History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies

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History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies is an interdisciplinary department, we offer three majors, tailored major options, and several exciting minors, including a minor in Latin American Studies and a minor in Museum Studies. Internships at historical societies, museums, and Yellowstone are also an important part of the educational experience. Undergraduate students also have opportunities to conduct research and work directly with faculty members on topics ranging from urban coyotes to the Butte mine. The Department hosts both history and philosophy honor societies, as well as a philosophy ethics debate team. Graduate students can pursue innovative MA and PhD degrees in the history of science and technology, environmental history, and the American west.

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Author: search.filters.author.Estaver, JamesEnd date: 2018

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    The Slave Mentality: Morality of Spirit in Hegel's Lordship and Bondage
    (2013-11) Estaver, James
    The master-slave dialectic which occurs in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit represents a crucial role in his ambitious project to cure European culture. At the turn of the 19th century, Hegel perceived Western culture as one inflicted with a pathology of implicitly contradictory dualisms which cause man to be unhappy and divided in himself. In his Phenomenology, Hegel lays bare the philosophical horizon for a system of broadly scoped monisms that will transform man’s cognition and perception of the other through the development of consciousness. The section entitled Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage is critical to Hegel’s dialectical derivation of the development of self-consciousness, the moment when consciousness becomes aware of itself, when recognized by another. This derivation permits an interpretation of Hegel in such a way that a moral structure of relations between two self-consciousnesses can exist. What would form a moral dimension of recognition? Delving further, what would be the nature of this inter-subjective context of morality?The master-slave dialectic which occurs in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit represents a crucial role in his ambitious project to cure European culture. At the turn of the 19th century, Hegel perceived Western culture as one inflicted with a pathology of implicitly contradictory dualisms which cause man to be unhappy and divided in himself. In his Phenomenology, Hegel lays bare the philosophical horizon for a system of broadly scoped monisms that will transform man’s cognition and perception of the other through the development of consciousness. The section entitled Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage is critical to Hegel’s dialectical derivation of the development of self-consciousness, the moment when consciousness becomes aware of itself, when recognized by another. This derivation permits an interpretation of Hegel in such a way that a moral structure of relations between two self-consciousnesses can exist. What would form a moral dimension of recognition? Delving further, what would be the nature of this inter-subjective context of morality?In this discussion, I claim that the morality of Spirit in Hegel’s master-slave dialectic is the recognition of another as a self-consciousness. This recognition, in turn, allows self-consciousness to become certain of itself as a being-for-itself. I argue that recognition is only possible with the psychological state I name the “slave mentality.” In order to derive recognition from the slave mentality, I will identify two psychological states in the dialectic. The first will be the primordial psychological state of self-consciousness, which precedes the initial and inevitable engagement of one self-consciousness with another. The second psychological state will be one that is fashioned in the enslavement of one self-consciousness by another, which will occur after the life and death struggle. Afterwards, I move beyond the dialectic and present a third psychological state, which I will determine to be the final psychological state that is necessary for Spirit and, consequently, for morality.
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