This chapter examines Hegel's conception of recognition in the light of a generally hermeneutic approach to social life, contrasting the normative dimension of Hegel's approach to social life that flows from the central role he gives to recognition with Dilthey's more empiricist transformation of Hegel's "objective spirit". It then attempts to divest Hegel's idea of absolute spirit from the taint of pre-critical spiritualistic metaphysics by drawing on Robert Brandom's recent attempts to capture Hegel's concept of recognition. Following hints in Kant, the chapter suggests that Hegel may still have much to teach us about the constitutive normative functions of social life, and that these lessons are to be found in those parts of his theory that Dilthey had been most eager to abandon. Keywords:absolute spirit; concept of recognition; Hegel; Kant; social normativity