Introduction to the intersubjective nature of recognition emerging from the struggle of negotiation of identities between subjects of unequal power. Exploration of the social terms and dynamic of “asymmetrical relations” via the structural examination of the conceptual pair “master – slave” that marks various forms of dependency and independence of every individual subject from infancy until its aged years. Philosophical figures to be discussed: Thucydides, Xenophon, Aristippus, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Husserl, Kojeve, Sartre, Foucault, Sade, Clausewitz, Kondylis.