Resumo

VERBRUGGE, AD. A matter of recognition: Regarding Hegel's understanding of recognition and the postmodern crisis of identity. Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2021, vol.61, n.3, pp.849-869. ISSN 2224-7912.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2021/v61n3a13.

The central question of this article concerns Hegel's concept of recognition (Anerkennung) and its meaning for the current political and social debate regarding issues of identity in our postmodern society. In the dominant interpretations of this pivotal Hegelian concept - for example in Honneth's or Fukuyama's work - the relationship between self-consciousness and absolute "negativity" has not been given due consideration. Departing from Hegel's determination of sickness and death in his philosophy of nature, the specific role and nature of absolute negativity in his concept of spirit and freedom will be clarified. Following the death of the immediate living being - as the manifestation of infinity in a finite entity - the free spirit is born. According to Hegel, man as a self-conscious being is not only part of infinite life, but he is this infinity in and for itself. Recognition as the concept of spirit is the actualisation of self-consciousness through doubling itself: the I that becomes We and the We that becomes I. The infinity of the spirit that is actualised in and through a doubling of self-consciousness contains this death of its natural being - absolute negativity. Now, this recognition can only become "real" due to a reciprocal action of at least two self-conscious people: both acting against themselves and towards each other. As became clear in the battle of life and death, in which both parties put their lives at stake in trying to kill each other, this action against themselves - as the actualisation of absolute negativity - is only made possible by both parties acting against each other, thereby enabling each other to put their lives at risk. As long as both parties fight no recognition is actualised. For actual recognition both the negation of immediate nature and "education" (formation/Bildung) are necessary. Recognition in this sense implies that you "mean" something in the eyes of others on the basis of what you can do, your skills and attitudes. Now, in his philosophy of spirit for Hegel this formation of freedom (as the prerequisite of recognition) is actualised by labour, as the latter is professionally performed in the ethical life of a community (that is directed towards such actualisation of freedom). The so called system of needs, as presented in Hegel's reinterpretation of modern economy, is a vital moment for this actualisation of freedom in "civil society" (Bürgerliche Gesellschaft). From the perspective of Hegel's concept of recognition and freedom, pressing issues concerning "identity" in postmodern society can be viewed and interpreted in a new way. The ubiquity of our technological consumer society tends to undermine socially fixed structures of recognition, erode communities and can therefore, lead to both alienation and mass formation. In an atomised and consumptive environment a compensative desire for recognition might manifest itself and remain inactive and turn into a cult of victimhood. This passive way of identity creation carries with it the risk of forming one's identity in an externally negative way, i.e. in an irresolvable battle against the supposed offenders. Such a counterculture might in fact destroy the elementary conditions for a civil society and give rise to a kind of postmodern "tribalisation". The article ends with a critical review of Hegel's concept of recognition from a wider perspective, looking at a more fundamental motive behind the primacy of self-consciousness in modern philosophy. Could it be a manifestation of a titanic power in modernity? One that Hegel is trying to tame, but simultaneously falls prey to? This idea might also present us with an alternative perspective on both Hegel's philosophy of spirit and our current situation.

Palavras-chave : recognition; freedom; nature; self-consciousness; negativity; education; labour; civil society; identity politics; consumer-culture.

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