Chapter 2 - Sociality

Summary

This chapter begins by showing why Hegel thinks that recognition depends on sociality, on shared forms of “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit). Drawing on a comparison with Rahel Jaeggi’s conceptions of “social practices” and “forms of life,” I consider the central elements of the social theory advanced in the Phenomenology. I show that “ethical life,” in particular when understood as a configuration of “spirit,” both provides the terms for individual self-understanding and secures the conditions for equality and reciprocity with other subjects. At the same time, I demonstrate that relations of reciprocal intersubjective recognition will not be possible in all forms of social life. While social forms that entrench relations of domination and inequality among their members are among the primary threats to the achievement of reciprocal recognition, I argue that, in the Phenomenology, Hegel makes a unique argument that it is possible for a form of social life to be structured so that no one is recognized within them, in which even one-sided configurations of recognition are impossible. I conclude by pointing to Hegel’s proposed solution to this problem, a universal conception of the self that is explicitly articulated within a shared way of life.