The Phenomenology starts with the analysis of sensuous certainty, which - as we saw in chapter 3 - mutates logically into perception. Perception then transforms itself into
understanding (Verstand). In each of these shapes of consciousness, there is an element of self-awareness, since each distinguishes itself from the object to which it relates. Yet the principal focus of each shape is on its object, rather than itself. Each one takes ‘what is true for consciousness’ to be ‘something other than itself’1 Consequently, these three shapes are described by Hegel as shapes of consciousness in the narrow sense, as opposed to shapes of self-consciousness, reason or spirit. (In the broader sense, of course, all the shapes analysed in the Phenomenology - with the exception of absolute knowing - count as shapes of
‘consciousness’, since all fail to recognize fully the essential structural identity between being and thought.)2
Hegel then argues that consciousness in the narrow sense turns logically into self- consciousness. Such self-consciousness does not merely consist in the self-awareness that accompanies all consciousness of objects. It consists, rather, in being wholly preoccupied with and absorbed by itself, and it sees objects as little more than the means to reinforce and deepen its sense of itself. The transition to such all-embracing self-consciousness is made necessary by the third shape of consciousness, ‘understanding’. Its object proves in its experience not just to be simple immediacy, nor just to be a perceivable thing with prop
erties, but to be an object governed by inner forces and laws. In such laws, however, con
sciousness recognizes principles of its own understanding. This, according to Hegel, is why
‘explaining’ something in terms of laws affords such satisfaction: ‘because in it conscious
ness is, so to speak, communing directly with itself, enjoying only itself; although it seems to be busy with something else, it is in fact occupied only with itself’.3
Explanatory consciousness, or understanding, is explicitly directed towards objects standing over against it; but it is implicitly concerned with itself above all. The next shape of consciousness analysed by Hegel is the one that explicitly affirms what is implicit in the experience of understanding and openly places itself at the centre of its own world. Such explicit self-consciousness, as its name suggests, is principally absorbed by itself Yet it also remains conscious of what is other than itself, and its certainty of itself is mediated by the other things and selves to which it relates. Such mediation, Hegel argues, takes two forms.
On the one hand, self-consciousness affirms its certainty of itself by negating the inde
pendence of objects and pressing them into the service of the self; that is, by turning them into means to the satisfaction of desire. On the other hand, self-consciousness sees its iden
tity confirmed by another self-consciousness that ‘negates itself’ through setting its own interests to one side and according recognition to the first self-consciousness.4
Fully developed self-consciousness, according to Hegel, is to be found only where such recognition is mutual, indeed where two (or more) self-consciousnesses ‘recognise themselves as mutually recognising one another’, as, for example, in the modern constitu
tional state.5 Hegel turns first, however, to examine primitive or ‘immediate’ self-con
sciousness which is not yet committed to genuine reciprocity but seeks recognition for itself alone. Such primitive self-consciousness, we are told, wants to be recognized by another self-consciousness as pure ‘being-for-self ’ (Fursichsein) or freedom.6 This freedom is under
stood in a wholly negative way as freedom from all limitation and determination by others or by one’s own given nature and, accordingly, is taken to reside in what Hegel calls
‘absolute negativity’. Such negativity is held, more specifically, to consist (a) in being governed in oneself by nothing determinate, such as one’s sex, age or skin colour, and so being in essence nothing in particular, and (b) in the corresponding ability to negate anything and everything outside oneself, including not only objects but also any other self-consciousness to which one relates. Since primitive self-consciousness seeks to be recognized by another as nothing but such sheer negativity, and the other self- consciousness seeks similar recognition for itself in turn, there necessarily ensues a ‘life
and death struggle’ in which each tries to prove to the other how free and ‘negative’ it is.
Each does so by endeavouring to kill the other and by risking its own life in the process.
Hegel points out, however, that there is a contradiction in this struggle: for if either self- consciousness were actually to end up dead, the other would not gain the desired recog
nition. The survivor would prove his freedom to himself, but he could not be recognized by the other as the one who was prepared to risk his life in seeking the other’s death. The logical ‘experience’ of self-consciousness thus reveals that both the combatants must emerge from the struggle alive, and indeed that one of them must give way to the other, if there is to be any conferral and enjoyment of the recognition that they both desire. The one that backs down will do so out of the fear of dying: he will cling on to life, abandon his effort to be recognized as free ‘negativity’ and subordinate himself to the other as his
‘bondsman’ or ‘slave’ (Knecht). The other self-consciousness, who is recognized by the slave as free negativity, becomes the ‘lord’ or ‘master’ (Herr).7 Note that Hegel’s claim is not that all such life and death struggles in history issue in relations of dominance and subservience.
Hegel well knows that the combatants in such struggles often end up dead. His point is that the recognition sought by both self-consciousnesses in the struggle can be achieved only if the struggle gives way to the master-slave relation. The life and death struggle thus leads logically to mastery and slavery, even if actual historical struggles do not always obey this logic.
In his famous account of the master-slave relation, Hegel shows that each self- consciousness discovers through its own experience that it is actually the opposite of what it initially takes itself to be. The master takes himself to manifest the freedom and power of unfettered ‘negativity’ or desire, but learns that his freedom is in fact dependent on the labour and service of the slave. The slave, by contrast, takes himself to be wholly unfree, but learns that he does in fact enjoy genuine freedom in his very servitude.
Just as lordship showed that its essential nature is the reverse of what it wants to be, so too servitude in its consummation will really turn 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 [selb
ständig] consciousness.8
The slave is forced by the master to work on things and prepare them for his consump
tion; but in the very activity of labour the slave discovers that he, too, has a certain freedom and power to negate and transform things: ‘the bondsman realises that it is precisely in his work wherein he seemed to have only an alienated existence that he acquires a mind of his own [eigener Sinn] Furthermore, the slave is able to do what the master cannot do, namely give positive, objective expression to his freedom by giving a new form to, rather than merely destroying, objects around him: ‘in fashioning the thing, the bondsman’s own negativity, his being-for-self, becomes an object for him only through his negating the existing shape confronting him’.9
In itself such labour is the particular expression of a particular skill - the particular ability to bake bread or to make chairs. Hegel points out, however, that the slave also har
bours within himself an awareness of a profound freedom from all particularity and given
ness - an awareness of himself as ‘pure negativity and being-for-self’.10 Yet how can the slave think of himself in this way? In the life and death struggle, each of the rival self- consciousnesses sought recognition for itself as sheer negativity, but the one that became the slave abandoned its search for such recognition. In so doing, it also forfeited its own sense of being purely ‘negative’ by clinging on to the concrete determinacies of life. Para
doxically, however, the slave gains a new sense of being purely negative through his fear of
death. The slave experiences such fear because, in the struggle, he envisages himself being dead, and so being nothing, and quakes at the thought of his utter destruction. This is not to say that slave is simply fearful that he will die at some unspecified time in the future.
What fills him with all-consuming terror is the fact that he stares death directly in the face and envisages himself being dead and being nothing now. In other words, he is terrified by the thought of himself, now, as nothing whatsoever.
This fearful thought, in Hegel’s view, is double-edged. On the one hand, it is the thought that everything about oneself is under threat of being ‘inwardly dissolved’.11 On the other hand, it entails a new and highly abstract thought of oneself - the thought of oneself as nothing determinate, as not-a-thing. The slave’s confrontation with his own death in fear is thus not purely and simply an experience of loss, because in such fear the slave actually gains a renewed consciousness of himself. As Kojeve puts it, the slave in the fear of death catches ‘a glimpse of himself as nothingness,. . . a Nothingness maintained in Being’.12 Indeed, the slave sees himself as nothing but pure and empty being itself - pure being that is for itself For this reason, Hegel argues, ‘in fear, being-for-self is present in the bondsman himself [an ihm selbst]’?3
The master’s consciousness of his own pure negativity expressed itself in the form of sheer unrestrained desire. The slave’s consciousness of his own pure negativity takes a far less rapacious form. It is sheltered within a fear that by itself is ‘inward and mute’ and is no more than a silent quaking within the slave.14 Such fearful consciousness of being in essence nothing in particular is not, however, impotent; on the contrary, it radically trans
forms the slave’s understanding of his own labour. For if the slave labours out of an under
lying mortal fear, he can regard his labour as giving active expression to the pure negativity that, in his fear, he experiences himself to be.
Were the slave to labour without fear, Hegel argues, such labour would be for the slave himself nothing more than the exercise of a particular talent. In such a case, the slavish consciousness’s ‘formative activity cannot give it a consciousness of itself as essential being’;
that is, as ‘negativity per se. Furthermore, the slave would regard the particular labour in which he engages as the sole locus of his freedom and so would cling to it stubbornly - with Eigensinn.1S Since the slave would be bound to and dependent upon this particular labour for the freedom he enjoys, his freedom would in fact still be ‘enmeshed in servitude’.16
If, however, the slave labours out of fear and the accompanying experience of himself as pure negativity, he can regard any particular activity as the particular, concrete expression of his universal freedom from, and freedom to negate and transform, everything given and determinate around him, or what Hegel calls his ‘universal formative activity’.17 Accord
ingly, he will understand himself to be capable of all kinds of labour and not to be depend
ent on, or slave to, any one of them. To paraphrase Marx, he will regard himself not just as a painter but as a person who engages in painting among other possible activities.18 In this way, the slave who labours out of fear acquires a consciousness of freedom that incor
porates and fuses together the concrete ability to transform particular objects and the abstract consciousness of oneself as pure negativity that initially appeared to be reserved for the master alone. Such consciousness of freedom belies the slave’s initial understand
ing o f himself as no more than a slave.19
In the experience described by the phenomenologist, the slave discovers that, thanks to the fear of death, he possesses a freedom that is not just the partial, slavish freedom of labour and service alone. Yet despite this, the slave still knows himself to be in servitude to the master. He thus regards himself as non-slavishly free in his very slavery. At this point, however, we make the transition to a new shape of consciousness that takes over and
renders fully explicit the new understanding of freedom attained by the slave, without the slave’s lingering conception of oneself as bound in servitude. This new shape of consciousness is thought or ‘Stoicism’
Stoicism
Kojeve regards the transition from the slave’s consciousness to ‘stoical’ thought as a his
torical transition: the slave himself becomes a stoic who claims that he is free in his think
ing in order to compensate for his lack of real freedom in the world and, indeed, ‘to justify . . . his refusal to fight to realise his libertarian ideal’20 As is the case throughout the Phe
nomenology y however, this transition is logical, not historical. Stoical thought is a new shape of consciousness that renders explicit what is implicit in the slave’s experience.
The slave sees his own freedom embodied in the object of his labour. He works on the object, gives it a new form and sees that form as manifesting, in the object itself, his own free activity. In this way, ‘consciousness, qua worker, comes to see in the independent being [of the object] its own independence’.21 The slave, however, continues to regard the object as other than consciousness and, of course, as an inanimate object lacking any conscious
ness, selfhood or freedom of its own. He sees the master as another ‘being-for-self’ but he does not regard the object of his labour in this way. Consequendy, he does not see his own selfhood as such duplicated in another self-consciousness, but instead sees his freedom embodied ‘in the form of the thing he has fashioned’22
Yet for us what is implicit in the slave’s relation to his object is the fact that he finds him self- qua self-consciousness and being-for-self - in the form he has given to the object.
As Hegel puts it, ‘the form and the being-for-self are for ms, or in themselves, the same’23 We now make the transition, therefore, to a new shape of consciousness that takes over explicitiy the truth revealed in the experience of the slave.
This new shape of consciousness does not cease to relate to objects — objects that lack any self-consciousness of their own. Yet, at the same time, it finds itself explicidy as such in these objects. But how can it see itself and its own consciousness in objects that are inani
mate? By recognizing that ‘thinghood which received its form in being fashioned is no other substance [keine andere Substanz\ than consciousness’ itself. And what is this ‘substance’
that is identical in both inanimate things and consciousness? It is intelligible, conceptual form. The new shape of consciousness that explicitiy recognizes itself in things is thus thought (Denken) that sees in the object’s intelligible structure its very own concepts and categories.
When consciousness perceives something, its attention is directed outside itself to the object perceived. It knows itself to be perceptual consciousness, but it considers the object and the properties perceived in the object to be quite other than itself. When thought understands something through concepts, however, it is immediately aware that such con
cepts are its own: ‘the Concept is for me straightway my Concept’. At the same time those concepts are understood to articulate and bring to mind the true structure of things them
selves - a structure that is itself understood to be conceptual. Conceptual thought thus dis
cerns in its object an intelligible structure that it understands also to belong to concepts it immediately knows to be its own: ‘since this content is at the same time a content grasped in thoughty consciousness remains immediately aware of its unity with this determinate and distinct being’. There is, therefore, a subtle but important difference between thought and the self-consciousness of the slave: whereas the slave relates to another object in which it finds itself embodied, thought relates principally to itself and its own concepts in the objects
it finds before it. Such thought thus actually attains a higher degree of self-consciousness and freedom than does the slave: cin thinking, I am free, because I am not in an other, but remain simply and solely in communion with myself, and the object, which is for me the essential being, is in undivided unity with my being-for-myself; and my activity in con
ceptual thinking is a movement within myself I24
Yet does this not mean that the Phenomenology has now reached its goal: a shape of con
sciousness in which the opposition between subject and object has been overcome and in which thought and being are known to be completely identical in form? Not quite, because the mode of thought under discussion at this point in the text - associated by Hegel with Stoicism - does not give equal weight to being and to its own thought, but remains above all a shape of self-consciousness. Some critics have suggested that Hegelian absolute knowing is itself nothing more than self-consciousness writ large and for this reason fails to make genuine space for what is other than consciousness and its own determinations.25 Yet a brief comparison between absolute knowing and stoical thought shows this charge to be mis
placed.
Stoical thought prefigures absolute knowing in so far as it understands thought and being to be identical in structure. It insists on such an identity, however, not because it dis
covers through its experience that its object is itself independently and immanently logical, but because it ‘withdraws’ (sich . . . zurückzieht) into its own thought and finds therein the categories that it then discerns in the object.26 Its understanding of the identity of thought and being is, therefore, one-sided, since it comes to recognize that identity by looking first
covers through its experience that its object is itself independently and immanently logical, but because it ‘withdraws’ (sich . . . zurückzieht) into its own thought and finds therein the categories that it then discerns in the object.26 Its understanding of the identity of thought and being is, therefore, one-sided, since it comes to recognize that identity by looking first