Hegel

While reading Hegel’s “The Master-Slave Dialectic”, I have felt a strong urge to make a resistance against the hierarchical process of reaching the “truth of self-consciousness”  along with the concept of Spirit- absolute knowledge- but I have felt gratitude on the other hand, for the influential effect of his, on the later thinkers.  

“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.”

For example the recognition of self through “the other” made me think of Lacan and his mirror stage theory  while his thoughts on work made me think of Marx and his views on “work” as a process :

“Through work, however, the bondsman becomes conscious of what he truly is.”

But how does the slave(the dependent consciousness) reach there? Through work, but before, how? Through a dialectical struggle with the lord (seemingly independent consciousness that is actually dependent on the other dependent consciousness) a deadly ordeal “ trial by death” and only after “it has experienced the fear of death, the absolute Lord.” Although  the work is still there as the necessary formative activity: “Without the formative activity, fear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become explicitly for itself.”

Now,  is the lord of “ the lord and the bondsman” different than this Lord?  This is a capital letter, there. ‘L’ urges me to resist against the whole idea of the absoluteness in Hegel’s thoughts, once more. Maybe even before I understand it as a whole. Maybe it is me who understands it all wrong. So, please correct me.  

         
            In the introduction, The Norton Anthology  asserts that “Hegel clearly echoes Plato on the arts… 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 thing; instead it contributes to human understanding of the Idea.”

This made me think of two things. First, Derrida came to my mind and all these binary oppositions mentioned above and the restrictions of a system which is build on binary oppositions that is, language. Then I simply became curious about the relation between the dialectics and binary oppositions. Second, I thought that if art contributes to human understanding of the Idea, to what extent can that be true? Art brings questions and more questions when we look from different perspectives and search for them but lately is it the answers that we are maybe led by these questions that are praised or the variety of original questions that we discover in art? Or, is such a thing possible: Art is a tool that contributes to human understanding of the Idea- the absolute knowledge?

"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 be for another. The former is lord [Herr] , the other is bondsman [Knecht]."

It seems that the power struggle is essential in Hegel ‘s dialectical journey. As Hegel explains this dialectical system of reaching “the truth of self-consciousness” with metaphors, I cannot help but think of the “lord” as an adolescent bully who needs to prove his existence to himself by hurting the physically weaker but smarter “other” who, then by fear of this bully turns inward and later by thinking – working upon it, trying to find her/his own identity  through literary works and art, reaches a healthier point in life than this bully.

Apart from all the questions in my mind, I kind of admired how he explains human beings’ dependency on each others. 

“They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another.”

This means to me that we are all this child who needs an “other” to form our identities. Not the bully child that I made up of course but Lacan’s child perhaps, who discovers himself/herself in the eye of the other. I also agree that art contributes an understanding. When we take an inquisitive look at some characters in a novel for example, we recognize ourselves a little bit more.

"Human interest, the spiritual value possessed by an event, an individual character, an action in its complexity and outcome, is grasped in the work of art and blazoned more purely and more transparently  than is possible on the grounf other non-artistic things. Therefore the work of art stands higher than any natural product which has not made this journey through the spirit."

Here, there is the effect of this thinking in binary oppositions again: spirit or intellect over nature. However, seeing the artificial one higher than the natural one, this time as it serves a philosophical purpose.