Žižek's Hegel & Contemporary Hegel Debates
Žižek's polemical label for the contemporary Hegel centred on recognition and argumentative discourse (Pippin, Brandom, Fukuyama, Butler), which he regards as a domestication that suppresses Hegel's negativity and distrust.
In his words 5
“What if the gap that separates me from the absolute is already immanent inherent to the absolute itself?”1:22:23 Figures of Post-Humanity · gap / disparity immanent to the absolute
“We can experience the absolute only through our very failure to experience it.”1:23:51 Figures of Post-Humanity · Kantian sublime / negative access to the absolute
“I think it's exactly the opposite. Animals do it when there is a mating season for procreation. Women do this that they elevate an act which is in itself physically a rather ridiculous act of copulation, they elevate it to the absolute.”1:27:57 Figures of Post-Humanity · sexuality as elevation to the absolute / critique of Catholic sexual ethics
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
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.
Adorno on Schoenberg and Rachmaninov
Adorno argues that after Schoenberg's atonal revolution, traditional tonal music (like Rachmaninov's) loses its innocence and becomes 'kitsch' or a negation of itself, mediated by the new break.
Kant on Revolution
Kant’s paradox that a revolution is illegal, but if it succeeds and establishes a new legal order, it becomes prohibited to rebel against it, showing how outcomes retroactively validate means.
Hegel and the English Reform Bill
Žižek notes that the last text Hegel published was an analysis of the English Reform Bill moving toward universal democracy, and Hegel was horrified by it, showing his awareness that a new epoch was beginning and that his own model of the state was already disintegrating.
Late Plato Dialogue
Žižek compares the expected Q&A session to late Platonic dialogues where one character (Socrates) talks continuously and the other merely interjects with 'by Zeus, Socrates' every ten minutes, predicting a monologic format.
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.
Where it comes up 36
43 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there