What Hegel's Master/Slave Dialectic Really Means

Cole, Andrew

doi:10.1215/10829636-34-3-577

Cited by 22 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The historical trajectory of Marxism has undoubtedly influenced a strongly materialist reading of the master-servant dialectic, where the interpretive key to the text is the unequal relations pertaining to material production. Andrew Cole (2004) historicises the dialectic and argues that a historical reading will reveal its context of servitude not as modern capitalism as it concerns Marx, but as medieval feudalism; hence, rather than a clichéd struggle for recognition, the dialectic represents a 'struggle for possession, struggle between "ownership" and "effective possession" -the former a mode of possession via legal right and military force and the latter a mode of possession via labor' (Cole, 2004, p. 584). Cole, thus, sees the story of medieval class-struggle for the possession of land in the dialectic, and objects to the 'phenomenological turn' in interpretations like Kojève's because they obscure 'the underlying material problems of possession'.…”

Section: The Dialectic Of Contemporary Oppressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participative cultural productions of the oppressed: The master-servant dialectic through an Indian lens

Nisar

2020

Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology

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Section: The Dialectic Of Contemporary Oppressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participative cultural productions of the oppressed: The master-servant dialectic through an Indian lens

Nisar

2020

Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology

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“…Often this leads to denigration of stakeholders with whom the individual holds contrary views. Denigration thus becomes a form of agency which is embedded in othering (Cole, 2004).…”

Section: Othering and Denigration As Forms Of Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

#FeesMustFall Protests in South Africa: A Critical Realist Analysis of Selected Newspaper Articles

Mavunga

2019

JSAA

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Using Critical Realism, this article looks at articles from selected South African newspapers which reported on the #FeesMustFall protests. The study established that, arising from the protests, was a culture characteried by tensions and distrust amongst stakeholders such as students, university management and the government. This, the article argues, was a result of how each of these stakeholders perceived, and went on to exercise, their agency in an attempt to resolve the conflict arising from the protests. To avert a recurrence of negative consequences of student protests such as the destruction of property and development of toxic and adversarial relationships amongst different stakeholders, the article recommends collaborative approaches to conflict resolution in South African higher education. These approaches need to be framed differently from those in which some stakeholders seek to use their agency to achieve outright victory over other stakeholders -a recurring mode of engagement during the #FeesMustFall protests.

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“…Gurevitch (2001) illustrates this through the example of a discussion: individual voices struggle to be heard but only one person can speak at any one time if anyone is to be heard, so the silenced party is not recognized. This is a struggle in which there is a desire to eliminate the other (Benjamin, 1988), but through finding ways of remaining in a relationship of interdependency, albeit one based on inequality, both parties survive and possess a sense of self (as self-consciousness) (Cole, 2004), but survival means one party is superior and the other submissive. The slave, forced to produce goods for the master, eventually sees himself reflected in the products he has created for the master and realizes he has produced the world; through this he comes to self-consciousness.…”

Section: The Leader: Alanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The master, however, is dependent only on the lesser form of life, the slave, for recognition, and as the recognition from such an inferior form of life cannot be counted as recognition, the master cannot attain self-consciousness. Jean Hyppolite suggests it shows that ‘the truth of the master reveals that he is the slave, and that the slave is revealed to be the master of the master’ (Hyppolite, in Cole, 2004: 579).…”

Section: Re-reading Butler Re-reading Hegel: Inserting the Leader Intmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading leadership through Hegel’s master/slave dialectic: Towards a theory of the powerlessness of the powerful

Harding

2014

Leadership

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Reading leadership through Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic:Towards a theory of the powerlessness of the powerful Abstract This paper develops a theory of the subjectivity of the leader through the philosophical lens of Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic and its recent interpretation by the philosopher Judith Butler. This is used to analyse the working life history of a man who rose from poverty to a leadership position in a large company and eventually to running his own successful business. Hegel's dialectic is foundational to much Western thought, but in this paper I rashly update it by inserting a leader in between the master, whose approval the leader needs if s/he is to sustain self-hood, and the follower, who becomes a tool that the leader uses when trying to gain that elusive approval. The analysis follows the structure of Butler's reading of the Dialectic, and develops understanding of the norms that govern how leaders should act and the persons they should be. Hard work has become for leaders an ethical endeavour, but they grieve the sacrifice of leisure. They enjoy a frisson of erotic pleasure at their power over others but feel guilt as a result. They must prove their leadership skills by ensuring their followers are perfect employees but at the same time must prove their followers are poor workers who need their continued leadership. This leads to the conclusion that the leader is someone who is both powerful and powerless. This analysis is intended not to demonise leaders, but to show the harm that follows the emphasis on leadership as a desirable and necessary organizational function.

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What Hegel's Master/Slave Dialectic Really Means

Cited by 22 publications

References 27 publications

Participative cultural productions of the oppressed: The master-servant dialectic through an Indian lens

Participative cultural productions of the oppressed: The master-servant dialectic through an Indian lens

#FeesMustFall Protests in South Africa: A Critical Realist Analysis of Selected Newspaper Articles

Reading leadership through Hegel’s master/slave dialectic: Towards a theory of the powerlessness of the powerful

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