The willing self-exploiter is an absolute slave without a master

Evidence

Although the achievement-subject deems itself free, in reality it is a slave. In so far as it willingly exploits itself without a master, it is an absolute slave. There is no master forcing the achievement-subject to work. Yet all the same, it is absolutizing bare life and labour. Bare life and labour form two sides of the same coin. Health represents the ideal of bare life. Today’s neoliberal slave lacks the sovereignty – indeed, the freedom – of the master who, according to Hegel’s dialectic, performs no labour at all and only enjoys. For Hegel, the sovereignty of the master derives from his rising above bare life and risking death itself in the process. Such excess – living and enjoying beyond measure – is alien to the slave, who worries only about bare life. But counter to what Hegel assumed, labouring does not make the slave free. The slave remains enslaved to labour. Now, the slave is forcing the master to work too. Today’s dialectic of master and slave means the totalization of labour. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 14

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses and inverts Hegel’s master-slave dialectic — directly engaging the dialectics theme familiar from the Frankfurt School readings, and generalizable to any reading of Hegel. — connects to: Freedom is absent under any master’s power, however kindly that master behaves — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 330; The master’s belief in the slave’s inessentiality is an illusion masking real dependency — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 199; Denying that one freely chooses ends makes one enslaved to those ends — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 46 (+7 more)

Related

• Self-exploiting subject makes Hegel’s slave-master dialectic collapse (similarity 0.91)
• Exploitation now occurs without domination, making freedom and compulsion coincide. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Self-exploiting subject makes Hegel’s slave-master dialectic collapse #expands (0.95) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 14
• Exploitation now occurs without domination, making freedom and compulsion coincide. #expands (0.85) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 131
• Consent cannot justify self-enslavement because no one owns his own life #contradicts (0.80) — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 31
• The master’s belief in the slave’s inessentiality is an illusion masking real dependency #qualifies (0.78) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 199
• Denying that one freely chooses ends makes one enslaved to those ends #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 46
• Accepting vulnerability to others is necessary to enjoy maximal non-domination #qualifies (0.72) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 1193
• Dominants sustain privilege through subordinate compliance that coercion alone would not secure #complicates (0.72) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 668
• Self-determination cannot precede the abolition of exploitation #corroborates (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 227
• Machine mastery perpetuates rather than ends enslavement #expands (0.70) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 635