Mutual Recognition and Rational Justification in Hegel’sPhenomenology of Spirit

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Individual rational judgment, of the kind required for justification in cognition or morals, is fundamentally socially and historically conditioned. I argue for this by defending key themes from Kant’s and Hegel’s accounts of rational judgment and justification, including the “autonomy” of rational judgment and one key point of Hegel’s account of “mutual recognition.” These themes are rooted in Kant’s and Hegel’s transformation of the modern natural law tradition, which originates the properly pragmatic account of rationality, which affords genuine rational justification, and which provides for realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and strict objectivity about moral norms.