Chapter 5 - Conclusion

Summary

In this concluding chapter, I summarize the argument about the conditions for the achievement of recognition that Hegel sets out from Chapters IV-VI of the Phenomenology. I consider the ways in which the conclusions of this argument are significant for the project of the text as a whole, pointing to the role of the idea of the self both in the Phenomenology’s “Preface” and account of “Absolute Knowing,” and in the Science of Logic. At the same time, I also argue that the account of reciprocal recognition is completed in Hegel’s account of “spirit,” and so does not depend on the subsequent accounts of religion or philosophical science. I conclude by stressing the precarity of relations of reciprocal recognition which are dependent on the achievement of moral agreement.