Although there definitely are some connections – the movement of recognition is but a prolongation of desire – the struggle for life and death can therefore hardly be read in the Hobbesian terms. It is not so much about possession or domination, and it is not provoked by any previous infringement. It rather follows out of the immanent need to prove to the other that “for self-consciousness, the essence is not being, not the immediate way it appears in, not its immersion into the expanse of life” (§187). The fight is fought in order to be recognized as “pure being-for-itself”.

Na tem mestu se v tekstu pojavi neka nenavadnost. Takoj za zgoraj navedenim citatom, ki nas vpelje v boj na smrt, Hegel pravi: »Ta predočitev je podvojeno početje: početje drugega in početje po samem sebi. Kolikor je početje drugega, gre torej vsakteri na smrt drugega« (PhG:§187, slo 194). 

Self-consciousness is supposed to manifest its independence to the other by displaying its readiness o give its life. This can, however, be done only by actually risking and ventually giving it. The selfconscious subject is consequently driven to live dangerously, to look for a situation where its life is exposed to the risk of dying, or to put it in radical terms, to actively search for death. It is its wn death it is after, not so much the death of the other – the other being, s it were, a mere instrument of its suicide.

In the preceding considerations, Hegel the philosopher simply analysed the concept of recognitionm delineating the list od necessary conditions that have to be met in ordertthat a successful recognition could happen it is only "now" that we proceed to the level of experience. The concrete shape the natural consciousness takes "at first" is that of two self-conscious individuals which immediately "exist for themselves in the way orfdinary objects do", as "independent shpes absoorbed in the being of life".

The movement of recognition of the two self consciousnesses commands a relation of multilayered reciprocity, consisting in wht may be called specularity (What does the one, the other does at the same time), ambidirectionality (What does the one against oneself, it does against the other at the same time) and ambioriginality (What dos the one against the otherm the other does against itself). It is especially this second point demanding absolute reciprocity that Hegel summarised by using a succint formula: "They recognise each other as mutually recognizing each other".

In sedaj je jasno, da vse to velja le v popolni vzajemnosti. Pomislimo na trivialno obliko pripoznanja, pozdrav. »Vsaktero vidi drugo početi isto, kar počne samo, vskatero počne samo tisto, kar terja od drugega, in zato počne, kar počne, tudi le tolikanj, kolikor drugo počne isto; enostransko početje bi bilo brez haska …« (str. 104, 189) V resnici ne bi bilo brez haska, temveč smrtonosno za lastno samozavedanje. 

The relation of desire has been transformed into what Hegel – once again after Fichte – calls recognition: “Self-consciousness exists only in being recognized.” (§178) The fact that what used to be the object of desire has now become the self-conscious subject in its own merit, and in addition, that this other has become an integral part of the unity of the first, renders the situations infinitely complex indeed. 

Tako Hegel najprej reflektira o dialektiki samozavedanja kot gibanju pripoznanja, kot se predstavlja nam, se pravi, kot refleksija na sebi, ki ni refleksija zavesti, temveč refleksija pojma. Očitno tu ne gre le za posamezno podvojitev samozavedanja, torej za to, da je za samozavedanje neko drugo samozavedanje – gre za podvojitev samozavedanja v sebi: torej že, ker je to v samem sebi, kot samozavedanje, ki sebi reče 'jaz', razcepljeno in poenoteno, si kot samozavedanje z življenjem deli notranji razloček oziroma neskončnost.