© 2015 The Philosophical Forum, Inc.

ALIENATION AND RECOGNITION IN HEGEL’S

PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT*

TIMOTHY L. BROWNLEE

I. RECOGNITION AND THE PROBLEM OF ALIENATION

There is a prominent model of recognition according to which we identify some

generic, self-standing feature that individuals share—it might be rationality, or
dignity, or the capacity to suffer—and then hold that we recognize another when we
respond to that characteristic in the appropriate way—say by giving her reasons, or
showing respect, or promoting her welfare. We can call this model of recognition
“automatic”: Since the ground of recognition is simply whatever generic, self-
standing characteristic we hold to be salient, and since individuals could not help
but possess that trait, the demand that we recognize them is therefore unconditioned
and automatic. Recognition is their due simply for being the sort of being they are.
In what follows, I aim to demonstrate that, in the Jena Phenomenology of Spirit,
G. W. F. Hegel presents a powerful critique of this automatic model of recognition,
and of the conception of the self that corresponds to it.1 The central problem that
Hegel identifies is this. Conceptions that identify the self solely in terms of what
individuals always already share (a generic, self-standing feature) can only be
partial and exclusive since they cannot include those features that distinguish
individuals one from another, what Hegel will call their “particularity.” As long as

*Acknowledgments: My thanks to Gabe Gottlieb who read and offered very helpful comments on an
earlier draft of this paper; to J.C. Gonzalez for helpful conversations in summer 2013; to the
anonymous referees for this journal, whose comments I have done my best to address here; and to the
organizers of the 2014 meeting of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy where I delivered
an earlier version of the text.
1
References are to G. W. F. Hegel, Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Hans-Friedrich Wessels and
Heinrich Clairmont (Hamburg: Meiner, 1988). References are to the page number in this edition, and
the paragraph number in Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Oxford UP,
1977). All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.

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 TIMOTHY L. BROWNLEE

the predominant conception of the self is partial and exclusive in this way,
individuals will inevitably fail really to recognize one another, since the concep-
tion of the other whom they attempt to recognize is incomplete and false. Hegel
calls this condition one of alienation (Entfremdung), and holds that we should
reject both the automatic model of recognition, and the conception of the self
corresponding to it. Instead, Hegel argues that overcoming alienation requires the
articulation of a conception of the self that can both be affirmed equally of
everyone (and so satisfies a universality criterion), but, most importantly, which
also includes the individual’s particularity (and so satisfies a criterion of what
Hegel calls “fulfillment”). In place of the automatic model, Hegel proposes what
I shall call an “achievement” model of recognition, where the ground of recog-
nition does not lie in a generic feature individuals always already share, but
instead in what the individual comes to be as a result of her own activity.
I proceed as follows. I begin (Section II) by sketching Stephen Darwall’s model
of reciprocal recognition, showing that the feature of the individual that is salient
for recognition is the generic and self-standing characteristic of possessing
dignity, and that Darwall understands recognition to be a matter or responding
appropriately to this feature. I then (Section III) turn to Hegel’s claim that we find
the roots of alienation in the experience of being recognized merely as a “person,”
before (Section IV) showing that Hegel’s critique of this conception of the self and
its corresponding model of recognition can count as critiques of Darwall’s view of
reciprocal recognition. I demonstrate (Section V) that Hegel thinks that we need
instead to identify the self in terms of what it becomes (rather than in terms of
those generic and self-standing features we always already share), and that
(Section VI) the achievement of fully reciprocal recognition ultimately requires
the rejection of atomistic conceptions of the self. I conclude (Section VII) by
considering the unique conception of the self that Hegel proposes in the Jena
Phenomenology of Spirit.
Before proceeding, two points about my argument bear noting, one interpretive,
and one substantive. On the interpretive level, we find Hegel’s primary account of
alienation in the early Jena Phenomenology, and so I make this text my primary
focus.2 While alienation is clearly central in Hegel’s account of “culture”
(Bildung), which he calls “spirit alienated from itself,” if we begin our investiga-
tion into alienation in Chapter VIB, we find a proliferation of forms of alienation,
so that it is not clear which is Hegel’s primary interest. I argue that we should
instead seek the roots of alienation in the decline of what Hegel calls “ethicality”

2
Pinkard’s recent account of alienation focuses, puzzlingly, on the discussion of civil society in the
philosophy of objective spirit, where the idea plays no manifest role. See Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s
Naturalism (New York: Oxford UP, 2012) 147–58.

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(Sittlichkeit). Attention to that account shows that Hegel has a unified and coherent
concept of alienation, and that he considers, in his account of culture, a series of
attempts to overcome alienation.3
Substantively, the term “alienation” has a number of different senses and
applications, so that it is philosophically important either to articulate a unified
account of alienation, showing what the particular senses have in common, or
carefully and consistently to distinguish the different senses in which it might be
used.4 I argue Hegel holds that a form of self-alienation is the fundamental form of
alienation, from which others—alienation from society or from nature—are
derivative. It is essential to see that Hegel’s framework is therefore not that of the
early Marx, for whom alienation is understood in relation to something like a
human “essential nature.”5 Instead, Hegel ultimately argues that overcoming alien-
ation requires that we understand the self not as a given fact of nature, but instead
as a product of attitudes of recognition. In short, a proper understanding of the
contribution that Hegel’s conception of alienation makes to his theory of recog-
nition provides powerful support for the interpretive claim that Hegel understands
the self to be a kind of norm.

II. KANTIAN CONCEPTIONS OF RECOGNITION

As I have suggested, we can see more clearly why Hegel’s concept of alienation
is significant for understanding recognition by considering a prominent competing

3
Dean Moyar argues that Hegel clarifies and expands the concept of alienation throughout Chapter
VIB. See Dean Moyar, “Self-Completing Alienation: Hegel’s Argument for Transparent Conditions
of Free Agency,” Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Critical Guide, ed. Moyar and Michael Quante
(New York: Cambridge UP, 2008) 150–72. On my account, Moyar reads the chapter backwards,
since Hegel sets out the concept of alienation at the outset of Chapter VIB, and considers strategies
for overcoming alienation in the remainder. In general, I do not devote much attention in what
follows to identifying the specific historical and literary sources that Hegel might have had in mind
in composing his discussion of culture. Other studies do this admirably. (See for example, C. Allen
Speight, Hegel, Literature and the Problem of Agency [New York: Cambridge UP, 2001] and H. S.
Harris, Hegel’s Ladder [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishers, 1997].)
4
Pippin gathers a range of diverse phenomena under the broad heading of alienation but they are not
obviously all instances of a single phenomenon, and I am not convinced that the problematic that
Pippin believes unites them—an account of free agency—is the central one in the Jena Phenom-
enology. See Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (New
York: Cambridge UP, 2008). On Pippin’s account of freedom and the role of alienation, see also
Fabian Schuppert, “Discursive Control, Non-Domination, and Hegelian Recognition Theory,” Phi-
losophy & Social Criticism 39, 9 (2013): 893–905.
5
I therefore disagree with Schacht who contends that Hegel’s account of alienation depends on such
an “essential nature” from which we are alienated. See Richard Schacht, Alienation (Lanham, MD:
UP of America, 1984) 51.

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conception of recognition, one that takes its bearings from Kant. While Kant
devotes little attention to the idea of recognition, other philosophers who draw
directly on Kantian ideas—I will focus on Stephen Darwall—ascribe greater
practical significance to it.
We can identify the roots of the problem in which I am interested in Kant’s
conception of respect (Achtung). On Kant’s view, the individual’s dignity (Würde)
consists in her capacity to be both author and subject of universal laws, and this
dignity is the proper object of our respect.6 Moreover, dignity is, for Kant, inalien-
able, a necessary characteristic belonging to all rational beings simply in virtue of
their having a will. As Christine Korsgaard makes explicit, it is our humanity
(Menschheit), “the capacity for the rational determination of ends in general” and
not our personality (Persönlichkeit), “the capacity for adopting morally obligatory
ends,” that is the proper object of respect.7 Put otherwise, we show respect for
individuals in virtue of unchangeable and necessary facts about them—that they
have a will, the capacity to adopt ends—not the concrete expression of that
capacity in particular deeds and a particular character.
Darwall appeals to this Kantian conception of dignity to provide a model for
reciprocal recognition. On Darwall’s account, we rightly ascribe dignity to others
in virtue of their having what he calls second-person authority and competence,
the ability to make claims and demands on others, and to be responsive to those
claims in one’s own actions.8 For Darwall, as for Kant, dignity is an inalienable
characteristic belonging to us in virtue of being free and rational. Rather than
being a product of the attitudes of others, or social practices, he holds that dignity
is an “irreducibly normative” (and not a “socially constituted”) characteristic, that
is in turn the source of obligations of respect.9 Because we possess dignity simply
in virtue of our freedom and rationality, others have an obligation to show respect
for us, and it is this sense of respect that Darwall identifies as a form of recogni-
tion, specifically of “second-person recognition respect.”10 When an individual

6
“Our own will, insofar as it can act only under the condition of a universal law-giving
[Gesetzgebung], this will, possible in the idea, is the proper object of respect [Achtung], and the
dignity [Würde] of humanity [Menschheit] consists in this capacity, to be universally law-giving,
even with the condition of likewise being subordinate to this law-giving.” Immanuel Kant,
Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten in Theorie Werkausgabe VII, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974) 74.
7
Christine M. Korsgaard, “Kant’s Formula of Humanity,” Creating the Kingdom of Ends (New York:
Cambridge UP, 1996) 111.
8
Stephen Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2006) 21.
9
“Dignity is an irreducibly normative rather than a socially constituted status.” Darwall, “Respect as
Honor and Accountability,” Honor, History, and Relationship: Essays In Second-Personal Ethics II
(New York: Oxford UP, 2013) 16.
10
Darwall (2006): 120.

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makes a claim on another, and the other acknowledges that claim, Darwall calls
this a relation of reciprocal recognition.11 Darwall endorses a model of recognition
where every individual possesses a specific characteristic—dignity—that is the
source of an obligation on the part of others to recognize them.
Darwall explicitly distinguishes this form of respect, second-person recognition
respect, from two other forms of respect, and these distinctions are helpful for
understanding why he thinks that only second-person respect can be a model for
reciprocal recognition. First, he distinguishes this “second-person recognition
respect” from “honor respect,” the form of recognition respect that predominates
in class societies in which social status constitutes the primary basis for behaviors
of recognition. These are distinct since honor respect is merited by features that
are socially constituted and that distinguish individuals from one another, while,
as we have seen, second-person respect is based on a shared identity that is
“irreducibly normative,” not founded in specific social arrangements.12 Second, he
distinguishes recognition respect in general from what he calls “appraisal respect”
or “esteem.”13 Like honor respect, appraisal respect is merited in virtue of features
that distinguish individuals one from another, most notably the achievement of
having an upright character or being an agent of some moral accomplishment.
However, unlike honor respect which, like recognition respect generally “is some-
thing we broadly do,” esteem is primarily an “attitude” that “we may simply have
toward a person,” which need not be social, calling for or requiring acknowledge-
ment and response from another.14
The fact that individual difference is not the object of second-person recogni-
tion respect is clearly connected to an important feature of Darwall’s conception
of morality. While Darwall argues that moral obligations are ultimately based in
second-personal relations, the concrete identities of the related parties are irrel-
evant to morality, since every moral agent possesses a dignity equal to the others.
From the moral standpoint, I must be able to understand myself as merely “one
among others.”15 Darwall holds that this equality is necessary for relations of
reciprocal recognition, and it is the reason why, with the decline of societies

11
Ibid: 39.
12
Darwall (2013): 15. See also Darwall (2006): 143–45.
13
He initially draws this distinction in Darwall, “Two Kinds of Respect,” Ethics 88, 1 (October 1977):
36–49. But see also Darwall (2006): 122–26.
14
Darwall (2013): 17. Like Darwall, Honneth aims to understand recognition in relation to the idea of
respect. Unlike Darwall, he holds that recognition depends not only on actions, but also on a specific
attitude, that of “value-ascription” (Wertschätzung). See for example, Honneth, “Unsichtbarkeit,
Über die moralische Epistemologie von ‘Anerkennung’,” Unsichtbarkeit, Stationen einer Theorie
von Intersubjektivität (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003) 10–27.
15
Darwall (2006): 102.

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 TIMOTHY L. BROWNLEE

oriented around honor, recognition cannot take as its object individual particular-
ity, becoming “psychologized” in egalitarian societies as a mere subjective “atti-
tude,” that of esteem.16

III. PERSONHOOD AND THE ROOTS OF ALIENATION

In the Jena Phenomenology, Hegel presents a critique of the model of reciprocal

recognition where we recognize one another as “persons” on the grounds that that
form of recognition is the root of alienation. On Hegel’s account, “personhood” is
a conception of “the self” (das Selbst).17 The central problem with this conception
of the self is that it necessarily excludes the individual’s particularity, which,
Hegel contends, makes it impossible for the individual to find “fulfillment” in it.
Once we identify the essential elements of that conception, we can see an impor-
tant way in which Hegel’s critique counts equally against the model of reciprocal
recognition that Darwall defends.
On Hegel’s account, an individual is a person in virtue of being an “I,” that is,
in virtue of having the capacities for self-conscious thought, and for the ownership
of property.18 As a conception of the self, personhood embodies two distinct
commitments. First, it grounds the idea of the self in a generic feature shared by
all individuals, in this case, being capable of thought. Second, it takes this feature
to be something that I possess simply on my own or by nature, so that, as a person
I am independent and “self-standing.” Put otherwise, personhood is an atomistic
conception of the self—throughout the discussion of “culture,” Hegel uses the
language of “atoms” and “points” to describe the basic character of individuals.19
Recognizing others as persons means ascribing to them a specific and equal
standing, which, in turn, entails distinctive normative commitments. The key term
in this connection is “Gelten”—having “validity” or “counting”—and the central
idea is that each person has an equal standing as a person: It is “a recognized and
actual validity [Gelten].”20 Recognizing someone as a person means ascribing
to her a set of rights, especially property rights, that it would be inappropriate
to violate. Because the individual deserves this recognition simply for possessing
the relevant generic and self-standing features (such as being capable of self-
conscious thought), we can call the model of recognition that corresponds to

16
Darwall (2013): 18.
17
It is the “first self” that we find in the account of spirit. Hegel (1988): 416, par. 633.
18
Ibid: 317, par. 479.
19
The “person” is an atomistic conception of the self (Hegel 1988: 318, par. 481), but so too is the
absolute monarch (Ibid: 338, par. 511). As Hegel makes explicit at the conclusion of the account of
“culture,” throughout the self is understood as an “atomic point” (atome Punkt) (Ibid: 393, par. 594).
20
Ibid: 318, par. 480.

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personhood an automatic model of recognition. Recognition is here a matter of

responding correctly to these features, in this case, by respecting the individual’s
rights.
As a conception of the self, personhood derives its plausibility in part from the
fact that it can be affirmed universally of individuals in virtue of an element of
their constitution that is essential. However, Hegel argues that personhood is
excessively formal and that the attempt to identify a generic feature shared by all
individuals ends up excluding other features that ought to belong to the self,
features that Hegel identifies under the broad heading of “content.”21 That is, the
“person” is a mere “empty unity” (das reine leere Eins) whose “reality” it must
experience as “a contingent existence [Dasein] and essenceless movement and
deed, which comes to no continued existence [Bestand].” The difficulty is in
relating those generic features that we share with others to our particular character
and deeds, which Hegel identifies as “content.” Personhood can connect these
only contingently by means of the idea of ownership, which, however, makes my
particularity dependent on mere “arbitrary choice” (Willkür), so that I must expe-
rience the concrete contents that I come to own as a merely contingent fact, with
no necessary connection to what I really am.
Hegel calls this problem of relating the self’s generic and the particular char-
acteristics one of “fulfillment” (Erfüllung).22 Since it fails to include their particu-
larity, individuals come to find being recognized merely as a person as a mark of
“disrespect” (Verachtung).23 If I cannot identify this “content”—my embodied
existence, my actions, my real powers—not only as “mine” but as myself—if I
cannot experience them as necessary elements of my constitution—they become
subject to the manipulation of others.24 So the experience of the attempt to ground

21
Ibid: 317–18, par. 480.
22
Ibid: 317, par. 480.
23
“The consciousness of right therefore experiences in its actual counting [Gelten] much more the loss
of its reality and its complete inessentiality, and designating an individual as a person is an
expression of disrespect.” Ibid: 318, par. 480.
24
On Hegel’s account, they can become subject to a “lord of the world” who is the “universal power
and absolute actuality” of all “content.” Ibid: 318, par. 481. There are deep similarities to Marx’s
critique of the person (see Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Erster Band [Berlin: Dietz, 1953, 90–91]), who
also believes that understanding one another as free and equal persons is actually consistent with
economic practices of domination and control. We might challenge Hegel here by suggesting that
it is sufficient for individuals to own their particularity, rather than being identified with it. At the
same time, the idea of economic self-ownership is more complicated than it may seem at first blush.
(See G. A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality [New York: Cambridge UP, 1995,
209–44 esp.]) There are equally prominent views that hold that we rightly identify individuals
primarily in terms of what they choose (their “plan of life” to employ the phrase of John Rawls, A
Theory of Justice [Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1971, 92ff.]) rather than in terms of their

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our conception of the self in a generic, self-standing feature is one of factual

dependence and blind submission to external authorities and powers.
In addition to being a subjective problem for individual agents, personhood also
raises challenges for the objective form of social life that mediates relations
between individuals. For Hegel, a conception of the self is meaningful and actual
only within a specific configuration of the social and political “world.”25 Person-
hood is meaningful only within social forms that support the individual’s rights.
Instead of understanding the social world to be self-standing, Hegel argues that it
depends for its existence and stability on the concrete activities of individuals,
drawing on their distinctive talents and abilities. Hegel explains this notion in
terms of the idea of “externalization” (Entaußerung): “The power of the individual
consists in this, [. . .] that it externalizes its self [es sich seines Selbsts entäußert],
therefore that it posits itself as the objective existing substance. Its culture
[Bildung] and its own actuality is therefore the actualization of the substance
itself.”26 The social world therefore itself depends essentially on individuals’
particular character, powers, and deeds. So finding a conception of the self that
includes content is not only a subjective problem for agents within a form of social
life. It is also an objective problem that a social form will need to resolve in order
to be stable.
As a conception of the self, personhood fails to comprehend elements of my
constitution that both distinguish me as an individual from others, and that are
necessary to animate and sustain the social world.27 The experience of this lack of
fit between the idea of the self and what is essential for the individual is an
experience of alienation: “This counting [Gelten] [of self-consciousness as a
person] is the universal actuality of the self, but it is just as much immediately its
reversal; it is the loss of its essence.—The actuality of the self not present in the
ethical world is won through its return into the person, but what was unified in
the person now emerges developed as alienated from itself [sich entfremdet].”28
The roots of alienation therefore lie in the experience of a false conception of the
self. Alienation arises when the predominant conception of what it means to be a

particularity, which can be, in part at least, given, so that there is no default entitlement to the
products of their particular actions and powers.
25
See sect. 7 below.
26
Hegel (1988): 325, par. 490. It is therefore essential to distinguish “Entäußerung,” the
externalization and expression of what is given to me which is essential to the production and
maintenance of any social order, from “Entfremdung,” the condition of alienation that I clarify
below.
27
Moyar is right to stress that alienation is neither simply a subjective nor objective condition.
However, his account does not correctly portray the relationship between these, since he does not
identify the centrality of the idea of the self to Hegel’s account. See Moyar (2008): 150.
28
Hegel (1988): 320, par. 484.

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self fails to capture those elements of my constitution that are essential to my own
self-understanding, and that are necessary to support my social world.29
This basic self-alienation can take at least two forms. First, it can occur on the
individual level. For example, when I work hard to develop an ability with a view
to securing employment, but those abilities are not valued in the job market, the
result would be an experience of alienation. Traits that I take to be important about
and constitutive of myself, in this case, the acquired abilities that enable me to do
a job, do not find expression from the standpoint of the objective institutions and
practices that structure the social world, in this case, those of the market for
employment. Second, as the title to the “Culture” chapter indicates, Hegel also
believes that it is possible for “spirit”—the normatively structured social world
taken as a whole, and the self-conscious agents who animate and sustain it—to
be “alienated from itself.”30 We find this global condition where there is no
understanding of the self available in which any individual could find herself
“fulfilled,” or no coherent, concrete self-understanding that is both universal, and
that includes those elements of my constitution about which I care. Finding such
a self-understanding is the fundamental task that drives Hegel’s account of
“Culture” in the Jena Phenomenology (it seems that he also thought that this
condition of alienation is one that pervaded Europe and western societies from
imperial Rome up to the turn of the nineteenth century).

IV. ALIENATION AND RECOGNITION

Alienation constitutes an impediment to the achievement of relations of recip-

rocal recognition. The account of reciprocal recognition (gegenseitiges
Anerkennen) that Hegel presents in the text is complex and cumulative, stretching
from the introductory discussion of “self-consciousness” at least up to the con-
clusion of the treatment of “spirit.”31 Hegel argues that self-conscious beings are
constituted in part by the recognition of others: “Self-consciousness is in and for

29
Hegel’s conception of alienation is therefore distinct from Jaeggi’s. Jaeggi identifies alienation as a
failure of “appropriation” (Aneignung) arising when an individual is incapable of incorporating an
element of her experience into a coherent understanding of herself as an agent. See Rahel Jaeggi,
Entfremdung: Zur Aktualität eines sozialphilosophischen Problems (Frankfurt am Main: Campus,
2005). Hegel’s account works the other way around, where the social structures that provide the
terms for the individual’s self-understanding fail to comprehend essential elements of her own
constitution.
30
Hegel (1988): 320.
31
See especially Hegel (1988): 441, par. 670. I discuss the rise of the problem of recognition in the text
and the contribution that Hegel’s account of “Ethicality” makes to addressing it in Timothy L.
Brownlee, “Ethicality and the Movement of Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,”
International Philosophical Quarterly 56, 2 (June 2016): forthcoming.

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 TIMOTHY L. BROWNLEE

itself, by and through the fact that it is in and for itself for another, that is, it is only
as something recognized [Anerkanntes].”32 Since “The simple essence of self-
consciousness is absolute negativity, pure being-for-self,”33 that is, its capacity to
negate or transcend any particular determinacy, self-conscious beings acquire
a positive standing only when they are recognized by others. Because that standing
depends on the relation to another that is its like or equal—Hegel’s account of
the relation between lord and bondsman shows why relations of “one-sided”
(einseitig) recognition are inadequate to secure a genuine positive standing—
genuine recognition must be “reciprocal” (gegenseitig).34
Hegel invokes the idea of ethicality, of a normatively structured form of shared
social life, to spell out the conditions for the achievement of this reciprocity.35
Ethicality makes possible relations of reciprocity by furnishing a shared conception
of what it means to be a “self.”36 Hegel’s account of the “ethical world” and “ethical
action” demonstrates that in a social world lacking such an explicit and universal
conception of the self—a social world in which the individual counts only as an
“unreal shadow”37—no one is recognized, and so reciprocal intersubjective recog-
nition is impossible. Reciprocal recognition therefore presupposes an articulate and
unified conception of what it means to be a self, and such a conception must satisfy
what we can call a “universality” criterion. The self-understanding that we’ve just
considered, that of the “person,” satisfies this universality criterion, since it is
supposed to apply equally to all participants in social life.
The experience of alienation points to the centrality of the issue of fulfillment
for Hegel’s theory of reciprocal recognition. In short, recognition will be success-
ful on this account only so long as the understanding that I have of what you are,
which informs what I recognize you as, is in fact true. In cases like the one we
have been considering, where the predominant conception of the self is that of the
person, the problem is that while the shared conception of selfhood is one that can
be ascribed equally to everyone, it fails to satisfy the “fulfillment” criterion since
it does not include those essential elements of my constitution that Hegel identifies
as “content.” As long as individuals are alienated in this way, as long as they lack
a true conception of the other whom they recognize and who in turn recognizes
them, they fail really to recognize one another.
Identifying this link between alienation and recognition is important because it
shows that not every failure of recognition is a failure of mutuality. Interpreters

32
Hegel (1988): 127, par. 178.
33
Ibid: 134, par. 194.
34
Ibid: 129, par. 184.
35
Ibid: 234, par. 349, 236, par. 351. See Brownlee (2016).
36
Ibid: 285–87, par. 436–37.
37
Ibid: 304, par. 464.

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often take the relation of “one-sided” recognition between the lord and bondsman
to be a paradigmatic form of failed recognition.38 By contrast, in conditions of
alienation, it is possible for everyone to recognize the same norms governing what
it means to be a self, and for everyone to enjoy the same equal status (e.g., that of
being a person), but for full intersubjective recognition to be impossible. This
failure is not rooted in the absence of mutuality, but rather in the fact that the
understanding of the self is false or incomplete. In the absence of a true conception
of the self, mutual recognition of the same norms is insufficient to secure the
conditions for fully reciprocal recognition of and between subjects.
At the same time, Hegel’s conception of the relation between recognition and
alienation also provides the materials for a critique of Darwall’s conception of
reciprocal recognition. Darwall’s model of recognition is, to use the terminology
I introduced above, an automatic model of recognition: Individuals merit recog-
nition in virtue of a self-standing generic feature that they always already possess.
If Hegel is right, then Darwall’s model of recognition and the self-conception
corresponding to it will be alienating, since they do not include “content”: Merely
being recognized as a person will prove insufficient since that form of recognition
neglects the particularity that is essential to the constitution of the self. The sort of
recognition that Darwall calls second-person recognition respect, where each
individual is “one among others,” therefore falls short of what Hegel calls fully
reciprocal recognition, since it is grounded in a merely partial, and therefore false,
conception of the self.
Of course, Darwall might well respond that this critique misses the mark,
stressing that his primary interest is in the idea of moral obligation, not articulating
a complete conception of the self. He might admit that there are other forms of
recognition besides second-person respect and honor respect, but simply hold that
these are not directly relevant to morality. Indeed, if Darwall is right, then Hegel’s
attempt to find a universal conception of the self shared equally by everyone is
inconsistent with the attempt to find a conception of the self that includes the
individual’s particularity. After all, one of the primary reasons Darwall distin-
guishes second-person respect from honor respect and esteem is because only the
former admits of full reciprocity, since it is based on a characteristic shared
equally by all persons, their dignity. On this account, Hegel’s attempt to articulate
a conception of reciprocal recognition that includes individual particularity is
doomed to fail. Addressing this objection requires that we look in greater detail at
how Hegel thinks the experience of alienation prompts a shift in both our con-
ception of the self and the idea of recognition.

38
Ibid: 133, par. 191.

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V. A NEW MODEL OF RECOGNITION

In his account of “Culture,” Hegel argues that responding to the problem of

alienation entails the need for a change in what we might call the “model” of
recognition in the text. The experience of the inadequacy of personhood as a
conception of the self entails not only the rejection of the automatic model of
recognition, but also the articulation of a new conception of the self, and of a
corresponding model of recognition.
The key passage for making sense of this change is the following. Within
“culture”:

Self-consciousness is something, it has reality only insofar as it alienates itself from itself [es sich
selbst entfremdet]; it thereby posits itself as something universal, and this universality is its counting
[Gelten] and actuality. This equality [Gleichheit] with all is therefore not the equality of right, not
the immediate being recognized and counting of self-consciousness simply because it is; rather, the
fact that it counts [gelte] is through the alienated mediation of making itself accord with the
universal. The spiritless universality of right takes up the natural mode of the character and of
existence and justifies it. But the universality that counts here is that which has come to be [die
gewordne], and thus is it actual. That through which the individual has validity and actuality here
is culture [die Bildung].39

Instead of identifying the self with a characteristic or set of characteristics that

everyone always already has, the experience of alienation entails a demand for
self-alteration, so that what primarily constitutes the self is what it becomes rather
than what it already is.40 While it is true that different individuals can become
different things, this new conception of the self still satisfies what I have been
calling the universality criterion—it is a status that can be ascribed equally to
all—since on Hegel’s account this self-alteration is undertaken with a view
to specific norms that are themselves universal. That is, the activity of self-
transformation involves positing a common “purpose” (Zweck) or goal, and that
purpose is articulated in terms of universal standards. This conception of the
self includes what was excluded from the “person,” namely what Hegel calls
“content,” since this process of becoming necessarily draws on traits like our
specific talents and abilities (“determinate individuality”), giving them a special
significance.41 This process of becoming is essentially social, since Hegel claims
that it is identical with the process through which the social “substance” itself

39
Ibid: 324, par. 488–89.
40
To this extent, the verb “to alienate” need not have a pejorative connotation. If a self is something
I must become, then being a self requires a process of “alienating” what is merely natural from
myself.
41
Hegel (1988): 324, par. 489.

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 ALIENATION AND RECOGNITION IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

comes to be something real or actual.42 This project, which depends on the specific
character and talent of the individual, is therefore necessary for the achievement of
recognition.
This new conception, which identifies the self primarily in terms of what the
individual comes to be, requires a new model of recognition. In contrast to the
automatic model, we can call this the achievement model of recognition, since on
this new model individuals come to merit recognition in virtue of the extent to
which they draw on their capacity for self-transformation to achieve the universal
purpose or goal with which the self is identified.43
This new model of recognition, and the new conception of the self that corre-
sponds to it, provide the basis for Hegel’s answer to our hypothetical Darwallian
challenge. This challenge is based on what Hegel would hold to be a false
dichotomy: Darwall is wrong to hold that a shared “universal” conception of the
self and one that includes what differentiates individuals, their particular deeds
and character, are mutually exclusive. Instead, understanding the self in terms of
the idea of “becoming” entails that our particular deeds and character are actually
essential for achieving a universal status. Recognition of our particularity need not
be bound up with a conception of “honor” or “esteem,” but is instead an essential
requirement of any coherent universal conception of the self.44 While Hegel does
think that individuals come to merit recognition in virtue of their success in this
project of self-shaping, because the standards that guide that project are “univer-
sal,” such success can be the basis for a reasonable demand for recognition from
others. So Hegel presents us with a model of recognition that incorporates both an
equal status and individual particularly as essential elements.
There is one sense in which Darwall’s account of recognition depends not only
on a conception of what individuals always already are but also on their particular
deeds, in particular the action of making claims and demands on others. The kind
of reciprocal recognition that interests him is one in which one individual makes
a claim and the other acknowledges that claim. That recognition clearly does
depend on the specific deeds and actions of individuals. Darwall holds that his
emphasis on this Fichtean idea actually marks an advance on Kant, and it certainly

42
See again, Ibid: 325, par. 490.
43
Like Chapter VB, “The actualization of rational self-consciousness through itself,” Hegel is here
considering a practical stance stressing self-actualization through agency. However, the stance of
reason is atomistic both in holding a negative stance toward ethicality and the social world (Ibid:
236–39, par. 354–58), and in attempting to draw its self-definition entirely from itself, not from
others (so the account of reason is not directly about recognition). By contrast, the alienated self
knows both that the social world provides the terms for its actualization and expression, and that it
acquires its standing only through the recognition of others.
44
See McBride’s measured consideration of the negative implications of the expectation for esteem in
Cillian McBride, Recognition (Malden, MA: Polity, 2013) 72–102.

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 TIMOTHY L. BROWNLEE

involves a different conception of the self, now understood not simply in terms of
what it always already is, but in terms of its free activity.45 At the same time,
Darwall devotes surprisingly little attention to the concrete contents of the claims
that individuals make on one another, focusing much more on a generalized idea
of claim-making and the principles underlying it.46 By contrast, one of the impor-
tant lessons that we find in Hegel’s critique of alienating conceptions of the self is
that overcoming alienation requires that we devote attention not only to the role
that activity plays in constituting the self—the idea that I am to a significant
degree what I become—but also to the question of the specific ends toward which
I ought to dedicate my deeds.47 This question of ultimate ends is one that is absent
from Darwall’s conception of morality, but it is one that Hegel believes is ines-
capable for the theory of recognition.

VI. OVERCOMING ALIENATION

This question of ultimate ends is important because of its contribution to the

idea of the self. If we take being a self to depend on what the individual becomes
rather than on what she always already is, then addressing the question of what I
should become, of the sort of life I should lead, of the ends toward which I ought
to devote my particularity, is essential for overcoming the alienation problem
that otherwise plagues the theory of recognition. Hegel articulates three central
conditions for overcoming alienation through the course of his discussion of
culture.
First, Hegel clarifies the nature of the universals in accordance with which the
individual ought to shape her life. The self of culture must become the “self-
interpreting self” (das sich selbst erfaßendes Selbst),48 by which Hegel means that
the ultimate standards that govern the individual’s life must be such that she can
have insight into their justifiability, to affirm them on the basis of the rational

45
“Activity [Tätigkeit] in general returning into itself (I-ness [Ichheit], subjectivity) is the character
of the rational being.” J. G. Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts, ed. Fritz Medicus (Hamburg:
Meiner, 1979) 17.
46
Similarly, Fichte distinguishes the demands of right, in which he situates his account of reciprocal
recognition, from the specific claims we make on one another from the moral standpoint. Likewise,
while the action of “summoning” another plays a central role in Fichte’s account of right, the
specific contents of the summons—what it is that I summon the other to do—are left intentionally
empty. On a similar note, see Paul Franks, All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments,
and Skepticism in German Idealism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2005) 325.
47
Compare Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard UP, 2006) 43.
48
Hegel (1988): 322, par. 486.

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 ALIENATION AND RECOGNITION IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

activities of judgment and thought.49 Instead of being a merely given end or value,
the universal that directs the individual’s activities must take the form of a
coherent human life that it is possible for me and others to lead.50 They must
articulate a standpoint that I can occupy and from which I can receive recognition
from others, and a standpoint through which I can recognize others when they
occupy it.51
Second, overcoming alienation requires the achievement of a non-alienated
relationship to the world. The enlightenment’s work is a dual one. It consists first
in undermining the idea that the world of our experience is only a second best in
comparison to some “beyond” of, as Hegel says, “pure consciousness”—a city of
man that is but a pale shadow of the city of God. Second, enlightenment creates
an awareness of the constitutive role that self-conscious individuals play in
making and remaking the world, an awareness that the norms structuring the
social world are themselves the “work” of self-conscious individuals, not fixed
and permanent facts of nature.52
However, the most decisive step in overcoming alienation lies in the rejection of
atomistic conceptions of the self. Hegel rejects the automatic model of recogni-
tion, and the atomistic conception of the self to which it corresponds in favor of an
achievement model, where individuals only come to merit recognition in virtue of
what they become, drawing on their specific deeds and character. However, there
remains an important question about this achievement model: Is its conception
of the self also atomistic? This question turns on whether recognition is, on the
achievement model, responsive or constitutive. On the automatic model, recogni-
tion is essentially responsive, since it is required by features that individuals
always already have as persons. The achievement model could also be merely
responsive if it turns out that the achievement in virtue of which individuals come
to merit recognition is one that they can make independent of the contribution of

49
In Chapter VIB, Hegel considers and rejects a range of possible standards that specify merely given
ends for human conduct, like those of wealth, state power, and nobility. See the summary of this
treatment in Ibid: 343–44, par. 521.
50
It therefore turns out that while the fulfillment problem is rooted in concerns connected to the basic
character of the self, it ultimately requires engagement with the question of what are the ends that
are constitutive of a “fulfilled” life. This is the sense of “fulfillment” that is primarily at play in
Martin Seel, Paradoxien der Erfüllung (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2006).
51
Hegel’s treatment of the “absolute monarch” indicates the challenge, namely to articulate a human
life that is not simply given, but rather the product of attitudes of recognition. The monarch is
certainly a product of such attitudes—it is through the act of “naming” that the monarch comes to
“count” at all (Hegel 1988, 337, par. 511)—and identifying the purpose as a human being is
important since, unlike objects like wealth or state power, the monarch is herself a human being,
who can recognize her subjects as well.
52
The enlightenment conception of “utility” embodies this understanding. See Ibid: 382–84, par. 580.

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 TIMOTHY L. BROWNLEE

others. In this case, others would merely respond to the achievement by recog-
nizing the individual. Does the bindingness of the ends toward which individuals
direct their activity stem from an external ground, like nature or a divinely given
purpose, in which case satisfying those goals need not depend on the recognition
of others? Or does the legitimacy of those ends instead ultimately depend on the
fact that other self-conscious individuals recognize them to be binding?
In his account of culture, Hegel identifies what he takes to be a fundamental
problem with atomism: It fails to acknowledge that determinate conceptions of the
self are fundamentally constituted through the mutual recognition of a set of
shared social norms. The consequences of the failure to acknowledge this consti-
tutive role are borne out by Hegel’s account of “absolute freedom.” On this
understanding of the self,53 each individual understands herself to be not only an
atomistic point, separate from others, but also competent on her own to be the
judge and architect of a social order that she believes would be fulfilling and which
she expects others to share. Hegel argues that the ultimate result of the adoption
of this understanding of the self is really the complete loss of the self, a loss whose
practical realization is “terror,” the insignificance of the individual resulting ulti-
mately in a meaningless death.54 That is, Hegel argues for a particularly strong
conclusion that points to the centrality of the distinctive theory of the self that he
articulates in the Jena Phenomenology: In the absence of a set of shared institu-
tions whose norms individuals mutually recognize, there can be no shared con-
ception of the self, and therefore no intersubjective recognition.
Of course, it is a commonplace that Hegel is a critic of atomism.55 However,
there are a range of non-atomistic positions that one might adopt. On the promi-
nent account of Charles Taylor, atomistic doctrines espouse “a vision of society as
in some sense constituted by individual for the fulfillment of ends which [are]
primarily individual” or which “defend in some sense the priority of the individual
and his rights over society, or which present a purely instrumental view of
society.”56 To this atomism, Taylor opposes the Aristotelian view that we could not
develop our distinctively human capacities, in particular, our capacity to be
autonomous, outside of a specific form of social life.57 There is a prominent
account of Hegel’s mature practical philosophy according to which Hegel himself

53
“Absolute freedom” is the “second self” of spirit. Ibid: 416, par. 633.
54
Ibid: 392–93, par. 594.
55
See for example, the discussion of “liberalism” in Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der
Geschichte, Theorie Werkausgabe 12, ed. Eva Moldenauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1970) 534.
56
Charles Taylor, “Atomism,” Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, vol 2
(New York: Oxford UP, 1985) 187.
57
Ibid: 189.

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 ALIENATION AND RECOGNITION IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

holds an Aristotelian “self-actualization” view, in which a form of social life

is essential for the full development of the distinctively human capacity to be
free.58
Hegel clearly rejects the atomistic thesis that the individual is “prior to” society.
However, that rejection need not entail the endorsement of a self-actualization
view. The key problem with the revolutionary terror is not simply that it renders
impossible the development of some distinctively human capacities. It is instead
that “absolute freedom” makes it impossible for anyone to be a self since it
undermines the social conditions that make the self possible in the first place. In
short, overcoming alienation does not simply require seeing others as essential to
the development of some essential capacity or capacities, but instead requires
acknowledging that the self is actually constituted through the acknowledgment of
shared norms.

VII. RECOGNITION AND THE SELF

The idea that the self is fundamentally constituted through recognition is

therefore at the heart of Hegel’s account of the revolutionary terror. And this
should not surprise us, given the centrality of “the self” (das Selbst) to Hegel’s
account of “spirit” (der Geist) in the text.59 Indeed, right from the outset of Chapter
VI, where he essentially identifies spirit as the self, Hegel advances the unortho-
dox view that we can neither understand the self to be simply a form conscious-
ness separate from and independent of the objective world, nor completely explain
the self in terms of features of objective nature:

[Spirit] is the self [das Selbst] of actual consciousness, which confronts actual consciousness as an
objective actual world, but which has just as much lost for the self the significance of something
alien [fremd], just as the self has lost all significance of being something divided from the world, as
a dependent or independent being-for-self. [As] the substance and the universal, self-same, remain-
ing essence, it is the unmoved and firm ground and point of departure of the deeds of all. As the
thought in itself of all self-consciousness, [it is at the same time] the purpose and goal [of those
deeds].—This substance is just as much the universal work that engenders itself through the deeds
of all and each as their unity and equality, for it is the being-for-self, the self, the deed.60

58
See for example, Allen Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge UP, 1990).
59
Up until the start of the discussion of spirit, “self” and its cognates always appear as fragments,
either as parts of compound expressions (e.g., Selbstbewußtsein) or as reflexive pronouns (e.g., die
Sache selbst). By contrast, with the introduction of the concept of spirit, Hegel begins to use “the
self” (das Selbst) as a substantive. For this reason, we ought to treat “the self” as a technical term,
to distinguish it from its prior and distinct appearances as a particle or reflexive.
60
Hegel (1988): 288–89, par. 439.

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 TIMOTHY L. BROWNLEE

Instead of identifying the self with consciousness, Hegel holds that determinate
conceptions of the self are always anchored in and shaped by a normatively
structured “world” which transcends individual self-consciousness. At the same
time, he holds that those institutions and practices that give shape to our determi-
nate conceptions of the self are only “actual” when they are animated and sus-
tained by self-conscious individuals. So a determinate conception of the self is not
simply given to us as an immediate fact of consciousness, or as a simple fact of
nature, but instead depends on the sustained recognition of a set of institutionally
embodied norms.
Acknowledging this dependence of the self on norm recognition helps us
understand Hegel’s critique of absolute freedom, since the latter can only under-
mine the shared norms that are at the basis of our conceptions of the self.
However, the experience of alienation points to the fact that it is possible for
forms of social life to fail to acknowledge this constitutive role, and instead hold
that the self is not a product of norm recognition, but instead is given as a fact,
either from immediate consciousness, or nature, or God. However, such forms
of social life—Hegel calls them shapes of spirit—will inevitably be at odds with
themselves, since in itself or in truth, the self is really a product of attitudes of
recognition, even though it is not so for these social forms. And this entails that
overcoming alienation requires a form of self-conscious spirit, that is, a shape of
spirit that acknowledges the role that recognitive attitudes always already play
in constituting the self.
We can now see why overcoming alienation requires the rejection of atom-
istic conceptions of the self and the responsive models of recognition to which
they are tied in favor of an understanding of the self as a product of recognitive
attitudes. The failure to acknowledge this role for the attitudes of others in
constituting the self is the ultimate source of the alienating character of
Darwall’s conception of reciprocal recognition. In spite of the importance of
“second-personal” relations to Darwall’s conceptions of practical reason and
morality, his commitment to the “irreducibly normative” character of dignity
entails that the person who is recognized exists outside of relations of recogni-
tion, and their dignity provides the external ground for the demands of respect.61
And that entails that, at root, Darwall’s conception of the self remains atomistic.
By contrast, Hegel rejects such atomistic conceptions of the self in favor of one
that is fundamentally social, whose basic character is determined by the com-
mitments, institutions, and practices of a given people. We might say that unlike
Kant, who thought that the fundamental characteristic that makes me what

61
Darwall (2006): 144.

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 ALIENATION AND RECOGNITION IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

I am is something “holy” (heilig), my dignity,62 Hegel holds that the self is

something that is instead “spiritual” (geistig), the product of shared social
understanding.63
This “spiritual” conception of the self is, at the same time, essential to the
achievement of relations of reciprocal intersubjective recognition. That is, Hegel
argues that a relation of recognition that satisfies both the universality and fulfill-
ment criteria will be possible only on the condition that we adopt a “constitutive”
(as opposed to the “responsive”) model of recognition. We find this achievement
at the conclusion of the final part of the treatment of spirit, “morality,” in which
Hegel shows that reciprocal recognition depends on the parties understanding one
another as “conscience.”64 A full account of the achievement of reciprocal recog-
nition within morality falls outside the scope of the present discussion. However,
the account of alienation that I have offered points to some important features that
distinguish Hegel’s conception of the relation between reciprocal recognition and
morality from Darwall’s.
First, for Hegel, “conscience” must be a conception of “the self”65 that acknowl-
edges the role that the attitudes of others play in its constitution.66 The specific
forms of language (which Hegel calls the “existence [Dasein] of spirit”67) in
conscience point to this acknowledgment: It is only through saying to others what
one is doing and why that the individual is recognized by others as a self.68 Second,
since it is only as a participant in a norm-governed, linguistically mediated
practice that I come to merit recognition, morality incorporates an achievement
model of recognition. Hegel argues that it is possible for agents to fail to partici-
pate in that practice (the “beautiful soul”), or to participate in ways that violate
the norms to which others hold them (the “evil” agent), and so not to be entitled
to the recognition of others. Finally, conscience acknowledges the essentiality of
the individual’s particularity to moral practice. In place of holding individuals to
abstract standards, conscience locates the sources of the right in individual con-
viction, sees an essential role for the expression of the individual’s take on what
she is doing in communicative discourse, and leaves room for subjects to negotiate

62
Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Theorie Werkausgabe VII, 210.
63
Hegel’s view of the self is therefore closer to the conception of the “person” defended by Rebecca
Kukla and Mark Lance, “Yo!” and “Lo!” The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009) 192.
64
See again, Hegel (1988): 441, par. 670.
65
Ibid: 416–17, par. 633.
66
One of the central arguments of this section is that we cannot anchor our account of what is right
on features drawn from agents’ “natural being.” See for example, Ibid: 423, par. 643. Conscience
cannot simply be a practical faculty or an eternal feature of practical reason.
67
Ibid: 428, par. 652.
68
Ibid: 430, par. 654.

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 TIMOTHY L. BROWNLEE

the meaning of the individual’s action and of what is right, exemplified in the
practices of confession and forgiveness. In short, conscience makes possible the
overcoming of alienation by incorporating the key elements of Hegel’s account of
“culture”: the essential place of individual particularity, the achievement model of
recognition, and the role of recognitive attitudes in constituting the self.
Of course, the claim that individuals ought to be recognized not only for what
they share in common with others, but also for their particularity, plays a central
role in Honneth’s theory of recognition. Honneth distinguishes between “right,”
the “model” of recognition according to which everyone is understood to be a
person, equal to others, and “esteem,” which takes account of the individual’s
particular talents and achievements, arguing that we secure each form of recog-
nition in basically different social spheres.69 However, Honneth argues that these
must be basically separate models of recognition, since, unlike the universal
demands of right, we cannot reasonably demand esteem, the recognition of our
particularity, from everyone, and we do not expect every individual to merit it. By
contrast, Hegel’s argument in the Jena Phenomenology is that we must be able to
affirm a conception of the self of everyone equally—so that everyone enjoys the
same standing as a self—and that that conception of the self must include the
individual’s particularity—the individual must be able to find fulfillment in it.
However, there are not two separate models of recognition corresponding to these
two demands separately. Instead, Hegel’s unique attempt in the early Jena Phe-
nomenology is to articulate a unified conception of the self that includes each as an
essential moment. For this reason, Hegel would reject pluralistic conceptions of
recognition like Honneth and Darwall’s which aim to identify different forms of
recognition that correspond to different elements of our constitution, on the
grounds that they ultimately fragment the self so that it becomes unclear how
those different elements can be integrated into a coherent whole. Whether Hegel’s
attempt to articulate a unified conception of the self succeeds will ultimately
depend on the cogency of his account of conscience. However, alienation points to
the uniqueness of the questions and problems that motivate Hegel’s early account
of recognition, and of the distinctness of his response.

Department of Philosophy, Xavier University, Cincinnati

69
Axel Honneth, Die Kampf um Anerkennung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992) 196–210.

396