On The Issue Of "Recognition" In The Master-slave Dialectic

Recognition is the most important issue of contemporary political philosophy, whichcan trace back to Hegel. Hegel had discussed this question in his early theologicalwritings, Jenaer Manuscript, the Philosophy of Right,the Phenomenology of Spiritand so on. As we all know, Hegel’s discussion about recognition in thePhenomenology of Spirit was mainly in the Chapter4focusing on the dialectic ofmaster and slave.In the chapter4， Hegel pointed out the importance of recognition. Theself-consciousness is the awareness of another’s awareness of oneself. One becomesaware of oneself by seeing oneself through the eyes of another. Thus theindependence of self-consciousness depends on the recognition of the otherness.Self-consciousness has the desire to be recognized. But they don’t want to recognizethe otherness in the very beginning. And this leads to the struggle which is called “thestruggle for recognition”. In the struggle, the winner becomes the lord and the loserbecomes the bondsman. The lord gains the recognition of bondsman, but thisrecognition is sided and unequal due to they are not in the same position. In therelationship of master and slave, the former order the latter to work for him. Thebondman offers the object of desire for the lord via labor. In the fear and labor, thebondsman recognizes his independence of self-consciousness. And thus the bondsmanbecomes the independence of self-consciousness. However, due to the dependence onbondsman, the lord becomes the dependence of self-consciousness on the contrary. Asyou see, this is the master-slave dialectic. Whereas if only there are the master-slaverelations, then the recognition must be one-sided. It’s necessary to sublate themaster-slave relations for the mutual recognition which will make one getself-consciousness.This thesis focuses on the “recognition” issue in the master-slave dialectic. It hasthree parts. Chapter1discusses the concept of “recognition”, the background of the “recognition” and its development in contemporary era. Chapter2is about theimplications of master-slave dialectic and the implications of recognition in thedialectic of master-slave. Chapter3investigates the influence of Hegel’s“recognition” theory on Marx, Kojeve, Taylor and Honneth.