A human being can have rights and property and still feel like a nobody. We can become richer and angrier at the same time. Hegel helps explain why.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel argues that our sense of who we are depends on recognition by others. We cannot establish our identities on our own because many things that matter to us exist only in relation to others. We can think and desire in isolation, but we cannot be respected, humiliated, trusted, ignored, admired, or treated as equals in isolation. To understand ourselves as people whose choices and claims matter, we need others to acknowledge us as such
