3. Lord and Bondsman

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

In immediate self-consciousness, the simple ego is absolute object, which, however, is for us or in itself absolute mediation, and has as its essential moment substantial and solid independence.

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

Through this, there is posited:

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 essential, 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, but
• (b) is now moreover at the same time mediation, or a being-for-self which is for itself only through 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.

it is his chain, from which he could not in the struggle get away, and for that reason he proved himself to be dependent, to have his independence in the shape of thinghood.

The master, however, is the power controlling this state of existence, for he has shown in the struggle that he holds it to be merely something negative.

Since he is the power dominating existence, while this existence again is the power controlling the other [the bondsman], the master holds, par consequence, 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, by means of this mediating process, belongs the immediate relation, in the sense of the pure negation of it, in other words he gets the enjoyment.

What mere desire did not attain, he now succeeds in attaining, viz. to have done with the thing, and find satisfaction in enjoyment.

Desire alone did not get the length of this, because of the independence of the thing.

The master who has interposed the bondsman between it and himself, thereby relates himself merely to the dependence of the thing, and enjoys it without qualification and without reserve.

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

(a). Lordship

¹⁹¹ In these two moments, the master gets his recognition through an other consciousness, for in them the latter affirms itself as unessential, both by working upon the thing, and, on the other hand, by the fact of being dependent on a determinate existence; in neither case can this other get the mastery over existence, and succeed in absolutely negating it.

We have thus here this moment of recognition, viz. that the other consciousness cancels itself as self-existent, and, ipso facto, itself does what the first does to it.

In the same way we have the other moment, that this action on the part of the second is the action proper of the first; for what is done by the bondsman is properly an action on the part of the master.

The latter exists only for himself, that is his essential nature; he is the negative power without qualification, a power to which the thing is naught.

He is thus the absolutely essential act in this situation, while the bondsman is not so, he is an unessential activity.

But for recognition proper there is needed the moment that what the master does to the other he should also do to himself, and 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.