Patrice Canivez

Robert R William's Book, Hegel'

Pathologies of Recognition

Keywords: recognition, alienation, power relationships, universal freedom, finitude of action

The article argues that recognition is not only the answer to social pathologies caused by disrespect, but also an ambivalent relationship that generates its own pathologies. It distinguishes between two dimensions of recognition: the inter-individual dimension of intersubjective recognition and the institutional dimension of recognition between the individual and the state. Relying on a joint reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right, the article develops a critical and normative investigation. It draws the norms of recognition in its two dimensions, inter-individual and institutional. It shows how the Phenomenology of Spirit develops a critical analysis of inter-subjective recognition, which in Hegel's view is always contaminated by power relations. Such contamination of recognition by power appears in all inter-individual forms of recognition. It is not specific to the 'master/servant' dialectic. In contrast with Axel Honneth's reading of the Philosophy of Right, the 'vertical' dimension of recognition between the individual and the state is rehabilitated. Based on a close reading of Hegel's text, the article determines the conditions under which citizens may recognize the state as their own and consider themselves as being recognized in and by the state. These conditions concern domestic as well as international policies. Finally, the article analyses the link between Hegel's concept of recognition and his theory of action. In this view, the highest form of recognition has more to do with reconciliationreconciliation between human beings, reconciliation with the 'finitude of action' -than with the problematic of individual and collective identity. The analysis includes a discussion of recent interpretations of Hegel's philosophy, especially in Germany (J. Habermas, A. Honneth, L. Siep) and in the U.S. (F. Jameson, F. Neuhouser, T. Pinkard, R. Pippin, T. Rockmore), with particular attention to the question of argumentation.

leader to treat them as instruments of his or her policy. Such desire, which constitutes individuals as human subjects, may be used for their complete reification.

(852) In a word, there are pathologies of recognition. Of course, what is at stake is not the moral standpoint that sees the other as deserving and needing recognition. This standpoint is implied in the second formulation of the Kantian imperative. To consider the other as an end in and for itself is to recognize him or her. However, the imperative of recognition is indeterminate. When considering the concrete forms in which the desire for recognition expresses itself and the responses it receives, it appears that recognition is not only a cure for social pathologies. It is also an unstable relationship that has its own pathologies.

In order to avoid these pathologies, recognition must have a specific structure. This article is intended to determine this structure, which may be found in Hegel's practical philosophy. As Ludwig Siep points out, Hegel's concept of recognition has two dimensions: the horizontal 'I-You' and the vertical 'I-We' dimensions, the inter-individual recognition and the recognition between individual and community. Although both the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right deal with the two dimensions, the norms of true recognition are clearly defined in the Phenomenology as regards the horizontal dimension, in the Philosophy of Right as regards the vertical. In order to grasp fully the implications of Hegel's concept of recognition, we thus need to read conjointly the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right 1 . Within Hegel's ethical and political thought, however, the concept of recognition plays a role analogous to that of the social contract in Rousseau 2 . If this is correct, we may expect recognition to have in fact four interrelated dimensions 3 . Apart from the main 'I-You' and 'I-We', we must take into account the 'I-Me' and 'We-Us' dimensions. As regards interindividual recognition, the 'I-Me' relation interferes with the 'I-You' interaction. As regards the relationships between individual and community, the 'I-We' dimension is only part of a 'We-Us' relationship, i.e. of a relationship between the citizens as a whole and their political organization. As a rule, we may assume that pathologies of recognition are related to the way these four dimensions are articulated.

In the following pages, I consider the norms of recognition and the pathologies they permit to identify. I examine Hegel's critical theory of inter-individual action in the Phenomenology of Spirit (I). Then I consider, in the Philosophy of Right, the relationships between individual and society, state and citizens (II). In so doing, I try to clarify two interconnected points. First, according to Hegel, intersubjective interactions entail an almost inescapable part of delusion and self-deception. In some instances, seeking as well as granting recognition is a manifestation of the will to power. In other instances, the experience of this intertwining between power and recognition leads the individual to forsake action and retreat into abstract moralism. In a word, recognition must find its way between the opposite risks of alienation in the world and alienation from the world. Second, the issue of recognition is a matter of social, ethical and political relationships. However, it also relates to Hegel's theory of action, notably to what may be called 'finitude of action'. Such finitude derives from the fact that every action is the action of a finite individual. Hence, there is always a discrepancy between what is actually achieved and what the agent meant to do. But the finitude of action also means that real action, because it has to be decided upon by an individual, entails a moment of irreducible arbitrariness. Human action can never be entirely justified and accounted for. In Hegel's view, the utmost form of recognition enables us to be reconciled to such a fact 4 .

I. HEGEL'S CRITICAL THEORY OF INDIVIDUAL INTERACTION (853)

I.1. The 'cycle of recognition' and the normative pattern of reciprocal recognition

Many important analyses have been dedicated to the Phenomenology of Spirit in recent decades 5 . Therefore, a brief account of the overall project of the book suffices to situate our topic. As is well known, the Phenomenology is intended to lead the reader to the position of 'absolute knowledge', which is the medium in which Hegel's Logic develops its pure conceptual process. Such knowledge is absolute in the sense that it is not dependent on, nor limited by, the split between object and subject, being and thought. Therefore, absolute knowledge is self-conscious freedom, freedom consisting of 'being-with-oneself-in-an-other' (Beisichselbstsein in einem Anderen). In the framework of a phenomenology, however, the split between external world and internal thought manifests itself as the opposition between consciousness (of an object) and self-consciousness (of the subject). Overcoming such opposition is the task of the Phenomenology of Spirit. 4 My interpretation does not consist in saying, as Patchen Markell does, that in pursuing recognition human beings try to re-establish some kind of mastery over their individual or collective existence, thereby failing to acknowledge the contingency of human action. In fact, the highest form of recognition is the reconciliation with the finitude of action, a reconciliation which is the condition for inter-individual 'open' relationships. Patchen Markell's reading does not take into consideration the whole 'cycle of recognition' in the Phenomenology of Spirit. See Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). The book is divided into three sections. Section A demonstrates that individual consciousness entails implicit self-consciousness (chapters I to III) 6 . Section B shows that self-consciousness must be explicitly consciousness and self-consciousness (chapter IV) 7 . Section C reconciles consciousness and self-consciousness at individual as well as collective level. At individual level, the reconciliation implies uniting theoretical and practical reason (chapter V) 8 . In order to be fully achieved, such unity must also be realized at the level of society, which is that of the spirit. The chapter on the spirit, which retrospectively integrates the preceding stages, envisages spirit in its consciousness (chapter VI); the chapter entitled "Religion", spirit in its self-consciousness (chapter VII). Absolute knowledge (chapter VIII) reunifies both: spirit in its consciousness and spirit in its self-consciousness.

As Tom Rockmore says, the Phenomenology of Spirit can be 'read as a unified epistemological theory' 9 . However, recognition plays a central role in this project, and this for two reasons. First, the topic is essential in Hegel's philosophical anthropology. As Pierre-Jean Labarrière and Ludwig Siep have shown 10 , it constitutes a 'cycle' that extends from the master/servant dialectic to that of the 'evil and its forgiveness', i.e. from the beginning of chapter IV to the end of chapter VI. Throughout this cycle, the theme of recognition appears at times in the forefront, at other times it stays in the background. However, it is one of the leading threads of the phenomenological development. Second, recognition plays a crucial role in Hegel's argumentation. This role is patent in the major transitions of the book. Failures of inter-individual recognition mediate the transition from 'reason' to 'spirit', whereas authentic recognition between the two rival types of modern subjectivity -the one centering on self-empowered action, the other on abstract moral judgment -mediates the transition from "spirit" to "religion". The very quest for recognition has an argumentative function. It is a series of failed attempts at obtaining full recognition. Of these failed attempts, the individual (and the reader of the Phenomenology) must draw the conclusions. The main conclusion is to renounce fantasy -fantasy of domination, of narcissistic self-assertion, of transparent inter-individual relationships -and get back to reality, social as well as historical.

The 'cycle of recognition' begins with a logical analysis that sets up the normative pattern for inter-individual recognition. This is what Hegel calls the 'pure concept of recognition' 11 . (854) Then, the text develops phenomenological experiences that correspond to successive attempts at achieving recognition. The struggle for recognition that takes place at the beginning of the cycle leads to an impasse. Authentic recognition occurs only at the end of the cycle, in the dialectic of the 'evil and its forgiveness'.

The logical analysis of recognition relates to the problem posed by the structure of selfconsciousness. Self-consciousness must be both consciousness and self-consciousness. On the one hand, the individual must be conscious, not only of the external world, but also of himself 6 Section A, chapter I: 'Sense-certainty or the "this" and meaning Something'; chapter II: 'Perception; or the Thing and Illusion'; chapter III: 'Force and the Understanding; Appearance and the Supersensible World'. I quote after Terry Pinkard's translation of the Phenomenology of Spirit (2010): available at: http://web.me.com/titpaul/Site/Phenomenology_of_Spirit_page.html. as part of this world. On the other hand, he must be conscious of himself as an independent, self-relating subject. The problem is to understand how the subject reconciles these two sides of its own mind. Consciousness is the movement through which the subject identifies with the object. Self-consciousness is the movement through which the subject retreats from the object and returns to itself. Consciousness without self-consciousness is alienation in the world. Selfconsciousness without consciousness is alienation from the world. The problem is to overcome the inner split between what an individual is -as a worldly thing -and his own certitude to be a free, self-determining individual. What is at stake is not only to avoid being treated as a mere object. It is also to avoid the self-delusion of a subject that takes itself to be free while unable to realize itself in the world. Real freedom cannot be achieved in retreating from the world and withdrawing within oneself. The inward relation to oneself and the outward relation to the world must be somehow unified. In a word, the subject must relate to itself in the very act of relating to its other.

Recognition is the answer: the unity of consciousness and self-consciousness is achieved through reciprocal recognition between free subjects. In being recognized by another subject that belongs to the external world, the subject is assured both of its freedom and of its own reality. However, since only another free subject can recognize the individual as a subject, the latter must recognize, in the former, a subject that recognizes him or her. Consequently, selfconsciousness develops through the mutual recognition of at least two consciousnesses. An isolated self-consciousness is logically inconceivable. But the structure of the relationship does not merely imply mutual recognition among partners. It consists of a sort of reflexive reciprocity. The partners 'recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other' 12 .

This relationship implies that the partners are both different and identical. Being another self, the other is identical to the subject. But the other must be another self, a self that exists in the world. As a self, each partner must prove to be something more than a living body. They must assert themselves as self-conscious subjects. As a different, external being, however, each partner identifies with his or her body. Each individual must appear to be somebody, not a mere body. At the same time, he or she must appear as a body that is somebody. The result of this dual relationship to the body is the necessity of personal formation (Bildung). Both sides of the relationship -freedom from bodily constraints and incarnation of freedom in the body -are to be reconciled through education. The first requirement of such education is the appropriation of one's body through the development of natural abilities, together with that of rational thinking. The Philosophy of Right (hereafter cited as PR 13 ) makes this clear, with explicit reference to the difference between slaves and free human beings (PR § 57 and Remark). Only in educating his or her own body and mind can the individual achieve recognition (855) for his or her freedom as a self-conscious subject, as an independent person whose body can be no one else's property. As a rule, Hegel's main thesis is that only selfeducating individuals achieve authentic and reciprocal recognition 14 .

12 Ibid. 13 In the following pages, I quote the English translation by Allen Wood, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Recognition is about achieving freedom in the strongest sense. Here, the formula of authentic recognition is essential. The partners "recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other". In other words, recognition means setting the other free. It also means recognizing in the other someone who makes me free. Paradoxically, it is this 'setting free of the other' that binds the individuals. And this bond, when reciprocal, is stronger than any other. In a society based on reciprocal recognition, the spirit that unifies the society is also the spirit that sets its members free. What remains to be seen is to what extent. For if the 'I-We' relationship mediates the 'I-You' interaction, the question arises as to the constraints that the former imposes on the latter. Ludwig Siep has shown that the norm of reciprocity applies to the 'I-You', but not to the 'I-We' dimension. The 'I-We' dimension of recognition is asymmetrical, as is obvious in the relationship between state and citizen 15 . However, what is questionable is whether the formula that applies to the 'horizontal' dimension of recognition must also apply to the 'vertical'. For the formula of the 'I-You' dimension of recognition concerns two distinct individuals, while the 'We-Us' dimension, of which the 'I-We' relationship is only one aspect (a 'moment') does not concern two distinct, self-sufficient entities. In Hegel's terms, the 'people' (the 'We') that can be opposed to the state is an aggregate of atomistic individuals, the people that constitutes an organized whole is a unified political community. As such, it cannot be distinguished from the state itself (PR § 279, Remark).

I.2. The Individual and society

Authentic recognition allows us to avoid alienation in as well as from the world. Hence, we can anticipate that pathologies of recognition occur when the desire for recognition, or the way it strives for satisfaction, leads the individual to one or the other form of alienation. This is what appears when we turn to the phenomenology of recognition, i.e. to the individual's actual experience. Within the Phenomenology of Spirit, such experience develops in two successive stages:

(1) In chapters IV and V ('The Truth of Self-certainty', 'The Certainty and Truth of Reason'), the individual comes progressively to recognize that he is part of society, more precisely, that his self-consciousness is part of the collective consciousness of society. The path to such awareness is punctuated by failed attempts at achieving strict inter-individual recognition.

(2) Once we reach the level of social and ethical life (chapter VI: 'Spirit'), different patterns of recognition appear which are typical of given forms of society. In this view, failed attempts at achieving recognition are typical of different forms of civilization.

The process that leads from individual to collective consciousness (1) is itself subdivided into two successive stages. At first, the individual asserts himself by opposing society. Then, he strives for self-realization within that society. The human individual tries (856) to obtain unmediated recognition in confronting the others, then to achieve mediated recognition in cooperating with them.

Chapter IV deals with the development of self-consciousness into individual rationality. In order to be recognized as a free subject the individual must demonstrate his ability to transcend his own nature. The most 'natural' way to transcend nature is to put one's life at risk in a life-or-death struggle. The struggle ends up either in the death of one or both combatants, or in the domination of the one over the other. The result is the master/servant relationship. Considered as a social bond, such a relationship is a failed form of recognition because it is not reciprocal. Recognition from an inferior is an inferior form of recognition. Insofar as it is internalized, however, the master/servant relationship is a stage in the development of reason. It thus becomes the internal structure of the rational subjectivity. More precisely, it becomes the inner hierarchy between reason and nature that characterizes ancient Greek thought (notably stoicism and skepticism) and evolves, through Jewish and early Christian thought (the 'unhappy consciousness') into the modern concept of liberty. The latter supersedes the opposition of reason and nature into the idea of self-determination.

Resulting from the internalization of the master/servant hierarchy, reason asserts itself in the certainty that nature is submitted to its concepts. In other words, reason manifests itself through the certitude that objects can be captured and mastered by conceptual thought. However, mere confidence in the power of reason does not suffice. Such identity between being and thought must be verified and realized (chapter V). On the one hand, it is verified through the development of scientific knowledge. On the other, it is realized through effective action. Thus, reason asserts itself as theoretical as well as practical. At this stage, however, it is still individual reason. Consequently, practical reason aims at the individual's selfrealization. That is why the problem of inter-individual recognition reappears and plays a crucial role. The individual's self-realization is envisaged in the two phases already mentioned: in opposition to society and within the society, through unmediated and mediated recognition.

As was evidenced by Pierre-Jean Labarrière16 , the phenomenological experience makes us aware of the reality and dynamic of the logical process, which thus becomes a self-conscious process (spirit). For our purposes, Hegel's logical analysis allows us to envisage, in a systematic manner, all possible ways of seeking inter-individual recognition. These ways correspond to different stages in the dialectic of the universal and the singular. In other words, they correspond to different types of interference between the individual's relationship to himself and his relationship to others, between the 'I-Me' and the 'I-You' or 'I-the others' relationships.

As regards the individual's opposition to society (chapter V-B), three ideal-typical attitudes are available: to seduce, to rebel, to convert17 . The individual may:

(1) seek recognition of his singular nature through the experience of pleasure in love and/or sexual relationships ('Pleasure and necessity')

(2) try to make his singular desire and intimate sentiment recognized as universal law ('The law of the heart and the insanity of self-conceit')

(3) set an example of virtue by submitting his singular nature to the universal law of moral duty ('Virtue and the way of the world').

(857) As to the self-realization of the individual within society (chapter V-C), the individual may:

(4) fulfill himself through a personal 'work' (Werk), thereby giving universal value to its singular individuality ('the work'); or

(5) dedicate himself to a common cause, i.e. submit his singular will to the realization of a universal object (die Sache selbst) 18 .

(6) identify with the universal moral conscience that provides society with ethical laws ('Law-giving reason'),

(7) identify with the formal universal conscience that submits social norms to the critical examination of moral judgment ('Reason as testing laws').

Options 1 and 6-7 represent the extremes of pure singularity and pure universality. Options 2 to 5 represent various ways of articulating the singular and the universal. As regards the individual, they correspond to different ways of making the others recognize the universal value of one's singular self. These ways consist of exhibiting either the individual's universal value or the individual's exemplary self-submission to the universal. At each stage of the phenomenological process, the individual's intentions (what he means to do) are invalidated by his actual experience (what he actually does). This is the first aspect of the 'finitude of action' already mentioned. For the individual, experiencing the limits of these attempts at obtaining strict inter-individual recognition is a process of universalization. This process culminates in the subject's self-positing as universal will. Eventually, what is to be recognized is the subject as universal will and as will of universality. Such will of universality must also recognize itself in the concrete universal that structures the socio-ethical order.

We may sum up Hegel's analysis in the following way, starting with the crucial experience of pleasure (1). Pleasure is the satisfaction of the individual as such. In experiencing pleasure through love or sexual relationships, the individual enjoys recognition of his singular nature. In fact, Hegel tends to distinguish between love and sexuality for the former implies some kind of sublimation. That is why authentic love, in the Phenomenology, is illustrated by the relationship between brother and sister (Antigone and Polynices), whereas marital love, in the Philosophy of Right, is linked to the progressive sublation of sexual desire through its very satisfaction (PR § 163). Apart from bodily or sentimental gratification, pleasure is also experienced in action, in the act of making the decision and making it effective. For decisionmaking is the 'moment of the singularity' in any action. Whatever universal value or meaning the action may have otherwise, the act of performing it is the act of an individual. In the most general terms, pleasure is the individual experiencing self-realization (of its singularity) in the process of its own 'sublation' into a universal reality (the life cycle and the succession of generations, the economic process, the ethical life of society, etc.). In sensual or emotional pleasure, mutual recognition coincides with an intimate sentiment of unity. However, as long as the partners focus exclusively on sensual or emotional fulfillment, what is being achieved in the process appears in the form of external events, i.e. as personal destiny (for instance, an unforeseen child and the social consequences). In such fate, the individuals fail to recognize the consequences of their own desires and choices. On the contrary, the experience of destiny makes the individual perceive the outer world -in modern times, society -as an alien, hostile reality.

(858) In order to overcome the sentiment of facing a hostile social world, the individual may try to obtain recognition by having the way he feels recognized as universal law (2). He then tries to impose on society a law he feels is sensible, in contrast with the impersonal and meaningless usual order of things. He also wants to impose on society the law of authenticity: individuals should not submit to rules that run counter to their intimate convictions. In other words, the individual wants the others to recognize the universal value of the way he achieves satisfaction (happiness) and the idea that everybody should pursue satisfaction in their own personal way. However, two problems arise. On the one hand, if the individual succeeds in turning the way he feels into universal law, this law becomes a new impersonal order in which he no longer recognizes himself. On the other hand, the others may like the idea of revolting against the ordinary way of things, but they dislike the new law that the revolted individuality wants to impose on them. In this law, they recognize the individuality of the other; they do not recognize the language of their own heart. In a word, either the law is purely individual and it is not universally accepted; or it is universally accepted and it is not purely individual.

Although the social order contradicts their intimate feelings, members of society give it their support. In the eyes of the revolted personality who faces such denial of recognition, the others are a mere flock of inauthentic individuals. Here, the desire for recognition becomes pathogenic. Madness in general consists in taking the same thing, at the same time, for real and unreal. In this case, mental derangement consists in the individual experiencing himself, at the same time, as real and unreal. The individual takes his intimate feeling to be the norm for authentic social relationships. However, he cannot but recognize that reality is what is universally accepted, i.e. the usual order of things in which the law of his heart counts for nothing. At this point, revolt against the real, social world is the symptom of a pathogenic way of struggling for recognition. In order to escape the inner contradiction that makes him both real and unreal in his own eyes, the individual projects his own derangement onto the world. It is not the individual himself but the others that are deranged. For the others either let themselves be fooled by priests and despots, or accept any kind of law that suits their selfish interest. Society is nothing else but a battlefield for the struggle of individualities, the law nothing else but the result of multiple self-interested calculations. This is where the moral idealist comes in (3). Since the universal (the law) is subordinated to the singular (the individual's interests), the social order is upside down. What needs to be done is to set it right by subordinating individual interests to the universal, i.e. to the performance of moral duty. The moral idealist wants to convert society to virtue. This he intends to do by setting the example. Therefore, the virtuous individual represses his singular sensibility. He intends to act exclusively in view of duty. He aims at making the universal prevail by suppressing natural incentives. However, there is no action without personal motive. If anything, this personal motive is the pleasure the individual experiences in performing the action. Thus, for fear of acting according to conscious or unconscious egoistic motives, the virtuous individual ends up forsaking action. However, since virtue does not really act, the winner is once again the usual order of things. Moreover, virtue does not really want to transform the world. For instead of bettering the situation, the transformation might spoil whatever good is still present in society, which thus appears to be, after all, not so bad. Virtue ends up recognizing (859) the usual way of things not only as an interplay of individual interests, but also as an order that is not totally deprived of ethical value. Then, as all attempts at gaining recognition in challenging society and its members have failed, the individual is led to recognize himself in the external world. From now on, he considers society as the medium of his own self-realization.

Failures of unmediated recognition lead to attempts at mediated recognition. Instead of confronting the others, the individual seeks recognition in co-operating among them (the 'work') and, eventually, in co-operating with them (the 'Sache selbst'). At this stage, the individual does not seek recognition for his desire, in exposing his authentic feelings or his own virtuous self-denial. He seeks recognition through the mediation of his achievements. In the process of the "work" (Werk) (4), however, the most important thing is the recognition of the individual by himself. The 'work' is the process through which the individual recognizes himself in the world, because the 'work in progress' is his own world, the world that coincides with his own existence. As to the 'reception' of such 'work in progress' by the others, there are no criteria external to the work itself that would permit them to judge it as good or bad. What matters is that the 'work' is the individual's self-realization. Such work is its own criterion. It cannot be judged, it must be accepted as it is. The others are simply to recognize that they are dealing with a self-realizing personality.

However, there is a discrepancy between the 'work in progress' and the result, which is a definite piece of work. When the work is over, the individual cannot but recognize the limits of his achievements. He identifies with the work in progress, not with its inevitably limited results. Once it is completed, the work does not express the individual's self-consciousness anymore. It is an object in the world. As such, it turns into a material for other individuals who use it in order to perform their own work, their own process of self-realization. In so doing, they confer to the individual's achievement a meaning of their own. Consequently, the individual has no absolute control over the use and meaning of his work. Inasmuch as he identifies with this work, what the individual experiences is his lack of control over his own self and existence. Instead of achieving recognition for his singular personality, the subject dissolves into the social interplay of individual self-assertion.

In order to escape (or 'survive') such fate, the individual can find a way of self-realization not in a delimited work, but in a 'cause' which in his eyes is the 'real thing' (die Sache selbst) (5). This is the attitude of 'honest' dedication to a common cause. The opposition between the universal and the singular -between the meaning of the action and the fact of its being performed by an individual -remains inherent to such action. Up to this point, however, the individual was merely entangled in the dialectic between the singular and the universal, between what is 'for himself' and what is 'for the others'. Now the individual plays with the dialectic, he takes advantage of the intertwining between the 'I-Me' and 'I-the others' relationships. He occupies alternately the 'position' of the singular and that of the universal; he centers successively on the 'I-Me' and 'I-You' relationships. Consequently, the dialectic of human agency becomes a self-conscious process of hypocritical interplay between individual agents. At some point, the individual claims to be exclusively dedicated to the 'cause', while he still wants to assert himself by means of such action. Then he recognizes that he is (860) essentially interested in asserting himself. He then seems to let the others devote themselves to their own self-realization through some kind of commitment. Here again, however, the individual's position evolves. He is not content to be preoccupied with his own 'thing'; he is interested in the others' deeds. He wants to participate in the others' projects or, at least, to judge what they are doing. By either praise or condemnation, he wants to stamp his own mark on the others' achievements. Thus, the individual never stands where he is supposed to be. Whatever way the others interpret his conduct and behavior, whatever conjectures they make about his real state of mind, they are always deceived. But such deception is universal and reciprocal, because the others play the same game. All of them are engaged in the same interplay of self-assertion and devotion to a common cause, in the same attempts at achieving individual recognition through common action.

Such dialectic does not generate harmonious inter-individual relations, a friendly world of intersubjective co-operation that would promote, in an equal manner, the self-assertion of all partners. The dialectic of human interaction shows that the process of self-assertion through intersubjective co-operation achieves a real but limited and ambiguous form of recognition. For the others are themselves self-asserting individuals. For them, every act of recognition is an act of self-assertion. The others appropriate the individual's achievements (their 'work') or general contribution to a common undertaking (die Sache selbst) through the very act of recognizing both as real and effective. In so doing, they recognize the individual as a selfconscious and rational agent. Such recognition remains essential because no action is real and meaningful unless it is recognized as such by others. As we have seen in Hegel's pure concept of recognition, the individual needs the others' recognition in order to be and feel, at the same time, free and fully existing. For the others, however, the recognition of the individual's action is a way of taking hold of it. To put it in another philosophical language, every act of recognition is an act of the will to power.

That is why the dream of transparent intersubjective relationships must be forsaken. Interindividual action entails an inescapable part of deception and self-deception. In the framework of the Phenomenology, this leads the individual to renounce the idea of absolute individual self-realization. If the individual is to realize himself as a rational being, he must understand himself not as a singular, but as a universal individual. He must identify with the universal, i.e. with the moral law (6). At first, this law appears in the form of general ethical commandments. One of these is the imperative of mutual recognition through love (love thy neighbour as thyself). Then, the moral law coincides with the universality principle that permits critical examination of the existing laws of society (7). However, such morality is abstract. Being expressed as general commandments, ethical duties are indeterminate and ambiguous. The commandment of mutual love, for instance, leaves open the possibility of contradictory interpretations and practical conclusions. As to the law of universality, it justifies any kind of social institution. For example, it legitimates a society that is based on private property as well as a communist society. In fact, the principle of universalization only requires from the institutional system that it be coherent with itself. Consequently, what really matter are the actual ethical and social institutions. The individual is thus led to understand that the content of his self-consciousness, his concrete aims and values, come from the ethical life of society. As Pierre-Jean Labarrière says, the central question of the Phenomenology of Spirit is what it means to be a consciousness19 . (861) At this point of the book, the individual understands that its own self-consciousness is part of the collective consciousness of society.

All the options that we have surveyed suffer from ineffectiveness. From pure pleasure to pure moralism, from the reciprocal recognition of these singular individuals through love or sexual relationships to the general commandment of mutual love among human beings, all options reveal, at some point, a difficulty in connecting with the real. In some cases, the individual suffers from the contradiction between desire and reality. When it makes the individual refuse the real world, the desire for recognition becomes pathogenic. In other cases, the individual plays consciously with the difference between the real and the unreal, between what the action means 'for the others' and what it means 'for me'. In this case, the desire for recognition ends up in hypocritical relations to others. The chapter dedicated to subjective morality in the Philosophy of Right develops similar analyses (PR § 140 and Remark).

In other words, power relations interfere with inter-individual recognition. For the others, to acknowledge the individual's value is either to accept his law or to value his achievements. On the one hand, the others submit to the individual's law when they consent to be dominated or seduced, when they accept to follow his lead in the revolt against society or to convert to the moralism of pure virtue. On the other hand, they impose their own mark on the individual's achievements in the very act of valuing them (positively or negatively). This intertwining of power and recognition results from the contamination of intersubjective relationships by the individual's relation to himself -of the 'I-You' dimension of recognition by the 'I-Me' dimension. Considering the order in which Hegel takes up the topics -first, inter-individual action and communication (the 'work' and die Sache selbst), then the lawgiving and law-testing moral conscience -, there appears to be a chiasmus between the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right. In the Philosophy of Right, as Axel Honneth contends in his reading of the book, intersubjective action saves the individual from abstract moralism20 . In the Phenomenology, Hegel shows that abstract moralism may be a way to escape the ambivalence of intersubjective recognition21 . Of course, this is only shifting from one form of alienation to the other, from alienation in the world to alienation from the world. Eventually, Hegel's analysis does not mean that the various ways of seeking inter-individual recognition are inessential. It only means that none of these forms of recognition is entirely fulfilling. In accordance with the logic of Aufhebung, the diverse forms of recognition must be themselves recognized. They must be given their place in the individual's existence. Still, intersubjective relationships are ambivalent, to the point that the individual, in focusing 'abstractly' on such relationships, develops a 'fixation' on these ambivalences -as Rousseau's case illustrates. In contrast, the ambivalences of the horizontal, inter-individual dimension of recognition are circumscribed and given a limited importance through the integration of this dimension in the ethical life of society, i.e. in the 'I-We' or 'We-Us' dimension of recognition.

I.3. Forms of society and forms of subjectivity

The analysis of individual rational action shows that individual reason participates in the collective activity and norm-setting of society. However, the point is not merely to realize that (862) individual reason and self-consciousness are rooted in society in general. Since subjective morality is compelled to understand itself as a component of society, the question arises as to what kind of society makes such morality possible. Hence, a process of anamnesis that begins with the recollection of the Greek ethical life, and goes all the way down to modern society. Subjective morality must understand itself as the outcome of the entire history of human societies. Such morality -and in fact, the modern 'subjectivity' 22corresponds to the kind of collective consciousness that characterizes the society brought about by this history. Moreover, since moral conscience is a form of self-consciousness, it is not a mere byproduct of the material structure of society. If individual self-consciousness really participates in a collective form of life, what it is part of is the spirit of such form of life.

In the first analysis, spirit is what binds together the different elements that constitute a form of social and ethical life. It is a form of collective consciousness, an all-encompassing cultural world. Such spirit is effective in the individuals' convictions and ways of acting, on the one hand, in the social and political institutions, on the other. Thus, chapter VI presents us with the recollection of the 'history of the spirit', from the Greek city to the modern world. Within the framework of the Phenomenology, such recollection is the process through which moral subjectivity becomes aware not only of its necessary inscription within a substantive form of ethical life, but also of its own socio-ethical genesis.

What appears in the course of this process is that members of society develop contrasting types of collective consciousness. These forms of collective consciousness are one-sided and conflicting representations of society as a whole, of its fundamental norms and values. Thus the different forms of civilization, the different shapes that spirit has taken in the course of history, display inner contradictions. Within these forms of civilization, opposite types of collective consciousness develop in conflict with each other. All these types are abstract and partial. In contrast, true collective self-consciousness requires reconciliation between the conflicting ways in which society represents itself. If such reconciliation takes place, some kind of spiritual unity 'realizes itself' in the strictest sense. The spiritual unity of society is not only present in itself -e.g. for the external observer, the philosopher, etc. -but also for itself.

Here, the common cultural and ethical world unifies itself through a self-conscious act of reconciliation. At this point, collective self-consciousness appears to be something more than a predicate that we may attribute to a given form of social and ethical community. Such community is not only an ethical 'substance', i.e. a given set of norms and representations. It is a 'subject', a dynamic process of life and freedom through reconciliation.

That is why the 'social' interpretation of Hegel's concept of spirit, however true it is, does not suffice to capture the full meaning of this concept. In Hegel's view, recognition bears witness of a spirit that is 'at work' in bringing human beings together, in enabling them to become autonomous subjects. This means that spirit itself is a process of subjectification. As Terry Pinkard and Robert B. Pippin rightly say, spirit is a process of collective norm-setting 23 . However, as it appears at the end of the spirit chapter and in the last two chapters of the Phenomenology, the spirit is also a subject in the most proper sense. Taking these chapters ('Religion' and 'Absolute knowledge') as an appendix to the book, "as textual supplements of 22 one kind or another", as Fredric Jameson does 24 , (863) derives logically from the decision to equate spirit and mere collective consciousness. But this is forsaking any attempt at really accounting for Hegel's project. However, the symmetrical misunderstanding, which consists in interpreting the spirit as 'macro-subject', is equally misleading. The spirit is a subject but it is not an analog to individual consciousness. Habermas rightly criticizes such 'metaphysics of consciousness', the only problem being that it is not Hegel's 25 . The spirit is not an individual, self-centered subject written large. It is a process of subjectification. Subjectivity, if the word has any meaning, is a relational process, a process that realizes itself in the plurality of human individuals, i.e. in the relationships of recognition through which human beings develop as free and self-conscious individuals. Individuals are subjects inasmuch as they take part in the process. Consequently, the process itself is the real subject. As we have seen, Hegel insists that there can be no self-centered subjectivity. The real subject is the logical process of selfrealizing freedom, a spirit that becomes a self-conscious process -not a transcendent entityin the plurality of human communities and cultures. It remains that obtaining recognition implies revealing oneself in one's own deeds. In this view, as Robert B. Pippin says, it is important to make the others recognize the signification that I give to my deeds, to have my actions recognized for what I take them to be. Recognition is about making the others acknowledge and 'validate' my own way of accounting for what I do. Reciprocally, this implies that I must recognize the social norms that determine what kind of justification is acceptable 26 . That is why an essential 'moment' of the spirit is the collective norm-setting that determines what may count as an acceptable way of giving reasons for one's practical choices. In this view, mutual recognition is a relationship between partners who demand and give reasons for their actions. It is linked to a process of rational discussion whose norms and codes constitute the spirit of the time, in a given type of society. As Terry Pinkard says, the history of the spirit may be understood as a process through which these modes of account-giving (i.e. these shapes of the spirit) are successively put to the test and defeated through the very attempts to rearrange them 27 . However, as we will see, it is not only a given mode of account-giving that is put to the test; it is the very act of giving reasons for one's actions. What is in question, in the last instance, is the very act of seeking recognition by way of demanding and giving reasons; it is the very possibility of justifying one's ways of acting.

The spirit chapter of the Phenomenology analyses various forms of civilization that present conflicting types of social consciousness. These conflicts account for the decline and fall of these forms of civilization. The contradictions progressively deepen until, at the end of chapter VI, we come up to the ultimate opposition. This opposition concerns two ideal-types of subjective freedom. This means that modern societies express their self-understanding under the form of contrasting types of subjectivity, and not merely in a set of cultural and ethical norms. These types of subjectivity are abstract moralism, on the one hand, and selfempowered decisionism, on the other hand. The reconciliation between these types of subjectivity results from the dialectic of 'the evil and its forgiveness'. Spirit manifests itself not merely as a form of collective like-mindedeness, but as a reality of religious dimension 24 See Jameson, The Hegel Variations, p. 26. 25 that is present in the very act of reconciliation between moral judgment and effective action. For pure moral criticism exonerates itself from the responsibility to act, while any effective action entails an irreducible moment of arbitrariness. (864) Reconciliation is spirit itself, a unity that is realized not only through historic conflicts, but also in spite of the violence of these conflicts: "The wounds of the spirit heal and leave no scars behind" 28 .

In the course of such process, recognition also plays an important argumentative role. Each form of ethical and social life characterizes itself by the way its members try to obtain true recognition. Certain types of individuality, certain patterns of inter-individual relationships manifest the character of a given civilization. In itself, inter-individual recognition constitutes a community of spirit. Reciprocally, the community reveals itself in the manner it deals with its members' desire for recognition, i.e. in the way it values certain patterns of recognition.

In fact, all civilizations display twisted or misleading forms of recognition. This is the case of the 'ethical spirit' of the Greek cities. The human and the divine laws are essential aspects of the spiritual life of the city. These laws are enforced by the family and the state, through female and male ethical roles. But the enforcement of one of these laws entails violation of the other. In principle, woman and man represent the complementary roles of family and state. In reality, both family and state cannot develop without conflicting with each other. Therefore, there is a denial of recognition between women and men, private and public life. In principle, the ethical life of the city constitutes a coherent and harmonious whole. When it comes to action, however, the individual cannot follow one of the norms that make up the ethical system without violating other norms. Therefore, effective action comprises an irreducible part of guilt. In responding to certain ethical imperatives, the agent disregards other ethical imperatives. It must face the others' legitimate but unsatisfiable expectations. A decision has to be made and it is never innocent.

In the Greek city, the universal and the singular are immediately united. Gender determines the individual's social and ethical role. In the Roman Empire, the universal and the singular are distinct and opposed to each other. What remains of the ethical city is the duality of law and individual. What is being recognized is the abstract individual, the person of the Roman right. Such right is formal. It is the right of property and contracts that gives legal form to the individual's purposes. Whereas the truth of the Greek ethical world is the disruptive force of the individual, the truth of the Roman right is the anarchy of natural drives. The right of property and contracts legalizes the individuals' arbitrary will, as is shown by the fact that the entire system -i.e. the Roman Empire -is submitted to the arbitrary power of a single individual.

In the world of medieval and modern times, such opposition between the universal and the singular is overcome through a long process of formation (Bildung). The process develops both at the social and at the ideological level. At both levels, it implies failed forms of recognition that have to be superseded. At the sociopolitical level, there is fake recognition between the monarch and the nobles. In medieval kingdoms, the nobility assists the king in 'war and council'. The noble man is ready to fight and put his life at risk. However, he is not willing to sacrifice his self-consciousness, i.e. his personal pride and sense of honor. In contrast, such sacrifice belongs to the process of 'curialization' that characterizes absolute monarchy. Absolute monarchy implies domestication of the nobility. Through flattery and paying court, the noble sacrifices his independent self-consciousness. He submits to the monarch's absolute power and receives riches in exchange. (865) This is the complete reversal of the master/servant relationship. The masters (the nobles) have found their master. An exchange of power and riches takes place in lieu of mutual recognition. As a result, the noble consciousness makes its baseness recognized rather than its nobleness. Reciprocally, flattery secures recognition for nothing but an empty name (the monarch's). In itself, the social hierarchy is already upside down. Vulgarity is the true essence of the higher classes, while there is some sense of dignity in self-avowed mediocrity (Rameau's Nephew). The taste for witty conversation bears witness to the spirit of the time. Wit plays with contrary determinations. It reverses the serious into the non-serious, the noble into the vulgar, and the vulgar into the noble. The hierarchy of the nobility and the common people is thus undermined. The social order dissolves, and so does the hierarchy of values that is attached to such order. In a word, the cultural and spiritual pre-conditions for the French Revolution are present.

At the ideological level, there is misrecognition between faith and the Enlightenment. According to Hegel's analyses, faith and Enlightenment are the same 'thought', the one in the form of symbolic representation, the other in that of critical rationality. Such unconscious identity prefigures the self-conscious reconciliation between religion and philosophy that occurs at the end of the Phenomenology. But philosophy will prove to be something more than rational understanding, true religion something other than the ideological faith in the afterlife. The Enlightenment considers faith as a blend of superstition and earthly interests (interests of the Church, which sustain those of despotism). But the Enlightenment itself splits into idealistic and materialistic trends. Whatever the way it conceives of itself, the Enlightenment is thus in overt opposition to, and covert identification with, the content of religious faith. The supersession of such misrecognition between faith and the Enlightenment brings heaven back to earth. The result is the new world of bourgeois society whose key value is 'utility', which is a sort of immanent transcendence: everything relates to something beyond itself to which it is of use. The whole process is a process of universalization (formation, Bildung). The individual, who experiences the dissolution of social values and the progress of critical, rational thinking, comes to posit himself as a universal individual, bound to no pre-determined social or ethical role, who thinks in the name of all human beings. This is the 'subjective universality' of Rousseau's citizen and Kant's moral subject. Such subject takes part in the formation of the general will (Rousseau and the French revolutionaries). It considers itself as a lawgiver for the whole of humanity (Kant's moral law). At this point, the moral conscience -the law-testing reason -achieves full self-consciousness in understanding itself as part of the modern type of society. Moreover, it understands itself as a product of the history that has led to this type of society.

I.4. The finitude of action: evil and its forgiveness

In logical terms, the universal subject results from the self-identification of the singular individual with the universal will. However, such identification may be understood in two different ways. On the one hand, it requires of the individual that he suppress his egoistic drives or personal interests. At the political level, this leads to the terrorism of virtue that expects citizens to act out of pure civic virtue and keeps suspecting them of betraying the ideal. At the theoretical level, this leads to the contradictions of Kantian moralism (as Hegel understands it). On the other hand, self-identification with the universal (866) is experienced in the form of absolute individual certitude. In this view, the individual's subjective conviction is asserted as having universal value. Duty is what the individual feels is his duty. As regards the concept of action, this underlines the moment of decision-making. Every action involves the consideration of a complex set of duties and circumstances. The agent can neither have complete knowledge of the situation, nor satisfy all legitimate demands or duties. Thus, the individual decides what concrete duty or legitimate demand he is going to satisfy. He also decides at what point his knowledge of the circumstances is sufficient. Therefore, the moment of the decision, which has to be taken by the singular individual, is revealed to be crucial.

As regards recognition, the risk is once again to end up either in mutual deception or in a loss of contact with the real world. In principle, the individual achieves recognition through his actions and deeds. With all the ambivalences already noticed, the reality of his action is measured by the others' recognition. This depends on what the action is intended to mean (by the agent) and taken to be (by the others). At this point, the contradiction between the singular and the universal reappears. Every individual action has an aspect that allows us to present it as having universal meaning. For example, making enormous profits enables the individual to help others with financial support. Refusing to risk one's life in war and defend one's country means being able to fulfill one's duties towards family, friends, local community, etc. Conversely, every individual action can be presented as the result of personal interests or bias. Now, the individual may deal with such contradiction between the universal and the singular in asserting his absolute conviction of being in the right. The language of intimate conviction gives universal value to the individual's action. What the agents have to do is merely to present their deeds in such a way that they appear as the consequence of absolute certitude. The individuals are supposed to recognize each other as agents motivated by absolute convictions. Of course, this leaves room for hypocrisy and false pretense. Here again, mutual recognition appears to be more or less intermingled with deception and self-deception.

The extreme form of individual self-certitude is illustrated, as Terry Pinkard explains, by the 'ironic consciousness' 29 . In the terms of the Philosophy of Right, the ironic consciousness regards itself as a "power of resolution and decision on [matters of] truth, right and duty" (PR § 140, Remark). It enjoys its own power of decision on all matters, including the validity of truth claims, social norms and ethical laws. Such irony -to be distinguished from the Socratic form of irony -is the individual's self-enjoyment, the enjoyment of his singular self. Instead of enjoying his own power of arbitrary decision-making, however, the individual may content himself with expressing the purity of his conscience. This is the posture of the 'beautiful soul', which is another kind of pathogenic relation to recognition. This pathology arises from a two-stage reduction of the relationship with the external world. In principle, the individual obtains recognition through his deeds. But the 'beautiful soul' expects to be recognized in merely expressing the excellence of its moral conscience. At an initial stage, such expression of moral excellence replaces actual action. Later, the beautiful soul is so imbued with its own excellence that it anticipates the others' recognition and takes it for granted, up to the point of not even reaching out to interlocutors. Therefore, the beautiful soul ends up being completely closed in on itself. It becomes an example of the 'alienation from the world' that we evoked in analyzing the general formula of recognition.

(867) Once again, we face the alternative between moral solipsism and deceitful interindividual relationships, between alienation from the world and alienation in the world. On the one hand, the individual does not act anymore, but contents himself with judging the others' deeds. This is the position of the moral judgment, which criticizes the inadequacy of any concrete action to the imperative of universality. On the other hand, the individual's deeds, whatever they are, can never be entirely justified. There is an irreducible part of 'evil' in any concrete action, because any such action is the fact of a singular individual. As such, it entails an inescapable part of arbitrariness -arbitrariness in the action itself, arbitrariness in the way it is accounted for. However, if the individual is to escape alienation in and from the world, he must engage in concrete interaction with others. Therefore, actual action and moral judgment must be reconciled. The acting consciousness must avow the part of arbitrariness it entails. In so doing, it acknowledges the demand of universality that characterizes the judging consciousness. It recognizes itself in its other. Reciprocally, the judging consciousness must realize that in refusing to engage in any concrete action, it adopts a position that is no less arbitrary. In contenting itself to judge the other's deeds, it transforms its own insistence on pure universality in a particular position. It decides not to act, so that its pure moralism is also an individual, particular choice. Thus, the judging consciousness comes to recognize itself in its other, and to forgive the part of injustifiability that remains in any human action.

In Hegel's view, the most significant form of reciprocal recognition is that between the individual who acts, at the cost of inevitable wrongdoings, and the individual who judges but does not act. Such reconciliation sublates both the ironic consciousness and the beautiful soul. In the more general terms of a theory of action, however, it overcomes the opposition between abstract moralism and self-empowered decisionism. For every effective action hurts a norm or an ethical relationship in one way or another. Action is always about deciding, and the decision is never completely justifiable. Moreover, there is an aspect of violence in any effective action. Human action entails a component of more or less sublimated violence that is beyond justification. The violence must be reduced, but it cannot be utterly eliminated. At the very least, it appears in the form of the individual's arbitrariness, both in its actions and its judgments. According to Hegel, the highest form of recognition is the acceptation of such a fact, which must be altogether avowed and forgiven. As Robert B. Pippin points out, recognition is about demanding and providing reasons, about holding the other as capable of giving reasons for her or his actions or opinions. What needs to be recognized, however, is that there are limits to such a giving of reasons. In a word, what is required is the acceptance of the finitude of action. The individual then accepts full responsibility for an action that he recognizes as his own with all its ethical as well as practical limits, including the impossibility of giving and obtaining full moral justification. Ich bin's (I am he) is the word that seals the reconciliation 30 . Because it is openly acknowledged, the individual's self-relation becomes an aspect of his relation to the other. In substituting such openness for the dream of transparent relationships, the individual relates to himself in the very act of relating to the other.

The problematic of guilt and forgiveness is central because what is to be recognized is not so much the individual's 'authentic personality' -who the individual is in contrast with what he or she is, as Hannah Arendt would say 31 . In fact, the most profound form of recognition has little to do with the problematic of identity. The true meaning of recognition is reconciliation. (868) Such reconciliation sets the other free in the most effective way. It empowers the individual to act and realize something in the world, in spite of the moral imperfections of the action. It also empowers the individual to exercise critical judgment on what is being done, although moral criticism does not suffice to transform the world. However, such recognition does not only concern individuals. Since it occurs at the end of the spirit chapter, it concerns the two types of subjectivity that characterize modern society: abstract moralism, on the one hand, and self-deciding power, on the other. The reconciliation of these two types of subjectivity at the level of society, i.e. in the self-understanding of the society, makes possible the reconciliation of the individual with himself. In this case, the 'I-Me' relationship does not impair the 'I-You'. It is the 'I-You' recognition that makes possible the individual's reconciliation with himself. It makes possible the reconciliation of desire (in which any concrete action is rooted) and reason (the judgment of moral conscience). This reconciliation resolves the original problem: how am I to be at the same time conscious and self-conscious? How am I to avoid alienation in, and alienation from, the world? The problem concerns not only the individual consciousness, but also the ethical norms of society and its entire worldview. What modern civilization needs is a culture of reconciliation, a capacity to reconcile actual action and moral judgment, beyond the conflict that opposes the power to act and the propensity to condemn.

II. RECOGNITION IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT

Both the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right take up the two main dimensions of recognition, the 'I-You' (or 'I-the others') and the 'I-We' recognition. However, the Phenomenology determines the formula of the first dimension of recognition, the Philosophy of Right that of the second. The formula for the recognition between individual and community derives from the concept of the free will, i.e. of human freedom. However, the relationship between each individual and the state is only part of the larger relationship between the state and the citizenry as a whole. The 'I-We' dimension of recognition integrates into the larger 'We-Us' relation between the citizens and their political institutions.

II.1. The universal will of universal freedom.

As all commentators know, the key to understanding the Philosophy of Right resides in paragraphs 5 to 7 of the Introduction. In these paragraphs, the concept of human freedom is developed in three logical moments. The first moment (PR § 5) is that of abstract universality. I am free inasmuch as I can disengage from any particular action or constraint. The second moment (PR § 6) is that of concrete particularity. To be free means to be able to make particular choices and achieve definite goals. If the individual sticks to the first moment, he is unable to commit. If he sticks to the second moment, he chooses between goals or ways imposed on him from the outside. In this case, the human will is formally free but it does not determine its own content. It is still heteronomous. The third moment is the moment of individuality (PR § 7), which must reconcile the will's universal form and its particular content. This supposes that both be an expression of human freedom.

(869) The first two 'moments' of free will (PR § § 5-6) determine individualistic models of liberty. In his reading of the Philosophy of Right 32 , Axel Honneth calls 'negativistic' the 32 model that insists on the capacity to disengage; and 'optional' the model that focuses on the ability to make concrete choices. These models announce the first two parts of the Philosophy of Right, which deal with the right of property and contracts and subjective morality. The abstract right of legal contracts reduces human action to strategic interactions with the others. Subjective morality submits the individual's concrete goals to moral criticism. Hence, the individual refrains from engaging in actual action. The former model corresponds to a form of action that is not inter-subjective. The latter leads to a form of inter-subjectivity that is not properly active. For lack of intersubjective co-operation with others, these models of liberty have no real content. They leave the individuals with no concrete orientation and make them 'suffer from indeterminacy'. The result is a feeling of emptiness. According to Honneth, the third moment (PR § 7) consists in the individual's critical reflection upon their desires. The content of the will is an expression of liberty when it consists in desires that lead the subject to engage in relationships based on inter-individual recognition. Such content is determined through the subject's 'reflective restriction' (reflexive Beschränkung) 33 . The individual is truly free when he or she acts out of desires whose satisfaction implies reciprocal recognition. This model of liberty corresponds to the ethical life, in which social interaction gives orientation and content to human freedom 34 . However, there are various forms of recognition, which correspond to the different spheres of the ethical life: the bourgeois family, civil society and the state. The hierarchy between the three spheres sets up a hierarchy between the different forms of recognition. In a word: in the family, there is recognition without sufficient individualization, in civil society, individualization without authentic recognition. Within the family, the individuals' needs are recognized, satisfied and regulated through reciprocal affection. Yet, the individual's liberty is not fully realized. In civil society, people pursue their own individualistic interests. However, interactions in society are determined by the exchange of products and labor in the framework of a freemarket economy. These exchanges do not provide authentic recognition.

At this point, we would expect recognition and individualization to be reconciled within the framework of the state. However, Honneth rejects Hegel's logic as well as his concept of the state. Both are in his eyes irrelevant for our time. According to Honneth, the problem with Hegel's philosophy of right is its insistence on sociopolitical institutions [START_REF]Die Überinstitutianalisierung der "Sittlichkeit[END_REF] , on the very process of institutionalization, to the detriment of intersubjective relationships. In some places, Hegel's analysis merely legitimizes the existing social and political institutions. As regards the relationships between state and citizens, they are made up of vertical, hierarchized power relationships. Such asymmetric relationships predominate over the republican principles of the constitution. Thus, Honneth finds no trace of a public sphere, of a democratic formation of the will in the Hegelian state 36 . In his view, such state institutionalizes an authoritarian liberalism in which the citizen's role is reduced to that of a subject and servant of the sovereign state 37 .

In contrast, Honneth contends that true recognition and freedom reside in 'horizontal', intersubjective relationships in which reciprocal recognition and individual self-realization coincide. That is why Honneth, who refers to the Addition to § 7, understands friendship as a model and a paradigm for authentic freedom 38 . Eventually, the ultimate sphere (870) for the development of freedom is a public sphere where individuals work out their collective goals in a democratic way. The corporations and the individuals' participation in the corporations illustrate the idea of such a public sphere. As members of a corporation -i.e. of a workers' organization -, the individuals strive to realize a common good. They are not (or should not be) exclusively preoccupied with the defense of socioeconomic interests. They are recognized as reasonable individuals, i.e. as capable of decentration 39 . Such de-centration enables them to engage in value-oriented interactions for the benefit of the entire civil society. In this view, the 'corporation' should be considered as a part of the political sphere, not as a part of the social structure 40 .

Here, two remarks are called for. In the first place, in relation to Hegel's critical analysis of individual interaction, Honneth's insistence on horizontal, inter-individual relationships appears to be somewhat shallow. Honneth's idea is that reciprocal recognition is needed for the individuals' self-realization and moral autonomy. That is true, but it is also true that only limited forms of mutual recognition and self-realization can be achieved at the level of mere inter-individual relationships. As the Phenomenology of Spirit demonstrates, there is no preestablished harmony between the logic of self-realization and that of recognition. Both logics are always more or less in conflict with each other. As such -i.e. as a singular person -the individual can only achieve limited and unstable forms of recognition. Such forms are necessary and legitimate at their own level, but they can never be entirely fulfilling. That is why authentic recognition is more about reconciliation than about self-assertion. That is also why the 'horizontal', 'I-You' relationships must be incorporated into the 'vertical', 'We-Us' relationships. As will appear in what follows, this is not a flaw but a major point of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. In the second place, Honneth does not recognize, in Hegel's theory of the state, the 'reformist/revolutionary' content for which other authors, like Eric Weil and John Rawls, give Hegel credit [START_REF] Weil | Hegel and the State, trans[END_REF] . In his interpretation of the Philosophy of Right, John Rawls insists on the concept of reconciliation. In his view, the main objective of the Philosophy of Right is to reconcile the free will (the will of autonomy) with the social and political institutions. However, Rawls insists that reconciliation is not resignation [START_REF] Rawls | Rawls refers to Michael Hardimon's book[END_REF] . The idea is not to be satisfied with the institutions as they are (e.g. the Prussian state of 1820), but with the idea that concrete freedom is achieved through a rational and reasonable (vernünftig) system of institutions that in part already exists, while the remaining part may be worked out through political reforms. In Hegel's case, the Philosophy of Right is in line with the progressive trend represented by reformists like Chancellor Hardenberg and interior minister Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose project of a constitution for Prussia was set aside after the political victory of the conservatives in 1819. Rawls writes: 'Hegel's state resembles not the Prussia of 1820 but the Prussia that would have been had the reformers won over the conservatives' 43 . In 1807 Hardenberg, whom Rawls cites from James Sheehan's book on the history of Prussia [START_REF] Sheehan | [END_REF] , had advocated in a memorandum the idea of a revolution 'from the top'. Such revolution through state reform was meant to be 'a revolution in the positive sense… to be made not through violent impulses from below or outside, but through the wisdom of the government … Democratic principles in a monarchical government -that seems to me the appropriate form for the spirit of the age to go' 45 . By 'democratic' Hardenberg meant economic freedom and social emancipation, i.e. 'the opening of careers to all men of talent, religious toleration and civil liberty (871) for Jews, and freedom of opinion and education' 46 -in a word, Hegel's civil society. Rawls argues that Hegel goes further than Hardenberg, 'in allowing more room for the citizens to take part and have an active role in representative democratic institutions' 47 . In Eric Weil's words, Hegel's concept of the state theorizes the idea of a revolution made by universally minded civil servants [START_REF] Weil | Beauchesne, 1982), chapter VII, 'Hegel et le concept de la Révolution[END_REF] .

It remains that neither Rawls nor Honneth envisage Hegel's social and political theory in its logical dynamic. Both consider Hegel's logic as a metaphysical apparatus that may be set aside from its ethical and political philosophy. Honneth's reading of the Philosophy of Right reposes explicitly on the principled rejection of Hegel's logic 49 . This is methodologically unfortunate. For whatever philosophical (epistemological, ontological) status we accord to Hegel's logic, it remains that this logic has a strong 'disclosing-power', a power to disclose the various aspects of reality in their complex and ambivalent articulations. In neglecting this disclosing-power, we run the risk of oversimplifying the matter. In the case at hand, a more satisfying interpretation of § § 5-7 of the Philosophy of Right can be developed if we keep in mind the importance of the universality principle. In this view, the problem of the free will is that it must be universal both in its form and in its content. Therefore, it is not enough to discriminate between desires whose satisfaction implies mutual recognition and others that do not. Such critical reflection merely accommodates the universal and the particular. It does not overcome the opposition between both, so that the individual's self-consciousness is still characterized by this opposition. What happens is that the individual is trying to give some kind of universal meaning or moral framework to its particular desires. This is not to say that critical reflection is unnecessary. Critical reflection remains indispensable, but it is not sufficient to define authentic free will. A free will does not merely reflect upon itself, it knows what it wants.

In the paragraphs that follow § 7 in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel envisages various forms of self-determination through mere reflection, with a view to pointing out their insufficiency. First, the individual may consider that any particular choice he makes is his own choice. Whatever he decides, his particular desires have the signification of being the individual's possibilities. Second, the individual may universalize his particular ends by reflecting upon them. Such universalization may be carried out either by co-ordinating the ends within a global concept of happiness, or by submitting these ends to the moral law in the Kantian sense. But such reflection does not resolve the individual's inner contradiction. In a way, this contradiction reflects that between consciousness and self-consciousness that we have seen in the Phenomenology of Spirit. It is the contradiction between the individual's consciousness (of his own desires) and his self-consciousness (as a free agent). The problem is to reconcile both of them. Hence, it is no surprise that the idea of mutual recognition appears in the Addition to § 7, with reference to the experience of love and friendship. As Honneth points out, this Addition anticipates the idea of a political community. However, this is a mere anticipation, it is not a paradigm -otherwise Hegel would have mentioned it in the Philosophy of Right itself, not in a marginal (and oral) commentary. In the meantime, we are still stuck in the contradiction between universal will and particular desires, between free and arbitrary will (Wille vs. Willkür). The subject is still trying to overcome the contradiction. This leads him or her to give up the satisfaction of certain desires. Such 'reflective restriction', however, (872) simply 'manages' the opposition between abstract universality and concrete particularity.

As regards the Hegelian concept of free will, it states that the free will must be universal in its content as well as in its form. As Hegel puts it in paragraph 27 of the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right:

The abstract concept of the Idea of the will is in general the free will which wills the free will.

The 'abstract concept', this means that the Philosophy of Right provides the 'concrete' development of this concept. What we have here is the formula that accounts for the entire book. In logical terms, such identity between form and content of the free will means that the universal will is truly free when what it wills is the universality of the free will. We have already encountered this idea in our reading of the Phenomenology 50 . In the present context, however, such universality may be understood in three different ways. First, we can understand the universal as the general interest, i.e. the citizens' collective interest and the interest of the state itself. This seems to be Rawl's interpretation 51 . However, the citizens' collective interest is not strictly speaking universal, it is only universal in contrast with each individual's particular interest. Second, the universal may be understood as the universal 'rights of man and of the citizen'. This is the idea of the French declaration of 1789: in order to be realized and secured, the 'rights of man' must be incorporated in the citizen's legal status [START_REF] Bernard | Philosophie et droits de l'homme de Kant à Marx[END_REF] . In this view, 'universality' means 'equality'. Universal freedom is realized in a state that grants equal civil and political rights to all citizens. Reciprocally, the citizen's free will is truly universal when it wants the rights of man to be guaranteed to all citizens by the state constitution. As Eric Weil says, 'man is free only insofar as he wants the freedom of man in a free community' [START_REF] Weil | Hegel and the State[END_REF] . Supposing this to be the case, the citizens' will recognizes itself in the political institutions, the subjective universality of the will accords with the objective universality of the law. In practical terms, the universal content of the free will is nothing else than the laws and procedures of the constitutional state. In a word, the political translation of the formula the free will which wills the free will is the sort of constitutional patriotism that appears in § 268 of the Philosophy of Right. In this view, however, the universal is realized within the limits of a particular state. Although there is no doubt that the first and second meanings correspond to Hegel's thought, the universal will of universal freedom cannot be satisfied with the realization of freedom in a particular state. Therefore, we must envisage a third interpretation, which is that the human will is fully free when its ultimate end is the universal freedom of human beings, the freedom of all human individuals. The problem is that such interpretation leads us to a cosmopolitan perspective, while Hegel clearly rejects the Kantian idea of cosmopolitanism. Thus, the question arises as to whether Hegel draws the ultimate logical consequences of his own concept of the free will. Our presupposition is that he does -'The good … is realized freedom, the absolute and ultimate end of the world'(PR § 129) -but in a way that needs clarification.

II.2. Ambivalence and limits of socio-political recognition

The correspondence between form and content of the will is a dialectical one. Form and content of the will are both universal when the universal will gives itself a particular content (873) and when, reciprocally, the particular content of the will is 'elevated' to the universal. Such process of universalization corresponds to the individual's practical experience in the various spheres of the civil society. Such universalization implies that inter-individual relationships be integrated in the relationship between the individual and the community. In other words, the 'I-You' or 'I-the Others' recognition becomes a moment of the 'We-Us' recognition, i.e. the recognition between the individuals and the community, between state and citizens. This does not mean that inter-individual recognition is unimportant. On the contrary, the inter-individual dimension of recognition is affirmed in Hegel's thesis of the identity between right and duty. In Hegel's view, duties are not the counterpart of rights. Duty and right are two faces of the same relationship. Parents have the right to educate their children because it is their duty. Teachers have the right to give assignments because it is their duty. Students have the duty to hand in papers because writing papers is part of the education which is their due. The identity of right and duty signals a relationship of mutual recognition. Since the exercise of my right consists in performing a duty, it involves the recognition of the other's right. If correctly interpreted, the individuals' mutual recognition results in the coincidence of rights and duties.

Relationships of rights and duties develop concretely within the three spheres of ethical life: the family, the civil bourgeois society and the state. As Axel Honneth points out, the hierarchy between the three spheres determines a hierarchy between different forms of recognition. However, three points deserve attention. First, these forms of recognition are all ambivalent. Second, the social recognition mediates the political, so that failures in the social recognition endanger the cohesion of the state itself. Third, in the course of these analyses, the 'disclosing-power' of Hegel's logic has a paradoxical effect. In some instances, pathologies of recognition appear within Hegel's text, without being acknowledged by Hegel himself. In other instances, the pathologies are diagnosed as such.

An example of the former case is recognition within the family. Within the family, there is recognition between parents and children, men and women. The individual's personality is recognized through love and care. But such recognition is both reciprocal and asymmetrical. As regards the relationships between parents and child, the child's individuality is recognized at the same time that it is educated. The result, however, is not the completion but the dissolution of the relationship. For the more the child maturates, the more the parents become irrelevant until, eventually, the family dissolves (PR § 175, Addition and PR § 177). As regards the relations between wife and husband, their roles within the family are determined by gender, so that the relationship is also asymmetrical. Men are destined to social and political activities, women to intra-familial tasks. Thus, women are not entitled to recognition in the same way that men are. The latter are to be recognized as members of the universal, outer society, the former incarnate the contingency of sentiment and inclination (PR § 166, Remark and Addition). Here, the 'rational' development of the concept merely justifies the prejudices of the time. Just as there is 'too much nature' in the ethical world of the Phenomenology of Spirit, there is too much nature in Hegel's concept of the family, too much determination of social roles through natural (or pseudo-natural) factors. In fact, there is 'too much nature' in Hegel's Philosophy of Right in general. For now, it suffices to note that in the bourgeois family, the natural singularity of the individual is recognized within the limits of its natural status.

(874) Within the civil society, individuals achieve recognition in two complementary ways. They achieve recognition as human beings in general and as members of a particular professional group. As human beings, they develop desires that are based on representation and opinion (PR § 194). Such desires transcend the limits of bare natural needs. They express man's freedom (negativity) towards its own natural determinations. At the same time, they are a source of social dependency. In practical terms, the individuals must obtain social recognition for their desires as well as the means to satisfy them (PR § 192). In order to do so, they must contribute to the welfare of society. Therefore, they develop professional skills and a capacity of rational thinking that enable them to participate in the social division of labor (PR § 197). Within modern society, human beings are thus characterized by the need to satisfy socially recognized desires and the capacity for rational activity. As such, they demand equal consideration (PR § 193). They are recognized as workers and consumers, proprietors and parties in legal contracts, as bearers of subjective rights. Their rights are guaranteed by the tribunals, the administration and the 'police' -in the broader sense that the term had at that time, which includes some of our 'public services'. The individuals' free choice is recognized in every aspect of social life, notably as regards marriage and the exercise of a profession. The individuals are also recognized as moral subjects (PR § 207). They are responsible for their personal life choices. They are given the chance to display moral solidarity. For members of the civil society are exposed to contingencies. Illness, poverty, unexpected difficulties call for inter-individual solidarity and mutual aid (PR § 242) although public intervention is more suited to solve such problems. In fact, inter-individual solidarity does not suffice to deal with social problems. It depends upon the individuals' 'good will', which is itself more or less contingent and arbitrary (PR § 242, Remark).

Thus, individuals are recognized within the civil society as human beings in general. The modern concept of humankind -i.e. the universal concept of the human individual -results from the development of the civil bourgeois society (PR § 190 and Remark). Obviously, this is not yet the recognition of the universal will of universal freedom. The civil society merely recognizes the universal rights of the particularity (PR § 189). However, the desire for social recognition, like any process of recognition, engages the individuals in a double movement of identification and distinction. Since all members of society demand equal consideration, they tend to 'make themselves like others'. At the same time, they try to assert themselves through some distinctive quality (PR § 193). This they can do through the pursuit of social and economical success (PR § 253, Remark). However, social recognition only gives an appearance of liberty. On the one hand, the freedom of choice that is acknowledged is a pure appearance of liberty. In reality, the individuals have to choose between alternatives that are imposed on them from the outside. On the other hand, social recognition creates a complex network of growing interdependency. Members of society undergo a process of mutual dependence that develops not in spite of, but through social recognition.

Socialization through recognition is thus an ambivalent process. It is at the same time a process of education and a process of growing dependency. In order to overcome the ambivalence, inter-individual recognition must be encapsulated in the recognition between individual and community. Here again, it appears that the 'horizontal' dimension of recognition must be incorporated in the 'vertical'. At the level of society, (875) this occurs through the individuals' membership in corporations (in workers organizations). Individuals are recognized as professionals by the corporation and as members of the corporation within the civil society. The corporations regulate the labor market. They also provide solidarity and support to members in need. As members of corporations, individuals enjoy Standesehre, which is the recognition not only of their own professional skills, but also of the social value of their work. Eventually, membership of a corporation enlarges the individuals' viewpoint and mediates the formation of a civic consciousness. The individuals become aware of the fact that they share the same interests -professional, group interests -with the rest of the corporation and all members of a certain social stratum. Eventually, they develop some kind of collective perception of society as a whole, an awareness of its structure and problems.

In a word, the social recognition mediates the political. The citizen is a legitimate member of the state because he participates in the civil society. Such participation does not come down to the individual's contribution to the welfare of society. It is also a process of formation (Bildung), i.e. of universalization, which leads to the development of a civic collective consciousness. As regards the relationship between the individual and the state, it develops in two ways. In the first place, individuals are recognized as members of a particular social stratum. This occurs in parliament, as is indicated by the fact that Hegel uses the same word -Stand, estate -to designate the social strata and their parliamentary representation. This is another example of there being 'too much nature' in Hegel's Philosophy of Right. For the idea that parliament represents society in its internal structure is correct. But instead of representing such a structure in an informal way, which corresponds to the society being in constant transformation, as is the case in the modern world, Hegel's parliament is constituted according to fixed social categories (estates): landowners and farmers; entrepreneurs, artisans and shopkeepers, civil servants, etc. The sociopolitical views and interests of these categories are supposed to be determined by their being more or less close to nature itself (the case of the substantial estate, as against that of the industrial) (PR § 203, Remark and Addition).

In the second place, individuals are also recognized as citizens in general. As such, they follow the public discussions in law courts and parliament. This implies freedom of the press, publication of parliamentary debates, etc. Axel Honneth's assertion that there is not a single trace of a public sphere in Hegel's theory of the State 54 is clearly an overstatement. So is the thesis that citizens are mere subjects and servants of the sovereign State 55 . In fact, citizens are entitled to exercise their judgment, i.e. to verify that their universal will of universal freedom is satisfied by state institutions. Thus, the relation between state and citizen reposes on mutual recognition. The citizen recognizes itself in the state inasmuch as the state recognizes it. This relationship between state and citizen is 'vertical' because the state administration and the decision-making process -which involves the mutual interdependency of parliament, government and monarch -are hierarchized. However, the relationship between state and 54 Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit, p. 127. 55 Ibid., p. 126. citizen remains a relationship of reciprocal recognition. It is not mere submission of the citizen to state authority. Citizens recognize themselves in the state insofar as the state recognizes them as free human beings. In conformity with the formula of recognition, they recognize the state as recognizing them, and the state recognizes them as recognizing it. The state secures the citizens' universal rights. It recognizes their fundamental demand that universal rights be guaranteed by the rule of law.

(876) That is why citizens have the right to be informed and to judge the government's policies. As we have seen, the Phenomenology of Spirit envisages that kind of critical judgment that consists in verifying that the law is universally admissible. In Hegel's view, such judgment is abstract and must be 'sublated' in the ethical life of society. But that does not mean that critical judgment must be forsaken. In the chapter of the Phenomenology dedicated to the ethical world, Hegel observes that within the ethical world, the examination of laws subsists, but in another form. What is to be verified is not the law itself but the fact that it is really enforced56 . Obviously, this applies to the fundamental laws and rights of the rational, modern state. In such a state, the law that is to be enforced is the law that grants equal rights to all citizens. From this point of view, the sublation of the abstract moral judgment does not mean that the universality principle is abandoned; it means that the universality principle must be institutionalized in the form of constitutional rights. Then, the citizens are entitled to expect from the administration that it enforce these rights. In Hegel's own terms, the subjective will has the absolute right to judge by itself what is right: 'The right of the subjective will is that whatever it is to recognize as valid should be perceived by it as good' (PR § 132). This means that Hegel's theory of collective norm-setting poses no problem of relativism whatsoever. The problem only arises if we neglect Hegel's reference to the universality criterion, which for all its limits remains fundamental in the Philosophy of Right. As Frederick Neuhouser rightly says, individuals have 'reasons for endorsing their institutions that are valid not merely from the perspective of social members who are already subjectively at home in their particular social roles but from the perspective of all thinkers (or, more precisely, from the perspective of all thinkers who take an interest in the realization of freedom, which for Hegel just is the perspective of universal reason'57 . Eventually, social norms are submitted to the universality criterion, if anything, because members of society are considered as human beings in general. Thus, the citizens' right to express critical, moral judgment on public affairs is fundamental. Its sublation (Aufhebung) means that the individuals' moral conscience, while playing its legitimate role, is only part of a more complex political process. In practical terms, the crucial decisions are still to be taken at the level of the state, more precisely: of the head of state and its administration.

It remains that the social recognition mediates the political. People are not fully recognized as citizens when they are not recognized as private persons, family members, workers, bearers of rights, moral subjects, etc. Anyone who is excluded from the labor market and prevented from leading a normal private life is denied full membership of the political community. Now, this is exactly what happens in the constitutional state as the Philosophy of Right sees it. Social mediation is undermined by the growing polarization between wealth and poverty that results from overproduction in modern (i.e. early capitalist) societies. In the well-known § § 243-5, Hegel analyzes the formation of a mass of individuals who are excluded from the labor market and, therefore, from social recognition, individuals who are even barred from the possibility of living in accordance with the moral standards of their community. In other words, Hegel describes a process of material and moral massification. Consequently, the social cohesion that should be achieved through mutual recognition is undermined and, with it, the political cohesion of the state itself. Here, Hegel's text may be interpreted in two different ways. One interpretation would be that the collapse of social recognition must be palliated (877) by the corporations that regulate the labor market and secure assistance for their members -thus playing the role of a 'social safety net'. However, it is doubtful that this suffices to solve a problem which, according to Hegel's own analysis, affects the very structure of modern states and societies. Another interpretation, which is that of Eric Weil, is that in pointing out this unresolved contradiction, Hegel signals the necessity for the state to deal with the problem through proper social and political reforms 58 .

For in Hegel's view such problems must be solved through governmental action. It is true that Hegel does not draw the practical conclusions that we, nowadays, draw from the idea of the universal will of universal freedom. In case fundamental rights are violated, we consider that citizens have the right to resist through public protest or civil disobedience. The Philosophy of Right does not allow for such collective action. It does not even consider universal suffrage as a fundamental, decisive institution. One of the reasons is that universal suffrage characterizes the citizenry not as an organic body but as a collection of individual, atomic voters. Hegel did not anticipate that such 'unstructured' suffrage would make possible the kind of representation that is needed for a social structure in constant movement. Another reason is that the individuals' judgment on public affairs expresses itself in the form of public opinion. In Hegel's view, public opinion is ambivalent. It gives voice to a mixture of rational views and self-interested prejudices (PR § 317 and Remark). In the process of public opinion formation, each individual wants to obtain recognition for himself, i.e. for his own singular viewpoint. Hence, there is a contradiction between the form of the opinion, which is the individual self-certitude, and its content, which is an assertion regarding the universal good.

An analogous problem appears as regards inter-individual co-operation within the selfmanaged corporations. Owing to the complications of power relations -including the interindividual conflicts for recognition -the corporations will often be mismanaged (PR § 289, Remark). In a well-stabilized state, this is of little consequence. For these complications do not prevent the corporations from playing their role, which is to provide for the social recognition of the professions and enlarge the individuals' viewpoint on society and its problems. However, it remains that corporations have a particular view on the general interest of society. That is why they mediate between particular interests and the common good, between the self-centered consciousness of individuals and the knowledge of the general interest. Strictly speaking, the political point of view is the synoptical viewpoint that makes it possible to coordinate not only the particular interests, but also the particular views on the general interest. Corporations, as well as civil associations and local communities, develop their own understanding of the general interest, their own particular conception of the universal. But they do not provide the synoptic standpoint that allows us to mediate between the diverse particular conceptions of the universal. Such a synoptic point of view is that of the government and its administration -supposing, as Hegel does, that civil servants identify with the universal interest of the whole, i.e. do not side with a particular social class. Consequently, individual interaction and communication within the corporations -civil associations, local communities, etc. -are necessary, but they do not suffice to develop fully the citizens' social and political consciousness. Citizens' develop such global social and political awareness in communicating with the government and the administration -in contemporary democracies: with the political parties that are able to form a government and run the state administration.

(878) The same logic applies when the state itself needs to be transformed. The transformation will be better carried out by a body of competent civil servants. Nevertheless, the action of civil servants is only part of a system of mutual control and empowerment. Hegel criticizes the system of 'checks and balances' for being a mere system of negative control that enables each constitutional power to impeach the others. In addition to this mutual control, Hegel advocates a system of co-action through which each element of the constitutional system empowers the others and the whole system to act in a rational and reasonable manner (PR § 272 and Remark). According to Hegel's constitutional logic, no particular power is in the position of subjugating the others. Such logic includes the mutual information and control between the administration and public opinion. Hegel's model of 'communicative action', if there is any such model, is a model of interaction between the state administration and public opinion. If they are to have any political effect, communicative interactions among individuals must coalesce in the communication between government and citizenry. In any case, our disagreement with Hegel does not concern the theory of recognition, i.e. the concept of reciprocal recognition between state and citizens. What is at stake is not Hegel's theory of recognition, but the practical conclusions that are to be drawn from the idea of the universal will of universal freedom. The solution is not to flatten the idea of recognition and reduce it to 'horizontal', inter-individual relationships within civil society. It is to reconsider the articulation between the horizontal and the vertical dimensions of recognition, to investigate the means of incorporating the moral 'I-You' interaction into a politically effective 'We-Us' relationship.

II.3. International relations and the will of universal freedom

And on this point, precisely, we are left with a problem. According to Hegel's concept of the free will, what is to be realized is the freedom of all human beings. However, the state is a singular entity. As such, it must be represented by a singular individual who incarnates the state's internal and external sovereignty. This is a classical, Hobbesian idea. However, Hegel states that the existence and the continuity of the state must appear as an immediate, i.e. natural reality. Therefore, the state must be incarnated in a hereditary monarch. Here, we have a third instance of the fact that there is 'too much nature' in the Philosophy of Right. Hereditary monarchy is not the utmost rational way to symbolize the state's unity, as Hegel thought it was. In any case, there seems to be a discrepancy between the abstract and the concrete concepts of the free will. Whereas the former establishes that true free will aims at universal freedom, the latter realizes such freedom within the limits of a given state. The rational state secures the right of all citizens, so that the citizens recognize themselves in the state. However, freedom is thus realized for a particular people, under the governance of an individual monarch. The universal will of universal freedom is not yet fully satisfied.

What the idea of universal freedom requires is a model of international relations based on mutual recognition among a plurality of constitutional states. This may occur in the form of a strong or weak cosmopolitanism -the strong form corresponding to the development of supra-national institutions, the weak form to the mere coexistence of constitutional states in the framework of international law. As citizens of rational and reasonable states, all human individuals would in any case enjoy the same fundamental rights. (879) Is it Hegel's perspective? At first glance, it hardly seems to be the case. Hegel is skeptical about the political feasibility, the logical consistency and the ethical suitability of Kant's idea of a league of nations ensuring perpetual peace. The state is an individual that realizes its unity in opposing its other. Therefore, inter-state conflicts are an irreducible aspect of international relations. Supposing that a league of nations secures peace, the absence of supranational authority would make the very existence of the league dependent on the contingent, arbitrary will of the partner states. The league, which is to ensure perpetual peace, would either dissolve over time or maintain its cohesion in finding and fighting a common enemy. Supposing perpetual peace to be guaranteed, the effects on civil society would not be all positive. Individuals would be entrenched in their particular interests and the ensuing lack of cohesion would make society experience permanent unrest (PR § 324, Addition and PR § 333, Remark).

However, the same logic that defines the individual state as one among others -according to Hegel's Logic, there is no unity without multiplicity 59 -makes for the necessity of conflicts as well as that of inter-state recognition. The state is a self-related entity that excludes from itself other states or peoples. It achieves political cohesion in opposing a common foe. At the same time, the exclusive singularity of the state sets the other as a real, independent other. Thus, the individual state appears to be only one among a plurality of states. The durable existence of such plurality of self-standing states implies mutual recognition. Consequently, international relations are characterized, at the same time, by the inevitability of conflicts and the necessity of reciprocal recognition. One way of reconciling these contradictory aspects is to emphasize the absence of a supra-national authority. International relations are regulated by contracts and treaties. Since there is no supranational judge, each state is judge in its own cause. The arbitrary will of the state prevails when it comes to decide what issues are worth waging war for and to what extent international treaties are to be respected. Hence, international relations oscillate between war and peace. States are entitled to obtain recognition but they can never be sure of achieving it. Even if obtained, recognition may always be called into question.

Such a solution is appealing, but it does not entirely solve the problem. In the first place, there is still a paradox. In passing from internal to international politics, we regress to the abstract right and the subjective morality. There is no international law in the proper sense, only inter-state contracts. The command to respect one's commitments is a mere sollen, not a legal obligation enforced by an overarching authority. Such situation may be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, one could say that unresolved contradictions constitute the dynamic that prompts the philosophical discourse to the next stage. In this view, the fragility of international recognition indicates that the spirit does not reach full realization and, therefore, self-consciousness at the level of practical reason. The actualization and full selfconsciousness of the spirit is achieved only in theoretical, i.e. scientific and philosophical contemplation. In a word, the ultimate reconciliation occurs at the level of the absolute spirit, not at that of the objective spirit. This is notably Adriaan Peperzak's interpretation 60 . On the other hand, one can say that in pointing out these unresolved contradictions, Hegel indirectly announces the transition to another epoch in world history, an epoch whose task is to remedy the failures of social as well as inter-state recognition. This is Eric Weil's reading 61 .

(880) In the second place, the question of war makes it even more problematic to reconcile the perspective of permanent conflict and the idea of mutual recognition. It reveals the contrast between the two distinct viewpoints from which inter-state relations must be envisaged, the point of view of state sovereignty (PR § § 321-9) and that of international law (PR § § 330-40). The former seems to justify all-out war, while the latter legitimates only limited wars. From the standpoint of the state sovereignty, war strengthens the cohesion of the state. It manifests the 'ideality' of the individuals and of the institutions of civil society. In times of war, individuals realize that the state is the supreme good and that it must be defended at all cost. In losing their state, they would lose everything else: freedom, property, civil rights and the possibility of leading an ethical, reasonable life. Conversely, for the state to be a self-conscious ethical community, it is necessary that citizens experience the fear of losing it all. Individuals get into the rut of the rigid small mindedness of everyday social life. War is necessary for them to stay aware of their being members of an ethical community. Individuals must accept this necessity, 'even if their own life and property, as well as their opinions and all that naturally falls within the province of life, are endangered and sacrificed' (PR § 324). Hegel puts it in a famous passage:

The higher significance of war is that, through its agency … the ethical health of nations (Völker) is preserved in their indifference towards the permanence of finite determinacies, just as the movement of the winds preserve the sea from that putrefaction (Fäulnis) which a lasting calm would produce -a putrefaction which a lasting, not to say perpetual peace would also produce among nations. ( § 324, Remark, slightly modified translation).

Obviously, this is an unhappy metaphor and a poor argument. One might as well say that still water undergoes a process of decantation and purification, while stirring troubled waters makes the sludge come to the surface. Insofar as they target civilian populations as much as enemy soldiers, today's wars enable the dregs of humanity to resurface. Of course, Hegel was far from anticipating such a development. On the contrary, he makes it clear that war is to be waged exclusively among soldiers, without targeting civilians and civil institutions. 'War should on no account be waged either on internal institutions and the peace of private and family life, or on private individuals' (PR § 338). But how is this compatible with the idea that individuals should accept the idea of losing everything: life, property and 'all that naturally falls within the province of life'?

In any case, war appears in a different light when considered within the more global context of international right. Here, the stress is put on the relations between recognized, independent states. Obviously, such recognition precludes the 'all-out' war that the previous paragraphs seemed to justify, in virtue of the healthy fear of total collapse. Between states that recognize each other, only limited wars happen. These wars are waged by professional armies for the sake of delimited interests. They aim at destroying neither the state nor the civil society of the enemy. Such conflicts occur within the global framework of mutual international recognition. Eventually, states that have achieved the same level of cultural and political progress display a kind of like-mindedness. This like-mindedness regulates the relationship between the different states and prevents them from using extreme forms of 61 See Weil, Hegel and the State, chapter V, 'The Character of the Modern State'. violence, even in warfare. This is notably the case of the (881) European nation-states, which 'form a family with respect to the universal principle of their legislation, customs, and culture' (PR § 339, Addition). Thus, a common spirit manifests itself in the ethical proximity that exists among such states. This common spirit sets limits to the use of violence and safeguards the possibility of future peace between former enemies.

In a word, political sovereignty seems to justify all-out war in which the existence of the state and civil society are at risk. The international right vindicates limited wars in which neither the existence of the state nor normal civil life is at stake. In the former case, war is a struggle for recognition that may end in sheer struggle for life. In the latter, only limited wars happen within the framework of international relations based on mutual recognition. One might account for this discrepancy by saying that the possibility of total conflict refers to the Napoleonic wars -for instance, to the destruction of Prussia in 1806 -whereas the notion of international relations based on mutual recognition refers the treaty of Vienna of 1815 and the post-Napoleonic era. However, such difference in historic backgrounds would not salvage the text from its inner tension. It would merely account for it. But there is another way of reading it, which consists in saying that only opposite political regimes are likely to engage in all-out war. All-out war may only occur between rational and non-rational, i.e. constitutional and non-constitutional states. What sustains such interpretation is that the paragraphs to which it refers are the very last ones in which Hegel analyzes international relations. What follows immediately after are the paragraphs dedicated to world history. PR § 340 specifies that the violence between individual states and the ensuing risk for each state's independence make up the global play of world history. 'Weltgeschichte ist Weltgericht': world history is the superior 'court of justice' that invalidates the right to recognition of outdated forms of political organization. The tribunal of world history establishes the 'right' of the most progressive forms of state to get the upper hand over the others. Of course, we do not have to acquiesce to such a view. In the framework of Hegel's line of argumentation, however, this confirms that recognition is the principle of international relations among constitutional states. That is why mutually recognizing states have their say on each other's constitutional organization and lawfulness. As Robert R. Williams writes, 'states cannot be indifferent to the internal affairs of a state that they are to recognize, since that state must guarantee to reciprocate their recognition as a condition of receiving it' 62 .

Between rational and irrational types of states, war decides the existence of the state itself, i.e. of its political regime. Presumably, irrational and violent forms of state will not resist, in the long run, such international rivalry. One of the reasons is the absence of reciprocal recognition between the state and its citizens. For the lack of social and political recognition, irrational and violent forms of state do not have enough cohesion. Such states will probably experience the fate of all outdated, historically condemned forms of political organization (PR § 347). Non-constitutional states will either disappear or adopt the historic principle of universal freedom. As regards the constitutional states, there remains the difference between the nation that inaugurates a new principle of political freedom and the other nations, which merely adopt it. In the former, this principle expresses the 'immanent vitality' of the nation, which therefore takes the lead in historical progress. In the latter, the same principle is an 'extraneous element' that is more or less successfully incorporated in the nation's political organization. (882) Accordingly, the various constitutional states will more or less successfully incorporate the principle of rational and reasonable freedom. They will have more or less political cohesion and significance. Some of them will subsist either as particular states or in forming a group of states (ein Kreis von Staaten) (PR § 347, Remark). Some others will downgrade to second-class states enjoying a mere pretence of independence. Apart from the particular interests that are proper to each state, this persisting inadequacy between the concept of the state and its reality accounts for the many tensions that will remain within and among the existing states, even in a global context of mutual recognition.

Conclusion

From Hegel's theory of recognition, we can draw the following conclusions. Recognition is the medium in which human action and existence develop. On the one hand, the existence of a self-consciousness presupposes the mutual recognition of a plurality of selfconsciousnesses. On the other, no human action is real unless it is recognized as such by other human beings. Hence, recognition is the medium in which human action and existence develop. In contrast, the denial of recognition is the source of pathologies. At social and political level, the collapse of social recognition undermines the political and, therefore, the cohesion of the state. On the international stage, the existence of a plurality of independent states requires the principle of inter-state recognition. Such recognition is best ensured among states whose political development and ethical proximity make them less inclined to violence. In the absence of a supra-national arbiter, however, war is an irreducible aspect of international relations, especially as regards the relationships between rational and irrational forms of political organization.

According to the way it strives for satisfaction, however, the desire for recognition may be itself pathogenic. As a result, the individuals may experience alienation in or from the world. They may lose contact with reality or fall into excessive dependency. It is true that individual action is empty and ineffective unless it is performed as a participation in the ethical life of society. However, such a conclusion is also true for inter-individual action and communication. In Hegel's view, the idea of pure intersubjective recognition is no less abstract than the person of the abstract right or the subject of the abstract morality. Moreover, inter-individual recognition entails an irreducible part of misrecognition. Both the desire for recognition and the act of granting recognition entail a part of delusion and self-delusion. In a different philosophical language, they are manifestations of the 'will to power'. To such a problem, the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right give two different but compatible solutions. The Phenomenology insists on the mutual acknowledgment of the part of violence and arbitrariness -Rousseau's amour-propre, Kant's radical evil -that subsists in the individuals' actions and practical judgments. The Philosophy of Right insists that interindividual recognition, which is essential to human life, must be integrated into the 'vertical' order of social and political institutions.

In concrete terms, the individual's recognition within the family and civil society is a moment of the more accomplished form of recognition, which is the political. According to the logic of Aufhebung, the subordinated forms of recognition are essential in the sense that they are part of the whole process. It is essential to be recognized (883) as a loving member of the family, as a friend, as a proficient professional, as a person with ethical standards, etc. All these forms of recognition are themselves recognized and given their due place in the individual's life. At the same time, the limits of those forms are also recognized. Recognition in the family circle does not suffice if one faces disrespect at work. To be recognized as a proficient professional does not suffice if one is denied full citizenship. Consequently, particular forms of recognition must complete each other. Pathologies of recognition occur when the individual takes the subordinated form of recognition as the whole of recognition, as if it sufficed to be recognized as a consumer or a bearer of propriety rights, for instance, to be fully recognized as a human being. However, the problem is not only that limited forms of recognition are taken to be the most accomplished forms of human self-realization. The problem is also that the individual is stuck in the ambivalences and delusions that are part of each of these subordinated forms of recognition. Frustration and pathologies develop when the desire for recognition 'fixes' on forms of inter-individual recognition that, instead of being given the justified but limited importance they deserve, become all that matters in the individual's eyes. In contrast, the social and political Aufhebung overcomes the ambivalences of inter-individual relationships in determining their real but limited importance. Here, there is a marked difference between Hegel and Rousseau. On the one hand, the impossibility of developing or preserving transparent intersubjective relationships caused Rousseau to seek self-realization in solitary independency63 . For Hegel, a sort of 'openness' must be substituted for an ideal (and delusive) transparency, based on mutual innocence. This openness results from the mutual acknowledgement of the more or less sublimated violence that remains in every moral judgment as well as in every action, i.e. in the two forms of the 'will to power', the 'will to judge' and the 'will to act'. On the other hand, the ambivalence of human relationships should not deter us from engaging in inter-individual cooperation. Whatever the opacity of the individual's relations to the others and to herself or himself, what really matters is to do what needs to be done. Everyone in society has a role and a task to perform, problems arise at social and political level that must be dealt with. The ambiguity of moral relations should prevent us from excessive fantasizing on intersubjective recognition. At the same time, it should not be given excessive importance.

Eventually, the normative concept of the free will subordinates the private and socioeconomic forms of recognition to the mutual recognition between state and citizens. In this view, the highest form of recognition is defined by: 1) the recognition by the state of the citizens' will of universal freedom, 2) the citizens' reconciliation with their state inasmuch as it realizes universal freedom. Such recognition presupposes that the political organization be rational and reasonable. It also requires that the individuals be educated and develop their own free will of universal freedom. Here, we have the answer to our initial problem, which was posed by the nationalist, pathogenic form of recognition in which pure imaginary participation in the state power and the nation's predominance make citizens think they are recognized. Actually, the state recognizes its citizens inasmuch as it realizes and secures their fundamental human rights. Reciprocally, the citizens recognize themselves in the state insofar as it realizes their rights as human beings and, therefore, the fundamental rights of all human beings. In a word, citizens are fully recognized as human beings when the state recognizes their will of universal freedom. (884) This implies that the state educate the citizens and enable them to develop such a will. For the citizens, there is no other way of achieving authentic recognition than to consider themselves and be considered as reasonable individuals.

On the basis of the Hegelian concept of the free will, we may go a step further. Hegel's concept of the free will -the universal will of universal freedom -leaves the possibility of developing an approach to international relations that is more in line with our present situation. In this view, the universal will of universal freedom corresponds to a social as well as a political imperative. The social imperative is to reduce the reification of human beings in the world division of labor. This implies that the economic processes be submitted to political control. The political imperative is the development of an international community whose task is not only to ensure peace, but also to develop inter-state political cooperation and further the enforcement of fundamental rights. The aim of cosmopolitanism, be it of the strong or weak form, is not only the 'negative' aim of eliminating war; it is also the 'positive' goal of making international action and co-operation possible. In this view, reasonable individuals recognize themselves in their state if -and only if -this state acts as a partner of other nations in the edification of a more secure and reasonable world.

5

  Among many others, see in particular Pierre-Jean Labarrière, Structures et mouvement dialectique dans la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit de Hegel (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1968) and Introduction à une lecture de la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1979), Ludwig Siep, Annerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie (Freiburg: Alber, 1979), Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes : Ein einführender Kommentar zu Hegels Differenzschrift und Phänomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp Verlag, 2000), Terry Pinkard, Hegel's Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Tom Rockmore, Cognition : An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), Tom Rockmore, Before and After Hegel: An Introduction to Hegel's Thought (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1992), Fredric Jameson, The Hegel Variations. On the Phenomenology of Spirit (London and New-York: Verso, 2010), Robert B. Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

7

  Chapter IV: 'The Truth of Self-certainty'. 8 Chapter V: 'The Certainty and Truth of Reason'. 9 See Tom Rockmore, Cognition, p 2.

59

  See Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), § 100. 60 See Adriaan Peperzak, 'Hegel contra Hegel in his Philosophy of Right: The Contradictions of International Politics', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 32 (2) (April 1994), pp. 241-63.

  14 Ludwig Siep puts it very clearly: 'Hegel hat mit seiner Konzeption von Anerkennung den Prozeß der

Bewußtseinsbildung durch Interaktion zum Maßstab einer praktischen Philosophie gemacht, die zugleich Theorie der Freiheit, des Staates und der Geschichte sein will … Man darf aber den Preis nicht übersehen, der für diese Erneuerung der praktischen Philosophie gezahlt wurde: Freiheit ist für Hegel nicht ohne selbstnegation des Einzelnen möglich -und Anerkennung bedeutet nicht die Selbstdarstellung und das gegenseitige Respektieren der 'unvertretbaren' Individualität, sondern des zur Allgemeinheit gebildeten Selbst', in Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992), p. 157.

See for instance Annerkennung als Prinzip, p. 144: 'Das Problem der Hegelschen Anerkennungslehre bleibt das folgende: Die Einzelheit des Volksgeistes ist dessen 'Insichsein', nicht bloß das der in ihm lebenden Einzelnen. Es ist die selbstgewisse 'Spitze' des Staates, die Regierung und der Monarch, und es ist das Sich-Wissen des Volksgeistes im absoluten Geist. Dieses Insichsein, diese Selbstständigkeit des Staates den Einzelnen und Gruppen gegenüber, ist seinerseits das 'Woraufhin' des Sich-Transzendierens der Einzelnen. Wenn der Volksgeist so über die Einzelnen in sich selbst zurückkehrt, dann sind diese aber wiederum nicht eigentlich in ein selbständiges Anderssein freigegeben.'

See Pierre-Jean Labarrière, Structures et mouvement dialectique dans la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit de Hegel and Introduction à une lecture de la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit.

See Jean-François Marquet, Leçons sur la Phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel (Paris: Ellipses, 2004), Leçon XII, pp.

185-202.

Hegel regroups (4) and (5) under the title: 'The Spiritual Realm of Animals and Deception; or the Thing that matters'.

See Labarrière, Introduction à une lecture, p. 246.

See Axel Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit. Eine Reaktualisierung der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 2001). English-language edn, The Pathologies of Individual Freedom. Hegel's Social Theory, trans. Ladislaus Löb (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010).

This is the subject of Molière's play Le Misanthrope.

Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 304.

See Pinkard, Hegel's Phenomenology, pp. 214-20.

Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 302.

See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1998), chapter V: 'Action'.

Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 207.

Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory, p. 116.

See Weil, Hegel and the State.

William's, Hegel's Ethics of Recognition, p. 351.

On the importance of 'transparency' in Rousseau's philosophy, see Jean Starobinski's famous book, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. La transparence et l'obstacle (Paris: Gallimard, 1971) ; English-language edn, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Transparency and Obstruction, trans. A. Goldhammer, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988).