>> In fact there are/were some here who have shown no other interest
>> than finding ways to express
>> their own particular identities. (Look at me, look at me!)
>
>
> Examples please. The only thing I can think of is a post from Joanna
> that had nothing to do with calling attention to herself.
She doesn't herself contribute here, but Judith Butler's idea of "mutual recognition" is "giving an account of oneself."
This contrasts with the Hegel/Marx idea of the communicative content of "mutual recognition" - "the most beautiful music," "the finest play" - as created and appropriated by "educated" individuals who "determine their knowing, willing, and acting in a universal way." (Hegel, Philosophy of Right, § 187) <http://marx.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/prcivils.htm>
For this reason, the content is self-effacing in the following sense:
“In caprice it is involved that the content is not formed by the nature of my will, but by contingency. I am dependent upon this content. This is the contradiction contained in caprice. Ordinary man believes that he is free, when he is allowed to act capriciously, but precisely in caprice is it inherent that he is not free. When I will the rational, I do not act as a particular individual but according to the conception of ethical life in general. In an ethical act I establish not myself but the thing. A man, who acts perversely, exhibits particularity. The rational is the highway on which every one travels, and no one is specially marked. When a great artist finishes a work we say: ‘It must be so.’ The particularity of the artist has wholly disappeared and the work shows no mannerism. Phidias has no mannerism; the statue itself lives and moves. But the poorer is the artist, the more easily we discern himself, his particularity all caprice. If we adhere to the consideration that in caprice a man can will what he pleases, we have certainly freedom of a kind; but again, if we hold to the view that the content is given, then man must be determined by it, and in this light is no longer free.” (Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Introduction) <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/printrod.htm>
Ted