Hegel (1807/1977) discusses these aspects of knowledge and work in the preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit. Philosophical knowledge would be obtained through mental work: ‘True thoughts and scientific insight are only to be won through the work [“labour” in the original translation] of the Notion’ (Hegel 1807/1977, 43). He argues that knowledge is connected to non-knowledge. Mental work would turn experience into knowledge.
It is this coming-to-be of Science as such or of knowledge, that is described in this Phenomenology of Spirit. Knowledge in its first phase, or immediate Spirit, is the non-spiritual, i.e. sense-consciousness. In order to become genuine knowledge, to beget the element of Science which is the pure Notion of Science itself, it must travel a long way and work its passage (Hegel 1807/1977, 15).
For Hegel, mental and physical work stand in a dialectical relationship, they are identical and non-identical, just like there is a dialectic of work and nature. Adorno (1963) argues that the separation of mental and physical labour in class-based societies comes along with a labour ideology that ascribes to labour ‘inherent value’. ‘The metaphysics of labor and the appropriation of the labor of others are complementary’ (24). ‘For the absolutization of labor is that of the class relationship: a humankind free of labor would be free of domination’ (26). One problem with Hegel would be that in the final instance he ‘dissolves labor into a moment of spirit’ (24) so that the concept of the absolute spirit reifies bourgeois society’s class-based forms of labour.
3.4.3. Power
Power is human actors’ capacity to influence the development of the social systems that afect their lives. Power is therefore not limited to the political system, but has economic, political, and cultural dimensions (see table 3.1).
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Critical Theory of Communication