Saturday, April 7, 2018

Recognition and Social Efficacy

Yesterday (that is, the day I am writing this) I finished Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Tomorrow I begin Charles Taylor's Hegel, though, so we are not done with Hegel posts. At any rate, there was a theme which is not clearly located in any particular part of that work, but which was my main takeaway: recognition.

Prior to reading much Hegel for myself, my impression of Hegelian recognition was that it was about individuals recognizing each other or the law recognizing citizens as legal persons. The theme is actually much broader. I won't be citing particular passages in this post, since a) it is a blog post, not an essay for scholars, b) it would take a lot of time to find such, and c) I am mainly working from impressions.

In Hegel's system, a huge role is played by the relationship between appearance and essence. These are discussed as what a thing is in appearance (for itself or for others) and what it is in itself (as we see it from our vantage point at the end of its development). Spirit, in particular, has a "desire" to be seen as what it is. It wants what it is for others and for itself to fit with how it is in itself. To put it another way, the essence requires actualization. Thus, in the master-slave dialectic in The Phenomenology of Spirit, the starting point is that Spirit knows itself as pure Spirit and thus wants to be recognized as pure Spirit, so it posits another Spirit to recognize it. Similarly elsewhere, when Spirit knows itself as a legal person, it posits some spiritual reality (e.g., law or constitution) to recognize its personhood.

There is another sort of recognition, however, and this is the one which was particularly striking to me. Not only does Spirit want to be recognized in its own actualization, but individuals, as Spirit, want to recognize themselves in the world. Thus, the reason Hegel argues for a constitutional monarchy is not merely so that an individual can be at the head of the individual state, but also so that we can recognize our individuality in the state. We want our essence, not only as persons, but also as manifestations of Spirit and thus as free willing beings to be manifested in the Spirit in which, Hegel would say, we live and move and have our being (there is a kind of divinization of the State in Hegel, which I am not sure what to do with). As persons, we can exist only in relations with others, and thus are dependent moments of a whole. We thus seek to recognize ourselves--our essential nature--in that whole.

Why is this so striking to me? Well, if you look back on my post on Autonomy and Economics, you will see that I was basically arguing that we want to recognize ourselves in the economic system we find ourselves in. The same basic argument can be made for much of political life, and forms the basis for the democratic element of any political system. The dissatisfaction which some feel with "political correctness" originates primarily from a similar desire to find oneself in one's language. We have a need, as it were, to have efficacy in our lives. This is perhaps the strongest truth in modern conservatism and libertarianism, but is also recognized by the best liberals. Martha Nussbaum argues that the important thing is that we have the ability to pursue certain activities, not that we actually do pursue those activities, and this claim is based on a very similar insight.

Others have argued that this lack of efficacy, or in Hegel's terms this lack of recognition of self in society, plays a role in various social issues, from riots to the opioid epidemic (and both certain sorts of social justice warriors and their detractors). The lack of efficacy arises from various factors, but tends to run through or result in poverty. Money gives one some capacities. Education provides still others, as Nussbaum notes. If we are seeking to increase the equality of social efficacy, which I think is a better target than equality of money or education per se, and which I suspect would better reach the root of other inequalities, then the aim is tied up with an aim for liberty, insofar as one cannot have efficacy without the liberty to exercise it. I think this aim cuts across the political spectrum. Equality is valuable because it enables social efficacy, but it is also necessary that there be a modicum of equality because without it we crush the social efficacy of those at the bottom of the heap.

The challenge is to develop concrete policies which might address the issue. I do not claim to be in a position, as of yet, to propose any, but that is--very slowly--what I am trying to reach for. Getting clear on our aims, however, is a massive step forward. If we could all get on the same page as to the goal, and recognize each other as aiming for the same goal, this would vastly increase our ability to discuss potential policies across the aisle.

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