Abstract

Each is for the other the middle term, through which each mediates itself with itself and unites with itself; and each is for itself, and for the other, an immediate being on its own account, which at the same time is such only through this mediation. They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another. Scholars seeking an account of recognition will be familiar with the seminal section on lordship and bondage in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In these passages we learn that the dialectic of mutual recognition is the key to actualized self-consciousness, that moment in which the “I” transcends its immanence in the life process to become a self-reflective subject, actively superseding the..