
Contents
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The Emergence of Recognition: Rousseau on Self-Love The Emergence of Recognition: Rousseau on Self-Love
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Respect (the Aim) and the Law (the Mechanism) Respect (the Aim) and the Law (the Mechanism)
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Esteem (the Aim) and Solidarity (the Mechanism) Esteem (the Aim) and Solidarity (the Mechanism)
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Conclusion Conclusion
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6 Recognition, That “Most Ardent Desire”
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Published:May 2018
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Abstract
This chapter turns to the birth of the homo symbolicus, and of the discourse of recognition, as the third and final pillar of liberalism investigated in the book. It raises the following question: how is it that, whilst combated for over a thousand years in the western world, self-love (amor sui) has become a key mechanism of government, and a fundamental way of understanding and governing the self ? To answer this question, it is necessary to understand the manner in which, beginning with Rousseau, Adam Smith and some of their followers, a negative form of desire (cupiditas, libido, amor sui) was turned into a positive force, that is, a key engine of ethical and political life. The longing and struggle for recognition (as the German idealists called it) became, and continues to be, the measure of social progress, and a force behind the transformation of positive law in the last two hundred years. This "most ardent desire of human nature," Adam Smith argues, is one that any progressive politics should include, and can ignore only at its own peril.
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