Hegel located the essence of Oriental social relations in absolute domination

Evidence

What Moses sought was to present the servile spirit with its own representation, that of terror: “He brought before the slavish spirit the image of itself, namely, the terror of physical force.” The English translator explains that with the use of the word “orientally,” the image evoked by Hegel “was not a kindly one, like those of Greece, but a nonnatural one, a threat of terror, like those to which people under oriental despotisms were accustomed.” The French editor concurs and writes that “one finds here the prefiguration of the ‘Lordship and Bondage’ dialectic.” Writing in the same years, Hegel further provides an explanation of the “Oriental threat” alluded to in “The Spirit of Christianity.” What requires an explanation is that “two determinations” are “apparently contradictory,” but nonetheless “intimately linked” in the “Oriental character,” “the thirst for absolute domination” and “the willing subjection to any enslavement.” In the Orient, then, “domination, power and violence, is the essence of social relations.” Hegel continues: “Such a fixed, determined character does not tolerate anything outside itself but what it dominates and what dominates it.” Hence, it is always the case that “one dominates, and the other is dominated.” What accounts or more precisely enables this state of affairs is, of course, “the law which dominates all.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 635

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘Lordship and Bondage’ dialectic in Hegel’s Phenomenology — the master-slave dialectic is the philosophical frame here, and the book’s larger argument that Jews/Arabs were constructed as the quintessential enemy. — connects to: Hegel ties a people’s character to local spirits expressed in occupation and body.
• DEFINE: Shows how Hegel’s ‘Oriental’ stereotype combined two apparently contradictory traits — thirst for domination and willing servitude — into a single essence.