We talked previously about how the identity
of the subordinates lie in the position to
which they are subordinate.
The loyalty of the kingdom rests on the king
because the king grants the entity identity
by his existence and authority.
In Hegel’s analysis, this crucial part of
the whole identity is thus, made socially.
The master sees the slaves and rises up to
the occasion.
The inability of the passive gives rise to
dominance of masculinity and authority.
Imagine it like a team game.
While every player in the team may be valuable,
the members look up to someone to grant them
surety of authority.
Between hundreds and thousands of choices
that can be made at any time in the game by
the team, when the captain speaks, he is the
arbitrator of reason and conduct himself.
No player is above him in the field he dominates.
The questions of utmost importance are ultimately
decided by hierarchy.
The slave removes this burden from his shoulder
and hands it to the master; the master is
his guide.
The hierarchy thus, spreads, not from the
consent of the slave, but his unwillingness
or inability to do what is required and stand
up to the task.
The master takes up the task for his team.
Both mirror each other’s identities.
The slave feels like a king.
The guard of the king is obviously at a more
elevated position than a random guard on the
street.
The slave’s opulence shines in his master’s
success for that gives him the identity.
This is why initially the masters of destiny
are treated with utmost respect for they give
voice to the ones who fear they don’t deserve
it or afraid to sacrifice to deserve it.
The founders are kept close to the heart.
The person feels pride in the authority of
the one who rules over him for his grandness,
he shares with himself; the grandness ultimately
collapsing into the summum bonum, the God
of the religion himself.
The master, seeks his identity in his subjects.
For that is what he rules over.
The lordship has no meaning if there is no
one to rule over.
The identity of the lowly manifests in his
heart.
The master accepts the lordship, and becomes
the necessary authority.
Hegel’s dialectic shows this unique relationship
between the master and slave to be such that
both the identities are dependent on this
relation.
Without this relation, no meaningful relationship
exists.
The master thus, is dependent on the slave
and the slave is dependent on the master.
Thus neither the master wishes the demise
of slaves, nor the slave wishes to revolt
to gain the place of the master, at least
in normal circumstances.
Yet it is worth remembering that slave’s
acceptance of lordship of the master is not
rooted in inherent selflessness.
The slave wishes to achieve a fraction of
what the master has had, even if in figment
of his imagination, but cannot get himself
up for the task.
The opulence of the master creates a joy in
his heart for which he considers himself to
be unworthy, realizing the truth of his failure
against the existence.
This perhaps is best explained in the Christian
motif, where a person realizing himself as
in a state of perpetual sin, and wishing to
bathe in the glory of the highest, kneels
down to one who is the lord of the all.
“Repent and believe” is not just a term
intended to give power to some people to guilt
others, as is often thought by the people
who rebel against the idea of an existent
lord, but it is a statement of person’s
own state of mind wherein he, finding himself
to be short of a moral good, diminishes his
identity to make space for one which can share
two moments of the glory he envisions.
Just like a customer does for hedonistic desires
when he approaches the doors of the house
of sin.
The social identity is crafted not wholly
by the person himself but by the whole society
around him, especially the person he is interacting.
This manifestation of identity from division
of consciousness is also responsible for false
allusions, which Hegel describes later on.
In a nominal sense, the Hegelian thesis seems
to be at odds with Essentialism, for true
nature, essentialists claim is in the being
itself.
Yet, what the dialectic is against in reality
is Existentialism, questioning it via arguing
that identity is not what a person makes of
it, but crafted by the world itself.
The dominance hierarchy is about shifts, in
fact, gets reversed.
This play of interpersonal identities gets
murkier as Hegel goes one step further but
stay with this till the next time we discuss
how the loyalties switch.
