Hegel's bondsman is a recurrent trope, as is metaphysical slavery in general.
Unlike Pynchon, however, Wallace does not wish to dump the legacy of Calvinism; he seeks to build fictions around work and the fervent call to work, an activity he recurrently sees not just in terms of the labor theory of value but, through the lens of Hegel, as the only way of creating a fully viable self.
attempts a fusion of semiotic, economic, and psychoanalytic systems
a textbook petitio principii
quoted from Oblivion
My third and most important philosophical guidepost on value is axiology
Severs includes DFW's definition of axiology from Both Flesh and Not
