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 fact th' ~ everyone shares certain universal traits; divination consequently is inspir:d as the reader 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 receives ItS security first. from an affirmative comparison, without which it mi ht become outlandIsh. But the comparative of itself cannot yield 't Tgh e I d .f' aumy. e each other, and this can onl ha en b g nera an . specl.IlC must permeate means 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 understood in terms 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 execution. As a r~\le ~t IS easy enough t.o determine, even if it is not exactly specified; but for a. t a.t, one can ?e mIstaken. One finds the purpose of the work most precIsely m It.S ~eculIa.r or characteristic development of its material. Often the characteristIc motIf has only a limited influence on certain sections of work, but nonetheless of the wo r k b y Ism . fl uence on 't a h Th' . shapes the character ot . 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.

teaching at the University of Jena in 1801, the year he published his first book. In 1807 he published Phenomenology of Spirit, the nrst version of his grand philosophical vision and 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), and the resultant synthesis of the two through a process of "overcoming" (atifgehoben in German). We might call the dialectic 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 constant motion. Meaning and truth are never fixed because they are always in process. 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 perfection at the end of history, and at times he appears to believe that his philosophy is that end, the moment when consciousness fully understands its own nature-its essential unity 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 "absolute knowledge" that would consist of Spirit recognizing the world as its own emanation. The changes of history, its dialectical path, would then come to an end. The dream of such completion has proven extraordinarily alluring yet often dangerous. $,horn of that dream, Hegel's philosophy gives us a dynamic world of interrelationships in which the various elements contend with one another through dialectical struggle. Hegel's most famous disciple, KARLMARX,adopts both the vision of struggle and the dream of an end to strife. But Hegelian themes also echo, in a different key, throughout the work of poststructuralists such as MICHELFOUCAULT and JULIA KRISTEVA. Our nrst selection presents the most famous instance of dialectical confrontation in Hegel, the so-called Master-Slave ("lord" and "bondsman" in our translation) dialectic. Although dense and abstract, this section of Phenomenology of Spirit has been very influential, especially in France, where, by way of Alexandre Kojeve's celebrated Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (1947), it shaped the thought of JEANPAULSARTRE,SIMO E DE BEAUVOIR, ACQUESLACAN,and JACQUESDERRIDA,among J others. The question Hegel asks is this: ~S'~,,-Qpesa human being C0.me to consciousn?s-oL itself as a self (a consciousness that animals lack)? Hegel assumes that hYluans are not born with the sense "I am John Smith, and this is what I believe and ap:l-l-i.ke."How then do we acquire self-consciousness? Only in meeting with somethi[lg that is not the self, according to Hegel. Confrontatiqn with my Iir;pits. with the n'0t:;J;elf, enables me to identify what is self, what belongs to me. The reality of this discovered self depends on two things: I must have the consciousness that I am a self (which Hegel calls "being-~or-self"), and my existence must be acknowledged or recognized by other human beings ("being-fw-others'). In Hegel's words, "Selfconsciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being ackno,ledged." Most interpreters have seen Hegel as dem~nstrating that selfhood is a social fact. The child develops a sense of self largely ~~ause others treat it as a self-and the self will be s$lci'llly cons,tructed in different ways, depending on how it is treated. Selves a{.c-.not born but made, in a dialectical social process 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 consciousness 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

GEORG

WILHELM

FRIEDRICH

HEGEL

1770-1831
d IMMANUELKANT(1724-J804) and G . W . F . H ege I are t h e ARISTOTLEand PLATOof n~o ~rn Continental 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 entity's meaning rests not in its~IT~u;~~ t I.' re atIOnshlp of that thing to other things .' within an all -e ncompassmg, e . I I everc 1angmg ~v 10 e. Where the part is situated is crucial. All modern criticism that stresses t e hlstorlcal and social context of utterances or artworks is Hegelia t some degree. ,. n 0 . Hegel was the son of a minor court official in the 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 . h S h II' Af d' r ne nc von c e II1g. ter gra uatll1g in J 793, Hegel worked as a private tutor until he began

moment of the full selfmovement of humans through time to the culminating consciousness of Spirit. In the Master-Slave dialectic, the counterposed selves who are coming to consciousness have so much at stake that their relationships are a constant source-of strife, "such that they prove themselves and each other through a life-and-death struggle." Selves do not take their fundamental dependence on others kindly. Here power enters the discussion, as Hegel imagines that each individual would pref~x to guarantee continued recognition from the other, while not extending that recognitIOn 111turn. Such imbalance, taken to its extreme, is figured by Hegel as the relationship 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 return for 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 it is 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 selfformation 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 independent 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-consciousness achieved through wOo/k. (The Hegelian description of labor as redeeming greatly II1Auenced Marx.) The Slave gains a sense of self because his labor has an effect on a material world of resistant objects. The, Master has lost contact with 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 willing 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 account prov!des a memorable and persuasive model for understanding the complex dynamics of intersybjective relationships. Selfhood is a social product that individuals crave; 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 and social power that are distinct from physical force or the power afforded by superior wealth. Whenever modern literary theorists and critics have been interested in questions of identity and of the self's confrontation with the other (however understood) Hegel's famous account of the Master-Slave dialectic has hovered in the 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 of the arts, the features of art objects, the activity of artists, and the effects of the arts on audiences. 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 in the 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 puts before himself what ... is." After art has given Spirit a concrete form, it can be apprehended. This account makes art part of the philosophical project of coming to full consciousness-and provides Hegel with firm answers to a number of problems that bedevil aesthetics. In the first part of our selection, Hegel reviews previous notions of the arts, steering a middle path between accounts that emphasize rules and those that rely on pure inspiration. More 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 again 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 presents the movement to full self-consciousness as occurring in stages. Symbolic, classical, and romantic art form 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 phenomena" is made manifest. The gap here between the natural and the spiritual is, Hegel tells us, "sublime," a striking revision of a category invoked in antiquity by LONGINUSand in the eighteenth century by JOSEPH ADDISON,EDMUNDBURKE, and Kant. The failure of primitive symbolic art, associated with the ancient Near East, generates its antithesis, classical art; and what Hegel sees as the higher, \Vestern tradition 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 not give the Idea a local habitation and name. Classical art fails 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 sensuous 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 embodiment 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 of Romantic aesthetics-WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,and RALPH '"VALDO EMERSONare among the nineteenth-century writers who espouse some version of an expressivist aesthetic-and it continues to dominate 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

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, postmodern 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 overcoming 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 explaining away everything that makes art different from and even antithetical to thinking. By highlighting the different and the singular, postmodernists question Hegel's placing of 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.

Hegel in relation to current debates and themes in literary theory, see Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (1993); Feminist Interpretations of G.WF. Hegel, edited by Patricia J. Mills (1996); Robert R. Williams, Hegel's Ethics 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: Tracing Finitude in Hegel's "Phenomenology" (2006), and Hegel and the Arts, edited by Stephen Houlgate (2007). Kurt Stei n hauer's massive German/English Hegel Bibliographie (1980, 1998) covers almost all the secondary literature from 1802. A more manageable bibliography, helpfully arranged by topic, can be found in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, while the "Bibliographical Essay" at the end of Houlgate's Tntroduction is very useful and more recent than these other two sources.

From Phenomenology
Edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, Hegel's Wel-ke (22 vols., 196972) is a complete German edition of his writings. Most of his work has been translated 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: Lectures on Fine Art, translated by T. M. Knox (2 vols., 1975); Lectures on the Philosophy of World Histor)', edited by H. B. Nisbet (1975); Phenomenology of Spirit, 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 interests. The best biography is Terry Pinkard's Hegel: A Biography (2000). The secondary 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 Revolution: 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 version titled Hegel and Modem Society (1979). There are also two recent superb introductions: Stephen Houlgate's An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth, and History (2d ed., 2005) and Frederick Beiser's Hegel (2005). John Russon'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 poststructuralist 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's French 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 [The Master-Slave

of Spirit'

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 many and varied meanings. Its moments, then, must on the one hand be held strictly apart, and on the other hand must in this differentiation at the same time also be taken and known as not distinct, or in their opposite signiflcance. The twofold significance of the distinct moments has in the nature of self-consciousness to be infinite, or directly the opposite of the determinateness in which it is posited. The detailed exposition of the Notion of this spiritual unity in its duplication will present us with the process of R~cognition [Anerkennen]. . 179. Self-consciousness is faced by another s.elf-consciQusness; it has come out of itself. This has a twofold significance: first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being; secondly, in doing so it has superseded the other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the 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 proceeds 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 itself; 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 the other and thus lets the other again go free.

I. Translated by A, V, Miller, who sometimes retains the original phrases in brackets and has added the paragraph numbers.

German

or adds clarifying

words or

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 signifIcance 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 first does not have the object before it merely as it exists primarily for desire, but as something that has an independE<pt existence of its own, which, therefore, it cannot utilize for its own purposes, if that object does not of its own accord do what the first does to it. Thus the movement is simply the double movement of the two self-consciousnesses. Each sees the other do the same as it does; each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does only in so far as the other does the same. Action by one side only would be useless because what is to happen can only be brought about by both. 183. Thus the action has a double significance not only because it is directed against itself as well as against the other, but also because it is indivisibly the action of one as well as of the other. 184. In this movement we see repeated the process which presented itself as the play of Forces, but repeated now in consciousness. What in that process was for us, is true here of the extremes themselves. The middle term is self-consciousness which splits into the extremes; and each extreme is this exchanging of its own determinateness and an absolute transition into the opposite. Although, as consciousness, it does indeed come oui of itself, yet, though out of itself, it is at the same time kept back within itself, isfor itself, and the self outside it, is for it. It is aware that it at once is, and is not, another consciousness, and equally that this other is for itself only when it supersedes itself as being for itself, and is for itself only in the being-for-self of the other. Each is for the other the middle term, through which each mediates itself with itself and unites with itself; and each is for itself, and for the other, an immediate being to its own account, which at the same time is such only through this mediation.2 They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another. 185. \lVe have now to see how the process of this pure Notion of recognition, of the duplicating of self-consciousness in its oneness, appears to self-consciousness. At first, it will exhibit the side of the inequality of the two, or the splitting-up of the middle term into the extremes which, as extremes, are opposed to one another, one being only recognized, the other only recognizing. 186. Self-consciousness is, to begin with, simple being-far-self, self-equal through the exclusion from itself of everything else. For it, its essence and absolute object is 'I'; and in this immediacy, or in this [mere] being, of its being-for-self, iUs_.an individual. What is 'otber' for it is an unessential, negatively characterized object. But the 'other" is also a self-consciousness; one individual is confronted by another individual. 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-for the object in its immediacy is here determined as Life. They are, for each other, shapes of consciousness which have not yet accomplished the move-

ment of absolute abstraction, of rooling-out all immediate being, and of being merely the purely negative being of self-identical consciousness; in other words, they have not as yet exposed themselves to each other in the form of pure being-for-self, or as self-consciousness. Each is indeed certain of its own self, but not of the other, and therefore its own self-certainty still has no truth. For it would have truth only if its own being-for-self had confronted it as an independent object, or, what is the same thing, if the object had presented itself as this pure self-certainty. But according to the Notion of recognition this is possible only when each is for the other what the other is for it, only when each in its own self through its own action, and again through the action of the other, achieves this pure abstraction of beingfor-self. 187. The presentation of itself, however, as the pure abstraction of selfconsciousness consists in showing itself as the pure negation of its objective mode, or in showing that it is not attached to any specific existence, not to the individuality common to existence as such, that it is not attached to life. This presentation is a twofold action: action on the part of the other, and action on its own part. In so far as it is the action of the other, each seeks the death of the other. But in doing so, the second kind of action, action on its own part, is also involved; for the former involves the staking of its own life. Thus the relation of the two self-conscious individuals is such that they prove themselves and each other through a life-and-death struggle. They must engage in this struggle, for they must raise their certainty of beingfor themselves to truth, both in the case of the other and in their own case. And it is only through staking one's life that freedom is won; only thus is it proved that for self-consciousness, its essential being is not [just] being, not the immediate form in which it appears, not its submergence in the expanse of life, but rather that there is nothing present in it which could not be regarded as a vanishing moment, that it is only pure being-far-self. The individual who has not risked his life may well be recognized as a person, but he has not attained to the truth of this recognition as an independent selfconsciousness. Similarly, just as each stakes his own life, so each must seek the other's death, for it values the other no more than itself; its essential being is present to it in the form of an 'other', it is outside of itself and must rid itself of its self-externality. The other is an immediate consciousness entangled in a variety of relationships, and it must regard its otherness as a pure being-for-self or as an absolute negation. 188. This trial by death, however, does away with the truth which was supposed to issue from it, and so, too, with the certainty of self generally. For just as life is the natural setting of consciousness, independence without absolute negativity, so death is the natural negation of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the required significance of recognition. Death certainly shows that each staked his life and held it of no account, both in himself and in the other; but that is not for those who survived this struggle. They put an end to their consciousness in its alien setting of natural existence, that is to say, they put an end to themselves, and are done away with as extremes wanting to be for themselves, or to have an existence of their own. But with this there vanishes from their interplay the essential moment of splitting into extremes with opposite characteristics; and the middle term collapses into a lifeless unity

unopposed extremes; and the which is split into lifeless, merely immediate, two clo not reciprocally give and receive one another back from each other consciously, but 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 superseded, 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 independent 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 lord is the consciousness that exists for itself, but no longer merely the Notion of such a consciousness. Rather, it is a consciousness existing for itself which is mediated with itself through anothp consciousness, i.e. through a consciousness whose nature it is to be bound.up.w-i.th..a..n existence 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 characteristic. And since he is (a) qua the Notion of self-consciousness an immediate relation of being-far-self, but (b) is now at the same time mediation, or a being-far-self which is for itself only through another, he is related (a) immediately 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 independent, 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 takes 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 consciousness" encapsJtJates the dialectic.

from

because of the thing's independence; but the lord, who has interposed the bondsman between it and himself, takes to himself only the dependent aspect of the thing and has the pure enjoyment of it. The aspect of its independence he leaves to the bondsman, who works on it. 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 dependence 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 so 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 whom the thing is nothing. Thus he is the pure, essential action in this relationship, while the action of the bondsman is impure and unessential. But for recognition proper the moment is lacking, that what the lord does to the other he also does to himself, and what the bondsman does to himself he should also do to the other. The outcome is a recognition 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 object in which the lord has achieved his lordship has in reality turned out to be something quite different from an independent consciousness. What now really confronts him is 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. 193. The truth of the independent consciousness is accordingly the servile 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 in its consummation will really turn 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 truth 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 it 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 that 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 absolute melting-away of everything stable, is the simple, essential nature of selfconsciollsness, absolute negativity, p-",.re being-far-self, wh ich consequently is

i'I'Hplicit in this consciousness, This moment 01' pure beino-for-self is also explicit for the bondsman, for in the lord it exists for him a: his object. Furthermore, his consciousness is not this dissolution 01' 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 single detail; 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 bondsman becomes conscious of what he truly is. Tn the moment which corresponds t<~desire in the lord's consciousness, it did seem that the aspect of unessentIal relation to the thing fell to the lot of the bondsman, since in that relation the thing retained its independence. Desire has reserved to itself the pure negating of the object and thereby its unalloyed feeling of self. But that is the reason why this satisfaction is itself only a fleeting one, for it lacks the side of objectivity and permanence. Work, on the other hand is desire held in check, fleetingness staved off; in other words, work forms ;nd shapes the thing. The negative relation to the object becomes its form and som~thlJ1g permanent, because it is precisely for the worker that the object has Independence, This negative middle term or the formative activity is at the same time the individuality or pure being-for-self of consciousness which now, in the work outside of it, acquires an element of permanences It is in this way, therefore, that consciousness, qua worker, comes to see in the independent being [of the object] its own independence. 19? But the form~tive activity has not only this positive significance that In It the pure beIng-for-self of the servile consciousness acquires an eXistence; It also has negative significance with respect to its first moment, fear. F~r, in fashioning the t~ing, the bondsman's own negativity, his beingfo~-s~lf, becomes an object !-or him only through his setting at nought the eXlstll1g sh.ape confronting him. But this objective negative moment is none other than the alien being before which it has trembled. Now, ho\~'ever, he destroys this alien I.,egative moment, posits himself as a negative in the perma n~nt order of thmgs, and thereby becomes for him,self, someone existing on hIS own account. In the lord, the being-for-self is an 'other' for the ?ondsman" or is only for him [i.e. is not his own]; in fear, the being-for-self IS present In the bondsman himself; in fashioning the thing, he becomes aware that b~ing~for-self ,belongs to him, that he himself exists essentially and ac~ually m hIS own n.ght. The shape does not become something other than himself t.hrough b~lI1g made external to him; for it is precisely this shape that IShIS pure bemg-for-self, which in this externality is seen by him to be the truth. Through this rediscovery of himself by himself, the bondsman realizes that it is precisely in his work wherein he seemed to have only an alienated eXistence that he acquires a mind of his o"vn. For this reflection, the two moments of fear and service as such, as also that of formative activity, are necessary, both being at the same time in a universal mode. Without the discipline of service and obedience, fear remains at the formal stage, and does not extend to the known real world of existence. Without
5.~\~o.rk as "formative .activity," according to Hegel, creates stdb,hty for the conscIOusness that shapes that object. a stable object that comes to signify a similar

the formative actIVity, fear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become explicitly for itself. If consciousness fashions the thing without that initial absolute fear, it is only an empty self-centered attitude; for its form or negativity is not negativity per se, and therefore its formative activity cannot give it a consciousness of itself as essential being. If it has not experienced absolute fear but only some lesser dread, the negative being has remained for it something external, its substance has not been infected by it through and through. Since the entire contents of its natural consciousness have not been jeopardized, determinate being still in principle attaches to it; having a 'mind of one's own' is self-will, a freedom which is still enmeshed in servitude. Just as little as the pure form can become essential being for it, just as little is that form, regarded as extended to the particular, a universal formative activity, an absolute Notion; rather it is a skill which is master over some things, but not over the universal power and the whole of objective being.

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(a) As for the first point, that a work of art is a product of human activity, this view has given rise to the thought that this activity, being the conscious production of an external object, can also be known and expounded, and learnt and pursued by others. For what one man makes, another, it may seem, could make or imitate too, if only he were first acquainted with the manner of proceeding; so that, granted universal acquaintance with the rules of artistic production, it would only be a matter of everyone's pleasure to carry out the procedure in the same manner and produce works of art. It is in this way that the rule-providing theories, mentioned above, with their prescriptions calculated for practical application, have arisen. But what can be carried out on such directions can only be something formally regular and mechanical. For the mechanical alone is of so external a kind that only a purely empty exercise of will and dexterity is required for receiving it into our ideas and activating it; this exercise does not require to be supplemented by anything concrete, or by anything not prescribed in universal rules. This comes out most vividly when such prescriptions do not limit themselves to the purely external and mechanical, but extend to the significant and spiritual activity of the artist. In this sphere the rules contain only vague generalities, for example that 'the theme should be interesting, every character should speak according to his standing, age, sex, and situation'. But if rules are to satisfy here, then their prescriptions should have been drawn up at the same time with such precision that they could be observed just as they are expressed, without any further spiritual activity of the