Skip over navigation  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
Phenomenology of Spirit, Chapter 4: “Self-consciousness”
Hegel moves from the discussion of consciousness in general to a
discussion of self-consciousness. Like the idealist philosophers
before him, Hegel believes that consciousness of objects
necessarily implies some awareness of self, as a subject, which
is separate from the perceived object. But Hegel takes this idea
of self-consciousness a step further and asserts that subjects
are also objects to other subjects. Self-consciousness is thus
the awareness of another’s awareness of oneself. To put it
another way, one becomes aware of oneself by seeing oneself
through the eyes of another. Hegel speaks of the “struggle for
recognition” implied in self-consciousness. This struggle is
between two opposing tendencies arising in self-
consciousness—between, on one hand, the moment when the self and
the other come together, which makes self-consciousness
possible, and, on the other hand, the moment