Master–Slave Dialectic and Morality in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle

Year 2022, Issue: 57, 111 - 133, 14.06.2023

Cenk Tan

Abstract

The Man in the High Castle (1962) is one of Philip K. Dick’s
most acclaimed and striking novels. The narrative is set in an alternate
reality where the Axis powers have won the Second World War and
occupied the United States, dividing the country into three regions: the
Nazi ruled greater Reich, the Pacific Japanese States and the neutral
zone. As a result of this partition, Americans have become foreign in
their own country. This article examines the master-slave dialectic
and master-slave morality in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High
Castle. The master-slave dialectic is a theory proposed by Hegel in
the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel outlines a mutual relationship
where he assigns specific roles to two parties that engage in a struggle
for desire to achieve self-consciousness. In direct connection with the
master-slave dialectic is Nietzsche’s master-slave morality which was
developed upon Hegel’s original conception. The thinker describes a
binary opposition where particular values have been ascribed to master
and slave/servant morality to establish a sustainable and reciprocal
relationship. This study aims to analyze Dick’s The Man in the High
Castle from a philosophical perspective, attempting to expose the
master-slave dialectic and morality in the work of fiction and thus
revealing the author’s covert messages implied in the subtext of the
novel, while at the same time comparing and contrasting these with the
television adaptation.

Keywords

Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, Master-Slave Dialectic, GWF. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche

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