Diane,
thanks for that. Hegel's dialectic of the master and the slave has fueled a
long, long tradition of interpretation. It seems that each generation
interprets it according to the dictates of its own historical situation.
But I'm not sure where butler's interpretation of unhappy consciousness is
quite faithful to what Hegel intended however since the "unhappiness" has
nothing whatsoever to do with "self-beratement". In the struggle to the
death that established the master-slave relationship, the slave loses all
sense of self-certainty and its truth appears to it as the truth of the
master's self-consciousness. Hegel writes: "It has been in that experience
melted to its inmost soul, has trembled throughout its every fibre, and all
that was fixed and steadfast has quaked within it. This complete
peturbation of its entire substance, this absolute dissolution of all its
stability into fluent continuity, is however, the simple, ultimate nature of
self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure self-referent existence, which
consequently is inovlolved in this type of consciousness." Although the
truth of self-consciousness is the consciousness of the slave, the slave is
unaware of this. The upshot of the process is that the slave, who is forced
to labor for the master, becomes aware of its own truth through the labor it
performs. " /. . . p[recisely 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'". But as should be clear, the bondsman is alienated from the product
of its labor, and this is the source of "unhappy consciousness". "This
unhappy consciousness, divided and at variance within itself, must, because
this contradiction of its essential nature is felt to be a single
consciousness, always have in the one consciousness the other also; and thus
be straightway driven out of each in turn." This is the essential
characteristic of the unhappy consciousness then: alienation from that which
could provide a sense of self-certainty (the products of the labor of the
slave do not belong to the slave).
I always thought that Kierkergaard's philosophy was the perfect expression
of the "unhappy consciousness" and I think that Kierkergaard himself
criticized Hegel on the grounds that no transition to rationality, of the
type Hegel envisioned in the stage following the stage of "unhappy
consciousness" was possible.
From a CHAT perspective the master-slave relationship is significant since
it is the point at which consciousness becomes mediated in the Hegelian
architectonic. Hegel writes, "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."" Consciousness of self occurs as mediated through
labor/instruments, etc.
Interesting to find that in spite of the ever changing vocabulary,. the same
springs are providing important sources of insight and theorization
regardless of the accuracy or faithfulness of the interpretations.
BTW, I'd still like to know what you mean by "type with two hands."
Paul H. Dillon
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