There is perhaps no other passage in the history of philosophy which has met with such a delirium of interpretations and so much scrutiny as the couple of pages where Hegel deals with the dialectic of lord and bondsman. The passage presents a scene which is both spectacular and overladen with metaphysical hidden meanings and consequences. It has often served mistakenly so—as a touchstone of the Hegelian enterprise as a whole, a clue to his project. Can the Lacanian reading, with this abundance of conflicting views where everything seems to have been said, all the approaches already tried, significantly add to the delirium?
Simon Gros 
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