Right and intersubjectivity: Hegel's comprehension of modern ethical life and Fichte's concept of recognition

Author(s)

Erick Calheiros de Lima

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2006-05-12

Examining board members

Marcos Lutz Muller; Cesar Augusto Ramos; Silvio Rosa Filho; Oswaldo Giacoia Junior; Vladimir Pinheiro Safatle

• Advisor: Marcos Lutz Muller

Abstract

This work intends to delineate some motives underlying the development of Hegel's social philosophy. According to the interpretation we attempt to formulate, Fichte's view of intersubjectivity plays a decisive role in Hegel's comprehension of the conceptual unfolding of ¿ethical life¿ (Sittlichkeit). The first part focuses on Fichte's theory of intersubjectivity, particularly on its version presented in the Foundations of Natural Law, where it is deduced as a condition for the ¿juridical relation¿(Rechtsverhältnis). The main task is to show that Fichte's conception of the intersubjective mediation of individual conscience, when considered apart from its endurable form as a relation of reciprocally limited spheres of action, seems to contain the ethical potential for a ¿non-limited¿, ¿non-exclusive¿ and positive actualization of individual freedom. In the second part, after elucidating, in Hegel's early writings, the opposition between the ¿juridical¿, potentially disintegrative conception of intersubjectivity and the harmony of love, we intend to indicate how the frustration of Hegel's expectations, regarding social integration through a Volksreligion, conduces to the project of ¿subordination¿ (Bezwingung) of juridically regulated economics under the political realm of the abolute ethical life. Thus, after demonstrating that the problem of the Einssein of universal and individual pressuposes an intersubjective solution, the aim is to delineate the intersubjective genesis of the ¿Spirit of a People¿ in the System of Ethical Life and in the Philosophy of Spirit 1803/04, always emphazising the progressive articulation of theory of conscience, recognition and the conceptual unfolding of ethical life. The third part aims to elucidate, through a comparative investigation of the ¿phenomenological¿ versions of Hegel's theory of recognition, its connection with the actualization of individual freedom in the institutional framework of ethical life. In this context, it is aimed to show that the ¿generalization¿ of the process of recognition, due to its insertion into the ¿philosophy of subjective spirit¿, in despite of its immediate disconnection from the stages of intersubjective actualization of freedom, points toward the possibility of its pressuposition as the normative form of the actual social relation. According to this view, this ¿generalization¿ allows that not only the formative intersubjective ralation and the solidary connection among the individuals, that engenders the ¿ethical state¿, but also the interpersonal relations, based on reciprocal respect to the intangibility of individual freedom, could be reduced to the common denominator of a ¿being-recognized¿ (Anerkanntsein). Finally, the task is to consider how Hegel integrates, in the Philosophy of Spirit 1805/06, the ¿struggle for recognition¿ into an argumentation that articulates the participative form of intersubjectivity with the genesis of the ethical solidarity that is vinculated to the social actuality of the universal will, which is, for the first time in Hegel's philosophical development, understood in its immediacy as right (Recht). As a conclusion, we summarize some indications of a possible extension of this presented view to an interpretation of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (AU)