416. The thirst for recognition: where does it come from?

In a recent book[i] Francis Fukuyama traced present identity politics to a fundamental human need for recognition and respect.

I agree that there is this fundamental urge towards recognition and respect, and it is enlightening to look at it as a source of identity politics. However, I think it is an error to identify this with ‘thymos’ as a fundamental human urge, as Fukuyama does.

The notion of thymos goes back to Plato, for example, who used the image of reason as a charioteer who has to keep in check two wild horses: eros (desire) and thymos.

Thymos is spiritedness, an urge to manifest oneself, in excellence, anger, battle, discovery, heroism. Often this is indeed accompanied with the thirst for fame, recognition, but that is not necessarily so.

Nietzsche is an example of someone who valued thymos in the form of creative destruction, in transcendence of the self, while I am sure that he would despise the urge to gain recognition for it. Thymos can be its own goal and reward, for the intrinsic value of it, in ‘making something of oneself’, of one’s life, not necessarily for the extrinsic value of using it to gain recognition. Also, everyone has the urge to recognition and respect, while not everyone is driven by thymos.

Also, why, then, should the urge for recognition be accompanied by the urge to conform to group expectations and values, in group identity? Doesn’t that go against thymos as the urge to distinction? 


However that may be, I do grant that the urge for recognition is fundamental and probably quite universal, and if it does not derive from thymos, where does it come from?

I have a proposal for that. Earlier in this blog (item 205), I discussed the notion of ‘parochial altruism’. That is the inclination of people, established in much empirical research, to be loyal, solidary, altruistic, with regard to people considered to belong to one’s own group, while being suspicious, distrustful towards outsiders. Here I define altruism as being prepared to sacrifice something to someone else even if one cannot count on an adequate return.

I proposed that parochial altruism is an outcome of evolution. For the survival of a group internal solidarity helps, but genes are in the individual, not the group. The risk of a ‘gene for solidarity’ is that the group is vulnerable to entry of opportunists without the gene, who prey on the altruism of people in the group, and ultimately compete them away until no-one with the altruistic gene survives. In order to survive, the gene had to be accompanied with a gene for suspicion and fear of outsiders. That, I propose, is the foundation of fear and discrimination of outsiders, xenophobia, particularly of those who are manifestly different, in race, religion, or culture.

Now, if this hypothesis is true, and there is much evidence for it, then in order to survive in the group one should not be seen as an outsider. For that reason an urge has developed towards recognition as a legitimate member of the group, on pain of exclusion. That, I propose, is the source of the urge for recognition, and, I would add, for conformism. It also, I suspect, is ‘in the genes’, in a package with parochial altruism and xenophobia.

Note that the combined urges of recognition and of conformism form an ideal bedding for nationalism and for submission to authoritarianism.   

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[i] Francis Fukuyama, 2018, Identity: Contemporary identity politics and the struggle for recognition, Profile Books.