The human being, according to his immediate existence in himself, is something natural, external to his concept; it is only through the formation of his own body and mind, and essentially through his self-consciousness apprehending itself as free, that he takes possession of himself and becomes the property of himself as against others. This taking possession of himself is, conversely, equally the putting into actuality of what he is according to his concept (as a possibility, capacity, or predisposition), whereby he is, for the first time, both posited as his own and, as an object, distinguished from simple self-consciousness, and thereby becomes capable of receiving the form of a thing (cf. Rem. to § 43).

The asserted justification of slavery (in all its more particular grounds — physical force, captivity in war, the saving and preservation of life, sustenance, upbringing, benefits conferred, one’s own consent, and so forth), as well as the justification of dominion as mere lordship in general, and every historical view of the right of slavery and of lordship, rests upon taking the human being as a natural entity in general, according to an existence (to which arbitrary will also belongs) that is not adequate to his concept. The assertion of the absolute wrong of slavery, on the other hand, holds fast to the concept of the human being as spirit, as in itself free, and is one-sided in that it takes the human being as free by nature, or, what is the same thing, takes the concept as such in its immediacy, and not the Idea, as the truth. This antinomy, like every antinomy, rests upon formal thinking, which holds fast to and asserts the two moments of an Idea in separation from one another, each on its own, so that neither is adequate to the Idea, and each remains in its untruth. Free spirit is precisely this (§ 21): not to be merely the concept, or to be in itself, but to supersede this formalism of itself, and with it its immediate natural existence, and to give itself an existence which is solely its own, a free existence. The side of the antinomy that asserts the concept of freedom therefore has the merit of containing the absolute starting point — but only the starting point — for the truth, while the other side, which remains fixed at conceptless existence, does not contain the standpoint of rationality and right at all. The standpoint of the free will, with which right and the science of right begin, is already beyond the untrue standpoint on which the human being is taken as a natural entity and merely as a concept existing in itself, and is on that account capable of slavery. This earlier, untrue appearance concerns spirit at the stage where it is still only at the standpoint of its consciousness; the dialectic of the concept and of the merely immediate consciousness of freedom there brings about the struggle for recognition and the relation of lordship and bondage (see the Phenomenology of Spirit, pp. 115 ff., and the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, § 325 ff.). But that objective spirit, the content of right, should not itself again be grasped merely in its subjective concept — so that the fact that the human being, in and for himself, is not destined for slavery should not again be taken merely as an ought — this comes about only through the recognition that the Idea of freedom is truly actual only as the state.

Encyclopaedia [of the Philosophical Sciences], 3rd ed., § 430 ff.