Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Eco's Superman Myth and Camus's The Fall It is impossible to truly realize the impact of previous minds on modern society, simply because what they taught is so intrinsic to the thinking that followed. A great example is GWF Hegel, an 18th century philosopher who first gave a name to dialectical relations. In his book Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel details the relationships between people and ideas in a way that seems obvious today, but was revolutionary at the time. He opens his discussion by describing the meeting of consciousnesses as master and slave and describes the development of the interaction in a dialectical manner. In this particular situation, the slave receives an original definition from the master, then denies it, since it is not a complete (and therefore inaccurate) description of himself. The relationship between the two consciousnesses unfolds as a progression between a definition, negation and result. Common terms given to this movement are thesis (the original position or definition), antithesis (the negation), and synthesis (the final movement that combines elements of each of the first two). The synthesis often becomes the new thesis, which is equally denied. The entire theory can be seen as an elaboration of cause and effect, where the original thesis "causes" the antithesis which "causes" a synthesis. There is a direct causal progression. An interesting concept that dialectics gives rise to is the fact that once a thesis is formulated, everything that comes after is influenced by the original position. For example, one may attempt to negate a label, while still giving validity to the label, and the synthesis will cause the slave, even in the "free" definition, to define the self in terms of what the master originally defined. Even a negation ends in the original terms, because the original terms were the "cause" of any definition the slave created. Hegel's theory prevailed in society for many years, thinkers such as Kierkegaard and Heidegger relied heavily on dialectics as a way to promote their theories. Cause and effect became the main way of looking at world events, and life continued until the advent of the 20th century, which saw a denial of Hegel's thought and a change in dialectics. Superman was published. In this article, Eco, critic and novelist, discussed the transition from Hegelian dialectics in light of the Superman saga.