🙂 But they can’t kill each other, or even if one is killed off, recognition is denied then in both these cases. In the first because both have died, and the second, there is only one party, the other having died, can no longer grant recogntion, so it’s the sound of one hand clapping.
“He must give up his desire and satisfy the desire of the other, must refuse to risk his life for the satisfaction of his desire for “recognition.” He must give up his desire and satisfy the desire of the other: he must “recognize” the other without being “recognized” by him. Now, “to recognize”him thus is “to recognize” him as his Master and to recognize himself and to be recognized as the Master’s Slave. 8
🙂 Kojève’s ontological gesture: “In other words, in his nascent state, man is never simply man. He is always, necessarily, and essentially, either Master or Slave. … society is human —at least in its origin— only on the basis of its implying an element of Mastery and an element of Slavery, of “autonomous” existences and “dependent” existences.” 8
When the “first” two men confront one another for the first time, the one sees in the other ony an animal (and a dangerous and hostile one at that) that is to be destroyed, and not a self-conscious being representing an autonomous value. Each of these two human-individuals is, to be sure, subjectively-certain of himself; but he is not certain of the other. 10
🙂 But this certainty of oneself is purely subjective, it could be inflated, deceptive, downright wrong. What is needed in order to achieve proper Self-Consciousness he must “make himself recognized by the other, he must have in himself the certainty of being recognized by another.”
Now, the human reality is created, is constituted, only in the fight for recognition and by the risk of life that it implies. The truth of man, or the revelation of his reality, therefore, presupposes the fight to the death. And that is why human-individuals are obliged to start this fight. For each must raise his subjective-certainty of existing for self to the level of truth, both in the other and in himself. 12
The human-individual that has not dared-to-risk his life can, to be sure, be recognized as a human-person; but he has not attained the truth of this fact of being recognized as an autonomous Self-Consciousness. Hence, each of the two human-individuals must have the death of the other as his goal, just as he risks his own life. 12-13
[I]t does the man of the Fight no good to kill his adversary, He must overcome him “dialectically.” That is, he must leave him life and consciousness, and destroy only his autonomy. he must overcome the adversary only insofar as the adversary is opposed to him and acts against him. In other words, he must enslave him. 15
This Slave is the defeated adversary, who has not gone all the way in risking his life, who has not adopted the principle of the Masters: to conquer or to die. He has accepted life granted him by another. Hence, he depends on that other. He has preferred slavery to death, and that is why, by remaining alive, he lives as a Slave. 16
According to Aristotle (who did not see the dialecticity of human existence), this will always be the case: Man is born with a slavish or free “nature,” and he will never be able to overcome or modify it; … According to Hegel, on the other hand, the radical difference between Master and Slave exists only at the beginning, and it can be overcome in the course of time; because for him, Mastery and Slavery are not given or innate characteristics. 224
🙂 Here is where Kojève’s bourgeois alter-ego gets the better him: In the beginning at least, Man is not born slave or free, but creates himself as one or the other through free or voluntary Action. The Master is the one who went all the way in the Fight, being ready to die if he was not recognized; whereas the Slave was afraid of death and voluntarily submitted, by recognizing the Master without being recognized by him. But it was one and the same innate animal nature that was transformed by the free Action of the Fight into slavish or free human “nature”: the Master could have created himself as Slave, and the Slave as Master. There was no “reason” for one of the two animals (of the species Homo sapiens) to become Master rather than Slave. Mastery and Slavery have no “cause”; they are not “determined” by any given; … they result from a free Act. That is why Man can “overcome” his slavish “nature” and become free, or better, (freely) create himself as free; even if he is born in Slavery, he can negate his innate slavish “nature.” And all of History — that is, the whole “movement” of human existence in the natural World— is nothing bu the progressive negation of Slavery by the Slave, the series of his successive “conversions” to Freedom … 224-225