The transcendence of desire. Supposedly in Hegel, it's the recognition that other living things are not just objects to be used or consumed (animal desire) but that others are also desiring subjects and the recognition of the importance to be desired by them (human desire) that is at the basis of human consciousness as a subject and object and of his/her place in society and civilization. From Alexandre Kojeve in his Introduction To The Reading Of Hegel
“…Man can appear on earth only within a herd. That is why the human reality can only be social. But for the herd to become a society, multiplicity of Desires is not sufficient by itself; in addition, the Desires of each member of the herd must be directed - or potentially directed - toward the Desires of the other members. […] antropogenetic Desire is different from animal Desire (which produces a natural being, merely living and having only a sentiment of its life) in that it is directed, not toward a real, ‘positive,’ given object, but toward another Desire. Thus, in the relationship between man and woman, for example, Desire is human only if the one desires, not the body, but the Desire of the other; if he wants ‘to possess’ or ‘to assimilate’ the Desire taken as Desire - that is to say, if he wants to be ‘desired’ or ‘loved,’ or, rather, ‘recognized’ in his human value, in his reality as a human individual.”
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