Desire for Recognition (old blog)

blog post 1.

mastery and servitude, Desire for recognition.

In this portion of the phenomenology, Hegel writes about the desire for recognition of others. He begins by saying that the consciousness of one is only able to know itself through others. I believe that he means this, that if you can only know yourself through the struggle of two people between mastery and servitude. To be understood better this should be broken down into two parts; the first part about the actual recognition, and the second part about the struggle between master and slave between dominant and submissive. To support the idea that one can only know oneself through others it is easier to think of one person by him or herself. What kind of person would that be? Hegel believes that the person would lose his identity in that he wouldn't know who he is. And that the only way that he could know himself is through the recognition of others. It is like saying that if I found a heavy bat, however how do you know that the bat is the heaviest in the world unless one can compare it with others. Another way of thinking about it is to say that if there is a small island and on this island there are people and on this island there is one man who is the tallest man on the island. Now let us say that the average height of these people is 3 feet. Now let us imagine that a lost ship crashes on the island, and this ship is from another island where the average size of the people is 5 feet tall. Now let us say that they are all killed upon impact and that the smallest man survives and that the smallest man is 4 feet tall. This man would now be the tallest and the man who was the tallest no longer is. Of course to take this metaphor one step further would be to say that there was only one man on an island. How would he know if he was strong, weak, smart, or dumb? In fact Hegel would say that the man has no idea of himself and no concept of who he is.
The next part of this piece is the desire for recognition. Hegel says when any two people meet there is a struggle that takes place for recognition. Lacking a better comparison, I'd say that the two people struggle for dominance. Hegel says that this is always what happens when two people interact for the first time. Recognition can only occur when one submits to the other's dominance. What I am confused is why must this be so? Can't there be some sort of sharing of recognition, or would it only work if it was like flipping a coin each day to see which is the dominant and which is the submissive one. Hegel would say that this cannot happen ever. The idea of a flip of a coin determining type of personality is impossible because people are not like that. Something tells me that there must be a way that there can be shared dominance or a mutual cooperation.