Master and Slave

In the ‘Philosophical Interlude’ separating parts one and two of Eros and Civilization, Marcuse notes how Freud’s analysis of the instincts is very much in keeping with the scientific rationality of Western civilization. Integral to this rationality is a metaphysics of subject against object, self against other. In this ‘a priori antagonistic experience’, Marcuse writes, objective nature is ‘ “given” to the ego as something that had to be fought, conquered, and even violated – such was the precondition for self-preservation and self-development’ (1998a: 109–10). The issue of self-preservation has been considered in relation to the destructive instincts and their repression. In this chapter the issue of self-development, explicitly the relation between self and other, is considered as a key component in the ontology of war. According to Marcuse the antagonistic experience that is central to this self-development receives its greatest treatment in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit which seeks to unfold the antagonism between subject and object, self and other, and seek a path to their overcoming in Spirit. For Marcuse the central argument in the Phenomenology is that reason ‘develops through the developing self-consciousness of man who conquers the natural and historical world and makes it the material of his self-realization. [The ego] can become conscious of itself only through satisfying itself in and by an “other”. But such satisfaction involves the “negation” of the other, for the ego has to prove itself by truly “being-for-itself” against all “otherness” ’ (113). The implications of this conflictual definition of humanity, in which negation becomes the prime mover of self, history and world, will be explored here. It will also be important to examine how, if at all, this concept of negation might offer us a position from which to critique war. If, in this antagonistic metaphysics of world-creation, the ego must prove itself by being against all otherness, is it not this egoistic philosophy itself that needs to be challenged if violence is to be lessened?