Master and Slave

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is the fteminine force in the knowledge of human nature' the other is the

mascu Ine. '

Both refer back to each other. The first depends on the fact th t

person has a susceptib~lit.Y to intuiting others, in addition to his :h:~~~y

many human characteristics. This itself appears to depend on the f act th' ~

everyone shares certain universal traits; divination consequently is inspir:d

as the r eader compares himself with the author.

But how does the comparative come to subsume the subject d

general. t~pe~ Obviously, either by comparing, which could go on in~n .~rl ~or by dlVmatlOn. me),

. Neit~er may be separated from the other, because divination receivesItS security first. f rom an affirmative comparison, without which it mi ht

become outlandIsh. Bu t t he comparative of itself cannot yield 't Tgh

ge I d .f' aumy. e

nera a n . specl.IlC must permeate each other, and this can onl ha en bmeans of dlvmatlOn. y pp y

7. ~h.e idea of the work, by which the author's fundamental purpose ['Ville]

revea s ltsel.f, can ~nly be underst oo d i n t er ms of the converoence of the

basIc materl~1 andlt~ peculiarity of his developments. b

T~e basJC material by itself stipulates no set manner of execut io n. As a

r~\le ~t IS easy enough t.o determine, even if it is not exactly specified; but f or

a. t a.t, one c an ?e mIstaken. One finds the purpose of the work most pre-

cIsely m It.S ~eculIa.r or characteristic development of its material . Often t he

characteristIc motIf has only a limited influence on certain sections of

work, but nonetheless shapes the character of the wo k b 't . fl ah Th' . r y Ism uen ce o not . ers. : mterpretlve knack is to somehow intuit the meanin while

bhemg cautIOusly ~wa :e o.f how the intuition in some ways predet:rmines

t e process of valIdatmg It.

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL1770-1831

IMMANUELKANT(1724-J804) and G W F H I hd . . . e ge are t e ARISTOTLEand PLATOof

n~o ~rn Continenta l pl~ilosophy, the two dominant figures from whom everything

e se ows. Hegel IS a gleat synthesIzer, a system builder who bequeaths t d

t~OUg~t ~he conviction that an individual e ntity's meaning rests not in its~IT~u;~~

t e re atIOnsh lp o f that thing to other things within an all e .I.' I I .' - ncompassmg, ever-c 1angmg ~v 10 e. Where the part is situated is crucial. All modern criticism that

stres se s t e hlstorlcal and social context of utterances or artworks is Hegelia tsome degree. ,. n 0

. Hegel was the son of a minor court official i n t he duchy of \Vurttemburg, in what

IS now Germany .. He studied theology at the University of TJbingen, where he

became friends with the poet Friedrich Holderlin and the phl'losophe F . d . hS h II' Af d' r ne nc vonc e II1g. ter gra uatll1g in J 793, Hegel worked as a private tutor until he began

teaching at the Universit y of Jena in 1801, the year he published his first book. In

1807 he published Phenomenology of Spirit, the nrst version of his grand philosoph-

ical vision an d one of the great philosophical masterpieces of all time. A sexual

scandal (he had a child with his landlord's wife) forced Hegel to leave Jena in 1807,

and he would not teach in a university again until 1816. He reached the height of his

fame and influence with his lectures at the University of Berlin, which he delivered

regularly from 1818 until his death. Many of these series were published either by

Hegel himself or from the notes taken by his students, as was Lectures on Fine Art

(1835-38).Hegel is usually associated with the dialectic. which entails the confrontation of

any thesis with its opposite (antithesis), an d t he resultant synthesis of the two

through a process of "overcoming" (atifgehoben in German). We might call the dia-

lectic the motor of the Hegelian system, str.essing movement and change over stasis.

This system, which places individual elements in relation to one another. is in con-

stant motion. Meaning and truth are never fixed because they are always in pro-

cess. The world possesses not determinate be,ing but only momentary resting places

on the stages of becoming. Hegel does believe that there will be stasis and perfec-

tion at the end of history, and at times he appears to believe that his philosophy is

that end, the moment when consciousness f ully understands its own nature-its

essential u ni ty with all that exists. Spirit (Geist) is the name Hegel most often uses

to designate this fundamental unity, and the goal of philosophy is to gain the "abso-

lute knowledge" that would consist of S pirit r ecognizing the world as its own ema-

nation . T he changes of history, its dialectical path, would then come to an end. The

dream of such completion has proven extraordinarily alluring yet often dangerous.

$,horn of that dream, Hegel's philosophy gives us a dynamic wo rld of interrelation-

ships in which the various elements contend with one another through dialectical

struggle. Hegel's most famous disciple, KARLMARX,adopts both the vision of strug-gle and the dream of an end to strife. But Hegelian themes also echo, in a different

key, throughout the work of poststructuralists such as MICHELFOUCAULTand JULIA

KRISTEVA.Our nrst selection presents the most famous instance of dialectical confrontation

in Hegel, the so-called Master-Slave ("lord" and "bondsman" in our translation) dia-

lectic. Although dense and abstract, this section of Phenomenology of Spirit has

been very influential, especially in France, where, by way of Alexandre Kojeve's cel-

ebrated Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (1947), it shaped the thought of JEAN-

PAULSARTRE,SIMO E DE BEAUVOIR,JACQUESLACAN,and JACQUESDERRIDA,among

others. The question Hegel asks is this: ~S'~,,-Qpesa human being C0.me to conscious-

n?s-oL itself as a self (a consciousness that animals lack)? Hegel assumes thathYluans are not born with the sense "I am John Smith, and this is what I believe and

ap:l-l-i.ke."How then do we acquire self-consciousness? Only in meeting with some-

thi[lg that i s not the self, according to Hegel. Confrontatiqn with my Iir;pits. with then'0t:;J;elf, enables me to identify what is self, what belongs to me. The reality of this

discovered self depends on two things: I must have the consciousness that I am a

self (which Hegel calls "being-~or-self"), and my existence must be acknowledged orrecognized by other hu man beings ("being-fw-others'). In Hegel's words, "Self-

consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for

another; that is, it exists only in being ackno,ledged."Most interpreters have seen Hegel as dem~nstrating that selfhood is a social fact.

The child develops a sense of self largely ~~ause others treat it as a self-and the self

will be s$lci'llly cons,tructed in different ways, depending on how it is treated. Selves

a{.c-.not born but made, in a dialectical social proces s of interrelationships among

selves. This ongoing process proceeds through "mom~nts" that Hegel then identifies

as stages on the way toward full self-consciousness. Just as the self develops con-

sciousne ss over time, so the 1)LJl1lanspecies as a whole passes through moments in

history on the path to absolute knowledge. Phenomenology of Spirit traces this


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movement of humans through time to the culminating moment of the full self-

consciousness of Spirit.

In the Master-Slave dialectic, the counterposed selves who are coming to con-

sciousness have so much at stake that their relationships are a constant source-of

strife, "such that they prove themselves and each other t hrough a life-and-death

struggle." Selves do not take their f undamental dependence on others kindly. Here

power ente rs the discussion, as Hegel imagines that each individual would pref~x to

guarantee continued recognition from the other, while not extending that recogni-

tIOn 111turn. S uch i mbalance, taken to its extreme, is figured by Hegel as the rela-

tionship between a ma~ter and a slaye, which is established in a battle that ends

when the Slave grants recognition and service to the Master in ret urn f or continued

life. (Both the Master and Slave stake their life in the battle, but the loser becomes

a slave by choosing a life of servitude over death at the hand of the victor.)

l~he Master, however, finds victory hollow. Recogn~tion, like love, has value only

when i t i s freely given, when it comes from someone who is likeJlle_in-status. If th~

othe.r acknowledges my existence only because forced to do so, how can that calm my

lurkmg doubt about who I am') (Hegel not only anticipates the processes of self-

formation described by SIGMU 'D FRE D but also describes the existential a~ietv that

haunts any attachment to "idenpty.') The Master's access to his own selfh~od is

mediated through his relationship to the Slave; and since that Slave is "not an inde-

pendent consciousness, but a dependent one," the Master "is, therefore, not certain

of being-for-self as the truth of himself." By obliterating the Slave's independence, the

Master has removed the very "oth@r" that must be encountered to achieve selfhood.

Meanwhile, the Slave moves from the "dread ... it has experienced" in the face

of "death, the absolute Lord [or Master]" to a fairly satisfactory self-consciousnessachieved through wOo/k. (The Hegelian description of lab or a s redeeming greatly

II1Auenced Marx.) The Slave gains a sense of self because his labor has an effect on

a material world o f resistant objects. The, Master has lost contact wi th the nOI1,-self

(except WIth the Slave) because he has left all physical interaction with the world to

the Slave. This ircmic reversal of the Master-Slave relationship points toward the

;.eciprocity of dependence that Hegel sees as characterizing human relationships:

They recogmze themselves as mutually recognizing one another." Only if I am will-

ing to acknowledge that the other is also a self, who has a need and a right to be a

being-for-self, can I satisfactorily establish my own selfhood.

This accoun t p rov!des a memorable and persuasive model f or understanding the

complex dynamics of intersybjective relationships. Selfhood is a social product that

individuals c ra ve; identity has to be constructed through contentious interaction with

and relation to others; this process makes us depenqent on others, and thus inclined

to re~ent and feaJ them; and such dependence involves forms of psychological andsocial power that are distinct from physical force or the power afforded by superior

wealth. Whenever modern literary theorists and critics have been interested in ques-

tions of identity and of the self's confrontation with the other (however understood)

Hegel's famous account of the Master-Slave dialectic has hovered i n t he background~

Our second selection consists of excerpts from the introduction to Lectures on

Fine Art-Hegel's contribution to philosophical aesthetics, the field that seeks to

deflne the aims o f the arts, the features of art objects, the activity of artists, and the

effect s of the arts on audience s. Aesthetics dates from the 1750s, but Hegel clearly

echoes Plato on the arts. For Hegel, the fundamental goal of humanity is to come

to full consciousness of the Idea (or Spirit), and philosophy is the golden road to

that goal. Yet, unlike Plato, he wants to praise art, not condemn it. Because Hegel

accepts the superiority of spirit over matter, truth over appearance, universal over

particular, intellectual over sensual, and logic over feeling, he must argue that art,

understood correctly, is not merely a sensuous, material, singular thing; instead, it

contributes to human understanding of the Idea.

Hegel takes the line of argument suggested by his model of thinking. Just as the

self i n t he Master-Slave dialectic can come to self-consciousness only through

encountering an other, so thinking needs to encounter an object. The Spirit or Idea

dwells within humans, but as "a thinking consciousness" a person "draws out of

himself and put s before himself what ... is." After art has given Spirit a concrete

form, it can be apprehended. This account makes art part of the philosophical proj-

ect of coming to full consciousness-and provides Hegel w it h f irm answers to a

number of problems that bedevil aesthetics.In the first part of our selection, Hegel reviews previous notions of the arts, steer-

ing a middle path between accounts that emphasize rules and those that rely on

pure inspiration. Mor e important, Hegel asserts the superiority of human-made

artistic objects to God-made natural ones by appealing to their spiritual purpose.Spirit dwells in nature as well as in humans, but only humans are conscious of

reaching an awareness of spirit. A man needs art "to lift the inner and outer world

into his spiritual consciousness as an object in which he recognizes agai n his own

self." In Hegel's quasi-religious philosophy, human life reaches its highest form

when we recognize that the spirit of the creator permeates all of the created world,

including ourselves. To discover this true self, to align ourselves with spirit, is to

attain "free rationality."True to his historicist convictions, in the second part of our selection Hegel pres-

ents the movement to full self-consciousness as occurring in stages. Symbolic, clas-

sical, and romantic ar t f orm a dialectical triad. Symbolic art, tied to "perceived

natural objects," attempts but fails to attach a spiritual significance to those objects.

This failure has its uses, since at least "the foreignness of the Idea to natural phe-

nomena" is made manifest. The gap here between the natural and the spiritu al is,

Hegel tells us, "sublime," a striking revision of a category invoked in antiquity byLONGINUSand in the eighteenth century by JOSEPH ADDISON,EDMUNDBURKE, and

Kant.The failure of primitive symbolic art, associated with the ancient Near East, gen-

erates its antithesis, classical art; and what Hegel sees as the higher, \Vestern tradi-

tion begins. By focusing on "the human form," the Greeks gave the Idea an adequate

material embodiment. Since humans are a potent example of the union of spirit

and body, Hegel finds ingenious the classical solution to the problem of "bring[ing]

the spiritual before our eyes in a sensuouS manner." But it too has a defect-the

opposite of that of symbolic art, which could n ot give the Idea a local habitation

and name. Classical ar t f ails because it "determine[s]" spirit "as particular and

human," thus obscuring its "absolute and eternal" essence.This "defect ... demands a transition to a higher form," the Romantic. The

threat of classical art lies in its sensuousness. Romantic art, even as it utilizes sen-

suous forms, must move both artist and audience (by irony and sublimity) toward

"the inwardness of self-consciousness," toward the indwelling spirit. As a synthesis

and overcoming of symbolic and classical art, romantic art dissociates the idea

from the sensuouS form (as does symbolic art) even as it presents the sensuous form

(as does classical art). Romantic art stages the "inadequacy" of the material embodi-

ment so that "the Idea ... appear[s] perfected in itself as spirit and heart."

Thus Hegel is a champion of Romantic art. In the move from sensuouS form to

inwardness, he places the expression of "subjective inner depth" and "reAective

emotion" at the center of the artistic enterprise. This notion of art as expression is

the cornerstone o f R om an tic aesthetics-WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,PERCYBYSSHE

SHELLEY,and RALPH '"VALDOEMERSONare among the nineteenth-century writers

who espouse some version of an expressivist aesthetic-and it continues to domi-

nate popular understandings of art, especially poetry. But Hegel's historicism also

suggests a broader expressivist understanding of art, in which the artwork is viewe~as an expression of an era, zeitgeist, culture, or natlOn rather than of the artIst s


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self. In both cases, artistic representation is tied not to some visible thing imitated

by the artist but to some invisible ideas, emotions, attitudes, values, or spirit.

While much contemporary critical practice, knowingly or not, is Hegelian, post-

modern theory has seH~consciously struggled (sometimes desperately) to slough off

Hegelian habits. The great problem is Hegel's will to totality, the movement of his

philosophy. through dialectical overcoming and synthesis, to include everything.

Postmodern theorists resist this philosophical imperialism, this "totalizing impulse,"

insisting that inclusion through the dialectic always comes at the price of overcom-

ing what is most singular and different in the incorporated other. The problem with

subsuming everything into a totalizing system is the erasure of difference. Hence,

in our selection Hegel makes art safe for philosophy by downplaying or explainingaway everything that makes art different from and even antithetical to thinking.

By highlighting the different and the singular, postmodernists question Hegel's

placing o f everything into a relational, systematic whole. But since postmodern theory

does accept that meaning is the product of systematic, though differential, relations,

Hegel has been hard to negate. Because he can be neither banished nor embraced,

Hegel remains a figure to whom much contemporary theory obsessively returns.

Edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, Hegel's Wel-ke (22 vols., 1969-

72) is a complete German edition of his writings. Most of his work has been trans-

lated into English, though there is no standard scholarly edition of the complete

works. Of special relevance to students of literature are Philosophy of Right, translated

by T. M. Knox (1942); Hegel's Aesthetics: Lecture s o n Fine Art, translated by T. M.Knox (2 vols., 1975); Lecture s on t he Philosophy of World Histor)', edited by H. B. Nisbet

(1975); Phenomenolo gy o f S pirit, translated by A. V. Miller (1977); and Lectures on the

History of Philosophy, edited by Robert Brown (3 vols., 1990). The Hegel Reader, edited

by Stephen Houlgate (1998), offers selections covering the breadth of Hegel's inter-

ests. The best biography is Terry Pinkard's Hegel: A Biography (2000).

The s econdary literature on Hegel is immense; thus the following bibliography is

extremely selective. Jean Hyppolite's Genesis and Stru,cture of Hegel's Phenomenolog),

of Spil"it (1946; trans. 1974) and Alexandre Kojeve's Introduction to the Reading of

Hegel (1947; trans. 1969) are two French works that shaped the existentialist and

poststructuralist understandings of Hegel. Herbert Marcuse's Reason and Revolu-

tion: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941) and Gyorgy Lukacs's The Young Hegel

(1948; trans. 1975) are important documents in Western Marxism's appropriation of

Hegel.

The single best, and most influential, overview remains Charles Taylor's Hegel(197'i). which also comes in a slimmer ve rsion titled Hegel and Modem Society

(1979). There are also two recent superb introductions: Stephen Houlgate's An Intro-

duction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth, and History (2d ed., 2005) and Frederick Beiser's

Hegel (2005). Joh n R usson's Reading Hegel's "Phenomenology" (2004), specifically

on the Phenomenology of Sl?irit, is also recommended. Another resource for the

beginner is The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, edited by Frederick C. Beiser (1993),

which provides clear essays that summarize Hegel's work in different areas ranging

from metaphysics to ethics.

Jacques Derrida's Glas (1981; trans. 1986) is the most important of many post-

structuralist encounters with Hegel. David Kolb's The Critique of Pure Modernity:

Hegel, Heidegger, and After (1986), Judith Butler's Subjects of Desire: Hegelial~

Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987), John McGowan's Postmodemism

and It.~Critics (1991), Theodor Adorno's Hegel: Three St~ulies (1963; trans. 1993),

Louis Althusser's The Spectre of Hegel: Early Writings (I997), and Bruce Baugh'sFrench Hegel: From Surrealism to Post1'1'LOdernism(2003) are all relevant to 'Hegel's

presence in contemporary theory. For works that continue the reexamination of

Hegel in relation to current debates and themes in literary theory, see Slavoj Zizek,

Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Criti qu e of Ideology (1993); Femi-

nist Interpretations of G.WF. Hegel, edited by Patricia J. Mills (1996); Robert R.

Williams, Hegel's Ethi cs of Recognition (1997); Hegel, History, and Interpretation,

edited by Shaun Gallagher (1997); Hegel After Derrida, edited by Stuart Barnett

(1998); and Jean-Luc Nancy, Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative (1997; trans.

2002). Three excellent books that address Hegel's aesthetics are Allen Speight's

Hegel, Literature, and the Problem of Agency (2001), Theodore D. George's Tragedies

of Spirit: T racing Finitude in Hegel's "Phenomenology" (2006), and Hegel and the

Arts, edited by Stephen Houlgate (2007).

Kurt Stei nhauer's massive German/English Hegel Bibliographie (1980, 1998) cov-ers almost all the secondary literature from 1802. A more manageable bibliography,

helpfully arranged by topic , c an be found in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel,

while the "Bibliographical Essay" at the end of Houlgate's Tntroduction is very use-

ful and more recent than these other two sources.

From Phenomenology of Spirit'

[The Master-Slave Dialectic]

178. Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it

so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged [als ein

Anerkanntes]. The Notion of this its unity in its duplication embraces manyand varied meanings. Its moments, then, must on the one hand be held

strictly apart, and on the other hand must i n this differentiation at the same

time also be taken and k nown as not distinct, or in their opposite signifl-

cance. The twofold significance of the distinct moments has i n t he nature

of self-consciousness to be infinite, or directly the opposite of the determi-

nateness in which it is posited. The detailed exposition of the Notion of this

spiritual unity in its duplication will present us wi th t he process of R~cog-

nition [Anerkennen]. .

179. Self-consciousness is f aced by another s.elf-consciQusness; it has

come out of itself. This has a twofold significance: first, it has los t i tself, for

it finds i tself as an other being; secondly, in doing so i t has superseded the

other, for it d oes not see the other as an essential being, but i n t he other

sees its own self.

180. It must supersede this otherness of itself. This is the supersession

of the first ambiguity, and is therefore itself a second ambiguity. First, it

must proceed to supersede the other independent being in order thereby to

become certain of itself as the essential being; secondly, in so doing it pro-

ceeds to supersede its own self, for this other is itself.

181. This amh.iguQus_supersession of its ambiguous ot-herness is equally,

an qmbiguous return into itself. For first, through the supersession, it receives

back its own self, because, by superseding its otherness, it again becomes

equal to itsel f; but secondly, it equally gives the other self-consciousness

back again to itself, for it saw itself in the other, but supersedes this being

of itself in t he other and thus lets the other again go free.

I. Translated by A, V, Miller, who sometimes retains the original German or adds clarifying words or

phrases in brackets and has added the paragraph numbers.


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182. Now, this movement of self-consciousness in relation lo another

self-consciousness has in this way been represented as the action of one

self-consciousness, but this action of the one has itself the double signifI-

cance of being both its own action and the action of the other as well. For

the ot~er is equally independent and self-contained, and there is nothing in

it of which it is not itself the origin. The fi rst does not have the object

before it merely as it exists primarily for desire, but as something that has

an independE


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which is split into lifeless, merely immediate, unopposed extremes; and the

two clo not reciprocally give and receive one another back from each other

consciously, bu t leave each other free only indifferently, liket4~-i.n.gs. Their

act is an abstract negation, not the negation coming from consciousness,

which supersedes in such a way as to preserve and maintain what is super-

seded, and consequently survives its own supersession.3

189. In this experience, self-consciousness learns that life is as essential to

it as pure self-consciousness. In immediate self-consciousness the simple 'I' is

the absolute object which, however, for us or in itself is absolute mediation,

and has as its essential moment lasting independence. The dissolution of that

simple unity is the result of the first experience; through this there is posited

a pure self-consciousness, and a consciousness which is not purely for itself

but for another, i.e. is a merely i1'l'tmedi.ate consciousness, or consciousness in

the form of thinghood. Both moments are essential. Since to begin with they

are unequal and opposed, and their reflection into a unity has not yet been

achieved, they exist as two opposed shapes of consciousness; one is the inde-

pendent consciousness whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is

the dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or to-ee

for another. The former is IOtid [Herr], the other is bondsr;pan [Knecht]."

190. The l or d is the consciousness that exists for itself, b ut no longer

merely the Notion of such a consciousness. Rather, it is a consciousness

existing for itself which is mediated with itself through anothp conscious-

ness, i.e. through a consciousness whose nature it is to be bound.up.w-i.th..a..nexistence that is independent, or thinghool1 in general. The lor4;puts himself

into relation with both of these moments, to a thing as such, the object of

desire, and to the conscioLi-sness for which thinghood is the essential charac-

teristic. And since he is (a) qua the Notion of self-consciousness an immedi-

ate relation of being-far-self, but (b) is now at the same time mediation, or a

being-far-self which is for itsel f only through another, he is related (a) imme-

diately to both, ;md (b) mediately to each through the other. The lord relates

himself mediately to the bondsman through a being [a thing] that is indepen-

dent, for it is just this which holds the bondsman in bondage; it is his chain

from which he could not break free in the struggle, thus proving himself to

be dependent, to possess his independence in thinghood. But the lord is the

power over this thing, for he proved in the struggle that it is something

merely negative; since he is the power over this thing and this again is the

power over the other [the bondsman], it follows that he holds the other in

subjection. Equally, the lord relates himself mediately to the thing through

the bondsman; the bondsman, qua self-consciousness in general, also relates

himself negatively to the thing, and ta k es away its independence; but at the

same time the thing is independent vis-a-vis the bondsman, whose negating

of it, therefore, cannot go to the length of being altogether done with it to the

point of annihilation; in other words. he onlyworhs on it. For the lord. on the

other hand, the immediate relation becomes through this mediation the

sheer negation of the thing, or the enjoyment of it. \.\fhat desire failed to

achieve, he succeeds in doing, viz. to have done with the thing altogether,

and to achieve satisfaction in the enjoyment of it. Desire failed to do this

3. This descriptio.n of "the negation coming fromconsciousness" encapsJtJates the dialectic.

because of the thing's independence; but the lord, who has interposed the

bondsman between it an d h imself, takes to himself only the dependent

aspect of the thing and has the pure enjoyment of it. The aspect of its inde-

pendence he leaves to the bondsman, who works on i t.

191. In both of these moments the lord achieves his recognition through

another consciousness; for in them, that other consciousness is expressly

something unessential, both by its working on the thing, and by its depen-

dence on a specific existence. In neither case can it be lord over the being

of the thing and achieve absolute negation of it. Here, therefore, is present

this moment of recognition, viz. that the other consciousness sets aside its

own being-for-self, and in s o doing itself does what the first does to it.

Similarly, the other moment too is present, that this action of the second is

the first's own action; for what the bondsman does is really the action of the

lord. The latter's essential nature is to exist only for himself; he is the sheer

negative power for who m t he thing is nothing. Thus he is the pure, essen-

tial action in this relationship, while the action of the bondsman is impure

and unessential. But f or recognition proper the moment is lacking, that

what the lord does to the other he also does to himself, and what the bonds-

man does to himself he should also do to the other. The outcome is a recog-

nition that is one-sided and unequal.

192. In this recognition the unessential consciousness is for the lord the

object, which constitutes the truth of his certainty of himself. But it is clear

that this object does not correspond to its lotion, but rather that the objectin which the lord has achieved his lords hi p has in reality turned out to be

something quite different from an independent consciousness. What now

really confronts him i s not an independent consciousness, but a dependent

one. He is, therefore, not certain of being-far-self as the truth of himself.

On the contrary, his truth is in reality the unessential consciousness and its

unessential action.

19 3. The truth of the independent consciousness is accordingly the ser-

vile consciousness of the bondsman. This, it is true, appears at first outside

of itself and not as the truth of self-consciousness. But just as lordship

showed that its essential nature is the reverse of what it wants to be, so too

servitude i n i ts consummation will really t ur n into the opposite of what it

immediately is; as a consciousness forced back into itself, it will withdraw

into itself and be transformed into a truly independent consciousness.

194. We have seen what servitude is only in relation to lordship. But it is

a self-consciousness, and we have now to consider what as such it is in and

for itself. To begin with, servitude has the lord for its essential reality; hence

the truth for it is the independent consciousness that it is for itself. However,

servitude is not yet aware that this t ruth is implicit in it. But it does in fact

contain with in itsel f this truth of pure negativity and bei ng-for-self, for i t has

experienced this its own essential nature. For this consciollsness has been

fearful, not of this or that particular thing or just at odd moments, but its

whole being has been seized with dread; for it has experienced the fear of

death, the absolute Lord. In t hat experience it has been quite unmanned,

has trembled in every fibre of its being, and everything solid and stable has

been shaken to its foundations. But this pure universal movement, the abso-lute melting-away of everything stable, is the simple, essential nature of self-

consciollsness, absolute negativity, p-",.re being-far-self, wh ich consequently is


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i'I'Hplicit in this consciousness, This moment 0 1 ' pure beino-for-self is also

explicit for the bondsman, for in the lord it exists for him a: his object. Fur-

thermore, his consciousness is not this dissolution 0 1 ' evervthino stable

mer~ly in principle; in his service he actually brings this about.~ Thr;ugh his

serVIce he rIds hlmsel~ of his attachment to natural existence in every singledetail; and gets rId of It by working on it.

195. However, the feeling of absolute power both in oeneral, and in the

particular form of service, is only implicitly this dissolu~ion, and althouah

the fear of the lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom, consciousness is n"'ot

therein aware that it is a being-for-self. Through \\Iork, however, the bonds-

man becomes conscious of what he truly is. Tn the moment which corre-sponds t

Master and Slave

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Transcript of Master and Slave