"the struggle for recognition"

from the Coeur d'Alene of the Mind

""In opposition to Liberalism and Contract theories, Hegel does not regard rights as originating from an a priori eternal human nature which have the same characteristics in all societies and all times. Human beings have rights as a result of a historical and social struggle, which he calls the struggle for recognition. This view of the nature of rights finds its complete exposition in The Phenomenology of Mind, but its origin lies in the Jena lectures.


If we take the right to property as an example, the difference between Hegel’s and Locke’s accounts becomes clear. The right to property in Hegel concerns Man as a Will, a Spirit, a Self-Conscious being. On the other hand, Man has property right in Locke because of his biological organic nature. Whereas Locke concentrated on the problem of possessing, enjoying, and distributing property, Hegel concentrated on the productive activity of the subject, which was prophetic to Marx. The subject in Locke confronts nature in a dominating, instrumental manner, taking from it what satisfies its biological needs, but in Hegel both subject and object, or man and nature constitute each other in a dialectical process. Hegel shows that human being makes the things of the outer world parts of his own world by way of labour, and thereby raising Man above his biological nature. ""