George W.F Hegel writes in Phenomenology of Spirit that the self-consciousness “exists only being acknowledged,” and that a human individual can only recognize itself as having self-consciousness through meeting another human individual and realizing their shared traits and otherness. This initial process leads to conflict between the two entities, as they must fight over the other being the essential being while the other is an object. This conflict is the struggle, and at the end of the struggle one being becomes the master and the other the slave. This process is built on the concept of fear, specifically fear of death and becoming a thing as opposed to a self-conscious being. This paper will analyze that concept of fear, and through …show more content…
The continued existence of the other as a self-conscious person undermines both individual’s status as an essential being. In order to become an essential being, an individual must defeat the other so totally that they cannot rise up and become the essential being. The only way to totally prevent the other from attaining the same level of self-consciousness and threaten the status on the individual is to revert them to a thing, and that reversion comes from death. Therefore, the struggle must be to the …show more content…
The crux of Hegel’s piece falls on the idea that two beings must recognize each other to attain self-consciousness, must fear the otherness and idea of not being essential, and struggle to form the master-slave dialectic. The master-slave dialectic contains the idea of control, as the master must control the slave in order to maintain their identity, and the slave must control their desires in order to continue to work towards their self-conscious. Fear comes from the unknowable and uncontrollable, and humanity fears what it cannot control in themselves and what they cannot control in their worlds. The master-slave dialectic proves this by having the struggle be based on fear and the ensuing relationship based on mutual fear of the other. If fear were to be removed, then the struggle would end, and the relationship would reach its synergistic end as Hegel hopes it will. Until that point, fear is a central factor of the master-slave dialectic, and is key to defining the struggle for self-conscious in the human
Indian social reformer B.R. Ambedkar once said of individuality: “Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.” Furthermore, Webster’s dictionary defines it as “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual.” In Night by Elie Wiesel, it seems that both the author and his fellow Semites’ sense of selves are virtually erased by Hitler and the Nazi Party.
This disheartening conceit, that eternally battles time for relevance, illuminates lack of importance people place on living beings, and on life in general. Humankind has lost sight of the original divinity of existence a Randall Jarrell, in his chilling anti-war poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” emphasizes the stark contrast between the warm comfort of the speaker’s previous life and his cold, painful sufferings as a gunner at the warfront, in order to condemn the government’s impassivity towards fallen soldiers, treated as replaceable parts in war’s perpetual assembly line. In the first sentence of the poem, Jarrell displays the speaker’s transition into an emotionless soldier at the manipulative hand of the government. At the beginning
Through analysis of a few of the proposed necessities of personhood–consciousness, intelligence, and self-awareness–the
Fear is perhaps the strongest force within humans- something that is an undeniable influence on our decision making process, whether those decisions may be major or minor. Fear comes into play both consciously and subconsciously; both practically and non practically; it is not always 100% apparent but it is the drive behind so much more of our thought process than we actually realize. This is not only human nature but the nature of animals, too. It is a force we cannot escape, whether is comes in reflexes or is something we avidly dwell on, so we’ve instead explored and embraced the wonders of this thing called fear.
The Prevalence of Fear Fear is something that has always existed since the beginning of time. In ancient times the notion of fear allowed humans to survive and not be killed by predators. While in modern times, the fear of the unknown has restricted creative learning and progress. Fear is a double edged sword and fear is something that is still affecting the daily lives of countless people to this day.
Fear is an emotional response created amongst ourselves due to a sense of some sort of danger or threat. Fear is not only something one feels within but is also the root of the change in behavior. When fearing something or someone our first instinct is to hide or flee away from what is causing us to feel that way. It is an unpleasant emotion that only prevents a person from achieving their beliefs or goals.
The recurring binary opposition of light and dark connotes the polarity of hope and despair; good and evil; and ultimately, the progression from trauma. Through Anton, Mulisch
These reasons show how fear can make you think only of
One of Freud’s theories is that the “Id – Ego combination dominates a person’s behavior until social awareness leads to the emergence of the superego, which recognizes that
Foresight and Fear What is fear? Fear is a feeling, and like all feelings it has the ability to impact everyone, including me, when making life-altering choices. While fear itself is a powerful force, it is when your foresight starts to cause this fear that its power is really shown. The picture obtained by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum shows a sight feared by millions during WWII, that became a reality for many including Elie Weisel, the author of the best selling book Night.
“The Rites for Cousin Vit” is from Gwendolyn Brooks' Annie Allen, the principal book by an African American to get the Pulitzer Prize for verse. Streams, conceived in 1917 in Kansas yet a Chicagoan for her eight decades, is a writer whose most grounded work joins contemporary (however seldom demotic) phrasing with an adoration for word-play and supple, elaborate punctuation reviewing Donne or even Crashaw (and as often as possible Eliot) which she conveys to tolerate, with friendly incongruity, on her subject. “Annie Allen” is an accumulation of sonnets which, taken together, narrative and counterpoint the life of a young lady and of her group: a dark average workers neighborhood in Chicago and soon after World War II. That group, and its consequent
In this paper, I will look at and criticize John Locke’s account of Personal Identity as well as put forward arguments of my own of what I consider to be the unreliability of that which Locke terms as consciousness in relation to and as a composition of ‘Personal Identity’. Before we can arrive at a discussion of consciousness it is essential to follow Locke’s thought process and see how he arrived at a differentiation between substance, person, self (an alternate term for person used in the latter half of the chapter) and consciousness. It is essential to realize that for Locke personal identity consists in the identity of consciousness. We know this because he says as much in the following passage: “[T]he same consciousness being preserv’d…the
(II.ii.523). He considers the raw emotions the actors show for imagined torments of a fictional character and compares them with his own emotions towards his inner-conflict. He asks, ‘What is Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?’ (II.ii.511) questioning
The argument of whether or not a human has a soul has been argued throughout centuries. Derek Parfit discusses two separate theories of personal identity, Ego Theory and Bundle Theory. The argument of which present a more accurate account of personhood is very hard to determine. The Ego Theory has some flaws such the soul is separate from the body and is a immaterialist object within us. Bundle Theory is reinforced and proven by the split-brain case, however it can lead to the argument that there is no self.
We need to explore our minds. Discover ourselves. Ursula Le Guin’s interesting argument of “The Child and the Shadow” portrays the necessity of the shadow side of self and how we need our unconsciousness and consciousness to work together for us, as well as our society, to really