Owl of Minerva (Epistemological Lateness)

In his words 8

“Philosophy as the thought of the world does not appear until reality has completed its formative process and made itself ready. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old.”
48:07 Towards a Materialist Theory of Subjectivity · Hegel's owl of Minerva—philosophy always too late

“What you add to objective to get to the absolute is illusion itself. Absolute means objective order plus the insight into how illusions are constitutive of it.”
43:54 International Journal of Zizek Studies Conference · Hegelian absolute knowing

“Absolute knowing is not opposed to historicism, but it's historicism brought to its most radical extreme. It's: that's the limit.”
35:44 In Conversation with Jonathan Derbyshire · reinterpretation of Hegel's absolute knowing

The stories that teach it

the jokes and anecdotes he reaches for when he works in this idea, ranked by how many of its talks they turn up in; each card is one story, with every retelling on its page

example · in 5 of its talks

Stephen Hawking's brain-wired wheelchair

A man who knew Stephen Hawking told Žižek that in his last years Hawking no longer needed to move his finger, his brain was directly connected and he just thought 'forward' and his chair moved. If the signal goes out, it can also go in: who will control this?

joke · in 4 of its talks

Light at the end of the tunnel is another train

Žižek subverts the reassuring proverb 'there is a light at the end of the tunnel' by adding: of course there is, it's another train coming towards us. Used to reject cheap optimism while not endorsing total pessimism.

example · in 4 of its talks

Chinese schoolchildren wearing brain-activity rings

Chinese elementary schools equipped students with metal rings that measured brain activity so teachers could see on a screen when a student's attention fell, a primitive but real form of cognitive surveillance already in use.

anecdote · in 4 of its talks

Engels' prediction of WWI

Friedrich Engels, in the 1870s/80s, predicted a future European war involving Germany caught between Anglo-Saxons and Russia, which Germany would lose and then restart, demonstrating that Marxists can be lucky or prescient.

joke · in 6 of its talks

coffee without cream / coffee without milk

A customer orders coffee without cream; the waiter says they have no cream but can offer coffee without milk. Even though the result is identical, the absent supplement matters, Hegelian negativity in a joke.

joke · in 4 of its talks

Stalin's dialectical synthesis on money in communism

Left radicals (Trotskyists) say no money in communism, Bukharin says money is natural; Stalin's dialectical 'synthesis', in communism there will be money and there will not be money: some people will have money, others will not.

Lacanian jealous husband4 St. Louis Hegelians3 Pascal's wager inverted3 The Knife and the Idiot3 Asking Occupy Wall Street 'what do you want?'3 Robespierre and Saint-Just: revolution as wild sea without compass3 Lenin in Warsaw3 Bill Gates as rent-extractor from general intellect3 Fukushima and Tokyo evacuation3 Malcolm X and the loss of roots as emancipatory starting point3

Where it comes up 56

76 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there

The Spirit of Distrust2020-09-08 · 31:27

0:42 Owl of Minerva

… As he says, we all know it, towards the end of the preface to his Rechtsphilosophie, like the Owl of Minerva which takes off at dusk, philosophy can only paint grey on grey.

2:52 absolute knowing

… gularity thinkers who think only with this Neuralink global machine where our minds will immediately communicate, what Hegel had in mind as absolute knowing will become will finally become realized.

2:17 'Noch nicht dort' Hegelians (not-yet-there Hegelians)

… I call them ironically the 'we are not yet there' Hegelians.

Slavoj Zizek vs. Terry Pinkard (How to Read Hegel)pub. 2022-07-19 · 1:27:59

25:31 Owl of Minerva

… no introduction, Vorrede I think, to Rechtsphilosophie, to Hegel's Philosophy of Right, where he has those famous lines about you know the owl of Minerva takes off only in the evening.

28:56 back from Marx to Hegel

… I think what we need today, I say this with all brutal irony, is a Hegelian materialist reversal of Marx.

9:29 'Noch nicht dort' Hegelians (not-yet-there Hegelians)

… Uh Terry, and it's my first question to you, how do you stand to this? Many Hegelians today are what I ironically call "not yet there Hegelians".

The Parallax of Ontology2018-12-01 · 1:52:48

1:18:13 Owl of Minerva

… d, "Wait a minute, Hegel says in the one of the most famous passages introduction to forward for a to *Rechtsphilosophie* that you know the Owl of Minerva takes off only in the evening, philosophy comes too late." Okay, but if Hegel was not a complete idiot, shouldn't we accept the fact that t …

6:31 unhintergehbar

… e Absolute in itself, but the Absolute of the, sorry for this confused expression, of the unsurpassable, you Germans have a wonderful word, unhintergehbar, you cannot go behind, self-relating, Selbstbeziehung, of the totality of meaning.

~23:49 episteme

was forever, that's the title of the book, Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More. That's how symbolic totality functions. It's not here, then all of a sudden it's here, and the entire past appears in a new way. Now it's easy to insist …

Slavoj Žižek — On G.W.F. Hegel, Lecture 1 [Remaster]2009-08 · 2:33:15

23:32 Owl of Minerva

… with his well-known usually interpreted as conservative saying that you know at the end of his introduction to philosophy of right that the owl of Minerva only takes off in the dusk and so on that this is precisely the non-necessary, the open contingent Hegel.

0:32 absolute knowing

… of a pan-logical view that you can out of the self-movement of a notion you can somehow develop, deduce the entire reality in the sense of absolute knowing, the end of history, all that stuff.

~23:28 blind act

prohibits. That's what Hegel aims at with his well-known usually interpreted as conservative saying that you know at the end of his introduction to philosophy of right that the owl of Minerva only takes off in the dusk and so on that this is precisely …

The Dash: A discussion with Rebecca Comay and Frank Ruda2018-10-23 · 1:26:41

3:39 Owl of Minerva

… s the most famous passage maybe of Philosophy of Right Hegel says you know that famous metaphor that philosophy can grasp an epoch when the owl of Minerva takes flight in the evening only when its time is over now isn’t there a clear conclusion from this either Hegel was a total idiot who didn …

56:23 absolute knowing

… r that reproach first as a way of getting into this question of the the the absolute which are enunciated um seemingly from the position of absolute knowing but are not and this is not really meant as an insult they’re not engaged in the production of absolute knowing itself and this is part of …