Abstract

Prior to Kojève's well-known account in his Introduction to the Reading of Hegel there seems to have been relatively little interest in Hegel's concept of recognition,1 after Kojève, however, a popular view of Hegel's philosophy emerged within which the idea of recognition played a central role.2 While Kojève directed attention to the importance of Hegel's use of notion of recognition in the famous dialectic of "master and slave" in chapter 4 of the Phenomenology of Spirit,3 his reading, inspired equally by Marx and Heidegger, was nevertheless difficult to reconcile not only with the more systematic features of Hegel's philosophy, but also with what Hegel had to say on the topic of recognition within chapter 4, but especially, elsewhere in the Phenomenology.