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The Desire and Struggle for Recognition Bjorn Wee Gomes Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Bjorn Wee Gomes All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Desire and Struggle for Recognition Bjorn Wee Gomes In recent decades, the politics of recognition has become an important theme in political and social theorizing about justice and freedom. The desire for recognition, that is to say, the desire to have the approval, esteem, consideration or respect of those around us, whether as individuals or members of social groups, has in fact been described as a vital human need. The distribution of rights and obligations, wealth and resources, all turn on the theme of recognition; failures to recognize the humanity of others or their particular identities as worthy of respect or esteem often result in political and social outcomes that are deeply unjust. The central idea behind these debates is that an individual’s identity – her self-understanding of who she is – and her social and political standing in any organized community – the rights she has and the protections she possesses under the law – are all in part shaped by the recognition or misrecognition of others. As Charles Taylor describes it, a social and political world that reflects back to individuals a demeaning picture of themselves can lead to severe psychic damage and cause real harm; a political society that simply refuses to recognize the identities of certain groups of individuals as having any standing at all can result in radical denials of the basic rights individuals are entitled to as members of a political community. Indeed, many of the major cultural, ethnic, racial, gender and religious movements of the last decade are seen by scholars as organized around the principle of recognition – the struggle to have one’s identity be recognized by others as worthy of respect. In trying to make sense of the politics of recognition, scholars have, for the most part, turned to Hegel’s account of the struggle for recognition for guidance. His most prominent remarks on this subject occur in the Phenomenology of Spirit, where he discusses the struggle for recognition through what is famously known as the master-slave dialectic. While Hegel certainly offers an extremely sophisticated and important account of the subject, and although many have shifted the debate to other areas of Hegel’s corpus, the general neglect of philosophical treatments on this issue by other thinkers in the history of thought is regrettable. In this dissertation, I examine some of the most important precursors to Hegel on this subject, arguing that they did indeed take the struggle for recognition seriously. Moreover, I hope to show that their reflections on the subject are themselves important and worthy of consideration, not only historically, but also for how we might think about the struggle for recognition today. This dissertation focuses on the social and political thought of Bernard Mandeville, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. It has two main aims. First and most principally, I aim to throw new light on each of their political philosophies by examining their ideas through the lens of the struggle for recognition. Each of them, I will argue, in varying ways set the desire for recognition at the centre of their thought. Second, I attempt to account for the continuities and discontinuities of between their views on the subject. Contents Acknowledgements ii Dedication iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Mandeville Self-Love, Self-liking, and The Struggle for Recognition 24 Chapter 2: Mandeville Genealogy, Sociability, and Esteem 90 Chapter 3: Rousseau Amour de soi, Amour-propre and the Desire for Consideration 165 Chapter 4: Rousseau On Private and Public Instruction 217 Chapter 5: Kant Unsociable Sociability, Self-Conceit and The Passions 251 Conclusion 282 Works Cited 287 i Acknowledgements This dissertation owes a debt of gratitude to many individuals. First, I would like to thank my advisors David Johnston and Melissa Schwartzberg. David’s trust and faith, and his openness to the different ways of engaging in political theory, made this dissertation possible. Moreover, his advice and guidance, his high standards for clarity and precision, certainly made this dissertation better than it would have been. For that I am extremely grateful. Melissa’s support, both intellectual and emotional, have also contributed immensely to the writing of this dissertation. I am extremely grateful for her willingness to stay on as my advisor despite moving to a different institution, and her guidance over the years has meant a lot to me. I would also like to sincerely thank Frederick Neuhouser for his willingness to work with me over the years. His lectures were a joy to attend and I learnt so much from them. His works have had an immeasurable influence on mine, and I feel thoroughly privileged to have had the chance to learn from him. I would also like to thank Ayten Gündoğdu and Joshua Simon for being on my committee. I am immensely grateful to Ayten’s extremely insightful comments, criticisms, and extremely close reading of the dissertation, and I am certain that I will benefit from her guidance and remarks as I look to develop my work in the future. Joshua’s remarks, too, were extremely insightful and provoked much thought, and I can only learn and benefit from his insights. ii I am also grateful to the rest of the faculty and others for making my time at Columbia a great experience. I would like to specially thank Turkuler Isiksel, Joseph Raz, the late Kenneth Waltz, Jean Cohen, Nadia Urbinati, David Lay Williams, Melissa Lane, and Tan Kok-Chor, all of whom I have learnt much from. To Terry Nardin, Luke O’Sullivan, and Ethan Putterman I owe too much to be described in words. I have also benefitted from conversations and discussions with my colleagues: Hiroaki Abe, Ashraf Ahmed, Michelle Chun, Kevin Elliot, Benjamin Schupmann, Felix Gerlsbeck, Rob Goodman, Mostafa Hefny, Jennifer Hudson, Kate Jackson, Yao Lin, Nathaniel Mull, and Elham Seyedsayamdost. Special thanks to Andrew Cheon, H. Seung Cho, Camille Strauss, Luise Papcke, Sung Eun Kim, Liya Yu, Tinghua Yu, Daphne Avgousti, Costantino Pischedda, and Sara Moller. Last but not least, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Andreas Avgousti – I will miss the coffees. And to my friends back home: Serene Chua, Sean Cheng, Kelvin Chong, Jiayi Liao, Jody Teo, Shirley Lim, Saufi Salleh, Erny Wah, Kelly Koh, Aruna Johnson, Huang Yaokang, Junli Lim, Bryan Tan, Jon Madd, Jaryllyn Siow, Joanne Raj, Eleine Ng, Gwendolyn Tan, Felicia Aw, and Alex Ang. And last but not least, to my family: Agnes Wee, Beverly Wee Gomes, Ruddin Dhilawala, Natasha Dhilawala and Alyssa Dhilawala. You are my greatest loves. iii Dedication For Agnes and Beverly, Natasha, Alyssa and Ruddin iv Introduction ‘I am now alone on earth, no longer having any brother, neighbour, friend, or society other than myself. The most sociable and the most loving of humans has been proscribed from society by a unanimous agreement. In the refinements of their hatred, they have sought the torment which would be cruelest to my sensitive soul and have violently broken all the ties which attached me to them. I would have loved men in spite of themselves. Only by ceasing to be humane, have they been able to slip away from my affection. They are now strangers, unknowns, in short, non-entities to me – because this is what they wanted. But I, detached from them and from everything, what am I? This is what remains for me to seek’ (RSW I, 3/ OC I, 995). With those words Rousseau opens the last of his reflections, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. One does not have to read very far in The Reveries to become conscious of how important recognition is to the whole energy of one’s being. In the creation of his exile Rousseau 1 found himself ‘cast into an incomprehensible chaos’, as if having a nightmare in a dreamless state. He was, in his words, passed for ‘a monster, a poisoner, an assassin’, ‘the horror of the human race’, charges of which he felt sure he was innocent, made guilty of only by the sheer number of the enchanted. He spent the years preceding his doubtful but self-described resignation to necessity, his fate of standing forever falsely accused, trying desperately to recover his station by virtue of his sincerity. But every effort in that direction further entangled him in a social temper which saw him only in the light of sin. Although no one can learn about the events of Rousseau’s life without becoming conscious of his complicity in his indictment, yet his insistence of innocence and integrity offers a not inconsiderable or uncertain truth. Turned away from humanity, Rousseau finally claimed tranquility ‘at the bottom of the abyss’ (RSW I, 3, 6/ OC I, 995-996, 999). But the abyss, stared at long enough, always stares back.1 Tranquility never stayed for too long in Rousseau’s heart before a returning despair took over his sentiments. If his birth was the first of his misfortunes, his expulsion from society would be his last (C I, 6/ OC I, 7).2 Certainly, ‘despair with its wits about it is very different from despair that is stupid; despair that is an abandonment of illusion is very different from despair which generates tender new cynicisms’ (Trilling, 2008: 6). And it is not always easy to describe the character it takes in Rousseau. But the strict condition imposed upon his being by that distressing sentiment carried him to another extreme.

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