Stephen Cunniff

This paper argues for a reinterpretation of Hegel's internal critique of the master in his famous ‘Master–Slave Dialectic.’ Hegel argues that, in addition to the evident injustice suffered by the enslaved, the arrangement also undermines the master's own purposes. Standard interpretations claim either that the unequal relation frustrates the master's desire for the other's recognition, or that he depends upon the slave in a manner that contradicts his supposed independence. I argue that these readings are both textually ungrounded and philosophically unsatisfying. The critiques they advance rely upon inadequate conceptions of relations of domination. Instead, Hegel's account turns on the way the means‐end structure of mastery is ultimately self‐conflicting. Drawing on Aristotle's idea that the master–slave relation is the consummate exemplar of a user‐tool relation, Hegel presents mastery as the pursuit of the unconstrained power embodied in the complete control over a ‘living tool.’ Yet precisely because mastery itself becomes the master's highest end, he thereby assigns absolute value to a possession simultaneously regarded as a mere means—his slave. Thus, like King Midas, the inner demands of the master's domineering will can only be realized in the shape of something he himself views as a contemptible means.

My dissertation is about Hegel’s account of the connection between self-consciousness, freedom, and human sociality in the fourth chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. That account has long attracted readers for its claim that the freedom of self-conscious subjects can only be realized through social relationships. But scholars have struggled to give a clear and convincing account of that claim. The standard view takes Hegel to combine a Kantian notion of rational autonomy with a conception of reason and norms of rationality as socially constituted. I argue that this view is mistaken, both as a reading of this chapter of the Phenomenology and as an interpretation of the broader social theory of freedom that Hegel introduces in it. The central theme of Hegel’s account of recognition is not that of overcoming natural heteronomy through universal normative principles—regardless of whether or not such norms are socially constituted. In fact, this very conception of freedom holds only a secondary, subordinate status for Hegel. Instead, I argue, Hegel’s account of recognition marks a decisive turn away from Kantian conceptions of freedom toward more Aristotelian conceptions of subjectivity and the collective self-sufficiency of a community. Specifically, Hegel’s account focuses on the internal teleological structure of self-conscious life and action and its implications for human freedom. The central notion of freedom here thus concerns a kind of self-sufficiency or Selbständigkeit — successfully existing for oneself without constraint to one’s inner purposes. Accordingly, I argue that the central claim in Hegel’s account of recognition is that the subject’s individual freedom and self-fulfillment can only be truly realized through relations of reciprocal action and shared internal purposiveness with other subjects. For Hegel, the higher practical freedom achieved through social life is not primarily founded upon shared rights or shared norms but, rather, a shared life. It concerns the “Zusammenleben des Menschen” (Encyclopaedia ❡433) in the strict sense of the term: a unified internal purpose sustained through the reciprocal action of its members, where each is, for the others, both a necessary means and an end in itself. For Hegel, this shared life is the true ground and inner purpose of all rights, norms, and mores.