Master–slave dialectic and morality in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle

Abstract

The Man in the High Castle (1962) is one of Philip K. Dick’s most acclaimed and striking novels. The narrative is set in an alternate reality where the Axis powers have won the Second World War and occupied the United States, dividing the country into three regions: the Nazi ruled greater Reich, the Pacific Japanese States and the neutral zone. As a result of this partition, Americans have become foreign in their own country. This article examines the master-slave dialectic and master-slave morality in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. The master-slave dialectic is a theory proposed by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel outlines a mutual relationship where he assigns specific roles to two parties that engage in a struggle for desire to achieve self-consciousness. In direct connection with the master-slave dialectic is Nietzsche’s master-slave morality which was developed upon Hegel’s original conception. The thinker describes a binary opposition where particular values have been ascribed to master and slave/servant morality to establish a sustainable and reciprocal relationship. This study aims to analyze Dick’s The Man in the High Castle from a philosophical perspective, attempting to expose the master-slave dialectic and morality in the work of fiction and thus revealing the author’s covert messages implied in the subtext of the novel, while at the same time comparing and contrasting these with the television adaptation.