Dialectic of Desire and Recognition: Texts and Commentary

Description

This book presents three generations of German, French, and Anglo-American thinking on the Hegelian narrative of desire, recognition, and alienation in life, labor, and language--a narrative that has been subject to extensive commentary in philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, and feminist thought. The texts focus on a central topos in Western thought, the story of self-consciousness awakened in nature and in history. John O'Neill argues that current postmodern rejections of the Hegelian-Marxist narrative demand an understanding of the texts included here. Without Hegel and Marx in our toolbox, he argues, we will flounder in a world marked by the split between postmodern indifference and premodern passion. The book makes a strong selection from the history of Hegelian-Marxist debate, hermeneutical and critical theory, and Freudian/Lacanian and feminist commentary on the dialectic of desire and recognition, on the levels of social psychology and political economy. Included are articles by Karl Marx, G. W. F. Hegel, Alexandre Kojeve, Jean Hyppolite, Jean-Paul Sarte, Georg Lukacs, Jurgen Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Howard Adelman, Shlomo Avineri, Jessica Benjamin, Edward S. Casey and J. Melvin Woody, Henry S. Harris, George Armstrong Kelly, Ludwig Siep, Judith N. Shklar, and Henry Sussman. The texts and commentaries show how the Hegelian-Maxist narrative of desire, recognition, and alienation is a contested story, one in which class, race, and gender issues are drawn into a historical romance that is being rewritten in contemporary cultural politics. John O'Neill is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at York University, Toronto, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of a number of books, including For Marx Against Althusser and The Poverty of Postmodernism. Cover Copyriight Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: A Dialectical Genealogy of Self, Society, and Culture in and after Hegel—John O'Neill List of Hegel's Works Cited Part I. Lordship and Bondage 1. Lordship and Bondage—G. W. F. Hegel 2. Critique of Hegel—Karl Marx Part II. Desire and Recognition 3. Desire and Work in the Master and Slave—Alexandre Kojive 4. Self-Consciousness and Life: The Independence of Self-Consciousness—Jean Hyppolite 5. The Existence of Others—Jean-Paul Sartre Part III. Alienation and Recognition 6. Hegel's Economics During the Jena Period Georg Lukacs 7. Labor and Interaction: Remarks on Hegel's Jena Philosophy of Mind—Jurgen Habermas 8. Hegel's Dialectic of Self-Consciousness—Hans-Georg Gadamer Part IV. Dialectics of Desire and Recognition 9. Of Human Bondage: Labor and Freedom in the Phenomenology—Howard Adelman 10. Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes in Hegel's Realphiksophie—Shlomo Avineri 11. Master and Slave: The Bonds of Low—Jessica Benjamin 12. Hegel and Lacan: The Dialectic of Desire—Edward S. Casey and J. Melvin Woody 13. The Concept of Recognition in Hegel's Jena Manuscripts—Henry S. Harris 14. Notes on Hegel's "Lordship and Bondage"—George Armstrong Kelly 15. The Struggle for Recognition: Hegel's Dispute with Hobbes in the Jena Writings—Ludwig Siep 16. Self-Sufficient Man: Dominion and Bondage—Judith N. Shklar 17. The Metaphor in Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind—Henry Sussman Index