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The life and death struggle
Hegel makes clear, however, that with this outline account of fully developed recognition he is anticipating, commenting that 'We have now to see how the process of this pure Notion of recognition, of the duplicating of self-consciousness in its oneness, appears to self-consciousness. At first, it will exhibit the side of the inequality of the two, or the splitting-up of the middle term into the extremes which, as extremes, are opposed to one another, one being only recognized, the other only recognizing' (my first two emphases). Thus, at the stage we have reached, the single self-consciousness is not yet able to achieve a stable sense of its own identity in the face of the other self-consciousness: as he puts the problem elsewhere, 'In this determination lies the tremendous contradiction that, on the one hand, the "I" is wholly universal, absolutely pervasive, and interrupted by no limit, is the universal essence common to all men, the two mutually related selves therefore constituting one identity, constituting, so to speak, one light; and yet, on the other hand, they are also two selves rigidly and unyieldingly confronting each other, each existing as a reflection-into-self, as absolutely distinct from and impenetrable by the other' . Thus, we once again have a tension between universality (the 'wholly universal' I belonging to both self-consciousnesses) and individuality (the sense that each self-consciousness has of itself as an individual fundamentally distinct from the other self-consciousness). Hegel's attempt to bring out the difficulty this creates for self-consciousness in achieving a stable self-identity is one of the most well known and influential sections of the Phenomenology; unfortunately, however, it is open to conflicting interpretations. For, although it is clear that the dialectic takes us from 'desire', through 'the life and death struggle', to 'mastership and servitude', it is not so obvious exactly what argument is meant to underpin the transition from 'desire' to 'the life and death struggle'. On the simplest interpretation, the argument is as follows . As we have seen, the difficulty with desire is that the subject faces a continual progression, as the destruction of the object leads to the re-emergence of desire. The subject then turns from objects to other subjects in order to resolve this difficulty: for other subjects do not need to be destroyed in order to be made subservient to the will, so they can be assimilated without leading to the contradiction of desire: 'On account of the independence of the object, therefore, [self-consciousness] can achieve satisfaction only when the object itself effects the negation within itself . . . Since the object is in its own self negation, and in being so is at the same time independent, it is consciousness . . . [Thus] Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness' . However, as I try to impose my will on you, so you will try to impose your will on me: we will then end up in conflict ('the life and death struggle'), which is only resolved when one of us concedes defeat, and succumbs to the will of the other, hence becoming a slave, while the victor becomes the master. As an argument, this has a certain plausibility: but it seems that Hegel had something more sophisticated in mind, as it leaves out an important aspect of the text. In particular, it leaves out the significance of recognition as the source of the struggle, rather than desire: that is, it appears that it is not because I am trying to make you subject to my will that we end up fighting, but because I am seeking to secure recognition from you, where this means that I want you to see me as another subject (for which turning you into a vehicle for my desires is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition). On this reading, recognition replaces desire as the outlook of self-consciousness, because it has realized that desire is contradictory: it hopes to find in recognition a form of practical well-being that is more realizable. Thus, when Hegel says that 'self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged', he is here taken to be introducing a new step in the dialectic, where recognition rather than the imposition of will through desire has become the goal of consciousness. Even if this reading is accepted, however, there is still room for debate over how the life and death struggle between different subjects is to be understood. On one view, the explanation is comparable to the explanation we gave above on the desire account: namely, while I want you to recognize me, I do not want to recognize you, as this seems to threaten my individuality and/or freedom, so we are inevitably led into a battle for recognition as each tries to wrest recognition from the other while giving nothing in return; eventually, this battle is won by one subject or the other, who then serves as master to the other as slave . As we have seen, Hegel emphasizes this lack of mutual recognition at the outset: 'At first, [recognition] will exhibit the side of the inequality of the two, or the splitting-up of the middle term into the extremes which, as extremes, are opposed to one another, one being only recognized, the other only recognizing' .
However, while again this argument has a certain plausibility, on another line of interpretation it appears defective as a reading of the text, because it misses out another important aspect of Hegel's discussion, which is the significance he gives to the fact that in the life and death struggle, individuals show themselves as willing to forfeit their lives. The contrast may be put as follows: on the previous reading, risking one's life is merely a side-effect (as it were) of the lack of mutual recognition, where this leads to a struggle in which life is imperiled, while on the reading we are now considering, risking one's life is the reason for the struggle itself. How can this be? On this reading, the answer is that in order to achieve recognition, I must show you that I am a subject and not a mere living thing; but although each of us knows that we are subjects, we need to convince the other that we are, for otherwise we may be seen as merely living creatures lacking in subjecthood, and so fail to be granted the recognition we require. As Sartre puts it: 'to the extent that the Other apprehends me as bound to a body and immersed in life, I am myself only an Other. In order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life. To risk one's life, in fact, is to reveal oneself as not-bound to the objective form or to any determined existence - as not-bound to life' . Thus, on this reading, the requirement on each subject to risk its life is the reason for the life and death struggle, rather than the lack of mutual recognition, as each tries to show the other that it is not a 'mere' living creature. Now, textual support for this interpretation can be found from the following passages:
One individual is confronted by another individual. Appearing thus immediately on the scene, they are for one another like ordinary objects, independent shapes, individuals submerged in the being [or immediacy] of Life - for the object in its immediacy is here determined as Life. They are, for each other, shapes of consciousness which have not yet accomplished the movement of absolute abstraction, of rooting-out all immediate being, and of being merely the purely negative being of self-identical consciousness; in other words, they have not as yet exposed themselves to each other in the form of pure being-for-self, or as self-consciousnesses.
Here, Hegel appears to be claiming that the most basic way for a subject to demonstrate its status as a subject to another, and hence to achieve recognition for its subjecthood, is to show that it is prepared to sacrifice its existence as an object: that is, to show that it is prepared to give up its life:
The presentation of itself, however, as the pure abstraction of self-consciousness consists in showing itself as the pure negation of its objective mode, or in showing that it is not attached to any specific existence, not to the individuality common to existence as such, that it is not attached to life . . . Thus the relation of the two self-conscious individuals is such that they prove themselves and each other through a life-and-death struggle. They must engage in this struggle, for they must raise their certainty of being for themselves to truth, both in the case of the other and in their own case. And it is only through staking one's life that freedom is won; and thus it is proved that for self-consciousness, its essential being is not [just] being, not the immediate form in which it appears, not its submergence in the expanse of life, but rather that there is nothing present in it which
could not be regarded as a vanishing moment, that it is only pure being-for-self.
For Hegel, it appears, a creature that shows it has knowingly and will- ingly risked its destruction as a living thing thereby differentiates itself from mere animal life, and shows itself to be human. As he puts it in the Philosophy of Right: 'I have these limbs and my life only in so far as I will it; the animal cannot mutilate or destroy itself, but the human being can' . (Every determinacy by which [the single being] should be gripped he can cut away from himself, and in death he can realize his absolute independence and freedom [for] himself as absolutely negative consciousness.') However, while the reading we are now considering has an advantage over the others in doing justice to these aspects of the text, it has the disadvantage of making the argument open to an obvious objection: namely, if what is required here for recognition of my subjecthood is that I risk my life, why do I have to fight you? Why couldn't I show my lack of concern for my biological nature and ends by risking my life in front of you in a non-conflictual way (jumping off a cliff, or fighting with an animal, or enlisting in a good cause)? Even if it is right that I must risk my life at this stage, why should I do so through attempting to kill you? Now, an obvious answer might be to say that while I am driven to try to risk my life to show myself to be a subject in your eyes, I am driven to fight you because I still want you to recognize me without giving any recognition in return. Thus, risking my life in fighting you gives me a good way of achieving both my goals at once. This, however, may seem a rather ad hoc way of bringing these two facets of the life and death struggle together. It also does not seem to fit the text very well. For, Hegel seems to offer a different answer to the ques- tion why I come to risk my life through the life and death struggle. The relevant passage is as follows:
The individual who has not risked his life may well be recog- nized as a person, but he has not attained to the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. Similarly, just for it values the other no more than itself; its essential being is present to it in the form of an 'other', it is outside of itself and must rid itself of its self-externality. The other is an immediate consciousness entangled in a variety of relationships, and it must regard its otherness as a pure being-for-self or as an absolute negation.
One interpretation of this passage might be this (based on the thought that the life-risker 'values the other no more than itself'): I have no regard for myself qua natural subject, so I have no regard for you qua natural subject, and I find no reason not to kill you in so far as life is merely part of your being as a natural subject. However, while this interpretation might explain why I would be prepared to kill you, it does not explain why I should feel compelled to do so. So another interpretation might be this: I only expect recognition from you in so far as I show myself to be more than an animal subject; likewise, I will only recognize you if you show yourself to be the same; so I will not recognize you without testing you to see if you are worthy of recogni- tion, and the way to do this is to put your life in peril and see how you behave ('The ego must accordingly set itself to find proof; it must "test" the alter-ego to adjudicate the presence of freedom. And this test will involve the negation, disregard, and destruction of life.'). This then explains why subjects fight each other: each is prepared to stake its life, while each sets out to test the other, so each will attack the other, while each will respond by risking its life.
Put in schematic terms, we have identified three different accounts of the transition from 'desire' to the 'life and death struggle':
A: desire → impose will on objects → impose will on subjects → each tries to impose will on the other → life and death struggle between subjects
B: desire → impose will on objects → move from desire to one-sided recognition → life and death struggle, as one subject seeks to get recognition from other without giving anything in return
C: desire → impose will on objects → move from desire to recognition → recognition by other requires staking life, and recognition of other requires testing other for willingness to stake life → life and death struggle
As well as having different structures, these accounts also have rather different implications regarding the limitations of self-consciousness that Hegel is trying to highlight at this stage, that lead it into the life and death struggle. Under interpretation A, self-consciousness is limited because it treats subjects as it treated objects, and so tries to
'negate' them. Under interpretation B, self-consciousness is limited by the fact that it is unable to grant recognition to other subjects without feeling that its own autonomy is undermined. And under interpretation C, self-consciousness is limited because it finds it can only show itself to be a self by risking its life, because at this stage in the emergence of the self it lacks any other resources for doing so: 'In a primitive situation the only way I can demonstrate my independence from my animal being is show that it is nothing to me: I must risk my life in the eyes of the other' (where Hegel himself says that the struggle for recognition 'can only occur in the natural state, where men exist only as single, separate individuals', whereas in society proper individuals can show themselves to be 'worthy of this recognition' by showing themselves to be rational subjects by obeying the law, filling a post, following a trade, or other kinds of social activity). If, however, we adopt interpretation C as fitting the text more completely than the other options we have considered, there is nonetheless something rather unsatisfactory about this interpretation's line on the grounds for the difficulties faced by self-consciousnesses at this stage: namely, that the social order is too limited to allow recognition to occur without the risk of life. For, up until now the dialectic has been driven by some sort of conceptual one-sidedness or tension, but under interpretation C it is driven by the fact that self-consciousness is operating in a 'primitive situation', which would seem to leave no room for the kind of categorial diagnosis we have seen hitherto. Now, it may be for this reason that in a later discussion of the life and death struggle in the Encyclopedia, Hegel seems to revert to something more like interpretation B, where the life and death struggle one-sidedness is explained through the limited notion of freedom operative here: namely, that if one subject recognizes another as a subject, it takes this to undermine its freedom, and so is unwilling to grant this recognition:
It is still the case [at this point in the dialectic] that in that I recognize another as being free, I lose my freedom. At this present standpoint we have to completely forget the relationships we are used to thinking about. If we speak of right, ethicality, love, we know that in that I recognize the others, I recognize their complete personal independence. We know too that I do not suffer on this account, but have validity as a free being, that in that the others have rights I have them too, or that my right is also essentially that of the other i.e. that I am a free person, and that this is essentially the same as the others' also being persons with rights. Benevolence or love does not involve the submergence of my personality. Here, however, there is as yet no such relationship, for one aspect of the determination is that of my still being, as a free self-consciousness, an immediate and single one. In so far as the immediate singularity of my self-consciousness and my freedom are not yet separated, I am unable to surrender anything of my particularity without surrendering my free independence . . . Self-consciousness at this standpoint . . . must resist recognizing an other as a free being, just as, on the other hand, each must concern itself with eliciting recognition within the other's self-consciousness, being posited as an independent being . . . The single self [is not] able to bear the other's being independent of it, so that they necessarily drift into a struggle.
Here we have something more like a conceptual limitation bringing about the life and death struggle, for each self-consciousness takes it that recognition of the freedom of the other threatens its own freedom, in so far as it assumes that to be free is to be able to ignore claims made on me by other individuals, and to act exactly as my egoistical desires ('my particularity') dictate. It is Hegel's aim to show that both these assumptions are mistaken , in a way that
self-consciousness must come to accept if it is to move beyond the impasse that leads to the life and death struggle. (where Hegel states that what 'gives rise at this stage to the struggle for recognition and of the relationship of lordship and servitude' is the 'as yet only immediate consciousness of freedom.')
Master and slave
However the transition from 'desire' to the 'life and death struggle' is understood, the transition from here to 'mastership and servitude' is more straightforward, as it becomes apparent that there is something deeply unsatisfying about the life and death struggle as a means of achieving recognition in the eyes of the other: for either the subject succeeds in killing the other, in which case there is no other subject to do the recognizing, or the first subject is killed, in which case their selfhood is lost: 'This trial by death, however, does away with the truth which was supposed to issue from it, and so, too, with the certainty of self generally. For just as life is the natural setting of consciousness, independence without absolute negativity, so death is the natural negation of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the required significance of recognition' . As soon as this occurs to self-consciousness, it gives up its struggle to appear as a subject in the eyes of the other, and hence its struggle to 'go free', and so becomes a slave. Once one self-consciousness realizes that 'life is as essential to it as pure self-consciousness' , and so gives up the life and death struggle, it appears at first that the two self-consciousness can now attain a kind of equilibrium, where the one that has given up the struggle is the slave and the other is the master. The master can now show himself to be a subject in the eyes of the slave, not by risking his life, but by exercising power over the slave's body, the very thing the slave was not prepared to lose in the struggle. At the same time, the master can overcome his estrangement from the world not simply by trying to destroy it (which was the only possibility at the level of desire) but by setting the slave to work on it.
However, Hegel quickly sets out to demonstrate that this apparent stability is illusory. He begins by pointing out that although the master has shown himself to be a subject in the eyes of the other, it is not clear how he can view this other any differently from an object in so far as the slave (like any object) is a mere instrument of his will, and so it is hard for him to maintain that any recognition has been achieved. So, although on the one hand 'here . . . is present this moment of recognition, viz. that the [slave] consciousness sets aside its own being-for-self', on the other hand because 'what the bondsman does is really the action of the lord . . . the outcome is a recognition that is one-sided and unequal' . At the same time, Hegel argues that contrary to initial appearances, it is the slave that 'will withdraw into itself and be transformed into a truly independent consciousness' . The first step, Hegel claims, comes through the experience of fear with which its servitude began: in this, the transitoriness of life was brought home to the slave in a way that the master has not come to feel, so it is the master and not the slave who has the most 'immediate' relationship to his natural existence. Likewise, through his work for the master, the slave is forced to set aside his own desires, and thus finds himself no longer driven by them. Most importantly of all, Hegel argues, 'through work . . . the bondsman becomes conscious of what he truly is' . This is because, in creating things not for himself but for the master, he is forced not just to consume things, but rather to labour on them while leaving them in existence. As a result he finds that he can leave his mark on the world in a way that is lasting: 'Through this rediscovery of himself by himself, the bondsman realizes that it is precisely in his work wherein he seemed to have only an alienated existence that he acquires a mind of his own' . Hegel is particularly insistent that all three of these elements - fear, service, and work on the world - must be present together for this realization to occur, as otherwise each will be degraded (for example, fear will remain 'inward and mute' unless the subject can find himself again through work, while work without the experience of fear will mean it once again becomes 'an empty self-centered attitude' ). The slave therefore comes to a different conception of individuality from that adopted by the master (who has not gone much beyond desire). In particular, the slave no longer sees the world as alien to it, which must therefore be negated if it is to achieve 'its unalloyed feeling of self' . Rather, in his work the slave labours for someone else's satisfaction, and so learns respect for the independent existence of the objects around him, with which he finds he can work. Consciousness thus comes to a new conception of itself as an individual in the world, by now treating that world as a place to which it is attuned, not merely because it has various 'skills' that make it 'master over some things', but because it possesses 'universal formative activity' which give it 'universal power' over 'the whole of objective being' .
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