It is impossible to deny that for Hegel formative labour has a pronounced liberating aspect. However, if it is formative, it is more so of its subject than of its object. Its primary function is rather to exemplify the reality check, i.e. the physical pain, self-restraint and perseverance that is in general characteristic of labour, but is equally needed for thinking As there is a “digestive philosophy” describing ognitive process in terms of desire, there is a kind of “manual hilosophy” describing it in terms of labour. Accordingly Hegel does not speak so much about the concept of labour, but rather about the labour of concept, about thinking as labour. Even the emancipation of the servant that eems to happen in manual labour could be understood in terms of the effort of thought. “hrough this rediscovery of itself by itself the servile onsciousess acquires a mind of its own, and it does it precisely in the labour wherein it seemed to be merely foreign mind.” (§196) It is only by hinking the thoughts of others that one learns to think thoughts of one’s own.