Hegel's Ethics of Recognition

Hegel's Ethics of Recognition by Williams, Robert R. R.. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780520224926.

In this significant contribution to Hegel scholarship, Robert Williams develops the most comprehensive account to date of Hegels concept of recognition (Anerkennung). Fichte introduced the concept of recognition as a presupposition of both Rousseaus social contract and Kants ethics. Williams shows that Hegel appropriated the concept of recognition as the general pattern of his concept of ethical life, breaking with natural law theory yet incorporating the Aristotelian view that rights and virtues are possible only within a certain kind of community. He explores Hegels intersubjective concept of spirit (Geist) as the product of affirmative mutual recognition and his conception of recognition as the right to have rights. Examining Hegels Jena manuscripts, his Philosophy of Right, the Phenomenology of Spirit, and other works, Williams shows how the concept of recognition shapes and illumines Hegels understandings of crime and punishment, morality, the family, the state, sovereignty, international relations, and war. A concluding chapter on the reception and reworking of the concept of recognition by contemporary thinkers including Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze demonstrates Hegels continuing centrality to the philosophical concerns of our age.