G.W.F. Hegel, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The life-and-death struggle is where we must begin. Two self-conscious beings encounter one another, and each, in that encounter, faces a fundamental problem: each is certain of itself, but not of the other, and so its own self-certainty remains without truth.1 For the truth of self-consciousness cannot be established in isolation — it requires that the other confirm what I take myself to be.
Yet the other stands before me as an immediate, natural, bodily existence, a kind of thing, and I before the other in the same way.2 The contradiction is plain: each must be recognized as free, yet each confronts the other as a natural entity subject to alien power, and mere natural existence is precisely what freedom is not.3 To break out of this contradiction, each must demonstrate that it is not simply a natural being, not merely fettered to life.
This demonstration cannot be made by assertion; it must be enacted. The exhibition of pure self-consciousness consists in showing that one is bound to no determinate existence, not shackled to life — and this showing is necessarily a doubled act: I put the other's life at risk, and I put my own life at risk simultaneously.4 Only through this mortal combat can freedom be won; the mere assurance of being free accomplishes nothing.5
But here the dialectic turns against itself. If one combatant dies, recognition is not achieved but annihilated — for recognition requires a living consciousness to perform it, and death produces only abstract negation, not the negation that sublates so that it preserves.6 Death dissolves the very medium in which recognition was to be realized.
What emerges from this aporia is not mutual recognition but an asymmetry: one combatant, preferring life over the risk of annihilation, submits; the other holds fast to the relation to himself and is recognized by the first in his subjugation.7 This is the relationship of mastery and bondage. Now the deeper irony unfolds. The master sought recognition from another self-consciousness, but what he has produced is a bondsman — a consciousness he has reduced to dependence, whose recognition of him is therefore the recognition of a thing, not of a free being.8
The master's independence rests on the bondsman's labor and on the bondsman's continued natural vitality, which the master must now care for; so the master, who appeared to be the independent one, finds himself in a peculiar dependence on the very consciousness he subjugated.9 Meanwhile the bondsman, through labor on the world — forming and shaping natural objects under the master's direction — begins to find himself in what he produces, to encounter his own consciousness objectified in the external world.
The posited identity of the two self-conscious subjects comes about only in a one-sided way, and this one-sidedness is the instability that drives the relationship beyond itself.10 It is worth being precise about what this dialectic is and is not. Force is the basis of this appearance — the struggle, the subjugation — but force is not on that account the basis of right.11
The master-slave relation is the external beginning of states, as it appears in history, not their substantial principle. Ancient peoples, Greeks and Romans, had not yet risen to the concept that the human being as such, as rational self-consciousness, is entitled to freedom; with them, freedom still carried the determination of naturalness, which is why slavery existed even in their free states.12
The dialectic traces the structural path by which self-consciousness, engrossed in desire and individuality, must pass through this contradiction on its way toward universal self-consciousness — the recognition that I am genuinely free only when the other is also free and is recognized by me as free.13
Each is, to be sure, certain of itself but not of the other, and for that reason its own certainty of itself is still without truth, for its truth would be only if its own being-for-itself were, to itself, to have exhibited itself as a self-sufficient object.Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 111
In the way that they immediately make their appearance, they are for each other in the way ordinary objects do. They are self-sufficient shapes absorbed within the being of life.Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 111
The two self-conscious subjects in relationship to each other, since they have an immediate reality, are natural, bodily, thus exist in the manner of a thing subjected to alien power, and they approach each other as such; yet at the same time they are quite free and may not be treated by each other as only immediate realities, as merely natural entities.Philosophy of Mind, p. 186
The exhibition of itself as the pure abstraction of self-consciousness consists in showing itself to be the pure negation of its objective mode, or in showing that it is fettered to no determinate existence... This display is the doubled act, namely, both what the other does and what is done through oneself.Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 111
Only through combat, therefore, can freedom be won; the assurance of being free is not enough for that; at this standpoint man demonstrates his capacity for freedom only by exposing himself, and others, to the danger of death.Philosophy of Mind, p. 186
Their deed is abstract negation, not the negation of consciousness, which sublates so that it preserves and maintains what has been sublated and which thereby survives its having become sublated.Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 112
the combat ends initially as one-sided negation with an asymmetry: one of the combatants prefers life, maintains himself as individual self-consciousness, but surrenders his chance of recognition, while the other holds fast to his relation to himself and is recognized by the first in his subjugation.Philosophy of Mind, p. 188
The individual who has not risked his life may admittedly be recognized as a person, but he has not achieved the truth of being recognized as a self-sufficient self-consciousness.Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 112
the master's side it is preserved. While the naturalness of life on both these sides persists, the self-will of the bondsman surrenders itself to the will of the master, receives for its content the purpose of the lord who, on his part, receives into his self-consciousness, not the bondsman's will, but only care for the support of the bondsman's natural vitality.Philosophy of Mind, p. 188
in this relationship the posited identity of the self-consciousness of the subjects related to each other comes about only in a one-sided way.Philosophy of Mind, p. 188
Force, which is the basis in this appearance, is not on that account the basis of right, though it is the necessary and legitimate moment in the passage of the condition of self-consciousness engrossed in desire and individuality into the condition of universal self-consciousness.Philosophy of Mind, p. 188
the ancient peoples, the Greeks and Romans, had not yet risen to the concept of absolute freedom, since they did not know that man as such, as this universal I, as rational self-consciousness, is entitled to freedom... freedom still had the determination of naturalness. That is why there was slavery in their free states.Philosophy of Mind, p. 188
since this consists in the identity of myself with the other, I am only genuinely free when the other is also free and is recognized by me as free.Philosophy of Mind, p. 186