Yet Hegel’s dialectic constitutes a more subtle and fluid way of thinking. It can be applied both internally and externally. Internally, it charts the progress of consciousness from its earliest stages of understanding through to its final stages of knowledge and self-consciousness. Externally, as will be seen, the dialectic refers to the movement of geist throughout history. In both instances recognition acts as a trigger to move from opposing (but not necessarily op- posite) moral viewpoints, allowing for new perspectives on familiar situations. The triadic formula implies that a synthesis is a simple resolution between two extreme positions, which suggests that any compromise or agreement could be the result of a dialectical interaction. What the dialectic really addresses is parallax rather than paradox.
The dialectical process is a state of flux—again it is the spinning of the coin—not to attain a paradoxical resolution as a traditional linear end point but to provide a deeper understanding by revealing parallactic positions as part of a broader whole. It is this dynamic rather than any conclusion that is the key; not for nothing did Hegel write, “There is no principle of Heraclitus that I have not incorporated into my Logic” (1995, §320). By no means do these parallaxes disappear, nor are they necessarily resolved. Hegel’s claim to absolute knowledge was not in the form of an answer but the proper phrasing of the question.
Ultimately, then, Hegelian recognition allows for parallactic shifts of moral and ethical perspectives of the type that run through discussions on ethics generally, and administrative ethics in particular. There is no thesis or antithesis and this chapter will not offer any forced and false synthesis. It is simply saying that the act of recognition causes the flip of the coin, which leads to a fuller view of the moral dilemma.
Recognition and Morality
Not only does recognition allow us to traverse competing moral perspectives, but also it acts as a basis for morality itself. The concept is intrinsically linked with the concept of geist, which for Hegel was rooted in human consciousness and mediated through human experience. The movement of geist is nothing less than the development of consciousness into self-consciousness through which human beings come to understand their multiple natures as particular, discrete individuals who are all part of a universal humanity.
At its most basic the concept of recognition simply relates to our interaction with our fellow man: it is a double acknowledgment of our shared common humanity and the particular needs, wants, and perspectives of individuals. It is an idea that will be familiar to many through the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke
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10:25–37). When the priest and the Levite ignored the cries of the wounded traveler, they did so for a number of reasons—they were too busy or scared or bound by social norms to help—but primarily they failed to help because they did not recognize the man as human. He was an inconvenience, a nuisance, an obstacle to be avoided; but he was not a human being worthy of help and compassion. Only the Samaritan recognized his distinctly human suffering, and in doing so, came to a closer understanding of his own human essence. Indeed Jesus chose a Samaritan as the unlikely hero of the parable almost certainly because the character himself would have been understood (and misrecognized) as a label (i.e., a Samaritan) rather than a human being. Thus the parable serves a dual purpose: to emphasize the importance of kindness and self-sacrifice, but also the more basic idea that we are, essentially, all one and the same. This echoes Hegel’s words that “man has value because he is a man, not because he is a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a German, and an Italian.”
For Hegel our development from understanding to self-consciousness involves our interaction with everything around us, but it fails completely unless we are constitutively recognized as human beings by our fellow men. It is only through this process that we can attain freedom as self-determining beings. This is the real meaning of geist—not God’s revelation but human intersubjectivity: “the unity of the different independent self-consciousnesses which, in their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence: ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (Hegel 1977, §177).
Externally, the dialectical movement of geist throughout history, therefore, is the struggle of self-conscious human beings to engage in recognition of each both as separate (i.e., individuals) and connected with each other (i.e., human). The dual meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan is again telling here for this is precisely what Hegel intends: that recognition is a pro- cess to enrich the particular (our individuality) and the universal (our shared self-conscious essence).
It is only when mutual recognition is achieved that we can experience our true self-conscious selves, from which emerge our freedom and a true basis for morality and ethical life:
The universal reappearance of self-consciousness—the notion which is aware of itself in its objectivity as a subjectivity identical with itself and for that reason universal—is the form of consciousness which lies at the root of all spiritual life—in family, fatherland, state and of all virtues, love, friendship, valor, honor, fame. (Hegel 1971, §436)
When Hegel writes of the movement of geist, therefore, he is writing about the progression of mutual human recognition throughout history; or to be more precise the movement of geist is that of misrecognition throughout history.
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