ABSTRACT
On the theme of confrontation, this chapter discusses a range of ways in which recognition could fail, because of failures on the part of the self and the other. The central thesis of the chapter concerns the necessity of the recognition's mutual nature, and that this is its strength as an ethical concept. The chapter discusses Hegel's own passages on forgiveness at the end of the Phenomenology in order to put forward a model of how such an interaction can constitute precisely the sort of positive recognition whose preconditions. It introduces the forgiveness as an instructive example of the failure of mutuality, and also argues that forgiveness is particularly suitable as a model of ethical recognition because of the pre-conditions of offering, and, to some extent, receiving, forgiveness. The chapter illustrates the connection of the idea of the confrontation with that of metanoia and the broken middle, and the self as having less than total autonomy.
