Conceptuación y operacionalización de las variables 1 Conceptuación de las variables

totally separate) is total, such that the finite consciousness can only cringe before it in humility, obedience, and fear.

The aim and outcome of the dialectical interplay between freedom and bondage is freedom, but not a freedom which is abstract and involves merely lack of restraint. It is rather a freedom in which all the

fragmentation and alienation of self-consciousness is overcome, a freedom whose essence is to manifest itself in a determinate world harmoniously, such that the finite world no longer strives for independence from its essence, which in actuality means choosing its own unfreedom. We have before us now a concept of freedom which is not the freedom which says "take any road, it does not matter which you choose." We rather have before us a freedom which finds its being in necessity.

In morality, this freedom is achieved by the harmonisation of duty with inclination, and in political life, by the coalescence of the individual and the social good. In Hegel's organic state, which is the outcome and culmination of more primitive and one-sided forms of social organisation, a perfect balance of freedom and necessity is achieved. The individual citizen transcends his individuality and

expresses his nature more truly by way of his participation within the 4

whole.

In the opening section of Hegel's discussion of dialectical development at work in the social sphere, we are shown with reference to concrete historical examples why epochs which embody one-sidedly the principle,of freedom or bondage must inevitably be superseded. In the chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind entitled "Independence and Dependence of self-consciousness: Lordship and Bondage" we are introduced to the sort of freedom which self-consciousness seeks to gain from wilful and immediate self-assertion. And we are shown why, as an attempt to win freedom, it must inevitably fail. Hegel is

discussing here, historical societies in which there have existed direct forms of slavery, where one man has literally been able to own another.

When self-consciousness first becomes aware of itself, it becomes aware too, that it is demarcated from a world which stands over against it as a not-self. It finds itself to be limited both by the external material world and by other self-consciousnesses. It responds to this aspect of reality which is alien self-consciousness by attempting to subdue it in a life and death struggle. The struggle is one for recognition so that each tries to make the other an expression of his own will, that is to say, a slave. Each participant in the struggle thus aims to be Infinite, a Universality which embraces its "Other'*

within itself. The struggle is one in which one stakes one's life, but this does not mean that the one always goes so far as to kitZ the other. Were this to happen, the one could not express his will through the other. What often happens is that one participant gives in - refuses to fight on to the death, and becomes a slave of the other in order to save his life.

The domination of the slave by the master makes the slave into something object-like and thing-like, the sort of thing whose recognition must inevitably fail to satisfy the master. The master is alienated from the work by which he sustains himself, that is, the work of the slave, because it is merely presented to him as it were "on a plate" and is in no wây the product of his own creative effort. In this way, the master in no way is able to achieve his ambition of becoming infinite, he is instead acutely reminded of his finite limitations. The attempt

to express universality and overcome limitation by an arbitrary exercise of the will leads to the master's efforts collapsing into a form of bondage and limitation. The slave too, is alienated (though through the mere fact that he can be in some small way creative through his work.

less so than the master), for his work is carried out at the command of another, and is not an expression of his free creativity.

The type of freedom which accrues to the master^ who has believed that this forcible domination is the way in which to be Infinite, is beautifully described by Hegel:

"Since the entire content of its natural consciousness has not tottered and shaken, it is still inherently a determinate mode of being; having a "mind of its own" (der Eigen Sinn) is simply stubbornness (Eigensinn), a type of freedom which does not get beyond the attitude of bondage." 22

Abstract freedom thus collapses into the finitude of the parti­ cular self-consciousness which is therefore forced to find ever more subtle ways of overcoming this alienation from its not-self, since it

now sees that direct domination defeats its own purpose. The next ; type of freedom which it seeks to find is radically different from the

abstract freedom of the master, it is a freedom in which self-conscious- !

I

ness seeks freedom through or at least in spite of bondage. This is [ Stoicism, which "is a freedom which can come on the scene as a general

form of the world's spirit only in a time of universal fear and 23

bondage ... "

In Stoicism, the only freedom which is believed to matter is freedom of thought, the type of freedom which can be enjoyed by the meanest slave.

"The essence of this consciousness is to be free, on the throne as well as in fetters, throughout all the dependence that attaches to its individual existence, from effective activity as well as from passive endurance, into the simple essentiality of thought." 24

22. See Phenomenology of Mind, p.188 (J.B. Baillie translation) Vol.l