ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Robert Brandom’s explanation of the concept of recognition in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In his first interpretation of Hegel’s conception of recognition, Brandom does not purely rely on Hegelian material, but rather extracts some motives from Hegel’s explanations in the Self-Consciousness chapters and combines them into an original systematic account of recognition. Brandom presents another explanation of how to conceive of recognition in his reading of the Conscience chapter. He focuses especially on Hegel develops a rather strange story about two conscientious consciousnesses, one that confesses and one that forgives. Brandom takes Hegel to say that the authority of the forgiver is based on a theoretical insight manifested by her practical attitudes—on the rightness of her attitudes towards norms. According to Hegel’s explanation, the confessor contributes to the realization of a community which is already there without being fully realized.
