Starting the Master-Slave Dialectic

With this video, we start the long-anticipated dialectic of Master and Slave, or if you prefer the more old-fashioned translation, Lordship and Bondage.

You won't find any discussion of these two terms quite yet, though -- Hegel has a bit of preliminary setting matters up to conduct first.  We have to get two self-consciousnesses caught within their relationship to each other, neither one able to be entirely what it is because it needs the other in order to be what it will.

But, the subjugation of the one consciousness -- the Slave or Bondsman -- to the other -- the Lord or Master -- is soon to come.  As is the surprise ending. . . .

On To the Master and Slave Dialectic!

We've finished up with the first portion of the Self-Consciousness section of Hegel's Phenomenology.  It too six video lectures -- about 3 hours worth of video (representing somewhere around 20-25 hours worth of work) -- to get through all of the dialectical twists and turns of those paragraphs.  Here's the video for paragraphs 176 and 177:

So that does mean that with the very next video, we get into the second section, "Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness:  Lordship and Bondage," otherwise known by the alternate translation of Herrschaft und Knechtschaft -- the Master-Slave Dialectic.   Exciting stuff coming up!

Progressing Through Self-Consciousness

We're continuing our trek through the first portion of the Self-Consciousness section, making good and steady progress once again -- and getting closer and closer to the beginning of the next section, "Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness, or the famous dialectic of Master and Slave.

There's two new videos available in the series, getting us now to 70 total half-hour installments. 

Here they are: 

• Lecture 69 - sections 170-171
• Lecture 70 - sections 172-175  

Open Culture Features The Project!

It looks like the Half-Hour Hegel project is starting to get some press in the larger online intellectual community -- the intersection between academic research, continuing education, and the broader interested public.

The massive curated clearinghouse for online intellectual content, Open Culture, recently featured the Half-Hour Hegel project.  That's very cool to see, and I suspect, so long as we keep up the quality video commentary work, we can expect to see some other sites mention or discuss the video commentary series down the line as well.

First Three Lectures of Self-Consciousness Published

We've now moved into the Self-Consciousness section, gradually making our way to the most-often-commented-upon portion of the Phenomenology -- the dialectic of Master and Slave (or as it's sometimes translated, Lordship and Bondage).

We've got a bit of dialectical development to cover before we arrive at the rather exciting topics just preceding the Master-Slave relations -- the doubling of self-consciousness, the struggle to the death for recognition -- and even before that, Hegel has to get us to the point where those can become in some way necessary.  He has to explore the nature of Life and Desire.

Here are the first three lectures, focused on the earliest paragraphs of the new section:

• Lecture 66 - sec. 166
• Lecture 67 - sec. 167  
• Lecture 68 - sec. 168-169

We'll have more coming out in the course of this week, and hopefully will be into the first bits of the Master-Slave section by the end of September!