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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 between 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 opposition of the two worlds become truly extreme in this conflict. “For self-consciousness, there is another self-consciousness; self-con
