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of Narcissus onthe cover of the volume says everything about the
tragedy of beauty turning in on itself. I reach for that, but I can
never touch it.
For Hegel, mediation between the two sides creates the temporary
and apparent unity. But Hegel adds that it is not that simple: it
requires even more precise circumstances. Without exaggeration,
I think you must start studying his work with this one sentence,
as here the author reveals everything. He could have even finished
with it. That he did not is praiseworthy, otherwise we would know
nothing about how the other becomes a stranger and how the enemy
appears. Of course, this is exactly what everyone who has read The
Phenomenology of Spirit knows (and I know everyone has read it, at
most they have kept having done so a secret, or they have forgotten
they read it): the unity of self-consciousness does not stop here,
but is confronted with the other self-consciousness, which becomes
the “other.” The two extremes are reborn, and only that, they are
already in conflict.
This is the master-servant dialectic. (see Mastery and Servitude, PoS
p.108.) To translate it into today's terms: it is the relationship be¬
tween the same (I) and the other (Not-I, You). According to Hegel,
the conflict between the two is the law. The struggle between myself
and the alien (to whom I am the alien; and yes, from here on that
person is no longer “other,” but “alien”)
© is for freedom
0 and existence.
This strife is cruel and merciless, and it is life-or-death. The oppo¬
sition of the two worlds become truly extreme in this conflict. “For
self-consciousness, there is another self-consciousness; self-con¬