In the past few weeks, we’ve looked at a few questions about finding worth in your work: we’ve asked what happens when work is the only place you feel you belong, when you struggle morally with your work, or when your work feels unimportant.
These are questions for reflection, but they also call us to action. At heart, every question about work and fulfillment is essentially practical: it’s asking what sort of thing you should do. It’s not enough to believe something or to know something. There needs to be a path to turn that idea into action. What’s the point of knowing what the purpose of your life is if you still have no idea how to live?
When we’re faced with this sort of practical question, our first instinct is to jump at action. Don’t think—act! Getting bogged down in theory and details can leave us more lost than before.
But it pays to take time to root our practical actions in something more abstract. There must be a philosophical ground to these practical questions. How can we dive into the abstract and theoretical parts of these questions and come out with something practical and applicable?
To see an example of this, let’s take a look at one of history’s most abstract and difficult philosophers: G.W.F. Hegel.
Why Bother With Something So Incomprehensible?
Hegel is known for writing some of the hardest-to-read philosophy in history. He insisted on using a very peculiar technical language that he believed meant you wouldn’t need any philosophical background to begin reading his work. Unfortunately, all this means is that you need to become an expert in a new and unfamiliar set of terms that he doesn’t always explain clearly. (Some Germans prefer to read his work translated into English because, as a teacher of mine put it, “the translator has to decide what things mean.”)
But hidden in this difficult work, there are genuinely practical insights into life and identity. It’s a matter of diving in and finding what you can extract from his writings.
Hegel’s most famous work, The Phenomenology of Spirit, is strange enough that I’m not entirely confident telling you what it’s about. Broadly, it’s about the development of consciousness: it’s asking about all the different ways that we interact with the world and how we as humans come together in a society. It’s a broad and complex book, but beneath the complexity, there’s insight that’s still worth searching for.
The Start of Self-Consciousness
Early in the book, Hegel asks what happens when self-consciousness emerges. When you first come to understand yourself, how will you treat the world? Where will you find yourself?
The first instinct a person has as a self-conscious being, Hegel says, is to see the whole world as an object for your consumption. This, he argues, is the first instinct to become certain of your own identity. Your goal is to make a world that revolves around you—in some sense, you’re trying to prove to yourself that you exist. This is how you Where does this lead you?
The first way to approach this is turning everything into an object for your wants. A world where everything is exactly the way you like it and made just for you—this, Hegel argues, is the most basic way you can find yourself in the world.
Of course, that’s not reality. A few moments of reflection should show that this doesn’t work. The world exists independently of you: things don’t revolve around any one person.
But it’s not so easy to do this on your own. Every attempt to change the world is just further proof that it doesn’t revolve around you. You’re just one small part of it, not the driving force. How can you get past this issue?
Your own work can’t get you what you want. All this would do is prove again that the world isn’t made for you. Instead, it’s the work of others that fixes this for you: when you have someone else at the ready to reshape things to your liking, you can hide away from the difficulty of reshaping the world this way.
This, Hegel argues, is the cause of inequality: there are those who control others and those who serve to reshape the world to their wants. The winners get to see the world shaped to one where everything serves them. The losers, meanwhile, have no choice but to put in the work to change the world as their masters please. It’s a very lonely and selfish way of looking at the world.
And, unsurprisingly, it’s not a real path to satisfaction. In this, Hegel argues, there’s no real path to recognition for the master. The inequality at hand makes it impossible for any recognition to matter: there’s no way for the recognition of another to matter, nor for the master to find any sense of self-respect or self-recognition. Self-consciousness is left in a small bubble where it still struggles to prove itself.
Working Your Way Out
How does Hegel think the mind moves past this stage? There’s no way of making this mastery work in the end: the world isn’t reducible to simple objects for your consumption. Yet there is one person who escapes from this with a new sense of identity: the worker.
It’s the loser of that inequality, the laborer, who’s really been finding the sense of recognition and importance that the master was after. Even though the laborer lacks the same control over the world and others that the master enjoys, there’s a much more important sort of control to be found here: in the transformative power of work.
In work, Hegel says, there’s a new way to see the world. Instead of seeing things as revolving around yourself, you begin to understand the independence of the world. Work lets you create something outside of yourself—and, within that creation, you begin to recognize your own independence. Work serves as a sort of proof to yourself that you are real and that you are significant in the world.
And, somewhat paradoxically, it’s only when you realize your power to impact the world around you that you can be content with its independence. Here, you find something objective to prove yourself to the world around you. You don’t need to force the world to conform to you—you build a space for yourself.
This might be most obvious in examples of craftsmanship—looking at something physical you’ve made clearly shows your power to impact the world. But this isn’t necessary to find this self-assurance. What matters is that your work shows you two things: first, that you can change the world, and second, that you don’t need to control it.
Your work may not be the most important part of your life. But it’s the place where you can see your own impact most clearly. It opens the path to a greater independence, both in and outside the workplace.
I fear that I’m misunderstanding or bending Hegel’s writings to make this argument—but this is always a part of the process of applying philosophy. New misunderstandings lead us to new understandings. There’s not one interpretation to take.
Nor can there be just one interpretation of the practical guidelines. Philosophy isn’t a means of learning how to follow others perfectly. It’s about cultivating independence—in work and in life.
On a very lay-person level, I experience a kind of micro-version of this philosophy in the competing desires I have to a) ascend to higher levels in my career, which lead to management and being a "controller" and the desire to be the one who produces the work and draws satisfaction from it. The former opens the door - in theory - to more prestige, more money, more free time... the latter often feels like almost an act of cowardice - avoiding the bigger responsibilities and risks of continuing to "progress."
I imagine there are some people who like the work of management and leadership and so they can still feel like a worker doing it, in a way. But for me, while I have and can do that work, and it is more lucrative and prestigious, I don't enjoy it as much. I find more satisfaction in being the one who does the hands on creation. But it also can feel like a bit of a ceiling in terms of independence and earning power.