PHENOMENOLOGY OFSPIRIT 913
absolute negativity, so death is the naturalnegation of consciousness, negation without
independence, which therefore remains without the required sense of acknowledge-
ment. Through death the certainty has indeed arisen that both risked their life and
despised it in themselves and in the other; though not for those who underwent this
combat. They do away with their consciousness set in this alien essentiality that is nat-
ural concrete existence, or they do away with themselves, and are done away with as the
extremeswhich would be for themselves. There thereby vanishes, however, from the
play of exchange the essential moment of setting oneself apart into extremes of opposed
determinations; and the centre collapses into a dead unity, which is set apart into dead,
merely existent, not opposed, extremes; and the two do not mutually give back and
receive back themselves from each other through consciousness, but let each other free
merely indifferently, as things. Their deed is abstract negation, not the negation of con-
sciousness, which does awayin such a manner that it puts byand preserveswhat is done
away, and consequently survives its being-done-away.
In this experience self-consciousness comes to realise that life is as essential to it
as pure self-consciousness is. In immediate self-consciousness the simple “I” is the
absolute object, which however, for us or in itself, is absolute mediation and has exis-
tent independence as an essential moment. The dissolution of that simple unity is the
result of the first experience; through it there is established a pure self-consciousness,
and a consciousness which is not purely for itself, but is for another consciousness,
that is, is as existent,or is consciousness in the form of thinghood.Both moments are
essential;—but as they are to begin with unequal and opposed, and their reflexion into
unity is not yet a reality, they are as two opposed forms of consciousness: one, the
independent consciousness, to which being-for-self is the essence; the other, the
dependent consciousness, to which life or being for another is the essence: the former
is the master,the latter the servant.
The master is the consciousness existing for itself,though no longer merely the
concept of the latter, but a consciousness existing for itself which is in mediate rela-
tion with itself through anotherconsciousness, namely through one to whose essence
it pertains to be synthesised with independent beingor thinghood in general. The
master relates himself to both these moments, to a thingas such, the object of desire,
and to the consciousness to whom thinghood is what is essential; and since he (a),qua
concept of self-consciousness, is immediate relation of being-for-himself,but (b) now
is also as mediation, or as a being-for-self which is for itself only through another, so
he relates himself (a) immediately to both and (b) mediately to each through the other.
The master relates himself to the servant mediately through independent being;for it
is precisely to this that the servant is kept; it is his chain, from which in the combat he
could not abstract, and consequently showed himself to be dependent, to have his
independence in thinghood. The master, however, is the power over the being in ques-
tion, for he showed in the combat that it meant merely something negative to him;
since he is the power over this being, while this being is the power over the other, the
master thus has in this conjunction the other under himself. Likewise the master
relates himself mediately through the servant to the thing,the servant relates himself,
quaself-consciousness as such, to the thing negatively also, and does away with it;
but the thing is at the same time independent for him, and hence he cannot through his
negating dispose of it so far as to destroy it, or he worksit merely. The master on the
other hand gainsthrough this mediation the immediaterelation as the pure negation
of the thing, or the enjoyment;where desire did not succeed, he succeeds, namely in
disposing of the thing and in satisfying himself in the enjoyment of it. Desire did not