Degrees of social recognition: a critic of a concept from G. W. F. Hegel

Abstract

The article sees in German idealism, the predominant philosophy in the transition between the 18th and 19th centuries, more precisely in the philosophy of Hegel, the basis for the establishment of social recognition as the ethical embasement of the social liberal order, of free but interdependent individuals. The author attempts to show how successively, in the writings of Frankfurt (The spirit of Christianity and its destination), Jena (Phenomenology of Spirit) and Berlin (Philosophy of Law), stages of this theoretical project were performed. As it culminates with an juridificated ethics, where the legally accepted rights limit the scope of legitim expectations, social recognition is reduced to a formality. Possible alternatives of social recognition such as the reciprocity behind the pardon outlined in Phenomenology of Spirit were excluded. For the author, the recovery of this utopia in the arguments of Hegel could become a basis for criticism or, better yet, as a regulatory idea for conceive a new ethic, capable to overcome the principle of curent liberal ethics. Such an ethic would have in the forgiveness the core of the rehumanization of a society that by now is committed only to compliance of legal rules of social order, without beeing concerned about the arising effects of that behavior.