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In Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” he mentions the concept of sense-certainty, delving into the depth of the “now” and the “here.” He then explains that it is an inadequate concept in reality because the “now” and the “here” are constantly changing. When one says they are doing something in the immediate “now,” it is already in the past after that individual finishes saying the word “now.” An example illustrating this fallacy is the presence of wet paint signs in our subway system. When personally traveling underground in New York City, and encountering a wet paint sign taped to subway beams, countless individuals would avoid even bracing on the beam in fear that there is wet paint. However, when directly placing a finger on the beam, one hundred percent of the time, the paint would be dry, revealing the limitations of relying solely on sense-certainty. Hegel explains this perfectly by stating, “This itself. To the question: ‘What is the Now?’ we answer, for example, ‘The ‘now’ is the night.’ To put the truth of this sensuous-certainty to the test, a simple experiment will suffice. We write down this truth. A truth cannot be lost by being written down any more than it can be lost by our preserving it, and if now, this midday, we look at this truth that has been written down, we will have to say that it has become rather stale.” In other words, he is explaining that when it is night if it were to be the morning or a different time of day and look back at the phrase “The ‘now’ is the night,” that phrase would be false because it would be a different time of day, which is not the “night.” The same applies to the wet paint scenario. Is the paint really wet when it’s already dry? Hegel does a good job clarifying this fallacy with the now and here.

$187 quote: “The relation of both self-consciousnesses is thus determined in such a way that it is through a life and death struggle that each proves its worth to itself, and that both prove their worth to each other – They must engage in this struggle, for each must elevate its self-certainty of existing for itself to truth, both in the other and in itself” (Hegel Phenomenology pg.111, $187).

In Hegel’s view, the willingness to gamble all that you have—your life—is a necessary step to achieving self-consciousness: a definitive part of freedom. This becomes particularly relevant when one consciousness encounters another as they vie for dominance—as any being driven by desire would.

The world is chock full of such instances, particularly relevant in matters of religion and government, high up on the list of causes for which people would die. The late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny is a marquee example of this struggle to prove oneself to his opponent, his audience, and perhaps most of all himself. For those unfamiliar with the circumstances, Navalny was the main opponent of Putin in the pseudo-democratic political sphere before he was poisoned by Russian secret services. He was left in a coma, treated back to health in Germany, returned to Russia to continue the fight, and was rather predictable imprisoned on bogus charges, and died under suspicious circumstances not too long after.

I suppose in this case, Navalny’s rival in this Hegelian showdown would be either Putin or the monolithic Russian government as an extension of Putin.

At any rate, Navalny’s expeditious and mildly foolhardy return after a close call with Novichok speaks to a desire to prove his worth. To prove himself to himself he wanted to be seen fighting Putin from the front lines, not from the insulation of Western political asylum. The question then arises of Putin’s role in this showdown. Of course, there is debate whether Putin was directly responsible, but for those who know Russia, as I do, this is a distinction without a difference.

Within Hegel’s framework, both Navalny and Putin were aiming to establish self-certainty, not only for the sake of recognition by the counterparty but also in the eyes of a disenchanted Russian electorate. Faced with this scenario, Hegel might assert that Navalny had no choice but to go back, lest he fail to be “recognized as a self-sufficient self-consciousness”(pg. 111, $187).

We can apply this test of mettle, if you will, to many other public-facing steps towards mortality. Some examples that may also be interesting to explore: assisted suicide, suicide by cop, and martyrdom (for any cause).