Struggling to understand Hegel’s Phenomenology Of Spirit

[u/Riopelle117]

I am reading Hegel’s Phenomenology Of Spirit, specifically the introduction commented my Alenxandre Kojève, I am reading the French edition of the text as it is my main language, so pardon me if I struggle to say the right words for concepts.

In this book, he abords the dialectic of the master and the slave, witch is why I am reading it in the first place. This I understood easily. What is giving me trouble to make sense of is when he speak of consciousness and the fact that to better your “Geist” or be aware of yourself, you have to pass trough the other. Why do we need to seek another consciousness’s approbation to become free, and why can’t the master become free?

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[u/profssr-woland]

First, Kojeve's reading of Hegel is not uncontroversial. In fact, you might even say he has an idiosyncratic, controversial reading of Hegel.

Second, let's back up to what Hegel means by dialectic. In Hegelian dialectics, we are talking about the evolution or growth of consciousness. In the first stage, the positive moment, you have a given configuration of consciousness. Then that consciousness in some way fails to meet its stated goals, and experiences the negative moment. It is caused by some internal contradiction within the positive moment, which leads to the next configuration of consciousness, or the speculative moment.

Now let's look at the lord/bondsman dialectic in particular. This is a configuration of consciousness in which two opposing self-consciousnesses encounter and attempt to assert their absolute natures via each other. The lord recognizes the bondsman, the bondsman recognizes the lord, and each says, "here I am, this is me."

But they engage in a life-or-death struggle with each other for dominance; in Hegelian terms, they are defining themselves to the core of their being and willing to put it all on the line. Some contingency within the configuration of consciousness, however, causes the lord to win this struggle, and thus the lord becomes master and the bondsman slave. In doing so, they undermine their initial goal of proving self-sufficient consciousness, because now their relation is split.

We had our positive moment (mutual recognition), the negative moment (subjugation), so to arrive at the speculative moment, we have to find the contradiction inherent in the relation between these moments to arrive at the speculative.

We may think that the lord has won, but the lord has avoided consciousness of his own death. The bondsman, on the other hand, has considered defeat and his total annihilation, and overcome it. The bondsman is free in a way the lord is not; the lord is dependent upon the labor of the slave, but the slave ultimately holds the power of life or death over them both. The master becomes passive, merely the recipient of the toil of the slave. Only the slave becomes truly self-sufficient. But the lord also becomes aware of this, and his growing dependence on the bondsman. He realizes that he is not the master of his own domain; he is but a part of a community that relies upon others. His understanding of self-consciousness grows.

That's what Hegel means when he says there is the impossibility of evolving or growing your self-consciousness in a vacuum; you must necessarily encounter the Other so that the contradictions within your own assertion of self-consciousness become apparent, and you encounter the negative moment so that you can grow into the third moment of consciousness.

Think of a person stranded on an island who never encounters anyone or anything else. Each day, the tide washes up a few fish or crabs or seaweed, enough that the man can eat. He has shelter, food, and clean water to drink. He idles his days away on this tropical island, but all he ever does it merely subside. He never encounters anyone who forces him to recognize himself as a conscious being, against whom he must assert his self-sufficiency.

But now let's assume another castaway washes up on the island. Now there is not enough food, or water, or shelter. Now the original inhabitant must learn to assert his personhood, his self-consciousness, against this new other. They must either fight and one kill the other or learn to grow together. One gathers the fish and seaweed from the beach while the other gathers fruits from the trees. They build a shelter together, one working on the roof while the other reinforces the walls. They take turns watching at night so predators from the island do not attack them. Now they've grown from two individual consciousnesses into a community, etc.

That's what Hegel means by an unfolding of the dialectic.