Robert R. Williams
There is No We Fichte and Sartre on Recognition
In this paper I examine Fichte and Sartre on the concept of recognition. Sartre’s source for the concept of recognition is Hegel, who in turn appropriated it from Fichte. In the �rst part of the paper I shall focus on the concept of recognition in Fichte’s classical formulation. In Fichte’s account the self-consciousness of freedom do m is medi mediat ated ed by reco recogn gnit itio ion, n, and and the the conc concep eptt of indi indivi vidu dual alit ity y stan stands ds in esse essenntial tial corre correlat lation ion with with the concep conceptt of commun community ity.. The human human being being becom becomes es human human only in community with others. Thus recognition is the foundation of Fichte’s concept of right. Yet despite its importance, Fichte’s account of recognition does not �nd consistent expression in his Jena philosophy. philosophy. Hegel appropriates and reformulates the concept of recognition. In his Phehis Phenomenology of Spirit recognition recognition is the existential genesis of Spirit, the I that is a We and a We that is an I. This enlarged mentality becomes the basic structure of ethical ethical life (Sittlichkeit ). ). But Hegel does not begin with the We as a given; rather he starts with the famous struggle for recognition that results in master and sla slave, an uneq unequa uall reco recogn gnit itio ion n and and rela relatio tion n enfo enforc rced ed by coer coerci cion on;; as such such it is self self-subverting. In spite of Hegel’s importance for Sartre, in Being in Being and Nothingness Sartre lacks �rst hand acquaintance with Hegel. Like Kojève, Sartre tends to identify recognition with Master and slave; he rejects reciprocal recognition, the We, and reduces love to sado-masochism. Sartre regards Hegel’s treatment of intersubjectivity as superior to Husserl’s, but he also criticizes Hegel’s alleged ontological optimism. This criticism takes him back to a quasi-Fichtean position. Thus Sartre’s attitude towards recognition is ambivalent. He denies reciprocal recognition in principle while affirming it in Ethics. But what happens to Sartre’s practice, especially in his Notebooks his Notebooks for an Ethics. Sartre’s radica radicall lly y indiv individ idual ualist ist existe existenti ntial al ontolo ontology gy in his later later work work? Sartr Sartree draws draws closer closer to recipr reciproca ocall recog recogniti nition on and commun community ity withou withoutt clearl clearly y embrac embracing ing these. these. Althou Although gh Sartr Sartree prese presents nts descri descripti ptions ons of recip recipro rocal cal recogn recogniti ition, on, he concei conceive vess these these throu through gh a dualistic ontology. The possibility and ontological status of mutual recognition remain unclear. Both Fichte and Sartre have problems with the transition from the I to to the We, We, i.e, the passage from individual to universal that is necessary for freedom, relation and community. Sartre’s nominalism entails his view that hell is other people. Fichte fails to resolve a tension in his account of recognition that distorts
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its reciprocity and allows it to be displaced by the coercive aspect of right; this reduces community from a condition of freedom to its nemesis.
� The Concept Concept of of Recognitio Recognition n in Fichte’s Fichte’s Jena Writings Anerkennung ) in his Fichte introduces the topic of recognition ( Anerkennung his Grundlage des (1796). 6).¹¹ Recogn Recogniti ition on is the inters intersubj ubject ectiv ivee mediati mediation on of the consci conscious ous- Naturrechts (179 ness of freedom; it is a transcendental condition of right and ethics. Recognition enlarges and corrects the concept of freedom in Kant’s practical philosophy. For Kant the self knowledge of freedom is problematic, because freedom is not an object and thus not knowable; it is a practically necessary assumption or postuSecond Critique Critique Kant ratio cognos cognoscen cendi di late late.. In the the Second ant clai claims ms that that the the mora morall law law is the the ratio of freedom: a free being discovers that it is free only through the imperatives impose imposed d by practic practical al reaso reason. n. Conve Converse rsely ly,, freed freedom om is the ratio the mora morall ratio essendi essendi of the law: for only a free being is capable of apprehending a moral imperative (what ought to be but is not) and obeying it. Inthe Naturrecht Inthe Naturrecht Fic Fichte hte presen presents ts a more more elabor elaborate ate answer answerto to Kant’ Kant’ss questi questions ons:: How is the self-consciousness of freedom possible? How can the subject �nd itself as an object?² Fichte’s answer turns on the twin concepts of the summons Aufforderung ) and recognition. The self-consciousness of freedom is not some( Aufforderung thing that the self can give to itself because it cannot objectify itself as a whole. Rather the self requires and depends on an other to make it available to itself; the other summons it to act. Formulated in Kant’s terminology the ratio the ratio cognoscendi essendi of the summons is of freedom is the summons of the other, and the ratio the ratio essendi of the capacity of the subject to respond as an agent an agent . For Fichte, the self-consciousness of freedom is intersubjectively mediated rung ) of an other.³ The other summons the self to free by the summons ( Aufforde ( Aufforderung activity, and makes room for that free activity by limiting its own freedom. By summoning, the other shows that he recognizes the one summoned to be free, and by limiting his freedom he renounces any claim to be the sole freedom in the world. The summons presupposes that the summoner has a concept of freedom
Fichte, GNR, SW SW III, § 3, 30; 30; FNR 29. 29. � Fichte, GNR, SW III, 33; 33; FNR 32. � Aufforderung has has several senses: summons, requirement, demand, request, invitation. invitation. �
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and recognizes that the self it summons is capable of acting freely and independently. The summons is not a physical-causal action or an Anstoß that would nullify the subject’s freedom. According to Fichte, the summons itself does not function as the cause of freedom, rather it “leaves the subject in full possession of its freedom to be self-determining: for otherwise the �rst point would be lost and the subject would not �nd itself as an I.”⁴ The rational being is not determined or necessitated to act by the summons. In the summons the subject comes to the consciousness of its freedom as having to respond to the other in some way; the summons is the subject’s being-determined to be self-determining.⁵ The other calls upon the subject to resolve to exercise its freedom, i. e., respond.⁶ What or who summons the subject to resolve to efficacious action? Fichte fudges this issue. He suddenly shifts perspective: the Naturrecht will treat this question not from the transcendental point of view, but from the perspective of the subject under investigation.⁷ This shift from a transcendental to an ordinary consciousness perspective allows, indeed requires, Fichte to introduce an other outside the subject who is posited/inferred as the source of the summons. This shift of perspective introduces an ambiguity: What does reciprocity mean? Does the reciprocity between summoned and summoner refer to a reciprocity between persons or to a self-coincidence of transcendental with empirical consciousness? What would a transcendental account of the summons look like? Resolution of that question would require a systematic integration of the transcendental standpoint with the ordinary consciousness standpoint. Fichte does not provide this integration in the Naturrecht . Following the Naturrecht , we take up the ordinary consciousness perspective, and postpone the transcendental perspective for later consideration. For ordinary consciousness the summons comes from an other “outside” of consciousness. Fichte vacillates between regarding the other as the result of an inference from effect to cause⁸ on the one hand, and affirming the priority of the other over the subject as the factual yet necessary condition of the subject’s resolve to free efficaciousness.⁹ Fichte affirms both views. His general point is that human freedom is a mediated autonomy; as such it has a divided ground, partly in
� � � � � �
Fichte, GNR, SW III, 33; FNR 32. Fichte, GNR, SW III, 33; FNR 31. Fichte, GNR, SW III, 33; FNR 31. Fichte, GNR, SW III, 33; FNR 32. Fichte, GNR, SW III, 36; FNR 35. Fichte, GNR, SW III, 35; FNR 34–35.
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the subject and partly in the one who summons.¹⁰ If we �nd ourselves summoned, then there must be another who summons us. The summons becomes a proof of intersubjectivity.¹¹ It is the manifestation of a freedom (the summoner) that limits itself in order to create space and possibility for another freedom (the one who is summoned) to exercise itself and become actual. Such self-limitation presupposes and exhibits the recognition of the subject’s freedom: Through itsactionthis being outside the subject has[.. . ] summoned thesubject to act freely; thus it has limited its freedom through the concept of an end in which the subject’s freedom is presupposed [...]. Thus it has limited its freedom through the concept of the subject’s (formal) freedom.¹²
Note that the summons is not causal; it is not a compulsion to act or to do anything: “The subject cannot �nd itself necessitated to do anything, not even to act . . . for then it would not be free or an I.”¹³ “How and in what sense then, must the subject be determined to exercise its efficacy, if it is to �nd itself as an object? Only insofar as it �nds itself as something that could exercise its efficacy but that could just as well refrain from doing so.”¹⁴ But even refraining still quali�es as a response. In responding the subject discovers and comes to the self-consciousness of her freedom. The summons can be accepted, declined, or ignored; in each case, the subject comes to a consciousness of her freedom that was previously only implicit or latent. In Fichte’s view, there is an inner telos and teleology at work here, according to which the most appropriate response to the summons is a corresponding reciprocity, to wit, a reciprocal recognition in which the self likewise limits its freedom and enters into free relation with the other. The appropriate relation between the divided grounds of freedom, i. e., self and other, is not one of exclusion or opposition, or asymmetry and inequality, but rather reciprocal recognition. Reciprocal recognition is a complex intersubjective process in which the one cannot be separated from the other. “Both must constitute partes integrantes of an undivided event.”¹⁵ Fichte affirms that not only does a social whole result from reciprocal
�� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 35, 41; FNR 33, 39. �� See Charles K. Hunter: Der Interpersonalitätsbeweis in Fichtes früher angewandter praktischer
Philosophie. Meisenheim am Glan 1973. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 43; FNR 41. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 33–34; FNR 32–33. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 34; FNR 33. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 34; FNR 33.
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recognition, this whole is a reconciliation of persons that establishes the concept of right: The relation of free beings towards each other is therefore the relation of reciprocal interaction through intelligence and freedom. One cannot recognize the other if both do not mutually recognize each other; and one cannot treat the other as free if both do not mutually treat each other as free. The concept established here is extremely important for our project, for our entire theory of right rests upon it.¹⁶
Reciprocity is essential to the concept of recognition; it is at once a condition of the summons and the result of recognition as the completion of the process originated by the summons. Hegel concurs with Fichte, asserting that a one-sided action would be useless because what is supposed to happen can only come to pass through both acting together.¹⁷ Reciprocity is not merely the condition of intersubjectivity, it is a condition of relation and freedom in relation. Fichte asserts that with absent reciprocity “we remain separate and are absolutely nothing for each other.”¹⁸ What arises out of reciprocal recognition is a new, higher sense of individuality: the concept of individuality is a reciprocal concept, i. e., a concept that can be thought only in relation to another thought and one that is (with respect to its form) conditioned by another thought. This concept can exist in a rational being only if it is posited as completed by another rational being. Thus this concept [of individuality] is never [merely] mine; rather it is – in accordance with my admission and with the admission of the other – mine and his, his and mine; it is a shared concept within which two consciousnesses are uni�ed into one.¹⁹
The concept of individual recognition results in and correlates with the concept of union and community. A free community depends on neither individual alone – for as Hegel says, a one-sided relation is no relation at all – but on their reciprocal relation to each other. For Fichte, the concept of community “is necessary, and this necessity compels both of us to abide by the concept and its necessary implications: we are both bound and obligated to each other by our very existence.”²⁰ Thus reciprocal recognition aims at and results in a whole or community. This basic teleology is inherent in Fichte’s concept of recognition set forth in the Naturrecht . It is this conception that Hegel takes from Fichte, and what Sartre praises
Fichte, GNR, SW III, 44; FNR 42. �� Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit , tr. Arnold V. Miller. Oxford 1977, § 182; id.: Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister. Hamburg 1952, 142. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 46; FNR 43. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 47–48; FNR 45 [emphasis added]. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 48; FNR 45 [emphasis added]. ��
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in Hegel’s account: to wit that the road of interiority ( fürsichsein) passes through the other. The process of recognition binds persons together and constitutes a mediated autonomy; the self is for-itself and for another. But is this binding tied a We? Not quite. Fichte proceeds to ask, how is a community of free beings qua free beings possible?²¹ By this question he seeks to inquire further into what he calls the inner conditions of reciprocal interaction.²² His answer is puzzling because on the one hand it con�rms the above noted transformation of isolated private individuals into a community through reciprocal recognition. On the other hand, it is not evident that Fichte believes reciprocal recognition establishes any community at all. Here is the puzzling and problematic text in full: At the basis of all voluntarily chosen reciprocal interaction among free beings there lies an original andnecessaryreciprocal interaction among them, which is this: the free being, by his mere presence in the sensible world, compels every other free being, without quali�cation, to recognize him as a person . The one free being providcs the particular appearance, the other the particular concept. Both are necessarily united [...] In this way a common cognition emerges, and nothing more. Both recognize each other in their inner being, but they are isolated, as before.²³
Fichte begins by asserting that the existence of the other is not an inference as he had previously claimed, but rather an immediate presence that compels others to recognize him as a (free) person. This compelling presence constitutes the independence and relative primacy of the other over the subject. It constitutes what Fichte calls “an original and necessary reciprocal interaction” that lies at the basis of all voluntarily chosen interaction among free beings. However the puzzle is that if there is an original and necessary reciprocal interaction that compels recognition, then mutual recognition should result in a union, a shared will, or a We. But it doesn’t. Fichte asserts that after recognition, individuals remain isolated as before. Recognition that is supposed to result in community, leaves both the recognized and recognizing in their isolation. The divided grounds of freedom – the summoning other and the one summoned to respond – remain as separate and isolated after recognition and in recognition as they were before becoming partes integrantes in the process of recognition. The result of recognition is not a common bond or tie that binds the mutually mediating individuals into a We, but rather a strange relation that remains external to the
�� Fichte,
GNR, SW III, 85; FNR 79. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 85; FNR 79. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 85–86; FNR 79 [emphasis added].
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partes integrantes, and thus is neither relation nor a community. After recognition individuals remain as isolated as they were before. What happened to the inner teleology? The tie that binds mine and yours, yours and mine? Fichte adds on the next page: “Now obviously this is not the way things are.”²⁴ Well, how are things exactly? Fichte is not terribly clear, but what emerges next in his Naturrecht discussion is not a further clari�cation and analysis of the compelling presence of the other, or of the original and necessary reciprocal recognition at the basis of all voluntarily chosen interaction, much less a clari�cation of how individuals can remain as isolated in relation as they were prior to relation. Rather his treatment of recognition becomes entangled in his attempts to distinguish between right and morality. Fichte distinguishes between moral imperatives as duties, and the imperatives of right as permissions. The imperatives of right are permissions that are valid within a determinate, limited sphere. This limitation introduces contingency into the imperatives of right that distinguishes them from the unconditional imperatives of morality. The most that can be said concerning the imperatives of right is that “[i]f a community of free beings as such is to be possible, then the law of right must hold.”²⁵ In the sphere of right everything is contingent upon the free decision to enter/join a speci�c, determinate community. The imperatives of right are not unconditional, but hypothetical, they become binding only through the (free but optional) decision to enter a particular community. On the other hand, if the law of right must hold in order to secure the community of free beings, then coercion may be necessary and legitimate. Right entails the right to coerce. But in that case recognition might become super�uous as far as the realization of right is concerned. In contrast, the moral sphere is founded on the categorical imperative. The moral law is not restricted like right, but rather is universal; morality is supposed to govern all acts of rational beings. This means that within the sphere of morality, there is a duty and obligation to will that community among free beings has an enduring existence.²⁶ However, a moral community is not a given, but something that ought to be and thus has to be created. From the perspective of right, the enduring community of free beings possesses a merely conditional necessity.²⁷ Moreover, the lawful behavior presupposed by an enduring community may have to be
�� Fichte,
GNR, SW III, 86; FNR 80. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 89; FNR 82 [emphasis added]. �� Fichte, GNR, SW III, 88–89; FNR 81. �� But is this the same community? Is something morally necessary merely contingent in the sphere of right?
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enforced through coercion by the legal community. But morality eschews coercion and cannot be enforced. This is the dividing line between right and morality. It appears that when Fichte says that individuals remain isolated after recognition as they were before recognition, he may have in mind the recognition constitutive of the sphere of right, and not the deeper, fuller sense described above. This hypothesis is con�rmed by Hegel when he describes civil society as ethical life that has become lost in its extremes,²⁸ to wit, each person takes himself as his own end, and it is as directed to his own end that he relates to civil society and to others. That is why Hegel characterizes the �rst moment of civil society as the external state, as the state based on need, the state as the understanding conceives it, to wit, a system of universal individual freedom and exploitation. But Hegel adds signi�cantly that the individual “cannot accomplish the full extent of his ends without reference to others” and that “particularity limited by universality is the only standard by which each particular person promotes his welfare.”²⁹ Here everything – the universal, the community and others – are all regarded as external to the individual as his own end, and are exploited as means to that end. According to Fichte, only in the sphere of morality do individuals become internally related to each other through recognition and achieve a non-coercive, yet binding tie of solidarity in freedom. This becomes explicit in Fichte’s exposition of the summons in the System of Ethics that both presupposes and goes beyond the Naturrecht account: (1) I cannot comprehend the summons to self-activity without ascribing it to an actual being outside myself, a being that wanted to communicate to me a concept: the concept of the action that is demanded of me [...]. It is a condition of self-consciousness, of I-hood, to assume that there is an actual rational being outside of oneself.³⁰ (2) It can thus be proven strictly a priori that a rational being does not become rational in an isolated state, butthat at least oneindividual outside it must be assumed, another individual being who elevates this being to freedom.³¹ (3) My I-hood, along with my self-sufficiency in general, is conditioned by the freedom of the other. It follows that my drive to self-sufficiency absolutely cannot aim at annihilating the condition of its own possibility, that is, the freedom of the other [...]. This limitation of the drive for self-sufficiency therefore contains within itself an absolute prohibition against disturbing the freedom of the other, a command to consider the other as self-sufficient,
�� Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Philosophy
§ 184. �� Hegel: Philosophy of Right , § 182 Zusatz. �� Fichte, GNR, SW IV, 220–221; SE 209–210. �� Fichte, GNR, SW IV, 221; SE 209–210.
of Right , trans. Hugh B. Nisbet. Cambridge 1990,
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and absolutely not to use him as means for my own ends [...]. I am not allowed to be selfsufficient at the expense of the other’s freedom.³²
The summons cannot be comprehended without ascribing it to a being outside of myself who wants to communicate a concept to me, to wit, of a free action demanded of me that evokes my freedom in response. The assumption that there is another rational being outside of me is a condition of I-Hood. Fichte claims this other is actual; the other takes priority over my freedom as its condition. My freedom, though it aims at self-sufficiency, is morally conditioned, restricted, and limited by the other’s freedom. My freedom is always already bound, obligated and limited by the other. However, this relation of myconsciousness of freedom to its condition through mutual self-limitation, is asserted by Fichte a priori. Despite terms like actuality , and despite the priority of the one who summons over the one who is summoned, this a priori is not yet an actual relation, much less an actual community. The summons is like a categorical imperative of morality. As Schelling puts it, “Where my moral power encounters resistance, there can no longer be nature. I shudder and stop. I hear the warning: here is humanity! I am not permitted to go any farther.”³³ This account of the summons is not yet a reciprocal relation of free beings, rather it is the borderline between religion and morality. Fichte claims that the summons understood as an imperative to halt before another freedom implies a pre-established harmony; this is a theological-metaphysical justi�cation of original reciprocity.³⁴ In Fichte’s analysis I-hood presupposes the existence of at least one other, but this other is a priori and does not include empirical plurality. Fichte’s account of I-hood appears to be a transcendental theory of a general other or a transcendental dyad. But how this dyad is related to the Aufforderung or to an empirical plurality of individuals is not clear. If empirical individuals are excluded, what happens to the summons? Is the dyad itself a plausible we? If it is, then why does Fichte believe that it requires metaphysical buttressing by the concept of preestablished harmony? Further questions remain. What is the relation between recognition, which is a condition of right, and Fichte’s transcendental philosophy? What is the relation between the standpoint of ordinary consciousness and the transcendental stand-
Fichte, GNR, SW IV, 221; SE 209–210 [emphasis added]. From the transcendental perspective, “we infer an object [...] from some limitation of our being.” (Fichte, GNR, SW IV, 225; SE 213). �� Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling: Neue Deduction des Naturrechts, cited in Fichte, GNR, SW IV, 225; SE 213. �� Fichte, GNR, SW IV, 226–230; SE 214–217. ��
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point? The two standpoints appear to be both different and yet interconnected. Fichte maintainsboth that ordinary consciousness requires and needs philosophy for its comprehension, and that philosophy presupposes and depends in some sense on ordinary consciousness. Fichte sought to clarify some of these issues in his 1796Wissenschaftslere novo methodo. There he maintains that while the transcendental standpoint and the standpoint of ordinary consciousness must be distinguished, they are not absolutely opposed; he declares “these two viewpoints must not be absolutely opposed to each other [...] but must be united”.³⁵ But how can these be united? According to ordinary consciousness another rational being outside of consciousness must be assumed as the one who summons me to freedom. According to the transcendental standpoint, the transcendental subject and freedom are primary. Günter Zöller maintains that the only consistent transcendental explanation of the Aufforderung is that the self summons itself: “Yet the solicitation is not really an appeal issued from outside the individual but is the individual’s ‘clandestine’ representation to itself of its own �nite being under the form of the solicitation.”³⁶ Can both of the perspectives be true? Both seem necessary, but onlyif they can be taken together. If they cannot be taken together, both by themselves appear to be one-sided. The summons presupposes that the other is not an illusion, but a genuine other whose summons is the occasion for my completing the summons by resolving to free activity. Both the empirical other whosummons andthe transcendental self-origination of the summons are necessary: the other who summons me initiates the process. However, I must complete it, for if I do not also summon myself to freedom, I will never become free or act freely. My freedom would be only a continuation of an external impulse or impetus from the other. However, if we follow Zöller’s transcendental interpretation of the summons, the summoning other “outside” consciousness appears super�uous, or inferred from the self-limitation of the drive towards independent self-sufficiency. But that seems implausible, because the other who is external ground of freedom would be dissolved under the pretext of transcendental clari�cation: the not-I is just another guise of the primordial I. For Fichte the transcendental and the empirical dimensions of freedom are both essential and necessary. But how can the transcendental and the empirical aspects of Fichte’s Aufforderung be correlated and related? How can the transcendental be subject to the empirical events it conditions? Is this plausible?³⁷
�� Fichte,
FTP 473; GA IV 2, 266. �� Günter Zöller: Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy . Cambridge 1998, 119. �� See Violetta L. Waibel: On the Fundamental Connection between Moral Law and Natural Right , in: Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (ed.): Rights Bodies and Recognition: New Essays on Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right . Ashgate 2006, 45–58.
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In Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy Fichte clari�es these issues somewhat, when he observes that what is outside of (ordinary) consciousness is not necessarily outside of reason. He claims that the situation is different for the observed individual than it is for the philosopher. The indi vidual is confronted with things, human beings etc., that are independent of him. But the idealist says, “There are no things outside of me and present independently of me.” Though the two say opposite things, they do not contradict each other [...]: When the idealist says “outside of me”, he means “outside of reason”; when the individual says the same thing, he means “outside of my person”.³⁸
This implies that reason is social, but what is the sociality of reason? Might it be something like a transcendental intersubjectivity? This might be the implication of the monadology Fichte �irted with in the System of Ethics. However, since the monads are windowless, their relations to others are not included in their self-relation; consequently the original reciprocity and their relations have to be regulated by a pre-established harmony imposed by a deus ex machina. But this metaphysical solution is arbitrary, and it doesn’t work because the harmony, as pre-established, is heteronomous to freedom and self-relation. For these reasons Fichte quickly abandoned pre-established harmony. In theVocation of Man Fichte appeals to conscience and moral vocation. Conscience is identi�ed both as infallible and as the voice of God. If this means that God, not a human other, summons the self to freedom, Fichte’s view would resemble Levinas’s. That interpretation would imply that, contrary to Kant, God is for Fichte more than a subjective postulate of morality, and that Fichte either drastically modi�ed or simply abandoned Kant’s transcendental program by embracing Jacobi’s identi�cation of faith with immediate knowing. Ives Radrizanni rejects the theological interpretation; he claims that the argument in Vocation of Man remains fully transcendental, a practical ontology: [T]he deduction of the postulate of the existence of God can be considered to be part of the analysis of the requirements for the moral vocation posited with the postulate of liberty [freedom]. That postulate is as necessary as the postulate of liberty and therefore necessarily included within it as a condition of the coming reign of liberty. It [the postulate of the existence of God] may [...] be quali�ed as an “explanatory ground”.³⁹
Fichte, FTP 105–106; GA IV 3, 341 f. �� Ives Radrizanni: The Place of the Vocation of Man in Fichte’s Work, in: Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (ed.): New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre . Evanston 2002, 336. ��
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Of course terms like a subjectively necessary “practical ontology” and an epistemic, but non-ontological, “explanatory ground” cry out for clari�cation, probably more clari�cation than Fichte’s philosophy of postulates can provide.⁴⁰ However, if Radrizanni is right, if “ought implies can,” then in the fully transcendental interpretation, it is not an other, but rather the self that summons itself, as Zöller has pointed out. Neither an empirical other, nor an actual God is necessary. There is no other, no recognition, no we but only self-coincidence of the absolute ego and empirical ego.
� Sartre’s Appropriation and Critique of Recognition Sartre’s discussion of Hegel in Being and Nothingness is both illuminating and frustrating. On the one hand he praises Hegel and awards him the palm over Husserl and Heidegger because he gets the main point necessary in any adequate account of intersubjectivity: [T]he “moment” which Hegel calls being-for-Other is a necessary stage in the development of self-consciousness; the road of interiority passes through the Other [...]. Hegel’s brilliant intuitionistomakemedependontheOtherinmy being. I am,he said, a being-for-selfwhichis for itself only through another. Therefore the Other penetrates me to the heart. I cannot doubt him without doubting myself , since “self-consciousness is real only in so far as it recognizes its echo (and its re�ection) in another” [.. . ]. Thus solipsism seems tobe put out of the picture once and for all. By proceeding from Husserl to Hegel we have realized immense progress [...] instead of holding that my being-for-self is opposed to my being-for-others, I �nd that being-for-others appears as a necessary condition for my being-for-self .⁴¹
It is noteworthy that Sartre here singles out the priority of the other, the relation to the other in the ontologically binding tie of recognition that Fichte asserted and Hegel appropriated from him. However, despite Sartre’s embrace of Hegel’s position, it is doubtful whether Sartre actually read Hegel at this time.⁴² His pro-
his later Wissenschaftslehre and philosophy of religion, the priority of subjectivity over being is reversed in favor of being’s priority over thought. It is not clear whether Fichte abandons the primacy of the subject and the practical in favor of Jacobi’s immediate knowing. �� Sartre, BN 236–238. �� Sartrewasasked whether he had read Hegel when he wrote Being and Nothingness. He replied “No. I knew of him through seminars and lectures,but I didn’t study him until much later, around 1945.”, Paul A. Schilpp (ed.): The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre . LaSalle 1981, 9. Perhaps the �� In
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nouncements are often contradictory: e. g., he praises Hegel for breaking with Cartesian idealism and solipsism; then he criticizes Hegel for the idealism he has allegedly broken with. Like Kojève, Sartre identi�es Hegel’s account of recognition primarily as a theory of Master and Slave. He fails to notice Hegel’s distinction between the concept of recognition and its possible instantiations. By ignoring the distinction between the ontological (eidetic) and ontic (empirical) levels and concentrating on the latter,⁴³ Sartre fails to see that for Hegel recognition has an ontological structure capable of supporting a greater range of instantiations than master/slave, con�ict and domination. Sartre asserts that the original and essential truth of intersubjectivity is con�ict.⁴⁴ While it is true that for Hegel intersubjectivity includes con�ict, it is also true that con�ict does not exhaust all possibilities; the conditions of freedom and intersubjectivity also make mutual recognition and reconciliation possible. In Being and Nothingness Sartre extends the existentialist critique of Hegel. Sartre holds a nominalist position, according to which “the particular is the support and foundation of the universal.”⁴⁵ Although Sartre had previously asserted that Hegel broke decisively with the impasse between realism and idealism, he now charges Hegel with metaphysical idealism that identi�es being with knowing and from this �ow Hegel’s errors, namely epistemological and ontological optimism.⁴⁶
answer to some of the puzzles concerning Sartre’s discussion of Hegel is to be found in his Hegel source, rather than Hegel himself. When Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness he was reading a collection of Hegel’s writings in abridgement and translation. See Christopher M. Fry: Sartre and Hegel: The Variations of An Enigma in L’ Etre et le Neant . Bonn 1988. Fry claims that Sartre’s Hegel source during Being and Nothingness was the book Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Morceaux Choisis, ed. and tr. Henri Lefebvre and Norbert Guterman. Paris 1939. This book is a collection of sources, including parts of the Phänomenologie des Geistes, the Propädeutik , and selections from Hegel’s Enzyklopädie. Fry points out that while it is possible that Sartre read Hegel’s books, there is not a single quotation from Hegel in Being and Nothingness not found in Hegel, Morceaux Choisis. This historical explanation may account for Sartre’s abrupt transitions from one work to another, his piecemeal distorted picture of Hegel, and clarify his later statement that when writing Being and Nothingness he knew of Hegel but had not read or studied his books. �� See Martin Heidegger: Sein und Zeit . Tübingen 1984, § 26, 120; See Sartre, BN 9 ff., 286f. Sartre himself makes similar distinctions. �� See Sartre, BN 364, 429. �� Sartre, BN 239. As far as I can tell, Sartre never abandons this position; he calls his later theory dialectical nominalism. I shall return to this issue later. �� Sartre misunderstands Hegel’s idealism or holism. The formal absolute ego, the I am I, is precisely that idealism which Hegel criticizes in the Phenomenology and rejects as a pure motionless tautology. (Hegel: Phänomenologie des Geistes,175ff.)Thisisnotthe�rsttimethatHegelhasbeen
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By epistemological optimism Sartre means 1) the assumption that reciprocal recognition in a positive sense is possible, and 2) that reciprocal recognition makes possible a passage to the universal, from the I to the We.⁴⁷ Sartre denies this and charges Hegel with a failed attempt to overcome the ontological separation between consciousnesses. “Hegel’s optimism ends in failure: between the Other as object and Me as subject there is no common measure [.. . ] I cannot know myself in the other if the other is �rst an object for me; neither can I apprehend the other in his true being – that is, his subjectivity. No universal knowledge can be derived from the relation of consciousnesses. This is what we shall call their ontological separation.”⁴⁸ The result of ontological separation is there is no positive relation to other(s). Relation to the other is only negative, and this allows only a negative reciprocity of mutual exclusion and refusal. We can clarify these claims by a brief examination of Sartre’s phenomenology of shame. Sartre’s phenomenology of shame must be distinguished from his ontological analysis.⁴⁹ Sartre’s phenomenological description of shame as an essentially intersubjective consciousness exhibits the concept of recognition. Shame is not a re�ective consciousness, but is rather pre-re�ective or non-positional. Shame is not a state of mind one can give to oneself, but shame at oneself before somebody. The immediate presence of somebody else sends an immediate shudder through my being: “in the �eld of my re�ection I can never meet with anything
charged with holding the idealism which he was the �rst to attack and reject. Hegel would agree with Sartre that from such a formal conception of idealism, the pure ego as pure identity, I am I, etc., it is difficult if not impossible to understand the problem of the Other or intersubjectivity. Hegel holds a different concept of identity as identity of identity and non-identity, and insists upon dialectical negation and mediation. That is why for Hegel the problem of the Other, and the related problem of mediation, are inescapable: there is nothing in heaven or earth that does not contain mediation. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Wissenschaft der Logik ., in: id.: Theorie Werkausgabe, Vol. 5, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl M. Michel. Frankfurt am Main 1990, 66). �� Sartre, BN 240. �� Sartre, BN 243. Hegel’s critique of immediate knowledge makes a similar point: Not only is there no direct or immediate access to the other , there is no immediate or privileged access of the self to itself . Hegel’s starting point is simultaneous correlative uncertainty concerning the other and false consciousness concerning oneself. Uncertainty concerning the other is intolerable, and sets in motion the life and death struggle. Hegel’s account of recognition shows that the self is for itself only through the mediation of the other’s recognition. Since self identity is mediated by other, alterity is a constitutive feature of self-identity. Moreover, Hegel’s analysis of the understanding (Verstand) shows that abstract identity – the identity that excludes difference – is its fundamental category. This abstract identity must be deconstructed and replaced by a holistic dialectical concept that grants otherness and difference its due. �� Sartre himself draws this distinction. See Sartre, BN 268.
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but the consciousness which is mine. But the Other is the indispensable mediator between myself and me. I am ashamed of my self as I appear to the Other.”⁵⁰ Yet this is not a description of the entire phenomenon of shame. Signi�cantly Sartre continues: By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgment on myself asan object, for itis as an object thatI appear tothe Other. Yet this object which has appeared to the Other is not an empty image in the mind of another . Such an image in fact would be imputable wholly to the Other, and so could not “touch” me. I could feel irritation, or anger before it as before a bad portrait of myself which gives expression to an ugliness or baseness which I do not have, but I could not be touched to the quick. Shame is by nature recognition. I recognize that I am as the Other sees me.⁵¹
Shame clearly involves self-recognition in other. This self-recognition in other underlies and is the condition of subsequent evasions and �ight before the other. Shame is self-recognition in other in the Hegelian sense. In contrast with his phenomenology, Sartre’s ontological analysis of shame is another matter. Sartre’s ontology explains away and dissolves the original phenomenon of self-recognition in other. Being and Nothingness is an existential philosophy , a posture opposed to mediation and dialectic. Sartre distinguishes sharply between subject and object as two types or regions of being. The other as subject who looks at me is not-me and not-object; The existence of the other as subject is ascertained only through being the object of his Look. The existence of other as subject is immediately certain for the Cogito as looked at, whereas the other as object is a phenomenal object in the world whose existence is merely probable. This assumes that knowledge is objectifying, restricted to what can be objecti�ed, and thus �nite. As objectifying, knowledge is self-subverting, because it cuts me off from the very things and others that I seek to know. No mediation is possible between these two orders of being. Sartre’s epistemology in Being and Nothingness resembles Fichte’s in Vocation of Man: knowledge involves representation and objecti�cation that cut us off from the very realities which we wish to know. According to Fichte, knowledge destroys error but cannot give truth.⁵² Truth about self, others and God can be apprehended only in faith – Fichte’s �irtation with Kant’s practical faith and with Jacobi’s immediate knowing. For Sartre, our consciousness of others is not cognitive, but an
�� Sartre,
BN 222. �� Sartre, BN 222 [emphasis added]. �� Fichte: Vocation of Man, tr. William Smith, rev. and ed. Roderick M. Chisholm. New York 1956, 64f.
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immediate fact of being in direct relation to the being of the other; it is a prere�ective, immediate certainty. Sartre’s dualism is evident in his criticism of the passage from the I to the We, and subsequent analysis of the other as a transcending presence who is the real condition of my being as object. There is indeed a confusion here between two distinct orders of knowledge and two types of being which cannot be compared. We have always known that the object in the world can only be probable. This is due to its very character as object. It is probable that the passerby is a man; if he turns his eyes towards me, then although I immediately experience and with certainty the fact of being looked at, I cannot make this certainty pass into my experience of the other as object. In fact it reveals to me only the other as subject, a transcending presence in the world and the real condition of my being as object. In every causal state therefore it is impossible to transfer my certainty of the other as subject to the other as object which was the occasion of that certainty, and conversely it is impossible to invalidate the evidence of the appearance of the other as subject by pointing to the constitutional probability of the other as object [...] What is certain is that I am looked at: what is only probable is that the look is bound to this or that mundane presence .⁵³
The other as subject and the other as object are incommensurable because according to Sartre they constitute two separate orders of being. The other as subject turns me into an object. The only access I have to the other as subject is through being an object for him. Apart from the other-subject, I am incapable of apprehending the (object) self which I am for the other.⁵⁴ But when I act as subject and turn the other into an object for me, the other as subject disappears. Since he is object, the object-other no longer re�ects me back to myself. The other as object is not a for-itself. Sartre explains: The other as object for me is released to me in universal time, i. e., the original dispersion of its moments, instead of appearing to me in the unity of its own temporalization. For the only consciousness that can appear to me in its own temporalization is mine, and it can do so only by renouncing all objectivity. In short the for-itself as for itself cannot be known by the other.⁵⁵
The paradoxical conclusion is that the other as subject who looks at me and the other as object whom I look at have nothing in common. I cannot transfer the certainty I have of being looked at to an other as object in my world. Between other as object and me as subject there is no common measure. Hence an ontological
�� Sartre,
BN 276–277 [emphasis added]. �� Sartre, BN 242. �� Sartre, BN 242.
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dualism, according to which one is either abstract I am I in its own self-enclosed temporalization, or an object of the Look of others dispersed amid universal time. Such dualistic ontology renders reciprocity between these two orders of existence impossible. Subject and object exclude each other. The for-itself is for itself only , i. e., solipsism. Sartre’s claim that reciprocal recognition is impossible depends on interpreting it through dualist ontological premises, to wit, there is nothing in common between the other as object and the other as subject of the look. Given the ontological separation between subjects, no reciprocal recognition is possible.⁵⁶ Sartre claims: “Thus Hegel’s optimism ends in failure: between the Other as object and me as subject there is no common measure [.. . ] I cannot know myself in the other if the Other is �rst an object for me; neither I can apprehend the Other in his true being – that is, in his subjectivity.”⁵⁷ The other and relation to the other are not structures of the for-itself; rather they are its original alienation, signifying the fall of the subject into the world.⁵⁸ The other is, ontologically speaking, an alienation: “My original Fall is the existence of the other. Shame [. . . ] is the apprehension of myself as a nature although that very nature escapes me and is unknowable as such.”⁵⁹ But if my shame is unknowable to me, then such absolute heterogeneity makes impossible the very mutual recognition that shame is. I could not recognize that I am as the other sees me. Ontological alienation is incapable of being overcome. Further, for Sartre master/slave is not a contingent, addressable historical condition, but rather ontologically necessary: “I am a slave to the degree that my being is dependent at the center of a freedom which is not mine and which is the very condition of my being [. . . ] this slavery is not a historical result – capable of being surmounted – of a life in the abstract form of consciousness.”⁶⁰ If there is no escape from ontological necessity, mutual recognition is impossible. Sartre’s ontology undermines the possibility of recognition, mediation and liberation. The truth of intersubjectivity is con�ict, and Hell is other people. However Sartre subsequently softens his opposition to mutual recognition. After 1945 he tells us he began to read Hegel, and he attempted to synthesize his existentialist philosophical anthropology with a social ontology. This move compels a re-assessment of Sartre’s repudiation of Hegel in Being and Nothingness.For
Hartmann: Sartre’s Ontology . Evanston 1969, 115 f. �� Sartre, BN 243. Here Sartre derives the plurality and ontological separation of consciousnesses from the fundamental dualistic ontology. �� Sartre, BN 267. �� Sartre, BN 263. �� Sartre, BN 267. �� Klaus
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suchapassagefromtheindividualtothesociallevelistheverymovethattheearly Sartre declared, contra Hegel, to be epistemologically optimistic and ontologically impossible. Sartre’s Notebooks for an Ethics is fascinating because of the wealth of its detailed analyses of recognition. To be sure Sartre continues his critical posture and ambivalence towards Hegel. On the one hand Sartre claims that mutual recognition is a lie.⁶¹ But this assertion is no longer a blanket rejection of reciprocal recognition as in Being and Nothingness. Sartre’s analysis of generosity and the appeal are important. The appeal is a form of recognition that transcends Sartre’s analysis of shame; it bears an uncanny similarity to Fichte’s Aufforderung . ⁶² “The appeal is a request made by someone to someone in the name of something [...] The appeal is the recognition of a personal freedom in a situation by a personal freedom in a situation.”⁶³ In making an appeal to someone “I recognize the other’s freedom without being pierced by a look. In effect, I posit that his end is my end”.⁶⁴ Again, “[t]he appeal in effect is a promise of reciprocity. It is understood that the person I appeal to may appeal to me in return.”⁶⁵ Finally, and most signi�cantly, “the appeal is the recognition of ambiguity, since it recognizes the other’s freedom being in a situation, the conditioned character of his ends, and the unconditionality of his freedom. With this the appeal is itself a form of reciprocity from the moment it springs up.”⁶⁶ Further, an affirmative relation to the other is explicitly acknowledged: “Through the Other I am enriched in a new dimension of being [...] This is in no way a fall or threat [.. .] he enriches the world and me, he gives a meaning to my existence in addition to the subjective meaning I myself give it”⁶⁷ Unfortunately, the Notebooks for an Ethics do not present a uni�ed position concerning relation, reciprocity, or intersubjective mediation. David Pellauer observes that “if anything is unclear it is the organizing framework that holds all these re�ections together.”⁶⁸ For while Sartre affirms generosity and appeal, he also maintains that generosity can become a new oppression. He notes that the
�� Sartre,
NE 70. �� Did Sartre read Fichte? I have no idea. Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrecht and his System der Sittenlehre were not translated into French until 1984 and 1986 respectively. �� Sartre, NE 274. �� Sartre, NE 279. �� Sartre, NE 284. �� Sartre, NE 285. �� Sartre, NE 499–500. �� Sartre, NE 19.
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gift can become “a means of ensnaring the other, alienation and oppression.”⁶⁹ In spite of conceding the affirmative character of generosity, Sartre continues to maintain that “the original relation of the other to me is already one of alienation.”⁷⁰ In short, Sartre fails in the Notebooks for an Ethics to resolve the fundamental question whether mutual recognition is possible. Instead he reiterates the atomistic nominalism of Being and Nothingness: “Here I am with two types of consciousness: the one mediated which comes to me by way of other people, the other coming to me by way of myself. No synthesis is possible between these kinds of knowledge since the one resides in the Other and the one resides in me.”⁷¹ If no synthesis is possible, there is no between, and no We. Other commentators have pointed out that Sartre’s later position, while changed from Being and Nothingness, remains unclear on the fundamental question of affirmative relation to others. Hegel identi�ed this issue of affirmative self-recognition in other as the question on which the possibility of spirit and ethical life turns. In an excellent essay “Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third,” Thomas Flynn refers to the concept of freedom Sartre develops in Critique of Dialectical Reason, that the individual is free only in the group (fusion). However, Flynn warns us not to read too much into this: “if they speak of Sartre as repudiating the existentialist theory of the primacy of the individual, they have neglected to note the limitations to group integration which Sartre invokes at every turn.”⁷² Sartre describes his later position as dialectical nominalism. Is it possible to move from the I to the We in dialectical nominalism? This is precisely the transition that Sartre criticized in Hegel and rejected in Being and Nothingness. It is the question of affirmative, reciprocal relation to an other, a binding tie of union and obligation that transforms the I into a We. Thomas Flynn observes that this issue surfaces again in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. Sartre hopes to arrive at a practical, non-substantial “We”. In so arguing, he imitates those nominalists who opt for resemblance theories of universals without realizing that “resemblance” is itself a universal [...]. Not that Sartre has created a substantial “We” in spite of himself; but his zealous opposition to what he takes to be substantialism in social theory has blinded him to the fact that he too has assigned an ontological status to the group, namely, that of a relational entity [...]. Perhaps the chief de�ciency in Sartre’s theory from the ontological viewpoint is precisely this failure to offer a thoroughgoing ontology of rela-
�� Sartre,
NE 370. �� Sartre, NE 370. �� Sartre, NE 451. �� Thomas Flynn: Mediated Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third, in: Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.): The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre . LaSalle 1991, 357.
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tions. He has never undertaken a systematic analysis of relations themselves, though their distinction from substances and events has been crucial to Sartrean philosophy since Being and Nothingness.⁷³
In addition to failing to clarify the status of relations, Sartre fails to resolve the contradiction in dialectical nominalism itself, for, as Flynn observes, “dialectical nominalism turns out to be self-defeating, since it destroys as nominalism what it aims at establishing as dialectic, namely a real synthesis of individual actions into group praxis.”⁷⁴ Sartre, says Flynn, “�uctuates between denials that the group is a hypostasis and assertions that group praxis is distinct from and irreducible to individual praxis.”⁷⁵ This �uctuation means that the issue of affirmative relation, “the between,” is inescapable, for “agents in relation differ from agents alone (if there could be such), and the difference is precisely the relation.”⁷⁶
� Concluding Remarks: Relation, Mechanism and Teleology Flynn’s comment on the difference relation makes in agents, echoes Hegel’s view of recognition that Sartre praises: Hegel’s brilliant intuition is to make me depend on the Other in my being . I am, he said, a being-for-self which is for itself only through another [.. . ] the Other penetrates me to the heart . As we have seen, this is also the core of Fichte’s account, the original relation at the heart of all voluntary interaction. In his Logic Hegel provides important discussions of categories of relations and wholes that mediate all sorts of dualisms. Hegel writes: Everything that exists stands in relationship, and this relationship is the authentic nature of every existence. Consequently what exists does not do so abstractly, on its own account, but only within an other. But in this other it relates to itself ( i. e., in relating to other it is relating to itself) and relationship is the unity of self-relation and relation to others [...].⁷⁷
�� Flynn: Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third , 356. �� Flynn: Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third , 359. �� Flynn: Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third , 359. �� Flynn: Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third , 359.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Encyclopedia Logic, tr. Theodore F. Geraets, Wallis A. Suchting and Henry S. Harris. Indianapolis 1991, § 135 Zusatz. ��
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To appreciate Hegel’s point about a relation that is a unity of self-relation and relation to others, we must note his distinction between the categories of mechanism and teleology . Mechanism conceives the relation of whole and parts as external so that they remain indifferent to each other in their relation. Teleology conceives the presence of a whole in its members as it organizes them into a vital union. This vital union means that members are what they are only in their union with each other and with the whole. Hegel writes: The relationship of whole and parts, being relationship in its immediacy, is one that recommends itself to re�ective understanding. Hence the understanding is frequently content with it where deeper relationships are involved. For instance, the members and organs of a living body should not be considered merely as parts of it, for they are what they are only in their unity and are not indifferent to that unity at all. The members and organs become mere “parts” only under the hands of the anatomist; but for that reason he is dealing with corpses rather than with living bodies [...] the external and mechanical relationship of whole and parts does not suffice for the cognition of organic life in its truth. The same applies in a much higher degree when the whole-part relationship is applied to spirit and the con�gurations of the spiritual world.⁷⁸
The distinction between the living body and a corpse, is taken from Aristotle. Hegel is also a good Aristotelian when he maintains that on the spiritual level love is the foundation of freedom, reconciliation, justice and ethical life. For Fichte and Hegel the We is not a given; the passage from the I to the We is the mutual achievement of a spiritual organic unity and totality.⁷⁹ However, Fichte persists in thinking the We or totality in mechanistic modes of thought. Mechanism distorts his own liberationist views. Given mechanist assumptions, it is no accident that in Naturrecht Fichte represents recognition and trust as breaking down, for such a failure is already pre�gured in his assertion that after recognition, individuals remain isolated as before. Recognition, though mutual, remains external to individuals. This is the view Hegel criticizes as the “understanding, whose relations always leave the multiplicity of related termsas a multiplicity , and whose unity is always a unity of opposites left as opposites.”⁸⁰ When recognition is conceived as a mechanism, everything remains independent and unaffected in
�� Hegel: Encyclopedia Logic, § 135 Zusatz [emphasis added].
Fichte proposes the organic model for conceiving the state in Fichte, GNR, SW III, 207–208; FNR 180. �� Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Early Theological Writings, tr. Thomas Malcolm Knox. Chicago 1948,304 [emphasis added]. For a similar statement, see Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. III, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, tr. Robert F. Brown. Berkely 1984, 192–193. ��
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spite of being related. This view of relation is geistlos, but it is not innocuous, for if the parties remain isolated from each other after recognition, then not only is there no “We,” the parties can be united only externally by coercion and compulsion. This would not only contradict Fichte’s ethics, but also undermine his state. The state, which is supposed to guarantee and preserve freedom and right, must resort to compulsion, not only to punish crime, but to unite its parts. The latter compulsion implies that freedom and recognition become super�uous and pushes the state in a totalitarian direction.⁸¹ As for Sartre, there is a �nal irony. Sartre saw in Hegel’s account of recognition precisely the difference that relation makes, to wit, a binding tie that transforms the self. Sartre was in a position to correct mechanistic distortions of relation. But as Flynn points out, Sartre doesn’t know what to make of relation. In an interview Sartre acknowledged that he changed his position concerning freedom: “beginning with Saint Genet I changed my position a bit, and I now see more positivity in love.”⁸² But later in the interview when asked about the ontological separation of consciousness, Sartre replies: In any case the separation exists, and I do not see any reason to speak of intersubjectivity once subjectivities are separated. Intersubjectivity assumes a communion that almost reaches a kind of identi�cation, in any case a unity. It designates a subjectivity that is made up of all subjectivities and it thus assumes each subjectivity in relation to the others – at once separated in the same way and united in another. I see the separation but I do not see the union.⁸³
Sartre believes that the only categories for conceiving intersubjectivity are abstract universality on the one hand, and nominalist individuality on the other. However, nominalism has no adequate conception of intersubjectivity, the We, or relations: the being of the Cogito is only its own, not shaped or affected by its relation to others. Sartre expresses this when he says that he sees intersubjective separation, but no union such as love. The result is Sartre’s despairing comments that hell is other people, and that the ethics that has eluded him is both necessary and impossible.
This is Hegel’s criticism of Fichte: “Fichte’s state is centered on the police [.. .] but his state is a state based on need. According to Fichte, no persons can go out without having their identity papers with them, and he deems this very important so as to prevent crimes. But such a state becomes a world of galley slaves, where each is supposed to keep his fellow under constant supervision.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science , tr. Jon Stewart and Peter C. Hodgson. Berkeley 1995, 212. �� Flynn: Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third , 13. �� Flynn: Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third , 44. ��
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From his earliest writings Hegel understands reciprocal recognition as an essentially intersubjective union, an I that becomes a We that includes both separation and union, and the separation is a condition and requirement of the union.⁸⁴ The We is not an immediate given or abstract identity but a vital organic unity that reconciles and preserves its co-constitutive individuals. Hegel comments that “representational thought often imagines that the state is held together by force, but what holds it together is simply the basic sense of order which everyone possesses.”⁸⁵ This comment occurs in a discussion of patriotism, the political disposition that re�ects the primordial reciprocal recognition lying at the basis of all voluntary interaction, to wit, “the consciousness that my substantial and particular interest is preserved and included in the interest and end of an other (the state) [. . . ]. As a result this other ceases to be an other for me, and in my consciousness of this I am free.”⁸⁶ Hegel’s concepts of spirit and ethical life are not only indebted to Fichte’s concept of recognition, but preserve his deepest insights concerning freedom, relation and community from the mechanistic distortions in the second half of the Naturrecht , and from the ontological dualisms of Sartre’s contradictory dialectical nominalism.
�� Hegel: Philosophy of Right , § 260–269. �� Hegel: Philosophy of Right , § 268 Zusatz. �� Hegel: Philosophy of Right , § 268 Zusatz.
