Hegel on the Peloponnesian War and Thucydides
example · Hegel ·
retold in 4 talks
Hegel reportedly said that the only spiritual gain of the Peloponnesian War was Thucydides' book about it, as if thousands had to die so the book could be written. Žižek uses this to introduce his own (tongue-in-cheek) claim that San Francisco exists so Hitchcock could make Vertigo.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“things in reality happen so that then a book can be written about them”
“from the standpoint of the world history retroactive constructing a narrative the Peloponnesian War took place so that Thucydides could write a book on it”
“his immortal work is the absolute gain which humanity has derived from the contest.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Eduard Bernstein2Helmut Dahmer2Thucydides2Emanuel Swedenborg1Jamil Khader1Steven St. Croix1Shulamit Aloni1Percy Bysshe Shelley1
alongside works
Every retelling 4
Hegel reportedly said that the only spiritual gain of the Peloponnesian War was Thucydides' book about it, as if thousands had to die so the book could be written. Žižek uses this to introduce his own (tongue-in-cheek) claim that San Francisco exists so Hitchcock could make Vertigo., illustrating Hegelian teleology,the aesthetic result of historical catastrophe
Hegel claimed the spiritual result of the Peloponnesian War is that Thucydides wrote his book about it, the crazy idealist notion that real historical events happen so that a great work can be written., illustrating ontological justification of art,form-content tension,thinking in cinema
Žižek cites Hegel's claim that Thucydides' history is the 'absolute gain' humanity derived from the Peloponnesian War, which he reads naively but profoundly: the war took place so that the book could be written, meaning is constituted retroactively., illustrating retroactivity of truth,vanishing mediator
1:09 German Idealism and Psychoanalysis with Slavoj Zizek, Alenka Zupancic, Mladen Dolar - Part 22012-04-20 · 36:35
Hegel says the Peloponnesian War effectively took place so that Thucydides could write his book; from the standpoint of the Absolute the book is the gain humanity derived from the contest, more important than the suffering., illustrating the Absolute,Aufhebung,book matters, not bodies that matter