{"id":5404,"date":"2010-04-03T22:14:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-04T02:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=5404"},"modified":"2012-10-12T23:10:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-13T04:10:25","slug":"houlgate-desire-and-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2010\/04\/03\/houlgate-desire-and-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"houlgate desire and recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houlgate article is here<\/a><\/p>\n

Desire fails to secure pure self-certainty because it always has to seek out new objects that are other than consciousness. In negating such objects, desire does find satisfaction and enjoys itself; but it ceases to be certain of itself as soon as it encounters the otherness and independence of things once again.<\/p>\n

A more secure self-consciousness would be achieved, however, if consciousness were able to preserve its certainty of itself in its very awareness of the independence of things. How might it do this? <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hegel\u2019s answer is clear: by turning its attention specifically toward things that in their very independence negate themselves and thereby allow consciousness to be certain only of itself.<\/strong> Simply eliminating all consciousness of other things is not an option for self-consciousness. Hegel has shown that self-consciousness first arises in our consciousness of other things, and that such consciousness of otherness remains an integral part of the consciousness that is explicitly concerned with itself. That is why self-consciousness must be desire. If consciousness is not to be restricted to being perennially renewed desire, therefore, the only logical alternative is for it to relate to something independent that negates itself for the sake of self-consciousness<\/strong>: \u201con account of the independence of the object, . . . it can achieve satisfaction only when the object itself effects the negation within itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

What kinds of objects perform such an independent negation of themselves?<\/strong> One possible candidate is the living object, or organism. In his account of understanding, Hegel argued that the objects of understanding include not just those that are law-governed but also those that are alive. Living beings thus belong among the objects that desire seeks to consume. Furthermore, as Hegel construes it, life is the explicit process of self-negation: death does not just descend on living organisms from the outside, but is immanent in life from the start, because \u201cthe simple substance of Life is the splitting up of itself into shapes and at the same time the dissolution of these existent differences.\u201d14<\/p>\n

So, do living things afford us the opportunity of being conscious only of ourselves in being conscious of that which is independent of us? Almost, but not quite. The problem is that living things do not preserve their independence when they negate themselves: when they die, they simply cease to be. As Hegel puts it, \u201cthe differentiated, merely living, shape does indeed also supersede its independence in the process of Life, but it ceases with its distinctive difference to be what it is.\u201d\u00a0 (The same is true of inorganic objects: insofar as they \u201cnegate themselves,\u201d they do so only by ceasing to be what they are.)<\/p>\n

The logic of self-consciousness demands, however, that we achieve self-certainty in relating to objects that retain their independence from us. We can satisfy this demand only by relating to an object that negates itself but that is \u201cequally independent in this negativity of itself.\u201d<\/strong> Such an object, Hegel maintains, cannot merely be a living thing (or an inorganic object), but must be another consciousness or self-consciousness<\/strong>.\u00a0 Consequently, \u201cself-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point Hegel appears no longer to be just a critic of Descartes, but to draw a positive lesson from the latter\u2019s meditations (though Hegel does not mention him by name). We do not learn from Descartes what it is to be concretely self-conscious; only phenomenology can teach us that. Nevertheless, in his cogito argument Descartes proves that consciousness retains an abstract awareness of its own independent identity and existence even when it calls into question and abstracts from every particular aspect of itself. The logic of self-consciousness demands that we achieve concrete self-certainty in relating to another thing that negates itself for our sake and that retains its independent identity in so doing. As Hans-Georg Gadamer writes, \u201conly consciousness is able to . . . cancel itself in such a fashion that it does not cease to exist.\u201d This fact, I would suggest, we learn from Descartes (as well, of course, as from Fichte).<\/p>\n

It is important not to lose sight of the point at issue here. Descartes himself fails to see that concrete self-consciousness is to be gained in a relation to what is irreducibly other than consciousness.<\/strong> Yet he helps us to see that that very other cannot just take the form of an inanimate or animate thing, but must also take the form of another self-consciousness, for he shows that self-consciousness alone is able to negate every aspect of itself and preserve itself in so doing. Of course, to be genuinely and concretely self-conscious, that other self-consciousness must in turn be related to what is other than it, and so must itself be desire and relate to another self-consciousness. The specific point that Hegel is making here, however, is that the other, to which any concrete self-consciousness relates, must at least be capable of abstract self-consciousness: for only in this way can it thoroughly negate itself and at the same time retain its identity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The desire to be certain of ourselves in our very relation to others is fulfilled not by consuming things, but by interacting with another self-consciousness<\/strong> \u2013 one that is not only capable of abstract self-awareness, but also takes the form of desire and relates to a self-consciousness other than itself. Self-consciousness is thus necessarily social or \u201cspiritual\u201d: it is \u201c\u2018I\u2019 that is \u2018We\u2019 and \u2018We\u2019 that is \u2018I\u2019.\u201d In this social relation, Hegel remarks, I find my own identity out there in an objective form: \u201cjust as much \u2018I\u2019 as \u2018object\u2019.\u201d This is because I find my identity recognized by something other than and independent of me.<\/strong> This moment of recognition is built into the act of independent self-negation performed by the other self-consciousness: for by negating itself the other declares itself to be nothing in and for itself \u2013 it \u201cposits its otherness . . . as a nothingness\u201d \u2013 and so makes way for me. The other thus allows me to relate wholly to myself in relating to another, because all I see in the other is his or her recognition of my identity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If we are to enjoy full self-consciousness, the hermit\u2019s existence cannot be an option for us, for we can become properly self-conscious only in the society of others who recognize us. Of course, we could try to turn our backs on self-consciousness. Hegel would point out, however, that self-consciousness is logically entailed by consciousness itself. Insofar as we are conscious at all, we must therefore seek to become fully self-conscious. The hermit, it seems, lives at odds with the logic inherent in consciousness itself.<\/p>\n

Hegel\u2019s own account shows not how desire seeks to become pure desire, freed from determination by independent objects, but how self-certainty is attained by a consciousness that considers independent otherness to be irreducible<\/em>. Unlike Koj\u00e8vian desire, Hegelian desire learns that we are always conscious of what is other than and independent of us, and that we can never fulfill the desire to be purely free. For Hegel, if I am to be conscious of myself alone, I can thus do so only in relation to what is and remains independent of me. But how is this possible? Only if the other, in its very independence, negates itself and puts itself at my disposal. <\/strong>This in turn is possible only when another self-consciousness thinks of itself as nothing, recognizes me alone, and thereby enables me to find nothing but myself reflected in it. Gadamer puts the point perfectly: \u201cif self-consciousness is to become true self-consciousness, then it must . . . find another self-consciousness that is willing to be \u2018for it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

To recapitulate: for Koj\u00e8ve, what drives self-consciousness to become social is its desire to assimilate (as well as be desired by) another\u2019s desire; for Hegel, by contrast, what renders self-consciousness social is its acceptance of the other as an independent<\/em> source of recognition for itself. <\/strong>This significant difference between Koj\u00e8ve and Hegel leads them to very different views of what is implicit in and made necessary by social life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Houlgate article is here Desire fails to secure pure self-certainty because it always has to seek out new objects that are other than consciousness. In negating such objects, desire does find satisfaction and enjoys itself; but it ceases to be certain of itself as soon as it encounters the otherness and independence of things once … Continue reading “houlgate desire and recognition”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,15],"tags":[129],"class_list":["post-5404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hegel","category-subjectivity","tag-recognition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5404"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9543,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5404\/revisions\/9543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}