“Each conscience seeks the death of the other.” – Hegel
In the novel, She Came to Stay, Simone de Beauvoir uses this quote of Hegel as her epigram. The female protagonist seeks the literal death of the ‘third’ in her triangular relationship as the final manifestation of the latent psychological desire. In romantic/love relationships (or maybe especially so), we seek to transcend the body of the other in order to feel the existence of our own – skin on skin, flesh against flesh. The other becomes merely an object, for our purposes, dead. Then we return to our own selves, having validated our transcendence, until the next death of the other, or the death of the next other. We only become enslaved to the other when we choose to validate our sense of self-worth based on the reaction or response of that one. Feel your body, your own erotics as individuated, rather than as dependent. Kill the other.
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