At the Origins of Institutional Reality: Desire and Recognition in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

In the passages of Phenomenology of spirit titled, B. Self-consciousness, Hegel (1807) supplies us with the theory of the duplication (Verdoppelung) of Self- consciousness, which allows the dissolution of individuality in a context of a reciprocal relationship with another individuality, i.e., another Self- consciousness. This relationship arises from an original relationship to an external object, i.e., desire (Begierde) and develops in institutional reality by the independence from the desire self. In this contribution, my aim is to explain Hegel’s principle of desire-independence and compare it to the quite similar Searle’s (2010) proposal that Status Functions Declarations [SFD] must be desire-independent. The lordship-bondage relationship reveals a recognitive structure in which individuals’ independence vanishes in the institutional reality.