The Ethics of the Master-Slave Dialectic

As a refresher, the master-slave dialectic begins from the idea that consciousness can only gain knowledge of itself as an individual by meeting resistance from the objects over which it exerts its will. The problem is that objects can’t really offer resistance, as they either bend to our wills or break. So the only way that consciousness can come to know itself is through encountering the one thing that can offer resistance—another consciousness. To Hegel, this resistance amounts to nothing less than a life-and-death struggle, in which both consciousnesses offer up their lives in the effort to be recognized. When one consciousness decides that the struggle for recognition is not worth dying, it consents to slavery, giving the new “master” the recognition it desires; however, this recognition is ultimately hollow, as the slave is not giving it in earnest, but as a defense. In class, we compared this to one person in a relationship bending to the will of the other and saying “I love you,” even when the sentiment is not true. In the master-slave dialectic, neither consciousness achieves the desired recognition. There are two major ethical implications here that I want to examine. First, that the slave effectively chooses slavery; second, that consciousness’ individual knowledge of itself is dependent on other consciousnesses—that is, we need other people so that we can be “selves.”

These implications work together, so I want to look at the first one in light of the second. The obvious ramification of the second (to me, at least) is that, because the individuated self is contingent upon the resistance and recognition of and by another consciousness, we should care about others. To view the self as a sui generis creation is ultimately a fruitless (and pretentious) stance, willfully ignorant of others’ influence on one’s individual being. So shouldn’t we actively seek to mitigate the enslavement—metaphorical or literal—of other consciousnesses? To accept the first implication, that enslavement is at the whim of the enslaved—is to condone it. Though I can agree that slaves to have the freedom to change their predicaments (through suicide, if nothing else), how can we submit them to such a challenge if they are not phenomenologists? People born and raised in oppressive environments cannot have true conceptions of their individuated consciousnesses and as such may not be aware of their own freedom. The role of the un-oppressed—those outside a particular master-slave relation—then, might be to undermine the master-slave relationship, validating the oppressed and encouraging a return to the life-and-death struggle for recognition. This is revolution.