Butler and Hegel

[Sam Pawlett]

The best book on Hegel is _In the Spirit of Hegel_ by Robert Solomon.
Charles Taylor _Hegel_ is interesting too but a real idiosyncratic
interpretation. Lenin's notebooks on Hegel's logic are interesting.
Solomon argues that the point of the master/slave dialectic is the
explanation and genesis of self-consciousness.
" The Master-Slave parable is a specific illustration of the reciprocal
formation of two self-consciousness. There can be no master wihrout a
slave , and no slave without a master...The key to the master-slave
parable is the mutual recognition that self( or specific
self-consciousness) is dependant on others in a complex reciprocal
interaction... (1) there is no selfhood without the continued
recognition of others( though the continuation may carry on in one's own
consciousness) and (2) selfhood may sometime seem more important than
life, since one is willing to risk one's life for the sake of
self-consciousness. In other words, contra Hobbes and Fichte (if not
Rousseau) the threat to one's own life is no the limit of one's
independance, since, at least in a "negative" sense, one can prove one's
independane of the other by risking one's life." p443ff. Solomon also
wrote a book on the relation between Beethoven, Hegel( they were born in
the same year), Goethe and the German romantics. Can't remember the
title.

Sam Pawlett.