The Master's Problem: Revisiting Hegel's Critique of Social Domination

Abstract This paper argues for a reinterpretation of Hegel's internal critique of the master in his famous ‘Master–Slave Dialectic.’ Hegel argues that, in addition to the evident injustice suffered by the enslaved, the arrangement also undermines the master's own purposes. Standard interpretations claim either that the unequal relation frustrates the master's desire for the other's recognition, or that he depends upon the slave in a manner that contradicts his supposed independence. I argue that these readings are both textually ungrounded and philosophically unsatisfying. The critiques they advance rely upon inadequate conceptions of relations of domination. Instead, Hegel's account turns on the way the means‐end structure of mastery is ultimately self‐conflicting. Drawing on Aristotle's idea that the master–slave relation is the consummate exemplar of a user‐tool relation, Hegel presents mastery as the pursuit of the unconstrained power embodied in the complete control over a ‘living tool.’ Yet precisely because mastery itself becomes the master's highest end, he thereby assigns absolute value to a possession simultaneously regarded as a mere means—his slave. Thus, like King Midas, the inner demands of the master's domineering will can only be realized in the shape of something he himself views as a contemptible means.