Fear

(b). Fear

¹⁹⁴ We have seen what bondage is only in relation to lordship.

But bondage is a self-consciousness.

What is bondage in itself?

In the first instance, the master is the essential reality for the state of bondage.

Hence, for the master, the truth is the independent consciousness existing for itself, although this truth is not taken yet as inherent in bondage itself.

Still, it does contain this truth of pure negativity and self-existence.

This is because it has experienced this reality within it.

This consciousness was not in peril and fear for this element or that, nor for this or that moment of time, it was afraid for its entire being; it felt the fear of death, the sovereign master.

That experience melted it to its inmost soul. It has trembled throughout its every fibre, and all that was fixed and steadfast has quaked within it.

This type of consciousness involves:

• this complete perturbation of its entire substance
• this absolute dissolution of its stability into fluent continuity

This absolute negativity is pure self-referrent existence.

• It is the simple, ultimate nature of self-consciousness

This moment of pure self-existence is moreover a fact for it; for in the master it finds this as its object. Further, this bondsman’s consciousness is not only this total dissolution in a general way; in serving and toiling the bondsman actually carries this out. By serving he cancels in every particular aspect his dependence on and attachment to natural existence, and by his work removes this existence away.

¹⁹⁵ The feeling of absolute power, however, realized both in general and in the particular form of service, is only dissolution implicitly;

Albeit the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom, consciousness is not therein aware of being self-existent.

Through work and labour, however, this consciousness of the bondsman comes to itself. In the moment which corresponds to desire in the case of the master’s consciousness, the aspect of the non-essential relation to the thing seemed to fall to the lot of the servant, since the thing there retained its independence.

Desire has reserved to itself the pure negating of the object and thereby unalloyed feeling of self.

This satisfaction, however, just for that reason is itself only a state of evanescence, for it lacks objectivity or subsistence.

Labour, on the other hand, is desire restrained and checked, evanescence delayed and postponed; in other words, labour shapes and fashions the thing. The negative relation to the object passes into the form of the object, into something that is permanent and remains; because it is just for the labourer that the object has independence.

This negative mediating agency, this activity giving shape and form, is at the same time the individual existence, the pure self-existence of that consciousness, which now in the work it does is externalized and passes into the condition of permanence. The consciousness that toils and serves accordingly attains by this means the direct apprehension of that independent being as its self.

¹⁹⁶ Shaping the object has not only the positive significance that the bondsman becomes thereby aware of himself as factually and objectively self-existent;

This type of consciousness has also a negative import, in contrast with its moment, the element of fear. For in shaping the thing it only becomes aware of its own proper negativity, existence on its own account, as an object, through the fact that it cancels the actual form confronting it.

But this objective negative element is precisely alien, external reality, before which it trembled. Now, however, it destroys this extraneous alien negative, affirms and sets itself up as a negative in the element of permanence, and thereby becomes for itself a self-existent being.

In the master, the bondsman feels self-existence to be something external, an objective fact; in fear self-existence is present within himself; in fashioning the thing, self-existence comes to be felt explicitly as his own proper being, and he attains the consciousness that he himself exists in its own right and on its own account (an und für sich).

By the fact that the form is objectified, it does not become something other than the consciousness moulding the thing through work; for just that form is his pure self existence, which therein becomes truly realized.

Thus precisely in labour where there seemed to be merely some outsider’s mind and ideas involved, the bondsman becomes aware, through this re-discovery of himself by himself, of having and being a “mind of his own”.

(c). The Formative Process of Self-Enfranchisement

For this reflection of self into self the two moments, fear and service in general, as also that of formative activity, are necessary: and at the same time both must exist in a universal manner.

Without the discipline of service and obedience, fear remains formal and does not spread over the whole known reality of existence.

Without the formative activity shaping the thing, fear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become objective for itself. Should consciousness shape and form the thing without the initial state of absolute fear, then it has a merely vain and futile “mind of its own”; for its form or negativity is not negativity per se, and hence its formative activity cannot furnish the consciousness of itself as essentially real.

If it has endured not absolute fear, but merely some slight anxiety, the negative reality has remained external to it, its substance has not been through and through infected thereby.

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 eigene Sinn) is simply stubbornness (Eigensinn), a type of freedom which does not get beyond the attitude of bondage.

As little as the pure form can become its essential nature, so little is that form, considered as extending over particulars, a universal formative activity, an absolute notion; it is rather a piece of cleverness which has mastery within a certain range, but not over the universal power nor over the entire objective reality.