Contemporary Readings of Hegel (Session 4)

Hi and welcome to the new Center for Research and Practice Contemporary Readings of Hegel with Ray Bressier. I'm going to pass the mic off to him now. Hi, thanks. Okay, so today we're going to focus on the so-called master and slave dialectic and the phenomenology and this follows on from the account of self-consciousness which as we discussed last week involves falls of the is the first kind of major transition from

consciousness to self-consciousness self-consciousness is characterized as the desire for recognition and Hegel famously says that would set no in paragraph 167 Hegel writes with self-consciousness we have therefore entered the native realm of truth so self-consciousness is whereas consciousness was structured around the diff you know the distinction between self and other or between what is for it and what is in itself eventually through a laborious process consciousness becomes self-conscious and realizes that

that it is itself generating its own object. So here we have the... There's lots to suggest in the moments leading up to the transition to self-consciousness that Hegel thinks that Kantian pure apperception, what Kant called the transcendental unity of pure apperception, marks the point at which reason or rationality becomes fully self-aware, aware of itself and of the way in which it generates its own object.

So the next transition, after the Hegel says that self-consciousness manifests itself first as a desire, the desire for its own self-unification. Because self-consciousness is only itself, can only relate to itself through another, it has to externalize itself and generate another to itself, but then it has to reintegrate this other within itself. And this movement of externalization, re-internalization is a movement of desire.

And ultimately this movement of desire is consummated in the desire for recognition. So in a way, the movement from consciousness to self-consciousness is a transition from cognition, and the German word is erkentness, to recognition. And the German word that Hegel uses is anerkantness. So obviously there's a close etymological link between the two words, erkentness, cognition, and recognition, anerkantness. and this is a crucial transition for you know obviously for interpreters such as Pepin and Brandon because the claim now is that the relationship to an object or

the relationship to truth to what is in itself mind independent reality is mediated by the relation among a community of self consciousnesses plural so the claim I think the way to understand this the significance of this transition is that cognition is no mediated by recognition so some way the the mutual recognition of self-consciousnesses in the plural now becomes a constitutive condition for cognition, for objective cognition.

And obviously this is an idea that is crucial for Brandom, for instance. Brandom, who argues in his Spirit of Trust, his book on Hegel's Phenomenology, he credits Hegel with this decisive insight that we adjudicate the difference between what is merely relative to us and what has some kind of mind independence or attitude independent objectivity through by tracking the resources of justification.

So in other words, we grant independence to objects or states of affairs through a complex process of negotiation, negotiation about the conditions under which certain claims are justifiable. So this is why this particular kind of the emergence of recognition has a decisive epistemological significance. So in a way, and Pippin insists upon this idea that all of a sudden the emergence of the problematic of mutual recognition in the account of self-consciousness is not some

kind of divergence it's not some kind of you know tangent from the you know the fundamental epistemological preoccupations that fueled both the introduction and the section on consciousness Pippen insists that in a way the introduction of the relation of a social relation of a relation between a multiplicity of self consciousnesses is a direct consequence of this epistemological dialectic that has been staged in both in the introduction and in the section on natural consciousness

so this is important because it means that Hegel is not just suddenly introducing sociality from the outside the the dimension of sociality of sociality is internal to the unfolding of the structure of self-consciousness so the first quotation on the on the handout is paragraph 178 self-consciousness exists in and for itself when that it so exists for another that is it exists only

in being acknowledged this is a very strong statement you know self consciousness can only be what it is through acknowledged through being acknowledged by another self consciousness so in other words this means that its relation to itself self consciousness is already a self relations self relation via relation to another but now he goes claim is that this self relation via relation to another is itself constituted by the relation to another self consciousness okay so this is no we have this decisive triangulation between self consciousness its objects what it is conscious of and and another self-consciousness.

But the first way in which this triangulation emerges is immediate or incomplete. And I think it's important to understand the movement, the complicated movement from what could be called a moment of immediate, of sorry of immediate reciprocity between self consciousnesses in which the reciprocity is not fully mediated through the you know the the decomposition of this reciprocity into the asymmetrical relationship between Lord and bondsman

where you have to where you know how the kind of an asymmetric relation between between a recognizing consciousness and a recognized consciousness. And finally to, you know, this will set the stage for a future, you know, kind of overcoming of this asymmetry and a reestablishment of reciprocity, but now in a fully mediated way, where each self-consciousness contains, you know, you know, is fully constituted by its relationship to another self-consciousness, as well as its relationship to another, to what is, you know, its immediate other or the object.

And this is what I think we have to try to understand. So if we look at paragraph number 182 on the handout, so Hegel writes, okay, No, this movement of self-consciousness in relation to 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 other 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 independent existence of its own which therefore it cannot utilize for its own purposes it's an object is not of its own accord do what the first does to it 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 so I think what's what's happening here is that we have here you know the encounter between

two self consciousnesses where there is a kind of an immediate reciprocity each self each mirrors the attitudes of the other so in a way and I think this idea of of mirroring is quite important because it implies that in this in the initial encounter between self consciousnesses each recognizes the other but only as its own mirror so in other words each recognizes that you know its other is another self consciousness as opposed to another objects or you non-conscious entity but you know self-conscious other is merely acts as a

mirror for the you know the self-consciousness so in other words the the self-consciousness only sees itself in its other and it sees itself superficially it sees itself simply reflected back out of the other's gaze so this and this is precisely you know this so this is only the immediate stage of reciprocity so this is an immediate reciprocity as opposed to fully mediated reciprocity and I think that what Hegel you know means to you know communicate here is you know what he says is that the claim that you know

each sees the other do the same as it does each does itself what it demands of the other and therefore does what they do what it does only in so far as the other does the same now I think so one way of you know kind of illuminating think what Hegel is getting at here is that in a way this is the idea that's this initial encounter between self-consciousness is unfolds in a context in which each is a kind of each sees itself as an independent atom of self-consciousness and therefore only recognizes it only recognizes the other

self-consciousness to the extent that it can you know it recognizes something like mutual self-interest so in other words this is a kind of I think this is Hegel's kind of critique of a model of sociality where collectivity or sociality is simply understood on the model of a negotiation between two you know pre-existing independently constituted subjectivities or self consciousnesses so in other words and these self consciousnesses are only able

to relate to each other their own interest their own self-interest so what you have here is the claim that sociality is instituted through a kind of reflexive equilibrium in which the social bond or the social contract is a consequence of mutual self-interest okay the idea so each another was we relate to one another only in so far as we recognize that we have common interests but these common interests in a way are read off of each other's you know we read we we read off these common interests from our own kind of from the

assumption of our own self interestedness the idea that we're all you know independent autonomous subjectivities you know motivated by by desire motivated by a kind of an ultimately kind of you know egoistic desire which demands satisfaction and the satisfaction of this desire is always simply perpetuates the independence of the consciousness. So what Hegel I think is saying here is that this is a merely, this is the most impoverished

of the social bond or the social relation, where you just have, again, these kind of pre-constituted individuals, each of which is animated by a desire and it demands the kind of the satisfaction of its desires. But then, so then the social bond is merely the, you know, the kind of the adjudication or the trade-off between competing desires. So the social bond is generated by trying to kind of optimize the satisfaction of individual self-interest without questioning or challenging the sovereignty of this already individuated interest.

and I think that this is and so in other words you have a model here of competition so here initially kind of you know the desire for recognition here is competitive each self-consciousness competes for recognition and it demands recognition from the other from another self-consciousness but it demands recognition on its own terms okay and what happens it's precisely this competitive desire for recognition which is going to lead to a crisis this okay or a split which will generate the dialectic of Lorde and bondsman where

you have the the an asymmetry between recognizing and recognize and this is what we need to understand and this is what happens in paragraph 184 I mean so so here's the quotation okay the middle term he means the middle term in the relations between two self consciousnesses the middle term is self-consciousness which splits into the extremes and each extreme is this exchanging of its own determinants and an absolute transition into the opposite although as consciousness it does indeed come out of itself yet though

out of itself it is at the same time kept back within itself is for 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 so here's the important passage 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 they recognize themselves

as mutually recognizing one another so this mutual recognition in which each self-consciousness recognizes itself in its own other is still immediate it's not fully mediated because the whole the the the the complicated relationship between self and other has not yet been reflected back into each cell for each pole of the relation and it's quite and so what I've done is I've drawn a little diagram here that I hope helps kind of you know can sketch as a basic the representation of the schema

that I think Hegel has in mind so I'm going to hold it up to the camera here and tell me if it's I mean it's pretty rough and ready but like tell me if you can see this this diagram okay so this is this diagram says the splitting of the middle term and this is the the which is the splitting of immediate recognition so here the middle term here you have two self consciousnesses at each pull one and two the middle term for each cell of consciousness is in facts the other self-consciousness okay so each self-consciousness relates to

this other self-consciousness and in doing so relates back to itself so it sees you know this other self-consciousness as no mirroring its own relationship to itself okay so here if you look within the middle term the middle term includes the the difference between self another within itself so in other words that the relationship between the two self consciousnesses is internal to the middle term okay and what Hegel is going to say is that it's this middle term because this middle term includes the relationship between the two

self-consciousness within itself it's going to collapse and splits into two opposing consciousnesses okay which will then be the consciousness of a recognizing subjectivity the bondsman and a recognized subjectivity which is the Lord. This isn't so if it's completely illegible, please tell me. It's a little illegible? I mean it's difficult for me to read on the screen because it's all backwards. Does it read backwards to you as well? No, it's forward but the words themselves are not legible. The words are so each so the top arrow

says self exteriorization consciousness one here self consciousness to hear SC1 and SC2 the top arrow is supposed to read self exteriorization so this is self consciousness exterior rising itself generating its own other the lower here is the return into itself so each self-consciousness externalizes itself in its other and then returns into itself from this other okay so you have each your self-consciousness one here and self-consciousness to here both relating to itself but via this middle term which is the object for each

self-consciousness okay and this reads here desire for self another each self-consciousness the movement of exterior ization and returning into self is the movement of desire each desires itself through its own other okay so it desires it's because it desires its own unity that it can only relate to itself by relating to another okay but it's but because this desire is a desire for unification for reunification after this selfish exterior ization this is why it can only you know reunite with itself from after having been reflected in this

the in the eyes of the other self consciousness okay so that the middle term is the other so this is the other but what is other for each self consciousness is is no a complex of it this is no longer an object it's a self consciousness so in other words within this that the middle term contains the relationship or the difference between self another okay so that the relationship between the two self consciousnesses is internal to the middle term it's because it's internal to the middle term that each self consciousness can relate back to itself from its encounter with the other

self consciousness okay so so this is what he means so this is the immediate recognition and the reason that it's a it's an immediate recognition because this has not yet been reflected back into each pole into each kind of pole of the relationship between self consciousnesses so in other words each only mirrors the other each sees the other self consciousness as its own mirror okay and this this is why this you know this this is a kind of a superficial reciprocity which is not proper recognition. Okay, so now let's quickly look at the next, sorry, paragraph

185, okay, paragraph 185, Hegel writes, 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 so the reason that's so this you know the the initial moments of immediate recognition when each only recognizes they recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another is unstable because each because each ultimately the the desire for recognition cannot be satisfied at

this superficial level as each only mirrors a desire or each only sees the other as a mirror for its own desire each is seeks to objectify the other each seeks to turn the other interest that into a thing in other words so even though the self-consciousness recognizes that this is another self-consciousness nevertheless it only recognizes this other self-consciousness as a mirror for its own desire okay so it's still objectifying it's not granting full independence or autonomy to this other self-consciousness and it's so therefore it's it's because of the desire for recognition is merely a

desire for a kind of a superficial reciprocity where really what you want back from you want the other to reflect back your own self desire your own desire for yourself this is already this is a competitive or an implicitly antagonistic relationship which will generate the breakdown of the middle term or the splitting up of the middle term into two extremes one of which is no recognizing and the other which is recognized instead of having two you know desires for recognition you know the mutual recognition splits into a

recognizing and a recognize because this mutual recognition is predicated on the on an idea of recognition of one's own of the sovereignty of one's own desire okay so this is what happens here so this what happens so I need to go back to the camera so the splits is below when because each only relates to the other as insofar as it mirrors its own desire for itself then this the antagonism will erupt and the the desire

for recognition is going to become antagonistic so it's going to split into a relationship between two self consciousnesses one of which is recognizing the bondsman and the other which is recognized or the Lord and what What mediates the relationship between recognizing and recognized is a thing. The thing which mediates. So each term, both the Lord and the bondsman, each pole of this new antagonistic relationship has a mediated relationship to its other through its immediate relationship to the thing.

The thing through which the Lord subjugates the bondsman and the thing through which the bondsman satisfies the desire of the Lord. Could you put a little closer? Yes, sorry. That's good. That's good. Okay, so the thing is each relates to the other through the thing. thing is that through which the lord subjugates the desire of the bondsman and it's the thing through which the bondsman satisfies the desire of the lord so each has an immediate relationship to the thing okay which is generated by the you know a subjugating desire and a subjugated desire

but then through and then each has a mediated relationship to through the thing okay so no so now I think if we know read we go back to 186 so paragraph 186 Well, actually, no, I'm not going to... 186, actually, it's simply a reiteration of what Hegel has already said about what is missing from this immediate reciprocity.

So I'll just read the last sentence from paragraph 186, where Hegel writes, 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 each seeks in a way the ratification of its own self-certainty through the other so each only sees the other as as a kind of an object for its own self-certification and it doesn't see the truth the other as something that is in itself as an

entirely independent and autonomous self-consciousness okay so now if we look at paragraph one is seven paragraph only suddenly it's where it's where explains why this kind of this this the encounter between two self-consciousness is to sovereign self-consciousness is demanding the satisfaction of you know ignition is going to lead to what he calls a struggle you know the struggle unto death okay so in one eight seventy writes the presentation of itself by which he means he's talking about self-consciousness self-consciousness presents itself to itself as the pure abstraction of self-consciousness

consistent showing itself as the pure negation of its subjective 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 so what he's saying is this is that the desire for the gratification of self consciousness self consciousness desires graded the gratification of its desire and it's it's what it desires is itself as its own unity its own its own autonomy independence and sovereignty so it so self consciousness initially understands itself as a pure abstraction which is the negation of any objectivation

it's when he writes the pure negation of its subjective mode i it's the negation of its own objectivation for the other self-consciousness okay so in other words so what happens is that the self-consciousness now wants to assert its own independence and its own sovereignty the sovereignty of its own desire which means negating any attachment it has any attachment it has to life or any determination by another okay so it's going to so self-consciousness now asserts what it takes to be its own truth the truth of its own sovereignty or its own independence as you know the

pure negation of its objective mode which is to say the fact that it is a living being that exists as a living being okay which is in a way you know mediated by organic needs and secondly the fact that it exists as you know a being you know social being connected to which depends upon other consciousnesses okay so so this is you know what he goes things so the cells want to detach itself from its dependence upon anything external to it which means both it's you

know kind of the the movements of life but you know the satisfaction of biological needs but also the the demands imposed upon it by any other consciousness so it's going to this is why he wants to show that it is not attached to any specific existence which is to say not any objective determination not any determinate existence as a living thing or a social being not to the individuality common to existence as such that is not attached to life okay so then he continues this presentation is a twofold action action on the part of the other an action on its own part for 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 engage in this struggle for they must raise their certainty of being for themselves to truth both in the case of the other and in their own case so what what is saying each self-consciousness now wants to assert its own self-certainty its own certainty of its own independence and sovereignty which means that it must affirm its own you know

absolute independence from the other okay so in other words in asserting their own you know what what they take to be each takes the truth of its self-consciousness to reside merely in the certainty of its own independence or sovereignty and this is why the assertion of this you know sovereign autonomy or independence can only be consummated through a struggle to the death in other words you know the competition that was first kind of no that was no latent in the the the desire for the you know the desire for

reciprocal recognition has no led to a kind of a full-blown you know antagonism okay and a life and death struggle and Hegel then continues this is the the third section in bold in the handout in paragraph 187 and it is only through staking one's life that freedom is one 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 for 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 self-consciousness 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.

So each must stake its own life, and each stakes its own life because it affirms its own independence from life so in other words each you know the only way in which consciousness can you know satisfy its own desire for you know for for for certainty which means the certainty of its own independence is by risking its own life by showing that it is not attached to to life it doesn't care about about life, it values its independence above life itself. And this means that each must seek the other's death because each must show that it's willing to risk its own life

to win its own absolute independence or sovereignty. So it cannot value life, whether its own life or the value, or the other's life, more than it values its its own independence or freedom so it sees um you know it sees uh you know its essential being which is to say uh life you know that which was life was the initial medium in which self-consciousness emerged is now simply other is external to it it's it's it's outside of of self-consciousness and self-consciousness must rid of but must rid itself of its dependence upon

life you know it must rid itself of its self-externality it must rid itself of its own understanding as a living being a being that is conditioned by the demands of life and this means that in a way that the this is you know nobility emerges or that no nobility emerges as the valuing of something above life you know honor let's say honor okay so it's because of this the life and that struggle that the middle term becomes a thing the middle term once once again which was you know the middle

term in the diagram through which you know the middle term through which each self-consciousness related to its other and back to itself has isn't is no has no kind of degenerated into a thing okay so hegel writes in paragraph 188 this trial by death however does the way 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 this is important this is hegel's definition of life life is independence without absolute negativity then he continues so death is the natural negation of consciousness negation

without independence which thus remains without the required significance of recognition so he continues death certainly shows that each staked his life and held it of no account both in himself and in the other but that isn't but that is not for those who underwent the struggle they put an end to their consciousness in its alien setting of natural existence that is to say they 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, into lifeless, merely immediate, unopposed extremes. And the two do not reciprocally give and receive one another back from each other consciously, but leave each other free only indifferently like things. 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. So what's interesting here is that Hegel is saying that in the splits and the disintegration of the middle term which mediated the initial social bond

between the two self-consciousnesses, you have a regression back to consciousness. and you have a regression back to a kind of a lifeless, you know, a lifeless relation between extremes. So this is why he says the middle term collapses into a lifeless unity, which is split into lifeless, merely immediate, unopposed extremes. So he then continues in paragraph 189, the dissolution of the simple unity is the result of the first experience. And what the result of this dissolution into these, you know, kind of, you know, lifeless extremes

is the two independent consciousnesses, okay? And this is the passage in bold from paragraph 189. 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 before another the former is the Lord hair the other is bondsman next so no just one quick word here I think the the the terms Lord and bondsman are actually much more appropriate to Hegel's German and actually there's very good reason to

believe that it's a mistake to you know to kind of construe this relationship between these two you know the recognizing and the recognizing as a relationship between a master and a slave and you know Alexander Kojev's very famous kind of interpretation of this dialectic no because it basically takes this this entire kind of the moment in the phenomenology as a kind of an account of anthropogenesis okay an account of the the generation of of

humanity or harmonization but the the stratification that occurs in the splitting of the middle term or the you know the initial collapse of the reciprocity between the self consciousnesses I think depends upon is not voluntary servitude this is an account of voluntary servitude as opposed to involuntary servitude so in other words here the subjugation of the bondsman is voluntary not involuntary so this is why this is not about enslavement this is

not coercion by brute force so even though you know the subjugation is a result of a struggle to the death it's it's not it's a kind of a struggle to the death which is again internal to to the movement to the development of cognitive consciousness it's not simply some kind of eruption of you know kind of brute violence and I said this has this is important because I guess well But we can discuss the significance of this distinction.

So Hegel continues in paragraph 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 another consciousness, i.e. through a consciousness whose nature it is to be bound up with an existence that is independent or thinghood in general. The Lord puts himself into relation with both of these moments, to a thing as such, the object of desire, and to the consciousness for which thinghood is the essential characteristic. And then Hegel, I won't read the middle,

section here in this paragraph, but the point is that each, the Lord relates to both terms. He relates to the bondsman mediatedly through the thing, and he relates to the thing immediately. And so does, as we've already said, so does the bondsman. and this is so once again this is what was meant in this the kind of this sketch below this is what hegel is is talking about here where you've got so you've got an immediate relationship to the thing each each consciousness is immediately

related to the thing and relates to the other through this thing so you've got the immediate relation here and the immediate relation here okay so this is the distinction between mediation and immediacy so each relates to the other through the mediation of the thing okay the thing which is as we'll see the thing which the bondsman produces in order to satisfy the desire of the Lord and the thing which the Lord enjoys to satisfy his desire for for sovereignty

basically so so now we if we can read the final section in bold from paragraph 190 so that so each relates Lord and you know both the Lord and the bondsman relate to each other through the intermediary of the thing. But Hegel writes, But the Lord is the power over this thing, for he has 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.

So the thing is the instrument through which the Lord subjugates the bondsman and it's instruments through which in a way it's it's the instrument of death it's a thing that through which the bondsman was attached to life it's a thing that the bondsman was unwilling to give up in the struggle to the death in the struggle for for recognition so in other words the this is you know the Lord subjugates the bondsman through the thing that the bondsman was unwilling to give up the attachment this is the the residual attachment to life which prevented the bondsman from you know from risking his

from going out from from the from risking his life altogether okay so so the Lord has proven that this thing is something merely negative for him so he has that he is that he's a power over this thing and it's through his power over this thing that he has party exercises power over the bondsman equally the Lord relates himself mediately to the thing through the bondsman the bondsman cross cell of 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 who's negating of it therefore cannot go to the length

of being altogether done with it to the point of annihilation in other words he only works on it okay so this is important so this is you know a crucial and very famous passage where hegel introduces the notion of work. This is where work emerges in the phenomenology. So in other words, the Lord negates the thing by showing, by affirming his, you know, indifferent, not his indifference, but his independence. He doesn't need the thing. he so the Lord relates to the thing as something that he does not need he does

not depend upon that's the way in which he negates the thing the bondsman may also negates the thing but he negates the thing by he negates the independence of the thing through mediation in other words through work he works upon the thing he he works upon the thing by transforming it into the object that will satisfy the Lord's desire okay so what's happening here is that the the through work the bondsman produces a thing

that the bondsman himself does not need but that is the object that will satisfy the Lord's desire for independence in other words he is what the bondsman is producing here is some kind of luxury object let's say he's producing gold or ornaments the ornaments through which in a way the kind of the superfluous objects the objects that you know in a way have no use value through which the Lord in a way exhibits his own sovereignty so no it's the it's the enjoyment of luxury that is the mark

of the Lord's sovereignty and his independence from the the desire for for life or for vital interests for the satisfaction of vital interests and then the passage continues for the Lord on the one hand the immediate relation becomes through this mediation the sheer negation of the thing or the enjoyment of it okay so his immediate relation to the thing is a kind of a sheer negation where he simply he consumes the thing but consumes it as a useless objects you know in other words his enjoyment of the object

is a kind of a pure enjoyment. It's an enjoyment tied to, you know, the satisfaction of any need. And so the passage goes on, what 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. So remember, desire, you know, desire was self-consciousness originally emerges as a desire for a living thing but desire fails to satisfy self-consciousness the desire for living things or let's say kind of vital desire cannot

fully satisfy self-consciousness so self-consciousness only you know satisfies its desire through enjoying something that is extraneous to it something that is nothing to it basically so this is the enjoyment of luxury as the old you Ray there self only the dependent aspect of the thing and has the pure enjoyment of it

The aspect of its independence he leads to the bondsman who works on it okay so that the Lord so the Lord no longer relates to the thing you know immediately or directly in other words he doesn't kind of you know sully himself with work he leaves it to the bondsman to produce the thing that will satisfy his desire you know the useless object you know whose uselessness you know is is the index of the luxury that will satisfy the Lord's desire for sovereignty or for mastery and for independence from any need so this is

why the Lord takes himself only the dependent aspect of the thing and has a pure enjoyment of others so in other words the the Lord can only enjoy this thing once it has been shaped once it's once the things radical independence has been cancelled by the labor of the bondsman okay so the point here is that the satisfaction of the Lord's desire for independence through the thing you know the luxury object depends upon the labor of the bondsman okay so although

the the Lord has freed himself or has asserted his freedom as as independence from any kind of need or the satisfaction of any kind of of any objective determination um you know the irony here for Hegel is that this this kind of this independence the assertion of this independence is depends upon the labor of the bondsman so in other words that the sovereignty of the Lord is predicated upon you know the work done by the bondsman which is quite you know the Lord is actually blind to the way in which his his self-assertion of

independence and sovereignty is one that renders him ultimately dependent okay so he has not achieved the independence of freedom that is proper to self-consciousness. In fact, he's bartered it for a superficial assertion of sovereignty, which in fact is still entirely dependent upon something extraneous. so this is why then Hegel will continue well I'll just read the passage in bold

from paragraph 191 here therefore is present this moment of recognition that the other consciousness sets aside its own being for self and in so doing, and in so doing itself does what the first does to it. Okay. So each, you know, the Lord's assertion of independence is actually, you know, a cancellation, you know, an unwitting negation of the truth of the independence of self-consciousness, which Hegel shows will, you know, depends upon a fully mediated recognition

or, you know, a properly mediated reciprocity among self-consciousnesses. And so just as, you know, the bondsman has, you know, given up something of his own independence in the relationship, you know, in recognizing the sovereignty of the Lord, the Lord also has unwittingly given up his you know the the independence you know the true independence of self consciousness by in order to know to satisfy this the certainty of independence and this certainty of

independence the self-assertion of independence is superficial is ultimately superficial so now we get the moment of reversal so this is why you've got a recognition that is one-sided unequal each you know the Lord takes himself to be the pure and essential factor in the relationship while the activity of the bondsman is that in on impure and unessential but in fact as hegel will show the opposite will turn out to be the case so this is the moment of reversal which begins in paragraph 192 so hegel writes what no really confronts him the Lord is not an independent consciousness but a

dependent one he is therefore not certain of being forced the truth of themselves on the contrary his truth is in reality the unessential consciousness and its unessential action okay so what the Lord took to be he took himself to be you know the essential moments and the labor of the bondsman was supposed to be inessential but in fact you know the opposite it is a case because no the in a way that kind of the Lord's recognition he

gets from a dependent consciousness you know from a bondsman is however much it be necessary to the you know the satisfaction of his self certainty it's actually inadequate to the it points out the untruth of this certainty so this self certainty of the Lord is in fact predicated upon an untruth because it's the untruth because it turns out that this independence or the self consciousness is entirely dependent so hegel continues in three the truth of

the independent consciousness is accordingly the servile consciousness of the bondsman but just as Lordship showed that its essential nature is the reverse of what it wants to be the essential nature of Lordship is the reversal it wants to be independent but actually it's essentially it's essentially dependent so to servitude and its consummation and 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 this is the moment of

reversal where in fact the shift the the relationship between dependence and independence shit it's no the law or in other words the Lord's enjoyment of his own sovereignty depends upon the labor of the bondsman and it is essentially dependent upon the activity of the bondsman and the bondsman precisely by not being recognized by the Lord has withdrawn into himself and through this withdrawal into himself he know becomes capable of achieving proper independence

okay so I think what's so now this is the gloss I've given this is the next paragraph is my own gloss on this this reversal so what what's happened here is that the the role of death the role played by death in in this kind of dialectic and the unfold first of all as the struggle unto death it turns out that although the Lord thought that he had vanquished death the Lord thought that he had achieved mastery over death in fact he hasn't in fact his victory over death was premature and in fact he has

not in fact given up everything in fact he has he his his victory was a shallow victory predicated upon a refusal to face up to the absolute negativity of death and in fact it's the bondsman whose fear of death you know entails a confrontation with death which allows the bondsman you know to recognize the power of death and in some way to internalize it okay so this is what the next couple of paragraphs are going to through the experience of death as absolute Lord self-consciousness experiences

its own essential nature formative activity is the work of death it is a determinate negation of the fear of death verse of natural existences desire for life as independence without negativity here you have to remember the contrast Hegel's definition of the difference between life and death which was given on the in paragraph 188 Hegel wrote for just as life is a natural setting of consciousness which is independence without absolute negativity death is a natural negation of consciousness negation without independence which

thus remains without the required significance of recognition so what we have here is the it's the the bondsman okay if you know we has properly You know recognized the power of death and in a way who has endured death Okay, that the Lord thinks that he has endured death and overcome it, but he hasn't and I mean one way of explaining it is this is that you know the Lord believes that he has everything that he's willing to that he has no attachment that he's willing to

assert his absolute independence his refusal to be determined by anything other than himself and therefore his absolutes you know he's willing to kind of you know to die if necessary but he's only willing to die in order to achieve let's say honor or glory or you know which is ultimately bestowed upon him by the recognition of others so what the Lord fails to realize in a way is that you know ultimately death is the absolute negation of all value as such and not just of the value of life so even those transcendent values that the

the Lord affirmed in risking his life are themselves I mean he ultimately he fails to realize how they are reifications of like they are generated through life as you know this infinite self relation which Hegel talked about in the opening pages of his account of self-consciousness and it's the the bondsman whose fear of death in a way allows him to overcome death okay so this is what we we need to understand and the last sentence in this in this glossaries through work self-consciousness recognizes itself as the independence of absolute negativity so this is the it's only through work

that self-consciousness achieves or realizes its own proper independence the independence of absolute negativity negation of every objective determination or of all dependence upon another so let's now look at paragraph 194 so to begin with servitude has the lord for its essential reality hence the truth for it is the independent consciousness that is for itself okay this is the consciousness of the Lord however servitude is not yet aware that this truth is implicit in it but it does in fact contain within

itself this this truth of pure negativity and being for self for it has experienced this its own essential nature for this consciousness 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 fiber 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 self-consciousness absolute negativity pure being for self which consequently is implicit in this consciousness okay this moment of pure being for self is also explicit for the bondsman for in the Lord it exists for him as his object and furthermore his consciousness the conscious of the bondman is not this dissolution of everything stable merely in principle in his service he actually brings this about through his service he rids himself of his attachment to natural existence in every single detail and gets rid of it okay right so I think this is you know a rightly

famous passage in here and it's it's it's famous for for several things one is it's a first you know account you know the distinction between anxiety or dread and fear you know which is obviously decisive for Kierkegaard and Heidegger is Hegelian. It's Hegel who establishes this absolute distinction between what he calls anxiety or dread and fear. Because fear has an object. You're afraid of something determinate. But anxiety is the confrontation with radical indetermination this is why you know death provokes anxiety but it provokes anxiety in

so far as death is recognized as absolute negativity as the you know the the negation of every possible determination okay so in a way it's the so it's the it's because the bondsman experienced this dread, you know, this fear of death, and it's because, you know, the bondsman has had an experience that transcends fear. Okay, he's experienced dread, and as Hegel puts it, you know, has trembled in every fiber of his being, so that everything solid and stable within himself has been shaken to its foundation

and undermined. But in this encounter with death, you know, as absolute negativity, what the bondsman has experienced is the truth of his own self-consciousness. He's recognized himself in death, okay, as the absolute Lord. So, okay, the way, the um the the sovereignty of the lord you know um to which um you know whom the the bondsman is serving is actually predicated the nation to death in a way the lord thinks he is um

thinks that he is the master of life okay and that he's also kind of mastered death but because he he can only think of death you know in a way as the kind of as the local negation of life okay or as the abstract negation of life the Lord is still a bondsman to to death he's still a servant of death okay so in other words his whole his consciousness is entirely subjugated to death he doesn't realize how his own his autonomy and independence are still

beholden to the authority of death and death which he is incapable of recognizing because he merely you know he's he misunderstands it as you know the as the end of life okay so he doesn't he fails to recognize you know the radical unconditional negativity of death okay and his domestication of death actually subordinates him to it so he's not alone this is why death is the absolute Lord so that the Lord rules his sovereignty from the sovereignty of death which is why his sovereignty is a factitious sovereignty it's not it's an

illusory sovereignty it's it's it's a dependent independence whereas because of his by undergoing you know the you know anxiety in the face of death of death as absolute negativity the bondsman has been forced to retreat into himself okay because he's no not recognized by another self he's not recognized by the Lord but no through this retreat into himself and through in a way through by being kind of you know compelled to work you know for another he know begins to assert some of his you know his independence through

what Hegel calls his universal formative activity which is Hegel's characterization of work okay and in other words so through his work the bondsman now rids himself of his attachment to natural existence okay so by by working and by you know by unleashing this universal formative activity the bondsman begins to transcend begins to detach himself dependence upon life but in a in a properly self-conscious way this is a mediated negation of the attachment to life as opposed to the Lord's immediate and abstract negation of the attachment to life okay and so this is why he will

then conceal paragraph 195 through work however the bondsman becomes conscious of what he truly is desire has reserved to itself the pure negating of the object and thereby its unalloyed feeling of self so no the desire of the Lord the Lord's enjoyment of you know his desire through the object produced for him by the bondsman is only yields what he calls a fleeting satisfaction that is the reason why the 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 and shapes the thing

the negative relation to the object becomes its form and something 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 permanence it is in this way therefore the consciousness qua worker comes to see in the independent being of the object its own independence

okay so so now Hegel says you know the worker is now generating you know through by producing the object through his labor he is generally object in a way is an encapsulation of the independence of self-consciousness but it's an it's an independence that is now generated by my self-consciousness itself as opposed to one that is in a way granted to it by another self-consciousness the independence of the Lord okay you know the Lord's

independence from need depends upon the labor the work of the bondsman whereas now the bondsman begins to realize his own independence because he know he's now producing his own independence through work and in fact everything that that he produces you know the fruits of his or her labor is this is a manifestation of this independence so this is why this is the next gloss on what's going on here through work as universal formative activity this recognizes its own absolute freedom as exerting mastery over the universal

power i.e. death and the whole being so work this is it's very important remember that there's a link between universality and negativity for hegel hegel says that every every you know universal universality properly understood is self-relating negativity okay and a concrete universal which is a a proper individual is nothing but a self-relating negativity work is because work is form generating and because form is in a way the formal determinations

are negative because to attributes a formal determination to a thing is involves an operation of negation remember the section in the preface where Hegel talks about the power of the negative and he attributes the power of the negative to the operations of the understanding what does the understanding do the understanding analyzes and decomposes because the understanding by the understanding splits you know the concrete immediacy of you know sensory experience and of lived experience into conceptual

determinations okay and these conceptual determinations are universals okay and And these universals are formative. All determination is through form, but form is always negation, a negation of an immediate particularity. So work is, and I think it's very important for Hegel that this work is not merely, is already conceptual. the work that Hegel is talking about here involves understanding, it involves the ability for conceptual determination so that what the worker is doing is negating the kind of the brute, sensual, you know, the indeterminates or abstract particularity of the thing

and giving it a concrete particularity through his formative activity and this formative activity through manual, I think there's or at least what I wanted to suggest is that this kind of even manual activity here involves conceptual determination, it's still conceptual but it is implicitly conceptual it's not yet self-consciously conceptual and by the way and this is an important point because this is a point that's been made by Mladen Dolar and his writing on Hegel in the Kozhevian interpretation of the you know the so-called master-slave dialectic the claim you know which has been taken up which was taken up you

know by some kind of Marxist in the 20th century the claim was that in a way that's you know work is the condition for you know harmonization and ultimately for you know conscious conceptual thinking in other words that you know the kind of what's going on in cognitive activity you know supervenes on some kind of more you know fundamental dimension of practical activity but not as well as pointed out in the one definition that marks gives of work in volume two of capital is the work or labor is formative activity but it's the

it's a generation of an object in accordance with a concept with a thought determination in other words the labor presupposes conceptual determination and there is solid textual you know I think that dollar is absolutely right there's solid textual evidence for this so this is why the attempt by some you know the attempt by some Marxist to make you know conceptual labor supervene upon practical labor is I think confused okay it's the whole point is that in the point is that work is already an intentional determination work is not

mere kind of you know a kind of a an expenditure of energy work in the kind of in the strong sense in the sense which Marx's whole analysis requires is is already internal to the social relation. You cannot explain the genesis of the social relationship in terms of labor. Labor can only be understood internally to the social relation. And this is why, in Hegel's accounts, the social relation must be in place in order for labor to emerge. You cannot derive sociality from labor. labor already presupposes sociality. And that means that

the it's a variant, there's a cognitive dimension to work. And the attempt to kind of to come up with a characterization of work in abstraction from this cognitive dimension is you know confused and ill begotten. So I think this important repercussions for understanding Hegel's relationship to Marx so let's now continue with you know we'll complete with paragraph 196 so Hegel writes in fashioning the thing the bondsman's own negativity his being for self i.e. his self-consciousness becomes an object for him only through his

setting at not the existing shape confronting him but this objective negative moment is none other than the alien being before which it has trembled no however he destroys this alien negative moment self as a negative in the permanent order of things and thereby becomes for himself someone existing on his own accounts so again I'm not going to read out the lengthy you know the lengthy passage in between but I'll just move now directly to the second passage in bold so Hegel concludes you know how the you know the

the bondsman has achieved independence has you know has achieved his own kind of of realize his own self-consciousness through work and through work he relates to himself as an independent self-consciousness through through work okay so Hegel writes for this reflection the two moments of fear and service as such as also that a formative activity are necessary both being at the same time in a universal mode so this is the again in bold hegel writes 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 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 a 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

okay so this now I think this this final claim is really crucial to understand the radicality of Hegel's claim here. So Hegel is saying that self-consciousness has to go through this ordeal of the trial unto death, the struggle unto death, and has to, in a way, give up its own vital independence or what it took to be its own independence, insofar as it understood itself as a living thing, in order to achieve its true independence as a self-consciousness,

which has the strength to endure death itself, to tarry with the negative, and in fact to incorporate the absolute negativity of death and transform itself and its world through the, you know, by, in a way, by marshalling this, you know, this fatal negativity. Wait, wait. Yes. Just one out for a second. One out for a second. Go back. Go back. Okay. Yes, so I'll just repeat what I just said, just recapitulating what I take to be the crucial import of this last passage here, the passage in bold.

So Hegel is saying that without undergoing the ordeal of the struggle unto death and without in a way giving up its own, what it took to be its own independence insofar as it understood itself to be a living being, you know, which desired kind of satisfaction as a living being, consciousness cannot realize its true independence, which is an independence which supersedes the kind of independence that is realizable within life or within the order of the living,

but an independence which has incorporated the power of death okay and in a way you know an end of you know the an independence note which is capable of us you know hegel puts it you know carrying with the negative and you know an enduring death, an enduring the absolute decomposition and scission, which is a part of the work of death, and thereby reshaping itself and its own world through this interiorization of the absolute negativity of death.

And this is why it's a universal formative power. This is why work is a universal formative power insofar as it is the work of death. which it's death that is at work through um the the labor of self-consciousness um and this is why it's it's it's able it's it self-consciousness is a universal power this is why self-consciousness is a masters the universal power the universal power of death self-consciousness achieves mastery of death itself which remember was the absolute lord and through mastering death, he masters the whole of objective being.

So I think this is one of Hegel's most radical claim in this account of the dialectic of Lord and bondsman. So just one final closing remark. So obviously this account, the other kind of figure for whom this account is very important is also Georges Bataille. George Bataille's whole account of what he calls a kind of unemployed or unemployable negativity, a negativity that cannot be made to work or that cannot be generative, comes from his, well, actually comes from Courgev's reading of this passage. So what, you know, like many kind of French thinkers of the 20th century,

hey you know but I wants to identify a moment in Hegel which would be non dialecticizable so the idea that that's high wants to kind of affirm death wants to you know affirm a conception of death as expenditure without return and therefore as a kind of as a kind of negativity you know without which allegedly transcends even conceptual determination itself so I kind of once again a difference that is entirely independent of the concept no difference outside of the concept but this idea of a kind of oh hey Ray we lost just for a

bit at when you were talking about George Bataille okay yes so yes this this whole accounts of hegel's whole account of the relationship between death and work here is obviously decisive for George Bataille whose notion of death as you know unemployable negativity and whose his notion of no expenditure without reserve and of death as if you attempt to kind of to think death in a way which would be not no not dialecticizable and not no that's a kind of negativity that could not be you know subordinated to the labor of the

concept in a way it's just one of the many instances in of attempting to find a kind of non dialectical difference or non conceptual difference in 20th century French philosophy but once again it's you know I think if one reads Hegel carefully you know the question you know I think it's not clear that this non dialectical difference or or a distinction without a conceptual difference can be so easily extracted from you know the movement of the notion and is that impositing you know if you reify death as absolute negativity well

this the this absolute solution will once again become an abstraction which is to say, all you do, Pegel says, you resubstantialize death by abstracting it from its own, you know, from the reflexive relation which it must have to self-consciousness. So in other words, once again, this attempt to identify a notion of death, you know, as an absolute negativity which would be you know a purely useless expenditure and expenditures that cannot be made to work I think it does in fact end up you know it's a it's another reification of death and it's another false absolute it's

another false absolute which is you know a kind of an indeterminate negation of the negativity that death must have it precisely in order to retain its radicality so so i would argue in fact that this attempt to think um again simply to abstract um you know the negativity of death from the labor of the concept or from its relationship to self-consciousness does is another domestication actually it's another domestication of death because what you end up with is a metaphysics of you know a kind of well you should a morbid vitalism where you simply have this idea that's you know this kind of this this metaphysics of

pure kind of superfluity or kind of this expenditure without reserve or this energetics of absolute kind of well desire whatever you want to call it okay I realize I've been talking for quite a while so this is I've gone through you know the all the material on the handout so I think this would be a good point at which to open things up for questions great that that was a really good summary. So I just want to give a time check too. We're at 1250 and the end of the course time

today would be technically 40 minutes from now. We can push over if we want to. Does anybody have a question that they would like to ask first? I have kind of a simple question. Yes. So, I mean, so I guess just to clarify, so we're talking about a lord and a bondsman, right? But I mean, this sounds, I mean, the relation just isn't between two people. I mean, you could have, because he speaks so much about self-relating in the first couple parts of the book.

I mean these two if there's just simply two things one is uh you know has mastery over the other or it's it's in a position of mastery over the other I mean this could just be I guess I'm just trying to I just don't understand quite understand exactly the objects that could be involved I understand the relationships and the dynamics you're you're talking about but um it's just it's just could this just simply be a conceptual determination does that make sense you mean Could the Lord and Bondsman dialectic just be a conceptual determination? Right. I can think of the fact that I had a thought. Therefore, my thought for myself becomes an object into itself.

Now is the question, in what sense do I have mastery over these things? Because they're sort of like dying as time goes on. They become objects. They become things. so to think that I have some sort of mastery over like what's going on with uh you know the determination of my thoughts I don't know I guess I'm thinking of the problem of Spinoza where the question is like where does freedom come in right when it when everything is so becomes so determined ah well I mean well freedom cannot be understood as indetermination because that in fact that would be indetermination is simply the abstract kind of negation of determination and so it's completely you know it's it's empty you know it's a

negative freedom that will give you like freedom from but freedom from is meaningless unless you have free you have the capacity to actually exercise your autonomy or your independence so the question is what is this independence What is this? In order to freedom, we have to understand what, you know, freedom must be given a positive content. So, Heidel's going to say that actually the content freedom is achieved through, you know, kind of mutual recognition, through the achievement of a properly mediated, you know, kind of reciprocal recognition among self-consciousnesses.

And he says this is why the condition, this is why, you know, the freedom of one depends upon the freedom of all. The idea that freedom can only be collectively achieved and that unless everyone is free, no one is free. So we're talking about more than one person. We're not just talking about me amongst my own thoughts as having different relationships with themselves. Yes, yes. So this is the introduction of, you know, here with self-consciousness, you know, you've got self-consciousness realizes that it cannot be alone. but in a way it's constitutive of the very notion of self-consciousness that

there can never be just one okay that's that's what I how I understood it so I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting too far off track so so so he goes point is that self-consciousness is constitutive Lee social right absolutely how this social reality it's not like he's not bringing in the social relationship from outside and saying you know and saying oh but now we realize that all the problem this is a there's a very there's really superficial glosses on Hegel where you say Hegel realized that all the problem with Kant and Descartes solipsistic is too individualistic and that we have to realize that you know subjectivity is always you know we're always subjects together and as if so And, you know, if that's kind of nonsensical.

Hegel, he's not just grabbing a pre-established notion of sociality. Right. Or collect and foisting it upon the dialectic, you know, which he's elaborating in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Instead, he's showing how the relationship, you know, because self-consciousness is relating to oneself through another, well, self-consciousness can only properly achieve itself relation if its other is maximally other, which means it has to be another self-consciousness. So which is why the maximal internal differentiation of self-consciousness requires this, you know, the kind of the encounter between these two self-consciousnesses. Okay, and initially, so what he's done here is he's tracked the movement,

you know the initial the initial in the initial moment self-consciousness tries to reduce the other self-consciousness to an onto a thing okay so what I have a question why doesn't he start the book with self-consciousness then because he thinks that's does that make sense if my question makes sense um yes it does make sense I think the answer to the question is because it's the book is a science of the experience of consciousness okay what science is knowledge he means it's it's a he means this is a theoretical accounts of the experience of control

consciousness comes to properly know what it truly is and he says the consciousness can't begin by understanding itself as self-consciousness nor can it begin by understanding itself as intrinsically social because these terms are too rich. You have to get to those stages. You have to begin with a more abstract, with a more impoverished moment, which is sense certainty. And remember, you know, at each point Hegel is saying that every consciousness is consciousness of something that is independent of it. And then he shows how consciousness contains within itself the criterion for the independence of the object.

So it's a distinction between truth and knowledge, what the object is in itself and what it is for it. And then he's just merely studying the gradual transformation of each stage of that relationship up until the emergence of self-consciousness. But you can't begin with self-consciousness. I didn't think you could. I was trying to make a negative determination. So as like a quick comment that I like to boil it down, it's almost like when self-consciousness recognizes itself as an object at the moment of self-consciousness, that's when there's two self-consciousnesses.

Yes. like so and then you have like to put it naively like two people it recognizes itself as an object and so then there's intersubjectivity but that's at a specific moment in a dialectic that's already gone through a couple of stages which is like such a when you boil it down that way it's a really fascinating way of thinking of things it's a very bold very very bold idea I mean yeah that's that's a really good way to put it I mean it's sort of the difficulty is like it's such a the whole book is such a fractal you know it just keeps looking like the same thing you know and slightly different variations as you like I don't know like I mean we could talk about the first part of the book as a moment of the self-consciousness I mean I think that's what

you just said too like yes well yeah because okay in the logic in the science of logic he famously said that you know what happens in the kind of the the movements of the logic is kind of retroactive so you begin abstractly okay you know you begin abstract and then you abstract from the beginning so you know you begin with the you know the kind of the logic of being and then the logic of essence okay which are the objective logic and then you move to the subject logic but at each one when he comes to his account of essence he says essence is what being will have been essence is the past basin is what has been so the truth of so in a way the hegel's the the

unfolding of conceptual determination for hegel is it's it's you know it's projecting backwards It's not linear. It's not going from point A to point B to point C. It's starting at point A and then going to kind of, you know, showing how there's an A prime and an A prime prime, which were the preconditions for A. So what you get is that you're actually kind of generating a pastness for every notional determination. so what's happening in the I think in the phenomenology as well is that the phenomenology is not kind of progress I mean there's a progress there's a

progress in our understanding of what consciousness is okay but at the level of consciousness it's not a kind of a linear you know an unfolding teleological narrative it's actually you know first of all two things that one is that he shows her sense certainty is itself an abstraction sensor is an abstraction which already pre supposes if you can already see this here now okay this here knows an abstraction from this plethora of conceptual determinations which are actually have been kind of you know repressed by you know by natural consciousness so at every moment he's showing what was already implicitly

presupposed by the preceding stage I think that this is the way to understand that he's not it's not kind of cumulative in the sense that he's not kind of starting with natural consciousness then getting to kind of self then getting to social self-consciousness and then your kind of socio-historical determinations he's showing how the beginning you know everything with which you everything that you pause visit at the beginning was an was it was a kind of an abstraction it's a necessary abstract Hegel saying you Hegel doesn't think that abstraction is bad but you have to understand what you're doing when you're abstracting and Hegel wants to show that every abstraction is actually a movement of abstraction and you must never forget

the movement that generates the abstracted thing and the movement is itself a movement of self-consciousness so self-consciousness you know understands itself because in a way the whole of the phenomenology can be said to be written from you know the achievement of absolute knowing Hegel thinks you know he's achieved absolutely wrong that's why he can write the phenomenology so he's writing backwards he's writing backwards but that doesn't mean so then the claim is well isn't this just a kind of a purely isn't this just like a kind of a conveyor belt where you're just moving smoothly from one kind of no

dialectical determination to another and I don't think that's you know obviously the kind of always accusation made made against Hegel but what's really just go back to the point was made about the fractality of you know of Hegel's a kind of technology but also the science of logic it's not there is a kind of recursion the same structures kind of reemerge in different forms but they're They're always different. There's repetition, but there's always a kind of, it's always a differential repetition. And even if you look at the movements of, you know, the dialect of Lord and Bondsman, what's striking is the reversals. You know, you start, self-consciousness emerges

and then it encounters another self-consciousness. So you think things are going to kind of, you know, everything's going to be hunky-dory. But no, the first thing that happens is a kind of collapse, a disintegration. of this kind of reciprocity and in fact there's a you know this is why if you're looking at this if you were reading this as a kind of as a narrative as some kind of pseudo or quasi historical narrative there's a regression there's a regression necessary which Hegel says is necessary in order to make the necessary progression. So this is why Hegel thinks that regression and progression are indissociable,

that they're woven together. So you have to, you know, sometimes you have to step backwards and step forwards. So this is why you have to have the kind of the struggle to the death, and this is why the kind of the consciousness of the bondsman must be completely kind of, you know, as he puts, must be destituted through the shattering encounter with death in order to achieve its own independence. And what happens if you do this, if you study these movements, what's striking is the, you know, Hegel, I think, should be seen, you know, this would be a really good thriller in that there are all these unexpected twists and turns. I think it's a travesty to portray Hegel as this kind of mechanical, you know, pan-logicist dialectician, just cranking out these kind of dialectical synthesis to the same machinery, you know, in every...

And if you read the encyclopedia, and if you read the lectures, in a way, that's kind of, you know, that's what you get. But those are not written by Hegel. Those are lecture notes. Those are things composed for pedagogical purposes. they're not texts composed by Hegel they're not the most decisive or like I think authentic examples of Hegel's own thinking and if you see Hegel's thinking in action his speculative thinking in action what it's it's full of these unexpected twists reversals shifts you know where you know they're where it's not kind of so yes there are kind of there are repetitions but the repetitions are not predictable and I don't think it's possible you know to

reduce it to a kind of you know a really kind of a very tidy schematic where you can predict in advance what kind of you know what structure or what movement will be repeated you know at a subsequent stage So, yes, but that's a very good question. I think, shall I look at the questions in the... I think Maria has a question. I'll let her come in. Yes. My question is, so insofar as like, I'm trying to understand what the scale of the self, of this desiring self or self-consciousness is in Hegel's phenomenology and whether there is

like a change or like maybe a development or progression through history of the scale in Hegel because it seems to start on this sort of like the illusion of like an immediacy which is something that I take to be on a sort of a very um like an individual person uh scale itself but then it it seems to develop into something larger and i'm just wondering if if if there's a difference in scale that develops as the dialectic goes along um yes well the difference in scale is that self-consciousness he takes itself to be

you know fully individuated so in other words so in a way that the notion of the self generated through consciousness natural consciousness is entirely superficial and what Hegel is going to I mean what Hegel I think wants to show is how the distinction between the I and the self is important here so the distinction that's you know crucial made very important in post-Lacanian French philosophy but Hegel will show how self the self of sense of sense certainty for instance when you think you know the eye that is supposed to be

the subject of sense certainty is itself a kind is an abstraction from this much richer and you know socially mediated self so the difference in scale is in a way at the beginning he's zooming in you've got kind of a zoom in or a close-up on a consciousness that takes itself to be you know properly individuated so that let's say that's kind of sense certainty but then he's going to show that this even the minimal consciousness of self that is you know

required for sense certainty is mediated by a universal and of course this universal itself will turn out to require the whole kind of you know the whole context the whole elements of socially mediated recognition in other words the I that is a we and the we that is an eye so in other words you can zoom in when in fact with natural consciousness natural consciousness in a way is coarse grained and you know microscopic and takes itself to be the the domain of individuality but it's an absolute it's a it's a false universality

and a false it's a false individuality and a false immediacy this is true individuality only emerges with you know kind of mutual properly mediated mutual recognition and allows you know an individual to be you know to kind of to experience itself as fully individuated is this whole this complex kind of relationship to you know this membership of a community of self-consciousness is so desire did it okay so when desire emerges with self-consciousness why

does desire emerge well desire emerges as a first the first notional determination of what animates self-consciousness after you in a way once you've gone beneath the distinction between subject and object which is fundamental for consciousness so with self-consciousness self-consciousness realizes that that is itself its own object and therefore the relationship to the to you know to its own other is now mediated by desire okay so it desires its own other but through desiring its own other it desires itself because what it desires is its own integrity its own

unity and he understands that it can only achieve its own unification in and through relating to this other this is why you've got self exteriorization and then the returning to self so desire is what animates in a way the this kind of desire is what animates cognition what Hegel is saying is that the not the cognitive relationship the series of cognitive relationships which were tracked in the the developments of consciousness were actually underwritten by desire because knowledge what went you know at the final stage of the

dialectic of consciousness is when consciousness enjoys recognizes that the laws that govern the forces that are, you know, that animates, you know, kind of object, you know, the play of forces that are, you know, the intelligible inside of the objective world, or the noumenal interiority for a normal exteriority, are generated by its own understanding and by its own activity of explanation. And Hegel says that in explanation, in explaining the manifoldness, the manifold determinateness of sensually experienced objective reality,

consciousness enjoys itself. So it turns out that there's a desire, it's the desire for explanation or the desire for understanding that actually fueled or animated the movement of consciousness. So now with self-consciousness, self-consciousness understands itself as desiring, as desiring knowledge. So the move from cognition to recognition, in a way, is articulated by desire. because desire was already at work in cognition cognition was already animated by desire then you have to understand that desire can only be fully satisfied

through recognition so that's why it's the bridge between cognition and recognition and and so therefore saying that the the the proper satisfaction of the will to know okay the desire to know can only be achieved through recognition you know through mutual recognition which with amongst a community of self-consciousness and then this is when you know the kind of where desire then is no longer beholden to you know to song with the desire of and for a living thing desire becomes in

a way becomes autonomous and becomes you know transparent to itself it becomes integrated within the concept remember so because you know at every point he goes he's not going to oppose desire and you know desire is not this kind of abstract kind of force that is that can be kind of straightforwardly juxtaposed to knowledge or not a conceptualization on the car it turns out to be internal to to both it's the all knowledge is fueled by the desire to know the will to know but this this desire for knowledge is itself the manifestation of a more fundamental

desire for recognition and also I mean I think it's worth you know the lacanian account of desire comes from you know famously comes from you know from Hegel as via Kojève, okay? So, you know, Hegel said, you know, Lacan is famous, the famous Lacanian dictum is that the desire is all the desire for the desire of the other. Well, this is exactly what you see here. Self-consciousness, you know, can only desire insofar as its desire is mediated by the desire of the other self-consciousness. And that's what, if you, you know, again, that clumsy diagram that I had at the beginning is is also you've got it's a

relationship between these two desires okay this is and desire each this is the desire of the other so I my desire my desire for my own unity is mediated by my encounter with the desire for the other so I only encounter my own desire through the desire of the other and the desire of the other is internal to you know to the middle term it's what mediates the encounter between these two self-consciousness is just want to ask one more thing to to get a little bit

closer to my um to what i'm getting at i mean where where are these self-consciousnesses like located what is the scale my basic question is like is the lord and the bondsman are they like individual beings or we think of them as collectives these this whole account i mean what you're asking for is um yeah i mean or this sorry go on go on oh no or or does it exist on multiple levels at once like is there a basic unit of consciousness here where like there's a like a monad of consciousness that then like locks in with another one and then they create this sort of composition or is or is it more of like an abstract thing that then kind of appears inside

of an individual being well hegel is dealing with the concept of self-consciousness once again so what is he talking about here he's not talking about something that happened in the world he's not talking about a series of impressive he's not talking about the empirical genesis of self-consciousness he's not who human beings acquire self-consciousness as this ability to kind of you know to relate to them to themselves he's trying to come up he's trying to explain what the concept of self-consciousness requires so this it doesn't correspond so

it cannot be tracked at an empirical level or a level of historical facts or sociological facts or psychological facts it's a kind of you know you see as a kind of a I was gonna say rational reconstruction that's not really the appropriate term so he's saying that the concept of self-consciousness is necessarily multiple but in a way it doesn't matter whether this concept well is whether this concept is satisfied in empirical reality because he's just talking about what you're saying that in order to understand what consciousness is you have to

understand how it's it can only be it becomes self-consciousness but this self-consciousness is a speculative characterization I mean I think your question is a it's a very good question but a very difficult question to answer because it's a really a question about what is he doing here what is going on how are we to make concrete sense of these claims and once again the problem is that these are this Hegel's entire discourse is speculative it unfolds in a speculative register and what is the speculative register well you know he just tells us what it's not empirical okay so immediately rules out you know history psychology sociology it's not

metaphysical he's not saying he's not talking about consciousness he's not talking about the necessary determinations of self-consciousness as an independently existing substance but nor is it transcendental in the and you sense it's not talking about you know the necessary conditions for the possibility of self-consciousness it's talking about you know the concept of self-consciousness and how this concept is you know acquires determinations no you know the proper way for a proper way to make sense of it this self

consciousness is constitutively multiple or it's always a multiplicity of self-consciousness so I mean I know I'm not directly answering I feel as if I'm not answering your question in a way in which perhaps you want it to be answered. Because it seems like it does, even though it's not about how culture and mind unfold and develop, they do have to develop accordingly.

accordingly, like not chronologically, but logically or something, like it's a diagram or an attractor or something. It's not totally clear to me, because it's not just a rational reconstruction like you're saying. It underlies, but I don't know. Yeah, it's a little bit mind-bending. I feel like I sort of get it, but also don't. Here's a simple, here's a Hegelian answer to Maria's question. the basic unit of consciousness is spirit spirit geist and what is geist geist is a kind of a socio historically effectuated um structure of self-consciousness and that that is the minimal unit all consciousness and all you know individual self-consciousness is you know presupposes geist

unfolds within geist so in other words my consciousness your consciousness are only exist in and through a collective shape of self-consciousness which hegel calls geist which is socially and historically effectuated and that is a minimal unit for him this is why the phenomenology of spirit involved it moves back and forth between i mean this is why the book is so confusing because he moves from talking about things that seem to be internal to an individual consciousness to then talking about what seems to be a relationship between like two consciousnesses and then all of a sudden he has he's got a whole kind of a whole culture or a whole

kind of you know a whole social cultural kind of framework operative but I think throughout what he's talking about is every moment of consciousness or self-consciousness presupposes Geist and so Geist is the minimal unit of analysis and a Geist is a shape of self of collective self-consciousness that's the simplest definition I think I can give it's a it's a shape of collective self-consciousness which is you know historically kind of incarnated um so i'm gonna play that uh or give a time check it's now five minutes to 1 30 here um so would we like to go on further and

ask some more questions is that all right with you ray uh yes yes of course yes okay um and then i just want to make sure that everyone gets a chance to ask a question. So I think Christian's up next, unless you had, you want to finish up something, right? No, no, no, go ahead, Christian. Give me a second, let me get my face on, I'm going to trim the end with that. There we go. So, if the, you know, like, bare unit of consciousness, this sexuated instance, I just kind of want, like, sort of, like, an anticipatory speculative, like, where we're heading in the text, you know, just sort of to, you know, to condition, like, you know, to condition us.

condition our own, you know, uh, historical substance to, but, you know, just, I just want to see where we're headed, you know? So like what I want to, you know, how, um, is like, it seems like with the master and the Lord, um, it's very similar to the way that, for example, the part in frenzy and self-conceit later on, but also in absolute freedom and terror. Because it's like, to me it seems like it's moments where you have very large distributed of negativity that end up

carving out the new ethical substance or conceptual criteria at that point in time for like that next one and I want to know exactly how that like in the long run like that distributed it gets up producing absolute knowledge. Can you repeat that one just really quickly? So, basically, it seems to me like with master and slave, what we have is we have

almost like a very large distributed effort of negativity, of carrying out the work of death, so to speak. and it seems to me like how that distributed negativity especially for example absolute terror and how that constitutes morality how that will end up doing the working with absolute knowledge okay yes I just want to know how that carving out is going to work in the later Like where we're heading. Okay. Well, with absolute knowledge, you know, famously it's kind of, it's a very schematic chapter.

It's written, I suppose it's written very fast. There's no if I remember rightly there's no explicit mention of this Of the remarks about you know the the work of death or relationship between work and death that so that arises again in the Well, no, what I was what I was asking was how like successively like what we can get somewhere from sort of the terror and freedom to a place where at that point we get absolute knowledge later on.

Like, cause I, I, I noticed reading, looking at, um, I know it's like not exactly corresponding, but you're having us go to, um, the, like after this part, we're going towards the absolute terror and absolute freedom and then absolute knowledge. So to me, I'm like, I'm wanting to see just sort of like as a quick, I don't want anything big. Just like a see where we're heading because you obviously chose that for a reason. Yes, well. So I just wanted to know if you could elaborate on that. Like, I know it's a complicated question, but.

well the so Hegel wants to be able to achieve absolutes knowledge and you know but he thinks so he thinks at the moment of you know that the terror this kind of frenzied negativity is he thinks once once again it's a kind of it's an it's a necessary error okay it's a it's part it's tight as I said last week it's tied in he connects this you know the kind of the terroristic you know imposition of you know

abstract universality to Kantian moralism and you know Kantian formalism where the you know concrete particularity is you know kind of subordinated to to a formal universality but a formal universality which Hegel thinks is not properly connected to with particularity and with with content so he thinks that the result is if he thinks that that the results is something that prevents us from achieving if we remain at that stage we cannot achieve absolute

knowledge and we cannot achieve freedom either so this is a but the readings we're looking at so for instance of the first reading we'll look at is Rebecca Comey's account of Hegel which reads you know which focuses very much on his account of the French Revolution and is a very I mean look it's the claim if Hegel is a thinker of revolution and of revolutionary transformation the whole the whole issue is is revolutionary terror no and one thinks not just to the terror the Jacobin's era but obviously the kind of you know the Bolshevik terror and you know 1918 to 1920 is that some unnecessary stage in the

realization of absolute knowledge which is you know the effectuation of freedom you know the overcoming of all these kind of finite oppositions so in other words is terror you know and this kind of murderous negativity necessary for the effectuation of the absolute if so doesn't that make Hegel's account a theodicy which justifies evil you know in the name of the achievement of a greater good so this account so the reason I am focusing on this what he says about kind of negativity and

nothing works is because it all depends upon exactly how self-consciousness harnesses death and whether this harnessing of death is necessarily murderous and you know you know kind of you know leads to the kind of these you know totalitarian pathologies or whether there's a way in which it can be actually you know emancipatory and not yes not an alibi for you know the you know not the subordination of the suffering of the many for the

achievements of you know the you know the happiness and fulfillment of of the lucky few at the you know at the end of history so this is the reason that's the reason I want to look at those passages and they're very important so for Rebecca come a and her you know her book no morning sickness she reads Hegel as a someone who's who's working he's mourning the failure of the French Revolution in some you know complicated sense and for you know people like Adorno Hegel's to kind of to reconcile you know abstract you know kind of universality with concrete freedom

is a failure has been shown to be a free a failure by the disasters of the 20th century so that's why we're looking at these passages and that's why we're emphasizing this everything he has to say about death and negativity and their connection with self-consciousness. So basically, yes, that's, you know, and in a way, look, you know, the objection is that Hegel, what is Hegel's claim? Hegel thinks that he's achieved, he's brought infinity down to earth. He's overcome the bridge between the finite and the infinite.

And he's shown how human, the achievement of freedom is only possible with the full realization of cognitive self-consciousness. and that is you know that claim is that's exactly what people find most objectionable that is what you know all his critics kind of fasten upon as you know no Hegel's alleged complicity with no totalitarian crime so the claim so

This means that Hegel is now fatally untimely because Hegel's attempt to think his own time in thought is vitiated by assumptions which are no longer tenable, which are now anachronistic. and it's that criticism that I want to examine is Hegel's account of the link between negativity rationality and freedom completely anachronistic and has it been kind of definitively you know falsified by history or in fact does it provide us with the resources we need to understand the catastrophes of the 20th century. Great and I think Ivan had a question as well. Do you want to come in Ivan?

Yeah, actually you largely answered my questions but I wanted to return really quick to this issue of language in sense certainty in the move of sense certainty to self-consciousness within an individual which was a stumbling block for me but now I'm wondering if it reappears at the level of the the commonality I mean the transition between the individual and the social in Lordship and bondage and and the Hunter commented on the side something about philosophy of mathematics which has also

been a kind of recurring thought I think of the kind of argument of math generated of arithmetic coming from logic as being underwritten by language and the counter argument by Brewer or Brouwer and intuitionist mathematicians that would kind of eliminate language from that, you know, generation of arithmetic and actually bring it closer to something like Bergson's and DOR, immediate data of consciousness, if you see what I'm saying.

So Hunter compared it to the self-consciousness generating a kind of tuity, you know, and then the self-consciousness of self-consciousness kind of, you know, generating natural numbers that way. So I don't know if those two questions, it's kind of two angles on the same question, which is basically, I'm unclear about the necessity of language in this whole process. but I realized that Hegel says language is the more truthful and it hinges mediation and language are somehow conflated to me but I'm wondering if there can be basically mediation without language okay well um so yes

Hegel in sense or she already what he says that's a you know language already kind of is a you know language already kind of you know effectuates the kind of the medium of universal it's already an achievements of universality and it's a new medium for the proper elaboration self-conscious elaboration of universality so clearly he does link because he links thinking and conceptualization he links thinking you know the resource of conceptualization somehow tied to language no the Hegel what Hegel has to say about the

relationship between thought and language is I mean I'd have to go back and off the top of my head I think I probably I'm not in a position to say anything very informative or satisfying about that I mean he thinks but he does often say that he thinks that there's a necessary link between the universality of thinking and conceptualization the universality so the language kind of facilitates this the deployments of conceptual universality so this is already contrary to birth I mean the extent to which Hegel maintains a

distinction the classical accounts classic you know is that you know language preschool is only possible because thinking no no language is just nearly the kind of the expression of thinking or the kind of the outward manifestation of thinking but thinking is independent of language and there's reason to believe that he has a more conflict he doesn't want to separate thinking and language in that way then philosophers obviously philosophers like random will insist that thinking itself is only possible and then through language so that you can only conceptualization you know presupposes no linguistic resources so this is completely contrary to Berkson obviously

well Bergson thinks that there are you know kind of what he calls generality is linguistic so he thinks that language is the medium of you know generalization and he thinks that concepts as no generalities are secreted by language but he thinks that this is what that's what is pernicious or unhelpful about language. Language is constitutively incapable of grasping you know the qualitative differences of duration, you know difference in itself, you know difference without a concept which can only be directly experienced. So all of

you know Berkson's account is how language is you know linguistic classifications encourages to kind of just superimpose this coarse kind of grid of generalities over the you know fine-grained differentiations that constitutes experience or experience of reality so whatever Hegel so regardless of the details of Hegel's account he clearly I think is going to reject that kind of account he's going to reject the idea that there's this kind of pre-discursive you know intuitive consciousness this kind of consciousness which somehow is prior to an independence of you know

of the ability to kind of you know to say and state things about what one is experiencing so in that sense I think that no Hegel is going to insist on the indispensability of language and also in a way it makes it given his emphasis on Geist given his claim that consciousness is only possible as you know is only kind of as a moment of of spirits where spirit is a kind of collective self-consciousness well clearly language is absolutely fundamental to spirits so he thinks and that's it's you know given that i think there can't be spirit without language

and i think he's going to simply insist that there can't be consciousness without there can't be cognitive consciousness without language remember hegel is talking about cognition and recognition kind of allegedly precognitive experience here so does that address the first part of your question but just I unmute yourself Hello? Am I unmuted now? Yeah, yeah, it really does. And I just thought of the second part, the arithmetic, it hinges on reason, I guess,

that sense certainty to consciousness to reason path. Yes. There would be a form of reason within... the Bergsonian or the Brower, the intuition is, you know, concept of arithmetic. So I understand that Hegel rejects it, but I want to follow that move better, I guess. I'm a little hung up on that. Okay. I know looking at, I can see Hunter's question now. the this not so much a brewers project generate natural numbers through moments

of a septic awareness and then the recollection of this moment generating to see so well I take this you know I'm not very familiar with brewers I want have a very superficial you know equations with accounts but I mean look two things one is that he's going to say I mean I think Cagle would say he's going to want to assist on the difference between the the unfolding consciousness and self-consciousness with the generation of a number sequence

or the kind of the kinds of the you know that the conceptuality that would be deployed in order to kind of generate you know numerical unity etc because I think he wants to say that that is well you know he has a lot to say about you know notorious I mean there's a lot to say about quantity and quality and about what he thinks that quality famously is a kind of is a more is conceptually impoverished so he goes also mathematics is kind of torus for you

know still being enthralled or kind of a romantic subordination of quantity to quality it doesn't it doesn't attain to let so quantitative difference is conceptually impoverished it's not properly notional but it's when you know but it's when you move from quantity to quality that you get properly kind of notional determination and there is a very lengthy treatment of this in the science of logic and much has been written about this so in a way Hegel I mean actually bad use critique of early critique of Hegel in the 60s is tied to this very he thinks that Hegel's subordination of quantity to quality is

ideological and really you know just bad and kind of you know is precisely what kind of renders Hegel Hegel's notion of infinity you know fatally precantorian and therefore you know anachronistic but I've also read defenses of Hegel on this point in fact there's an article kind of critically responding to bad use critique of Hegel on this very issue of the relationship between quantity and quality and wanting to say that in the you know the Cantorian Cantor's notion of you know actual infinity you've got this already

this you know this overcoming or this this dissolution of the difference between quantity and quality. Quantity becomes quality. So this is I mean this is I don't feel properly equipped to tackle this you know off the top of my head but um but I do think there is a real issue here there's a real issue about how you know about what I mean so Hegel's official doctrine is that you know notional determinations are necessarily qualitative and qualitative actions are irreducible to quantity however he also there's lots of passages

for instance when he's discussing atomism and the science of logic which I think is just before the length I mean let me see I've got it here let me see the discussion of well yes chapter I mean the whole of you know you know section two of the the doctrine of being you know is about magnitude and quantity so chapter one is about quantity a chapter two is about quantum and in fact which eventually up to measure so he wants I mean it's a long

time since I read those sections so basically he wants to show how quantitative difference acquires determination you know in typical you know ideal fashion it gradually acquires determination to yield to eventually kind of transform into quality but But, yes, I mean, I do think this is a straightforward distinction between quantity and quality is, yes, I mean, it's a very difficult issue about whether there's a, you know,

if you're trying to think kind of spatial difference like difference no parties extra parties where you have separation without any qualitative distinction well the standards claim is that even this kind of disability to know to individuates independently of quality, in other words this ability to count, requires the operation of consciousness. You have to be able to retain, so it's the unity of consciousness that guarantees the abstract unity of a point

which is distinguished from another points by by no quality which isn't which is not qualitatively differentiated in itself so this yeah I'm not this is a very difficult issue I can't all I can say is that Hegel would say that the notional determinations we're talking about are distinct the level of self-consciousness is not as very different from what's going on in the the account of quantity and and units and measure in science of logic

but there may be an underlying connection because you know the logic are supposed to map onto moments of the phenomenology. But I'm afraid I don't know. I can't see anything. No, that's great. It's so helpful. Thank you very much. And I'll just, you know, I have plenty of other questions, but I'll just do the reading that you recommended and maybe write something on it for the classroom page. Right, yes, that would be great. Yeah. Thanks a lot. So, Ray, do you have time for one more question? It's almost two now. Yes, yes, okay. Yep. So, Kevin? Yeah, hi. I have a question. I want to go back to work.

Does the way that work, the contemporary way that work is specialized, our roles are specialized, and work processes are instrumentalized, Does that negate our possibility of confronting and overcoming absolute death, since what we produce doesn't lead to a form of self-reliance or some form of emancipation from bondmanship, or even encourage, it seems, any kind of self-consciousness? I mean, the short answer is yes. It completely precludes this kind of work. It would facilitate

consciousness of death no it clearly doesn't and so what Hegel is talking about is again a kind of he's saying that there's something about work that is that he believes is kind of that is emancipatory that does allow self consciousness to realize itself but yes I mean clearly the conditions under which work I mean the social no wage labor and the social conditions under which you know subjects are compelled to sell their labor seem to preclude you know the kind of you know the realization

of you know self-conscious freedom so so I think the claim would be that's there's something about yes I think given that you know the conditions on what work is and the conditions under what which work is undertaken are socially determined to depend upon a whole kind of social context then clearly you have to order for work to you know fulfill this you know emancipate emancipatory potential

that hegel attributes to it you need a completely a radical complete kind of I know the abolition of wage labor I would say and a complete a radical reorganization of society so yes so I think it's not silly it's not I mean it's obviously possible to read what he says here in a very conservative way, you know, how work, how drudgery is good for you, and I'm sure people have read it in that way. But I think that's, you know, he's not, he's saying that work is not, well in a way he's kind of rejecting the idea,

I don't know if it's a Rousseau idea, but that there's a work is like some kind of alienation from, you know, from some kind of state of nature in which human beings are and kind of enjoy a kind of spontaneous, you know, collective self-expression and self-realization without any kind of alienation. you know he thinks that kind of the exteriorization that self-consciousness undertakes in work is entirely positive is a condition for its it's kind of for achieving its independence okay but um but obviously he doesn't think that

It's quite obvious that capitalism is a kind of oppressive and paralyzing alienation. It's not a kind of... There are enabling and disabling modes of alienation, I think, for Hegel. And it's clear that capitalism is a completely disabling mode of alienation, according to what he says about the consciousness. Does that answer your question?

Yes, it does. Thank you. And I actually want to ask a follow-up question that will probably bring us too far afield. but what would an enabling kind of alienation look like? Well, Hegel thinks, I mean, the words, you know, there's two words, there's estrangement and externalization. Okay, there's this famous two kind of registers or what sometimes just gets translated as alienation. I think in Hegel, there's, I can't remember the two German words right now, because my German is terrible. But there's a kind of self-externalization, which Hegel thinks is entirely positive.

So he thinks precisely because self-consciousness is not something that is self-contained. In fact, it's precisely that which is always, you know, always already outside of itself. And by the way, you know, what a philosopher like what Heidegger says about kind of Dasein's kind of ecstatic transcendence, Dasein, already with Hegel, I mean, self-consciousness for Hegel is something that is, it has no inside and no outside, because, you know, its outside is its inside and vice versa. So in a way, this, because it can only relate to itself by relating to another, this is what allows it to be what it is it has to externalize itself in order to you know to be you know to unite with itself to maintain its its kind of

integrity so that is entirely so there's a sense in which in the at this moment of the dialectic of Lord and bondsman the the bondsman's work is entirely is what allows it to achieve its independence okay so that's an enabling exteriorization so and so in other words it's an exteriorization which is you know which overcomes its alienate the alienation of its service to the Lord so I think that's a very good example of a way in which June is both enable it can be simply not enabling and disable because there are two different kinds of you know alienation coinciding at any moment and I kind of a dialectical

development so the key thing is obviously the kind of the I think that the bad the worst and anti-hegelian understanding of the nation is to understand alienation as the objectivation of some kind of inner essence or core, which must be reincorporated within oneself. The point is that self-consciousness doesn't have an essence in this sense. This is why I think that the whole post-Tutcher's critique of

Hegelism as, you know, kind of the claim, you know, I don't think there's a metaphysics of propriety in Hegel, in the way in which there is in Heidegger, you know, in Dasein is, you know, Dasein's authenticity, it's, you know, Egeintlichkeit, is about, you know, it's properly, it's about, you know, it's properly being itself. and the whole in a creation in Heidegger I think is you know really and I think Derrida rightly identifies here as a kind of metaphysics of the proper. Now in Hegel I just don't think because what Hegel says about essence and about essence being

negativity, essence is not stable self-identity for Hegel so essence is realized through this externalization, internalization. But there is no, so the claim is that if you believe that this process culminates in this moment of perfect homeostatic equilibrium, where Geist has kind of successfully reincorporated, you know, all possible alterity, that's where you could then attack him, say, well, this is, you know, this is Hegel as a thinker of parousia, absolute parousia, absolute self present self identity which is obviously the classical characterization of essence but I think that that is a clearly a caricature of Hegel and I just don't think that

there is no credible evidence for that's you know for that reading so so no so I think you know in a way he thinks so hegel is a thinker for whom estrangement is enabling so what it means to be human is to be estranged that's what self-consciousness is so this means that you can't understand whatever kind of the uh the process for the you know the the achievement of self-consciousness is it's not kind of uh it's not the kind of the the overcoming of estrangement and the reestablishment of some kind of authentic propriety? Absolutely not.

Great. Does that answer your question, Kevin, a little bit? Yes, it does. Thank you so much. All right. Well, we are past the three-hour mark now. Thanks so much for your extra time, Ray. Okay. and I just wanted to say that I have no read your assignments but I haven't had time to actually make any comments on them but I will try to kind of send them back with with some you know comments and feedback over the next hopefully well before the next session there's no session next week because I'm traveling yet so the session will be on the 13th yes that's it yeah great so I'm gonna

I'm going to post the sidebar in the classroom again and the link to the video as well. Is there anything else that you want to do before we end the session? No, that's the reading. So next time we'll go through, we'll try to finish, so we'll try to read absolute freedom and terror and the hopefully kind of absolute knowing as well. Sounds great. So that will be the final week on Hagel and then we'll begin the second reading. readings after that. Perfect. Alright, thanks so much Ray. That was great. Okay, okay, thanks. Okay, good night. Alright, I'm going to end the broadcast.