The Dialectic of Master and Servant in Anthropology

Abstract

This article proposes a philosophically productive use of the Phenomenology of Spirit, and in particular of the dialectic of lordship and bondage, in order to reflect on the anthropological conditions of concept formation. Starting from the thesis that conceptualization emerges from a conflict between singular experience and a socially established ontology, the paper shifts this framework toward non-modern social contexts in which highly institutionalized forms of mediation are absent. In dialogue with contemporary anthropology, especially with the notion of seasonality developed by Graeber and Wengrow, it is argued that seasonal gatherings constitute privileged social configurations for the emergence of practical, technological, and cosmological innovations. In such scenarios, the mediation between the individual subject and the collective conceptual horizon can take place in a concentrated and situated manner. The articulation between Hegelian reflection and ethnographic evidence thus allows conceptualization to be understood as a socially embodied and culturally variable process, without recourse to the figure of an abstract pre-social subject.