Stoicism: On the Nature of Thinking, On the Origins and Nature of Free Will and Determinism, and On Manly Restraint

Stoicism

Epictetus, a stoic slave.

Introduction

Self-consciousness is still on its journey towards absolute knowing. We have traced out its movement from the very beginning, restraining ourselves in the kinds of inferences we can make regarding the nature of consciousness, as well as its abilities, as far as we are able. The journey of consciousness has been marked by a strict adherence to a single, axiomatic, assumption. It has been guided by a single principle. We have taken care to restrict ourselves from the urge to introduce extraneous elements to the journey of consciousness to absolute knowing which are not allowable by the first assumption, or any other inference that is allowed by that first and most fundamental principle: knowing is distinct from the the object of knowledge. Certain words are introduced only because those words are commonly used by German and English speakers to refer to such phenomena, as they have arisen, from the journey of consciousness. 

If our statements are not a direct consequence of the first principle, and the development of that first principle, then it is because it is from the undeniable nature of reality. We began with only three such statements: (i) reality is real, (ii) reality is spatial, and space is an extended expanse, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, composed of unique points, (iii) reality is temporal, and time is an extended expanse, one-dimensional, composed of unique points. Finally, we assume that true knowledge begins with the senses. Only by sensing the real world, and itself, does consciousness come to know the world and itself. In addition to these three assumptions, along with the first axiom, we have in total five axioms. Thus, any other point that has been mentioned in all these articles are justifiable by the development which result from a kind of development unfolding from the interaction of the five principle, and fundamental, axioms. We have come across points that are considered to be factual judgments, as well as points that are considered to be value judgments, i.e. moral lessons.

Some of these factual claims are scientific in nature, and refer to the condition of objects and living things. Other factual claims are historical in nature, and are connected to the human condition as it really has been experienced, and documented, in our history. The retort that history is written by the winners is irrelevant. Even our genetic code is written by winners. Winners have the right to creating our reality, physical and mental. It just so happens that the factual claims made in these articles are supported by scientific research and confirmed by the writings of historians. Since we cannot provide a rational account for that connection between what has been written here, and real world history, from our axioms or what has been developed thencefrom, we shall consider such associations to be merely a fortunate coincidence. 

In regards to value judgements, as well as the discussion of the appearance of virtue and vice in history, these are strictly extracted from the development of the five axioms. The English words we use to summarize them are again from necessity. These words are what people commonly use to refer to such traits of character, at least historically, and thus we must use them as well. There is no other way for us to express these ideas in the English language, in a written manner, preserving them from the decay of time, on a blog of all places. Words that are not written are merely memories, and like all memories are washed away by the stream of consciousness, and the flow of time.

Now, the value judgments are also a necessary consequence of the development of consciousness and self-consciousness at this point in the development. It just so happens that these judgments have been espoused and confirmed in one way or another by all lawmakers that have ever appeared in our global history as a species by the greatest philosophers and holy men, such as Mohammed, Moses, Jesus, Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha, Lao-Tzu, etc. This is, since we cannot provide still a rational account for that connection between what has been written here, and the real words attributed to those sages from our axioms or what has been developed thencefrom, it is again a coincidence. Even though we are excited about such a coincidence, we still exercise strict self-restraint, and follow the development as it unfolds only in its own terms.

Self-restraint is the animating principle of the Stoic. Stoicism is the focus of this article. While Hegel only commits five paragraphs to the discussion of the Stoic, we will commit more. Our own tracing of the development of consciousness and self-consciousness has yielded more fruit than Hegel's exposition, we say things that Hegel did not say, yet could have said. If Hegel were alive today, he would be in total agreement with our extra content, since it is in strict accordance to the guiding principle that allowed him to write the entirety of the phenomenology as he did. We were only able to add more content due to our living in a time further along the historical development of self-consciousness, on its way to absolute knowing, than Hegel. Thus, while this may be a blog that is dedicated only to the interpretation of Hegel's phenomenology, it also is independent of Hegel. We, as readers, along with the bondsman, have developed a mind of our own. In future articles, when it is appropriate, we shall begin an exhaustive analysis on the most recent events in human history, and we shall uncover the truth of the human condition in the 21st century. Indeed, we shall uncover the truth of the human condition as it is on the day that the article is actually written, up to and including why this blog was written now, by me. Yet, for now, we trace the path of self-consciousness, now taking the shape of the Stoic, and refer to Hegel's account of the Stoic as a guidestone to our own account.

You are witnessing, therefore, the development of a new systematic philosophy for the 21st century. I shall not, however, attach a name to it. This is not Riveran philosophy, since my name is Carlos Rivera; nor is it Leonean philosophy, since my name was supposed to be Carlos de Leon, in honor of my father's line, whose ancestors originated from Leon, Spain. The writer of this is hispanic, with a lineage that goes back to the Central America, extends to Spain, which was occupied by the Visigothic Spaniards and the Arab Moors, as well as Africans. The Visigothic Spaniards settled there just before the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D. The Visigoths were themselves the first set of Goths that crossed the Danube river in Eastern Europe, and settled on Roman territory. The Visigoths, followed by the Ostrogoths, the latter of whom ended up settling in Italy, were a part of the Gothic tribe, who themselves were migrants from Scandinavia. In the course of their centuries-long journey from Scandinavia to Spain, the Goths interacted with, and bred, with the Huns, who are of Asian descent.

Thus, the genetic line of the Hispanics extends from all the races of the Earth. It is a universal lineage to which I belong, from which I spring. Therefore, I cannot taint this philosophy with my particularity, and this is the only section where I shall allow that stain to surface. I am not the author of this philosophy. It was bound to be espoused. A man named Carlos Rivera de Leon just so happened make a blog and write it. Hegel and I follow the same guiding principle, logic, or better yet, the divine logos. I use the word logos, instead of "logic", because I wish to distance myself from what modern day academics have reduced that term to; further I wish to distance myself from the secularization that term, logic, has endured at the hands of those kinds of  individuals who unthinkingly attach themselves to the cult of scientism, and their followers, who brazenly lie to themselves and to each other's faces about their being paragons of independence. Followers are submissive to their leaders; they are not independent, as we have seen with the bondsman. Personally, I am not attached to Hegel because of any dogmatic devotion or obsession, but because my attachment to Hegel is necessitated by the activity of logos. My only wish is for my reader to be an independent individual who can think for himself. 

That being said, we shall exercise self-restraint, and concern ourselves only with the development of the Stoic as it has appeared before us. Before we go on in discussing the development proper, and comparing the mental and social condition of the Stoic to his innate standard of success and the point towards which he is moving, Spirit, let us examine the behaviour of the perennial Stoic, Epictetus. His picture is at the top of this article, and you can see from the picture that he has a at his side a crutch. He needed that crutch because he was a cripple. The manner in which he became a cripple is a perfect expression of what Stoicism represents.

Epictetus was a bondsman, more specifically, a slave. His lord treated him cruelly. There was an occasion in which the lord was holding Epictetus' leg in an awkward position, with Epictetus being pinned to the ground. With characteristic Stoic indifference, Epictetus spoke to his lord with a calm, tranquil, and indifferent tone, "If you continue to hold my leg in such a manner, you will break it." The lord continued to hold his leg in such a manner, and indeed, he broke it. Without flinching, without expressing any pain, his relationship with himself remaining undisturbed, Epictetus remarked with that same calm and indifferent tone, "I told you so." Such is the extent to which the Stoic restrained himself and his desires, as well as his urge to express his emotions. 

In addition to this, Epictetus was a well known lecturer. He lived his life as a thinker. Epictetus had very good relations with the Emperor Hadrian, the third of the Five Good Emperors. It is said that the Emperor was friendly with Epictetus, and it is also said that the Emperor attended his lectures. Hadrian himself went on to adopt Antoninus Pius as his heir. He made a good choice. Edward Gibbon, the pre-eminent Roman historian and author of the iconic book: The History of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, made the remark that Antoninus Pius was such a good emperor (lord of lords) that representatives from surrounding kingdoms begged him to rule them and the kingdoms they represented. Those representatives, who were bondsmen, faithfully expressed the will of their lords. 

In his turn, when he ascended to the throne, on the recommendation of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius went on to adopt the "other" famous Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, as heir to the throne of the Roman Empire. Marcus Aurelius, during the course of his world went on to complete a composition a series of letters to himself, since the day of his coronation, which were published posthumously after his death. These letters comprised a work known as the Meditations. He wrote these letters for himself in private - nobody knew of their existence. As we have shown, there is a direct historical link between Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. The content of the Meditations gives us access into the private activities of the mind of the Stoic Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. The Meditations are considered to be a perennial work on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius was just as much a philosopher as he was the most powerful man in the Roman Empire. 

If you care to notice the content of the picture directly above this statement, you will notice that Marcus Aurelius writes to himself as if he has learned from the experience of the bondsman, which we discussed in detail in the previous article. He talks about surrender, strength, discontent i.e. dissatisfaction, and weakness. These are all the traits of a bondsman who surrenders in the battle for life and death. While we did admit that the lord developed a sense of practical reason, phronesis, in response to the stubbornness of a bondsman who has developed a mind of his own, one gets the sense that the Emperor not only developed a sense of phronesis, but also of pure wisdom, sophia. One can only possess pure wisdom, as we have already mentioned, by the bondsman. His entire being quakes and trembles in fear of violent death, nothing at all within him remains stable and fixed amidst that trembling. A typical lord, while he does engage in continuous warfare, cannot allow his fear to overcome him and engulf his entire being. If he were to do so, he would have to surrender in the struggle for life and death. 

Marcus Aurelius is an emperor, a lord of lords. He, in his lifetime, could never have allowed himself to be engulfed by the fear of violent death. Moreover, he's a stoic. He does not express his emotions, including fear. A lord of lords could have never surrendered in the struggle for life and death, otherwise he wouldn't be a lord of lords. He would have been a bondsman. Yet he writes to himself in private, where nobody can see him; writing as if he at one point in his development really did experience that absolute fear of violent death, and really did surrender the struggle for life and death. In his lifetime, furthermore, Marcus Aurelius never experienced bondage as a living reality for himself and others. He was never a slave, unless every Roman historian at the time was censored by the Roman state, and by the penalty of death did not dare make a record of the lost period of time in the life of Marcus Aurelius where he experienced bondage, and sullied his hands by work and labor, it follows that this paradox can only be resolved if we state that the self-consciousness that was Marcus Aurelius experienced the fear of violent death, and surrendered in a struggle for life and death, and went on to experience bondage, in another existence, i.e. in another lifetime. We will make a hypothesis, one which may or may not be demonstrable, by claiming that the link between Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius went beyond being merely a historical link. 

Conflation is a kind of error that the mind is prone to fall into.

With such a consideration aside, let us now continue on with the journey of consciousness on its path towards absolute knowing, this time taking the shape of the Stoic.

The Pure Thought of the Stoic; His Free Will

The bondsman has developed a mind of his own through his work and labor. He has learned that the product he fashions through his work and labor is an actual living objective existence. The finished product is independent and self-subsisting - a vanishing that nevertheless remains. Yet, this independent product is dependent on the independence of the bondsman for its own independence. The bondsman's independence stems from his capacity to restrain and check his desire to consume the object. The bondsman's capacity to restrain and check himself is an expression of the bondsman's independence of his desire, and therefore, of the living objective world of appearances. In having come upon this realization, and further realizing that the object does not punish him for making this realization, the bondsman re-gains an arousing suspicion of his self-subsistent independence, his being-for-self, his relating of self to self in tranquil equilibrium. Indeed, this suspicion is a confirmed fact. The bondsman is independent through his self-restraint. The finished product, which exists in the living objective world of appearance, is dependent on the bondsman's independence for its own independence. Reciprocally, the bondsman is dependent on the object for his own independence. In relating to the object, the bondsman is being-for-self and being-for-another. He is truly independent only through the finished product. The self-consciousness of the bondsman, in making himself an object for himself while remaining subject, is the Absolute standard of truth for himself.

At the same time, the lord still holds the power of life and death over the bondsman. Having learned from the experience of revolt, either through quashing an unsuccessful revolt or becoming lord through a successful revolt, the lord punishes, and possibly kills, the bondsman for showing signs of independence. This has three consequences for the bondsman. First, he does not engage in acts, or exhibits behaviour that would indicate to the lord that the bondsman has a mind of his own. Second, the bondsman does not react to his feelings; he does not exhibit emotion. If he exhibits to the lord the type of emotion that indicates that he has a mind of his own, he again will be punished. Since he cannot stop the activity of sensing by absolutely numbing himself, nor can he stop the activity of his self-consciousness and the process of feeling and continue to live in a living body, as discussed in a previous article, his only recourse is to restrain his emotions. Finally, he engages in thought, the only refuge where he can relate himself to himself in tranquil equilibrium, and therefore relieve the pain of being in bondage. The pain originates from a tension his self-consciousness is all too aware of: the bondsman is both dependent, and independent; yet, the independence of the bondsman is not only an an arousing suspicion, but a confirmed fact. It is not, however, a living reality. The lord does not recognize the independence of the bondsman through his finished product. Indeed, the lord consumes the finished product, and by extension the bondsman's independence. The lord has the power of life and death over the bondsman. The bondsman cannot express his independence in the real objective world of experiences for fear of violent death; and he is not in state of independence, as he thinks himself to be. He is still in bondage. This kind of contradiction causes tension for the self-consciousness of the bondsman, which he feels as pain. Such is the nature of the pain of the bondsman. All self-consciousnesses are naturally inclined to seek relief from pain. Thus, the bondsman seeks refuge, and relief, in his own thoughts. The bondsman becomes committed to the activity of thought.

The social circumstances of the bondsman gives him incentive to assume the shape of a stoic self-consciousness. The stoic self-conscious is defined precisely by the three consequences discussed in the paragraph above. He is a repressed, subordinate kind of self-consciousness who is independent only in secret, where no one in the objective living world of appearances can see his independence. He still works and labors on his product, but the product ends up being consumed by the lord, or damaged by the activity of the lord, or simply vanishes from normal wear, tear, and disrepair. The lord, in satisfying his desire, or the objective living world of appearances itself, cancels the objective living reality of the finished product - the only objective living demonstration of the bondsman's independence.

Wise words from a stoic. No one, but I, can answer my prayer for strength.

In addition to labouring and working on physical matter so as to ensure the satisfaction of the desires of the lord, as well as ensuring to the administration of his own basic desires, the stoic labours and works on his thoughts. The stoic is a thinking self-consciousness. The material which the stoic works and labors on is thought, and the finished product of his labor is thought. Instead of physical tools, he uses thought to convert thought into thought. This new thought, as a finished product, is more refined than the component thoughts that it is composed of. We see the nature of this kind of refinement. When he uses thought, he uses thought as a tool; this kind of thought is a relation. There are physical tools, which the stoic uses to work and labor on physical material, that allows him to combine physical components of a physical product, as well as to separate those components. Examples of each, respectively, are the hammer and sickle (heh). Thus, there are relations that correspond to the hammer and sickle. The relation that corresponds to the hammer, and combines thoughts, is the conjunction. The relation that corresponds to the sickle, and divides thoughts, is the disjunction. The stoic also makes use of negation as a thought tool. The stoic also uses thought as he does the material for building the objective product, i.e. as a stable, inert essence that refers and is supposed to correspond to aspects of the objective living world; this kind of thought can be called essential, since it is an essential moment for self-consciousness at the moment it makes itself aware of it as object. Self-consciousness stands opposed to and independent from the thought it confronts.

The stoic, therefore, combines, divides, negates, or makes use of any combination of these on, essential thoughts to produce a finished product, another essential thought as a finished product. Like the independent product, thought too is independent from the stoic that creates it. The finished product is more refined than its material. Further, the refined thought is dependent on its independence on the independence of the stoic. The stoic must, like the bondsman, check and restrain his desire if he is to produce a truly refined thought. If he fails to do this, the product is faulty. Refined thoughts can, in their turn, be used as material to produce yet more refined thoughts. This process can continue ad infinitum. Thus, the activity of thought, so long as it remains thought, is an unimpeded movement of consciousness. In being dependent on the independence of the stoic, the refined thought is evidence that the stoic provides for himself of his own independence. It does not decay, so long as he teaches others these thoughts, and it cannot be taken away from him by the lord.

The thought is both a relation and an essence. In mathematical terms, a thought is both a relation and a set (a collection of objects). It can be proven that thoughts are not only simple conjunctions, disjunctions, and negations, but also that thoughts are equivalence relations. Two thoughts, therefore, are not only two sets, and not only are they two relations, but also a setoid. For mathematicians, it can be proved by reductio ad absurdum that there exists no function that maps a setoid onto a two-dimensional plane. In other words, you cannot draw a setoid, nor represent it to yourself as a picture-thought. The thought of the stoic is a pure notion; a point that has no extension in space or time. Thus, a thought does not make contact with the objective living world of experiences. The thought cannot be said to have no existence, however, since it exists for consciousness as a comprehended, conceptual existence. The stoic works on it and produces better thoughts. Yet in doing this, he is literally not doing anything for those in the world to see.

Self-consciousness is a consciousness that relates to itself. Thus, it is a subject that relates to itself as subject. As we have mentioned on countless occasions, when self-consciousness thinks of itself, it repels itself from itself, and makes itself into an object for itself. Self-consciousness stands opposed to itself as object, yet remains self-same as subject. When self-consciousness makes itself into an object for itself, it makes itself into a thought. A thought, therefore, is self-consciousness presenting itself as object to itself as subject. Self-consciousness as object is wearing a disguise; it is disguised as a thought. Specifically, it is an essential thought for itself, a set. Notice also that self-consciousness repels itself from itself in thinking about itself. Self-consciousness divides itself from itself; it performs the activity of disjunction on itself. And in remaining aware that it remains subject in the same moment that it is an object to itself, self-consciousness unites itself with itself; it performs the activity of conjunction on itself. Finally, in making itself object to itself as subject, it negates itself as subject and becomes object; thus performing the activity of negation on itself. In being aware that it is still subject when it makes itself object for itself, self-consciousness negates itself as object and returns to being subject. These two negations just discussed operate on a single self-consciousness simultaneously, initiated by that same self-consciousness. Negation is a unary relation. Conjunction and disjunction are binary relations.

Don't worry Rangers. The math is over..maybe.

Thought as relation has been revealed to be the activity that self-consciousness performs on itself. Thought as material, or better yet, substance, is revealed to be self-consciousness in disguise. There is no difference between thought and self-consciousness; they are identical. Yet, thought is distinct from self-consciousness, where each stand opposed to one another, independent from each other. Since the thought of a stoic is a setoid, and hence cannot be represented in a form of picture-thought, self-consciousness too cannot be represented as a picture thought. Further, self-consciousness is an expression of infinity, the essence of life. Thought too is an expression of infinity, the essence of life, although in disguise. Again, the activity of thought is the unimpeded movement of self-consciousness. Henceforth, we shall regard thought and self-consciousness as being equivalent.

Self-consciousness, furthermore, is never uncertain as to whom a thought belongs to. My thought is eo ipso mine. When having a thought, self-consciousness immediately regards the thought as something that belongs to it. With a picture-thought, however, there must exist a slight delay, and hence a loss of certainty. Self-consciousness is an activity that cannot be pictured, so the material that generated the picture-thought cannot belong to self-consciousness. Self-consciousness cannot provide the material for the picture on its own, since self-consciousness is a pictureless entity. The picture-thought thus comes from somewhere else, i.e. the living objective world of appearances, or one's interaction with other living things, and other self-consciousnesses. Self-consciousness must take notice that its picture-thought is something that belongs to it; although it can never be certain that the thought belongs to it. Self-consciousness does not need to take this extra precaution for a pure conceptual thought.

In having revealed the true nature of a thought, we now see that in thinking, the self-consciousness places itself in a state of communion with itself, relating itself to itself in a tranquil state of equilibrium. The thought, even though it stands opposed to consciousness as an object distinct from it, the object was produced by self-consciousness repelling itself from itself, while remaining subject, and taking that repelled self to be an inert thought. This is true of thinking self-conscious in general, and a fortiori is true of the self-consciousness which takes the shape of a stoic. He remains in touch with himself, relieving himself of the tension of being in bondage. To think is a pleasurable experience. To produce refined thoughts relieves even more tension, since the more refined thought is a more refined self-consciousness. The finished thought product of the stoic, therefore, is the self-consciousness of the stoic himself. Self-consciousness, in itself and by itself, can be improved; the stoic is engaging in an activity of self-improvement, i.e. self-cultivation. He educates himself, and his education arises sui generis. It is the stoic that is the first to get a sense for himself of what we have just discussed.

The stoic is a thinking self-consciousness. Thought constitutes the realm in which the stoic dwells - a supersensible beyond that he constructs for himself. Since thought can refer to anything in the objective living world appearances, as we saw with the understanding, and the stoic produces many thoughts, eventually his mind's eye is covered with a web of thought-products; the stoic approaches life through a thought filter. It is as if he is wearing goggles that converts every kind of thing or situation into a thought. Since the stoic considers his own subordinate self-consciousness to be his own Absolute standard of truth, and since thoughts are equivalent to self-consciousness, the stoic considers his thought as an activity of relating, and thought as the substance which is related to be his own Absolute standard of truth. In his mind, the stoic has already deposed the lord. The stoic is no longer a recognizing self-consciousness like the bondsman was. Yet, in fact, the lord remains lord; fearing punishment, the stoic does not make it known to the lord of his deposition. Yet this deposition can only remain a dream for the stoic. For the lord, in fact, still has power over the life and death of the stoic self-consciousness. The stoic self-consciousness drags the shell of a bondsman to and fro, yet is the mind of an independent man; remaining content only with the things he has control over - his products. He refrains from revolting due to fear of punishment, and of violent death. The stoic must remain alive, for his self-consciousness is dependent on his living body in order to be an independent self-consciousness at all.

More wise words from another stoic.

It must be remarked that in the history of the human species, stoics were responsible for the development of propositional logic, or sentential logic; this development was an advancement and improvement of Aristotelian syllogistic logic. Aristotle's logic was the first systematic account of the system of logic, so stoics developed their thoughts to a systematic level. How this development could have been possible is discussed above in detail. No stoic lets a thought pass through his self-conscious awareness unexamined, especially if it is a picture thought. Epictetus himself taught logic.

We have shown that thought is revealed to be the immediate activity of self-consciousness in general, and a fortiori, the stoic self-consciousness. The stoic finds his independence, in tranquil communion with himself, only in thought. Thought, being identical to consciousness, is an expression of infinity, the essence of life. It is difference that is no difference; thought is a self-same that is repelled from the self-same infinity. In complete and perfect harmony, both thought and infinity, as the self-same, repels itself from itself; and simultaneously, that which is repelled is self-attractive. Thought has inherited a perfect copy of the movement, and repose, of infinity. The stoic no longer needs to produce physical finished products for its own sake; now he produces the product only to administer to the desires of the lord, so that the stoic may not have to face punishment up to and including violent death.

The self-consciousness of the stoic, which also harmoniously exhibits this character of infinity and thought, being identical to them, is independent only in the confines of the stoic's mind. The self-consciousness of the stoic is independent only in thought; thought is the infinite movement of self-consciousness, and self-consciousness has the independence to think any thought. The self-consciousness of the stoic has the independence to think his own self-consciousness, since self-consciousness is a thought. In other words, thinking about self-consciousness is an independent act. Again, self-consciousness has the independence to think, i.e. to set into motion or to cease from motion, any thought. Thus, the thought of thought is an independent act. The stoic, just like any thinking self-consciousness, can think thoughts about thoughts.

Self-consciousness can further think about itself thinking thoughts about thoughts. This can go on for infinity, with an infinitely variety of permutations. Nothing prevents self-consciousness from thinking what it wants; not only does the self-consciousness of the stoic find independence in his thoughts, he finds absolute freedom. Self-consciousness can think thoughts about self-consciousness. Also, self-consciousness is aware of those thoughts as its own. Combining the previous two statements, the stoic produces one its finest thought products: the thought of self-consciousness and the self-consciousness of thought is the will. Self-consciousness is a will; self-consciousness, being an activity as well is an inert being, both is a will that wills. Since self-consciousness is absolutely free in thought, and self-consciousness is a will that wills, the stoic realizes that he has a free will to set into motion, or to cease the motion, of any thought.

For the first time, self-consciousness recognizes free will for what it is. Its thought of free will corresponds perfectly to the way free will actually is. Self-consciousness had a vague awareness of its free will, calling it independence. Free will is what self-consciousness meant to say when he referred to independence. The stoic has free will, a finished thought product, and the lord cannot take it away from him and consume it. We have been shown a demonstration of how exactly the stoic fashions for himself finished thought-products. At no point do these thought products become an alien external reality for the stoic, as did the finished product of the bondsman.

The stoic is free to use his thought, and the thought-products of his thought-work and thought-labor. Three of those products are the thoughts of conjunction, disjunction, and negation. A man who was named Chrysippus, a stoic, in during the course of the development of the self-consciousness of the human species (which we will henceforth refer to as history), developed the propositional logic. The stoic combined the negation and disjunction thoughts, along with other thoughts that referred to what he took to be inert substances, and captured the material conditional, i.e. the "if...then..." statement, as a refined thought. He combined two material conditionals to capture the biconditional, i.e. the "...if and only if..." statement, as a refined thought. Along with other thought-products, the stoic in this way developed a system of formal logic.

Having done so, the stoic became better at informal logic, at arguing logically. Now, the stoic can have thoughts and justify them. Further, he can justify his justifications. He only harbors thoughts that are justifiable, and hence is said to be reasonable. The true and good, for the self-consciousness of the stoic, is the self-consciousness of the stoic. As a thinking self-consciousness, the stoic communes with his self-consciousness through thinking thoughts. Thoughts are self-consciousness in disguise, thus the good and true for the stoic are his thoughts. Further, since the stoic only harbors justifiable thoughts, making both him and his thoughts reasonable, the good and true is that which is reasonable.

The Stoic and the Material World 

Having also refined the concepts of cause and effect for himself, which consciousness first caught sight of in the shape of the understanding, the self-consciousness of the stoic gazes upon cause and effect in complete clarity. Cause and effect occur in the living objective world of the appearances, the external world which the stoic refers to using the refined thought of "material", calling it the material world. The material in the material world is in a dance of causes and effects. Cause exists only in the material world; hence cause is only what the stoic refers to as efficient cause. Material in the material world brings about motion or ceases motion in only another material. That other material is the effect, which exists only in the material world. The stoic is engaging in the same explanation that the understanding engaged in. The stoic endeavors to produce as many thought-products as is possible for him to refer to different kinds of material and the relations between them. The stoic uses these thoughts to explain cause and effect in this manner.

The stoic maintains that the free will is not material, since it cannot be found in the material world. As we have shown, you cannot even draw the free will; nor can you represent it to yourself as a picture-thought. The free will is immaterial, and hence cannot be an efficient cause. Immaterial things, by the stoic's own definition, cannot be efficient causes. The free will cannot bring about effects, neither bring about motions nor cease motions, in the material world. This is to say that anything in the material world that happens happens regardless of the input of the free will. The material world is an independent system of cause and effects, opposed and indifferent to the free will of the stoic. Thus, the stoic subscribes to a determinism. We commit the true Scotsman fallacy on purpose, and hold that a truly reasonable stoic can only argue for a hard determinism.

Yet, notice what has happened here. The free will was supposed to be free. The self-consciousness of the stoic is free to think in an infinite variety of ways without constraint without, except that of justifiability, without consequence; this is not just any kind of freedom. It is supposed to be absolute freedom. At the same time, he accepts the material world as a system of causes and effects for what it is - indeed, he could not change anything about the material world even if he wanted to. The free will is the finest refined thought product of the stoic's thought labor. Thoughts, being in truth self-consciousness, do not make contact with the material world. Thoughts alone cannot make material substances move, or stop material substances from moving. Now, notice again that you cannot even a picture of a thought, because a thought is a setoid, as we have seen; so you can't think a picture-thought of a pure thought. Thus, a thought is not an extended thing in real space and time. You can only have picture-thoughts of things extended from a central point (which need not occupy the true center of a particular object) in real space and time. I am referring to what has been called physical flux. The stoic's thought, being something that is not in the material world, cannot ever be an efficient cause. The free will, which is a refined thought, a fortiori can in no way initiate or cease motion in the material world. The stoic is free to think, but he is not free to change anything about the world whatsoever. This is a type of restraint which the material world imposes on the stoic, yet it is more severe than any kind of limitation that the lord could ever impose on his bondsman - even a totalitarian lord with the help of modern communications and surveillance technology. The stoic is not absolutely free like he was supposed to be, in actual fact in his material world, but in absolute bondage - not absolute freedom. Even using his own terms, we can force the stoic to concede that his free will is an illusion. It is a silly plaything, and an elaborate illusion. The stoic only has the thought about what freedom is, not the living reality of being free.

We derived this inference using the same methods of argumentation that the stoic himself would have used if he were in our position, knowing what we know; the same methods that he developed and refined. The stoic would be forced to consider us, in his own terms, to be reasonable, true and good. We can go further, and using his own thought-products we can enchain him him in a type of bondage that is beyond absolute bondage - beyond the limits of the possible. The stoic has a body, which is extended in real space and time from a central point. He can think a picture-thought of his own body. A physical body is not a pure thought, but something that exists in the material world. Remember that in not being a pure thought, the stoic must remind himself that the body is his. This happens in almost an instant, but not exactly an instant. The stoic's body, he must concede, exists in the material world. The body of the stoic can bring effects about in the material world, and so, it can act as an efficient cause. The stoic knows this, for he restrains his body from revolting against his lord. Yet, self-restraint originates from the activity of the self-consciousness of the stoic; self-restraint is the expression of the stoic's independence. The stoic is free to restrain to himself, and indeed, he does. The living reality of being free exists for the stoic only in his capacity to restrain himself.

Consider again, however, that the body of the stoic is extended in space. The free will is a refined thought-produce of the stoic; its just a fancy thought. A fancy thought is still a thought. No thought can make contact with anything in the material world; hence no fancy thought can make contact with anything in the material world. No fancy thought can initiate or cease motion in the material world. Free will cannot make contact with anything in the material world. The body of the stoic is in the material world; the body is itself material. Therefore, the free will of the stoic, not being able to make contact with anything in the material world, cannot make contact with his body. The stoic cannot even control his own body with his free will. He cannot make his own body move, nor stop it from moving. But even restraint is a type of control. Restraint is the cessation of motion. It is an efficient cause. But, on the other hand, the self-restraint of the stoic originates from his free will. It is just as illusory as his free will. Restraint from the will is immaterial. The self-restraint of the stoic is just another thought-product. If the stoic's finger wants to scratch, it will scratch, regardless of whether or not the stoic wishes to restrain it.

This problem has not really gone away. We have just figured out fancier ways to describe the same thing.

The stoic does not restrain himself truly. His body allows him to restrain himself, and tricks him into thinking that the restraint, which as an efficient cause can only belong to another efficient cause, i.e. a body. The stoic only believes that he restrained himself because his body has fooled him into believing. Therefore, the stoic cannot truly be independent, because only through self-restraint did the bondsman become, in fashioning a finished product to satisfy the lord, aware of his independence. The stoic inherited that awareness from the bondsman. But we have shown, using the very thought-products that the stoic developed, that the stoic is not even independent. If this is true, then the bondsman was never independent. His surrender in the struggle for life and death was fated to occur. Even all the things that happened during the course of his history are pre-determined. This can go back all the way to the very beginning of his existence as mere sense-certainty. All of every movement of the material world, including his body, was destined to happen, even to a single scratch, and consciousness could have done nothing to avoid what has happened to it. Consciousness is a victim. There is such thing as true victimhood. All are victims of circumstance. No one is responsible for anything. Thus, nothing is the fault of the stoic. He doesn't even have to take responsibility for his actions. We have discovered that responsibility is dependent on the independence of self-consciousness. Yet it is precisely the acceptance of responsibility that makes one independent. Again, the same kind of process that we saw in the thing and its many properties, force, and others, is occurring. We shall leave it at this for now. We shall discuss responsibility when we begin our discussion of the Philosophy of Right.

That being said, free will is his fanciest thought-product. But the stoic himself developed the thought and the term (for the human species it was libera volunta) for the purposes of expressing to himself his own independence which he thought that he had. Thinking through the thought term, free will, and what it would look like alongside the stoic's other thought term, the deterministic material world, we see that there is tension between those thoughts, which to this day has not been resolved. Let us leave this paradox for now, and return to it once we discuss the feelings and emotions of the stoic.

The Feelings and Emotions of the Stoic 

Suppose for now that the stoic really can restrain his feelings and emotions with his will alone. He is not being tricked by his body. It is first necessary, however, to make a distinction between the feelings and emotions of the stoic. As we have already discussed, feelings are a kind of movement that consciousness senses. However, feelings do not originate in the objective living world of appearances. The particular immediacy that sense-certainty senses, which originates from the objective living world of appearances, is referred to as sensation. Feeling does not originate in the object of sense-certainty. Recall that we assumed at first that the activity of knowing is distinct from the object of knowing. If feeling does not originate from the object of sense certainty, then feeling originates in the activity of sense-certainty itself. But sense-certainty is just a shape of consciousness. It follows that feeling originates in the activity of consciousness itself. Since consciousness must still sense in order to perceive, understand, be self-aware, desire, etc., it follows that feeling remains with consciousness throughout its development (which we have referred to, peripherally, as tension).

We said that consciousness feels pain, when the activity of consciousness is in tension with itself or its object. This kind of tension can arise in any kind of manner, and is usually accompanied by doubt and loss of certainty. Certainty is the absence of doubt; it was the state where consciousness was in a state of equilibrium with its object, as well as a state where consciousness conception of the object corresponded to how the object actually was in fact. When sense-certainty's conception of the object was questioned, it was discovered that its conception of the immediate particular object did not correspond to how the object turned out to be, a mediated universal. Indeed, the loss of certainty for sense-certainty was the first instance in which consciousness felt pain. The loss of certainty an ultimate and supreme source of feeling. Sense-certainty, in feeling pain, wished to relieve itself, and regain its certainty, inducing it to shift to its second sub-shape. Having shifted to its new sub-shape, the activity of sense-certainty regained its certainty, In realizing its error, sense-certainty had lost its state of equilibrium with the object; it attempted to regain the correspondence of its conception of the object and the object as it was in fact by forming a new conception. Developing this new conception, and relieving its pain, sense-certainty felt pleasure.

Here is an example of what that spectrum might look like.

After sense-certainty, more situations in which sense-certainty lost its certainty arose, and the source of consciousness' new tensions were as numerous as those situations. New feelings arose, which we have not yet named, which are a mean between pain and pleasure. The types of feelings that exist are various in degree between pain and pleasure. Pain and pleasure themselves are experienced in a variety of degrees.

Recall that death is the loss of consciousness, and just before the moment of death, it is accompanied by pain. Self-consciousness fears violent death. Fear is referred to as an emotion. The fear of violent death, as well as non-violent death, is the fear of the loss of consciousness. The loss of consciousness is not possible, since consciousness springs from infinity, which is itself subject, and is thus an activity of consciousness. Infinity is indestructible. It is immortal. It is rather the loss of one's unique individuality that is feared, i.e. the loss of one's own self-relatedness to himself as an individual so far as he knows himself, being-for-self. The fear of death is the fear of the loss of being-for-self. But sense-certainty, was at first certain of itself; it was in a state of harmonious, tranquil, equilibrium. It was undisturbed in relating to itself. Its being-for-self was undisturbed. Pain results from the disturbance of consciousness' being-for-self. Fear is the fear of losing, and not regaining, being-for-self. It follows that fear is a response to pain. Since fear is an emotion, and pain is a feeling, it follows that emotions are a response to feelings. In other words, feelings bring about emotions.

Fear brings about an effect, namely, emotion. Fear sets emotion into motion. It follows that feeling is what the stoic calls an efficient cause. It can also be said that emotions bring about feelings. Emotion and feeling, like force, are both a kind of cause and effect. Yet, emotions and feelings, as we have seen, are both pure activities of consciousness. If an individual consciousness, and hence self-consciousness, were to have remain a being-for-self with no living body, it would still experience emotion and feelings just like consciousnesses, and self-consciousnesses, that do have living bodies. We have already mentioned that the stoic cannot control what he feels. In his own terms, since he cannot control what happens in the material world, he cannot control what happens to him that disturbs his state of tranquil relating of self to self. When this happens, he feels fear. By the stoic's own terms, supposing that he can really restrain himself, the stoic cannot control his feelings. His feelings impinge on his senses without his consent. He is not free to feel what he wants to feel.

The stoic does not restrain his feelings. He does, however, restrain his emotions. Stoic restraint is the restraint of emotion. Thus, the stoic is unmoved by feelings of pain, pleasure, or any other kind of feeling. He makes himself a shell of complete tranquility, yet beneath it is a storm. And, indeed, the stoic does restrain his emotions in actual fact, because as we have already shown from our own assumptions and our discoveries during the course of consciousness' journey towards absolute knowing, both restraint and emotion are pure activities of consciousness. Thus, the free will of the stoic does have the power to restrain his emotions, despite what the terms of the stoic allow him to think. Hard determinism, therefore, is an erroneous concept. The material world is not completely deterministic. It is a thought-product that contains an error. Where did the error occur?

Gotcha

The stoic finds himself having two thoughts, about the same thing, at the same time, which cannot both be true at the same time. On the one hand, his free will is free to restrain his emotions, because that is what the stoic does in fact. On the other, his free will is not free to restrain his emotions. This is the inference that we must accept if we follow the stoic's own line of reasoning. But this line of reasoning is just one thought that leads to another, helped along by a system of reasoning, logic, that is itself a collection of thoughts. Thoughts do not make contact with the objective world of experiences. Thus, the error occurred in the thoughts of the bondsman. Specifically, it is the thought-product that the term "material" refers to that is in error. The activity of consciousness cannot be material, while the world is. Either both the activity of self-consciousness and the living objective world of appearances are material, or neither are. The types of words one uses, and the meanings that they have, have huge consequences on the way one thinks and behaves.

Further, the stoic is thinking one thing and doing another. His thought and his action are not in line, therefore in tension. It appears that thinking by itself cannot put the stoic at ease with engaging in actions to bring about real change in the external world that would put him at ease. Yet this is the one thing the stoic refuses to do, for he would risk his life in overthrowing his lord, and risk having to endure a violent death. The fear of death, and of having to act to change the world in order to bring about a situation that would relieve one's pain, is the cause of the tension between free will and determinism. The stoic does not see this, although he has a sense of disharmony between his thoughts and actions. The pain which springs from this disharmony is accompanied by a stoic dissatisfaction.

The stoic cannot depose his lord; he has only deposed his lord in his mind. He does not recognize the self-consciousness of the lord as his Absolute standard of truth, his being-in-itself. Self-consciousness which takes the shape of the stoic is not a recognizing self-consciousness, like the bondsman. The functions of the bondsman, of administering to the life of the lord, are the inheritance that burdens the stoic. He is a free self-consciousness, a free will, only in his mind. He is not living the living reality of freedom. He can only attain this reality if he deposes the lord, and therefore, risk life and death.

The Unfortunate Stoic

But the stoic, in being shaken in every fibre of his being to its very roots by the fear of violent death, refuses to risk life and death. His most beautiful thought-product, free-will, corresponds to something that is real in a precise manner. Free will is real; it is the thought of self-consciousness and the self-consciousness of thought. Thought and self-consciousness have an actual and self-sustaining existence, since both are expressions of the ultimate immortal being, infinity. Free will is made of components that stand independently opposed to one another, and to infinity, yet all form a unity. Free will is an actual and self-sustaining state of self-consciousness. Like force proper, it must express itself; free will expresses itself in the following manner: the stoic is free in actual fact. Having a free will implies having the ability to set into motion a choice. Equally, free will is the ability to cease that which choice which as been set into motion; it can change its mind.

In exercising choice, the stoic has free will; since free will must express itself, the stoic self-consciousness must make a choice. His will will set into motion a series of forces, which culminate into a series of circumstances, situations, different configurations of self-consciousness, as well as different configurations of the relationship between those configurations of self-consciousness and the objective world, which extends far into space and time, that result as a consequences of that choice. All this originates from his free will's capacity to make that choice. Given that the stoic refrains from acting or feeling due to his social circumstances of being bound to a lord who has the power of life and death over him, the choice cannot involve any type of action that would change those circumstances. Otherwise, the stoic risks death. The stoic's choice cannot be something that sets into motion anything that exists in what he calls the material world. The stoic's choice can only be directed inward, at the state of his very own activity of consciousness.

The path towards absolute knowing splits.

Free will is directed at itself, and the stoic has the free will to allow his free will to express itself, or to cease it from expressing itself. Whatever choice he makes, henceforth, the stoic is no longer an animal that automatically and necessarily reacts to stimuli. Thus, whatever the outcome, the stoic assumes a new shape of self-consciousness. With the first choice, we have the stoic who has the free will to allow his free will to express itself. That stoic, for reasons which will be made clear below, is the fortunate stoic. With the second choice, we have a stoic who has the free will to cease his free will from expressing itself. That stoic, for reasons which will be made clear below, is the unfortunate stoic.

Yet, both choices must be enacted; otherwise, free will is not free. If only the first choice is enacted, and not the second, the free will of the stoic is not a real and living actual freedom. If only the second choice is enacted, and not the first, again the free will of the stoic is not a real and living actual freedom. Thus both choices are enacted, and since there is nothing in our axioms, and nothing about the development of self-consciousness thus far, to suggest that one choice is made after another (there is a temporal delay between the moments in which these choices are made), it follows that this choice is made simultaneously. Further, the choice is made simultaneously in a single individual, for reasons already stated in this paragraph. Once having realized this, the self-consciousness of the stoic immediately splits into two self-consciousnesses while still in a living body. While it is two distinct self-consciousnesses, it is the same singular self-consciousness from which they sprung.

The one is the fortunate self-consciousness of the stoic, the other is the unfortunate self-consciousness of the stoic. They both belong to the same living body. The body endures for as long as a body does, and by the life-process, it must pass away. Yet, this self-consciousness, attached to infinity, with composition acquired from its development remaining undisturbed, remains split into two self-consciousnesses that stand opposed and independent from one another, yet are still one. They are, so to speak, soulmates. These self-consciousness, since each is an independent being-for-self in their own right, and since neither is distinct from unsplit self-consciousnesses other than their being split, acquire each for themselves distinct living bodies, separated by space and time. Now, there is nothing in our axioms, or in the course of the development of self-consciousness thus far, to suggest that there must be a delay between the final breath of the body which both self-consciousnesses shared, and the first breath of the bodies which both self-consciousnesses now inhabit. Thus, the change is immediate.

It gets weirder.

The nature of each body, and the life it is to lead, is a consequence of that choice regarding the free will directed at itself that the stoic made. The unfortunate stoic chose to cease his free will from expressing itself. Thus, he is born still in absolute bondage. In not allowing to his free will to express itself, he reinforces that bondage. The fortunate stoic chose to allow his free will to express itself. His life will be different from the first. Such is the nature of the transcendental choice in the transmigration of the soul. The fortunate stoic, in allowing his free will to express itself into the actual living world, is different from the unified self-consciousness of the stoic whence it originated. It has changed in a fundamental sense. While born in bondage, he has to go through the entire development of self-consciousness in the course of growing up from childhood to adulthood, he is released from his bounds. Why this happens shall be made clear below.

The unfortunate stoic, in forbidding his free will to express itself into the actual living world, remains with a free will which is not a living reality. Thus, nothing changes about him. He is still utterly shaken by the fear of violent death. His thoughts, and his living reality remain in utter contradiction. The unfortunate stoic is still in absolute bondage. He still holds thought-products, which if he thought them through, would necessarily lead to the conclusion that his is not even free to direct his own will, or to direct his own living body. The source of this choice his insistence on clinging to his thought-products, for it is only his thought products that give him independence. Further, he is shaken by the fear of violent death. He is a hard determinist, and refuses to yield that the world is what it is, and that he cannot act upon it. He is independent only in and through his thoughts, and he clings steadfastly to to this false kind of independence, which even he cannot support if compelled to. He would have to concede that his free will is a facade, and that he is at the mercy of the system of efficient causes in the material world. Yet, he thinks he has free will, and futilely behaves as if he does. His actions do not correspond to this thoughts.

In his mind, his thoughts do not make contact with his material world. Now, the stoic cannot justify for himself having to undergo violent death; therefore violent death is unjustifiable, and hence, unreasonable. His body, being part of the material world, is something that causes in the efficient sense. His brings about an effect, which is itself a cause. One effect that the stoic cannot use his body for is violent death. The cause of his violent death can be anything that causes about his lord to bring that effect. He could exhibit to the lord signs of independence and risk death, or he could not, and save his own life. Wanting to be free, he slavishly clings to life. Wanting to live nobly, he lives vulgarly. His thoughts and his actions are tragically divided; by the same token, his intentions and the living reality of his life situation do not align. In the history of homo sapiens, the figure that corresponds is Seneca the Younger.

This face is mistakenly attributed to being the face of Seneca, yet it captures the expression on the face of an unfortunate stoic. It gazes into a beyond in deep thought, yet is animated by deep fear, and mangled by his unfortunate circumstances in life.

The fortunate stoic, in allowing his free will to express itself into the actual living world, rather than cling safely to his thought-products as did the unfortunate stoic, lets go. He lets go of the hard determinism of the material world, and instead allows for a soft determinism. But soft determinism cannot be supported by the thought-products of the stoic. For the unified self-consciousness of the stoic whence the fortunate stoic sprung, such a notion would be unjustifiable, unreasonable, and hence, neither good nor true. It is no different from violent death. Thus, in letting go of its thought products, he lets go of the concrete thought-independence that he can only secure with his thought products. He has done something courageous. In doing so, he allows himself to contradict himself in order to save himself from self-contradiction.Thus, he surrenders one kind of independence, yet in doing so attains a true independence and self-subsisting independence that exists only the deepest confines of his self-consciousness. This kind of independence is of a different kind than the first, due to its being a living reality; yet it has not yet expressed itself in the actual world. Further, the fortunate stoic has indeed deposed a lord, yet not the lord against whom he surrendered in the struggle for life and death. This lord also has the power of life and death over the stoic; it commands the stoic from doing some things, and restricts it from doing other things. This deposed lord is the very self-consciousness of the fortunate stoic. Yet this self-consciousness is the stoic himself. He divests himself of his capacity to think for himself; he has surrendered that mind of his own which he developed. Thus he is free to not obey himself. Also, he has divested himself of the capacity to obey himself in the first place, since it is he himself who was shaken by the fear of violent death. It was he himself who commanded himself to fear violent death, and thus remain in chains. Thus, the fortunate stoic is triply independent: from his desires, himself as being-for-another, himself as being-for-self.

This type independence is beyond what is possible for a normal self-consciousness to achieve transcendent. It is in fact the hidden secret path that leads towards the supersensible beyond, and towards the throne of the alpha and the omega, infinity. His independence is absolute and divine. His triple independence surpasses even the doubled independence of the lord of lords, i.e. emperors, of kingdoms in the objective living world of appearances. The fortunate stoic is no longer simply an animal. He is closer to a god who inhabits the living body of an animal. He is born in a new body, taking his first breath in his new body immediately after the last breath left his old body, knowing only what has resulted from his development up to that point from sense-certainty, i.e. still thinking that he is in bondage. Yet, his nature has compelled the the lord of whom he was afraid to disappear. He lives a living reality of freedom. Thus, on the one hand, he is free to act however he pleases, yet he cannot act as he pleases, since he does not know how. Acting as one pleases is a true living independence from one's desires, as well as from one's lord. He has never experienced this kind of situation in the course of his development. He behaves just as if he was a bondsman. Yet, his inner transcendent freedom, as well as the living reality of independence which previously only the lord knew, destines this fortunate stoic self-consciousness to take the reigns of a lord of lords. He should rule the world like a god, a philosopher king; but the world cannot be ruled by one who is not understood. The historical figure in the world history of homo sapiens that corresponds to this figure is the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Indeed, Lord Emperor. 

These two stoic self-consciousnesses will not unite again into a single self-consciousness until both reach the end of the development of self-consciousness on the path towards absolute knowing, and both stand at the door of absolute knowing. Neither will be able to open it until they unite once again into a single self-consciousness, and open it together. The rest of the journey for self-consciousness which we shall undertake is the account of how these two stoic self-consciousnesses unite. They will engage in a dance, with each step perfectly executed as mirror images of the other; their fingers will only make contact when both attain perfect harmony within themselves, reaching the extreme of pure a tranquil, pleasant, harmonious self-relatedness which every Buddhist monk struggles to achieve - pure being-for-self. In each having attained their being-for-self, just as we saw with the thing of perception, the distinctiveness of each of their being-self reveals that they are related to the other. Their related-to-otherness and their being-for-another, will become for each a living reality; the two will become one again.

Nice way to express the kind of movement involved concisely.

For now, they are a divided self-consciousness, living separate lives as two separate self-consciousnesses reciprocally related to each other, one independent from the other, one the complete polar opposite of the other. It is only until this difference is reconciled that they will re-unite, and regain that unified self-consciousness which they lost. Yet, we must go through the movement of each in their turn, where-ever it might lead us; we must keep firmly in mind that each must exist in strict reciprocality. We must recall this, because Hegel only traces the movement of one of these self-consciousnesses. We can take comfort in knowing that, since they are one, by the inverted law, they are self-attractive; hence, if we consider each to be like two distinct points on a straight line, they pull each other towards the exact midpoint of that line, at the point of bisection. They start at polar opposites of each other: one supremely blessed, the other supremely wretched. Each are pulled towards the center; thus, despite being in a strictly reciprocal relationship, they will be similar in some respects. Those respects in which they are similar correspond only to that midpoint, the point of fusion, since they have nothing in common except that one unique midpoint, and provide the clue for us in determining the nature of the fused self-consciousness.

Lordship and Bondage: Our Hero Enters a Relationship, Fights to the Death, and Gets A Job

Lordship and Bondage

Introduction
Everybody wants to be noticed. More specifically, everybody wants someone to notice them. As we shall see here, that desire for others love and affection is not a desire for a luxury, but rather a need. A self-consciousness is a self-consciousness in actual fact, truly itself, if other self-consciousnesses notice it. We learned in the articles of sense-certainty, perception, and understanding, how consciousness transitioned from immediate sense-knowledge of an object to knowledge of self, which itself turns out to be immediate. Self-consciousness is self-aware, and this self-awareness is immediate. In this article, we see what will happen to self-consciousness the first time it notices another self-consciousness. At first it will be a slow process that needs time to unfold, but at a certain point, self-consciousness will become accustomed to the process in which it is about to embark. Consciousness of others will become an immediate process, which contains within itself the mediation, and the history of its unfolding that we shall see in this article. In fact, this is what happens behind the scenes when you meet other people - specifically romantic interests, strangers, employers, managers, and employees - and which sets the tone of those kinds of interaction. Something different happens with family, friends, and fellow compatriots - this is a topic for another article.

At the end of the last article, Self-consciousness has set a goal for itself. The subsequent sections, and there are many of them, are its attempt to make this goal a reality. The goal is a state of being is a higher form of existence which Hegel calls "Spirit". Our relation to family and friends is a form of spirit. Spirit is a state of being, the State of being, or just simply, the State, that is occupied by many individuals where each individual is a self-consciousness in actual fact. Each self-consciousness is, for-itself, the supreme standard of Absolute truth. Yet this state of being is not merely an arousing suspicion, but an enduring, ineradicable reality. Each individual self-consciousness lives in state of freedom and are independent of each other. Yet at the same time, they recognize themselves as the component elements of the same substance. The Spirit is an "I that is We, and a We that is I". Each self-consciousness mutually and constitutively recognizes themselves, as well as each other, equally as self-consciousnesses. This State is not the communist paradise where all are equal, as in, everyone is the same. This state has elements of communism, it is true, but also elements of laissez-faire capitalism. I shall make a proclamation here, however: At the time of this writing, Spirit is in danger of dissolving. This is the danger with globalization and the influence of egalitarian ideologies on our media, politics, academic institutions, and law.

Self-consciousness is aiming to become part of a family, an economy, a State. The pride of belonging to a group. Familial pride. National pride.

However, let us refrain from discussing Spirit and the State any further, since for self-consciousness at this point in the development, Spirit and the State is only a vague awareness. Self-consciousness needs to confirm its arousing suspicion that it is for itself the highest form of truth, the Absolute. It needs to become self-certain, i.e. supremely self-confident. In lacking confidence, its conception of itself remains only an arousing suspicion, not the living reality that it is supposed to be. In order to make this suspicion into a reality, self-consciousness must make something in the objective world surrender its independence. Only another self-consciousness Self-consciousness still has not found even another self-consciousness that it can compel to negate its own independence. Henceforth, self-consciousness will attempt to bring this State, where its denizens recognize themselves as selves (true self-consciousnesses), as well as each other as other and as themselves, into being. It will compare its relating to itself, as well as its relationship to other self-consciousnesses, at each point in the development with how it is supposed to relate to itself, as well as to others, in the State. The State of Spirit is the goal, and we, as readers, now have for ourselves a definite goal, a destination that self-consciousness is trying to establish.

Self-consciousness is not aware of the State as concretely as we have described it here. If it could speak, it would not even understand what the term, the State with a capital 'S', refers to. We only bring up the State now because it is useful for us, as readers, to have a sense of what kind of path self-consciousness is going to take. Recall from the first article that when something is brought into the awareness of a consciousness, it is altered. The same is true for self-consciousness. When one self-consciousness is brought into the awareness of another self-consciousness, it is altered. You change when people look at you. What you change into is who you really are. Let us look at exactly what happens, using only the rules that we have allowed ourselves to use, in more detail.

Duplicated Self-Consciousness

Self-consciousness is in the same vicinity, for the first time, of a second self-consciousness. Each is within range of the other's senses, and there exists the potential that one notice the other. This potential has not yet been actualized. Each is minding his own business. They have not yet noticed each other. Both self-consciousnesses are a product of the development which we have seen. The second can sense, perceive, understand, and is just as self-aware of the other. In short, each is just as much a self-enclosed unity as itself; each is self-relating; each self-consciousness is a being-for-self. Just as we saw with the singular thing and force, self-consciousness contains within its own self a kind of related-to-otherness. Self-consciousness is aware of itself; in being aware of itself it thinks about itself. When it thinks about itself, it makes itself an object for itself to think about. Thus, self-consciousness is just as much a multiplicity as it is a unity; it is a relation-to-otherness. Self-consciousness contains within its own self being-for-another. But that "other" is self-consciousness itself. The being-for-another in truth is only being-for-self. Being-for-self is really being-for-another, which is really being-for-self. Like becomes unlike, and unlike becomes like.

Here they are not noticing each other, and have not yet noticed each other.

Both self-consciousnesses, which confront each other, are a self-awareness. Each are within their own selves a self-relatedness, being-for-self. They have not yet noticed each other. Each is still thinking about itself, or more specifically, himself/herself. This kind of self-consciousness belongs to a sexually reproducing species. A man could be confronting a man, a woman could be confronting a woman, a man could be confronting a woman, or a woman could be confronting a man. These are all possibilities. For brevity, and generality, we shall say that "it" confronts "it", rather than having to concern ourselves with the pronouns, "he" or "she". Anyways, in being self-aware, each self-consciousness makes itself into an object for itself, so each contains within itself relation-to-otherness, being-for-another. But this "other" is really self-consciousness itself, so this being-for-another is really being-for-self. Being-for-self is really being-for-another, which is really being-for-self. Like becomes unlike, and unlike becomes like. This is really just a repetition of the previous paragraph. Only this time we are considering the nature of this relationship with two consciousnesses in mind. They still have not noticed each other. Each self is for itself Absolute. Each self is selfish.

Now, the one self-consciousness for the first time notices the other self-consciousness. Each understands that the other is self-aware. Thus, each sees in the other an aspect of self-relatedness, being-for-self. The one sees that the other is a unity, an enclosed system, a living body that senses, perceives, has intelligence, is self-aware, and has desires. The one self-consciousness sees the process of its own kind of self-relating, its being-for-self, in another self. One self-consciousness sees itself in another. Each self-consciousness is self-aware, so each takes itself to be an object for itself. Each, as we have mentioned, contains within its own self related-to-otherness, being-for-another. In knowing that the other is a self-consciousness, each self-consciousness knows that the other contains within its self being-for-another. And indeed, not only is self-consciousness related to other internally, but externally. Each self-consciousness relates to the other in the real living world of appearances, of space and time. Thus, again, self-consciousness sees its own being-for-another operating in the other self-consciousness.

Since the other too obeys the inverted law: like becomes unlike, and unlike becomes like, the one self-consciousness recognizes the other as an expression of infinity. Both come from the same source, so the one self-consciousness, in its mind, no longer holds the other opposed to it as other. They are the same. Their external relationship to each other, their being-for-another, turns out to be in truth a relationship between the same being; one self-consciousness identifies with the other. They relate not as a duality, but a unity. The external being-for-another shows itself to be in truth, being-for-self. But there is a contradiction. They are still two distinct bodies, and these bodies cannot merge. Their being-for-self is only an abstract notion. It seems to not be confirmed by reality.

Further, self-consciousness, in relating to another loses its independence. In being aware of the other, the other is aware of it. What we have discussed in the last two paragraphs occurs for both self-consciousnesses simultaneously. Each self-consciousness, further, sees that the other is an actual living self-consciousness who is part of the living objective world of appearances. Neither is merely the figment of the other's imagination. Each has the arousing suspicion that it is independent of the objective living world of appearances. But for each, the objective living world of appearances continually asserts its independence over both self-consciousnesses. Both self-consciousnesses related to the world, and are not allowed to remain pre-occupied with themselves, by feelings the pangs of desire: hunger, thirst, etc.

Since each self-consciousness has a body, that body is a part of the living objective world of appearances. Since self-consciousness is a part of a sexually reducing species, and the life of the species is dependent on each of its members to reproduce, each member has embedded within it the desire to reproduce. Each self-consciousness, therefore, relates to some other self-consciousnesses by means of desiring their physical bodies. At this stage, the one self-consciousness is merely an object for the other. The one is aware that the other is a self-consciousness, but the other self-consciousness does not, for the first, have the status of being the Absolute standard of truth. Each self-consciousness, in desiring the body of the other, remains ultimately a selfish self.

Still, the one self-consciousness has an arousing suspicion of its independence from the living objective world of appearances. When a self-consciousness desires the body of another self-consciousness, the satisfaction that it has through being independently self-relating, concerned with itself in a state of equilibrium, minding its own business, is cancelled. Self-consciousness is dependent on the physical body of another. Through the physical living body of one self-consciousness, the objective living world of appearances, and the species as a whole, asserts its independence over the individual self-consciousness with indifference and impunity.

Ideally, same-sex relationships are perfectly equal.

This desire is only satisfied if each self-consciousness desires the body of the other, and each treats the other equally as object, and no further. Since self-consciousness belongs to a sexually reproducing species, there is a male and a female, in general; in the case of homo sapiens sapiens, there is a man and a woman. In this case, we are here speaking of a man desiring the physical body of another man, and a woman desiring the physical body of another woman. In general, self-consciousness desires the body of another self-consciousness, a member of its own species with the same type of body, with the same kind of reproductive organs as itself. Only in the one desiring the other does the relationship form, and does the sex happen, in no particular sequential order.

Sex is the cancelling out of difference between two self-consciousness, by the union of two bodies. and the union of the one with the other, and of both with their infinite nature. Yet sex does not last forever. It ends when one, or the other, or both, attain satisfaction. Once satisfaction is attained, the desire that one self-consciousness has for the body of another subsides, and it is again in a state of equilibrium, where each relates to itself as itself, minding its own business. Each is one with itself, and remains distinct from, yet at one, with its own infinite nature. Each is in love with itself, and in loving itself it loves the other. This is the true nature of love; it is equal and is, at first, only approachable by same-sex couples. Something different occurs when a man wants the physical body of a woman, or vice versa. Since one self-consciousness, inhabiting one kind of body, desires another, that inhabits a different kind of body, there is difference in the living objective world of appearances.

We shall leave it at that, for we cannot explore the nature of heterosexual relationships, and heterosexual love, without first proceeding onwards and allowing self-consciousness to examine itself. Even in the ideal and perfect same-sex relationship, there is still tension. Self-consciousness was supposed to be the Absolute standard of truth for itself, and itself alone. It desires the body of another, not only does the one self-consciousness surrender its own independence, and becomes dependent on the other's body for the satisfaction of its desire, and the cancellation of its dissatisfaction. One self-consciousness, therefore, makes another self-consciousness its Absolute standard of truth against which one models himself against. One self-consciousness pedestalizes another.

The very nature of self-consciousness makes it necessary for one to put the other on a pedestal.

In a truly equal relationship, each self-consciousness would pedestalize the other, where each becomes both dependent from the other, yet remains independent from the other. This is the prisoner's dilemma. Neither benefits if neither pedestalizes the other. Both self-consciousnesses benefit if each pedestalizes the other; but if one does not go through the pedestalization of the other, and the other does pedestalize, only one self-consciousness benefits. This scenario is the most likely to happen, and it is what we see in our world. The pedestalizing self-consciousness loses its independence, and becomes dependent on the other, while the other, who is put on the pedestal and does not pedestalize, remains independent, and has another dependent on it. The non-pedestalizing self-consciousness has another self-consciousness affect on its own its own negation of itself, of its own accord. In the form of relationships, self-consciousness finds what it sought. The non-pedestalizing self-consciousness becomes the dominant partner, and if it is a pair of male self-consciousnesses, the dominant one penetrates. In a lesbian couple, the one pedestalized partner becomes the dominant one. In a heterosexual couple, the male is supposed to remain dominant in this manner, yet he is prone to fail in being the one who should penetrate. He pedestalizes the woman and becomes submissive, losing his dominance, and along with it, the woman's attraction. If the pedestalized still finds the pedestalizer useful, like a thing, the pedestalized placed the pedestalizer in the friend-zone.

The pedestalizing self-consciousness has surrendered its independence. Its Absolute standard of truth is not itself, but the pedestalized self-consciousness. The pedestalizing self-consciousness is dependent on the pedestalized self-consciousness. It does not want the other to leave it, thus, the pedestalizing self-consciousness becomes supplicating. This self-consciousness becomes the submissive one, and hence the one who is penetrated. This self-consciousness is the woman, or the "bitch". Sometimes, however, she will fail to submit and become dominant. In losing her submissiveness, she loses her attraction for the male, and is prone to cheat on him. This, of course, also applies to same sex couples. The pedestalizing self-consciousness becomes the submissive one.

Now the pedestalized self-consciousness finds itself the real living actual fact of its independence that it first sought. It is truly self-consciousness. Another self-consciousness is dependent on it, and hence affirms the arousing suspicion of the first that it is independent. Yet, the pedestalizing self-consciousness is dependent on the pedestalized. Just like the play of forces, where the soliciting force turns out to be the solicited, which turns out to be the soliciting, the independent, pedestalized, self-consciousness turns out to be dependent on the dependent, pedestalizing, self-consciousness. The independence of the first is dependent on the dependence of the second. On the other hand, the pedestalizing consciousness chose to pedestalize. It was an independent decision. Thus, the dependent, pedestalizing consciousness is in truth independent.

Thus, the independence that the pedestalized self-consciousness has is a sham. Having realized this, it leaves the pedestalizing self-consciousness. The pedestalized self-consciousness, more often than not, initiates the break-up. It loses its attraction for the other. The pedestalizing self-consciousness is not aware of its own independence, and tries all that it can to prevent the other from leaving. Yet the initial attraction has been lost; there is very little chance that the pedestalizing self-consciousness will re-initiate that attraction if it engages in a chase. The pedestalizing self-consciousness has a better chance of re-initiating that initial attraction only if it recognizes its own independence and lets go. The sooner the better.

It's not pretty.

Let us not concern ourselves if the attraction is re-initiated. The same tensions will arise and again, one will pedestalize the other, and the other will leave the first. This can go on to infinity, yet is limited by the lifespans of each individual self-consciousness. The one independent self-consciousness, cancels its dependence on the other, and leaves. It again is independent some of the time, and its independence again sinks to being an arousing suspicion. The pedestalizing self-consciousness, once it has let go, cancels its dependence and regains its independence. Yet for the second, as well, its regained independence remains what it was before it entered that relationship - a rousing suspicion. Both self-consciousnesses have not become truly self-conscious, where the objective world and the living bodies in it, affirm that each self-consciousness is their own Absolute standard of truth.

This dynamic holds for any kind of romantic relationship. It also hold for any employment relationship between employee and employer. Either the employee is fired if he becomes too dependent on his employer, or he quits if he doesn't become dependent enough on his employer. What each of these types of relationship have in common is that the dominant member allows the submissive to live. The dominant member of the relationship is independent. Yet in having this kind of independence at, the dominant member is dependent on the dependence of the submissive member. This dependence continues so long as the submissive member remains being a living body in the objective living world of appearance. This dependence of the dominant on the submissive is present only if the submissive lives.

And the nature of self-consciousness demands the death of another.

The submissive member may become bitter, and resentful of the way its former relationship(s) turned out, or he may shrug it off and forget about it. In any case it has learned that its independence is not merely a phantasm, a figment of its imagination. The submissive partner independently chose to be dependent on the independent dominant partner. The nature of its arousing suspicion, of its own independence, is made clearer for the submissive, and just like sense-certainty learned from the pain of its dissatisfaction, so too does self-consciousness learn from the pain of its dissatisfaction. The submissive partner enters other relationships, and from in some of them learns to become the dominant partner. At some point, this self-consciousness chooses to end a relationship of his own accord, and the process involved in break-ups is again re-initiated. Self-consciousness, who began as the submissive, but became dominant, recognizes that the actualization of its independence, its self-certainty, demands the death of the other self-consciousness.

The dominant member in the first relationship we saw goes on to enter other relationships as well, resisting that frightening demand that the nature of the relationship between two self-consciousnesses imposes on him. Yet his dominant status was the first time only a product of chance. In other relationships, the dominant partner may just as well become submissive, and must go through the same learning process as the submissive member. Having experienced what it is like to be submissive, the originally dominant self-consciousness too learns that its independence is no mere phantasm, a figment of its imagination. The dominant self-consciousness enters new relationships with a re-enforced state of being dominant and remaining dominant in them. And again he leaves the relationship and again finds the same frightening demand. Its self-certainty demands the death of another self-consciousness.

The Struggle For Life and Death

Now, this dynamic plays out only in two self-consciousnesses. Yet, the presence of two self-consciousnesses, just as the presence of two reciprocally related forces, is the assertion that it is not alone, i.e. one self-consciousness. There are many self-consciousnesses. These self-consciousness inhabit bodies and form a tribe within a species with those self-consciousnesses that are in their immediate vicinity. This dynamic plays out in a tribe. While the form, which we have discovered here, is the same for every relationship of this kind, each individual relationship plays out in its own unique way. Each follows the blueprint, yet expresses it in its own unique way. The content of this dynamic, which is an expression of the form, is potentially infinite and variegated.

All end with the same conclusion. The self-certainty of self-consciousness demands the death of another self-consciousness. Self-consciousness cannot find reason to demand the death of his tribesmen, for he relates to his tribesman in such a way that he sees himself in another self-consciousness. We have explained this dynamic in detail above. Yet, not all members of the species belong to the same tribe, so there are self-consciousnesses that self-consciousness does not see as itself to the same degree of its tribesman. Self-consciousness, further, has the desire for the food, water, and women, of another tribe. It also desires that the self-consciousnesses, e.g. men, women, and children, of another tribe relinquish their independence on their own accord. Tribes inhabited by self-consciousnesses in living bodies make war among themselves. We will now explore this dynamic in more detail by examining how two self-consciousness, each wanting the death of the other, plays out.

Warfare: the stakes are higher than just physical resources.

Self-consciousness confronts the other self-consciousness. In being-for-self, the one recognizes the being-for-self in the other, in addition to recognizing its own being-for-self. In being-for-another, the one recognizes the being-for-another in internal world of the other, as well as itself relating to another in real space and time. Insofar as it is related to another, self-consciousness recognizes that it is related to itself internally; the converse is also true. Each self-consciousness, further, recognizes that its being-for-self and being-for-another are the same externally in real space and time.

Now, however, each self-consciousness desires the death of the other. Both self-consciousnesses have an arousing suspicion of their own independence, and each can only make this arousing suspicion a living reality, becoming continuously satisfied, only if it gets the other the affect the cancellation, the negation, of its independence. One self-consciousness needs the other to do this, and they both intend the other to do as it has planned. One self-consciousness wishes the death of the other self-consciousness. Yet, the other self-consciousness simultaneously wishes the death of the one self-consciousness. Thus, the one self-consciousness has death wished upon it. It wishes the death of the other, yet its death is also wished by the other. This is also true for the other.

In wishing the death of another, and in intending on acting upon this wish to make it into a reality, it puts the life of the other in danger. Yet the other, in wishing the death of the first self-consciousness, and also intending on acting upon this wish to make it into a reality, puts the life of the first in danger. The first self-consciousness puts the other in danger, yet is itself in danger. The same is true for the other. The first threatens and is threatened. The other, too, threatens and is threatened. In wishing the death of another self-consciousness, each self-consciousness must risk its own life.

This risk was not present in romantic and workplace relationships, so the outcome may be different from the first kind of relation, depending on the outcome of the struggle. There are only three possibilities. The struggle ensues. In the first possibility, both self-consciousnesses end up killing each other. The demand from both self-consciousnesses is satisfied simultaneously. Both self-consciousnesses lose their lives, die, and return to the oneness of infinity. Each defeated self-consciousness, now dead, must be born again, and again go through the whole process from the beginning to the point just before the fight ensued. The journey will be taken again, but will be faster than the first, since there are still living members of their species who reproduce and generate bodies for self-consciousnesses to inhabit. These newborn bodies have been produced from parent self-consciousnesses, who themselves inhabit bodies, that have undergone that process in their turn. These bodies make the movement from, sense-certainty to perception to understanding to self-consciousness as desire to pair-bonding self-consciousness, much faster. We are back to the start.

The struggle ensues. In the second possible outcome, both self-consciousnesses surrender. They value their life too much, and give up the prestige that comes with demonstrating their independence. Recall that self-consciousness wants to prove its independence by showing itself to be just as independent and self-subsistent as that objective living world of appearances, as well as the self-conscious living things that inhabit it, as well as their desire to satisfy their urges. In risking their lives, each self-consciousness shows that it is in truth independent even from the life process, its body, and the relation of self-consciousness to its body, its desire. In risking its life, self-consciousness proves to be self-subsistent. It is for itself the Absolute standard of the True. Both surrender, and thus fail to enact each other's wish for the death of the other self-consciousness; both fail to gain the coveted prize of independence. Each self-consciousness, must again wish the death of the other.

The struggle ensues. The third and final possible outcome is the result. One self-consciousness surrenders. The other is the victor. The struggle has a winner and a loser. The winner is cool, the loser is not. Both remain living, but experience of the struggle for life and death fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship between the winner and the loser. The relationship is no longer a reciprocal relationship where one consciousness is just like the other; the winner and loser are no longer equals.

When one bows, it is a gesture of their surrender; the Chinese and Japanese made the bow a courtesy. It isn't. When it first appeared, only the loser bowed.

During the struggle, one self-consciousness wished to remove itself from the threat of losing its life. In doing this, he valued his life as a living reality more than he valued making that arousing suspicion of his independence into reality. He had to compel the other self-consciousness to no longer wish death upon it. Therefore, self-consciousness no longer wished the death of the other. He had to stop the fight, otherwise, he would be killed, and he did not want to be killed. The fear of death engulfed the entirety of his being. This fear was painful, and he had to make that pain subside. He is cowardly. There was only one way he could stop the fight, and therefore, save his own life. He had to show his opponent that he surrendered by positioning his body in a submissive manner, or showing some other symbol that shows to the other his submission, like tapping out. That self-consciousness lost, and therefore, bowed to the winner. The loser remains alive, but has lost the prize of independence.

The other self-consciousness did not wish to remove itself from the threat of losing its own life. He valued his independence, the satisfaction of his desire to be his own Absolute standard of truth, more than he valued his own life. He was perfectly willing to continue to the death until one self-consciousness died. It did not matter whether it was the other self-consciousness, or himself. He intends to carry out his intention regardless of the consequences. Even though fear engulfs the entirety of his being, he ignores it, further demonstrating that he is an independent self-consciousness even over his own feelings. He is courageous. At some point, the other self-consciousness submits. This self-consciousness has become the winner. He has attained his prize of independence.

For reasons that shall become clear, the loser becomes bound to the life of the winner. The loser, in order to preserve his own life, recognizes the self-consciousness of the winner to be the one Absolute standard of truth. He must now ensure that the living body of the winner, as well as his own. The loser is now the bondsman. He is a slave, but I have not used the word "slave" to characterize him. The term "slave" implies permanent victimhood. The bondsman has chosen his fate by choosing life. Now the burden on maintaining life has doubled for the bondsman, and it was of his own doing. There is no such thing as true and unadulterated victimhood. The condition that every self-consciousness finds themselves in is of their own doing.

The winner still recognizes his own self-consciousness as being the one and only standard of Absolute truth for himself. The bondsman has taken it upon himself to ensure the maintenance of the winner's body. The winner, therefore, no longer has to concern himself with the drudgery of satisfying his desire for food and water.  The bondsman has surrendered his independence for the winner, and henceforth, we shall call the winner the lord. We will not use the word "master", because again, this arrangement is not permanent. Self-consciousness has gotten another self-consciousness to affect its own negation. Thus is can make its arousing suspicion of its own independence into a reality. Both the lord and the bondsman recognize the independence of the lord.

The two-fold object of self-consciousness, (i) self-consciousness itself, which for it is the supreme Absolute standard of truth, and (ii) the objective living world of appearances, which did not have the same prestige as self-consciousness, has been distributed among two self-consciousness. We saw a similar dynamic occur on the thing in perception, and force and law in the understanding. Extending this dynamic beyond just two self-consciousnesses, and distributing them, we see this play out among many self-consciousnesses. When tribes go to war, the surviving members of a winning army has the right to the resources, and the land, of the losing army. The winning army places the losers in bondage and can enslave the men who did not fight, as well,as the women and children. This is the nature and living reality of conquest. We can leave the specifics to another writer, for it is not our focus here.

That being said, when consider the two self-consciousnesses who have engaged in the struggle for life and death, the first sport, we see that the bondsman was bound and chained by his desire for life. Those chains, which at first only dwelled within his inner life, have become a living reality.

Lord and Bondsman

The lord has made his own independence a living reality. Before having engaged in the struggle, self-consciousness had only an arousing suspicion of its own independence. By recognizing that infinity was not only an object, but also subject, self-consciousness saw that it too was subject and object. Self-consciousness, therefore, took itself to be an object for itself; there was nothing in our initial assumptions that prevented self-consciousness from employing this move. Yet, the metamorphosis of consciousness to self-consciousness was, for the consciousness experiencing it, a vague undertaking. Consciousness did not develop the language, or the conceptual framework, that would have allowed it to express to itself using words like we can. For consciousness, these changes were subtle, and were reflected to the outside world by corresponding, and slight, changes in behaviour in how it expressed its body language.

(i) Lordship

For consciousness, the discovery of infinity, was only a vague and ambiguous shift from consciousness to self-consciousness. The objective living world of appearances remained, and it continues to be, as it has always been, independent from self-consciousness. The independence of the objective world asserted itself over self-consciousness through the desire of self-consciousness. Its desire to eat and drink, and fuck, was for self-consciousness a demonstration of its dependence on the living object world and the things in it. This dependence was further exasperated in the fact that self-consciousness had to labor to bring about its own satisfaction, i.e. to eat and drink and have sex. A free and independent being does not have to labor.

Having won the struggle of life and death, self-consciousness has become the lord, and retains for himself his independence. The lord is a self-consciousness that recognizes himself as his one and only absolute standard of truth. The lord has gotten the bondsman to affect the negation of his own independence, and has therefore attained the enjoyment of his own independence in its purity. Furthermore, the lord no longer has to labor in order to satisfy his desire to eat, drink, and has sex. The bondsman is now responsible for that labor. Having learned of the nature of cause and effect, and having learned that affecting the objective world in a particular way produces a particular outcome, the bondsman prepares the food for the lord, as well as bears his wine. The bondsman, further, surrenders his women to the lord; the lord has a harem of willing females ready, and willing, to be taken. Of course, his female bondsmen, in addition to satisfying the lord sexually, also prepare his food and drink. In some cases, if the lord is a homosexual, the bondsman must allow himself to be penetrated by the lord.

Further, the bondsman recognizes only the self-consciousness as the one and only standard of Absolute truth. The bondsman admires and wishes to be like the lord. Hero worship and celebrity worship share in this dynamic. The bondsman formally acts not of his own accord, but in the name of the lord; the bondsman is not an independent self-consciousness, but a dependent self-consciousness. In addition to administering to the needs of the lord, the bondsman administers to his own needs; the needs of the lord, however, take precedence over the needs of the bondsman. The dependence of the bondsman is in this way doubled.

The lord, on the other hand, no longer has to concern himself with feeding himself, or worry about whether he will get laid, or in extreme cases, wipe his butthole after taking a shit. The bondsman takes care of it. The lord not only has an arousing suspicion of his independence and self-subsistence, it is confirmed by the living bodies that inhabit the objective living world of appearances. The lord is a self-consciousness is a recognized self-consciousness, and the bondsman is recognizing. The relationship between lord and bonds is, therefore, one sided and unequal.

If we were to compare the relationship between lord and bondsman with the kind of relationship present in Spirit, a vague goal towards which self-consciousness is striving, and partly a motivator that compelled self-consciousness to risk its life in the struggle for life and death in the first place, we see that they do not match. In Spirit, two self-consciousnesses mutually recognize themselves and each other. Each sees the other as an independent other, yet each remains itself independent. The bondsman is not independent, he is dependent. The lord does not recognize the recognition of the bondsman. On the other side, the bondsman receives no recognition from the lord. If the relationship were to be equal, the lord would recognize the bondsman, and the bondsman would be recognized by the lord, and would further recognize the lord's recognition.

The terracotta army, which is life-sized, shows the extent to which the bondsman submits to the lord. The builders of the first Chinese emperor's tomb were also buried alive along with the emperor.

There is tension between what self-consciousness wanted out of the struggle, and he actually got. Further, just as we saw in the relationships duplicated entered - those kinds of relationships one can enter without having to risk their life - the lord is dependent on the bondsman's dependence in order to remain independent. The objective life circumstances of the lord shows both to himself and others that he is independent; beneath this independence is a hidden dependence on the bondsman. On the other side, the objective life circumstances of the bondsman shows both to himself and others that he is dependent. Yet, that dependence is a product of a the bondsman's independent choice to surrender in the struggle for life and death. Further, when the bondsman labors on parts of the objective world to prepare food, drink, and entertainment, for the lord, the bondsman is initiating causes again through independent choice, and is bringing about effects that are dependent on that choice.

Beneath the dependence of the bondsman hides an independence. We see an inversion occur in the relationship between lord and bondsman. The lord is supposed to be independent. Both he and the living objective world, as well as those living in it, affirms his independence. Yet he is revealed to be in truth dependent on the bondsman's dependence. The bondsman is supposed to be dependent on the lord. Both he and the living objective world, as well as those living in it, affirm his dependence. Yet he is revealed to be independent of the lord's independence. Each self-consciousness is the reciprocal of the other, having one kind of status in the living world of appearances, as well as for themselves, and quite another beyond the reach of their conscious and self-conscious awareness.

The hidden dependence of the lord will express itself in this manner: the lord must engage in continuous warfare in order to maintain his status. He must re-enter the life and death struggle again and again. At some point he will surrender, and the lord will become the bondsman for another lord. We see this in our own history most clearly in the feudal west and feudal japan, but this necessarily occurs in any period of history where there are lords and bondsmen. These battles continue until there is only one hegemonic lord, who has the status of being lord of lords. Every other lord beneath him is simultaneously bondsman, and while each lord does not need to ensure the survival of the lord of lords per se, each lord must swear fealty to him, and pledge to go to war with him if the need ever arises.

Human history has had at least one period where there ruled four lord of lords, simultaneously. One lord of lords, born from dynasties ranging from the Julio-Claudian dynasties to the Nerva-Antonine dynasties, ruled over a unified Roman Empire. Around the same time, another lord of lords, born  from the Han dynasty, ruled over the Chinese Empire. In India yet another lord of lords from the Kushan dynasty ruled the Kushan Empire, and still another lord of lords ruled over the Parthian Empire in the Middle East. It is at this time that the Christians claim their lord came to Earth. We shall explore this in the next article. The first century was monumental in the history of mankind.

In the string of these struggles for life and death, every lord will come to know his innate dependence as a living reality. Not even the lord of lords is exempt from learning of his innate dependence on his lord's and his bondsmans' dependence. Empires collapse, and with them, so does the independence of the lord of lords. Some retire to the country-side, returning to the life of a self-consciousness before having engaged in the struggle for life and death, others die in battles that determine the fate of their empire. Still, others die in battles not so important. Others are forced to become bondsmen for a new lord of lords, yet remain lords. Others are killed by their own bondsmen; yet others are killed by their captors while in bondage. Some die as lord of lords despite tasting defeat, refusing to surrender. Others die as lord of lords and their empires with them, never tasting defeat or bondage, never surrendering, without leaving heirs. Everyone of them return to infinity, and are born into new living bodies, living the life of a natural self-consciousnesses, seemingly never having risked his life in the struggle. Others are the offspring of bondsmen, or become bondsmen in their new lifetimes, and live the life of a bondsman. Whatever his fate, nobody around him can suspect that the self-consciousnesses that inhabit those bodies ever tasted the splendor of supreme self-certainty. Such is the fate of the lord, and of the lord of lords.

(ii) Fear

Bondage is bondage only in relation to lordship. We will know consider the state of bondage itself. No one can escape this state. It began with self-consciousness wishing to make its rousing suspicion that its own self-consciousness was for itself the one and only Absolute standard of truth. This suspicion was a residue product of the development that consciousness picked up on its journey to self-consciousness. Self-consciousness was situated in real space and time, the living objective world of appearances. This world stands opposed to and is independent from self-consciousness, yet it no longer had the status of being the Absolute standard of truth for self-consciousness, as were the conditioned immediate particular object of sense for sense-certainty, the conditioned mediated universal exclusive thing and its many diverse equally mediated universal properties for perception, or the unconditioned universal force, law, and inverted law for the understanding. Self-consciousness did not stand opposed to itself when it discovered that infinity, subject and object like itself, was the Absolute standard of truth.

Self-consciousness came to have two objects: (i) self-consciousness itself in itself, by itself, (ii) the objective living world of appearance, as it relates to itself and to self-consciousness through its living body. This objective world, eternal and self-subsistent, asserted its independence over self-consciousness whenever self-consciousness felt the pangs of desire. The tranquil state of inner harmony and equilibrium which self-consciousness calls "independence" was continually interrupted by the pain of having its physical body lose some of its physical material. Dissatisfaction arose, along with pain, and self-consciousness could only satisfy its desire by obtaining organic matter or inorganic matter to replace the material its body had lost. Since the object of its desire could only be objective, self-consciousness showed to itself its dependence on the objective living world, as well as the things in it. The objective living world asserted its own independence on self-consciousness with indifference and impunity, and self-consciousness' independence could be no more than an arousing suspicion, arising in brief moments of pleasure and satisfaction in the moments just after its desire was satisfied. This is the life of a natural self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness could only make the objective world affirm the arousing suspicion of its own independence if it got the objective world to negate its own independence. Self-consciousness found that only another self-consciousness was aware of itself enough to make that negation significant. Self-consciousness further came to find that it needed to demand the death of another self-consciousness and to risk its own life in a struggle for life and death, if it was ever to be elevate its suspicion of its independence from a sort of fantasy to reality, becoming truly self-certain. In the course of the struggle, self-consciousness risked its own life, as well as all the progress it had made to reach that point of self-consciousness, in order to ensure for itself independence. At some point, self-consciousness was consumed with dread, that is to say a fear of violent death.

This fear was not just an ordinary kind of fear. This fear was all-encompassing; it shook the very foundations of self-consciousness, right down to its very roots, our assumption that knowing is distinct from its object. Self-consciousness could not endure the pain that experiencing this fear caused it, or the pain of participating in the struggle for life and death; it wished to stop the pain, and return to its "tranquil" life, more than it wished for its own independence. Self-consciousness therefore surrendered and became the bondsman to the lord.

Fear.

The bondsman had its life, and along with it his dependence on the living objective world of appearances, but had lost his independence as a self-subsisting self-consciousness who was his own standard of Absolute truth. Self-consciousness had experienced a type of fear that encompassed every single fibre of his being; nothing fixed and stable in him remained; he quaked and trembled in the presence of the lord. No unity remained in the bondsman in the moment of fear. He experienced himself as a pure being-for-another, and had surrendered even his own being-for-self. The lord did not allow his fear to encompass him, so the bondsman had a deeper and more complete, sense of his being-for-another.

In addition to satisfying his own desires, which the bondsman was left with in having his life spared, he now had to satisfy the desire of the lord. He originally satisfied his desires by laboring on the living and non-living things of the objective world for himself, with the help of his knowledge of cause and effect which he picked up as understanding. Now some of his products of labor, he cannot consume for himself, they are for the lord. His labor is now work. The bondsman is not only a bondsman, but also a craftsman. He prepares food and drink for the lord. He uses his understanding to build tools for himself, and tools, weapons, and entertainment for the lord. He builds houses for himself, and palaces and monuments for the lord. He even gives up his own body for the satisfaction of the lord.

Work makes you aware of yourself.

The bondsman begins by recognizing only the independence of the lord. Only the self-consciousness of the lord has for the bondsman the status of being one Absolute standard of truth. The truth for self-consciousness is another self-consciousness. The bondsman does not recognize within his entire being any semblance of stability or fixity - no being-for-self whatsoever. Neither the bondsman, nor the lord, recognize any independence that abides in the activity of bondsman's self-consciousness. Only through work and labour does the bondsman come to re-claim an awareness of his own independence. Although the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom, the bondsman will have to work and labour repeatedly in order to begin to get a sense of his own independence. The relationship of lord and bondsman is a prolonged on.

The lord only enjoys the fruit of the work and labor of the bondsman. The lord does not have to concern himself with the drudgery of work and labour; the product of the bondsmans' work and labour is there only for the enjoyment and satisfaction of the lord's desire. The lord has his desire continuously satisfied, and even though he feels dissatisfaction at times, that dissatisfaction is administered to as immediately as is possible. The lord is given access to his own independence like electric alternating current. Only the bondsman is concerned with the drudgery of work and labor. His reward is his life.

In other words, the bondsman cannot consume much of his own product. His desire to consume his product must be restrained and checked. No such restraint is necessary for the lord. The bondsman must learn to delay the gratification of his own desire. This restraint originates from the activity of a self-consciousness that is related to itself. Neuroscience states that one is only free to say no, to veto the pangs of desire. The bondsman expresses his own free will in its absolute completeness, and therefore his independence, only through delaying the gratification of his desire. In addition to this, the craftsman takes advantage of the principle of cause and effect, and learns to manipulate organic and inorganic matter, and combine them together in a certain way, with definable and repeatable steps, to get a finished product. For example, the swordsmith takes advantage of the principle of heat and crystallization, among others, to fashion a sword. He does not know the specifics of the principle. All he knows is that if he does this, he gets a specific kind of thing. Work and labour fashions and molds the object.

The finished product retains an enduring existence in the objective living world of appearances, and is as independent as any other thing in the living objective world. Yet, it does not come into appearance on its own; it comes into appearance due only to the work and labour of the craftsman. Through the fact that the abidance, and enduring self-subsistence, of the finished product is dependent on the independent will of the bondsman, the bondsman comes to have a sense and awareness of his own independence. Yet the bondsman works and labours on a collection of objects that belong to a self-subsistent, independent, and opposed objective living world of appearances. The bondsman works and labours on the very thing he at one point in his development he shook and quaked before. The thing he labors on is self-relatedness, being-for-self; being-for-self is the essence which the bondsman divested of himself, opposed to himself, and shook before.

A finished product.

The lord is a being who never divested himself of being-for-another. He remained self-related, and sure of himself, he was independent both for himself and for the bondsman. The self-consciousness of the lord, by being self-related, is a being-for-self for whom the bondsman quaked and trembled. The being-for-self of the lord, as well as the finished product, is for the bondsman an external and alien reality. In fearing the lord, the bondsman also fears the product. Yet, the product is dependent on the bondsman's capacity to restrain and check his desire to consume the product.

The bondsman recognizes both the independence of the product, its living object self-existence; the bondsman also recognizes the dependence of the product on the capacity of the bondsman to restrain himself. The bondsman at first is afraid that the product will punish him, as the lord does, for realizing its dependence on him. He is superstitious. However, the product does not punish him. When he thinks that it does, he mistakenly attributes the cause of the punishment he received from the product; he commits the fallacy of false cause. He comes to learn of his error, and corrects it. The product does not punish him, and he truly is an independent, self-subsisting self-consciousness.

By failing to punish him, the objective produce, which resides in the objective living world of appearances,  does not assert its independence over the bondsman - again with indifference and impunity. The sense of the bondsman's own abiding independence re-emerges, and it is not merely an arousing suspicion as it was for natural self-consciousness. The objective product, which is just as much an object entity as the totality of the objective living world of appearances, confirms the independence of the bondsman. His independence is a living reality. His fear of the object, of the materials that he brings together to fashion the finished product, of the product itself, subsides, and the bondsman gains mastery over it. The bondsman is a lord over himself and the product of his labour. He is self-certain and confident only through his work and labour.


(iii) The Formative Process of Self-Enfranchisement

The bondsman develops an awareness that his own self-consciousness is also his one Absolute standard of truth; he has within himself two self-consciousnesses that for him are the standard of Absolute truth. Within the mind of the bondsman, these two standards of Absolute enter into a relationship, similar to the kind of relationship we see in romantic relationships. Yet his fear of the lord does not subside, for the lord does not recognize the independence of the bondsman, for reasons which we have outlined above in more detail. If the bondsman so much as provide any inkling of independence, the lord punishes him. The self-consciousness of the lord remains the Absolute standard of truth and dominant over the more submissive Absolute standard further the bondsman.

The bondsman has developed, through his work and labour, a mind of his own which stands opposed and is independent from the self-consciousness of the lord. The lord has a self-consciousness that the bondsman recognizes as being the dominant Absolute standard of truth, in whose name his actions are directed. Yet, despite being dominant, the self-consciousness of the lord remains to be an alien externality. The bondsman does not merge with the lord. The self-consciousness of the bondsman, while it is submissive, is the bondsmans' own. This tension leads to situations where the bondsman ceases to recognize the dominance of the lord; this occurs when the lord slips, and shows signs that he is not as independent as he is taken to be. One way that this happens is that the bondsman realizes that the lord does not have the capacity to restrain himself. The bondsman further recognizes that the independence of the lord is dependent on the labor of the bondsman, and therefore the bondsman's capacity to restrain himself. Through no fault of the lord, except for the fact that he punishes the bondsman occasionally, and is cruel to him, the bondsman is prone to revolt.

The lord does not like when this happens.

Either the bondsman in this situation re-initiates the struggle for life and death. The lord cannot surrender without losing his status of lord. If he does surrender, he loses that status. If he does not surrender, he either is defeated, either by being killed or in his turn put into bondage. The new lord, being aware that he gained his position by developing a mind of his own through his work and labour, attempts to prevent the new bondsman from doing the same. When the new bondsman shows signs of independence, the new lord punishes him. This type of situation arises only if the revolting bondsman wins.

In the case that the revolting bondsman surrenders once again, he remains bondsman, and the lord remains lord. Having learned from the experience of the revolt of the bondsman, the lord searches for the ultimate cause of the revolt. He discovers that the revolt began due to the bondsman having developed a mind of his own through work and labor. Thus, if the bondsman once again shows signs of independence, the lord, in wishing to prevent another revolt from occurring, punishes the bondsman. He further learns to never show weakness to the bondsman, and develops the capacity to restrain himself in order to defend his status as lord. Temperance, along with courage becomes a virtue. In having learned temperance, the lord re-enforces his independence, and demonstrates the right of having his own self-consciousness of being the one and only Absolute standard of truth for both himself and the bondsman. Having quashed the revolt, however, the lord does not experience the absolute fear that made the bondsman the bondsman. The lord only won because he valued his own prestige and independence more than he valued his own life. 

In either case, a bondsman is punished for showing signs of independence. In only one case does the lord learn the temperance that belonged originally only to the bondsman. Yet, not having quaked before the being-for-self of the bondsman, the lord does not attain true wisdom, sophia, but only a practical kind of reason, phronesis. Still, this is enough for the lord to take up craftsmanship; he does this, however, voluntarily. Having not allowed the fear of violent death to consume him, the lord does not attain an awareness of himself as an independent self-subsistent self-consciousness to the same degree as the bondsman. The independence of the lord is not continuous as a function of time; it is rather a discontinuous, periodic, sinusoidal function of time that tends towards a constant, yet never reaches it.

As we know, at some point, the lord experiences bondage. He cannot escape the experience of bondage even if he attains the status of being lord of lords. So at some point, the lord too will gain an independence that is more constant, tranquil, and self-same than the one he currently possesses. The lord too, will attain wisdom, true absolute knowledge. The bondsman from the very first struggle for life and death has first dibs. It may be the case, that that very bondsman is writing this very article.

In any case, the bondsman, one way or another, learns that he cannot show signs of his own independence. The lord punishes him every time he demonstrates it, and the lord refers to the transgression as stubbornness. The bondsman is not independent. He is stubborn. And he is stubborn only because the lord says so. He not stubborn due to any good, well-reasoned and intricately detailed arguments on the part of the lord; the bondsman is stubborn only the lord says so. And on such an account, the lord punishes him. The social status of the lord is the only valid argument. The lord wins by the sheer force of ethos. The social status of an individual has a tremendous influence on how influential his way of looking at things is.

Despite not being, allowed to express his independence, either in his actions, nor in his feelings (your feelings make themselves known to others through your body language) the bondsman still recognizes himself as independent in the privacy of his own mind. The bondsman, therefore, finds his own independence only in the activity of thought. He further restrains himself, as he did by delaying the gratification of his desire, in the expression of feeling. The bondsman becomes a Stoic.