2. The Missing Mediation in Pragmatic Interpretations of Hegel by Andy Blunden Start Talk

3. Today only a Pragmatic Interpretation of Hegel’s ‘Spirit’ is possible Spirit is not presupposed,... but simply the coincidence of thinking, social practice and material culture

4. Recognition is used as the basis for a ‘Narrowly Pragmatic’ reading “Narrow” pragmatism explains everything by unmediated interactions between individuals... ignoring material culture

5. For Hegel, everything is both Immediate and Mediated Unmediated intersubjectivity is an impossibility.

6. Recognition is made possible by the Splitting of the subject in Two In the absence of mediation, outsiders are wild animals — more dangerous than a horde of locusts.

7. Mead’s I/Me is a rendering of Hegel’s Dialectic of Self-Consciousness The paradigmatic symbol for Mead is the gesture

8. For Winnicott, the “Transitional Object” is key to the formation of Self-consciousness The paradigmatic symbol for Winnicott is the mother’s breast

9. In each case an Artefact is the Mediating element Hegel specifies three paradigmatic activities: (1) the use of tools (2) the use of words, and (3) the raising of children.

10. Axel Honneth misconstrues Mead and Winnicott in the spirit of liberalism the law is ‘blind’ not ‘personal’

11. Axel Honneth misconstrues Hegel in the spirit of Kant Honneth presumes that psychology can capture social movements by “switching planes” from individual psyche to social movements and institutions

12. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory continues Hegel’s approach Vygotsky traced the transformations an artefact undergoes from being a useful object to being a ‘psychological tool’