For as Kojève recounts, the master desires recognition from the slave, but because he does not recognize the slave’s humanity, he cannot have it. “And this is what is insufficient—what is tragic—in his situation,” Kojève writes. “For he can be satisfied only by recognition from one whom he recognizes as worthy of recognizing him.”[50] We can only experience the existential satisfaction of recognition from those who we ourselves truly recognize. We can only have our own personhood affirmed by other people we grasp deeply as persons themselves.
