{"id":903214,"date":"2026-09-17T16:13:38","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grundlinien.de\/?page_id=903214"},"modified":"2026-09-17T16:13:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:13:39","slug":"is-hegels-recognition-fit-for-the-politics-of-recognition","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/grundlinien.de\/en\/is-hegels-recognition-fit-for-the-politics-of-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Hegel\u2019s recognition fit for the politics of recognition?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In brief:<\/strong> The concept comes from Hegel, but it means something other than today\u2019s debate usually assumes. Recognition<\/a> is in him not an attitude one adopts or withholds but a relation that becomes actual in institutions \u2013 or not at all. That is an objection to both sides of the dispute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What recognition is in Hegel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It is reciprocal or it is none. The analysis of lordship and bondage<\/a> shows that the lord who does not recognise the bondsman as free is recognised by someone unfree \u2013 and so not at all. Recognition that is compelled, granted or handed down is by definition worthless. That is Hegel\u2019s real discovery, and it has the force of a logical argument, not of a moral plea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, recognition is in him not only a relation between persons but the structure of legal relations themselves. In contract<\/a> two persons recognise each other as owners (\u00a7 71<\/a> ff.); in punishment the offender is honoured as a rational being (\u00a7 100<\/a> note); in an occupation particularity gives itself \u201eits right, merit, and honour\u201c (\u00a7 206<\/a>); in the state particular interests \u201egain recognition of their right for themselves\u201c (\u00a7 260<\/a>). In Hegel, recognition is wherever right is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The objection to a merely symbolic politics of recognition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If recognition has its actuality in institutions, then a politics that stops at language, disposition and visibility is, by Hegel\u2019s own analysis, the stage of morality<\/a> \u2013 to be taken seriously, but without effect so long as it does not become ethical<\/a>, that is, appear in rights, offices, access and procedures. The sentence from \u00a7 209<\/a> note is in this no opposite of the recognition of particularity but its condition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The human being counts<\/em>, thus, because he is a human being<\/em>, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, Italian, and so on.<\/p>\nGroundlines, \u00a7 209<\/a> note<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Hegel adds that this consciousness is \u201eof infinite importance\u201c and deficient only when it fixes itself, as cosmopolitanism, against concrete life in the state. The equality of the person therefore does not exclude particularity \u2013 it is the ground on which particularity can raise a claim at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The objection to the other side<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Whoever concludes from this that formal equality before the law suffices and that everything further is touchiness will find an uncomfortable diagnosis in \u00a7 206<\/a> note. Hegel describes there orders in which subjective particularity has no place \u2013 and predicts what then happens:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thus not taken up into the organization of the whole, and not reconciled within it, subjective particularity shows itself, precisely because it also emerges as an essential moment, as something hostile, as the corruption of the social order.<\/p>\nGroundlines, \u00a7 206<\/a> note<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Conversely: \u201ePreserved, however, by the objective order, in conformity with it, and, at the same time, in its own right, subjective particularity becomes the principle of all animation of civil society, of the development of thinking activity, of merit, and of honour.\u201c Whoever takes the claims of particularity for a disturbance gets the disturbance \u2013 not because that would be unjust, but because an order that excludes an essential moment has it against itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What this yields for the debate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hegel gives neither side the victory and both a task. To the one: show in which institutions the recognition demanded is to become actual, instead of demanding it as an attitude. To the other: show where in the existing order particularity has its place, instead of declaring its claims an imposition. Both are empirical questions, and that is the gain: the dispute becomes decidable as soon as it is put in Hegelian terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources.<\/strong> Phenomenology of Spirit, chapter IV A. \u2013 Encyclopaedia (1830) \u00a7\u00a7 430\u2013437. \u2013 Groundlines \u00a7 35<\/a>\u2013\u00a7 40<\/a> (person and capacity for rights), \u00a7 57<\/a> note, \u00a7 71<\/a>\u2013\u00a7 74<\/a>, \u00a7 100<\/a> note, \u00a7 192<\/a> (recognition in the system of needs), \u00a7 206<\/a> and note, \u00a7 209<\/a> note, \u00a7 253<\/a> (honour in the corporation), \u00a7 260<\/a>. \u2013 In the glossary: Recognition<\/a>, Intersubjectivity<\/a>, Ethical Life<\/a>. \u2013 Literature.<\/strong> Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie<\/em>, Freiburg 1979; Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung<\/em>, Frankfurt a. M. 1992; Charles Taylor, \u201eThe Politics of Recognition\u201c, 1992; Nancy Fraser \/ Axel Honneth, Umverteilung oder Anerkennung?<\/em>, Frankfurt a. M. 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n