Introduction

Summary

This chapter introduces the idea of a distinctively moral form of recognition by considering J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, a work of literature that exemplifies the recognitive tensions in which Hegel is interested, showing how moral disagreement can undermine the experience of the integrity of one’s own selfhood. I then turn to presenting a general account of the issue of recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, by situating the role that the idea of the self plays in addressing that issue. I show that recognition addresses a challenge about self-knowledge, so that an adequate conception of what the self is is necessary to secure relations of recognition. After clarifying the interpretive method that I follow in the book by contrasting with my own approach to extant interpretations, I conclude with a chapter-by-chapter outline of the rest of the monograph.