A New Tale of Hegel's Death Struggle and Absolute Negativity
Dear Colleagues,
I want to follow-up on my comment about using philosophical consideration of absolute negativity to inform our concept of soul with an example from Hegel, the master-slave dialectic. Hegel is not primarily interested in history here but rather in (what we might call) the logical life of consciousness. He traces the progression of consciousness from its rudimentary status of immediate "sense certainty" to self-consciousness. The progression is driven from one stage to the next by contradiction and negation. At the stage of Hegel's narrative in which the master-slave dialectic appears consciousness needs to establish its autonomy from the body and its survival drive. The need arises to place the demands of consciousness above body. Life must be risked. Contempt for survival must be shown.
Hegel’s offers a story in which one consciousness (or person) in this status encounters another consciousness (person) in this status, and there ensues a fight to the death. Hegel explains:
The individual who has not risked his life may well be recognized as a person, but he has not attained to the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. Similarly, just as each stakes his own life, so each must seek the other's death, for it values the other no more than itself; its essential being is present to it in the form of an 'other.,' it is outside of itself and must rid itself of its self-externality. Phenomenology of the Spirit, p. 114.
At a certain point in the fight to the death, one of the fighters decides he does not want to die and submits to the other. The victor becomes the master and the defeated becomes the slave, per Hegel.
The aim of this process is to move mere consciousness to self-consciousness. The master-slave relationship represents the step in that process whereby the differentiated character of self-consciousness is distributed between two persons, the master and the slave. Hegel concludes, for various reasons, however, that it is the slave, not the master, who rises to self-consciousness through this dialectic. Phenomenology of the Spirit, pp. 116-119.
Hegel addresses an alternate scenario in which (apparently) both fighters kill each other. No dialectic can arise from that, rather obviously. Hegel observes:
Death certainly shows that each staked his life and held it of no account, both in himself and in the other; but that is not for those who survived this struggle. They put an end to their consciousness in its alien setting of natural existence, that is to say, they put an end to themselves, and are done away with as extremes wanting to be for themselves, or have an existence of their own. But with this there vanishes from their interplay the essential moment of splitting into extremes with opposite characteristics; and the middle term collapses into a lifeless unity which is split into lifeless, merely immediate, unopposed extremes; and the two do not reciprocally give and receive back from each other consciously, but leave each other free only indifferently, like things. Their act is an abstract negation, not the negation coming from consciousness, which supersedes in such a way as to preserve and maintain what is superseded, and consequently survives in its own supersession. Phenomenology, pp. 114-115.
Hegel’s point is well taken. However, there are not only two possible outcomes of the battle to the death—one prevailing, and the other submitting to the other, or both killing each other. There is a third possibility: one kills the other, but lives. It is this possibility I would like to explore because I do not believe that Hegel’s characterization when both parties die applies when one person kills the other and survives.
Let me offer an alternate version of the story. (Please forgive the poetic license):
A single road traversed a valley enclosed on either side by sheer rock walls. Gunnar, outfitted in his blue tribal colors, entered the narrow valley at one end, and Sigurd, dressed in red, entered from the other. There was no question of what would occur. Neither could cede the road to the other. Only one way led out of the valley: over the dead body of the other. Twenty paces apart, the warriors stopped, gauged the other, and began shouting curses. Their blood burned, boiled, then turned to white hot rage. The warriors charged. Their blades bit metal and frail flesh. The battle raged until the sun lowered into the far end of the valley sending all life into shadow—Sigurd’s life more than any other, for with the light’s waning it became clear Sigurd would die. The moment came. Gunnar lifted high his sword for the death blow. With his last strength, Sigurd straightened and stared defiant hate into Gunnar’s eyes. Gunnar’s blade fell and sliced Sigurd’s head from his body.
It thumped to the earth. Left standing, Sigurd’s headless body wavered, stumbled, then fell like a tree. The valley, which moments before echoed with the curses and cries of warriors was imaginably silent. Gunnar stared down at the corpse, and its severed head with eyes that still stared defiance. It lay infinitely still. The image burned into Gunnar's mind like fire. Suddenly, the valley echoed with a laugh. Sigurd! Gunnar spun around expecting to see Sigurd standing over him, sword raised. But there was nothing.
Gunnar hurriedly dug a grave with his sword, dragged Sigurd’s headless body into it and settled the head back onto the bloody neck. He shut the staring eyes with a shudder, covered the corpse, spoke the rites of departure and rushed from the valley.
But he did not leave Sigurd behind. Not in that moment, nor any moment after. The battle clung to him like a shadow: the staring into Sigurd’s burning eyes, the defiant cries, curses and blows, the severing of the head, the deafening silence of death and Sigurd’s final burning, distant stare. It played through his mind, as victory, then as torment, then as reconciliation, and finally as transformation. Something happened. Flowers never shone as bright for Gunnar after that day. He never sang gaily again. But neither did he ever again steer his mount away from a grave. It was said that from that day forward Gunnar fought with the strength of two men. And when he lay aside his sword he gave his tribe wise counsel until he breathed his last and was laid to rest next to Sigurd.
This tale illustrates how a Hegelian killing generates absolute negativity—at least to me. I would welcome your thoughts.
Dan
Wonderful reflections, Dan. Great storytelling, too.
I recall that Hegel also talks about the need of the victor to have his victory recognized, this leading to the forgoing and supersession of the killing of his foe and to his taking him as a slave instead.
Slavery is invented for the purpose meeting the Master's need for recogntion.
The other possilby that you sketch I found interesting and was reminded by it of the way Giegerich presents the sacrifical slaughter and big-game hunting of primoridial times in his essay "Killings." There, too, the killing of the animal kindles a light in the hunter.
Giegerich writes: "The dullness of animal existence had consisted in the fact that the reaction to whatever was encountered had to be more of less automatic (affective, instinctual), exclusively in the service of the biological purpose of securing and heightening life. Homo necans--the killing man--burst asunder this being bonded by naked biological interests through his blow with the axe or thrusting the spear. For with this tremendous deed he logically broke through life's boundary to death, by which boundary the living organism is completely enclosed; he thus inflicted the experience of death upon himself, while still in life, and made this experience the basis of his own, no longer merely-biological life."
In your tale you write: "The battle clung to him like a shadow: the staring into Sigurd’s burning eyes, the defiant cries, curses and blows, the severing of the head, the deafening silence of death and Sigurd’s final burning, distant stare."
By this I was put in mind of the fofllowing from Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia":
"Thus, the shadow of the object fell upon the ego, and the latter could henceforth be judged by a special agency, as though it were an object, the forsaken object. In this way, an object-loss was transformed into an ego-loss, and the conflict between the ego and the loved person into a cleavage between the critical activity of the ego and the ego as altered by identification."
See also: In the Object’s Shadow | Cairn.info
Greg