“In Place of an Introduction”
310451001 余珮華 Esther
Hegel brings up the idea of self-consciousness. To make our self-consciousness
become the true knowledge instead of our subjective thoughts, he separates the steps
into several parts. The first and the most basic one is “Desire.” Desire makes humans
aware of themselves, and makes them take action to satisfy our desires by denying
(destroying, transforming) the object of desire. For example, if you are hungry, you
must eat, and therefore you eliminate food. Among many desires, some only belong to
human beings, such as love, possession, and recognition. And what makes human
beings different from animals is that people are willing to put themselves in life and
death just to get the “recognition” of others. To recognize others or be recognized by
others. Yet, in this fight to the death, both sides should remain alive since dead people
cannot recognize the winner and thus the winner cannot fulfill the desire of
“recognition.” Therefore, it comes to the master-slave dialectic. One side does not
want to risk his life and hence surrender, recognizing the other side as the winner and
recognizing himself as the winner’s slave. However, being a winner is not the final
goal, or we can say it leads to a dead end. It is the slave that can truly achieve the
“ideal of autonomous Self-Consciousness” (Kojève 30). The slave has already
recognized the human value of the master from the very beginning. He does not want
to be a slave, and does not want to risk his life to be a master either. He experiences
the terror and transforms himself through work. And finally attains the truth of
autonomous Self-Consciousness.
After reading, a thought pops into my mind. It seems like humans are all born to chase
something, finding something to live for.
In the article, Kojève mentions that “[i]t is only by being ‘recognized’ by another, by
many others, or-in the extreme-by all others, that a human being is really human, for
himself as well as for other” (Kojève 9). If I do not pursue the recognition, then am I
not a human? And Kojève also says that a master is needed so that a slave can be
born, but once we know that “the truth of autonomous Consciousness is slavish
Consciousness” (Kojève 20), then who is willing to be a master? Who represents the
position of a master?