Fichte and Hegel on recognition and slavery

In the first section of this essay I show how Hegel’s account of the struggle for recognition can be explained in terms of the role that Fichte accords to recognition in his deduction of the concept of right and, in particular, in terms of a problem to which this deduction gives rise. In the second section, I show how Hegel seeks to resolve this problem by means of his account of the struggle for recognition. Finally, in the third section, I show how Fichte’s and Hegel’s claims concerning the necessity of mutual recognition do not prevent them from regarding slavery as justified in certain circumstances, or at least as being as much the fault of the person enslaved as the person who has enslaved him or her, despite the fact that slavery represents one of the clearest possible examples of a situation in which mutual recognition is absent. One may therefore question the extent to which they regard mutual recognition as an absolutely fundamental norm of social relations. There is the difference, however, that Hegel’s position appears to be that mutual recognition becomes such a norm in the course of history, whereas Fichte implies that the absence of mutual recognition may be justified simply whenever an individual has failed to raise him-or herself to the level of a being whose attitude towards him-or herself as demonstrated through his or her actions is proof of a status that demands recognition from others