Negativity is pure nothingness: it is not, it does not exist, it does not appear. It is only as negation of Identity — that is, as Difference. … Negativity is real freedom which realizes itself and manifests or reveals itself as action. … Man as Man is not given Being, but creative Action. To be sure, Man is also given-Being and Nature: he also exists “in himself,” as animals and things exist. But it is only in an by Action that he is specifically human, and that he exists and appears as such —that is— as Being-for-itself … And by acting, he realizes and manifests Negativity or his Difference from natural given Being. 221-222
No animal commits suicide out of simple shame or pure vanity … no animal risks its life to capture or recapture a flag, to win officer’s stripes, or tobe decorated; animals never have bloody fights for pure prestige, for which the only reward is the resulting glory and which can be explained neither by the instinct of preservation (defense of life or search for food) nor by that of reproduction; no animal has ever fought a duel to pay back an insult that harmed noen of its vital interests, juist as no female has died “defending her honor” against a male. Therefore it is by negating acts of htis kind that Man realizes and manifests his freedom—that is, of Humanity— in the natural World: Work is another. …
In Hegel, Work “appears” for the first time in Nature in the form of slavish work imposed by the first Master on his first Slave (who submitted to him, moreover, voluntarily, since he could have escaped from slavery and work by accepting death in combat or by killing himself after his defeat).