Fear, Dead and Freedom. Alexander Kojève Reader of Hegel

Abstract

The dialectics of mastery-slavery is one of the key passages in which Hegel, in the pages of his Phenomenology, discusses the role of fear within the process of recognition of self-awareness. This essay concentrates on the original interpretation and re-elaboration of that  dialectics given by one of the most renowned readers of Hegel in the Twentieth century, Alexandre Kojève. From his reading, fear emerges as a crucial point at the crossroads between labour and subordination, something that determines the constitution of subjective self-awareness.