The 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.
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 in being
each 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.
== Context ==
"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.
== Recognition ==
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."
=== 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.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."
Alexandre 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.
== Influence ==
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..
Hegel's master–slave dialectic has been
influential in the social sciences, philosophy,
literary studies, critical theory, postcolonial
studies and in psychoanalysis.
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 and
Frantz Fanon's description of the colonial
relation in Black Skin, White Masks.
Susan Buck-Morss's article Hegel and Haiti
argues that the Haitian revolution influenced
Hegel's writing of his slave-master dialectic.
== See also ==
Discourse of the Master (Jacques Lacan)
Hegelianism and Young Hegelians
Master–slave morality
Philosophy of history
== Notes ==
