G.W.

F Hegel
MASTER-SLAVE DIALECTICAL
LORDSHIP BONDAGE
 Hegel is one of the greatest systematic thinkers in the history of Western philosophy.

 Hegel boldly claimed his own system of philosopher represented in historical

culmination of all previous philosophical thought.

 Hegel’s overall encyclopedic system is divided into the science of logic, the
philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of spirit.

 Hegel considered himself to be an expression of the self-concsiousness, and

recognition.

 Hegel discusses the forms of government the three main types being tyranny,
democracy and hereditary monarchy. Tyranny is found typically primate or
undeveloped states, democracy exists in states where there is realization of individual
identity but no split between the public and private sphere, and the hereditary
monarchy is the appropriate form of political authority in the modern world in
providing strong central government along with a system of indirect representation
through Estates.
 http://journalism.uoregon.edu/~tbivins/J644/pdfs/Hegel-
Master-Slave.pdf
 he master–slave dialectic is the common name for a famous
passage of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's
Phenomenology of Spirit, though the original German phrase,
Herrschaft und Knechtschaft, is more properly translated as
Lordship and Bondage.[1] It is widely considered a key element in
Hegel's philosophical system, and has heavily influenced many
subsequent philosophers.

 The passage describes, in narrative form, the development of self-

consciousness as such in an encounter between what are thereby
(i.e., emerging only from this encounter) two distinct,
self-conscious beings; the essence of the dialectic is the movement
or motion of recognizing, in which the two self-consciousnesses are
constituted each in being recognized as self-conscious by the other.
This movement, inexorably taken to its extreme, takes the form of a
"struggle to the death" in which one masters the other, only to find
that such lordship makes the very recognition he had sought
impossible, since the bondsman, in this state, is not free to offer it.
"Independent and Dependent Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage" is the first of
two titled subsections in the "Self-Consciousness" chapter of Phenomenology. It is
preceded in the chapter by a discussion of "Life" and "Desire", among other things, and
is followed by "Free Self-Consciousness: Stoicism, Skepticism, and the Unhappy
Consciousness".

Hegel wrote this story or myth in order to explain his idea of how self-consciousness
dialectically sublates into what he variously refers to as Absolute Knowledge, Spirit, and
Science. As a work, the Phenomenology may be considered both as an independent work,
apparently considered by Hegel to be an a priori for understanding the Science of Logic,
and as a part of the Science of Logic, where Hegel discusses absolute knowledge.
Crucially, for Hegel, absolute knowledge, or Spirit, cannot come to be without
first a self-consciousness recognizing another self-consciousness. Such an issue
in the history of philosophy had only ever been explored by Johann Gottlieb
Fichte and its treatment marks a watershed in European philosophy.
Hegel's myth

In order to explain how this works, Hegel uses a story that is in essence an
abstracted, idealized history about how two people meet. However, Hegel's idea
of the development of self-consciousness from consciousness, and its sublation
into a higher unity in absolute knowledge, is not the contoured brain of natural
science and evolutionary biology, but a phenomenological construct with a
history; one that must have passed through a struggle for freedom before
realising itself.

The abstract language used by Hegel never allows one to interpret this story in
a straightforward fashion. It can be read as self-consciousness coming to itself
through a child's or adult's development, or self-consciousness coming to be in
the beginning of human history (see hominization) or as that of a society or
nation realising freedom.
That the master–slave dialectic can be interpreted as an internal process occurring in one
person or as an external process between two or more people is a result, in part, of the fact
that Hegel asserts an "end to the antithesis of subject and object". What occurs in the human
mind also occurs outside of it. The objective and subjective, according to Hegel, sublate one
another until they are unified, and the "story" takes this process through its various
"moments" when the lifting up of two contradictory moments results in a higher unity.

First, the two abstract consciousnesses meet and are astounded at the realisation of the self as
a foreign object. Each can choose to ignore the other, in which case no self-consciousness
forms and each views the other merely as an animated object rather than an equivalent
subject. Or, they become mesmerized by the mirror-like other and attempt, as they previously
had done in controlling their own body, to assert their will.

According to Hegel,

"On approaching the other it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as another being;
secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for this primitive consciousness does not regard
the other as essentially real but sees its own self in the other."[2]

Reaction
When initially confronted with another person, the self cannot be immediately recognized
'Appearing thus immediately on the scene, they are for one another like ordinary objects,
independent shapes, individuals submerged in the being [or immediacy] of Life'.
Death struggle

A struggle to the death ensues. However, if one of the two should die, the
achievement of self-consciousness fails. Hegel refers to this failure as
"abstract negation" not the negation or sublation required. This death is
avoided by the agreement, communication of, or subordination to, slavery.
In this struggle the Master emerges as Master because he does not fear death
since he does not see his identity dependent on life, while the slave out of
this fear consents to the slavery. This experience of fear on the part of the
slave is crucial, however, in a later moment of the dialectic, where it
becomes the prerequisite experience for the slave's further development.
Enslavement and mastery
Truth of oneself as self-conscious is achieved only if both live; the
recognition of the other gives each of them the objective truth and self-
certainty required for self-consciousness. Thus, the two enter into the
relation of master/slave and preserve the recognition of each other.
 Contradiction and Resolution

 However, this state is not a happy one and does not achieve full self-
consciousness. The recognition by the slave is merely on pain of death.
The master's self-consciousness is dependent on the slave for
recognition and also has a mediated relation with nature: the slave
works with nature and begins to shape it into products for the master.
As the slave creates more and more products with greater and greater
sophistication through his own creativity, he begins to see himself
reflected in the products he created, he realises that the world around
him was created by his own hands, thus the slave is no longer
alienated from his own labour and achieves self-consciousness, while
the master on the other hand has become wholly dependent on the
products created by his slave; thus the master is enslaved by the labour
of his slave.
 Conclusions

 One interpretation of this dialectic is that neither a slave nor a master can be considered
as fully self-conscious. A person who has already achieved self-consciousness could be
enslaved, so self-consciousness must be considered not as an individual achievement, or
an achievement of natural and genetic evolution, but as a social phenomenon.[3]

 As philosopher Robert Brandom explains:

 "Hegel's discussion of the dialectic of the Master and Slave is an attempt to show that
asymmetric recognitive relations are metaphysically defective, that the norms they
institute aren't the right kind to help us think and act with—to make it possible for us to
think and act. Asymmetric recognition in this way is authority without responsibility, on
the side of the Master, and responsibility without authority, on the side of the Slave.
And Hegel's argument is that unless authority and responsibility are commensurate and
reciprocal, no actual normative statuses are instituted. This is one of his most important
and certainly one of his deepest ideas, though it's not so easy to see just how the
argument works."[
lexandre Kojève's unique interpretation differs
from this. For Kojève, people are born and
history began with the first struggle, which
ended with the first masters and slaves. A
person is always either master or slave; and
there are no real humans where there are no
masters and slaves. History comes to an end
when the difference between master and slave
ends, when the master ceases to be master
because there are no more slaves and the slave
ceases to be a slave because there are no more
masters. A synthesis takes place between
master and slave: the integral citizen of the
universal and homogenous state created by
Napoleon.[5]
The master and slave relationship influenced
numerous discussions and ideas in the 20th
century, especially because of its supposed
connection to Karl Marx's conception of class
struggle as the motive force of social
development.[citation needed].

Hegel's master–slave dialectic has been

influential in the social sciences, philosophy,
literary studies, critical theory, postcolonial
studies and in psychoanalysis.[6] Furthermore,
Hegel's master–slave trope, and particularly the
emphasis on recognition, has been of crucial
influence on Martin Buber's relational schema
in I and Thou, Simone de Beauvoir's account of
the history and dynamics of gender relations in
The Second Sex[7] and Frantz Fanon's
description of the colonial relation in Black
Skin, White Masks.[8] Susan Buck-Morss's
article Hegel and Haiti argues that the Haitian
revolution influenced Hegel's writing of his
slave-master dialectic.[9]
See also