27/10/2025: Joe Saunders on What's Wrong with the Master: A Critical Analysis of Hegel's Master-Slave Dialectic

ABSTRACT In his influential master-slave dialectic, Hegel looks to demonstrate that being a master is self-defeating. The master seeks absolute independence and genuine recognition from another. However, they depend upon their slave for their mastery, and the recognition their slave provides is “one-sided and unequal” (PS, §191, p. 114). Thus, Hegel claims that mastery undermines itself. In this paper, I put some pressure on this dialectic. Amongst other things, I argue that what is primarily wrong with the master is the fact they dominate a slave, not that they somehow fail on their own terms. ABOUT Joe primarily works on ethics and agency in Kant and the post-Kantian tradition. He also has interests in the philosophy of love and media ethics.

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27/10/2025: Joe Saunders on What's Wrong with the Master: A Critical Analysis of Hegel's Master-Slave Dialectic is an episode from Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society by The Aristotelian Society.

This episode is 45:10 long.

This episode was published on Feb 16, 2026.

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