When one is intently reading an author or a theory, it often happens that one encounters that author or that theory everywhere, even in TV series, which are what today, massively already at hand, offer us the possibility of catharsis for some moral and social problems of our time.
In this short text I offer a perspective on the series “Better call Saul!” In light of some ideas from the philosopher Axel Honneth on certain texts by G.F. Hegel, the chosen perspective is crime, interpreted as a form of revenge motivated by a lack of recognition or appreciation. Before continuing, I alert you to spoilers.
For Honneth, social relationships are driven by a profound need for recognition. This recognition is not only obtained within the family through love, or from the State in the form of rights recognition, but also from civil society, where individuals seek to achieve a certain level of social esteem, appreciation, or visibility.
“Esteem” He is Jimmy McGill's Suzuki and the only model of social esteem he possesses; scorned by both his older brother, the brilliant Chuck McGill, and the successful law firm he runs with his partner, Howard Hamlin. Jimmy's revenge is directed at those who failed to appreciate his merits. They gave him opportunities to rebuild his life, which he seized and in his own way progressed, but then they were petty in failing to recognize him as an equal, a peer, a valid interlocutor.
Shortly before his death, Howard confronted Jimmy and Kim at his home: they hadn't done it just for money, but for revenge. Kim, too, had suffered from a lack of recognition at the law firm. She had been given an opportunity to advance and finish her law degree; she took it, appreciated it, and responded with hard work, putting in extra hours and bringing in new clients. But she also experienced pettiness; she wasn't considered a partner, an equal, a peer, a valid interlocutor.
According to Honneth, someone who commits a crime may be tacitly protesting the lack of reciprocity in social relations. Beyond whether it is just or unjust, the crime constitutes a kind of public protest. Public, in the sense that it affects the moral community in which the perpetrator is embedded.
Chuck and Howard had built a highly prestigious law firm. And it is there, at the very heart of that hard-won social standing, that Jimmy and Kim precisely exact their revenge. Their resentment of denied recognition directs its violence toward the recognition they have finally received.
Both Kim and Jimmy, through their profession, show solidarity with the marginalized members of society: those who cannot afford top lawyers, the elderly, and petty criminals. With their skills in deception, they take justice into their own hands, outsmarting an oppressive and arbitrary system in a hyper-competitive society that divides people into winners and losers.
Faced with the dangerous consequences of her actions, Kim no longer wants to harm those around her. She moves, changes her life, but not her name. Jimmy, on the other hand, adopts a new, limitless identity—Saul Goodman—which earns him the recognition of the many he saved from prison and for whom now “everything is alright.” His alter ego, as he himself explains, comes from the expressionIt's all good, man"And it symbolizes the pinnacle of appreciation and acceptance of the other: no matter what you have done, everything is fine."
The inner prison in which Kim secludes herself and the actual prison in which Jimmy is locked are both rooted in conscience—another kind of recognition. Jimmy, alone in the face of Kim's unconditional acceptance, accepts his responsibility as McGill. The truth sets you free, and rescuing the one who made a mistake saves you. And here Honneth's ideas fall short, because, as in other American seriesIt's all about redemption.But that's a topic for another article.
