Comparison of the Concept of the Individual between Hegel and Kierkegaard

The contrast between Hegel and Kierkegaard turns on what recognition is meant to affirm: not merely an abstract formula of self-consciousness, but the concrete individual whose being gives universality its substance. Hegel’s account, the passage argues, fails to explain this individual claim and is too optimistic about the possibility of reciprocal recognition between consciousnesses.

The Individual Against Abstract Self-Identity

The argument first rejects an account of consciousness as an abstract doubling of the self, summed up by the formula “I am I.” Hegel treats such doubling as equivalent to self-consciousness, but the passage contends that it cannot explain consciousness’s original character. Personal existence rests instead on selfness, which is distinct from an Ego or from the Ego’s relation to itself. Consciousness is a concrete being, not an abstract relation of identity or the seat of an opaque Ego.

This distinction matters because consciousness exists before it is known. Reflective intuition may disclose a truth about consciousness, but that truth is measured by its conformity to consciousness’s prior being. Recognition by another therefore concerns a claim to recognition of being, not simply agreement about an abstract truth. The passage uses this point to question whether the master-and-slave conflict could ultimately be resolved by recognition of a formula such as “I am I.”

Kierkegaard and Concrete Recognition

Against Hegel, Kierkegaard represents the claims of the individual as such. The individual seeks recognition of concrete being, including its objective specification within a universal structure. The passage does not deny that claims made against another invoke universality: respect for persons requires recognition of a person as universal. But the particular individual is the support and foundation of that universal. Universality has meaning only insofar as it exists for the individual and is filled by that individual’s concrete being.

The opposition is therefore not simply between individual existence and all universal claims. Rather, it concerns which has priority and gives the other its sense. The universal is necessary to articulate respect, yet it cannot stand as an empty, self-sufficient abstraction: the individual is the being for whom recognition and rights are demanded.

The Limits of Reciprocal Recognition

The passage presents Hegel’s identification of being and knowledge as the source of a broader optimism. Hegel appears to assume that the truth of self-consciousness can become manifest through an objective agreement between consciousnesses: each recognizes the other, and each knows that the other recognizes it. In this account, reciprocal recognition realizes the universality of self-consciousness.

The critique questions whether such a passage to the universal is possible. If the Other refers a person’s self back to that person, successful recognition would require a common measure among what each is for the other, what each is for oneself, and what each is for oneself as the other is for oneself. The passage notes that this homogeneity does not exist at the outset; its objection is that the theory’s optimistic resolution depends on a convergence the relation between consciousnesses does not guarantee.