ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly reviews some influential twentieth-century and more recent discussions about the status of the master-slave dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology. The master-slave passages in the phenomenology, coupled with the French reception which focused strongly on political and social aspects, is therefore an important starting point for a discussion of positive recognition. Hegel's concept of recognition, in the context of his account of self-consciousness, offers the clearest possibilities for an account of positive recognition in the social world and how this fits into a theoretical philosophical framework. The chapter shows how Sartre's account of intersubjectivity, whilst indebted to Hegel and German Idealism and working with many of the same concepts, helps to demonstrate what is needed for an account of positive recognition. It also examines how questions of recognition fit in to the contemporary discourse on social ontology.
