Hegel's Master-Slave Dialectic Essay

Martin Heidegger defines death as an “ownmost possibility of Da-sein,” in that it is non- relational potentiality-of-being that is certain yet indefinite but is “not to be bypassed.”2 As an ownmost possibility, every human being’s experience of death differs from one another due to the fact that one lives out his or her life differently. Even with the way one follows a routine of waking up in order to eat and carry out daily tasks and recuperating the energy one exhausted in sleep, every person creates a form of meaning in one’s daily encounters, which individualizes one person from another in these unique

Nagel believes that human life is inherently absurd because all human beings live their lives with seriousness despite inevitable doubts that any of our actions matter. Despite existential suspicion, we have no choice but to continue living as normal. In order to explain this view it is first necessary to define the term “absurd”, as well as what it means to live life seriously, and what it means to doubt life’s importance. Finally, assuming that Nagel is correct in his view that life is absurd, I will explore what implications follow about life’s meaning and value in general.

Additionally, both Hegel and Nietzsche use the Master / Slave dichotomy to account for identity and difference in the relationship between the powerful subject and the weak object. Both thinkers see identity and morality emerging out of a relationship of conflict. Moreover, in both Hegel and Nietzsche’s narratives, there is a change in the structure of acknowledgment, where the antagonistic relationship allows one side to define itself by negating the other. Both thinkers find that negation is an integral part of identity formation. Hegel and Nietzsche both concur, in dialectical terms, ‘Being’ is represented by the ‘object’, or Master, and the ‘subject’, or Slave, is constantly in the process of ‘Becoming’. From these similarities, is that clear that both 19th century philosophers have made a massive impact on philosophical thought in todays day and age, despite their distinct

Sense-certainty is Hegel 's approach to proving that gaining knowledge of the world is not a wholly passive process. Hegel does this through a dialectic from, meaning that the argument moves as a conversation, with Hegel presenting an answer to a question, in this case how one can know about the world through the senses, and then works to show how the answer is wrong in itself because it holds inconsistencies. This essay will be read in two parts, first, I shall discuss how sense-certainty fails, and then will approach the question of what that means for epistemology. Finally leading to the conclusion to show that the impact of sense-certainties failure is minimal to epistemology, as Hegel is building up to present Spirit as the medium through which we gain knowledge.

The author’s metaphysical format brings together philosophical and religious issues, which are brought out by the use of paradoxes and conceits. For instance, death is compared to as a “slave” that brings the “soul’s

One exemplary area for diving in to discover what the truth might be in examining Hegel’s criticism is by investigating Hegel’s unfolding of Spirit within the Phenomenology in the moral world view and his claims of dissemblance in Kant’s prior moral work. For Hegel, Kant’s moral world view harbors many instances of dissemblance, some of which that often verge on hypocrisy in Hegel’s analysis. In the section, according to Hegel, it appears that Kant has not entirely avoided the difficulties presented in other views that he sought to avoid in developing his work. It also doesn’t appear that Kant has

Thomas Nagel approaches the mind body problem in a different manner. Nagel acknowledges that there is a close connection between mental life and the body, but he further questions the origin of our

Self-consciousness implies a state of mind that makes the individual aware of how others perceive him, and thus influences how he sees himself. In a sub-section of the Phenomenology of Spirit entitled ‘Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage’, Hegel describes the development of self-consciousness, and that while he agrees with the notion put forth by earlier philosophers that an individual is aware of himself as a conscious being and a subject, he also advances the argument that other beings (and fellow subjects) are objects from the point of view of the primary subject (self). In addition, within the realm of the social arena the individual is often locked into a struggle for the affirmation of his

In this passage from Hegel he is saying that freedom is terribly misunderstood in it's formal subjective sense, and has been far removed from its essential purpose and goals. People think they should be able to do whatever they want and that is what freedom is, and that anything limiting there desires, impulses , and passions is a limit of there freedom. Hegel is saying this is not true, but these limitations are simply the condition from which they must free themselves from, and that society and the government are where freedom is actualized.

Martin Heidegger provides an interesting lesson about what must be done to authentically grasp the nature of being in Being and Time. The focus of being in his book is the unique individual human consciousness referred to as Dasein, and authenticity is regarded as that which accords with Dasein’s own self, including its history, present concerns, and future possibilities. The thesis of this paper is an interpretative one: the path to authentically grasping one’s own being requires first disregarding philosophical history regarding being and then understanding one’s own presuppositions. More fully, the phenomena that give rise to examining ontology must be analyzed, which means that one must not simply start with

The subject of essence is not something that the average person thinks about everyday, or ever in their life. There are several varying arguments over essence including arguments from John Locke, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Georg W. F. Hegel. Two of these men argue that essence is something that we gain later in life once we have made the choice of who we want to be. The third argues that we all have the same essence from the time we are born. The arguments of these three philosophers will become very important in answering the question: Is it true or plausible that we humans have no essence until we choose to have an essence? Jean-Paul Sartre and Georg W. F. Hegel will support the affirmative

For instance, when an individual thinks to himself “I will”, that is just the abstract thought, it is content without identity. As a result, Hegel states we need to overcome the subjectivity of liberalism, and alter the subjective into an objective system of freedom. This system of freedom will contain an organic system of customs and institutions where the right of individuals is integrated to a system, which enables individuals in having a free fulfilled life. In this way, the rights of individuals and subjects are objective in the sense that they are integrated into a type of system and are clearly outlined, as opposed to having a subjective sense, where the rights of persons are changeable and can easily be overcome. With that said, Hegel says individuals can be fully free only when they participate in what Hegel refers to as “the ethical life”. Ethical life is defined as a system of norms created through the domain of social interaction and interdependence in which every individual is embedded in. In other words, ethical life is a deeper designation of the morality that people define through contracts and exchanges which reflects a type of respect between individuals. However, while the way of morality achieves the opposite of what it sets out to do, ethical life is exactly what morality ought to be; a set of practices that guides individuals in their

Hegel was born in 1770, in Stuttgart, a city in the south of Germany. He is known as a famous modern professional philosopher. The influence of his ideas, his philosophy and his works are still profound and studied. Throughout his philosophical working life, the ideas of Freedom, Reason and Progress always inspired him. However, at some points, his ideas are famously hard to be understood fully and rightly, for example, the notion of “God” in his works. In Hegel’s thinking, which is known as the matured thinking, the notion of “God” is the expression of the rational truths. He also mentioned the notions of Reason or Mind as equal to “God”. So, what does the notion of “God” really mean and why does Hegel choose the notion of “God”. This paper

G.W.F. Hegel made enormous contribution to the development of the concept of ‘alienation’ in discursive terms. Hegel’s The Phenomenolgy of Mind elucidates the concept of ‘alienation’ and ‘self-alienated spirit’ which however here have consequences far more significant and opposite to the generalized concept of ‘alienation’. He bases his account of the development of human spirit and human self-development on the premise of the concept of alienation. To Hegel, the “self is a historical and social creation. It develops through a process of alienation and its overcoming, self-estrangement and self-recognition, a 'fall' into division and reconciliation" (Sayers 2). By the term ‘alienation’ in this instance, Hegel refers to ‘self alienation’ in

The purpose of this paper is to provide a recreation of the ideas held by Edmund Husserl post-1890 and then to elucidate them in light of modern understanding. His greatest contributions of phenomenology and consciousness as a directed event will be the focus and offer guidance for Husserl’s uncovering of the ego as not only a state of being separate of the environment but also a state of immersion within the environment.