Fanon on Hegel

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1:03A philosophy podcast with Mark and Wes. I'm Wes Alwyn. And I'm Mark Lentenmeier.

1:10Welcome to a new year of Close Reads, philosophy with Mark and Wes. We had a number of things, ideas that we collected on our little idea list here. One of which, since we returned to Hegel recently, we're going to do some more Hegel. You have some politics of recognition things on your list, right? For potential partial exam on life coverage. So I thought I would look at this section in Franz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks, which is a text we covered way back in 2019 on Hegel specifically.

1:42So it's as you would expect on the Master and Slave section. And what better to have a person who's actually dealing with real conditions of slavery to address this? So it's in Chapter 7. Part A in there is on Adler, the Negro and Adler. Have you ever, you know, that's somebody I know, you know, a Freudian follower who focused on reducing everything to conditions of power. That seems like something you would be interested in.

2:13Have you read any of him or would you recommend that we read any of him? I mean, I've read a little bit, but not that I would remember much. Yeah, no, it is something I would be interested in. He focused on something called masculine protest, which sounds like what psychoanalysts call, yeah, narcissistic injury, getting your pride wounded. My interest is very much in thumos and the ways in which pride and recognition enter into this stuff. I think that's the most fruitful, you know, identification, as we saw in the Freud group psychology reading.

2:48That's the, for me, the most fruitful line of inquiry and kind of dovetails with my interest in philosophy. So this Part B of Chapter 7 is called The Negro and Hegel. So I see actually Chapter 7 was included in what we covered way back in 2019, but I did not re-listen to it, and I'm sure we'll have a completely different perspective on it. This is In Black Skin, White Masks. In the translation, I will link folks to page 216 or PDF, page 234.

3:19Let's do it.

3:25All right. B, The Negro and Hegel. Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself in that and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness. That is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or recognized. And if you thought that was Phenon, no, it's Hegel. Phenomenology of Mind, one of the clear things he says. So now, for Phenon, man is human only to the extent to which he tries to impose his existence on another man in order to be recognized by him.

4:04As long as he has not been effectively recognized by the other, that other will remain the theme of his actions. On that other being, on recognition by that other being, that his own human worth and reality depend. It is that other being in whom the meaning of life is condensed. I mean, this is, of course, very abstract. Any other person, right? If I'm just recognized by my family, is that enough?

4:35Or do I actually need recognition by strangers? Yeah, I think people, they do, right? They focus more on strangers than they do on their own families. If they're trying to become a great, you know, software developer or writer or this or that, a lot of career ambition, I think, is predicated on getting recognition from people who are not loved ones. And the more the merrier, right?

5:07And it's kind of a one-way street. It doesn't require any intimacy or any complications of ordinary relationships. So if you become famous, you have a lot of people recognizing you, but you don't have to give any back, which is the ideal situation. Is it? Just collect all your recognition riches and sit on that pile of gold.

5:29And so that's the narcissistic position, right? And a lot of people get caught up in that to the exclusion of intimacy, to the exclusion of actual relationships. Um, that's a big, that's a big, that's a big problem. But I think we all, we all in a way have this problem and, and recognition just, it's a word that spans a lot of different meanings. Right. So, so in our, um, Fonagy episode with Dr. Drew, recognition was there as early mirroring of the mother, right?

6:03And she recognizes that you exist, you kind of decipher your own existence in her gaze. She, her face becomes almost a symbolic medium for your own affect, for your own feelings. You come to understand your own emotional life in terms of the symbology of her facial expressions and her other responses. You know, you could be blind, but so it's the way she touches all sorts of other sensory data. And you come to self-consciousness in a way through that, that mirroring isn't the same thing as the recognition that will come later when the child shows you the drawing and you, and you go, oh, you know, that's wonderful.

6:47Or my niece who over Christmas break was just putting on a constant gymnastics performance for me and she could go on for, I know it was delightful and she could go on for, for, you know, um, indefinitely. And it was, look, she's look, look at this, look at this, look at this, look at what I'm, and I would say, well, that's, you know, that's amazing. That's great. You did great. Even if it wasn't amazing. So that, you know, there's that childhood desire, you know, there's the infancy where the recognition is unconditional in a way, and it's more akin to the kind of recognition that we think about in religion with every man, every human being is equal in the eyes of God or with liberalism, everyone has equal rights.

7:32I think that the mother in a way is legitimating the effective life of the infant. You, your, your feelings are legitimate and they're not going to destroy me, even if they're aggressive in the, um, in the case of the child, who's the, by the time they've become six and they're trying to put on these displays for us and to get our appreciation of their artwork or whatever, it's transformed a bit, right? It's, it's now it's about performance and look at my great deeds, look at the way I'm affecting the world. Um, and then as we become adults, it becomes very different.

8:06So I think there's a lot of, yeah, interrelated meanings of recognition. It plays a role in the concept of right. It plays a role in the concept of mirroring. It plays a role in the concept of ambition. Um, it's something I've been giving a lot, a lot of thought to, but yeah. So I, I don't know if that gets it what you're getting at, but it's such a, just, just the fact that it's such a broad term and yeah. Do, do we need it from everyone, buddy? What, what does that mean? I think often it's a fantasy that, you know, there's a fantasized general other in our own minds that we're really performing for.

8:40It's not any particular person. Um, it seems like it can't be all narcissistic. Even if we focus on, I need to receive love. I need to receive recognition implicit in that is I need to engage. It froze there for a second. Um, but you said it can't be all narcissistic. Yes. It can't be just, I need to receive love. I need to receive, uh, recognition implicit. And that seems to be that I need to engage in a relationship with someone, uh, you know, not necessarily that I have to learn all about them, but it, you know, the, the, the amount of emptiness that people find from fame, from being recognized by all these people.

9:26But like, well, you don't really know me and I certainly don't do know you and you could hate me for all I know. Uh, it seems like that is certainly empty. Um, yeah, and I was going to add to the varieties of recognition, the kind of thing Kant talks about in his ethics lectures with friendship, where part of one of the core pleasures of friendship is being seen, being recognized. And I do think actually Hegel was influenced by that, um, stuff in Kant. Um, so we want, we want to be seen, we want to be seen and we want to be seen for who we are.

10:04And that's an aspect of intimacy and it's very different than being seen for one's performances here. Here's my wonderful drawing. Please recognize me versus here's how I feel about the way my day went. Here's my negative feelings. Here's my, uh, the things that I wouldn't share with everyone because they're too shameful or embarrassing or whatever. And, and Kant will say, yeah, there's, there's even with friends, there's a limit to the amount that we can share.

10:35We're, we're walking this line. We need to be seen and we, we need the kind of intimacy where we show people these aspects of ourselves. But, but to some extent, something will have to remain hidden if we're going to avoid offending them or making them envious or just being a pain in the ass to them, always whining, whining, whining about our lives to them. Well, that, that I would take to be another form of recognition, that intimacy and friendship. Where everybody knows your name. I have a background in a bar that I found. I don't know why I thought that would be appropriate for this.

11:06Oh, well, so it does turn out to be very, very relevant. Uh, and in that case, it's not for anything I'm doing. In fact, the people in cheers or whatnot are, are basically losers are, we're just being with. So it's not even necessarily the deep friendship. It's just, can we just hang? Can I be so a way to be somebody is not necessarily to, to rise to fame, rise to success, but it's just to have some group of people that, you know, they will miss you if you're not there.

11:37But yeah, I mean, and I think they were, I did, did you watch a lot of cheers? They do get to know each other over those years. Sure. Have lots of drama and things going on, but yeah, yeah. But, but I think you make a very interesting point about, um, the kinds of relationships where you can keep people at a somewhat comfortable distance and a bar is a place to do that. Right. We don't ever see them hang out. Oh, let's go shopping. Let's, let's go, uh, get coffee together.

12:08Let's, uh, join a bowling league. No, they're only at the, at the, they're not showing up to each other's house for dinner. It's only the bar is the safe place to meet because it's, there's a comfortable distance to that. I don't know if you saw the, it was a late run episode on the Louis CK show where Robin Williams was the guest and they were at a funeral and they were reminiscing about this other guy, or maybe this is the person who the funeral was for anyway, but who was always telling, he was kind of annoying.

12:38He was always telling him, Hey, we should go to the strip club and they never wanted to go to the strip club. So they decided to go together to the strip club and they tell people to strip club that this kind of unlikable fringe member of their social group was dead. And everybody at the strip club is, is devastated there. They're announcing it over the loudspeaker. All the, all the strippers are, Oh my gosh, he was, you know, you have some place, you know, that, that fits your debauched, horrible personality.

13:09Yeah. There's a lot of nice strippers out there. Sorry. There is not an open conflict between white and black. One day, the white master without conflict recognized the Negro slave, but the former slave wants to make himself recognized at the foundation of Hegelian dialectic. There's an absolute reciprocity, which must be emphasized. It is in the degree to which I go beyond my own immediate being that I apprehend the existence of the other as a natural and more than natural reality.

13:40If I close the circuit, if I present, prevent the accomplishment of movement in two directions, I keep the other within himself. Ultimately, I deprive him even of this being for itself. This has gotten difficult pretty quickly, even though we're very familiar with the Hegelian master and slave dialectic. Yeah. What do you make? Let's, let's look at some of these sentences more closely. So the white master without conflict recognized the Negro slave.

14:13I'm not sure if he's talking about emancipation there, if he, if he's talking about the variety, the flavor of recognition involved in keeping a slave. Right. So, um, the master slave dialectic starts out with this inequality and then it, it ends in reciprocity, which is something like the liberal mutual recognition of rights. Right. Of the, each person recognizes the other as, as human and equal by virtue of being human.

14:45And, and part of the motivation for the master to do that is that they can't get the recognition they need out of the slave by debasing the slave, they put a crack in their own mirror, so to speak. Um, so we need to lift people up to have a proper mirror in them to have, to get the proper recognition from them. And that's, so that's the only point where you reach a kind of equilibrium until then there's struggle. So, but the lifting, that sounds like I'm, uh, how magnanimous I am, am I, I'm, I'm recognizing you, I'm lifting you up, even if it is sort of to my benefit, because I want an actual person to talk to and not a mere tool.

15:29But in, in the first paragraph, Fanon had said, uh, man is human only to the extent which he tries to impose existence on his other man. So in this section, the former slave wants to make himself recognized. He doesn't want a magnanimous master to like, as if, uh, you know, recognizing a pet or something like that. I want to, I want to actually get in your face and impose and, and demand recognition. So it seems like you actually want conflict. I think it could be conflict.

16:03I mean, it could be through, through rebellion or violence, but it can also be through an appeal to conscience, right? It was, um, Frederick, Frederick Douglass visiting Lincoln, for instance, or, you know, writing the books that he did, um, abolitionists doing the work they did. And so there are many different paths to recognition, I think, and violent, violences. One of them, I don't think it's, it's often the most, I don't think it was really, it's often not productive and it's not really what I think led to emancipation, but in the, in the, in the United States, at least.

16:42So there's an absolute reciprocity, which must be emphasized. So that sounds like, I don't want to just do my little dance in front of you and be recognized. I want to actually engage with you. And maybe it is a struggle as sort of this master slave chapter is known as, or maybe it is something, uh, you know, that certainly doesn't have to be physically violent as you're saying. Yeah, this is, so this gets confusing. Uh, absolute reciprocity, right?

17:13Yeah. So I give you recognition, you give me recognition. That's the end point of the Hegelian dialectic, but the degree to which I go beyond my own immediate being, right? So I'm not, if I go beyond my own immediate being, I'm not just, my own immediate being is just me thinking about being recognized. And that's all you are for me. You're just a recognition function. You're not someone with their own internal self-consciousness who needs to be recognized as well. So that I have to go beyond that, apprehend the existence of the other as a natural and more than natural reality.

17:46And I guess I suppose as, as a natural reality is as a thing in itself is something that's separate, truly separate from me. It isn't as a more than natural reality. It's as a subject, as a self-consciousness. All right. If I close the circuit, if I prevent the accomplishment of movement, I keep the other within himself. So that, it sounds like a thing in itself. Ultimately, I deprive him. Yeah. Yeah. Keep the other within himself. I think it also, yeah, speaks to the other as a conscious or a self-conscious being.

18:21Well, ultimately, I will deprive him even of this being for self. So it's not, to be a self-conscious being is not merely to be a thing in itself with an internal monologue. It is to be in dialogue.

18:36Yeah. I don't know what this means. Ultimately, I deprive him even of this being for self. I mean, I, um, do I deprive him of that by forcing him to recognize me? No, if I, if I close the circuit, if I prevent, I don't know what the close the circuit means because closing sounds like I achieve the, uh, reciprocity. Oh, sorry. Yeah. But if I cut, if I cut the circuit, if I keep the reciprocity from being complete, then I keep you tied within yourself.

19:07And actually you're going to be a stunted, narcissistic, not fully human, not fully self-conscious being. Yeah, I didn't reread that full sentence. So I was misinterpreting, keep the other within himself. So keeping the other within in himself is to be taken pejoratively as, yeah, I deprive you, you know, if I don't recognize you, I, to some extent, deprive your, you of your capacity for recognizing me, which is part of your full humanness.

19:40Just keep going. And that is a big theme in Phanon. Um, it's, it's the ways in which this kind of system is, is detrimental, spiritually detrimental, not just to the white master, but also to the people on the other end of the power relation. All right. The only means of breaking this vicious circle that throws me back on myself is to restore to the other through mediation and recognition, this human reality, which is different from natural reality.

20:17The other has to perform the same operation. Action from one side only would be useless because what is to happen can only be brought about by means of both. That's a great recognize themselves. Sorry. Just pointing out that this is, you're now reading quotes from Hegel. Sorry. Yeah. Um, and another quote, they recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other. Yeah. So it's not enough for the slave to, you know, say, I'm going to reverse, I'm going to reverse this relation and get the recognition from you.

20:52And, but not in the process, not, you know, not recognize you, you're not going to get the recognition and you need until you are also recognizing the other. There has to be reciprocity. So I'm interested in whether we're ultimately going to need something like love out of this or whether this is compatible with, on the one hand, just straight up liberalism, right? We don't have to have a shared conception of the good. You go your way.

21:22I go my way. I recognize that you are a being with your own purposes. I recognize your otherness. I don't try to reduce you. And I just let you go on your way or whether something more intimate is required here. So you couldn't have, you know, the, the angry black man coming out of this saying, you just, you know, stop oppressing us and you get out of here and, and we'll be strong and solid in each other because that's all we need. It seems like this is saying, no, we actually need real dialogue.

21:56We need something, you know, that is ultimately going to undermine the relation, unequal in power, power relations altogether, right? If you're really dealing with somebody on a personal level, then is that compatible? Obviously it is compatible with like, you know, parent child, but one could question whether those can be truly right. Maybe you don't really know your kids until they grow up and you're dealing with them. You know, it's never going to be as completely as, as equals, but, you know, because of what you, you remember, but, you know, treating them like actual people.

22:38Can, can, you know, it's a, it's a 19th century when Harry, Matt, Sally can, can the master and slave really be friends or does the master slave thing always get in the way?

22:51That's great.

22:54In its immediacy, consciousness of self is simple being for itself. In order to win the certainty of oneself, the incorporation of the concept of recognition is essential. Similarly, the other is waiting for recognition by us in order to burgeon into the universal consciousness of self. This seems like maybe something new, but I think in our last Hegel reading, we, when we got beyond the self-consciousness chapter and tried to get toward the spirit chapter through the reading,

23:30the reason discussion, right, the universal consciousness of self, how, how is that necessary or what does that phrase even mean over and above? Of, okay, now we are separate individuals who are in a social relation and, and can reflect on ourselves, you know, what, why this universal consciousness of self, what does that mean? I think, yeah, there's self-consciousness.

24:07I'm trying to recall, I had said something about this during those episodes, but self-consciousness is not, it's not, it's not, it's not personal, right? It's not me saying, oh, look, I'm Wes, or is it? It depends on the context.

24:33It's, there's something about it that has to be universal. I wish I could remember what I had said about this. I thought I, I thought I understood this idea.

24:46It's, it's not personal in the sense that it's, well, there's a way of being self-conscious where you're, you're just, it's qua human, right? You're recognizing yourself as human. And this is related to Kant's idea of treating people as ends in themselves or not, you know, not merely as a means to them, to means to something, but also as an end in themselves and that we associate that with the respect for rights.

25:16But to treat them as an end in themselves isn't to say, oh, Lucy, you know, I like you. Here's a right, here's some rights for you because I like you. It's just, you, you get it by virtue of being human. Um, but yeah, universal consciousness of self suggests that you, you, you're participating in, um, a universal, you're, you're participating in the geist and the universe, universal consciousness.

25:49I mean, we haven't really gotten to the geist to see whether the geist is really universal consciousness or the geist is a, a group consciousness that might even preclude universality, right? That it is a, uh, consciousness of solidarity with this specific group that might be opposed to an out-group, right? The German spirit, what is the German spirit? If there's not, yeah, the Volk, um, and that seems really relevant here in that, you know, does, do the master, do the, the, the black people and the white people, given the social conditions in which he's writing, have to recognize each other?

26:28Or is it, as I was saying, no, no, you're, we're never going to be able to recognize each other where there's too much of a gulf between us. I will have solidarity with my own people and we'll support each other and you can do that on your side and that's enough.

26:43Yeah. Why not? Why not just recognition within the particular identity group? Why is that not enough? And that seems to be, well, I don't know if that's been the focus recently or not. That's a bigger question, but it, but it, I think Fanon seems from, from what I remember is talking about. Um, you know, ultimately the relationship between the former, former masters and former slaves and, and wants to see reconciliation. Um, often I think he's treated by academics as if he were some kind of advocate of violence, but I took him to be the very opposite.

27:21Um, well, and the, uh, fellow, we just read the pragmatists.

27:29What was his name? Uh, about groups. I've already forgotten two episodes ago. Oh, Royce. Royce. Yes. So Royce has, has given us a picture of, uh, that every solidarity within a group sort of points to a solidarity across groups. So just the very active solidarity is pointing to a, some sort of universal solidarity, whether or not you buy that. It's, it's, yeah.

28:01Yeah. But, but yeah, I think, um, burgeon into the universal consciousness of self. That's interesting. Yeah. Maybe, maybe the rest of the paragraph. Yeah. Let me, it's only one more sentence or two more sentences here. Each consciousness of self is in quest of absoluteness. It wants to be recognized as a primal value without reference to life as a transformation of subjective certainty into objective truth.

28:29Sounds like he's, he's using a bunch of Hegelian language that we would have to review. Like what does life mean for Hegel? I know that's a technical term, uh, subjective certainty into objective truth. I mean, this, that, that's clear enough just from our reading of, uh, you know, the, the, that chapter and the Hegel we did recently. Uh, so in quest of absoluteness, is that just to be in a Kantian manner, I want to be treated as an absolute subject as a thing in itself.

28:57Yeah, I think so. So if you think about transformation of subjective certainty into, into, into objective truth, how do we get from the Cartesian, uh, did I say Cartesian? It's like, like, uh, Stewie on Family Guy. Cartesian. How do we get from the Cartesian cogito where I can be internally certain of myself, of my own, the incorrigibly certain of my own, the contents of my own consciousness?

29:29Into a Cartesian substance, the, into a kind of objective truth, which is not to say that that's what Hegel's returning to that, but, um, but subjective certainty doesn't give me self, give me back to myself as an objective subject, I think is part of the Hegel's point. So, um, so, um, I can't get that until I have others, until I have recognition from others, until I have a mirror.

30:00Um, so that's where the absoluteness comes in, and ironically, absoluteness is, um, predicated on these relationships to others. All right, keep going. Um, when it encounters resistance from the other, self-consciousness undergoes the experience of desire, the first milestone on the road that leads to the dignity of the spirit. Self-consciousness accepts the risk of its life, and consequently, it threatens the other in his physical being.

30:32Um, this is kind of just a recap of the master slave dialectic, but it is solely by risking, so he's quoting Hegel now. It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained. Only thus is it tried and proved that the essential nature of self-consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely immediate form in which it first makes its appearance, is not its mere absorption in the expanse of life.

31:03Okay, I thought I understood that until absorption in the expanse of life. But I think the bare existence, again, is something like the Cartesian cogito. Are we going to have to stop and look up, uh, life in the Hegel dictionary, just to see?

31:19I've got it on hand here. A Hegel dictionary. Yeah, I think he associates it with this, yeah, open up. I think it's, you know, he's associating it with the concreteness of the full physical being. Well, unfortunately, the word life appears 150 times in here, so actually finding, I guess it's in alphabetical order. Let me just go to the L's here. This is a really weirdly formatted thing, like as if it was printed off the internet.

31:57Yeah.

32:02And it's a little hard to, uh, go through because each entry in the dictionary takes up many pages. So even just get to the next, to get to the next one. Life in the living organism. The word Laban means to live in two sentences. Well, in two sentences, to be alive and not dead, to live in a certain way. Laban means biological life, being alive or my life. This is not helping. Schelling, in his philosophy of nature, views life as a continuous struggle against the threat of death.

32:36Uh, Hegel's view of life lies in this non-mechanistic tradition. Uh, life plays a similar role to that assigned to spirit. There's an infinite living unity of things in which human life shares after striving to fulfill its nature. Uh, life consists, skipping down, life resists the finite categories of the understanding, but not those of reason. The living organism involves a soul, its inner, and a body, its outer. So I think, I think part of the, um, if I'm recalling correctly, part of the idea is that before we encounter other conscious beings, we encounter something that is structurally like consciousness.

33:20So that is evocative of it. And that, and that's organic beings. So they have a structure. They're not, even if they're not conscious yet, or to be organic, to have life is to be evocative of, um, consciousness. So we, we are prepared in our encounter with life, which just literally means with living the phenomena of life as opposed to inanimate objects. That's, we, that's a stepping stone to an encounter with other conscious beings and, and therefore to self-consciousness.

33:52Yeah, I think that'll, that'll work for us here.

33:57Um, so that's what it means. Not, you know, not mere absorption in the expanse of life. So we get some kind of, um, yeah, we, we, we recognize life and ourselves as living and aren't simply. Part of it.

34:16All right. Is it my turn? Human being, uh, I think it's me. His human being in itself for itself can be achieved only through conflict. Did we already read this? And through the risk that conflict implies this risk means I need to, I go beyond life toward a supreme good. That is the transformation of subjective certainty of my own worth into a universally valid truth. If that, if we didn't already read this, it is very repetitious. Well, it's what we just said. Well, we didn't discuss the, this idea of risk, um, and why that's important.

34:50Well, let's, let's read. This is a major theme in the master slave dialect again. Get the next paragraph. As soon as I desire, I'm asking to be considered. I'm not merely here and now sealed into thingness. I am for, I am for somewhere else and for something else. I demand that notice be taken of my negating activity as far as I pursue something other than life. As far as I do battle for the creation of a human world that is a world of reciprocal recognition. So that getting, he already said that the, the, the getting out of yourself, uh, not merely, you know, rotating in this self-reflective bubble, that that is risk.

35:28And that is going for something other than life. So if we say, take life as what you were saying, this sort of, uh, this cycle, uh, that we want to, right. This is why if I merely close the circuit, then life just continues chugging on. We want to open up so that we actually have to have sparks jumping across a gap between me and really myself, but through the mediation of the other. Mm-hmm.

35:59I mean, the, the, uh, the beginning of that, of the paragraph that started this, right. When it encounters resistance from the other self-consciousness undergoes the experience of desire. Um, what is the resistance? Presumably they say, I know, I'm not going to recognize you. Um, and then the desire I, I presume is to get, is to squeeze that out of them in some way or to, um, elicit it.

36:32Not necessarily squeeze or force, but to do something to elicit, elicit it. But, but, but this becomes a risk and I, and so it does kind of sound like physical conflict, right? The risk of its life and consequently that threatens the other in his physical being. We, we enter at this point into, um, into true conflict. So this could even be something as simple as one tribe going out and conquering another, um, actual war, which does involve glory and does involve the concept of recognition.

37:08Like I'm going to force you.

37:11Um, so there's a, so it begins with risk, right? It begins with real conflict and the real, the real possibility of laying down one's life for honor and glory, I think.

37:27Hey, Wes, you got to put yourself out there more. Okay. I'll go on a crusade. I'll go. Yeah. Let me get my armor. Let me get my armor. That's not what I meant. I just thought you should go on the dating apps. Don't go to Constantinople.

37:45And I'm standing there with a head, severed head in my hand. Oh, this isn't what I was supposed to do. Um. But I'm doing battle in either case. Monty Python in the Holy Grail where he kills the wedding party. Oops. Sorry. Sorry. I'm doing battle for the creation of a human world.

38:05Okay. Yeah. I didn't know that's what I was doing battle for. I thought I just desired something. I didn't know that. I was, you know, working toward this greater, greater goal.

38:15Yeah. War for the sake of peace. I mean, ultimately the battle is, um, happens at the discursive level, right? We hopefully move beyond the, um, actual warfare and, uh, move to this discursive domain, but there's still risk involved. I think, you know, there's involved. There's the, um, what is the risk? Well, he was reluctant to recognize me, opposes me in a savage struggle.

38:47I'm willing to expect, accept convulsions of death, invincible dissolution, but also the possibility of the impossible.

38:56Uh, and there's a footnote. When I began this book, I wanted to vote one section to a study of the death wish among Negroes. I believed it necessary because people are forever saying that Negroes never commit suicide. Hmm.

39:11Yeah. So I think we're, I guess we're supposed to think about this in the revolutionary context here. Um, the laying down of one's life to, um, for an oppressed people to win recognition. Yeah.

39:28The other, however, can recognize me without struggle. Quote, the individual who has not staked his life may no doubt be recognized as a person, but he has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. So I think this is the position of the master, right? Once the, once you have this, um, master-slave dynamic already in, in place, the master, right, gets some kind of recognition from the, from the slave.

40:01The slave follows the master's orders, for instance, um, or the serf plays by the Lord's rules or however you want to, you want to put it. Um, but that doesn't mean that the master is getting the kind of recognition that he really needs. Like, you know, just having power and getting people to do what you tell them to do doesn't quite cut it.

40:24Um, and I'm seeing now, as I look at the footnote to this paragraph, that actually, uh, the footnote from the previous page about suicide is much longer. And I won't receive the whole thing, but it, uh, he's, he's saying this is a myth. Of course, Negroes commit suicide. The Detroit Municipal Hospital found that 66.6% of its suicide cases were Negroes, uh, which is much larger than the population there. And he, uh, compares it to Durkheim saying Jews never committed suicide.

40:56So there's just whatever it is about social scientists that like to, to, uh, underestimate this and, and say that these oppressed people, oh, they'll, they'll just, they, they don't kill themselves because they'll, they just take it. Um, I mean, it is true currently in the United States, white people commit suicide at a higher rate than, than other groups. So that's not a controversial opinion currently, but it's, it's, it's a point of curiosity and it, it, and it doesn't, um, you know, but, and, and it speaks to, to the master slave problem.

41:33Right. If you think of, um, that, the types of, the, the, the, the things that ail the oppressed in a way are different than, than what ails people who are in the, um, in the group that, that, that, the, the dominant group. So now I'm, I feel like I need to, in other words, suicide, suicide is a problem of recognition. Suicide is a problem of feeling unrecognized and in part and, and life having no meaning. And, and the master is often in that position of on, we, and, um, you know, there's, you know, what's the point?

42:06Whereas someone who the bondsman has to work for a living, they have day structure.

42:14It's, it's good for people in a way to have to struggle. Um, and if you don't have to struggle, you, you, you know, that's a problem. And that's the, that's part of Hegel's point and Fanon's point. I mean, we did discuss Durkheim on suicide in our other episode with Dr. Drew, uh, but I don't remember to what extent it is a matter of something we could analyze through Maslow's hierarchy of needs or affluenza, as you're saying, you know, that you only, when you're having to work,

42:46then do you generally are, you know, unless it's so terrible, then, you know, you could see more people wanting a way out. Um, but it's only if you, according to this theory anyway, and I don't know that this is right, that, uh, when you have your basic needs fulfilled, then you can experience existential dread, uh, and be, be bored into suicide. But it seems like there are, there have to be other routes.

43:16Yeah. I don't want to endorse this because I don't know what the socioeconomics of suicide are. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's, um, associated with lower income and unemployment and lower education levels. I wouldn't be surprised if it, if you, when you look at it by, in terms of class, right, that it's more prevalent among lower classes, which would kind of blows up the whole idea that it's a master problem as opposed to a bondsman. Um, right.

43:47And, and, and exist, so I just, I would throw that idea out there that, that, that there is a problem with being the master without saying the sociological evidence is going to bear it out. Yes. Um, existential angst, it seems like could, could strike anyone. It's just a matter of like, are you not embracing the task that you are in as a necessary one, uh, as a meaningful one? Um, so I would think, you know, if it, insofar as there's a consciousness raising among the working class, uh, then this could lead.

44:17Yes. Okay. To rededication to, uh, socialist sort of conquering, getting rid of the, the oppression, but it could also just lead to like, well, this is not very hopeful situation. I don't think we can get rid of oppression. I think it is built in. And so I'm checking out. Mm-hmm. All right. Historically, the Negro steeped in the inessentiality of servitude was set free by his master. He did not fight for his freedom. Out of slavery, the Negro burst into the lists where his masters stood.

44:52Like those servants who are allowed once every year to dance in the drawing room, the Negro is looking for a prop. The Negro, the Negro has not become a master when there were, when there are no longer slaves, there are no longer masters. The Negro is a slave who has been, has been allowed to assume the attitude of a master. The white man is master who has allowed his slaves to eat at his table. Well, that doesn't sound good. I mean, it's better than work to be done slavery, right?

45:27So the, the physical, you know, freeing of people was not enough, but go ahead. Sure.

45:36Burst into the lists where his master stood. So that, that could sound like I'm imposing or a merely, you know, neutral description of arriving on the scene quickly. Yeah.

45:55All right. Well, let's just keep going. One day, a good white master who had influence said to his friends, let's be nice to the N words. I'm not going to, I'm not going to do that just because it's already, we're already saying Negro. So yes, that's enough. That's potentially enough trouble for us. The other masters argued for, after all, it was not an easy thing, but then they decided to promote the machine animal men to the supreme rank of men. Slavery shall no longer exist on French soil. This is just in italics. This is not a quote. This is not.

46:27The upheaval reached the Negroes from without. The black man was acted upon. Values that had not been created by his actions, values that had not been born of the systolic tide of his blood, danced in a huge whirl around him. The upheaval did not make a difference in the Negro. He went from one way of life to another, but not from one life to another. Just as one, when one tells a much improved patient that in a few days he will be discharged from the hospital, thereupon suffers a relapse. So the announcement of the liberation of the black slaves produced psychoses and sudden deaths.

46:58Yeah, so Phenom was a psychiatrist, we should recall, and a psychoanalyst, I think, or at least very influenced by psychoanalysis. So this may be what he's seeing.

47:17But yeah, there's something lost if you get freedom in some sense politically and you haven't struggled for it. I think this is another big theme of this book, that it becomes a big psychological problem. I mean, it sounds like that, you know, being left, that's the Shawshank Redemption, being let out of jail, and I don't know how to live in the free world, so I kill myself.

47:48That was, you know, one of the characters in that. Yeah, what was his name? I don't know. Do you remember? Nope. Nope.

47:56I'm not going to stop and Google it. Yeah, so I guess the psychology here is that one, right, you've been, it's almost like you've been given something, as I think you were pointing out earlier, you know, it's like, okay, now you're allowed into the drawing room. And here, we've given you permission now, and there's something that's still demeaning about that, as if, you know, we're free, but we're kind of free at the, at the, by the good graces or with the permission of the dominant group.

48:42It is not an announcement that one hears twice in a lifetime. The black man contented himself with thanking the white man, and the most forceful proof of the fact is the impressive number of statues erected all over France and the colonies that show white France stoking the kinky hair of this nice Negro whose chains had just been broken. Say thank you to the nice man, the mother tells her little boy. We, we know often that the little boy is dying to scream some other more resounding expression. The white man, in the capacity of master, said to the Negro, from now on you are free.

49:15Uh, and there's a footnote. I hope I have shown that here the master differs basically from the master described by Hegel. For Hegel, there is reciprocity. Here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition, but work. Uh, so even after emancipation, what he wants is work, it sounds like. Yeah.

49:40Yeah. Okay. Let me just read one more. But the Negro knows nothing of the cost of freedom, for he has not fought for it. From time to time, he has fought for liberty and justice, but these were always white liberty and white justice, that is, values selected, secreted by his masters. The former slave who can find in his memory, no trace of the struggle for liberty or for, uh, or of that anguish of liberty, of which Kierkegaard speaks sits unmoved before the young white man singing and dancing on the tightrope of existence.

50:10Oh, we got, we got tightrope. We got Kierkegaard. He's who's, well, tightrope for Nietzsche. Yep. Um, who's doing the singing and dancing here? The white man or the black man? No, no, the young, the white, young white man. So they're, they're, they're getting to experience. The young white man is singing and dancing, right. They're sitting unmoved. Okay. Yeah. They're, they're finding, you know, again, this sort of sounds like the hierarchy of needs that you only get to the point where you're trying to be the uber mensch or whatever. And, and the tightrope walker, the things that Nietzsche talks about, the, the, the anguish of, I, I don't know if we've really read Kierkegaard on anguish exactly.

50:48Um, but it sure sounds like the general existential I'm faced with my freedom in a, in a broad sense, um, that to get to that point, you have to have. You actually have to realize in some strong way that you have choices. And if you've just, even if people are saying, okay, legally, you're no longer owned, but your livelihood means you just have to keep working at basically the job you were doing before. And maybe in fact, I will care for you less because before I owned you. And so I had to invest in you as I would, you know, as I would to a cattle that I want to keep alive.

51:22But now you're just a replaceable cog in my machine. And if you are too uppity, then I'll get different workers. Yeah.

51:32Yep. So the young white man, the, who has choices, there's risk involved in choices. And that's where the tightrope comes in and the anguish of Liberty. And there's value creation, I suppose. But the, the Negro on Fanon's account is not creating his own values. He's using the value secreted by the masters. They make the, um, the kind of normative choices and choices about norms. And then the Negroes caught up in that.

52:05So what an interesting combination of, you know, if we're looking at through our American political lens of, uh, conservatism, like, I don't, Oh, those liberals, they just want to be given things. They want a welfare state. They want to be given freedom. They want to be given, uh, uh, have their needs met and they need to work for it. They need to struggle for it. But that, that's what, you know, actually gives you a sense of self and will keep you on the right path and not make you just this meandering nothing. Uh, but on the other hand, this is clearly, you know, a revolutionary piece of, you know, this is more, would inspire the Black Panthers rather than, you know, some sort of assimilationist who would be saying a Booker T. Washington.

52:49Is that the guy who would, uh, be saying, take, take the values passed down by the master? Cause in fact, these capitalist self individualist values are the master's values. And we want you to just play our game. All right. Who's next? Keep, I think you're, you're going, um, when it does happen that the Negro looks fiercely at the white man, the white man tells him, brother, there is no difference between us. And yet the Negro knows that there is a difference.

53:22He wants it. He wants the white man to turn on him and shout damn N word. Then he would have that unique chance to show them to show them.

53:34Okay. That's good. We're not going to say the N word, but we are going to do impressions. No, I'm just saying it was quotes. The quote is, is around the figure show them like, in other words, to beat the crap out of them. Yes. Right. Okay. But most often there is nothing, there is nothing, nothing, but indifference or a paternalistic curiosity. Sorry. There is nothing. I thought he was nothing. Most often there is nothing, nothing, but indifference or a paternalistic curiosity.

54:11So the show them, um, gambit doesn't work out very well. The former slave needs a challenge to his humanity. He wants a conflict, a riot, but it is too late. The French Negro is doomed to bite himself and just a bite. I say the French Negro for the American Negro is cast in a different play. In the United States, the Negro battles and is battled. There are laws that little by little are invalidated under the constitution. There are other laws that forbid certain forms of discrimination, and we can be sure that nothing is going to be given free.

54:46This is written in 1952. Let's just remind ourselves here. Yeah. So there's Jim Crow and segregation. Um, but I guess apparently for the French, it was, it was different. So. Which we would normally think like, wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to go through all that struggle? But here he's saying like, there, there are problems, however, it is achieved, you know, you can't undo, uh, oppression with a snap of, with a, with a single law.

55:21Right. We can point to Martin Luther King and to civil rights marches and to that struggle. And, and there's a dignity to that. Um, where black people play a role in their own emancipation. Um, there is war, there are defeats, truces, victories, in quote, the 12 million black voices. Uh, so that's an English phrase, uh, howled against the curtain of the sky, torn from end to end, marked with the gashes of teeth biting into the bellies of interdiction.

55:52The curtain fell like a burst balloon on the field of battle. It's four corners marked by the scores of Negroes hanged by their testicles. A monument is slowly being builted built that, that promises to be majestic. And at the top of this monument, I can already see a white man and a black man hand in hand. Uh, so this seems to still describe the American situation with lynching. For the French Negro, the situation is unbearable, unable ever to be sure whether the white man considers him conscious, consciousness in itself for itself.

56:30He must forever absorb himself in uncovering resistance, opposition, challenge. Can I make a comparison here is, uh, when we have robots that seem self-conscious, we will probably often say, thank you. You know, we, people do this with Siri or whatever right now, but we're not going to actually consider them people. We're just going to like, okay, this is something to maneuver between. Maybe I will sort of just like Kant says, you should be nice to animals just because you want to be in the habit of being nice, you know, for when, for people.

57:05And I guess he's, this is what he's saying that like, yeah, white people, the French white people that freed us, they might be treating us with some respect, some of what looks like respect, but they don't really think we're people. Come on.

57:23This is what emerges from some passages of the book that Mournier has, uh, Monnier has devoted to Africa. The young Negroes whom he knew there sought to maintain their alterity, alterity of rupture, of conflict, of battle. The self takes place by opposing itself, Fichte said. Yes and no. I said in my introduction that man is a yes. I will never stop reiterating that. Yes to life. Yes to love. Yes to generosity. But man is also a no.

57:53No to scorn of man. No to degradation of man. No to exploitation of man. No to the butchery of what is most human in man. Freedom. Man's behavior is not only reactional and there is always resentment in a reaction. He already pointed that out in the will to power. To educate a man is to be actional. Preserving in all his relations, his respect for the basic values that constitute a human world is the prime task of him who having taken thought prepares to act.

58:25It's really quite inspiring to read him. Yeah I mean he's a great great prose writer and he you know we get somebody who is who is writing this fierce political stuff but has the education to insert in it. I don't know I'm sure there are lots of other followers of Hegel that write in with that combination of things but I feel like I there have not too many been too many things that I have read that I feel like have have both of those things.

58:58Yeah.

59:04And this is the end of the chapter so we're we don't need a part two where we can be done with this and it's right we're right at the yes at the end of the time it's perfect. Did you did this add anything to our I don't think this added anything to my understanding of Hegel this was adding okay this is the way this guy used Hegel to just say look obviously whatever Hegel is doing he's describing some abstraction about how self-consciousness forms itself.

59:38And you wonderfully went through those different ways you know we've had so many episodes oh oh is it Lacan's mirror stage is it you know some political battle for recognition Allah Fukuyama is it something in between this this pointing out you know the six-year-old stage of look at me look at me all this stuff is really great. Um and yes so we got to see at least one place where I don't know he's not giving us a direct way is he is he is he saying the American way is actually the better way even though it was more more violent or is he just saying there are there I don't think he wants to say it's better it just creates different different problems are created for the for the French way.

1:00:28Well he he posits at the top of this this this cake this uh monument is a black man and a white man hand in hand and this is you know way before Martin Luther King's speech that he's writing this so is he thinking like okay when you actually have struggle then we can really work out our differences and actually be related to each other uh because clearly I mean is that is that what's happened? I don't know I don't know and it sounds sarcastic almost but yeah I'm not sure the monument is a bunch of

1:01:01is built of bodies of Negroes I mean having like a truth and reconciliation commission having uh reparations these kind of things like with do this help or are they always it seems like any solution to undo an injustice is an imperfect solution not that you shouldn't you know explore things but there's always going to be the fact that that evil happened I mean he says you can't go from a life to a life so this is mainly a problem that he's talking psychologically for former slaves who were freed so their children well that's an actually different life

1:01:42so they're born into a different situation and in fact maybe it is more the case that you could say that young people protesting in our country are being basically born into affluence and that this is a case of I'm I'm bored and I don't know what to do with myself and so I will take up whatever the civic religion of the time is which could be protest all right well people should tell us what they think and whether we had any right to read

1:02:13this I don't I don't know did we say the word Negro too many times or too few it's it's in here it's in here uh all right uh we'll have a different reading next time close reads philosophy.com is the location where you can find the links to uh sign up for the podcast uh we would prefer you go to patreon.com slash close reads philosophy you would still get your your ad free uh you'd still get this episode and other part ones uh publicly right there for you

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