Vita e dominio. Servo-padrone, assoggettamento, riconoscimento

In this article the master-servant figure in Hegel’s Phenomenology is analyzed against the background of an ontology of life as an embodied process. It is therefore argued that the theme of this figure is the question of domination in general, understood as a social relationship of subjection that can take on different historical configurations. Domination is understood as a relationship of disparity of status between dominant and dominated subjects. Therefore, domination would have an intersubjective aspect, as constituted by asymmetric relations of recognition, and a material one, since this disparity in recognitive status allows the extraction of physical and symbolic resources from subordinate subjects.