love in earlier writings. At the same time, love is not isolated from the
struggle as they are both needed for the synthesis.^139
After this follows the famous and challenging passage that
describes the struggle in a situation in which equal recognition
between the parties is lacking.^140 Such situations are characterized
by inequality in which the autonomous consciousness is the‘lord’and
the non-autonomous one the‘servant’.^141 The autonomy of the lord
appears to be problematic, as the lord receives his‘being recognized’
through another consciousness, namely, that of the servant.^142 For
Hegel, this means that‘the truth of the autonomous consciousness is
the servile consciousness’. This consciousnessfirst appears as‘exter-
nal to itself’but it will later also permeate one’s self-consciousness.^143
Hegel aims at a dissolution of the simple identities of lord and
servant, explaining that more mature identities are developed in a
society through labour and through adopting the ideas of service and
education. This development goes through the struggle between lord
and servant so that a mature idea of freedom assumes cooperation
and heteronomy. Regarding the concept of recognition, Hegel con-
siders that a‘proper recognition’entails the recognition of oneself. If
the servant regards himself as the lord’s servant and the lord accepts
this recognition, neither party has a balance between self-recognition
and the recognition of others:
What is missing here from proper recognition is the moment at which
what the lord does to another, he also does to himself, and what the
servant does to himself, he also does to others. Thus we only have here a
one-sided and unequal recognition.^144As we saw from Fichte and Hegel’s earlier texts, the concepts of right
and legal person assume a mutuality that is missing from the unequal
recognition between lord and servant. The problem is not the absence
of mutuality between them, but the lack of the same standards for each.
In this manner, the‘truth’of lordship is the recognition given by
servants. A proper recognition surpasses this through a self-awareness
and the application of equal standards to oneself and the other.^145
(^139) Siep 2014, 151. (^140) Phänomenologie des Geistes, 148–9.
(^141) Phänomenologie des Geistes, 150. (^142) Phänomenologie des Geistes, 151.
(^143) Phänomenologie des Geistes, 152–3.
(^144) Phänomenologie des Geistes, 152.
(^145) Again, this is a simplified account. For a fuller discussion, see Siep 2014, 225–7,
269 – 71.
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