From Recognition to Intersubjectivity: Hegel and Psychoanalysis

Abstract

This chapter engages in a conversation between two seemingly disparate discourses of Hegelian philosophy and psychoanalytic theory. In the work of Jean Hyppolite, the chapter locates the first use of the term intersubjectivity in relation to Hegel’s theory of recognition as found in Phenomenology of Spirit (1977) and argues that Hyppolite pioneered a mode of thinking about Hegel and psychoanalysis. The chapter traces the transmutation initiated by Hyppolite through the work of Paul Ricouer, Jacques Lacan, Judith Butler, Jessica Benjamin, and others to locate the influence of Hegel’s philosophy on a particular line of psychoanalytic thinking. The author’s reading of Hegel incorporated here argues that the majority of attention paid to the concept of recognition, and its translation into terms of intersubjective relating, has confined it to the episode of the Lord and Bondsman and that further attention should be paid to the drama of the Unhappy Consciousness which follows.