• A&S offer a nice definition of sublation: "In Hegel, "dialectic proceeds, thesis to antithesis to synthesis, by the process of sublation (auf heben) in which each thesis is cancelled, lifted up, and preserved, from pure subjectivity to the 'absolute standpoint' of spirit as substance" (552).

• Art per se should not be treated as mere ornament or use-value; "instead it must be considered a mode, like religion and philosophy, through which the idea is made available to consciousness. It is one of the modes by which absolute spirit comes to consciousness of itself. Art represents its matter in sensuous forms. The beautiful in art is the idea carried into concrete form" (552). [Its "sensuousness" is probably why, of the three modes, art is given only third place by Hegel; philosophy, of course, is first: art "is limited by its media and finally proves less satisfactory to man than religion or philosophy" (533). Hmmm. That's why we're all philosophy majors.]

• "There are fundamentally three kinds of art—symbolic, classical, and romantic. [Moreover, these three types follow an evolutionary progress towards greater "Spirit."] Hegel explains the first two with more clarity than he does the third"!—probably because an art about the "inward life of reason," about "the release of Spirit into art itself" (552), is a pretty esoteric doctrine?!

• "Hegel goes on to associate architecture with symbolic art [think the Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal] and sculpture with classical art [think of a Greek statue]. Romantic art is realized by painting, music, and poetry in ascending order of freedom. . . . Music is more ideal than painting, for in music objects are not represented and a temporal order alone exists. The medium of poetry—words—is most free. Its sensuousness is created by the mind, not by the materials of the art" (552). [Words aren't "materials"?! Frankly, I would think that instrumental music is the most "free," but of course Hegel is going to privilege language & ideas.]

• "For many recent critics and theorists, interest in Hegel has centered more on his Phenomenology than his aesthetic theory, as the expression of a totalizing system that in seeking a 'universal standpoint' becomes particularly problematic in the practical domain of social and intellectual life" (553). [Thus Marx will immediately attack Hegel's idealism as being detached from real material life & politics; Nietzsche will go after any & all "universal standpoints."]

• Like religion & philosophy, true art is the expression/development of Mind or Spirit: "Fine art is not art" unless "its highest function is . . . satisfied when it has established itself in a sphere which it shares with religion and philosophy, becoming thereby merely one mode and form through which the divine, the profoundest interests of mankind, and spiritual truths of widest range, are brought home to consciousness and expressed" (553B).

• Art is a special case: while "the content of art is the idea . . . the form of its display [is] the configuration of the sensuous or plastic image." Moreover, this concrete sensuality is also a positive, vis-à-vis the manifestation of Spirit: "Everything that possesses truth for spirit* . . . is essentially concrete, and, despite its universality, possesses both ideality and particularity essentially within it" (554A). [One of the ironies/difficulties of Hegel's dialectic towards Absolute Spirit is that it continually gets both more "spiritual"/ideational and more "concretely" particular.] . . . Hegel develops this later: "the idea, viewed as the beautiful in art, is not the idea in the strict sense . . . as a metaphysical logic apprehends it as the absolute [which is instead the purview of philosophy, of course!]. It is rather the idea as carried into concrete form in the direction of express realization" (555A).

• This leads Hegel immediately to a (rather odd) religious interpolation (replete with Christian Eurocentrism): If "God" is "simply One," it is merely a "lifeless abstraction of the irrational understanding. . . . Consequently neither the Jews nor the Turks[!] have been able to represent their God, who is not even an abstraction of the understanding in the above sense, under the positive mode in which Christians have represented Him. For in Christianity God is conceived in His truth, and as such essentially concrete, as personality, as the subjective focus of conscious life, or, more accurately defined, as spirit" (554A). [Wow. So there goes the Old Testament?!]

• The EVOLUTIONARY STAGES of ART: there is a "division" involved here because, "before the mind can attain to the true notion of its absolute essence, it is constrained to traverse a series of stages . . . and to this course of stages . . . corresponds a coalescent series . . . of the plastic types of art, under the configuration whereof mind as art spirit presents to itself the consciousness of itself." Yes, the "evolution" is "spiritual and universal," yet it involves a "series of gradations which give artistic embodiment to the specific but widely embracing consciousness of Nature, man, and God." Each stage is characterized by "particular types of art," "types of artistic configuration." And for each stage its "definite sensuous" artistic embodiment is inevitably involved with Spirit (though some stages, of course, are greater embodiments than others!) (554B).

• Hegel first breaks his schema into "three fundamental parts":

• Then Hegel gets to his famous (or infamous?) THREE STAGES:

• Thus the three stages/types "consist in [1] the aspiration after, [2] the attainment and [3] transcendency of the ideal, viewed as the true concrete notion of beauty" (558A).

• The GENRES: "Each general type discovers its determinate character in one determinate external material or medium . . . . But, from another point of view, these types of art break through the boundaries of their specific realization in some definite art-species, and achieve an existence in other arts no less, although their position in such is of subordinate importance. . . . albeit the particular arts belong specifically to one of these general art-types respectively . . . yet this does not prevent them . . . from representing the totality of these art-types" (558A-B).

• Coda: "what the particular arts realize in particular works of art, are . . . simply the universal types which constitute the self-unfolding idea of beauty. It is as the external realization of this idea that the wide pantheon of art is being raised; and the architect and builder thereof is the spirit of beauty as it gradually comes to self-cognition [so Hegel!], and to complete which the history of the world will require its evolution of centuries" (561B).

• "Masters" and "bondsmen" aside, the fundamental point of this chapter from PofM is that (self-)consciousness per se is always already dialogic and dialectic; this crucial "discovery" sets up the Self/Other binary that permeates later crit-theory: "Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or 'recognized'" (561B). Thus Hegel can say that ego consciousness can only find "its unity in its duplication" (via the Other, and vice-versa). "Thus its moments must on the one hand be strictly kept apart in detailed distinctiveness, and, on the other, in this distinction must, at the same time, also be taken as not distinguished, or must always be accepted and understood in their opposite sense[!]." (Another "fun" Hegelian sentence!) There is always, then, this doubling, this mirroring, this "double meaning" entailed in consciousness, highlighted by "the process of recognition" (562A)—which itself is a doubling, a mirroring!

• "Self-consciousness has before it another self-consciousness; it has come outside itself. . . . First it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as an other being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for it does not regard the other as essentially real, but sees its own self in the other." (The Self "seeing"—and so really not seeing—the Other, as a mere mirror of the Self or the Same will be a key point in postcolonial and critical race theories.) "It must cancel this its other. . . . First, it must set itself to sublate the other independent being, in order thereby to become certain of itself as true being" (562A). (And so Edward Said will speak of the European discourse of the "Orient" as ultimately a "self-affirming" enterprise [57].)

• "[A]t the same time" this involves "a return . . . into its self. . . . through sublation, it gets back itself[!], because it becomes one with itself again through the cancelling of its otherness . . . it likewise gives otherness back again to the other self-consciousness . . . and thus lets the other again go free[!]" (562A; it's no doubt symptomatic that a rather master-slave power dynamic permeates Hegel's psychology, even before the "lordship & bondage" section of this chapter).

• Now this whole process is not "the action of one alone"; it has "the double significance of being at once its own action and the action of that other as well. For the other is likewise independent . . . ." The Other is not "only in the passive form characteristic primarily of the object of desire, but as object[?!] existing independently for itself"; thus there is this "double process of both self-consciousnesses" (562A).

• And there is a veritable "play of forces . . . found in consciousness," a "self-consciousness which breaks itself up into the extremes," as "Consciousness finds that it immediately is and is not another consciousness, as also that this other is for itself only when it cancels itself as existing for itself, and has self-existence only in the self-existence of the other. Each is the mediating term to the other . . . each is . . . an immediate self-existing reality, which, at the same time, exists thus for itself only through this mediation. They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another (562B). (And so the mirroring: S->O == O<-S.)

• But there is (always?) a "disparity" of power in the encounter: "This pure conception of recognition, of duplication of self-consciousness" entails an "aspect of the disparity of the two," in "which one is merely recognized, while the other only recognizes." From the point of view of sheer "Ego" or the "individual," "Self-consciousness is primarily simple existence for self, self-identity by exclusion of every other from itself," a mere dealing with "unessential object[s]"; "But the other is also a self-consciousness; an individual makes its appearance in antithesis to an individual" (562B). (Thus I originally referred to consciousness as always dialectic.) Progress towards real self-knowledge requires this dialectic. "Each is indeed certain of its own self, but not of the other, and hence its own certainty of itself is still without truth." All the ego knows, so far, via "the notion of recognition" is "that as the other is for it, so it is for the other" (563A).

• So—into the equation Hegel interjects STRUGGLE!, a veritable "war" between two psyches, between Self and Other. Now "each aims at the destruction and death of the other. . . . The relation of both self-consciousnesses is . . . so constituted that they prove themselves and each other through a life-and-death struggle. They must enter into this struggle, for they must bring their certainty of themselves, the certainty of being for themselves . . . ." This struggle is thus something of a guarantee "that self-consciousness is merely pure self-existence, being-for-self." In contrast, the "individual, who has not staked his life, may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness"! So there is this life-wager, as it were; "each must aim at the death of the other," that other must be "cancelled." The Ego "must view its otherness as pure existence for itself or as absolute negation" (563A).

• That this "war" is not psychotherapeutic (at least for now!?) becomes clear: "This trial by death, however, cancels both the truth which was to result from it, and therewith the certainty of self altogether." 'Cuz, like, death isn't the answer: "death is the natural 'negation' of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the requisite significance of actual recognition[!]." So let's talk about those who struggled—and lived!: "those who underwent this struggle . . . . cancel their consciousness," and "there vanishes from the play of change the essential moment, viz. that of breaking up into extremes with opposite characteristics . . . And the two do not mutually give and receive one another back from each other through consciousness . . . . Their act is abstract negation, not the negation characteristic of consciousness, which cancels in such a way that it preserves and maintains what is sublated, and thereby survives its being sublated" (563B; this is the possibility of a dialectic resulting in reciprocity that I alluded to earlier?).

• Master & Bondsman: The result of the "dissolution of that simple unity" of self includes a dyad—a dominating consciousness and the slave/other: "a consciousness which is not purely for itself, but for another. . . . The one is independent, and its essential nature is to be for itself; the other is dependent, and its essence is life or existence for another. The former is the Master, or Lord, the latter the Bondsman" (563B).

• "The master is the consciousness that exists for itself"; and yet: it is also "a consciousness existing on its own account which is mediated with itself through an other consciousness, i.e. through an other whose very nature implies that it is bound up with an independent being" . . . . Usually, this "independent self" has a mere object to master—"a thing as such, the object of desire"—but the fact that this "object" is here a self-conscious Other complicates things (563B). For now "the master, is (a) qua notion of self-consciousness, an immediate relation of self-existence, but (b) is now moreover at the same time mediation, or a being-for-self which is for itself only through an other . . . . It is the master's seeming independence that "keeps the bondsman in thrall; it is his chain, from which he could not in the struggle get away, and for that reason lie (typo: he) proved himself to be dependent, to have his independence in the shape of thinghood." The master "is the power dominating existence, while this existence again is the power controlling the other [the bondsman], the master holds, par consequence, this other in subordination" (564A).

• Now the interaction/dialectic includes another "thing." (At this point I can only read the "allegory" as the "thing" representing [via the lens of Marxism] the oppressed workers' production or [through postcolonial/critical race theory] the production of the indigenous, of non-white slaves, etc. And the following sections no doubt influenced Marx:) "the master relates himself to the thing immediately through the bondsman. The bondsman . . . also takes up a negative attitude to things and cancels them" (that is, via the usual self-object othering); "but the thing is . . . independent for him and, in consequence, he cannot, with all his negating, get so far as to annihilate it outright and be done with it . . . he merely works on it." It is "the master" who "gets the enjoyment" (and in Marxist terms, the profit!?). . . . "The master, however, who has interposed the bondsman between it and himself, thereby relates himself merely to the dependence of the thing, and enjoys it without qualification and without reserve—while "the bondsman . . . labours upon it" (564A).

• In this process, "the master gets his recognition through an other consciousness," as "the latter affirms itself as unessential, both by working on the thing, and . . . by the fact of being dependent on a determinate existence; in neither case can this other get the mastery over existence, and succeed in absolutely negating it. We have thus here this moment of recognition, viz. that the other consciousness cancels itself as self-existent, and, ipso facto, itself does what the first does to it." (An utter psychological slavery, at least.) "[T]his action [that is, work] on the part of the second is the action proper of the first; for what is done by the bondsman is properly an action on the part of the master. The latter exists only for himself, that is his essential nature" (564A)—"while the bondsman is not so, he is an unessential activity. But for recognition proper there is needed the moment that what the master does to the other he should also do to himself, and what the bondsman does to himself, he should do to the other also" (564B; another call for reciprocity?).

• Again, the Self's Othering is ultimately a "self-affirming business" (Said 57): "the unessential consciousness is, for the master, the object which embodies the truth of his certainty of himself. But it is evident that this object does not correspond to its notion; for, just where the master has effectively achieved lordship, he really finds that something has come about quite different from an independent consciousness. It is not an independent, but rather a dependent consciousness that he has achieved. He is thus not assured of self-existence as his truth; he finds that his truth is rather the unessential consciousness, and the fortuitous unessential action of that consciousness" (564B). (The "tables turned": this is the brilliant & yet infuriating & yet wonderful—at least I've come to relish it—sort of reversal that permeates much of later crit-theory.)

• And so, ironically: "The truth of the independent consciousness is accordingly the consciousness of the bondsman"; "just as lordship showed its essential nature to be the reverse of what it wants to be, so, too, bondage will, when completed, pass into the opposite [a thoroughly Hegelian notion!] of what it immediately is: being a consciousness repressed within itself, it will enter into itself, and change round into real and true independence" (564B). (Ingenious again. But the contemporary poco/race theorist wonders: isn't this really an underhanded defense of oppression?!—"It's oKAY! WE're the truly conscious & independent ones!")

• So we've only been examining "what bondage is only in relation to lordship. But it is a self-consciousness . . . in and for itself." At first, "the master is taken to be the essential reality for the state of bondage [the bondsman]; hence, for it, the truth is the independent consciousness existing for itself [that is, the other privileging the self as superior, as "pure" independent consciousness]. . . . Still, it does in fact contain within itself this truth of pure negativity . . . . For this consciousness . . . was afraid for its entire being; it felt the fear of death, the sovereign master[!]." And so it has been "melted to its inmost soul, has trembled throughout its every fibre, and all that was fixed and steadfast has quaked within it. [I bet, for Hegel, this struggle & negation is going to turn out to be a good thing!] This complete perturbation of its entire substance, this absolute dissolution of all its stability into fluent continuity, is, however, the simple, ultimate nature of self-consciousness, absolute negativity"; the other "finds" this (apparently positive) "pure self-existence," moreover, "in the master" (wow). "By serving he cancels in every particular aspect his dependence on and attachment to natural existence, and by his work removes this existence away" (564B). (Again, this at last seems to be a oddly positive reading of the "slave" mentality.) Even better yet: "By serving he cancels . . . his dependence on and attachment to natural existence[?!], and by his work removes this existence away" (565A; hmmm).

• "The feeling of absolute power, however, realized . . . in the particular form of service, is only dissolution implicitly" (this is supposed to be a good thing); and although "the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom[?!]," it is really only "[t]hrough work and labour, however, [that] this consciousness of the bondsman comes to itself." Indeed, it seems to be through working with the "thing" that consciousness evolves: "the non-essential relation to the thing seemed to fall to the lot of the servant"; "Labour . . . is desire restrained and checked, evanescence delayed and postponed" (again, a good thing); the bondsman's "labour shapes and fashions the thing," until at last: "The consciousness that toils and serves accordingly attains by this means the direct apprehension of that independent being as its self" (565A; again: wow).

• So there is "the positive significance that the bondsman becomes thereby aware of himself as factually and objectively self-existent"; but there is "also a negative import": "the element of fear. For in shaping the thing it only becomes aware of its own proper negativity, existence on its own account, as an object, through the fact that it cancels the actual form confronting it. But this objective negative element is precisely alien, external reality, before which it trembled[!]. Now, however, it destroys this extraneous alien negative, affirms and sets itself up as a negative in the element of permanence, and thereby becomes for itself a self-existent being." (As a materialist, I have so little sympathy what is described here that I want to run away.) "In the master, the bondsman feels self-existence to be something external, an objective fact; in fear self-existence is present within himself; in fashioning the thing, self-existence comes to be felt explicitly as his own proper being, and he attains the consciousness that he himself exists in its own right"—"for just that form is his pure self existence, which therein becomes truly realized. Thus precisely in labour where there seemed to be merely some outsider's mind and ideas involved, the bondsman becomes aware, through this re-discovery of himself by himself, of having and being a 'mind of his own'" (565B). (One wants to read this coming to consciousness in a positive light—however pathetic—but the Marxist in me can only see this as a falling into "false consciousness," as the working class fitting into/feeling a part of the system, via the ideology of the masters. . . . It also has strong suggestions, BTW, of Nietzsche's "herd mentality.")

• But apparently for Hegel, "it's good, it's good, it's good" (to quote from Bruce Almighty), since "[w]ithout the discipline of service and obedience, fear remains formal and does not spread over the whole known reality of existence. Without the formative activity shaping the thing, fear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become objective for itself." (Wow. Unlike the "good" slaves?!) "[W]ithout the initial state of absolute fear . . . it has a merely vain and futile 'mind of its own,'" and such bondsmens' consciousness "is simply stubbornness . . . a type of freedom which does not get beyond the attitude of bondage"; "it is rather a piece of cleverness which has mastery within a certain range, but not over the universal power nor over the entire objective reality" (565B). (This time reading the essay through, I hear this finale sounding fairly sinister, especially the phrase "the discipline of service and obedience" [with pre-echoes of Foucault's Discipline and Punish]).

Adams, Hazard, and Leroy Searle. "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel." Critical Theory Since Plato. Edited by Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, 3rd ed., Thomson Wadsworth, 2005, pp. 552-553.

Hegel, G. W. F. "[F]rom The Phenomenology of Mind." 1807. Critical Theory Since Plato. Edited by Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, 3rd ed., Thomson Wadsworth, 2005, pp. 561-565.

---. "The Philosophy of Fine Art: from Introduction." 1835. Critical Theory Since Plato. Edited by Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, 3rd ed., Thomson Wadsworth, 2005, pp. 553-561.

Said, Edward. "[F]rom Orientalism." A Critical and Cultural Studies Reader. Edited by Anthony Easthope and Kate McGowan, U of Toronto P, 2004, pp. 55-61.

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