In contrast to Heidegger's transcendental account of death, we have been reading the Phenomenology as a history of death, a history of death's transformation. Not only can death have a history, but according to Hegel's method, it must have a history. Part of the ‘detailed history of the education of consciousness’ is an account of how consciousness relates to what it is not. Initially, consciousness finds death as its complete negation, the incomprehensibility of natural negation. Slowly, as consciousness becomes community, it is able to introject death within itself and transform it from natural negation to spiritual negation, as we saw in the section on the Terror. It is insufficient, however, for death merely to be introjected within the community. The community must introject death in such a way that the negativity of death becomes part of the community's everyday life. The community must master death rather than be mastered by it. The final stages in spirit's mastery over death is found in the ‘revealed religion’ and ‘absolute knowing’ sections of the Phenomenology.

In every section we have examined prior to revealed religion, death has been characterised as ‘master’. In what respect, though, is death the master of the previous forms of consciousness and community we have examined? Death's mastery takes different forms depending on the consciousness or community that is trying to introject it.