Both conceptually and historically speaking, Hegel’s analysis of recognition has a justifiable claim to being the most famous and influential aspect of his system. While the importance of the other to questions of selfhood had been previously recognized, it is with Hegel that the concept fully enters the philosophical lexicon: he not only diagnoses the failings of a monadic conception of self, but also shows that the other is a constitutive aspect of the self. Not surprisingly, much has been written on this topic, meaning that a new study must find some way to distinguish itself. Liz Disley does this by offering a condensed examination of the relationship between love, forgiveness, and recognition to suggest that love and forgiveness ‘are both examples of positive recognition and can serve as ethical norms of human interaction’ (1).

Love is a topic that, while often discussed by Hegel, has tended to be overlooked in the literature. One of the few exceptions to this is Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos’s Hegel and the Logical Structure of Love (Reference Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos1999), which examines Hegel’s conception of love through the lens of the categories of the Science of Logic. Disley takes a different approach. Setting herself an ambitious agenda, especially within a book of 152 pages of actual text, she not only aims to show how love, forgiveness and recognition are conceptualized within Hegel’s thought, but at the same time engages with a number of questions relating to the nature of meaningful intersubjectivity and the conditions that make this possible, such as how moral responsibility and forgiveness can have meaning, what Hegel’s conception of love/forgiveness can contribute to contemporary discussions in moral philosophy, the relationship between Hegel’s conceptions of love/forgiveness and German Idealism, and the former’s applicability to contemporary discussions of forgiveness (1–2). The aim is not to argue that Hegel ‘has all of the answers, much less all of the correct answers, but [that he is] someone who serves as the originator of the most promising kind of approach’ (2). Rather than offering an exhaustive account of Hegel’s thinking on love, forgiveness and recognition, the book is an attempt to think through the theme of intersubjectivity that touches on and borrows from a particular assumed reading of love, forgiveness and recognition in Hegel.

Starting from an interesting discussion of the different possible meanings of metaphysics and ontology, Disley claims in the introduction that Hegel offers a transcendental argument to explain the structure of reality necessary to facilitate intersubjective exchange, which is then linked to contemporary debates in Hegelian scholarship on whether Hegel should be read as a metaphysician. By claiming that the deflationary, non-metaphysical view runs ‘entirely contrary to the view that Hegel has a positive concept of recognition, or a concept of recognition that … is grounded in some way in his ontology or metaphysics’ (11), Disley considers Hegel’s account of intersubjectivity to rely on an ontological and metaphysical monism (12).

Moreover, Disley holds that Hegel’s thinking on recognition, forgiveness, and love ‘has to be understood … in a way that fundamentally involves the theological’ (12), which brings her to a discussion of the different senses of recognition at stake in contemporary debates in philosophy of religion. In particular, Disley links Hegel’s concept of recognition to the theological concept of metanoia, which is defined not as ‘repentance’, as often translated, but as ‘something like a transmutation of consciousness’ (15). On her reading, Hegel’s conception of recognition entails a thoroughly transformative experience. It does not simply entail an independent subject recognizing another, but an ongoing process of mutual alteration that combines interaction, self-perception, intersubjective action, and self-understanding. She supports this view by drawing on Gillian Rose’s concept of the ‘broken middle’, whereby two entities do not synthesize into unity, but are held apart in an unstable ‘middle moment’ between the two. The instability of this middle moment is linked to failure, imperfection and rejuvenation, which is where Disley suggests that forgiveness enters the fray. As a consequence, we find that love and forgiveness are key conditions of positive recognition: the former helps to bind the participants together, while the latter sustains this by ensuring that the inevitable failures that result from social interactions do not tear the social relation apart.

Chapter 1 develops the main argument by examining the notion of recognition in the Phenomenology’s master-slave dialectic and the French reception of it. Distinguishing between a holistic and piecemeal approach, Disley aims to develop a ‘middle course’ (24) which holds that Hegel’s later account of ethical life and his earlier concept of recognition do not entail a ‘complete system’. Her rejection of the holistic approach does not, however, mean that she adopts a piecemeal one because she claims that Hegel’s account of ethical life is ‘not inconsistent’ (24) with his concept of recognition and, indeed, ‘follows on from it in some important respects’. What this entails, however, is never developed, nor are the ‘important respects’ specified, which means that it is difficult to know exactly what Disley is pointing to.

After identifying different readings of the relationship between desire, self-consciousness, and the master–slave dialectic, the chapter culminates in an analysis of the French reception of Hegel’s master–slave dialectic, in particular that of Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Simone de Beauvoir’s readings. The aim seems to be to show the originality of Hegel’s position on recognition. Limiting herself to Being and Nothingness, Disley claims that ‘Sartre’s analysis leaves no room for any kind of normatively positive relationships between conscious or self-conscious beings’ (30). This is a classic reading of Sartre, but it emanates from a fundamental misunderstanding of the role that Being and Nothingness plays in his thought, its difference from later texts, especially his Notebooks for an Ethics and Critique of Dialectical Reason, and the important role that the notion of ‘conversion’ plays in Sartre’s thinking generally. While it is true that the pre-conversion consciousness of Being and Nothingness cannot develop a form of positive recognition, in his later works, Sartre holds that, if each consciousness undergoes a process of conversion so as to recognize its dependence on objectivity and the other, then social relations based on a positive form of mutual recognition are possible. Disley’s Sartre is, therefore, not one that contemporary Sartrean scholarship would recognize (Heter Reference Heter2008; Mirvish Reference Mirvish2002; Rae Reference Rae2011, Reference Rae2012). This means that her comparison between Hegel and Sartre is a missed opportunity to bring the two thinkers together in a nuanced and subtle manner. Indeed, showing that Sartre develops a position on positive mutual recognition that is remarkably close to Hegel’s would have bolstered her overall argument by demonstrating that Hegel’s account is not the historical anomaly that she portrays it as being.

Disley’s treatment of Sartre is symptomatic of her tendency to describe the positions that she subsequently refutes without offering adequate textual support. For example, Disley claims that ‘like Heidegger’s Dasein, Hegel’s self-conscious subject is intended to elucidate fundamental ontological truths rather than providing a psychological or biological account of how the self appears to itself’ (25). This claim may be correct, but it is made without textual reference to any of Heidegger’s texts and binds Heidegger and Hegel together without caveats relating to the purposes of their overall philosophies, methods of argumentation and conclusions. Similarly, in her discussion of the different interpretations of desire, Disley contrasts those of Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard with Judith Butler’s, which is understood to argue ‘that a non-traditional concept of desire is involved in the Phenomenology’ (26). Disley then claims that her ‘definition of desire is also non-traditional, but in a different sense’ (26). However, it is never explained what a ‘non-traditional concept of desire’ involves and why Disley’s understanding is different from Butler’s. Proceeding in this manner allows Disley to cover much ground and navigate a pathway between different positions, but it means that the text is significantly underdeveloped at key points.

Continuing in a historical vein, Chapter 2 links Hegel’s account of intersubjectivity to German Idealism’s account of metaphysics. Disley holds that German Idealism is committed to a number of binary oppositions, including reflexivity/non-reflexivity, concept/intuition, and subject/object (43), but also ethics/epistemology, theoretical/practical reason and spirit/nature (44). She engages with the first three, not by discussing the representatives of German Idealism, but through contemporary philosophers of mind, including P. F. Strawson, Quassim Cassam, John MacDowell and Ernst Tugendhat. This reading is then linked back to Hegel through an analysis of the theological roots of positive recognition, which entails brief discussions of the notion of forgiveness in monotheism. The chapter concludes by claiming that a Christian notion of forgiveness may be able to reconcile the binary oppositions that Disley considers to be inherent to German Idealism.

Chapter 3 examines the relationship between a monistic ontology and ‘genuine intersubjectivity’ (67). To develop a model of intersubjectivity based on positive mutual recognition, Disley turns to Kant’s and Hegel’s theories of intersubjectivity to claim that Hegel’s account of intersubjectivity is ‘more complex’ (78) than Kant’s because ‘where Kant’s ethics require[s] the presence of others whom the ethical agent treats as an end or subject, Hegel’s account of self-consciousness and the ethical sphere require[s] their cooperation in according mutual recognition’. Disley goes on to develop her analysis of Hegel’s theory of intersubjectivity by engaging with Michael Theunissen’s, Axel Honneth’s and Jurgen Habermas’s interpretations, each of which is perceived to argue that Hegel ultimately fails to offer an account of positive mutual recognition because he reduces the other to consciousness. While disagreeing with their conclusion, Disley uses it to examine the nature of monism. By distinguishing between a pagan understanding of tragedy, manifested in the Phenomenology’s discussion of Antigone, which it is claimed is unable to reconcile two opposing moments, and a Christian understanding that can, Disley shows that Hegel’s account of positive mutual recognition is intimately connected to Christian theology. Clarifying the nature of spirit brings Disley to distinguish between different forms of ontology. Appealing to the work of Rolf-Peter Horstmann, she claims that Hegel depends upon a ‘non-dualist monism’ (90), which, when linked to Hegel’s theory of intersubjectivity, leads her to conclude that ‘only a monistic ontology will allow genuine intersubjectivity of a kind that will permit positive recognition to take place’ (91).

Chapter 4 aims to defend one of the central theses of the text, which is ‘that genuine sociality, intersubjectivity and recognition require an “ambiguous” attitude’ (93) whereby the involved parties perceive themselves and the other to be both subject and object. This is briefly tied to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, before a more detailed discussion of Simone de Beauvoir’s analysis of it is presented and compared to Sartre’s. The conclusion drawn is that neither de Beauvoir nor Sartre are capable of providing an account of positive recognition. In de Beauvoir’s case, this is because of a perceived biological pessimism that insists on the irreconcilable difference between the sexes and, in Sartre’s case, it is because of the psychological and ontological pessimism that Disley attributes to Being and Nothingness. Having argued that de Beauvoir and Sartre do not offer the type of positive recognition for which she is looking, Disley returns to Hegel’s conception of desire to conclude that ambiguity is the ontological and ethical foundation for positive recognition.

Chapter 5 develops the analysis of positive recognition by taking seriously Hegel’s claim that recognition must be mutual. Five different ways in which mutual recognition could fail are identified to show the difficulty and fragility inherent in it. This is then linked to the relationship between mutuality and forgiveness to explain that mutuality can only occur if each party is willing to forgive the other’s failings. The aim is to develop an account that shows that forgiveness is not only necessary to, but also constitutive of, positive recognition.

To do this, Disley turns to Kant’s views on forgiveness. While noting that Kant has relatively little to say about the topic and that what he does say ‘is scattered throughout his works’ (125), she provides a clear and interesting discussion of the different places where Kant mentions it, including a number of the alterations that take place in his thinking. Kant’s position is then compared to Hegel’s analysis of forgiveness in the Phenomenology. This does not entail a close reading, but a summary conducted through the work of Peter Singer, Simone de Beauvoir, and Allen Speight. Disley’s conclusion is that Kant’s and Hegel’s accounts of forgiveness differ: whereas the former holds ‘that forgiveness consists in refraining from placing some kind of social sanction on the perceived offender/forgiven’ (128), ‘Hegel sees forgiveness as a process that concludes with some kind of “judicial” (not necessarily in the formal, legal sense), ceasing or refraining from sanctions’ (129). Thus distinguishing between Kant’s individually-orientated form of forgiveness and Hegel’s social-judicial form, Disley concludes that ‘how one judges as regards the other is vital for positive recognition’ and claims that ‘this can be seen more clearly … in the example of love’ (129).

Having identified a relationship between forgiveness and love, Chapter 6 suggests that love could entail an ‘ethical mode of positive recognition’ (131). Disley provides an overview of Hegel’s engagements with the concept of love from his pre-Jena Early Theological Writings through to the Philosophy of Right. Rather than offering a close textual reading, she sketches a particular reading of these texts, laying out the logical structure underpinning her reading of Hegel. This is then used to identify a number of difficulties in alternative interpretations before she returns to the master-slave dialectic to suggest that, while there has to be a cognitive aspect to recognition, relationships of positive recognition cannot simply be ‘purely cognitive, or even mainly or primarily, or first of all’ (140). Disley’s overall point is that positive recognition entails a cognitive and non-cognitive aspect. To explore the relationship between the two, Disley produces brief discussions of love, its relationship to recognition, and debates in contemporary philosophy of emotion.

In sum, Hegel, Love and Forgiveness is an ambitious book, covering many diverse topics in a short space. A consequence of this is that, at times, it proceeds too rapidly and depends on statements rather than detailed and textually supported arguments. As such, readers who lack a thorough understanding of Hegel or those who disagree with the reading of Hegel on which Disley depends may struggle to follow the argument developed. However, by linking a certain reading of Hegel to contemporary debates in analytic philosophy, Disley shows that Hegel’s philosophy not only continues to be relevant, but offers a number of fruitful insights that enhance the debates on intersubjectivity in contemporary analytic philosophy. This is the book’s most substantial contribution.