Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
My Bondage and My Freedom
A more philosophical autobiography than the 1845 Narrative — Douglass after the Garrisonian break, reflecting on natural rights, the meaning of citizenship, and the universal aspiration to freedom
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | My Bondage and My Freedom (Mature (Douglass's second autobiography, written after his break with Garrison and the founding of his own newspaper)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
My Bondage and My Freedom
The autobiographical time of Douglass's life from birth in slavery through escape and political career; the historical time of antebellum America.
Space
My Bondage and My Freedom
The American slave system as the geographical-political space; the embodied movement from Maryland to free states and Britain.
Matter
My Bondage and My Freedom
The embodied enslaved person whose body is the immediate object of slavery's violence; the materiality of the slave-economy.
Observer
My Bondage and My Freedom
Douglass himself as autobiographical subject and political-philosophical theorist; the morally serious American reader.
Energy
My Bondage and My Freedom
The moral energies of the abolition movement; the political energies that the book aims to mobilise toward emancipation.
Information
My Bondage and My Freedom
The autobiographical narrative as evidentiary; the political-philosophical argument as the reflective theory it grounds.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The relation between Douglass's three autobiographies — Narrative (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Life and Times (1881, expanded 1892) — is itself a subject of scholarly debate. The 1855 work's philosophical ambition is sometimes underweighted by readers who prefer the more directly polemical 1845 Narrative; the recovery of the 1855 text's political-philosophical content has been a major project of contemporary Douglass scholarship (Stauffer, Blight, Gates).