If The Slave Fears Death, The Master Fears Life: Reinterpreting Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic in Romantic Contexts
At the core of Hegel’s philosophy of freedom lies one of the most famous concepts in his work: the master-slave dialectic. It begins with a confrontation between two conscious individuals, both of whom seek to assert their independence and autonomy in the struggle to attain self-consciousness. For Hegel, self-consciousness is not an innate property; it must be achieved through recognition by another self-conscious being.
The struggle for recognition, however, is not a peaceful or cooperative endeavor. Initially, it manifests as a life-and-death battle between the two subjects, each attempting to negate the other in a bid to assert their autonomy. In this battle, the subject that fears death more intensely will surrender first, becoming the slave to the other, who risked death and thus becomes the master. This moment of surrender marks the beginning of a relationship of domination and subordination, where the master claims dominance and the slave submits out of fear.
But this relationship, though it appears clear-cut at first, is inherently unstable and fraught with contradiction. The master, having won the struggle, appears to assert their independence by dominating the slave. Yet, this domination lacks the essential element for which the entire struggle began: genuine recognition. The master receives acknowledgment from the slave, but the slave is not an equal. Thus, the recognition that the master receives is hollow, incomplete, and unsatisfying.
One can interpret Hegel’s master-slave dialectic metaphorically in social contexts. The master is here the one who fears the death of a relationship or the death of a conversation less. This makes the master the subject of negativity, the one indulging themselves in absence. For example, in a conversation, there will be one person who does most of the ‘work’ in making the conversation flow by constantly coming up with new ideas and subjects to talk about, while the other person gives one-word replies. The former is the slave, because they are doing all the work while getting less of the benefits, while the latter is the master, because they fear the death of the conversation less. If both people were to act like the latter person (the master), they would simply stop talking and the conversation would die. In this way, the master fears “death” (the death of the conversation) less.
Or, take a cliché romantic scenario: after a date, each person waits for the other to text first. The one who ‘gives in’ first and gives the first text would be the slave here, since they fear the death of the relationship more. The master is the one waiting for the other to text first more, since they do not fear the temporary “death” of the relationship caused by silence, or by the absence of conversation.
We can notice in these examples how the master is the subject of negativity while the slave is the subject of positivity. The master indulges in absence and death, while the slave throws themselves in presence and life. It is here that Hegel’s analysis was incomplete. Hegel made it seem as if the master was braver than the slave by risking death. But it is here that we should add a caveat to Hegel’s analysis: it is true that the master does not fear dying, but the master fears living. The master is metaphorically suicidal, which makes them a coward, they are running away from the confrontation of the problems of life, or of the life of a particular relationship. The master fears the affirmation of life. They run away from life and retreat into the promise of death. This paradoxically makes the slave much braver than the master. The slave indeed fears death, but they do not fear life. That’s why Nietzsche and Deleuze were right in concluding that life’s meaning does not consist in negativity, but in the affirmation of life.
The slave in the dialectic is the one desiring more, while the master is the one being desired. If two people have a fight and start ignoring each other, the one who will first end the cycle of mutually ignoring each other by proposing to make up will demonstrate that they fear the death of the relationship more, and thus will demonstrate that they desire the other person more. The slave is the one giving attention and love unconditionally, without receiving any in return. This paradoxically makes the slave freer than the master.
Therefore, freedom is desire and desire is freedom. Desire is not ‘lack’, as Lacan would suggest. The desiring slave is not lacking in comparison to the desired master. Quite the contrary, desire is, as Spinoza suggests, “the very essence of man, insofar as it is conceived as determined to do something by a modification of itself”¹. Spinoza then goes on to add that “the striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing”². Desire is not lack for Spinoza, but the instinct of self-preservation through which each subject preserves in their own being and affirms their existence. Desire means making your presence known in the world. Desire is the affirmation of life, not of death. The slave, by constantly engaging in a relationship or a conversation, by constantly expressing their love and their desire for the other, are actively laboring, actively shaping the world around them, and thus affirming their own existence, asserting their influence on the world. The master is the one being desired, the one who waits for other people to work for them without moving a finger. They are affirming death, they are doing nothing all day, simply waiting in absence, it’s almost as if they are dead. The death of desire is the death of passion.
We too often wish to be the ones loved and desired without loving back in return. This is because showing your interest or desire in someone implies a state of radical vulnerability. But this desire to be the one desired, to be the master, quite paradoxically strips one of their freedom. The master is afraid of confessing their love, or of showing interest in some other way, because of the fear of rejection. The master is the person who confesses their love or who makes a marriage proposal, gets rejected, and then is ashamed of interacting with the loved person from then on, even breaking ties with that person because of the fear of ‘awkwardness’. The master is the one who fears being the one loving someone who does not love them in return (yet), as this puts them in a position of powerlessness and vulnerability in front of that other person, a state they dislike. This makes the master less free than the slave. The master will walk around on eggshells making sure that they show their interest in the smallest dose possible, carefully calibrating their actions to avoid exposing themselves too much. They live in constant fear of imbalance, where the other might see their vulnerability and use it against them. This guardedness, this hesitance to risk rejection, makes the master a prisoner of their own pride and fear. They cannot act freely because their actions are constrained by the need to maintain an illusion of invulnerability.
The slave, on the other hand, has no such illusions to maintain. By desiring openly and acting on that desire without fear of rejection or shame, the slave transcends the dynamic of power entirely. They affirm their freedom by embracing vulnerability, by recognizing that love and desire are acts of creation, not transactions. The slave is free because they are willing to risk their pride, to labor in love without guarantees, and to persist in their engagement with the world despite the possibility of not being reciprocated.
To have the courage to be vulnerable in front of someone is the most liberating act there is. Freedom is not escaping pain through death or suicide, but in confronting the pain and suffering of life, or of the specific ‘life’ of a relationship or social context. The master would rather metaphorically ‘kill’ the relationship than confront the pain of not being loved. The slave has no such fears. The master fears life and chooses death, whereas the slave fears death and chooses life — is it not clear, therefore, who out of the two is freer then? The master, who dwells in the static, unchanging nothingness of the void one encounters after death, or the slave, who dwells in the dynamic and ever-changing flux of life with its unpredictable twists and turns?
Ultimately, freedom resides not in the illusion of control or invulnerability but in the courage to desire fully and authentically. The desiring subject, in embracing the risk and labor of desire, achieves a greater freedom than the one who withholds their love out of fear. To desire is to affirm life, to take part in the dynamic unfolding of existence, and to resist the inertia of death that characterizes the passivity of the master. True freedom is found not in being desired, but in the fearless act of desiring.
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REFERENCES:
1: Baruch Spinoza, “Ethics”, Part 3, Proposition 57 (Scholium)
2: Baruch Spinoza, “Ethics”, Part 3, Proposition 7
