Recognition

"The most impressive aspect of this book is the full-length, detailed treatment of the idealist concept of intersubjectivity, or recognition, rarely studied in detail, virtually undiscussed in English at present. Williams' treatment of this concept is careful, informed, useful, and sticks closely to the primary text with appropriate reference to the available secondary literature and the relevant discussion by later thinkers. His study will redress many misconceptions about post-Kantian idealism, particularly concerning Fichte and Hegel. In his attention to Fichte, Williams breaks with the widespread, but often unjustified tendency to approach Hegel in terms of Schelling. He further shows the emergence of a significant form of phenomenology in the thought of Fichte and Hegel." — Tom Rockmore, Duquesne University

"The scholarship is excellent, ranging from classical secondary literature to the most recent. Moreover, the topic is extremely important. The argument for Hegel's social ontology based upon a triadic social model for absolute spirit versus the dyadic idealist model, and the foundations of this found in the center concept of 'recognition,' is very important. Williams has here successfully made a case for Hegel and has contributed to the destruction of the 'block-universe' interpretation which has so badly distorted Hegel. Williams has made sense of this triadic social model without falling into the sort of incomprehensibility traditionally experienced when other commentators in the past have attempted to speak of the model. Williams succeeds." — Joseph C. Flay, Pennsylvania State University