Hegel’s
Concept of Mutual Recognition:
The Limits of
Self-Determination
Dr. Victoria I. Burke
For Hegel, the ideal relation that
two self-conscious beings might have to each other is one of reciprocal mutual
recognition. According to Hegel, “a self-consciousness
exists for [another] consciousness.” That is, self-consciousness is defined by its
being recognized as self-conscious by another self-consciousness.
In one formulation, Robert Pippin says that this means that “being a free agent
consists in being recognized as one.” However, at the same time, Hegel values
self-determination, which suggests a fundamental independence from others. The
formative activity of Bildung,
writes Frederick Neuhouser, “is not simply formative
experience of any type, but formative experience that has a specific end,
namely, self-determination.” The fully educated Hegelian moral subject is
self-determining, and is capable of making and pursuing its own ends. In this
paper, after diagnosing some misreadings of Hegel’s
concept of mutual recognition, I will show that the very possibility of
self-determination is undermined by the doctrine of mutual recognition, not by consciousness
becoming subject to the recognition bestowed by others (and thereby being
determined in part by others), but rather because of the very nature of its own
act of recognition itself.