Recognition

reconnaissance

Worked through in 25 videos · 36 passages.

Play the 36 passages in a row Make a board

Summary

Dominique Pagani starts from Hegel: a self-consciousness exists in and for itself only for another self-consciousness, that is, as recognized1. He concludes that it is recognition by another human being, not genes, that makes someone human. Recognition is gratifying only if it comes from a free and equal being: one cannot obtain it from a slave. He therefore does not separate the struggle for recognition from economic struggle2. He finds this muted struggle in politeness, in "help yourself first", and in the nomad child who pours water for the gods before drinking3. He sees in it what distinguishes a people from a pack. For him, the essence of philosophy is recognition, not knowledge, and the concept of man results from the struggles of the slave, the worker and the woman4. He applies the notion to Clouscard's solitude, deprived of recognition from his comrades5, to negritude, to sport and to Girard's mimetic desire.

Summary produced automatically from 37 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Talks · 7 Feb 2025Michel Clouscard and the betrayal of May 68

9:19Clouscard's ontological solitude comes from the lack of recognition from those he expected it from, his comrades.
42:48Anarchism does not recognize what the individual owes to the collective.
1:08:13Sport gives popular recognition to the muscular effort in which the manual worker spends his life.

Talks · 23 Mar 2024Sahelian Africa and imperialism: Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger

33:46The thirsty child who pours water for the gods first signifies that he is not a beast: a silent struggle for recognition.

Season 12 · 22 Dec 2023Birth and carnage: the Massacre of the Innocents

1:56:26The struggle for recognition cannot be separated from economic struggle: to be recognized, the other must be free and equal.

Season 12 · 17 Oct 2023Neither left nor right? Islamo-leftism?

16:31The course from repressed determination to recognized determination (anerkannt), the moment of liberation.
1:13:23We know our determinations since we repress them; we must recognize them in order to free ourselves from them.

Season 11 · 3 Sept 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: desiring what? Through whom?

1:55:43Girard's mimetic desire takes up without dialectic the struggle for recognition, in which each does as in a mirror what the other does.

Series · 3 Jan 2023Why is Clouscard indispensable?

11:36Clouscard's solitude is not human but ontological: he lacked recognition from his peers, the Marxists and the revolutionary intelligentsia.

Season 11 · 14 Oct 2022Clouscard and the problem of Socrates

1:51:43The most Hegelian term: to call into question the false certainties of ordinary language; the prefix "re-" points to Platonic recollection.

Series · 19 Jul 2021Being born human is not enough to be human

18:52It is because another man recognizes me as human that I am integrated into the human community, not through genes.

Series · 15 Dec 2020#6 The jazz variation… by Beethoven

41:25The other must be free for their recognition to make me a free man: one cannot obtain it from a slave.

Talks · 6 Oct 2020Calves and Things (3): the dictatorship of the bobotariat

4:09The Tour de France is a recognition of the proletarian's effort, the opposite of class contempt; the effort of the peasant or the worker is never honored.

Season 8 · 17 Jul 2020#14 Return to the logics of the subject

1:31:19Popular art wants to be recognized by those who recognize the place, the neighborhood, the landscape.

Season 6 · 30 Jan 2020#6.4 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism

5:58A self-consciousness is in and for itself only insofar as it is recognized by another; recognition is gratifying only when freely granted.
36:03One does not await recognition from just anyone: Clouscard awaited it from his comrades.
1:10:43Freedom according to Rousseau and Hegel rests on recognition, which Nazi dignitaries loathe.

Season 6 · 3 Dec 2019#6.2 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism

1:11:34I am human insofar as another human recognizes me as such; the basis of the master-slave dialectic.

Series · 12 Mar 2019Pablo Servigne

1:44:15Man is a wolf to man because he awaits from the other a divinized recognition: this is the Hegelian struggle of consciousnesses.

Talks · 2 Jul 2018Tribute to Domenico Losurdo

1:00:39Philosophy's essence is not knowledge, which belongs to science, but recognition: it is polemical and political.
1:07:34For Hegel, the concept of man is the result of a struggle for recognition, not an inert contemplation; the struggle of the slave, the worker, the woman.

Season 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.6 From Ulysses to Daedalus

44:54One passes from the binary to the ternary: a second subject is needed to recognize me as owner. Marriage is an institution, not an instinct.
1:32:57It is recognition by the other that humanizes; in Hegel, self-consciousness exists only insofar as it is recognized.

Talks · 8 Jun 2017Adotevi: Negritude and negrologists (2017)

25:52Negritude was the stake of a struggle for recognition, not granted.

Series · 2 Aug 2016With Clouscard

48:41The desire for recognition is the first moment of the spirit according to Hegel. Clouscard, like Rousseau, never satisfies it at the price of fashionable postures.

Series · 2 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 5/5

1:00:12A great result of Hegel's philosophy; the struggle for recognition is lodged even in 'serve yourself first'.
1:23:50A self-consciousness for a self-consciousness: a me that is a we and a we that is a me.

Series · 2 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 4/5

49:30Self-consciousness exists in and for itself only for another self-consciousness: it is born recognized.
56:17The rules of politeness are muted struggles for recognition: each shows that he can take distance from desire.
2:37:14Recognition is gratifying only if it comes from a free being; I therefore have an interest in the other being free.

Series · 29 Jan 2016What is to be done? 3/3

19:08The human world is worth only what another subject recognizes as valid, reciprocally.

Season 1 · 11 Dec 2015#1.7 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

57:55In Hegel a self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself only for another self-consciousness, that is, recognized.

Season 1 · 14 Sept 2015#1.3 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

1:27:07Recognition is gratifying only if the other is free: one cannot keep the other enslaved and obtain his recognition.

Talks · 23 Jun 2015L'île du Peuple: the debate

23:40Without recognition of the other, there are only possessors and a relation of force.
46:25Mutual recognition, dealing with someone and not with something, is what makes a people and not an aggregate or a pack; the greeting expresses it.

Series · 19 Dec 2014E for Enfance (Childhood)

4:02The nomad who pours water for the gods before drinking wages a silent struggle for recognition: socially nothing, he shows that he is a human being.