In this video, I'll be discussing Hegel's notion of the master- servant dialectic as
it emerges in his text, The Phenomenology of Spirit, in hopes that this will help
you in your reading process of this text.
Hegel's text the phenomenology of spirit is all about the different shapes that
consciousness takes as it develops a sense of itself and leads to absolute knowing.
If you're curious about how this relates to the dialectical process,
I have a video in the dialectical method that I would recommend watching.
But I think the master servant dialectic is one of the
ways, or one of the scenes, in the phenomenology of spirit that has
been particularly salient for people.
It's probably the most famous section of the phenomenology of spirit.
I don't really know how Hegel would feel about that.
But in any case, um, it, it does have a particular kind of hold on
a lot of people's imagination about the phenomenology of spirit and has
been particularly influential on French intellectuals in the 20th
century, especially those coming out of phenomenology and existentialism.
Hegel sets the scene for us by saying that in order for consciousness to really
emerge into self- consciousness, it has to be faced with another consciousness,
another being I can't develop a full self consciousness if I don't encounter others.
They're mutually constitutive.
Hegel asks us to imagine a scene in which two consciousnesses are
facing each other for the first time.
And he thinks that this scene would fundamentally lead to conflict:
specifically, to a battle to the death.
A lot of us like to go about our everyday lives, kind of vaguely knowing
that there are other people around, but really thinking that we're the
only mind in the universe, and then sometimes things happen that disrupt
that sense of sovereignty we have.
And when those things happen, we feel fundamentally threatened.
So Hegel says, oh my goodness.
I suddenly come into contact with another person.
I feel threatened and my impulse is to kill them.
Their impulse is to kill me.
So the two people in this scene engage in a battle to the death.
And ultimately one of them asks for mercy.
The person who asks for mercy, Hegel says, has begged for their life.
And that means that the person who was on the receiving end of the
begging, the person who didn't give up, ends up becoming the master.
The person who did beg for their life ends up becoming the servant,
sometimes translated as slave.
So you'll see this sometimes as the master slave dialectic, um, in part,
because early translations, especially translations into French of Hegel's
phenomenology of spirit translated it as such, but nowadays it's translated
as master servant dialectic, the Knecht.
you get it.
Once this relationship is set up where one person is the master
and one person is the servant, the master puts the servant to work.
Let's say they tell the servant, okay, go work in the field.
Make sure that I have sustenance.
Make sure that I have food so I can, you know, just go hang out.
so the servant starts work the field.
And in working the field, they are putting their own human spirit into
the field, they are planting seeds.
They are tending the field.
They are externalizing themselves in the world and, in doing so, it seems like
they're servile to the master, right?
Cuz the master is giving them orders, but they actually come to have an independent
relationship with what they're working on, such that they see in the field that
they've been plowing, been tending, now are able to harvest from, an affirming.
sense of, Hey, I've created this thing that is outside me.
The servant is directly related to what they're working on.
And the master is immediately related to it.
By virtue of the servant being the mediator, the master gets
to enjoy the things that the servant has created, right?
The vegetables that they have planted, tended, and then harvested, for instance.
And that gives them a sense of affirmation as well.
But by virtue of being mediated through the servant, The master's affirmation
ultimately is dependent on the servant.
The servant has been dependent on the master because the master was
the one whom the servant begged for mercy, but ultimately Hegel thinks
the power differential inverts is the master is dependent upon
the servant for their sustenance.
In addition to that, the servant is also giving the master recognition as a master.
So the master is only a master by virtue of being recognized
as such by the servant.
But the master is treating the servant as an instrument, as a thing.
And so what ultimately ends up happening is that the master undermines their very
desire for recognition because recall that what they wanted from the life
and death struggle was to be recognized as a consciousness and specifically
as a sovereign and consciousness.
But this requires being recognized by another subject.
And so in treating the servant as an instrument or a thing, the
master ends up undermining the potential for recognition because
they can't be recognized by a thing.
They need to be recognized by another subject.
So, not only does the master depend on the servant, both for sustenance and
for recognition, but they actually can't get the recognition that they need.
And so the master's aims are doomed to be thwarted.
They can't actually have the mastery that they want, which is the mastery of being
recognized as a master by a subject.
Meanwhile, as the servant is working the land and getting a sense of
affirmation of selfhood through creatively transforming it, they also have a sense
that they can transform themselves.
They get a sense of their originality and their ability to shape not only the
world around them, but also themselves.
So for Hegel, uh, being in service to something else is a kind of necessary
apprenticeship for consciousness, because it allows us to take our sort of finite
and contingent self and transform it into something that goes beyond what
we originally thought was possible.
It unlocks our creative potential.
Thus, the servant ends up having more self- sufficiency than the master does.
And so it seems like actually the servant is higher than the master.
They've mastered nature and they've mastered themselves and
they don't actually need the master to help keep them alive.
Now, of course, the servant would still need the recognition by the free
subjectivity of the master in order to really achieve self consciousness.
And this is ultimately what Hegel thinks we can achieve through the state, a
reciprocal recognition of consciousnesses.
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