Williams - There Is No We. Fichte and Sartre On Recognition

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. Sartres
source for the concept of recognition is Hegel, who in turn appropriated it from
Fichte. In the first part of the paper I shall focus on the concept of recognition in
Fichtes classical formulation. In Fichtes account the self-consciousness of free-
dom is mediated by recognition, and the concept of individuality stands in essen-
tial correlation with the concept of community. The human being becomes human
only in community with others. Thus recognition is the foundation of Fichtes
concept of right. Yet despite its importance, Fichtes account of recognition does
not find consistent expression in his Jena philosophy.
Hegel appropriates and reformulates the concept of recognition. In his Phe-
nomenology of Spirit 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 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
slave, an unequal recognition and relation enforced by coercion; as such it is self-
subverting. In spite of Hegels importance for Sartre, in Being and Nothingness
Sartre lacks first hand acquaintance with Hegel. Like Kojve, Sartre tends to
identify recognition with Master and slave; he rejects reciprocal recognition, the
We, and reduces love to sado-masochism.
Sartre regards Hegels treatment of intersubjectivity as superior to Husserls,
but he also criticizes Hegels alleged ontological optimism. This criticism takes
him back to a quasi-Fichtean position. Thus Sartres attitude towards recognition
is ambivalent. He denies reciprocal recognition in principle while affirming it in
practice, especially in his Notebooks for an Ethics. But what happens to Sartres
radically individualist existential ontology in his later work? Sartre draws closer to
reciprocal recognition and community without clearly embracing these. Although
Sartre presents descriptions of reciprocal recognition, he conceives these through
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 the
We, i.e, the passage from individual to universal that is necessary for freedom,
relation and community. Sartres 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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164 | Robert R. Williams
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.
1 The Concept of Recognition in Fichtes

Jena Writings
Fichte introduces the topic of recognition (Anerkennung) in his Grundlage des
Naturrechts (1796). Recognition is the intersubjective mediation of the conscious-
ness of freedom; it is a transcendental condition of right and ethics. Recognition
enlarges and corrects the concept of freedom in Kants 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 postu-
late. In the Second Critique Kant claims that the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi
of freedom: a free being discovers that it is free only through the imperatives
imposed by practical reason. Conversely, freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral
law: for only a free being is capable of apprehending a moral imperative (what
ought to be but is not) and obeying it.
In the Naturrecht Fichte presents a more elaborate answer to Kants questions:
How is the self-consciousness of freedom possible? How can the subject find it-
self as an object? Fichtes answer turns on the twin concepts of the summons
(Aufforderung) and recognition. The self-consciousness of freedom is not some-
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 Kants terminology the ratio cognoscendi
of freedom is the summons of the other, and the ratio essendi of the summons is
the capacity of the subject to respond as an agent.
For Fichte, the self-consciousness of freedom is intersubjectively mediated
by the summons (Aufforderung) of an other. The other summons the self to free
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
1 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 3, 30; FNR 29.

2 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 33; FNR 32.
3 Aufforderung has several senses: summons, requirement, demand, request, invitation.

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There is No We | 165
and recognizes that the self it summons is capable of acting freely and indepen-
dently.
The summons is not a physical-causal action or an Ansto that would nullify
the subjects freedom. According to Fichte, the summons itself does not func-
tion as the cause of freedom, rather it leaves the subject in full possession of
its freedom to be self-determining: for otherwise the first point would be lost and
the subject would not find itself as an I. 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 subjects being-determined to be self-determining. The other
calls upon the subject to resolve to exercise its freedom, i. e., respond.
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. 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 stand-
point 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 cause on the one hand, and affirming the priority of the
other over the subject as the factual yet necessary condition of the subjects re-
solve to free efficaciousness. Fichte affirms both views. His general point is that
human freedom is a mediated autonomy; as such it has a divided ground, partly in


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the subject and partly in the one who summons. If we find ourselves summoned,
then there must be another who summons us. The summons becomes a proof of
intersubjectivity. 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 subjects freedom:
Through its action this being outside the subject has [. . . ] summoned the subject to act freely;
thus it has limited its freedom through the concept of an end in which the subjects freedom
is presupposed [. . . ]. Thus it has limited its freedom through the concept of the subjects
(formal) freedom.
Note that the summons is not causal; it is not a compulsion to act or to do any-
thing: The subject cannot find itself necessitated to do anything, not even to
act . . . for then it would not be free or an I. How and in what sense then, must
the subject be determined to exercise its efficacy, if it is to find itself as an object?
Only insofar as it finds itself as something that could exercise its efficacy but that
could just as well refrain from doing so. But even refraining still qualifies as a re-
sponse. 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 Fichtes view, there is an inner telos and teleology at work here, according
to which the most appropriate response to the summons is a corresponding reci-
procity, 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 oppo-
sition, or asymmetry and inequality, but rather reciprocal recognition. Reciprocal
recognition is a complex intersubjective process in which the one cannot be sep-
arated from the other. Both must constitute partes integrantes of an undivided
event. Fichte affirms that not only does a social whole result from reciprocal
10 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 35, 41; FNR 33, 39.

11 See Charles K. Hunter: Der Interpersonalittsbeweis in Fichtes frher angewandter praktischer
Philosophie. Meisenheim am Glan 1973.

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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 inter-
action 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.
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.
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. 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 an-
other 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 unified into one.
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 impli-
cations: we are both bound and obligated to each other by our very existence.
Thus reciprocal recognition aims at and results in a whole or community. This
basic teleology is inherent in Fichtes concept of recognition set forth in the Natur-
recht. It is this conception that Hegel takes from Fichte, and what Sartre praises

17 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. Arnold V. Miller. Oxford 1977,
182; id.: Phnomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister. Hamburg 1952, 142.
19 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 4748; FNR 45 [emphasis added].

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in Hegels account: to wit that the road of interiority (frsichsein) 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? By this question he seeks
to inquire further into what he calls the inner conditions of reciprocal interac-
tion. His answer is puzzling because on the one hand it confirms the above noted
transformation of isolated private individuals into a community through recipro-
cal recognition. On the other hand, it is not evident that Fichte believes reciprocal
recognition establishes any community at all. Here is the puzzling and problem-
atic text in full:
At the basis of all voluntarily chosen reciprocal interaction among free beings there lies an
original and necessary reciprocal interaction among them, which is this: the free being, by his
mere presence in the sensible world, compels every other free being, without qualification, 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.
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 inde-
pendence 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 doesnt. 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 mediat-
ing individuals into a We, but rather a strange relation that remains external to the


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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.
Well, how are things exactly? Fichte is not terribly clear, but what emerges next
in his Naturrecht discussion is not a further clarification and analysis of the com-
pelling presence of the other, or of the original and necessary reciprocal recogni-
tion at the basis of all voluntarily chosen interaction, much less a clarification 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 distin-
guish 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. In the sphere of right everything is
contingent upon the free decision to enter/join a specific, 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 com-
munity. 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 superfluous
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. 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 en-
during community of free beings possesses a merely conditional necessity. More-
over, the lawful behavior presupposed by an enduring community may have to be

27 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 recog-
nition as they were before recognition, he may have in mind the recognition con-
stitutive of the sphere of right, and not the deeper, fuller sense described above.
This hypothesis is confirmed by Hegel when he describes civil society as ethical
life that has become lost in its extremes, 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 first 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 significantly that the individual cannot accomplish the full extent of
his ends without reference to others and that particularity limited by universal-
ity is the only standard by which each particular person promotes his welfare.
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 in-
ternally related to each other through recognition and achieve a non-coercive, yet
binding tie of solidarity in freedom. This becomes explicit in Fichtes 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.
(2) It can thus be proven strictly a priori that a rational being does not become rational in an
isolated state, but that at least one individual outside it must be assumed, another individual
being who elevates this being to freedom.
(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,
28 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Philosophy of Right, trans. Hugh B. Nisbet. Cambridge 1990,
184.
29 Hegel: Philosophy of Right, 182 Zusatz.
30 Fichte, GNR, SW IV, 220221; SE 209210.

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and absolutely not to use him as means for my own ends [. . . ]. I am not allowed to be self-
sufficient at the expense of the others freedom.
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 others freedom. My freedom is always already bound, obligated
and limited by the other.
However, this relation of my consciousness 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. 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 justification
of original reciprocity.
In Fichtes analysis I-hood presupposes the existence of at least one other,
but this other is a priori and does not include empirical plurality. Fichtes account
of I-hood appears to be a transcendental theory of a general other or a transcen-
dental 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 pre-
established harmony?
Further questions remain. What is the relation between recognition, which is
a condition of right, and Fichtes transcendental philosophy? What is the relation
between the standpoint of ordinary consciousness and the transcendental stand-
32 Fichte, GNR, SW IV, 221; SE 209210 [emphasis added]. From the transcendental perspective,
we infer an object [. . . ] from some limitation of our being. (Fichte, GNR, SW IV, 225; SE 213).
33 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling: Neue Deduction des Naturrechts, cited in Fichte, GNR,
SW IV, 225; SE 213.

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point? The two standpoints appear to be both different and yet interconnected.
Fichte maintains both 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 1796 Wissenschaftslere novo
methodo. There he maintains that while the transcendental standpoint and the
standpoint of ordinary consciousness must be distinguished, they are not abso-
lutely opposed; he declares these two viewpoints must not be absolutely op-
posed to each other [. . . ] but must be united. But how can these be united?
According to ordinary consciousness another rational being outside of conscious-
ness must be assumed as the one who summons me to freedom. According to the
transcendental standpoint, the transcendental subject and freedom are primary.
Gnter Zller 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 individuals clandestine
representation to itself of its own finite being under the form of the solicitation.
Can both of the perspectives be true? Both seem necessary, but only if 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 who summons and the transcen-
dental 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 my-
self 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 fol-
low Zllers transcendental interpretation of the summons, the summoning other
outside consciousness appears superfluous, or inferred from the self-limitation
of the drive towards independent self-sufficiency. But that seems implausible, be-
cause the other who is external ground of freedom would be dissolved under the
pretext of transcendental clarification: the not-I is just another guise of the primor-
dial 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 Fichtes Aufforderung be correlated and related? How can the transcen-
dental be subject to the empirical events it conditions? Is this plausible?
35 Fichte, FTP 473; GA IV 2, 266.

36 Gnter Zller: Fichtes Transcendental Philosophy. Cambridge 1998, 119.
37 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
Fichtes Foundations of Natural Right. Ashgate 2006, 4558.

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In Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy Fichte clarifies 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.
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 implica-
tion of the monadology Fichte flirted 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 doesnt work because the harmony, as
pre-established, is heteronomous to freedom and self-relation. For these reasons
Fichte quickly abandoned pre-established harmony. In the Vocation of Man Fichte
appeals to conscience and moral vocation. Conscience is identified both as infal-
lible and as the voice of God. If this means that God, not a human other, summons
the self to freedom, Fichtes view would resemble Levinass. That interpretation
would imply that, contrary to Kant, God is for Fichte more than a subjective postu-
late of morality, and that Fichte either drastically modified or simply abandoned
Kants transcendental program by embracing Jacobis identification of faith with
immediate knowing.
Ives Radrizanni rejects the theological interpretation; he claims that the ar-
gument 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 neces-
sarily included within it as a condition of the coming reign of liberty. It [the postulate of the
existence of God] may [. . . ] be qualified as an explanatory ground.
38 Fichte, FTP 105106; GA IV 3, 341 f.

39 Ives Radrizanni: The Place of the Vocation of Man in Fichtes Work, in: Daniel Breazeale and
Tom Rockmore (ed.): New Essays on Fichtes Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre. Evanston 2002, 336.

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Of course terms like a subjectively necessary practical ontology and an epis-

temic, but non-ontological, explanatory ground cry out for clarification, proba-
bly more clarification than Fichtes philosophy of postulates can provide. How-
ever, 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 Zller
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.
2 Sartres Appropriation and Critique

of Recognition
Sartres 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 [. . . ]. Hegels 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. 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 reflection) in another [. . . ]. Thus solipsism seems to be 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 find that
being-for-others appears as a necessary condition for my being-for-self.
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 Sartres embrace of Hegels
position, it is doubtful whether Sartre actually read Hegel at this time. His pro-
40 In his later Wissenschaftslehre and philosophy of religion, the priority of subjectivity over
being is reversed in favor of beings priority over thought. It is not clear whether Fichte abandons
the primacy of the subject and the practical in favor of Jacobis immediate knowing.
41 Sartre, BN 236238.
42 Sartre was asked whether he had read Hegel when he wrote Being and Nothingness. He replied
No. I knew of him through seminars and lectures, but I didnt study him until much later, around
1945., Paul A. Schilpp (ed.): The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. LaSalle 1981, 9. Perhaps the

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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 Kojve, Sartre identifies Hegels account of recognition primarily as a the-
ory of Master and Slave. He fails to notice Hegels 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, Sartre fails to see that for Hegel recognition has an ontological structure
capable of supporting a greater range of instantiations than master/slave, conflict
and domination. Sartre asserts that the original and essential truth of intersubjec-
tivity is conflict. While it is true that for Hegel intersubjectivity includes conflict,
it is also true that conflict 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 sup-
port and foundation of the universal. Although Sartre had previously asserted
that Hegel broke decisively with the impasse between realism and idealism, he
now charges Hegel with metaphysical idealism that identifies being with knowing
and from this flow Hegels errors, namely epistemological and ontological opti-
mism.
answer to some of the puzzles concerning Sartres 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 Hegels 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 Sartres 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 Phnomenologie des Geistes, the Propdeutik, and selections
from Hegels Enzyklopdie. Fry points out that while it is possible that Sartre read Hegels 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 Sartres 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.
43 See Martin Heidegger: Sein und Zeit. Tbingen 1984, 26, 120; See Sartre, BN 9 ff., 286 f. Sartre
himself makes similar distinctions.
44 See Sartre, BN 364, 429.
45 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.
46 Sartre misunderstands Hegels idealism or holism. The formal absolute ego, the I am I, is pre-
cisely that idealism which Hegel criticizes in the Phenomenology and rejects as a pure motionless
tautology. (Hegel: Phnomenologie des Geistes, 175 ff.) This is not the first time that Hegel has been

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By epistemological optimism Sartre means 1) the assumption that recipro-

cal 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. Sartre denies this
and charges Hegel with a failed attempt to overcome the ontological separation
between consciousnesses. Hegels 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 first 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. 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 Sartres phenomenology
of shame. Sartres phenomenology of shame must be distinguished from his on-
tological analysis. Sartres phenomenological description of shame as an essen-
tially intersubjective consciousness exhibits the concept of recognition. Shame
is not a reflective consciousness, but is rather pre-reflective 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 shud-
der through my being: in the field of my reflection I can never meet with anything
charged with holding the idealism which he was the first 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).
47 Sartre, BN 240.
48 Sartre, BN 243. Hegels 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. Hegels 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. Hegels account of recognition shows that the self is
for itself only through the mediation of the others recognition. Since self identity is mediated by
other, alterity is a constitutive feature of self-identity. Moreover, Hegels analysis of the under-
standing (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.
49 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.
Yet this is not a description of the entire phenomenon of shame. Significantly
Sartre continues:
By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgment on myself
as an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the 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.
Shame clearly involves self-recognition in other. This self-recognition in other un-

derlies and is the condition of subsequent evasions and flight before the other.
Shame is self-recognition in other in the Hegelian sense.
In contrast with his phenomenology, Sartres ontological analysis of shame
is another matter. Sartres 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
objectified, and thus finite. 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.
Sartres epistemology in Being and Nothingness resembles Fichtes in Vocation
of Man: knowledge involves representation and objectification that cut us off from
the very realities which we wish to know. According to Fichte, knowledge destroys
error but cannot give truth. Truth about self, others and God can be apprehended
only in faith Fichtes flirtation with Kants practical faith and with Jacobis im-
mediate knowing. For Sartre, our consciousness of others is not cognitive, but an
50 Sartre, BN 222.
51 Sartre, BN 222 [emphasis added].
52 Fichte: Vocation of Man, tr. William Smith, rev. and ed. Roderick M. Chisholm. New York 1956,
64 f.

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immediate fact of being in direct relation to the being of the other; it is a pre-
reflective, immediate certainty.
Sartres 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.
The other as subject and the other as object are incommensurable because ac-
cording 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 appre-
hending the (object) self which I am for the other. 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 reflects 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.
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 cer-
tainty 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
53 Sartre, BN 276277 [emphasis added].

54 Sartre, BN 242.
55 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.
Sartres claim that reciprocal recognition is impossible depends on interpret-
ing 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 onto-
logical separation between subjects, no reciprocal recognition is possible. Sartre
claims: Thus Hegels 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 first an object for me; neither I can apprehend the Other in his true
being that is, in his subjectivity. 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. 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. 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 over-
come. 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. If there is
no escape from ontological necessity, mutual recognition is impossible. Sartres
ontology undermines the possibility of recognition, mediation and liberation. The
truth of intersubjectivity is conflict, 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 com-
pels a re-assessment of Sartres repudiation of Hegel in Being and Nothingness. For
56 Klaus Hartmann: Sartres Ontology. Evanston 1969, 115 f.

57 Sartre, BN 243. Here Sartre derives the plurality and ontological separation of conscious-
nesses from the fundamental dualistic ontology.
58 Sartre, BN 267.
59 Sartre, BN 263.
60 Sartre, BN 267.

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such a passage from the individual to the social level is the very move that the early
Sartre declared, contra Hegel, to be epistemologically optimistic and ontologically
impossible.
Sartres 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 recog-
nition is a lie. But this assertion is no longer a blanket rejection of reciprocal
recognition as in Being and Nothingness. Sartres analysis of generosity and the
appeal are important.
The appeal is a form of recognition that transcends Sartres analysis of shame;
it bears an uncanny similarity to Fichtes Aufforderung. 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 situa-
tion. In making an appeal to someone I recognize the others freedom without
being pierced by a look. In effect, I posit that his end is my end. 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. Finally, and most significantly, the appeal is
the recognition of ambiguity, since it recognizes the others 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. Further, an affirmative relation to the other is explicitly acknowl-
edged: 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
Unfortunately, the Notebooks for an Ethics do not present a unified position
concerning relation, reciprocity, or intersubjective mediation. David Pellauer ob-
serves that if anything is unclear it is the organizing framework that holds all
these reflections together. For while Sartre affirms generosity and appeal, he
also maintains that generosity can become a new oppression. He notes that the
61 Sartre, NE 70.
62 Did Sartre read Fichte? I have no idea. Fichtes Grundlage des Naturrecht and his System der
Sittenlehre were not translated into French until 1984 and 1986 respectively.
63 Sartre, NE 274.
64 Sartre, NE 279.
65 Sartre, NE 284.
66 Sartre, NE 285.
67 Sartre, NE 499500.
68 Sartre, NE 19.

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gift can become a means of ensnaring the other, alienation and oppression.
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 alien-
ation. In short, Sartre fails in the Notebooks for an Ethics to resolve the fun-
damental 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. If no
synthesis is possible, there is no between, and no We.
Other commentators have pointed out that Sartres later position, while
changed from Being and Nothingness, remains unclear on the fundamental
question of affirmative relation to others. Hegel identified 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 repudiat-
ing 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.
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 transi-
tion 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 resem-
blance 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 deficiency in Sartres theory from
the ontological viewpoint is precisely this failure to offer a thoroughgoing ontology of rela-
69 Sartre, NE 370.
70 Sartre, NE 370.
71 Sartre, NE 451.
72 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.
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. Sartre, says Flynn, fluctuates between denials that the group is
a hypostasis and assertions that group praxis is distinct from and irreducible to
individual praxis. This fluctuation 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.
3 Concluding Remarks: Relation, Mechanism

and Teleology
Flynns comment on the difference relation makes in agents, echoes Hegels view
of recognition that Sartre praises: Hegels 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 Fichtes 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 [. . . ].
73 Flynn: Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third, 356.

77 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Encyclopedia Logic, tr. Theodore F. Geraets, Wallis A. Sucht-
ing and Henry S. Harris. Indianapolis 1991, 135 Zusatz.

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To appreciate Hegels point about a relation that is a unity of self-relation and rela-
tion 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 rec-
ommends itself to reflective 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 configurations
of the spiritual world.
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. However, Fichte
persists in thinking the We or totality in mechanistic modes of thought. Mecha-
nism 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 prefigured in his assertion that after recogni-
tion, 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 terms as a multiplicity, and
whose unity is always a unity of opposites left as opposites. When recognition
is conceived as a mechanism, everything remains independent and unaffected in
78 Hegel: Encyclopedia Logic, 135 Zusatz [emphasis added].

79 Fichte proposes the organic model for conceiving the state in Fichte, GNR, SW III, 207208;
FNR 180.
80 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, 192193.

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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 com-
pulsion. This would not only contradict Fichtes 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 superfluous and
pushes the state in a totalitarian direction.
As for Sartre, there is a final irony. Sartre saw in Hegels 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 doesnt know what to make of relation. In an interview
Sartre acknowledged that he changed his position concerning freedom: begin-
ning with Saint Genet I changed my position a bit, and I now see more positivity
in love. 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 intersubjectiv-
ity once subjectivities are separated. Intersubjectivity assumes a communion that almost
reaches a kind of identification, 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.
Sartre believes that the only categories for conceiving intersubjectivity are ab-
stract 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 Sartres despairing comments
that hell is other people, and that the ethics that has eluded him is both necessary
and impossible.
81 This is Hegels criticism of Fichte: Fichtes 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.

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From his earliest writings Hegel understands reciprocal recognition as an es-

sentially intersubjective union, an I that becomes a We that includes both separa-
tion and union, and the separation is a condition and requirement of the union.
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 pos-
sesses. This comment occurs in a discussion of patriotism, the political dispo-
sition that reflects the primordial reciprocal recognition lying at the basis of all
voluntary interaction, to wit, the consciousness that my substantial and particu-
lar 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. Hegels concepts of spirit and ethical life are not only indebted
to Fichtes 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 Sartres contradictory
dialectical nominalism.
84 Hegel: Philosophy of Right, 260269.


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1 The Concept of Recognition in Fichtes

1 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 3, 30; FNR 29.

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4 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 33; FNR 32.

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10 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 35, 41; FNR 33, 39.

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recognition, this whole is a reconciliation of persons that establishes the concept

Reciprocity is essential to the concept of recognition; it is at once a condition

16 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 44; FNR 42.

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21 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 85; FNR 79.

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24 Fichte, GNR, SW III, 86; FNR 80.

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The summons cannot be comprehended without ascribing it to a being outside

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35 Fichte, FTP 473; GA IV 2, 266.

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In Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy Fichte clarifies these issues

38 Fichte, FTP 105106; GA IV 3, 341 f.

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Of course terms like a subjectively necessary practical ontology and an epis-

2 Sartres Appropriation and Critique

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By epistemological optimism Sartre means 1) the assumption that recipro-

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Shame clearly involves self-recognition in other. This self-recognition in other un-

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53 Sartre, BN 276277 [emphasis added].

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dualism, according to which one is either abstract I am I in its own self-enclosed

56 Klaus Hartmann: Sartres Ontology. Evanston 1969, 115 f.

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Sartre hopes to arrive at a practical, non-substantial We. In so arguing, he imitates those

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3 Concluding Remarks: Relation, Mechanism

73 Flynn: Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third, 356.

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78 Hegel: Encyclopedia Logic, 135 Zusatz [emphasis added].

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From his earliest writings Hegel understands reciprocal recognition as an es-

84 Hegel: Philosophy of Right, 260269.

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