ABSTRACT
G. W. F. Hegel's account of slavery is unique in the annals of thought in its attempt to derive slavery neither from nature, nor providence, nor chance, but from the very structure of self-consciousness. Hegel's account of the resolution of the struggle of master and slave reads almost like a burlesque on Aristotle's account of slavery in the Politics. The basis for slavery is the need of one self-conscious mind to be recognized by another. Marx's entire critique of political economy, and therewith his analysis of slavery, could well have developed out of an internal analysis of the paragraphs on civil society in the Philosophy of Right. The core of Marx's critique is that civil society is not an emancipatory institution but the creator of new forms of domination and servitude, which he characterizes by the term "alienation." Nietzsche was less concerned with the economic aspects of domination than he was with the political.
