Note: this assignment is for students in Group III only.
Please respond to the following in
two pages or less (double spaced). (Needless to say this should be
your own original work.)
In the first Zusatz to §163 (p. 241), Hegel
says that slavery as an institution has disappeared in Europe because
of ``the principle of Christianity itself'': the master regards the
slave as a ``thing'' (Sache) rather than as a person;
whereas Christianity regards every human under the form of the
universal, and ``the principle of personhood is universality.'' In the
Zusatz to §147, on the other hand (p. 223), he says
that ``person'' refers to the contingent and arbitrary contents
(inclinations and interests) of immediate, finite subjectivity, as
opposed to what really matters, the ``matter'' (again, Sache). Why might these two passages seem to contradict one
another? Defend the following explanation: the master's basic error,
according to Hegel, is not to understand correctly the relationship
between singular and universal; the result is that the slave's
personhood is taken to be something merely contingent and
arbitrary, to which the universal is indifferent, and which is
therefore not what matters (not the Sache). Christianity,
in recognizing universality as ``the principle of personhood,'' gets
the relation right.