Universality, Resistance, and the Struggle for Recognition: Challenging the Inevitability of Hegel’s Rabble

Abstract

Inspired by the pioneering work of Robert R. Williams and Axel Honneth, this article offers a new lens through which to consider Hegel’s infamous ‘rabble problem.’ By rethinking the conflict between the rabble and the State as a conflict between intersubjective and institutional recognition—generating a failure of reciprocal recognition—I suggest that there is embedded in Hegel’s right of necessity a right of resistance that the rabble may justifiably claim in their struggle for recognition. The existence of the rabble, I ultimately suggest, is therefore not an inevitable consequence of the State, but an indication that the State has itself failed to concretize the universal consciousness of Spirit.