Complete M/s relationships have been characterized as a “Total Power Exchange” and also as “Absolute Power Exchange”. Notwithstanding the difficulties involved in exchanging power, I mean to look at the differences between “Total” and “Absolute” and thereby reveal part of the reason I have chosen the term “Absolute Enslavement” for complete, consensual M/s relationships.
“ Hegel talks about absolute knowledge, that represents the journeys end. In order to achieve this Absolute knowledge, “Spirit attains to a knowledge of itself not only as it is in itself or as possessing an absolute content, nor only as it is for itself as a form devoid of content, or as the aspect of self-consciousness, but as it is both in essence and in actually, or in and for itself.” Hegel believes that the human spirit is related to the Absolute Spirit in the beginning, but only achieves knowledge of it in the end.
He criticizes the Kantian notion that knowledge is an “instrument” that should be examined before used, “But the examination of knowledge can only be carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before we know is as absurd as the wise resolution of Scholasticus, not to venture into the water until he had learned to swim.” “
- Hegel’s Thoughts on Knowledge, The Philosopher’s Lighthouse
Relationships in the context of consensual M/s have for a number of years eschewed the notion that the enslavement of the consensual slave is “partial” or not totalizing. This is so despite the fact that it has been pointed out by numerous observers that a “total” enslavement is not, in itself, possible, that every person has limits, however much they can be pushed, for example. In using the term “absolute” rather than “total” I mean the term in the sense intended by Hegel in his discussions on absolute knowledge, where knowledge knows itself as such. This reflexivity of the absolute does not imply a totalizing of knowledge – the person with absolute knowledge may know only one thing rather than everything in the universe, but knows that one thing absolutely. By the same token the consensual slave “knows” his/her enslavement as such in a way that was not possible for the non-consensual slave of western history or the non-consensual slaves that still exist in other parts of the world.
While a necessary a priori however knowing one’s enslavement is only part of the issue, as it does not really introduce the proper reflexivity into enslavement that is required for an enslavement to become absolute. A term introduced originally to replace TPE, “Internal Enslavement”, can point the way out of this bind. In the sense of internal enslavement, where the slave internalizes or has internalized his/her enslavement the slave essentially becomes “enslaved” to enslavement, where his/her enslavement becomes a necessary part of his/her being who he/she is. This internalization is not wholly an act of the slave but is a consequence of the actions of the slave and the Master in consummating the dynamic of the relationship. It is also not something that happens “all at once” or even “once” at all, but is a tangential progression towards a particular goal, a path along which one gets ever closer to the absolute without ever actually touching it. This type of tangent is in mathematics “equivalent” to the point it is tangential to and it is in this sense that the path of absolute enslavement can be said to be “equivalent” to an actualized absolute enslavement.
