Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic and The Relationship between God and Believer

Year 2017, Issue: 1, 148 - 160, 20.06.2017

Mehmet Fatih Şekerci

Abstract

In his Phenomenology, Hegel characterizes self-conscious- ness as desire and gives an account of master-slave relationship as an example of how consciousness is brought to the level of self-cons ciousness as a result of the interaction of two consciousnesses. In this paper, I will firstly try to explain masterslave dialectic, and then to analyze whether it can be useful to understand the relations between God and believer / man. Second, if this dialectic turns out to be useless in such an endeavour, I will try to explain why this is so. It should be said that Hegelian master-slave dialectic is very influential for an understanding of the nature of self-consciousness. It is also very help ful in engaging with the difficult questions both of religion and of philosophy: how is one related to many or how does divine interact with the world and human beings? However, Hegel’s master-slave dialectic proposes an answer which has certain deficiencies, especially, in ex plicating the nature of the relation between God and believer. I will to demonstrate why this dialectic can mislead us in understanding how God and believr interact.

Keywords

Hegel, Master-Slave Dialectic, God, Believer

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