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THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

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point even more forcefully in his discussion of corporations – the guilds or organizations<br />

that form within the business class. Speaking of membership in a specific corporation,<br />

Hegel says:<br />

In addition, this nexus of capability and livelihood is a recognized [anerkannt]<br />

fact, with the result that the Corporation member needs no external marks beyond<br />

his membership as evidence that he is a somebody. It is also recognized<br />

[annerkannt] that he belongs to a whole which is itself an organ of the entire<br />

society, and that he is actively concerned in promoting the comparatively<br />

disinterested end of this whole. Thus he commands the respect due to one in his<br />

social position. 335<br />

This passage ties together most of the themes we’ve discussed thus far, including (1) the<br />

relationship between the desires of the private person and social institutions, (2) the<br />

relationship between the structure of natural and social desires, (3) the desire to be<br />

recognized as a member of a group, and (4) the relationship between work and<br />

consumption.<br />

A specific form of work, designated by membership in a corporation, provides the<br />

individual with a form of social recognition and respect. Moreover, it provides the<br />

individual with a social identity. Here a new conception of the self emerges. Civil<br />

society construes the self as collection of desires and aims, and it sees participation in<br />

various social institutions and practices as a means for self-fulfillment, but not as a means<br />

for the more fundamental process of self-determination. After passing through various<br />

dialectical developments, however, we arrive at a conception of the self as something<br />

fundamentally determined by the institutions and practices in which it participates. 336<br />

335 Philosophy of Right, paragraph 253.<br />

336 In section on anthropology in the Philosophy of Mind, Hegel discusses the growth of the<br />

individual from childhood to adulthood. In speaking of the transition to adulthood, Hegel says: “By his<br />

share in this collective work he first is really somebody, gaining an effective existence and an objective<br />

value” (paragraph 396). It is work, as an explicitly collective process that precedes and transcends the<br />

298

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