3. Lord and Bondsman

¹⁸⁹ In this experience, self-consciousness becomes aware that life is as essential to it as pure self-consciousness is.

In immediate self-consciousness, the simple ego is absolute object.

For us, however, the simple ego:

• is absolute mediation
• has as its essential moment as substance and solid independence.

The dissolution of that simple unity is the result of the first experience.

The first experience creates:

1. A pure self-consciousness

• This is independent. Its essential nature is to be for itself.
• This is dependent. Its essence is life or existence for another.
• This is the Master.

2. An existent consciousness

• This is not purely for itself, but for another consciousness in the shape of thinghood.
• This is the Bondsman.

Both moments are essence, since they are opposed.

• Their reflexion into unity has not yet come to light.
• They stand as two opposed forms or modes of consciousness.

¹⁸⁹ The master is the consciousness that exists for itself.

Its existence is mediated through an other consciousness.

The master relates to both:

• the object of desire, and
• the consciousness whose essence is thinghood.

The master is:

• (a) qua notion of self-consciousness, an immediate relation of self-existence
• (b) mediation, or a being-for-self
  • This exists because of an other — he [the master] stands in relation (a) immediately to both, (b) mediately to each through the other.

The master relates himself to the bondsman mediately through independent existence, for that is precisely what keeps the bondsman in thrall.

Independent existence is the chain that makes the bondsman dependent. This makes his independence take the shape of thinghood.

The master, however, is the power controlling this state of existence. This is because he has shown in the struggle that independent existence is merely something negative.

He is the power dominating existence.

This existence is the power controlling the other [the bondsman].

And so the master holds this other in subordination.

In the same way, the master relates himself to the thing mediately through the bondsman.

The bondsman is a self-consciousness that takes up a negative attitude to things and cancels them.

But the thing is independent for him.

As a consequence, he cannot, with all his negating, get so far as to annihilate it.

Instead, he merely works on it.

To the master, on the other hand, gets the enjoyment through this mediating process of the pure negation of it.

The master now attains what mere desire could ot attain, viz. to have done with the thing, and find satisfaction in enjoyment.

Desire could not achieve this because of the independence of the thing.

But the master has interposed the bondsman between it and himself.

The master relates himself merely to the dependence of the thing. He and enjoys it without qualification nor reserve.

The aspect of its independence he leaves to the bondsman, who labours on it.

(a). Lordship

¹⁹¹ In these 2 moments, the master gets his recognition through an other consciousness which then affirms itself as non-essence by:

• working on the thing, and
• being dependent on a determinate existence

In neither case can this other [bondsman] get the mastery over existence, and succeed in absolutely negating it.

And so the other consciousness cancels itself as self-existent. It does what the master does to it.

In the same way we have the other moment when this action by the bondsman is the action of the master. This is because the bondsman merely does the action of the master.

The master exists only for himself.

• He is the negative power without qualification, a power to which the thing is naught.

He is thus the absolute essence in this situation. The bondsman is not essence.

But what the master does to the bondsman, he also does to himself. What the bondsman does to himself, he should do to the other also.

On that account a form of recognition has arisen that is one-sided and unequal.

¹⁹² In all this, the unessential consciousness is, for the master, the object which embodies the truth of his certainty of himself.

But this object does not correspond to its notion; for, just where the master has effectively achieved lordship, he really finds that something has come about quite different from an independent consciousness.

It is not an independent, but rather a dependent consciousness that he has achieved. He is thus not assured of self-existence as his truth; he finds that his truth is rather the unessential consciousness, and the fortuitous unessential action of that consciousness.

¹⁹³ The truth of the independent consciousness is the consciousness of the bondsman.

This appears in the first instance outside itself, and not as the truth of self-consciousness.

But just as lordship showed its essential nature to be the reverse of what it wants to be, so, too, bondage will, when completed, pass into the opposite of what it immediately is: being a consciousness repressed within itself, it will enter into itself, and change round into real and true independence.