Hegelian Recognition amidst Political Polarization
By: Feihu Yan, Tiger
Tags: Isolation, Language, Quarantine, Politics, Philosophy

Isolation, the theme of 2020, has been plaguing us since late March in America. Indeed, it is often difficult for us to strike a balance between our intrinsic human need for social activities and caution for safety. It’s easy for us to retreat into our internet enclave. As we become more involved digitally as a member of the society online filtered by various forms of medium, real interpersonal interaction loses its significance for us. Not only is the quarantine life itself disruptive to a fulfilling human life, but political polarization fueled by isolation also intensifies amidst the chaos. What we lack is concrete mutual recognition between humans as equals.

A quote from Adorno in his famous essay Society came to my mind:

“Where people think they are closest to things, as with television, delivered into their very living room, nearness is itself mediated through social distance, through great concentration of power.”

Quarantine makes us more self-reflective and self-aware but accelerates the transition of our social presence online.

But real interaction between human beings forms the basis of mutual recognition, which is critical for a fulfilling human life. This intellectual tradition of recognition dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, where Hegel builds upon Fichte’s work and sketches out the journey to absolute knowledge in the Phenomenology of the Spirit. The Phenomenology proceeds in stages, in which spirit comes to know itself through various forms of self-assertion that start from mere sense-certainty.

Though it is a daunting work as a whole, many parts of Hegel’s Phenomenology is extremely vivid in its image and rich in content. We locate ourselves at the beginning of the emergence of self-consciousness, where Hegel describes individual men as beings equipped with desires, and capable of actions.

What is so significant about self-consciousness?

While consciousness is merely a unitary awareness of an environment I am presented with through a synthesis of my senses, self-consciousness is an awareness of that consciousness. The second-order of awareness posit my own consciousness as an object, and simultaneously from the lens of self-consciousness as a subject.

I = I, Subject = Object: Unity.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

“With self-consciousness, then, we have therefore entered the native realm of truth” — Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

While I peer into myself, I create distance within myself, in which the second-order consciousness steps back and evaluates a claim(my claim) to consciousness. The realization of my own unity, “I am myself” gives me special status, as different from other external objects I perceive: being conscious of myself is vastly different from being conscious of other external objects.

With this realization, then, my consciousness of the external world also becomes different, since I can call this consciousness of the external world my external world, or a world in my own particular perspective, as opposed to a more simple consciousness of no perspective. All knowledge becomes self-knowledge. But in an important respect, while the consciousness before the realization of self-consciousness seems to be an impartial absolute picture of the world, self-consciousness after the realization of unity is alienated from the external world. I withdraw from the external world. Objects are not just objects per se anymore, they are objects for me.

A critical issue arises in this movement of the self. My realization of my own identity/unity is merely abstract. Although I regard this world as my world, I have retreated into my own consciousness to examine my own identity/unity. Although I exist as being in the world and encounter with real objects, I have not proved my truth in relation to these objects I encounter.

Abstractly, I am certain of myself as the absolute, in the sense that I am certain of myself as the truth of my own perspective of external things I am conscious of. This self-certainty is not real. Hegel believes that the self-certain consciousness needs to define its relationship with the external world not just as abstract certainty in the mind, but as real certainty, through desires and action. That is the fundamental drive of the self-consciousness. This process for such the unity of subject and object within each self-consciousness is called desire for Hegel.

Desire

“Self-consciousness is Desire in general” — Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

How do I get knowledge of myself?

I am not sure what sort of thing I am in the beginning of my realization of my unity. There is this sort of emptiness while I peer inside myself, but not so when I look to the external world, and identify myself as opposed to objects in the external world.

Desire for Hegel is different from the concept of desire we are familiar with now. Instead of the psychological verb of desire that must associate itself with some object of desire as the end, the end of desire is just desire itself for Hegel. The act of desiring, directed toward the external world, is in a sense natural to unitary self-consciousness, for that is the way we must prove our self-certainty in reality.

Recall the duality of self-consciousness: we are extremely anxious about our alienated existence, anxious of our abstract self-certainty, and we want to actualize that which is abstract. Desire has nothing to do with what the object of desire is. It simply doesn’t matter. Because the point of desiring is to prove something essential about ourselves, that transcends our preference for some particular food, or our particular aesthetic about some particular good. Hegel would say that animals also have desire, such as desire for food from hunger; but animals are not self-conscious, so their desires are in such a manner much more rudimentary.

Desire as Negation

To prove myself as the absolute, I embark in my violent conquest of the external world to prove my absoluteness. In negating objects in the external world, I show myself that that object is indeed for me, dependent on me, while I exist as a self-consciousness that is for myself and independent. That’s the difference. This is a deeper drive within me that seeks to make objects conform to my will to affirm my self-identity.

However, as I negate an object to prove my self-certainty, my desire surfaces again after the act, and I seek another object to negate, as if I am trapped in an endless cycle of desire. After the act of negation, I am back to being uncertain about my own absoluteness, I constantly need objects to negate in order to constantly prove my self-certainty.

It is critical that the Hegelian desire’s end is not the object, but desire itself. I am trying to prove something about myself through negation of external objects. But although the object of my desire is not the point, its existence is nonetheless still essential as the object of the desire, or else the desire to negate will never be satisfied. But as soon as other objects exist through the lens of my consciousness, I am compelled to negate it again, and again, and again.

Indeed, the story shows that the self-consciousness is never satisfied in such an effort to prove the absoluteness of myself. If I am trapped in this perpetual state of desire to posit an object, then negating it, then positing an object all over again, my self-certainty is not independent at all. In a significant sense, my identity is dependent on other objects. This cycle of unabating desires of negation is deeply unsatisfying to the self-conscious human being.

Hegel thinks what self-consciousness really desires is recognition

“Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness” — Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

A fulfilled self-conscious being requires the recognition of other self-consciousnesses. Hegel’s concept of a spirit is an advanced, satisfied self-consciousness that transcends its individuality and places itself in a community of self-conscious beings. Indeed, the process from unabating negation to recognition with another human being is described as a difficult and violent path.

Before we get anywhere close to recognition, Hegel first describes a life and death struggle between two self-conscious beings who both seek to negate the other to prove their own self-certainty. Fighting is essentially an expression of one’s autonomy, and Hegel thinks that my identity is so crucial to my existence as a human being that I am willing to even risk my life. Either someone wins, the other dies, or someone wins, the other step back from the cliff of death and submits to be a slave. But recognition is not achieved by anyone in this asymmetrical master-slave relation, because while the slave obviously receives no recognition, the slave’s recognition of the master’s superiority is not the worthy type of recognition the master truly desires.

Recognition can only be achieved in a society of equals, a society where rights of every member of the society are recognized, and opinions of every member of the society are respected. The link between recognition and our self-identity is crucial, for my conceptions of who I am is significantly reflected through how members of society treat me as an autonomous, free being, worthy of respect. While we require posited objects as ‘food’ for us to negate to prove our self-certainty, but with recognition the self exists only in its relation to another self, capable of reflection. We are comfortable only within the community of mutually recognizing beings. This is Hegel’s conception of a completed Spirit.

“I that is a We and the We that is I” — Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

Language, Isolation

Within this community of mutually recognizing individuals, language is utilized as a medium of communication through which each one of us exhibits our inner self to the external world, and display our individuality for other self-consciousness. Self-consciousness originally exists as a duality of the subject and an object, with my own awareness of my own consciousness in the privacy of my own mind.

Our self-consciousness can exist for others only through language. Though language is a public enterprise, that is, it must be understood by intersubjective standard, each one of us make ourselves comprehensible to the other. For society to function, we communicate towards one another to achieve certain goals in life, be it a community goal, or be it to discover something about myself, to understand my own self-consciousness better.

This is how I perceive my truth in community life: my self is a relation that relates myself to other-selves. Periods of prolonged isolation during present times without communication with other recognizing selves causes me to reflect more and more within my own consciousness. Without much interaction with other people, I retreat within myself, often hiding behind screens that present my image in a distorting way toward my friends and families.

Our lack of communication with each other as mutually recognizing human beings is problematic, especially during the year of quarantine. Of course, our activities online obviously still use language as the most basic medium, but such activities are always filtered through high order mediums, such as social media. We might present ourselves with posts consisted of one or two sentences, a picture by the beach, or a video of my dog. It is my conviction that these higher-order mediums are lacking in an important dimension. Our use of language within these higher-order mediums becomes more directed, more focused, and more resolute. They are in general more expressions based, and more reaction based.

But this isn’t a particularly optimistic development. There is much less opportunity for communication in the form of rational discussions of which the exchange of information depends.

Through online mediums, other people are reduced to forms such as users, or characters, as opposed to equal self-consciousness that is capable of comprehension and reflection. Indeed, in taking us to a global online community of users and characters, we are ever more anxious of proving our own self-certainty. We are overwhelmed with a diverse multitude of foreignness that frightens us.

We thus develop a critical need for identity that reflects a deep lack of self-certainty. The need for identity emerges from a lack of communication; our self-image is not reflected through other mutually recognizing agents in the community, but through flashy news headlines, short tweets that are simply insufficient for meaningful discussion that must take place for a fulfilling human life within the social world.

Indeed, isolation makes us more reflective of our own thoughts. An isolated individual, sans communication, becomes more intensely aware of his own consciousness, also becomes more eager to prove its own self-certainty. The desire to prove my own self-certainty without the condition of mutual recognition regresses into the relentless cycle of negation.

Another Dimension:

Our intake of knowledge of the world becomes restrictively online is also a source of such individual frustration that causes our desire for blind negation. This is the old problem of confirmation bias that works disastrously in concert with the current toxic media landscape. Unconsciously, we desire things that confirm our beliefs, and such articles feed our perceptions that “I am right”, which I thought is essentially a self-fulling prophecy. Bias, and more prevalently, omissions, cause our world-view to be incomplete and thus cause us to be ignorant.

A Two-Fold Negation

I think that is the essence of political polarization, which is a combination of a lack of communication between mutually recognizing self-consciousnesses and cycles of radical confirmation bias.

In Hegelian terms, this resembles a really bad infinity of negation. We are moved to prove our self-certainty with so much emotion and violence. Not only do we negate what we perceive to be the foreign ‘other’, be it another identity group, or another political affiliation, our desire to consume that which confirms us is also a kind of negation. This is negations in two distinct, but deeply related dimensions.

Self-righteousness and moral superiority has become the method for us to protect our fragile ego. Interactions online between opposing sides turns bitter, becomes moralizing, and reduces to expressions of hatred of the other side. We lose sight of the other side as beings worthy of recognition and seek to discredit in efforts to negate the other side as untrue to prove our own absoluteness. We not only become alienated as a group only as opposed to the other group, but also become alienated as unsatisfied individuals.

Mutual Recognition

It isn’t easy for anyone to step back to examine himself in an impartial manner. To improve our situation, however, it is also not enough to negatively criticize the media, the party, or the government.

As a start, we should focus on establishing inclusive platforms that facilitate and encourage more effective forms of communication. Instead of focusing on speed of information, or first-impression appeal, we should prioritize the quality of communication. As self-consciousnesses seeking to understand each other, such a medium of quality communication must incentivize the exchange of ideas in a thoughtful manner among equals.

The fact that we are autonomous individuals must not be a restrictive condition that limits our willingness to recognize something foreign to us. It should rather open us to possibilities beyond our private capabilities. Autonomy is not simply an autonomy in my self-centered identity. We should strive to for autonomy in deliberation, in taking control of our own judgments, which pertains to giving serious thoughts to topics worthy of consideration rather than fitting a topic within some preexisting categories in our mind.