A new Reading of “The Phenomenology of Spirit”:Brandom on Hegel

Abstract

Robert Brandom in his recently published commentaries to “The Phenomenology of Spirit” tries to re-actualize Hegel’s legacy, linking his speculative dialectics to the twenti­eth-century linguistic philosophy and pragmatism, with the ideas of G. Frege, L. Wittgen­stein, and W. Sellars. His principal focus is on the issue of “the struggle for recognition”. In terms of “mutual” and “symmetric” recognition as a terminus ad quem of social com­munication, Brandom interprets the reciprocal confirmation of the normative statuses of individual subjects acting as equal participants in a collective “game of giving and asking for reasons”. This state of mutual recognition, Brandom maintains, can be achieved through overcoming the subjectivist alienation and egotism characteristic of the moder­nity. The author argues that in his discussion of this issue the American philosopher con­fuses two key concepts used by Hegel in “The Phenomenology of Spirit”: Entfremdung (“alienation”) and Entäußerung (“externalization”). The author claims that by emphasiz­ing the negative side of Entfremdung, Brandom overlooks the meaning of Entäußerung (objectification), which, according to E. Ilyenkov, “is essential to the very definition of ‘Spirit’”.