Summarizing The Desire for Mutual Recognition

Chapter 3: Humiliation, Authority, Hierarchy

This chapter introduces the idea that fear of the other is actually a fear of humiliation of non-recognition resulting from the vulnerability of revealing one's desire for authentic mutuality. The chapter begins with a close phenomenological description of ordinary encounters with others on the street and shows how the vigilance of "balanced aversion of presence" leads to the creation of "strangers" and the overall despiritualization of the street as a whole during predominantly alienated social periods. The chapter then shows how this same aversive presence is then carried by each of us into the workplace, how we construct the social workplace, and how we give our social institutions the modification of the hierarchy to hold the rotation of social alienation in place and monitor its movement.