Hegel's Phenomenology of Self-Consciousness

Interest in Hegel has historically centered around the Phenomenology of Spirit. In particular chapter 4, including Hegel's celebrated "master-slave dialectic, " has influenced philosophers, political theorists, social psychologists, cultural anthropologists, and literary theorists alike. Hegel began this chapter with an influential discussion of the nature of human "desire, " and then described a hypothetical encounter between two pre-social human beings who engage in a life-and-death struggle for recognition. Out of this struggle that gave rise to self-identity, emerged such forms of consciousness as master and slave, stoicism skepticism, and what Hegel referred to as "the unhappy consciousness, " which he took to be paradigmatic of early, Christianity. These forms of consciousness, in turn, are transcended by other, more comprehensive, forms of consciousness that ultimately come to reflect the highest elaborations of societal life. The impetus for these dynamic changes comes from the dialectical contradictions that inhere within our most basic conceptions of personhood.