I was walking my dog, when I realized... đ©
We get serious in this week's newsletter. Theology and German philosophy.
Lord-Bondsman Dialectic
He knows my hand, he'll feel my strength Until the animal is tameâ The CEO, who will not yield, Is leashed to his ship: itâs bought, not leased; He'll sink if his costs are doing the same. âI'm strong but by the dog's pull on his length. Who of the men or gods am I Who asked of Abraham his son And secretly had realized He gambled that which made him God?
Explanation
A bit of a tricky one this week! But donât worry: I can explain.
This poem is about people that are putative lords but actually bondsmen, due to their dependence on their own bondsman for their status of lord. (This argument comes from the 19th century German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel.)Â
I understand his argument as follows.Â
Thesis:Â
Prima facie, a bondsman is a thing that depends on a lord for its survival. For example, a lord might guarantee security in exchange for submission.Â
Antithesis:Â
However, you canât be called a lord if you donât have a bondsman. The bondsman calls you lordâand other people call you a lordâbecause you have a bondsman.Â
Conclusion:Â
So the lord needs the bondsman to exist: their roles, and their names, are reversed.
In this poem, I have given three examples of situations where this reversal occurs.Â
A dog and its owner
A CEO and their companyÂ
God and Abraham
In the first stanza, a dog owner says that the dog will âknow my handâ and âfeel my strength,â meaning that the dog will submit to its master; the owner plans to make it thus. Howeverâand here you actually have to skip stanza two and go to stanza three, the one-linerâthe owner is only a master because they have purchased a dog.Â
The dog regains some independence in this way. The dog makes the owner what they are, and therefore the owner depends on the dog.
The same is said of a CEO and their company in stanza 2. I manage to squeeze a dog pun in when I say the CEO is âleashed to his shipââthe ship is a metaphor for a company; sinking, a metaphor for going bankrupt.Â
In stanza 3, I turn to the story of Abraham and Isaac. God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to prove his faith.Â
On my reading (probably quite unorthodox) God was gambling here. He knew that he stood to lose Abrahamsâs faith by asking such a horrible thing of him, all while needing Abraham to see him as God, in the same way an owner needs a dog. The interesting thing about this is, that God obviously knew that he was making this gamble, and did it anyways, instead of avoiding giving such a test to âthat which made him God,â i.e. Abraham. Proof of Abrahamâs loyalty is worth a lot to God.Â
Note, lastly, that the speaker identifies himself with the dog owner, and then speaks in third person about God and the CEO. This indicates that the speaker, and the poem, are allegorizing the domestic: they are metaphorizing dog ownership as Godlike and like a CEO.
Lesson
Treat your bondsmen with respect, my lords.
Scansion (poem stats)
10 lines
Iambic tetrameter
Rhyme scheme:
AB CDB A EFEG