What is recognition and why is it so important? This book develops a synoptic conception of the significance of recognition in its many forms for human persons by means of a rational reconstruction and internal critique of classical and contemporary accounts. The book begins with a clarification of several fundamental questions concerning recognition. It then reconstructs the core ideas of Fichte, Hegel, Taylor, Fraser and Honneth and utilizes the insights and conceptual tools developed across these chapters for developing a case for the universal importance of recognition for humans. It argues in favor of a universalist anthropological position, unusual in the literature on recognition, that aims to construe a philosophically sound basi...