Mutual Recognition and Relations of Right
Term:
Spring 2010
Subject Code:
GPHI
Course Number:
6633
How can another
person's attitudes - the fact that they accept certain things from me,
communicate certain ideas to me, etc. - constitute a valid claim on my own
thought and action, one that I must accept if I am to think and act rationally?
In the tradition which moves from Rousseau's notion of amour propre (the
desire for the esteem of others), through Kant and Hegel on Recht (Right), to
Sartre's notion of "the look," other subjectivities are regarded, not
principally as objects of contemplation, but as things I act and live with.
How are to understand this "being toward another"? What
relation are we in when we are bound together by "what we think of each
other"? This question arises in relation to a wide range of
phenomena: moral and legal rights, promising, collective action, love,
friendship, shame, resentment, humiliation, communication and testimony, to
name a few. Focusing mainly on "Right," but taking account of
some other topics as well, this seminar will ask whether there is a distinctive
form of relation or connection between rational subjects which unifies these
various inter-subjective phenomena; in short, the seminar will investigate what
Kojeve and Sartre might call a "relation of recognition." Readings include Rousseau,
Hegel, Fichte, Sartre, Stephen Darwall, Michael Thompson, Richard Moran, and
others.
< back
