Hegel and Recognition

Abstract

It would be surprising if the central finding of Part I of this book – that respecting the dignity of ontological persons requires that we respect their capacity for undistorted self-interpretation, in addition to respecting their capacity for autonomous action – lay behind the widespread but somewhat inchoate concern with such interpretive moral wrongs as objectification, yet had gone entirely unnoticed by previous enquirers. The primary concern of Part II is to round out and contextualise the findings of Part I by tracing the tradition of post-Kantian ethical reflection that can be said to be centrally concerned with the ethics of self-knowledge. In doing so it will suggest some significant modifications to the account of the normative foundations of the ethics of self-knowledge set out in Chapter 6. The process begins in this chapter with an exploration of Hegel’s view of the nature and moral importance of the recognition of others, as an element in our own self-realisation.