“Self consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.”(Phenomenology of the Spirit 111).
In his Phenomenology of the Spirit Hegel describes consciousness as an independent thing whose independence is only achieved through the acknowledgment of its own dependence on outside objects and the subsequent struggle to negate this “self externality” in order to achieve true independence (Phenomenology of the Spirit 114). He retells this elaborate genesis as a dramatic “life and death struggle”, in the story of the Lord and the Bondsman where each must engage in this struggle in order to “raise their certainty of being” (Phenomenology of the Spirit 113). In both stories one thing is clear: in order to develop a truly independent consciousness it is essential to first acknowledge and be acknowledged by another consciousnesses. In other words, we need the recognition of other consciousnesses — this is the first step to attaining our own freedom.
One of my favorite children’s books, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, seems to describe very well this “process of Recognition” which Hegel writes about (Phenomenology of the Spirit 111). In the story the narrator, a lonely aviator with an identity crisis that has something to do with people not being able to recognize a drawing he made when he was six, crash lands in the desert where he meets the little prince who lives on a lone astroid in space. The little prince recognizes the aviators drawing for what it is, a boa constrictor with an elephant in its stomach and not a hat, which seems to mirror the mutual acknowledgment between the consciousness of the little prince and that of the narrator. At the same time the narrator could represent the Bondsman (who lives on earth among objects and is constantly searching for recognition/connection via his drawing of a boa constrictor) and the little prince the Lord (who lives alone on an astroid in the heavens). In spending time with the little prince the narrator becomes more and more self aware— he sees himself in the little prince. They discuss many things regarding perspective and relationships, like the importance of taming (making connections with other people). The characters on other tiny planets which the little prince met in his travels, the businessman, the king with no subjects, etc., could very well be the seemingly independent consciousnesses which have not yet attained recognition and therefore possess no truth of their own self certainty. “Each is indeed certain of its own self, but not of the other, and therefore its own self certainty still has no truth”(Phenomenology of the Spirit 113). These isolated characters are all very narrow minded and cannot possess any certain knowledge of themselves or the world around them, i.e. a geographer who has never really seen the land he is supposedly mapping. At the end of the book, as is fitting of a life and death struggle between two consciousnesses, the little prince dies (or returns to his astroid in the heavens). He returns due to his great love for the rose which prompted his journey in the first place (a sort of dependence, he lives for the rose). The narrator is both saddened and comforted by the little prince’s departure because he was validated by their meeting but now sees he doesn’t need the little prince to stay. The little prince’s death is essentially the negation of the narrator’s “external self” which according to Hegel, is how the narrator can become a “pure being-for-self” (Phenomenology of the Spirit 117).
Click here to read an article in the New Yorker on the ambiguity of meaning in The Little Prince (which might make my own hegelian interpretation more acceptable) and the interpretation of the book as a war story.
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