Hegel on domination and slavery. Master, slave and free Place of confrontation between slave and master in Hegel's philosophy

25.G.V.F.. Hegel's system of objective idealism consists of three main parts: 1. "The science of logic" - Hegel depicts the world spirit (he here called the "absolute idea") as it was before the emergence of nature, i.e. recognizes the spirit as primary.2. “Philosophy of Nature” - An idealistic doctrine of nature, which Hegel considers secondary, derived from the absolute idea. 3. “Philosophy of Spirit” - Hegel’s idealistic theory of social life. Here the absolute idea becomes, according to Hegel, “absolute spirit.” Thus, Hegel’s system of views had a pronounced idealistic character. An essential positive feature of Hegel’s idealistic philosophy: the absolute idea, the absolute spirit is considered by him in movement, in development. Hegel's teaching on development constitutes the core of Hegel's idealist dialectic and is entirely directed against metaphysics. Of particular importance in Hegel’s dialectical method were three principles of development, which he understood as the movement of concepts, namely: the transition of quantity into quality, contradiction as a source of development, and the negation of negation. In these three principles, Hegel revealed all the general laws of development. For the first time in the history of philosophy, Hegel taught that the source of development is the contradictions inherent in phenomena. Hegel's thought about the internal contradictions of development was a precious acquisition of philosophy. Categories of quality and quantity. Quality is something without which an object. Three laws of dialectics (systematized by Engels): law unity and struggle of opposites (for every thing there is an opposite, the unity of opposites creates a contradiction, this contradiction is the source of development). Three laws of dialectics (systematized by Engels): law law the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones (every thing can be described both quantitatively and qualitatively, but quantitative definitions are unimportant within certain limits; Measure is what connects quantity and quality). Master and slave are images that Hegel uses to describe human self-consciousness, i.e. a person can have the self-consciousness of a master or a slave. The individual - in himself - is a certain innate unproduced being. The individual - for himself - is a free action. Man is being in himself and for himself, his existence is movement. The integral existence of a person is a combination of what is given to a person from birth and what he rejects. Hegel emphasizes that a person remains himself without ever being the same. He always changes, goes through crises. Desires make a person move forward. By realizing his desires, a person is free. Desire is the glaring presence of the absence of reality. Only a person can change himself and change the world. Being recognized is important for a person. Human life is a struggle for recognition; Hegel sees this as a manifestation of negativity. 2 There are two types of self-awareness: 1

) self-awareness of the master is self-awareness for oneself. ) the self-consciousness of a slave is self-consciousness in oneself, consciousness of oneself as a bound being. There is a struggle between two identities. A master becomes a master when he goes to death and is not afraid of it. A slave becomes a slave when in a mortal fight he cannot go to the end (as long as he is not killed). The master takes a slave captive and forces him to work for himself. In the course of labor, the slave learns and improves his skills and understands that the master can no longer do without him. Another form of manifestation of negativity is work. Labor is negative because it is forced, but in the course of labor a person is realized as a creative being, in the course of labor he actually creates objects, creates himself as someone who knows how to make them. Dialectical synthesis of slave and master - is a citizen of a state in which the thesis of the master and the antithesis of the slave are dialectically removed. They are eliminated in that which is one-sided and imperfect in them, but preserved in that in which they are truly human. The slave makes history, and the citizen creates it. The citizen is the true creator of history.1 Story 2 is the progress of the spirit towards freedom. This progress is, first of all, liberation from the power of nature. Everything that is real is reasonable. There is an internal logic to the development of history. Hegel speaks not about reality, but about reality. 3 ) Europe (Christendom). Everybody's Free. Reason rules the world. Conclusion: the course of world development represents the history of humanity in its concreteness and diversity, and the essence of world development (spirit) is freedom. But this freedom is not given initially; firstly, it must be learned, and secondly, realized. G. W. F. Hegel’s system of absolute idealism. The highest achievement of German classical philosophy was Hegel's dialectic of 1770-1831. whose great merit is that he was the first to present the entire natural, historical and spiritual world in the form of a process, i.e. in continuous movement, change, transformation and development, and made an attempt to reveal the internal connection of this movement and development. The absolute idea identifies nature. Nature is the otherness of the absolute idea. Alienation occurs not in time, but in space. The absolute idea returns to itself through the absolute spirit. Everything that happens in the world is the result of the self-unfolding of the absolute idea, the internal content occurring in it. The philosophy of spirit is divided into objective spirit, subjective spirit and absolute spirit. Subjective spirit - soul, consciousness individual person, Objective spirit is the next stage of spirit, the spirit of society as a whole. Absolute spirit is the highest manifestation of spirit, the eternally valid truth.

27. Social and philosophical views of K. Marx. The concept of “alienation”... Marxist philosophy began to take shape in the 1840s. in the works of German thinkers Karl Marx(1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels. It still remains one of the most influential philosophical movements1) Basic philosophical premise Marxism there were dialectics Hegel and materialism Feyerbach. Marx called for combining philosophy with practice.2) The Central Question of Philosophy- human liberation; it is a historical event determined by the very course of history. In the production process, labor becomes the object of the transaction; as a result, a person no longer belongs to himself, the product of labor becomes independent of him, alien to the producer. In the process of producing material goods, a person invests part of his essence in them. But in an unjust society, she is alienated from him by the exploiter, the owner of the means of production. 3) The history of any society Marx viewed it as the history of class struggle.(a historically defined type of society, representing a special stage in its development). As a result of the decomposition of the primitive communal formation, transition to class formations. Bourgeois social formation The prehistory of human society ends, and it must be replaced by a communist formation. The basis for typology is the method of production. Production method - this is the unity of productive forces and production relations. Productive forces represent a system of subjective (human resources) and material (technology, tools) elements that carry out the “exchange of substances” between society and nature. Industrial relations - this is a system of material and economic relations between people that develop in the process of production, consumption and distribution of material goods. The transition from one formation to another is carried out through a social revolution that resolves the contradictions between productive forces and production relations. Marx considered alienated labor in 4 aspects: 1. items that do not belong to him. Nature becomes for the worker only a means of labor, and objects that are created in production become a means of life, physical existence. The worker is completely dependent on them.2. The labor process is forced for the worker. But such labor does not satisfy the need for labor, but only a means to satisfy other needs. Only outside of work does the worker control himself - i.e. free Thus, he is free only to carry out the vital functions common to humans and animals. And labor, a form of activity specific to a person, for the worker seems to be a humiliation of the person within himself.3. Forced labor robs a person of his “ancestral” life. The human race lives in nature. Human life is inextricably linked with nature. This connection is an active contact with nature, in which the main thing is labor and production: “...productive life is tribal life.” But for the worker, labor is only a means to support his own life, and not his family. The worker relates to nature and production not as a free person, but as a worker, i.e. aloof. This means that both the ancestral life and human essence have been taken away from the worker. 4. Forced labor creates alienation between people. Workers are alien

each other because they compete for the opportunity to work. Not only the worker but all people are alienated. Relations between people are also alienated and the differences are only in the types and levels of alienation. Transcendental philosophy of Kant Ancient Indian treatise Upanishads. The theme of suffering, blind fate and death has long been one of the leading themes of Eastern philosophy. In the West, it was “rediscovered” by the philosopher A. Schopenhauer and set forth in his main work “The World as Will and Representation.” F. Sh. is pessimistic. Life is “mold” on one of the balls (our planet). The world is unreasonable and meaningless, it is ruled by a blind, barking will. We owe our lives to her, and therefore our suffering. How much stronger the will is than the intellect can be judged by our own actions: they are dictated not by the arguments of reason, but by instinct and desires, even if we know in advance that these desires will bring us more trouble than good. The strongest instinct of life is sexual love, i.e., behind them, we perceive the world as a kind of unity that has a peculiarity: all of them are characterized by eternal and constant movement and change, eternal vibration, which is called “world will”. The world will is a certain force, a movement that creates all things and processes; these processes acquire a directed, consistent character. Stages of manifestation: Forces of nature (gravity, magnetism), Forces of life and man: “The main property of the world will is that it to which it is not directed... there is no final goal, there is no meaning.”

The law of objectification: “The smarter and deeper a person is, the more difficult and tragic his life.” In search of meaning, man creates various religions and philosophies to make life bearable. Humanity has already invented a means of salvation from the lack of meaning - illusions, inventing activities. Man is a creature in which the “world will” fights with itself. Ways of a worthy life (search for quiet havens): * Art, which creates a lasting illusion of beauty. * Ethical (moral) asceticism: rejection of temptations, that is, meaningless waste of energy. * Philosophy, which clarifies the real reason for the tragedy of existence. * The purpose of art is liberation of the soul from the sufferings of life. Art frees us from the traditional bustle of life. The will to live is realized in a person through egoism. On the one hand, it is a source of unbridled egoism, on the other, it realizes itself in freedom. A person can go against selfishness along the path of self-sacrifice. You need to treat others as yourself, and enrich your spiritual world. But this destiny is only for the rare and chosen: “And we see a lot of people... hardworking... busy increasing wealth.”29.The originality and main themes of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche: nihilism and “revaluation of values”, “will to power” and the idea of ​​the “superman”.(1844-1900) - German thinker, creator of an original philosophical doctrine. Nietzsche's fundamental concept includes special criteria for assessing reality, which call into question the basic principles of existing forms of morality, religion, culture and socio-political relations. Nietzsche's philosophy is aimed at motivating man himself to think. 3 stages in creativity: The first stage took place within the framework of understanding the ideas of antiquity and the work of Schopenhauer. The second period marks a break with the previous philosophical tradition - “Human, too human.” In the third stage, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and “Beyond Good and Evil” are created. The main ideas are *The idea of ​​the “will of power” *The idea of ​​the “superman” *The idea of ​​“eternal return” * The philosophy of life. N introduced the concept nihilism– the highest values ​​lose their value. The nihilism of the “weak” is decline and decay. Radical nihilism, the nihilism of the “strong” is the path of absolute authorship - the creation of a new morality, a new person. Revaluation of values ​​involves a transition from love for one's neighbor to love for the “distant.” Love for the “distant” is creative love, it is not a softening of current manifestations of evil, but a change in the very principles of life. The “revaluation” program also includes a revision of human happiness. A person doesn't have to be happy, he has to be free“The “will” for N is concrete. The individual will of man, the essence of any being and being, lies in the enhancement and growth of this specific “will to power.” He considers will to be primary in relation to consciousness and thinking and connects it with human action. “I have a will and I act, and therefore I live.” N understands life as the blind irrational principle of the world, merged into the “will to power.” A man who has become master of nature, master of his own wildness, represents a colossal amount of power. “Life is only a means to something: it is an expression of the forms of growth of power”. Self-satisfied human subjectivity imagines itself as the master of the world, encountering no resistance anywhere in the world it itself created. There are no two worlds - peace in ourselves and peace for us, there is one world - the world of life, struggle and defeat . Life for Nietzsche is between nature and culture. To live means to be different from nature, to not submit to either natural or human necessity. Life as a person’s realization of the “will to power” is the sphere of creation of meaning, it is super-life, devoid of normativity. 3. The idea of ​​a superman”, interests and goals that are hidden from the individual. For him, the prejudices of the mind and the form of life are a priori and compulsory; he cannot help but follow them. Hence the fatalistic idea of ​​the eternal return of the same delusions, wars, and illusions. Opposed to this is the idea of ​​a superman, the need (including through education and selection) to overcome the properties of human nature, for example, the structure of sensuality. Nietzsche chooses the object of criticism is reason, science, morality, and the Christian religion. He came up with a radical problem of “revaluation of values”, with a frank criticism of humanism. He rejected not only Christian morality, but morality in general. Morality and culture according to Nietzsche are incompatible! Morality is the sighs of the weak, cat. no place in life. Culture should not be a culture of power, because only power is beautiful. Intelligence is a random phenomenon in the world; it relaxes a person, and therefore is an expression of decadence, the decline of culture. People do not live by scientific truths - they do not need them or are even hostile. Mass consciousness is mythological. And this is good, because a person needs illusions that can “fit” him into the irrational flow of life. He thought highly of Schopenhauer. Differences in their views: Sh.’s voluntarism – the primacy of the will to live. N.'s voluntarism is a hymn to the will to power, which

strong man (“superman”) must strive to develop as much as possible.31.Consciousness.Psychoanalytic approach. Themes and concepts of the teachings of Sigmund Freud.Sigmund Freud libido\mortido (eros, tantos) beyond the self (social-superego)-I (personality -), everything created by a subconscious desire to prolong the race (art), the social self limits, imposes taboos - hence the complexes deposited in the unconscious. (1856-1939) Freud's work as a philosopher can be divided into two stages. The first period: the creation of the concept of the unconscious (late 19th century to 1920), when, based on his experimental data, the author concludes that in the psyche of every person there are quite clearly defined structural formations, which he calls - consciousness, preconscious and unconscious. In contrast to the rationalistic European philosophical tradition, S. Freud pays special attention to the unconscious, defining it as that part of the psyche into which unconscious human desires, which are irrational and timeless in nature, are repressed. The realization of these desires and ideas is prevented by that part of the psyche , which Freud called the preconscious. In his opinion, this is the rational self, personifying the memory and thinking of a person. The main task of the preconscious is to censor the desires that characterize a person’s unconscious aspirations. It is here that the source of a person’s conflict with himself is located, since the unconscious is subject to the principle of pleasure, and the preconscious is considered, first of all, with reality. Its task is to curb the desires of the unconscious, to prevent them from penetrating consciousness and being realized in some kind of activity - because they can become the source of neurotic behavior. Freud called them a compromise in which the unconscious and preconscious try to find a way out. The super-ego acts as a judge, a social supervisor over the entire human psyche, correlating his thoughts and actions with the norms and patterns of behavior existing in society, considered by a person as a role model. Each of the “floors” of the human psyche lives its own life, but the realization of the fruits of their activities most often distorted, because a person’s life in society is subordinated not to his bioenergy, but to the cultural environment in which he is included. The entire European culture, according to Freud, is a culture of prohibition and all the main taboos relate specifically to unconscious impulses, therefore the development of culture presupposes the development of neuroses and unhappiness of people, leads to an increase in the feeling of guilt of each person, the renunciation of their own desires . Consciousness. Psychoanalytic approach. The ambiguity and uncertainty of the concept of psychoanalysis: 1. a certain therapeutic technique, a method of psychotherapy, which has become widespread in Europe since the beginning of the twentieth century, the USA since the mid-twentieth century and Latin America since the second half of the twentieth century. 2. the science of the unconscious mental activity of a person 3. a type of self-knowledge , something between medicine and philosophy 4. the art of interpreting errors, dreams, texts, art. works, symptoms of diseases Freud's ontology - between rationalism and irrationalism 1. The world is material, exists objectively and independently of the absolute spirit. 2. The unconscious is not a mystical principle, but a real side of human life, endowed with meaning and playing a role. role in people's behavior. The unconscious is special mental forces that lie beyond consciousness, but control human behavior. Consciousness is one of the two parts of the psyche, conscious of the individual, and determines the choice of behavior in the social environment, but not entirely, since the choice of behavior itself can be initiated by the unconscious. Consciousness and the unconscious are in an antagonistic relationship; in the endless struggle, the unconscious always wins. The psyche is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle, which is modified into the reality principle, and when the balance is disturbed, a reset is carried out through the unconscious sphere. The constant confrontation between the unconscious and the reality principle forms the basis for the emergence of intrapersonal conflicts. The unconscious can only be known through its becoming conscious. Later: 3 layers of the psyche: IT - the Unconscious, a deep layer in the depths of which hidden psychic formations, expressing the unconscious desires of a person. I am the conscious, a mediator between the outside world and IT. SUPER - I am the obligations and prohibitions that have a family and socio-cultural origin. I am caught in the grip of contradictions between the IT, the SUPER-Ego and

32.Fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger. Being and time; language, metaphysics, truth (“What is metaphysics?”, “Being and Time”). Existing is the entire totality of things that surround us. Being is the one thing thanks to which existing exists. Nothing is the negation of the entire totality of existing (But for this it is necessary to be able to imagine all that exists as a whole, which is impossible at the level of representation, but possible at the level of sensation) The feeling of horror tells us about Nothing (horror is different from fear/afraid: this is a fundamental mood, the subject is uncertain). Man is a creature initially pushed into Nothing : a person can “approach” Existence and delve into it. When a person perceives Nothing, he can step beyond the boundaries of existence as a whole, which leads to the discovery of being. All this is metaphysics, i.e. questioning about being. Philosophy is what sets metaphysics in motion. The problem of being in the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger Eat different kinds Beings who have something in common - the very fact of their existence, but only understands this. Dasein Beings who have something in common - the very fact of their existence, but only understands this.(“here-being, here-being, presence”) – being that has an understanding of being. Basic structures (ways of existence) :Existential analysis. 1. Being - in - the world. The world is where Dasein meets things. DasMan (“The Inauthentic Essence of Man”): “Everyone is another, and no one is himself”1. Isolation2. Averageness3. Sameness Inauthentic being (chatter, rumors, curiosity, meaninglessness) A way to escape from it: - experiencing the fear of death (you can live for another person, or he can live for you, but we ourselves will have to die)(1889 - 1976). M. Heidegger saw his task as a philosopher in substantiating in a new way the doctrine of the essence and meaning of being. M. Heidegger seeks to identify those fundamental attitudes of European thinking that gave rise to the undesirable state of the entire European civilization. Main focus in philosophy M. Heidegger is attached to the analysis of the meaning of the category of being, which he fills with a unique content. In his opinion, “being from the early beginnings of Western European thought to this day means the same thing as presence. From presence, presence, the present sounds. The latter, according to popular belief, forms a characteristic of time with the past and future. Being as presence is determined by time.” In other words, being for Heidegger is the existence of things in time, or existence. For Heidegger, according to researchers of his work, being means rather the existence of consciousness. A person, entering the world and being present in it, experiences a state of care. It appears in the form of the unity of three moments: “being-in-the-world”, “running ahead” and “being-with-in-the-world-existence”. Evidence of the completion of the old metaphysics, Heidegger believed, is the proclamation of the slogan “God is dead.” This slogan, put forward by F. Nietzsche, meant the rejection of religion and the recognition of the incapacity of faith in God, which was proof of the destruction of previous foundations. Care for the religious cult is replaced by the creation of culture or the spread of civilization. The sign of the New Age, which led to such a state, is nihilism. According to Heidegger, “nihilism” is the truth that has come to dominate that all the former goals of existence have been shaken. In covering the issues of comprehending being and establishing truth, discussed in the work “On the Essence of Truth,” M. Heidegger proceeded from the fact that ordinary human reason, thanks to thinking, acts as a means of movement towards truth. But what is true? Ancient Rome Republic period.

KOJEV(Kojéve) Alexander (real name Kozhevnikov Alexander Vladimirovich) (May 11, 1902, Moscow - June 4, 1968, Brussels) is a French philosopher of Russian origin. At the beginning of 1920 he left Russia, studied philosophy and oriental languages ​​in Berlin and Heidelberg; in 1926 he defended his dissertation on the philosophy of unity of Vl. Solovyov under the leadership K. Jaspers . Since 1927 he lives in France, in 1938 he receives French citizenship. From 1933 to 1939 he taught the course “Introduction to Reading Hegel” at the Practical School of Higher Studies. During the occupation, he took an active part in the Resistance movement. After the war, he worked at the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, participated in the development of important economic and political treaties (EEC, GATT, etc.).

Kojève's philosophical teaching is most often classified as one of the varieties neo-Hegelianism . Kojève’s own doctrine is indeed hidden behind the interpretation of the “Phenomenology of Spirit”, and Hegel’s dialectic is considered by him as the pinnacle and limit of the development of philosophical thought. At the same time, he radically revised the Hegelian system under the undoubted influence of Marx and Heidegger, and some of Kojève’s initial intuitions go back to his passion for Hinayana Buddhism. In a 1931 manuscript entitled “Atheism,” he formulated all the main theses of atheistic existentialism. The key to interpreting Hegel's philosophy for him is the concept of time, interpreted in the spirit of Heidegger's Being and Time. Kojève rejects not only Hegel’s philosophy of nature, but also his doctrine of the absolute spirit. Only finite human existence is dialectical; existence is endowed with the ability of self-negation and the negation of any predetermined essence. Natural characteristics are not rejected at all (Kojève is inclined towards ontological dualism), but they enter into human reality only as possibilities of negation and choice. In the 1933–39 course, Kojève uses the following metaphor: if you take a ring, it is determined not only by the properties of the metal from which it is made, but also by its shape, which is an empty circle inside. This emptiness is human reality, which does not depend on given natural characteristics. Free and self-denying existence forms a kind of “hole” in the unchanging natural being - this idea will become the foundation of the entire ontology J.-P. Sartre . The difference between Kojeve's philosophy and existentialism lies in the understanding of history as a rational and natural process.

Human existence is a denial of one's own animal nature. In society, lust (Hegel's Begierde) turns into a “struggle for recognition” - the humanity of each being depends on the recognition of it by others. As a result of the struggle, one becomes a Master, the other, on pain of death, becomes a Slave. “The dialectic of master and slave” from “Phenomenology of Spirit” acts as the foundation of Kojève’s philosophy of history. The master proves his humanity in a fight to the death; he overcomes the instinct of self-preservation. But outside the battlefield, his life is not human, since he indulges in pleasure and is beyond the boundaries of history. He does not receive genuine recognition, since such recognition on the part of the Slave is not free recognition. “Domination is an existential dead end. The master is capable of either being bruised in pleasure or dying on the battlefield, but he cannot live consciously, being a satisfied being” (“Introduction à la lecture...”, p. 174–75). Mastery of the forces of nature, its knowledge and practical transformation are realized not by the Master, but by the Slave. In the work and struggle of the Slave, not only the instinct of self-preservation is overcome - one’s own animality and the facticity of nature are overcome with the help of production, science, and technology. The end point of this process is the total transformation of nature in accordance with human needs and the transformation of man himself into a Sage, capable of solving all rationally posed problems. The destruction of the Master's kingdom through revolution is a historical necessity and a prerequisite for such a transformation. The result of the revolution is the synthesis of Master and Slave in the Citizen, recognized by all other citizens of a universal and homogeneous state. The political and legal aspects of this process were described by Kojève in his work “Essay on the Phenomenology of Law” (1943, published posthumously in 1981).

History is conceived by Kojève as a totality: it has a beginning and an inevitable end. Political history ends with a universal and homogeneous state, in which there are no wars and revolutions, no struggle “for a place in the sun” between individuals, groups, and states. But the “end of history” means for Kojève the disappearance of man. Complete submission to nature and satisfaction of all conceivable desires, cessation of struggle - all this no longer characterizes a person, but some other creature. Human existence is defined by lack, lust and struggle. Therefore, it is historical, and the end of history also means the “death of man.” Humanity has already entered the era of “post-history”. Hegel, according to Kojève, rightfully connected this transition with the French Revolution and Napoleon. Wars and revolutions of the 19th–20th centuries. lead only to the expansion of the kingdom of the Citizen. If in the 1930s–40s. Kojève saw in the “end of history” the coming kingdom of the Sage, then his subsequent views can be characterized as pessimistic - the “animal kingdom” of satisfied and complacent consumers, the time of the “last man,” is approaching.

Kojève’s interpretation of Hegelian philosophy occupies an important place in French philosophy of the 20th century. The students of his course were R.Aron , J. Bataille , R.Keno, P. Klossowski , J. Lacan , M.Merleau-Ponty and others. Existentialism, Hegelian-Marxism, structural psychoanalysis were created under the obvious influence of his course, published in 1947 by R. Queneau according to the notes of Kojève himself (the first three lectures of the course 1937–38 and the entire text of lectures 1938–39 were completely recorded) and notes from students . The influence of Kojève can also be traced, in addition to the philosophy of J. Bataille, the novels of R. Queneau and the theme of the “death of man” by M. Foucault, in the debate about the “end of history” in the 1980s and 90s. (S. Fukuyama’s report and all works on “post-history” of recent decades). In the 1950s–60s. Kojève wrote a number of works on the history of philosophy, the purpose of which was to demonstrate the natural movement of European thought towards the philosophy of Hegel. Along with them, some of Kojève’s early manuscripts were published posthumously, of which the greatest interest is his 1932 dissertation “The Idea of ​​Determinism in Classical and modern physics».

Essays:

1. Concrete (objective) painting by Kandinsky. – “Man”, 1997, No. 6;

2. Tyranny and wisdom. – “VF”, 1998, No. 6;

3. The idea of ​​death in Hegel’s philosophy. M., 1998;

4. Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. P., 1947;

5. Esquisse d'une phenoménologie du droit. P., 1981;

6. Essai d’une histoire raisonnée de la philosophie païenne, t. 1–3. P., 1968–73;

7. Kant. P., 1973;

8. Le Concept, le Temps et le Discours. Essai d'une mise à jour du Systeme du Savoir hegelien. P., 1990.

At the duel between Kurginyan and Gozman, Sergei Ervandovich gave an idea of ​​what Hegel said about the categories of domination and slavery. True, an explanatory example is taken from our life - the meeting of airplanes. And here is what Hegel himself wrote about domination and slavery in “Phenomenology of Spirit”.

Hegel explored how self-consciousness manifests itself. He's writing:
“But the manifestation of oneself as a pure abstraction of self-consciousness consists in showing oneself as a pure negation of one’s objective mode, or in showing oneself unconnected with any specific existence, not connected with the general singularity of existence in general, not connected with life. This manifestation is double action: the action of the other and the action emanating from oneself. Since this is the action of the other, each goes to the death of the other. But here there is also a second action - an action emanating from oneself, for the first involves the risk of one’s own life. self-consciousness, therefore, is defined in such a way that they confirm themselves and each other in a life-and-death struggle - They must enter into this struggle, because they must have the certainty of themselves, which consists in being for themselves. elevate to truth in others and in ourselves. And only at the risk of life is freedom confirmed, it is confirmed that for self-consciousness it is not being, not how it directly appears, not its immersion in the vastness of life that is the essence, but the fact that there is nothing in it that would not be a vanishing moment for it - that it is only pure being-for-itself. An individual who did not risk his life can, of course, be recognized as a person, but he has not achieved the truth of this recognition as some kind of independent self-awareness. Each must go to the death of the other to the same extent as he risks his own life, for the other has no greater meaning for him than himself; his essence manifests itself for him as something else, it is outside himself; it must sublate its existence outside itself; the other is a manifoldly confused and existing consciousness; it must contemplate its otherness as pure being-for-itself or as absolute negation.
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In this experience self-consciousness discovers that life is as essential to it as pure self-consciousness.<...>thanks to it, pure self-consciousness and consciousness are revealed, which is not just for itself, but for another [consciousness], that is, it exists as an existing consciousness or consciousness in the form of thinghood. Both points are significant; since at first they are unequal and opposite and their reflection into unity has not yet followed, they constitute two opposite types of consciousness: independent consciousness, for which being-for-itself is an essence, the other - non-independent, for which life or being is for some the other is the essence; the first is the master, the second is the slave.

The Master is a consciousness that exists for itself, but not just the concept of consciousness, but a consciousness that exists for itself, which is mediated with itself by another consciousness, namely one whose essence includes the fact that it is synthesized with independent existence or with thinghood in general. The master correlates with both of these moments: with a certain thing as such - with the object of desire, and with consciousness, for which thinghood is essential;

The master relates to the slave through independent existence, for it is this that holds the slave; this is his chain, from which he could not abstract himself in the struggle, and therefore it turned out that he, being dependent, has his own independence in thinghood. Meanwhile, the master rules over this being, for he has proven in the struggle that it has meaning for him only as some kind of negative; since he rules over this being, and this being rules over another, [over the slave], then as a result of this he subjugates this other to himself. Similar the master relates to the thing through the slave; slave as self-consciousness generally correlates with a thing also negatively and removes it; but at the same time, she is independent for him, and therefore, with his negative attitude, he cannot deal with her, even to the point of destruction, in other words, he only processes it. On the contrary, for the master the direct relation becomes, thanks to this mediation, a pure negation of the thing or consumption; what lust failed to do, he succeeds in - dealing with it and finding his satisfaction in consumption. Lust did not succeed in this because of the independence of the thing, but the master, who placed a slave between the thing and himself, thereby encounters only the lack of independence of the thing and consumes it completely; he leaves the aspect of independence [of the thing] to the slave who processes it.
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In the same way, there is also a second point here, which consists in the fact that this doing of the second consciousness is the own doing of the first, for what the slave does is, in fact, the doing of the master; for the latter, being-for-itself alone is essence; he is pure negative power, for which a thing is nothing, and therefore, in this situation, he is pure essential doing; a slave is some kind of not pure, but unimportant work.

That is, we see that the master becomes a master after surviving the challenge of death, proving that his life is not connected with existing existence, i.e. he acts as the master of this existence.

In his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel made his later famous analysis of domination and slavery, with a logic that can be called truly murderous, for it divides humanity into masters and slaves.

His train of thought is as follows.

What distinguishes a person from an animal is self-awareness (an animal has only a sense of self). To assert itself, self-consciousness turns into lust for what is outside it - the natural world. Self-consciousness, then, is a desire that must be satisfied. Therefore, in order to be sated, it acts, and in acting, it denies, destroys what it satiates with. Self-consciousness is negation.

But to destroy an object that does not have consciousness, such as meat in the act of eating, is also inherent in an animal. A person needs the lust of consciousness to turn to something different from the unconscious nature. The only thing in the world that is different from her is a different self-awareness. Consequently, it is necessary that lust should turn to another lust and that self-consciousness should be saturated with other self-consciousness. Simply put, a person is not recognized by others and does not recognize himself as a person while he is limited to a purely animal existence. He needs recognition from other people. In principle, any consciousness is only a desire to be recognized and approved, as such, by other consciousnesses. We are generated by others. Only in society do we acquire human value, which is higher than animal value.

The highest value for an animal is the preservation of life, and consciousness must rise above this instinct in order to acquire human value. It must be able to risk its own life. To be recognized by another consciousness, a person must be willing to put his life at risk and accept the possibility of death. Thus, fundamental human relationships are purely prestigious relationships, a constant struggle for recognition of each other, a struggle for life and death.

It is clear from this that from the very beginning human history and throughout its entire duration, only two types of consciousness are possible, one of which lacks the courage to renounce life and therefore agrees to recognize another consciousness without being recognized by it itself. In short, it allows itself to be considered as a thing. A consciousness that renounces independence for the sake of preserving animal life is the consciousness of a slave. Another thing that has gained recognition and independence is master consciousness. They differ when they collide, when one bows before the other.

But unfortunately for him, the master is recognized as such by consciousness, which he himself does not recognize as independent. Therefore, he cannot be satisfied. Dominance is a dead end. Since the master cannot in any way give up dominance and become a slave, the eternal fate of masters is to live unsatisfied or be killed. The role of the master in history is reduced only to reviving the slave consciousness, the only one that truly creates history. The slave does not value his fate, he wants to change it. Consequently, he can educate himself in spite of the master; what is called history is only a series of long efforts made to achieve true freedom. From here it is not far to Marxism-Leninism with its total war against all types and forms of oppression.

It is difficult to refute this scheme logically. You protest against it, rather, with your heart and with your whole being. Dominion and slavery are equally disgusting to me; I never wanted to either command or obey (I don’t at all confuse this with slavish submission conscious discipline necessary in any team). But it turns out that you always either command or obey. Equality of people is a utopia. Such a damn life.

Original article on my website "Forgotten Stories"

We have to constantly repeat that man is a contradictory creature and is in conflict with himself. A person seeks freedom, he has a huge impulse for freedom, and he not only easily falls into slavery, but he also loves slavery. Man is king and slave. Hegel in Phänomenologie des Geistes has wonderful thoughts about master and slave, about Herrschaft and Knechtschaft. We are talking here not about the social categories of master and slave, but about something deeper. This is a problem of the structure of consciousness. I see three states of a person, three structures of consciousness, which can be designated as “master”, “slave” and “free”. Master and slave are correlative; they cannot exist without each other. The free one exists in itself; it has its own quality in itself without correlativity with its opposite. The master is a consciousness that exists for himself, but which through another, through a slave, exists for himself. If the consciousness of a master is the consciousness of the existence of another for himself, then the consciousness of a slave is the existence of himself for another. The consciousness of the free is the consciousness of the existence of each for himself, but with a free exit from himself to another and to everyone. The limit of slavery is the absence of its consciousness. The world of slavery is a world of a spirit alienated from itself. Exteriorization is the source of slavery. Freedom is interiorization. Slavery always means alienation, being thrown outside of human nature. Feuerbach and then Marx recognized this source of human slavery, but connected it with materialist philosophy, which is the legalization of human slavery. Alienation, exteriorization, throwing out the spiritual nature of man means slavery of man. Economic slavery of man undoubtedly means the alienation of human nature and the transformation of man into a thing. Marx is right about this. But to liberate a person, his spiritual nature must be returned to him, he must recognize himself as a free and spiritual being. If man remains a material and economic being, but his spiritual nature is recognized as an illusion of consciousness, a deceptive ideology, then man remains a slave and a slave by nature. A person in an objectified world can only be relatively, and not absolutely free, and his freedom presupposes struggle and resistance to necessity, which he must overcome. But freedom presupposes a spiritual principle in man that resists enslaving necessity. Freedom, which will be the result of necessity, will not be true freedom; it is only an element in the dialectic of necessity. Hegel, in essence, does not know real freedom.

Exteriorizing, alienating consciousness is always a slave consciousness. God is the master, man is the slave; the church is the master, man is the slave; the state is the master, man is the slave; society is the master, man is the slave; family is master, man is slave; nature is the master, man is the slave; the object is the master, the human subject is the slave. The source of slavery is always objectification, i.e. exteriorization, alienation. This is slavery in everything - in knowledge, in morality, in religion, in art, in political and social life. The end of slavery is the end of objectification. And the end of slavery does not mean the emergence of domination, for domination is back side slavery. Man must become not a master, but a free man. Plato rightly said that the tyrant is himself a slave. Enslaving another is also enslaving oneself. Domination and enslavement are initially associated with magic, which does not know freedom. Primitive magic was the will to power. The master is only the image of a slave who misleads the world. Prometheus is free and liberating, while the dictator is slave and enslaving. The will to power is always a slave's will. Christ is free, the freest of the sons of men, He is free from the world, He binds only with love. Christ spoke as one who had power, but he did not have the will to power and was not a master. Caesar, the hero of imperialism, is a slave, a slave of the world, a slave of the will to power, a slave of the human mass, without which he cannot realize the will to power. The master knows only the height to which his slaves lift him; Caesar knows only the height to which the masses lift him. But the slaves, the masses, also overthrow all masters and all Caesars. Freedom is freedom not only from masters, but also from slaves. The master is determined from the outside, the master is not a person, just as a slave is not a person, only a free person is a person, even if the whole world wanted to enslave him.

The fall of man is most expressed in the fact that he is a tyrant. There is an eternal tendency towards tyranny. He is a tyrant, if not in the big, then in the small, if not in the state, not in the ways of world history, then in his family, in his shop, in his office, in the bureaucratic institution in which he occupies the smallest position. A person has an irresistible tendency to play a role and in this role to attach special importance to himself and to tyrannize those around him. Man is a tyrant not only in hatred, but also in love. A lover can be a terrible tyrant. Jealousy is a manifestation of tyranny in a passive form. A jealous person is an enslaver who lives in a world of fiction and hallucinations. Man is a tyrant of himself and, perhaps, most of all of himself. He tyrannizes himself, like a split creature that has lost its integrity. He tyrannizes himself with a false consciousness of guilt. A true consciousness of guilt would set a person free. He tyranns himself with false beliefs, superstitions, and myths. He tyrannizes himself with all sorts of fears and painful complexes. He tyrannizes himself with envy, pride, ressentiment. Sick pride is the most terrible tyranny. Man tyrannizes himself with the consciousness of his weakness and his insignificance and the thirst for power and greatness. With his enslaving will, a person enslaves not only another, but also himself. There is an eternal tendency towards despotism, a thirst for power and domination. Primary evil is the power of man over man, the humiliation of human dignity, violence and domination. The exploitation of man by man, which Marx considers a primary evil, is a derivative evil; this phenomenon is possible as the domination of man over man. But a person becomes the master of another because, according to the structure of his consciousness, he has become a slave of the will to dominate. The same force with which he enslaves another enslaves himself. A free person does not want to dominate anyone. Hegel's unhappy consciousness is the consciousness of the opposite as an essence and of one's own insignificance. When the essence of a person is experienced by him as opposite to him, then he can experience the oppression of the slave consciousness of dependence. But then he often wins back, compensating himself by enslaving others. The most terrible thing is a slave who has become a master. As a master, the least terrible thing is an aristocrat who is aware of his original nobility and dignity, free from ressentiment. Such an aristocrat is never a dictator, a man of the will to power. The psychology of the dictator, who is essentially parvenu, is a perversion of man. He is a slave to his enslavements. He is profoundly opposed to Prometheus the Liberator. The leader of the crowd is in the same slavery as the crowd, he has no existence outside the crowd, outside the slavery over which he dominates, he is completely thrown outside. A tyrant is a creature of the masses who are terrified of him. The will to power, to predominance and domination is an obsession; it is not a free will and the will to freedom. He who is possessed by the will to power is in the power of fate and becomes a fatal man. Caesar the dictator, the hero of the imperialist will, places himself under the sign of fate. He cannot stop, cannot limit himself, he goes further and further towards death. This is a doomed man. The will to power is insatiable. It does not indicate an excess of power that gives itself to people. The imperialist will creates a ghostly, ephemeral kingdom; it gives rise to disasters and wars. The imperialist will is a demonic perversion of man's true calling. It contains a perversion of the universalism to which man is called. They are trying to achieve this universalism through false objectification, through throwing human existence outward, through exteriorization, which makes a person a slave. Man is called to be the king of the earth and the world; the idea of ​​man is inherent in royalty. Man is called to expansion and mastery of space. He is involved in a great adventure. But the fall of man gives this universal will a false, enslaving direction. Lonely and unhappy, Nietzsche was a philosopher of the will to power. And how ugly they took advantage of Nietzsche, vulgarized him, how they made his thoughts an instrument of goals that would have been disgusting to Nietzsche. Nietzsche was addressed to the few, he was an aristocratic thinker, he despised the human mass, without which the imperialist will cannot be realized. He called the state the coldest of monsters and said that man begins only where the state ends. How can we organize an empire, which is always an organization of the masses, of the average person? Nietzsche was a weak man, devoid of any power, the weakest of the people in this world. And he did not have the will to power, but the idea of ​​the will to power. He encouraged people to be tough. But it is unlikely that he understood by rigidity the violence of states and revolutions, the rigidity of the imperialist will. The image of Caesar Borgia was for him only a symbol of the inner tragedy of the spirit he experienced. But the exaltation of the imperialist will, the will to power and to enslavement, in any case means a break with evangelical morality. And this gap is happening in the world; it did not yet exist in the old humanism, it did not exist in the French Revolution. The enslaving gesture of violence wants to be a gesture of strength, but in essence it is always a gesture of weakness. Caesar is the most powerless of men. Anyone who executes is a person who has lost the strength of spirit, who has lost all consciousness of it. We come to a very complex problem of violence.

That the will to power, the imperialist will, is contrary to the dignity and freedom of man is absolutely clear. And imperialist philosophy never said that it defends human freedom and dignity. She exalts violence against man as the highest state. But the problem of violence itself and the attitude towards it is very complex. When people are outraged against violence, they usually mean gross and conspicuous forms of violence. A person is beaten, imprisoned, killed. But human life is full of invisible, more subtle forms of violence. Psychological violence plays an even greater role in life than physical violence. A person is deprived of freedom and becomes a slave not only from physical violence. Social indoctrination experienced by a person from childhood can enslave him. The education system can completely deprive a person of freedom, making him incapable of freedom of judgment. The heaviness and massiveness of history rapes a person. You can rape a person through a threat, through an infection that has turned into a collective action. Enslavement is murder. Man always sends to man currents of life or currents of death. And hatred is always a current of death, sent to another and raping him. Hatred always wants to take away freedom. But it is amazing that love can become deadly and send a current of death. Love enslaves no less than hatred. Human life is permeated with underground currents, and a person falls invisibly into an atmosphere that rapes and enslaves him. There is a psychology of individual violence, and there is a psychology of collective, social violence. Crystallized, hardened public opinion becomes violence against a person. A person can be a slave of public opinion, a slave of customs, mores, socially imposed judgments and opinions. It is difficult to overestimate the violence committed by the press in our time. The average person of our era has the opinions and judgments of the newspaper that he reads every morning; it subjects him to mental coercion. And with the deceit and corruption of the press, the results are the most terrible in the sense of enslaving a person, depriving him of freedom of conscience and judgment. Meanwhile, this violence is relatively little noticeable. It is noticeable only in countries of dictatorship, where the falsification of people's opinions and judgments is a state action. There is an even deeper violence, this is the violence of the power of money. This is a hidden dictatorship in a capitalist society. The person is not raped in a direct, visible way. A person’s life depends on money, the most impersonal, most low-quality, equally changing force in the world. A person is not directly deprived, through physical violence, of freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of judgment, but he is placed in a financially dependent position, is under the threat of starvation and is thereby deprived of freedom. Money gives independence, lack of money makes you dependent. But even those who have money are in slavery and are subjected to invisible violence. In the kingdom of mammon, man is forced to sell his labor and his labor is not free. Man did not know real freedom in work. Relatively freer was the work of the artisan and intellectual work, which, however, was also subject to unnoticed violence. But the mass of humanity went through slave labor, through serf labor, through new slave labor in the capitalist world and through serf labor in the example of communist society. Man is still a slave. It is very interesting that psychologically it is most easily perceived as freedom, lack of movement, a familiar state. Movement is already some kind of violence against the surrounding world, over the surrounding material environment and over other people. Movement is change, and it does not ask the world for consent to those changes that are the result of this change generated by movement. This perception of peace as the absence of violence, and movement and change as violence, has conservative consequences in social life. Habitual, long-established slavery may not seem like violence, but a movement aimed at abolishing slavery may seem like violence. Social reform of society is perceived as violence by those for whom a certain familiar social system seems to be freedom, even if it was terribly unfair. All reforms in the situation of the working classes evoke cries from the bourgeois classes about violation of freedom, about violence. These are the paradoxes of freedom in social life. Slavery awaits man from all sides. The struggle for freedom presupposes resistance, and without resistance its pathos weakens. Freedom, which has become habitual life, turns into the imperceptible enslavement of a person; this is objectified freedom, while freedom is the kingdom of the subject. Man is a slave because freedom is difficult and slavery is easy.

In the slave world of objectivity, violence is considered force, manifested force. The exaltation of violence always means admiration for force. But violence is not only not identical with force, it should never be associated with force. Strength in a deeper sense means mastery of what it is aimed at, not domination, in which externality is always preserved, but a convincing, internally conquering connection. Christ speaks with power. A tyrant never speaks with force. The rapist is completely powerless over the one he abuses. They resort to violence due to powerlessness, due to the fact that they have no power over the one whom they commit violence against. The master has no power over his slave. He can torture him, but this torture only means meeting an insurmountable obstacle. And when the master had power, he ceased to be the master. Extreme powerlessness in relation to another person finds expression in his murder. Immense power would be revealed if it were possible to resurrect a person. Power is transformation, enlightenment, resurrection of another. Violence, torture, murder is weakness. In the objectified, everyday, depersonalized, exteriorized world, they don’t call it force, which is force in the existential sense of the word. This is expressed in a clash of power and value. The highest values ​​in the world turn out to be weaker than the lower ones, the highest values ​​are crucified, the lower values ​​triumph. The policeman and the sergeant major, the banker and the businessman are stronger than the poet and philosopher, than the prophet and saint. In the objectified world, matter is stronger than God. The Son of God was crucified. Socrates was poisoned. Prophets were stoned. The initiators and creators of new thought and new life have always been persecuted, oppressed and often executed. The average person of social everyday life triumphed. Only the master and the slave triumphed, but the free were not tolerated. They did not want to recognize the highest value - the human personality, but the lowest value - the state with its violence and lies, espionage and cold murder was revered highest value and the slaves worshiped her. In the objectified world they love only the finite and cannot stand the infinite. And this power of the finite always turns out to be the slavery of man, while the closed infinity would be liberation. Power was associated with evil means considered necessary for ends considered good. But my whole life was filled with these means, but I never achieved my goals. And the person becomes a slave to the means that supposedly give him strength. Man sought strength on false paths, on paths of powerlessness manifested in acts of violence. Man committed acts of will that enslaved and did not commit acts of will that liberated. Among the so-called great figures of history, heroes of the imperialist will, murder has always played a colossal role. And this always testified to the metaphysical weakness of these “strong” people, to the pathological will to power and dominance, accompanied by a mania of persecution. Spiritual weakness, powerlessness over a person’s inner life, lack of power that resurrects a new life, led to the fact that hellish torment in another life and executions, torture and cruel punishments in this life were easily tolerated. Truth is crucified in the world, but real power is in truth, God's truth.

Monism is the philosophical source of human slavery. The practice of monism is a tyrannical practice. Personalism is profoundly opposed to monism. Monism is the domination of the “general,” the abstract and universal, and the denial of personality and freedom. Personality and freedom are associated with pluralism, or rather, externally they take the form of pluralism, but internally they can mean concrete universalism. Conscience cannot have its center in any universal unity, it is not subject to alienation, it remains in the depths of the personality. Conscience in the depths of the personality does not at all mean that the personality is closed in on itself and self-centered; on the contrary, it presupposes an opening within, and not without, filling the inside with specific universal content. But this specific universal content of the personality never means that it places its conscience and its consciousness in society, in the state, people, class, party, church, as a social institution. The only acceptable, non-slave meaning of the word “conciliarity” is its understanding as the internal concrete universalism of the individual, and not as the alienation of conscience into some external collective. Free is only the one who does not allow alienation, the throwing out of his conscience and his judgment, but who allows this is a slave. The master allows this too, but he is only another form of slave. It is terminologically inaccurate to talk about personal autonomy, about the autonomy of consciousness and conscience. For Kant, this means the subordination of the individual to the moral and reasonable law. In this case, it is not a person who is autonomous, but a morally reasonable law. The autonomy of a person as an individual should be called freedom. Authoritarian and hierarchical system in European history Usually they opposed either reason or nature. Reason or nature rebelled against authority. But this does not achieve human freedom. Man remains subject to impersonal reason, sovereign society, or simply natural necessity. What needs to be opposed to an authoritarian consciousness or an authoritarian system of life is not reason, not nature, and not a sovereign society, but spirit, that is, freedom, the spiritual principle in man, which forms his personality and is independent of objectified nature and the objectified logical world. This presupposes a change in the direction of the struggle against human slavery, that is, a personalistic revaluation of values, to which this book is dedicated. The internal existential universalism of the individual must be contrasted with the external objectified universalism, which created more and more new forms of slavery. Everything that is not personal, everything alienated into the sphere of the general is the seduction and slavery of man. A free person is a self-governing being, not a controlled one, not the self-government of society and the people, but the self-government of a person who has become an individual. Self-government of society and people is also management of slaves.

A change in the direction of the struggle for human freedom, for the emergence of a free person, is, first of all, a change in the structure of consciousness, a change in the setting of values. This is a deep process, and its results can only be seen slowly. This is an internal, deep revolution taking place in existential, not historical time. This change in the structure of consciousness is also a change in the understanding of the relationship between immanence and transcendence. Immanent continuity, which plunges man into a continuous evolutionary process, is the negation of personality, which presupposes discontinuity and transcendence. Man here submits to a universal unity to which God is completely immanent. But God is completely transcendental to this universal unity and the process taking place in it. And this transcendence of God, the freedom of God from world necessity, from all objectivity, is the source of human freedom, is the very possibility of the existence of the individual. But transcendence can also be understood in a slavish way and can mean the humiliation of a person. Transcendence can be understood as objectification and exteriorization, and the attitude towards it is not as internal transcendence in freedom, but as the attitude of a slave to a master. The path of liberation lies beyond traditional immanence and transcendence. Transcending in freedom never means submission to someone else's will, which is slavery, but submission to the Truth, which at the same time is the way and life. Truth is always connected with freedom and is given only to freedom. Slavery is always a denial of truth, a fear of truth. Love for truth is victory over enslaving fear. Primitive man who still lives in modern man, is in the grip of fear, he is a slave of the past, the ordinary, the spirit of his ancestors. Myths can enslave. The free one is not at the mercy of myths, he is freed from their power. But the people of modern civilization, the pinnacle of civilization, are still at the mercy of myths and, by the way, at the mercy of the myth about universal realities, about the kingdom of the “common” to which man must be subordinated. But universal shared realities do not exist, they are ghosts and illusions created by objectification. There are universal values, such as truths, but always in a specific and individual form. The hypostasis of universal values ​​is a false direction of consciousness. This is an old metaphysics that cannot be justified. Outside of personality, no universality exists. The universe is in the personality of man, in the personality of God. Personification of principles is objectification, in which personality disappears.

Slavery is passivity. Victory over slavery is creative activity. Only in existential time is creative activity revealed. Historical activity is objectification, a projection of what is happening in the depths. And historical time wants to make man its slave. A free person should not bend before history, nor before the race, nor before the revolution, nor before any objective community that claims universal significance. The master also bends before history, before communities, before false universalism, just like the slave. Master and slave have more similarities than they think. A free person cannot even want to be a master; this would mean the loss of freedom. To prepare the structure of consciousness that overcomes slavery and domination, it is necessary to build an apophatic sociology by analogy with apophatic theology. Cataphatic sociology is in the categories of slavery and domination and does not lead to freedom. To think about a society free from the categories of domination and slavery, ordinary sociological concepts are not applicable; it presupposes detachment, negativity in relation to everything on which society rests in the kingdom of Caesar, that is, in the objectified world, where a person also becomes an object. The society of the free, the society of individuals, is neither a monarchy, nor a theocracy, nor an aristocracy, nor democracy, nor an authoritarian society, nor a liberal society, nor a bourgeois society, nor a socialist society, nor fascism, nor communism, nor even anarchism, since in anarchism there is objectification . This is pure apophatic, just as pure apophatic is the knowledge of God, free from concepts, from any rationalization. And this, first of all, means such a change in the structure of consciousness, in which objectification disappears, there is no opposition between subject and object, there is no master and slave, there is infinity, subjectivity filled with universal content, there is a kingdom of pure existentiality. It would be completely wrong to attribute apophatic sociology to the otherworldly, heavenly, transcendental world, to the “afterlife” and rest in the belief that in the thisworldly, earthly, immanent world, in life before death, everything should remain the same. We will see that this is a completely false understanding of eschatology, an understanding of the end as having no existential meaning. In fact, a change in the structure of consciousness, the cessation of objectification, the creation of a society of the free, which is conceivable only for apophatic sociology, must occur on this side.

Man lives not only in the cosmic time of the natural cycle and in broken historical time, directed towards the future, he also lives in existential time, he exists outside the objectification that is due to him. We will see in the last part of the book that the “end of the world,” which in philosophical language means the end of objectification, presupposes human creative activity and takes place not only “on the other side,” but also “on this side.” This is a paradox of human fate and the fate of the world, and it must be thought of paradoxically; it cannot be thought of in rational categories. A master and a slave cannot think about this at all; only a free person can think about this. The master and the slave will make inhuman efforts to prevent the end of objectification, the “end of the world,” the advent of the kingdom of God - the kingdom of freedom and the free, they will create ever new forms of domination and slavery, they will perform new disguises, ever new forms of objectification, in which the creative acts of man will suffer great failures, the crimes of history will continue. But the free must prepare their kingdom, not only “there”, but also “here” and, above all, prepare themselves, create themselves as free individuals. Free people take responsibility. Slaves cannot prepare a new kingdom, to which, in essence, the word kingdom is not applicable; a slave uprising always creates new forms of slavery. Only the free can grow for this. The master has the same fate as the slaves. And it is necessary to trace how many diverse and subtle forms of slavery lie in wait for a person and seduce him.