But the Slave, for his part, recognizes the Master in his human dignity and reality, and the Slave behaves accordingly. The Master’s “certainty” is therefore not purely subjective and “immediate,” but objectivized and “mediated” by another’s, the Slave’s, recognition. While the Slave still remains an “immediate,” natural, “bestial” being, the Master — as a result of his fight— is already human, “mediated.”
The relation between Master and Slave, therefore, is not recognition properly so-called. … this recognition is one-sided, for he (the Master rt) does not recognize in turn the Slave’s human reality and dignity. Hence, he is recognized by someone whom he does not recognize. And this is what is insufficient —and tragic— in his situation. The Master has fought and risked his life for a recognition without value for him. For he can be satisfied only by recognition from one whom he recognizes as worthy of recognizing him. … The Master, therefore, was on the wrong track. After the fight that made him a Master, he is not what he wanted to be in starting that fight: a man recognized by another man. Therefore: if man can be satisfied only by recognition, the man who behaves as a Master will never be satisfied. 20
If idle Mastery is an impasse, laborious Slavery, in contrast, is the source of all human, social, historical progress. history is the history of the working Slave. The Slave, in transforming the given World by his work, transcends the given and what is given by that given in himself; hence, he goes beyond himself, and also goes beyond the Master who is tied to the given which, not working, he leaves intact.
For only in an by work does man finally become aware of the significance, the value, and the necessity of his experience of fearing absolute power, incarnated form him in the Master.
The produce of work is the worker’s production. It is the realization of his project, of his idea; hence, it is he that is realized in and by this product, and consequently he contemplates himself when he contemplates it. Now, this artificial product is at the same time just as “autonomous,” just as objective, just as independent of man, as is the natural thing. Therefore, it is by work, and only by work, that man realizes himself objectively as man.
Only after producing an artificial object is man himself really and objectively more than and different from a natural being; and only in this real and objective product does he become truly conscious of his subjective human reality. 25
Work, then, is what “forms-or-educates” man beyond the animal. The “formed-or-educated” man, the completed man who is satisfied by his completion, is hence necessarily not Master but Slave; or, at least, he who passed through Slavery. 25
It is by work in the Master’s service performed in terror that the Slave frees himself from the terror that enslaved him to the Master. 26