Book Launch - Reading Hegel w/ Zizek, Ruda, Hamza
Debate · Scottish Center for Continental Philosophy ·
2022 · 1:57:47 · 14,938 words
with Dominic (host), Agon Hamza
philosophy-generalcinema-art-cultureideologysubjectivityhegel-dialecticscapitalismcommunism-socialismrevolution-violenceecology-climatehistorypsychoanalysiseconomicstechnology-ai-cyberspacedemocracy
Žižek presents a new Hegelian reading of Sophocles' Antigone, arguing that her act is not the application of a universal ethical law (respect for the dead) but a radical political suspension of the existing ethical order. He contrasts this with Judith Butler’s liberal interpretation, emphasizing that true ethical/political acts begin with an exception ('but my brother') that creates a new universality rather than extending an old one. He concludes with anecdotes about Cornel West and a critique of Putin’s rhetoric to illustrate the necessity of such disruptive, particularist acts. Žižek draws a sustained parallel between Hegel's dialectical reading of the French Revolution and our obligation to remain faithful to 20th-century emancipatory projects despite Stalinist failure, arguing for 'revolutionary pessimism' against historical teleology. He updates Marxist categories for contemporary capitalism, non-valorized work, neo-feudal rent extraction by tech monopolists, and precarious self-entrepreneurship, while defending state power against civil-society romanticism, drawing on David Harvey, Álvaro García Linera, and Adrian Johnston's reading of Hegel on the English Reform Bill. He attacks 'not yet Hegelians' (Fukuyama, Lukács, Kurzweil) and rehabilitates the Hegelian-Freudian thesis that wrong theoretical categories are not mere mistakes but constitute part of a wrong, inverted reality. The excerpt also addresses women's growing dominance in Hegel scholarship and reads Moonfall and Don't Look Up as Hegelian films about nature's artificiality and the impossibility of sincere political response.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 27
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek’s summary of Antigone’s stance: the universal rule is that bodies should be left to rot, with the exception of the brother being buried; this inversion of the 'respect the dead' norm highlights the brutal particularity of her act.
The pivotal moment in Antigone’s speech where she interrupts the general rule ('let them all rot') with a particular exception ('but my brother'), which serves as the foundation for a new universality.
as “exemplum”
A concrete universal: an exceptional specific case that directly gives body to a universality, functioning not as a mere example but as the exception that becomes the law itself.
The state of affairs before the ethical act, characterized by the rotting of corpses and the absence of order, which the ethical act interrupts and from which a new order emerges.
as “extension dislocates the universality”
The Hegelian idea that when a universal principle (like the French Revolution) is extended to new groups (like Haitian slaves), it does not simply apply the principle but displaces and transforms the universality itself.
The idea that Antigone’s act is not ethical in the sense of following universal principles, but political in that it suspends the prevailing ethical substance (customs/laws) to establish a new order.
as “symptonal point”
A specific, exceptional element (like the brother) that grounds and reveals the structure of a deeper universality, rather than being a mere instance of it.
as “historical teleology”
The Marxist assumption that we know where history is going; Žižek insists we must renounce its remaining traces in Marx and accept that emancipatory projects fail.
as “revolutionary pessimism”
Žižek's stance that things necessarily go wrong, but something good can emerge only through failure, a Hegelian corrective to teleological optimism.
Žižek's colorful phrase for the dialectical satisfaction Hegel would have felt reading Stalinism or cryptocurrencies, confirming that even the noblest project ends in its opposite.
as “formal egalitarian democracy”
Universal suffrage divorced from social-hierarchical position; Hegel's worry was that the lumpen bourgeoisie would manipulate it more powerfully than old hierarchical power, Žižek says Hegel was describing the US today.
Hegel's category for the new rich with no proper place in social hierarchy, whom Žižek invokes to show how formal democracy is manipulated by wealth more opaquely than old hierarchical power.
as “Kantianization of Hegel”
The liberal move of projecting mutual recognition as the ideal endpoint and then reading Hegel as merely progressing toward that Kantian-liberal goal.
Mutual recognition as the liberal telos projected onto Hegel by recognition-Hegelians; Žižek criticizes this Kantianization for domesticating Hegel's radicalism.
as “not yet Hegelians”
Žižek's label for thinkers (Lukács, Fukuyama, Kurzweil) who affirm Hegel but claim historical constraints prevented him from reaching the 'true' endpoint they themselves project.
The institutional structuring that cryptocurrencies were designed to eliminate; Hegel's point is that attempting to bypass mediation reproduces it in a more opaque and brutal form.
A term Žižek uses provocatively, noting Marx and Engels never used it; it was introduced by Plekhanov and falsely treats historical materialism as a mere application of a general ontological dialectics of nature.
The Hegelian-Freudian thesis that mistaken theoretical categories are never mere errors but participate in and constitute the inverted, alienated reality they mis-describe.
Not a simply wrong vision of reality but a wrong vision adequate to a wrong (inverted, alienated) reality, an illusion that is itself part of reality.
Žižek identifies two contemporary forms: classical valorized exploitation (now almost a 'privilege') and non-valorized dispossession of habitat and informal/illegal labor.
The portion of value appropriated by the capitalist from the worker's labor-power; contrasted with non-valorized forms of dispossession that underlie but exceed it.
Classical Marxist exploitation through commodity exchange in which the employer appropriates surplus value from labor-power; Žižek stresses it always requires a non-valorized supplement.
as “non-valorized work”
Work that underpins valorized exploitation without itself being formally exploited, illegal labor, immigrants, women's domestic work, destruction of indigenous habitat.
as “neo-feudal lords”
Žižek's term for tech monopolists (Gates, Amazon) who do not extract surplus value but collect rent by controlling the digital commons.
as “precarious workers as free entrepreneurs”
The ideological inversion by which gig workers (Uber drivers, programmers) perceive themselves as self-employed entrepreneurs because they own their means of production, making class solidarity impossible.
Lazarus's slogan ('all that moves/introduces disorder is not necessarily red') endorsed by Žižek: civil-society mobilization and populist unrest are not automatically left-wing.
Žižek's Hegelian reading of Moonfall: nature is not spontaneous organic chaos but is itself mechanical, formal, and artificial, the fantasy of natural spontaneity is a human projection.
Stories he reaches for 4
Uber drivers own their car; programmers own their PC; so gig workers perceive themselves as free entrepreneurs competing with other precarious workers rather than with bosses, the 'most ingenious invention of today's capitalism', making solidarity impossible.
“if you're an uber driver, you own your own means of production... you then perceive yourself as a small-scale free entrepreneur... you perceive as competition, not up the bosses, but other precarious.”
Žižek uses the slogan 'Black Lives Matter' to argue that true ethics is not the extension of 'All Lives Matter' (liberal universalism) but the assertion of a particular exception ('but black lives matter') that creates a new universality.
“black lives matter. no, it means precisely. but black lives matter.”
Based on Adrian Johnston's reading of Hegel's last political text (1831 Reform Bill), Žižek shows Hegel foresaw that formal egalitarian democracy enables the new wealthy lumpen bourgeoisie to manipulate elections more opaquely than old hierarchical power, Hegel was describing the US today.
“hegel was describing united states today, more or less. so you see, this is what i like in hegel. be careful even when he appears to be just conservative.”
Žižek notes that Putin, in justifying the invasion of Ukraine, blames Lenin for inventing Ukraine, thereby rejecting the Soviet legacy. Žižek uses this to argue that anti-colonial struggles (like Haiti) do not just apply French principles but dislocate them, similar to how Maoism or Leninism reframe Marxism.
“he said ukrainians don't exist. ukraine is an invention of lenin”
Works invoked 14
Antigone play
The central text for Žižek’s argument; he offers a new reading focusing on the 'let them rot' exception and the political suspension of the ethical.
Gillian Rose's landmark book; cited as opening the recent wave of women-authored Hegel scholarship.
Don't Look Up film
Defended against critics who found it too ironic; Zupančič's reading shows its real target includes enlightened Democrats not just Trumpism; confirms Žižek's thesis that genuine catastrophic response collapses into performance/comedy.
Moonfall film
Roland Emmerich disaster film; Žižek calls it 'disgusting' but says he 'moderately liked it'; reads the premise (moon as AI hyperstructure) as encoding a genuine Hegelian insight that nature is artificial rather than organic.
Crisis and Critique journal
Adrian Johnston's article on Hegel's last political text (English Reform Bill, 1831) showing Hegel's prescient fear of lumpen-bourgeois manipulation of formal democracy; Žižek says he is relying on it.
Dialectics of Nature book
Engels's manuscript collection; cited to show that even here Engels only conditionally wrote 'dialectics so to speak in nature' once and did not establish 'dialectical materialism' as systematic ontology.
Béatrice Longuenesse's early Hegel book; ASR corrupts the title to 'egalale la critique de la métaphysique'; described as a 'very good early book'.
Sheila Fitzpatrick's book; Žižek is writing a review; endorses her thesis that ordinary Soviet people willingly participated in corruption, complicating the elite-terror narrative.
Hymn to the Gods poem
Hölderlin’s poem, specifically the line 'but poets establish what remains,' which Žižek re-interprets to support his reading of Antigone.
Álvaro García Linera's contribution to a pandemic-era volume; makes a principled but realistic case that the left must take state power seriously rather than treating the state as automatically capital's instrument.
Refers to Alenka Zupančič’s upcoming book, which Žižek cites for its analysis of Antigone’s active stance toward the rotting corpse.
Referenced in the anecdote about Cornel West’s talk title 'Short Stories by Brother Anton.'
Žižek's informal name for a joint book by himself, Frank Ruda, and Agon Hamza; his only complaint is the absence of women; specific title unclear from ASR, likely Reading Marx (Polity, 2018).
Alenka Zupančič's Slovenian-language analysis of Don't Look Up; develops the point that the film's real target is enlightened liberal democracy, not only Trumpian populism; Žižek says critics missed what she found.
People invoked 46
Catherine Rosenfield positive
Cited for detailing how Antigone’s exception is grounded in her unique family situation (Edipus family misadventures).
Gillian Rose positive
Author of Hegel Contra Sociology; cited as pioneer of the wave of women Hegelians; Žižek explicitly notes she is Jacqueline Rose's sister (not Jacqueline herself).
Hans Küng negative
Cited as the originator of the 'global ethic project,' which Žižek rejects as incompatible with Antigone’s monstrous exception.
Lazarus, Sylvain positive
Endorsed for his slogan 'tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge'; broke with Badiou partly by embracing religion as a new politics, which Žižek criticizes; ASR renders name as 'laszararus'.
Agon Hamza positive
Co-author of joint 'triple orgy book'; addressed as interlocutor alongside Frank Ruda.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Cited for her 'path breaking study' on Antigone, which Žižek agrees with regarding the active stance of letting the body rot.
In Antigone, reacts to the violation of Creon’s prohibition and castsigated Antigone as demonic.
Rebecca Comay positive
Listed among important women Hegelians; mentioned as having co-written a book with Frank Ruda (likely The Dash, 2018).
Rocío Zambrana positive
Cited as a younger-generation woman Hegelian; post-anti-colonialist and politically engaged.
Pierre Bayard positive
Cited for the distinction between 'examples' and 'exemplum' (concrete universality), which Žižek adopts.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Mentioned in the context of Putin’s rhetoric and the Bolshevik revolution as an example of how universality is displaced/extended.
Georg Lukács negative
Another 'not yet Hegelian': claimed Hegel couldn't see the proletariat as subject-object of history because capitalism wasn't fully developed; ASR renders name as 'lukak sch'.
Georgi Plekhanov negative
Established 'dialectical materialism' as a systematic general ontology (of which historical materialism is supposedly just one application), Žižek treats this as a fundamental distortion of both Hegel and Marx.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Paradigm case of a 'not yet Hegelian': reads Hegel as pointing toward the liberal end of history, treating him as not yet fully there.
Ecuadorean president; his overthrow is described as 'an abomination' that brought right-wing Lenín Moreno to power.
Frank Ruda positive
Co-interlocutor throughout; co-author of joint 'triple orgy book' (with Žižek and Agon Hamza); Žižek's only complaint about the book is the absence of women.
Judith Butler negative
Žižek critiques Butler’s reading of Antigone as liberal and universalist, arguing she misses the radical particularity of Antigone’s act.
Álvaro García Linera positive
'Our good friend'; former Bolivian VP under Morales; wrote a pandemic-volume text on the role of state making a principled but realistic case for left engagement with state power; aware of Bolivia's non-valorized exploitation dilemma.
Raymond Kurzweil negative
Labelled 'an obscenity': claims true Hegelian unity of thinking and reality can only be actualized via AI singularity/Neuralink, the most extreme 'not yet Hegelian' variant.
Justin Trudeau negative
Despite small green gestures, did not touch fracking; indigenous communities' environments ruined without even constituting formal Marxist exploitation, paradigm of liberal hypocrisy.
Alain Badiou positive
Referenced approvingly in context of Lazarus's split from him; implicitly the more correct party on the religion question; ASR renders name as 'alain bab you'.
Mentioned only to distinguish her from her sister Gillian Rose, the Hegel scholar.
Leon Trotsky negative
The 'Trotsky dream' that Lenin's survival and alliance with Trotsky would have produced socialist democracy is dismissed as naive simplification inconsistent with revolutionary pessimism.
Antigone’s brother, whose burial is the central act of the play.
David Harvey positive
'My good friend David Harvey'; cited for the thesis that there is no classical valorization without a non-valorized supplement.
Cited to show he only conditionally used 'Dialektik sozusagen in der Natur' once in Dialectics of Nature and did not establish 'dialectical materialism' as systematic ontology.
Adrian Johnston positive
'I'm here relying on Adrian Johnston'; his Crisis and Critique article on Hegel's last political text (English Reform Bill, 1831) shows Hegel's prescient fear of lumpen-bourgeois manipulation of formal democracy.
Carl Jung negative
Patients treated by Jungian analysts develop specifically Jungian symptoms, proof that wrong theory is part of a wrong reality; implicitly contrasted unfavorably with Freud.
Evo Morales positive
Bolivian president praised for keeping radical left in power while proceeding pragmatically, raising ordinary people's standard of living 'without screwing it up'.
Catherine Malabou positive
Listed among the major women contributors to Hegel studies in the past 20 years.
Sheila Fitzpatrick positive
'The best historian of Stalinism'; hated by both right and left; her thesis that ordinary people gladly participated in Stalinist corruption; Žižek is writing a review of her Brief History of Soviet Union and links her skepticism to a 'specifically feminine' mode of inquiry.
Béatrice Longuenesse positive
Cited for early Hegel book (Hegel et la critique de la métaphysique; ASR corrupts the title); described as 'very good early book' before she became a Kantian.
Lenín Moreno negative
Ecuador's moderately right-wing president who replaced Correa; Žižek calls his bearing the name 'Lenín' 'a crime against history'; his government destroys indigenous habitat rather than employing people.
David Feldshuh positive
Cited as the translator of Antigone whose English version Žižek considers the 'best' and 'definitive' for capturing Antigone’s subjective stance.
Bill Gates negative
Named as a paradigm neo-feudal lord who extracts rent by controlling digital commons rather than exploiting through surplus value; ASR renders name as 'bill geake'.
Mao Zedong positive
Cited as an example of how basic concepts (Marxism) are reframed when applied to China, not just extended.
Roland Emmerich positive
Director of Moonfall; Žižek finds the film 'disgusting' but 'moderately liked it' and uses it seriously to illustrate the Hegelian insight that nature is an artificial megastructure.
Cornel West positive
Described as a 'very good friend' and 'American black theologian'; Žižek uses an anecdote about West’s naming conventions ('Brother Anton') to illustrate his point about particularity.
Sophocles positive
Cited as the author of Antigone, whose work is central to Žižek’s philosophical argument.
Character in Antigone, embodying the state/public space and pragmatic political terms.
Antigone’s sister, described as 'warmly human' in contrast to Antigone’s coldness.
Friedrich Hölderlin positive
Praised for his poetry, specifically the line 'but poets establish what remains,' which Žižek re-interprets to support his reading of Antigone.
Vladimir Putin negative
Cited as blaming Lenin for the existence of Ukraine; Žižek uses this to discuss how extensions of universality (like Soviet history) are contested.
Karl Marx positive
Affirmed as essential but in need of updating: remaining traces of historical teleology in Marx must be renounced; Marx and Engels never used the term 'dialectical materialism'.
Sigmund Freud positive
Co-invoked with Hegel for the basic rule: wrong theoretical categories are never just wrong descriptions but constitute part of reality; psychoanalytic school shapes patients' actual symptoms.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central theoretical framework throughout; Žižek consistently invokes Hegel's dialectics, his reading of the French Revolution, and his political texts as providing the best tools for the current moment.
Transcript 80 turns
Dominic (host)
it anarchy no.
it anarchy no.
Slavoj Žižek
this meeting is being recorded. okay, record it. so dominic, you you give the word first to other idiots, then to me. we should speak about a quarter of an hour. that's correct. and then dominique, you start the debate or whatever.
this meeting is being recorded. okay, record it. so dominic, you you give the word first to other idiots, then to me. we should speak about a quarter of an hour. that's correct. and then dominique, you start the debate or whatever.
Dominic (host)
absolutely. yep, and if everyone in the chat could simply post questions, we will turn to those after. the three 15-minute presentations. and so i'd ask you not to come on camera if you want to pose a question to the authors. but simply to post. and your questions and then after the presentations we're going to turn to discussion.
absolutely. yep, and if everyone in the chat could simply post questions, we will turn to those after. the three 15-minute presentations. and so i'd ask you not to come on camera if you want to pose a question to the authors. but simply to post. and your questions and then after the presentations we're going to turn to discussion.
Slavoj Žižek
what if one of the... participants themselves, the three of us. wants to ask a question. by all means do that. yeah, yeah, yeah, but what i mean, how we do it, is there a special rule for us?
what if one of the... participants themselves, the three of us. wants to ask a question. by all means do that. yeah, yeah, yeah, but what i mean, how we do it, is there a special rule for us?
Dominic (host)
no, simply i think what we'll do is we'll use the questions in the chat as the start point for our questions.. yeah.
no, simply i think what we'll do is we'll use the questions in the chat as the start point for our questions.. yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
the question is addressed to somebody and then you as the boss. ad me like if it's me like slik, would you like to answer this question blah blah, no?
the question is addressed to somebody and then you as the boss. ad me like if it's me like slik, would you like to answer this question blah blah, no?
Dominic (host)
anti. and
anti. and
Slavoj Žižek
yeah and then i said i'm tired, i need a coffee, fuck off. okay, everything clear. yeah. sorry, now things are clear. just purely technical stuff. i don't see, i will just check it up. should i put it a little bit like this, like... my faith is in principle okay, im. and. i mean the image of the face is okay, yes. the image, not the face itself. the face itself is... in in colloquial english, they call can face. i know. okay, thank very much. i shut up now. i'm ready.
yeah and then i said i'm tired, i need a coffee, fuck off. okay, everything clear. yeah. sorry, now things are clear. just purely technical stuff. i don't see, i will just check it up. should i put it a little bit like this, like... my faith is in principle okay, im. and. i mean the image of the face is okay, yes. the image, not the face itself. the face itself is... in in colloquial english, they call can face. i know. okay, thank very much. i shut up now. i'm ready.
Dominic (host)
okay. as as slavo says, let's simply move on with this event. we all know why we're here. i will skip. the lengthy introduction i prepared. because we've wasted enough time. and what i would like to do is simply invite our three authors for this wonderful book. that to step forward in sequence. what we're going to do is we're going to invert. invert the order of the book. so the book runs Žižek, Ruda, Hamza. our running order for our presentations is going to run Hamza, Ruda, Žižek and then we break in to discussion. as the presentations are ongoing, please post any questions in the chat. and i will try and direct those two. the authors. so with that in mind, i'd like to ask. i to step forward. i'll give a very short introduction. so agon is... professor of philosophy. at the institute of social sciences and humanities. skopje. an advisor to the prime minister of the republic of kosovo. he's the author of numerous books and articles, including Repeating Žižek in 2015 and Althusser and Theology from 2016. Agon, the floor slash webcam is yours.
okay. as as slavo says, let's simply move on with this event. we all know why we're here. i will skip. the lengthy introduction i prepared. because we've wasted enough time. and what i would like to do is simply invite our three authors for this wonderful book. that to step forward in sequence. what we're going to do is we're going to invert. invert the order of the book. so the book runs Žižek, Ruda, Hamza. our running order for our presentations is going to run Hamza, Ruda, Žižek and then we break in to discussion. as the presentations are ongoing, please post any questions in the chat. and i will try and direct those two. the authors. so with that in mind, i'd like to ask. i to step forward. i'll give a very short introduction. so agon is... professor of philosophy. at the institute of social sciences and humanities. skopje. an advisor to the prime minister of the republic of kosovo. he's the author of numerous books and articles, including Repeating Žižek in 2015 and Althusser and Theology from 2016. Agon, the floor slash webcam is yours.
Agon Hamza
thank you. thank you, dominique. it's great to be here. so i will try to finish this in 15 minutes, but please cut me if i... go longer. in his inaugural lecture, delivered at the heidelberg university in 1816, hegel writes that, quote, to draw philosophy out of the solitude into which it has wandered, to do such work as this, we may hope that we are called by the higher spirit of our time. and of quote, nothing seems more paradoxical than the attempts to draw philosophy out of its solitude, a place in which it has always existed. as hegel himself says, in no other science in effect is one as solitary as in philosophy. but what is our contemporary situation like? the effects of the pandemic are still persisting and they are not going to disappear in any near future. what is more, the economic, political and health problems accelerated by the pandemic should be thought only together with the global warming and ecological catastrophes exploding social antagonisms. and others which are part of a bigger and increasingly more uncontrollable cobweb of contradictions of capitalism. we are going through a night of a living death. one cannot avoid the disturbing aspect of overly present forces that have no political effect. efficacy fighting to remain alive and pretend like they have a clear and firm grip on the political reality. every ongoing crisis bears witness to this from the. ongoing ukrainian crisis ecology. to the far right all the way to the problems of racism, sexism and others. with the overload of political opinions from all sorts of spectrums more than ever one is tempted to propose the indifference in political matters. the very term opinion is problematic. the contemporary world has declared war to the long and painful process of thinking. not only encouraged but also solicited to abandon thinking. instead we are encouraged to feel and have opinions. we cannot have opinions for scientific and political and other matters. political opinions in political matters are profoundly. problematic because no matter what we say, they are indeed irrelevant because we lack the real knowledge and means to practice something that could be useful. there are political. problems and situations that are as they are and they appear as obscure not because they are necessarily in themselves so but because i do not have enough real information nor means to get it neither the necessary sufficient means to use it. therefore, one of the most hypocritical or problematic positions is to occupy a position of pretending to have more intimacy with some situations than with scientific or artistic problems that are equally. equally escape my grasp in this sense the more i pretend like i know a certain specific situation, the more i turn politics into a discursive war rather than sticking to what it really is, a question of principled pragmatic organization based on effective territorial engagements. this seems to be the problem of political commentaries and analysis of the left. with virtually every geopolitical, economic, cultural, or other problem in the world today. whenever one is engaged in providing a concrete analysis of a concrete situation, the beautiful souls. mo mostly of the left immediately react by evoking marx and sometimes even lenin in order to make up and justify it for their total lack of concrete positionings towards concrete situations. the real difficulty in lenin's dictum is not analyzing the concrete situation, what is truly going on on singularity, but rather providing a concrete analysis. that is to say, an analysis that is not more committed to the identification of an analyst as an abstract analyst of a concrete situation or as someone who can guarantee that providing the real correct analysis will guarantee his or her recognitions by others as a true marxist. undertaking a concrete analysis is traumatic precisely because it gives priority to the concrete situation over the reproduction of the analyst as an abstract individual. which means that it takes the side of the people over the side of the left. and waiting for the effects of the intervention analysis in order to find out where one stands. it is precisely this point where the risk is located. in this sense, reading hegel would not be productive. if one is concerned with immediate solutions. it is amazing to live in an era which is so obsessed with finding solutions to all sorts of problems, but without really trying to think about the situation of the conditions which produce these problems. we can think of all sorts of problems from those of global warming, ecological catastrophes, all the way to the ongoing crisis in ukraine. i very much doubt he, namely hegel. would have had anything to say about the ukrainian issue. hegel is not our guy who offers solutions for our so-called practical. uh... as he put it, what can understand the present only after it is completed, when it reaches the point of decline, with is painted gray on gray. but he offers something which is far more important, and that is the conceptual apparatus to thinking as such. in the philosophy of right, hegel provides a series of definitions of the state. in the opening sentence of the chapter on the state, he writes, quote, the state is the actuality of the ethical idea. this can... also be formulated as the actuality of concrete freedom. philosophically, however, the most compelling definition is, i quote, the state is the march of god in the world. its basis is the power of reason actualizing itself as well. the end of quote. how should we read this? the hegelian theory of concrete universals, of something which stands for the whole within the whole, even more so than the abstract apprehension of its totality, was fully developed in his work both in understanding of christianity and in his ontology, where the relation between a concept extension and its exceptions turn out to be the relation between the concepts formal and concrete existences. in his social theory however hegel took a more formalist perspective. he took the concrete establishment of social rules by the state, the means of regulating the interaction between private volitions in civil society to be the expression and realization of the very concept of volition and hence to stand for the concrete universal of society as such. this view in which historical existence was as real as the rational existence of the state was then subverted by marx, who in the line with his materialist turn of his time, recognize an impulse in hegel's deployment of the articulation between civil society and the state. rather than taking the state to serve as a concrete measure for the concept of what humanity is at a given historical moment, marx took up fobert's theory of generic being to argue that it is in the very concrete activity of labor that men make their essence objective. this is a process that is extremely and formally deviated and deformed by the state laws of property which alienate workers from participation in and realization of their historical existence. for the young marx then, it was not a matter of doing away with hegel so much as pointing out. that the logic of concrete universality. if properly followed through, should not lead us to recognize the state as the march of god in the world, but rather to recognize that there is a social class whose concrete existence stands in for the existence of the society as a whole. in its debasement, the poor working class did not only speak to the true consequences of a society based on private property, but they also incarnated the very properties. the ascendant bourgeoisie had sought to champion. if one wanted to defend the rights of men, irrespective of his particular identity or nationality, of his possessions and social standing, one couldn find this self-same abstract man walking down the street, abstracted due to his social conditions from his identity, nation, social standing and the means of living. but back to hegel's conception of the state. the crucial question to be asked is, what does hegel mean when he says that the state is something inherently rational he does not following the logic according to which everything in the state is. rational for for hegel the state as actual is always an individual, not a particular state. he for hegel, the phenomenon of the state, the place where people live under the same promise, expresses the rationality or the rational aspect of human life. how can we... then conceptualize the state in a hegelian understanding orientation. for him, the exact form of regulation within the state is not the object of philosophical thought. what matters is the universal form of the state. we can even argue that politics should aim at taking over and transforming the state. it is in this manner that we should. understand hegel's affirmation of the state form not as a moment of conformity or capitulation to the prussian empire, but as an affirmation of politics as such. for him, the state is the answers to the problems. problem of internationalism as well as to the problem of the commons, neither of which fits borders or other limitations of this kind. he was very well aware and it is for this reason that the state is the march of god in the world. his is a state which is ultimately not representative of a nation or a community. for hegel, the state was tied to the problem of dealing with multiple nations, as was the case with prussia, that is to say, the german state. his understanding of volkgeist cannot be interpreted in the spirit of a national or romantic vision. volkgeist does not create the character of a people, of a nation, but is ultimately a result of its religious, cultural, and other traits. the modern world, in hegel's view, contains a multiple of political units which are not held together by power but by spirit. the starting point should be an appropriation of hegel's idea of ethical state, a state which is founded upon a shared ethical... ethical order. he writes that the ethical order has been represented by mankind as eternal justice, as god's absolutely existent, in contrast with which the empty business of individuals is only a game of seesaw end of quote. or better still, the ethical order or ethical substance is an absolute authority and power infinitely more firmly established than the being of. how many minutes do i have more? or should i stop?
thank you. thank you, dominique. it's great to be here. so i will try to finish this in 15 minutes, but please cut me if i... go longer. in his inaugural lecture, delivered at the heidelberg university in 1816, hegel writes that, quote, to draw philosophy out of the solitude into which it has wandered, to do such work as this, we may hope that we are called by the higher spirit of our time. and of quote, nothing seems more paradoxical than the attempts to draw philosophy out of its solitude, a place in which it has always existed. as hegel himself says, in no other science in effect is one as solitary as in philosophy. but what is our contemporary situation like? the effects of the pandemic are still persisting and they are not going to disappear in any near future. what is more, the economic, political and health problems accelerated by the pandemic should be thought only together with the global warming and ecological catastrophes exploding social antagonisms. and others which are part of a bigger and increasingly more uncontrollable cobweb of contradictions of capitalism. we are going through a night of a living death. one cannot avoid the disturbing aspect of overly present forces that have no political effect. efficacy fighting to remain alive and pretend like they have a clear and firm grip on the political reality. every ongoing crisis bears witness to this from the. ongoing ukrainian crisis ecology. to the far right all the way to the problems of racism, sexism and others. with the overload of political opinions from all sorts of spectrums more than ever one is tempted to propose the indifference in political matters. the very term opinion is problematic. the contemporary world has declared war to the long and painful process of thinking. not only encouraged but also solicited to abandon thinking. instead we are encouraged to feel and have opinions. we cannot have opinions for scientific and political and other matters. political opinions in political matters are profoundly. problematic because no matter what we say, they are indeed irrelevant because we lack the real knowledge and means to practice something that could be useful. there are political. problems and situations that are as they are and they appear as obscure not because they are necessarily in themselves so but because i do not have enough real information nor means to get it neither the necessary sufficient means to use it. therefore, one of the most hypocritical or problematic positions is to occupy a position of pretending to have more intimacy with some situations than with scientific or artistic problems that are equally. equally escape my grasp in this sense the more i pretend like i know a certain specific situation, the more i turn politics into a discursive war rather than sticking to what it really is, a question of principled pragmatic organization based on effective territorial engagements. this seems to be the problem of political commentaries and analysis of the left. with virtually every geopolitical, economic, cultural, or other problem in the world today. whenever one is engaged in providing a concrete analysis of a concrete situation, the beautiful souls. mo mostly of the left immediately react by evoking marx and sometimes even lenin in order to make up and justify it for their total lack of concrete positionings towards concrete situations. the real difficulty in lenin's dictum is not analyzing the concrete situation, what is truly going on on singularity, but rather providing a concrete analysis. that is to say, an analysis that is not more committed to the identification of an analyst as an abstract analyst of a concrete situation or as someone who can guarantee that providing the real correct analysis will guarantee his or her recognitions by others as a true marxist. undertaking a concrete analysis is traumatic precisely because it gives priority to the concrete situation over the reproduction of the analyst as an abstract individual. which means that it takes the side of the people over the side of the left. and waiting for the effects of the intervention analysis in order to find out where one stands. it is precisely this point where the risk is located. in this sense, reading hegel would not be productive. if one is concerned with immediate solutions. it is amazing to live in an era which is so obsessed with finding solutions to all sorts of problems, but without really trying to think about the situation of the conditions which produce these problems. we can think of all sorts of problems from those of global warming, ecological catastrophes, all the way to the ongoing crisis in ukraine. i very much doubt he, namely hegel. would have had anything to say about the ukrainian issue. hegel is not our guy who offers solutions for our so-called practical. uh... as he put it, what can understand the present only after it is completed, when it reaches the point of decline, with is painted gray on gray. but he offers something which is far more important, and that is the conceptual apparatus to thinking as such. in the philosophy of right, hegel provides a series of definitions of the state. in the opening sentence of the chapter on the state, he writes, quote, the state is the actuality of the ethical idea. this can... also be formulated as the actuality of concrete freedom. philosophically, however, the most compelling definition is, i quote, the state is the march of god in the world. its basis is the power of reason actualizing itself as well. the end of quote. how should we read this? the hegelian theory of concrete universals, of something which stands for the whole within the whole, even more so than the abstract apprehension of its totality, was fully developed in his work both in understanding of christianity and in his ontology, where the relation between a concept extension and its exceptions turn out to be the relation between the concepts formal and concrete existences. in his social theory however hegel took a more formalist perspective. he took the concrete establishment of social rules by the state, the means of regulating the interaction between private volitions in civil society to be the expression and realization of the very concept of volition and hence to stand for the concrete universal of society as such. this view in which historical existence was as real as the rational existence of the state was then subverted by marx, who in the line with his materialist turn of his time, recognize an impulse in hegel's deployment of the articulation between civil society and the state. rather than taking the state to serve as a concrete measure for the concept of what humanity is at a given historical moment, marx took up fobert's theory of generic being to argue that it is in the very concrete activity of labor that men make their essence objective. this is a process that is extremely and formally deviated and deformed by the state laws of property which alienate workers from participation in and realization of their historical existence. for the young marx then, it was not a matter of doing away with hegel so much as pointing out. that the logic of concrete universality. if properly followed through, should not lead us to recognize the state as the march of god in the world, but rather to recognize that there is a social class whose concrete existence stands in for the existence of the society as a whole. in its debasement, the poor working class did not only speak to the true consequences of a society based on private property, but they also incarnated the very properties. the ascendant bourgeoisie had sought to champion. if one wanted to defend the rights of men, irrespective of his particular identity or nationality, of his possessions and social standing, one couldn find this self-same abstract man walking down the street, abstracted due to his social conditions from his identity, nation, social standing and the means of living. but back to hegel's conception of the state. the crucial question to be asked is, what does hegel mean when he says that the state is something inherently rational he does not following the logic according to which everything in the state is. rational for for hegel the state as actual is always an individual, not a particular state. he for hegel, the phenomenon of the state, the place where people live under the same promise, expresses the rationality or the rational aspect of human life. how can we... then conceptualize the state in a hegelian understanding orientation. for him, the exact form of regulation within the state is not the object of philosophical thought. what matters is the universal form of the state. we can even argue that politics should aim at taking over and transforming the state. it is in this manner that we should. understand hegel's affirmation of the state form not as a moment of conformity or capitulation to the prussian empire, but as an affirmation of politics as such. for him, the state is the answers to the problems. problem of internationalism as well as to the problem of the commons, neither of which fits borders or other limitations of this kind. he was very well aware and it is for this reason that the state is the march of god in the world. his is a state which is ultimately not representative of a nation or a community. for hegel, the state was tied to the problem of dealing with multiple nations, as was the case with prussia, that is to say, the german state. his understanding of volkgeist cannot be interpreted in the spirit of a national or romantic vision. volkgeist does not create the character of a people, of a nation, but is ultimately a result of its religious, cultural, and other traits. the modern world, in hegel's view, contains a multiple of political units which are not held together by power but by spirit. the starting point should be an appropriation of hegel's idea of ethical state, a state which is founded upon a shared ethical... ethical order. he writes that the ethical order has been represented by mankind as eternal justice, as god's absolutely existent, in contrast with which the empty business of individuals is only a game of seesaw end of quote. or better still, the ethical order or ethical substance is an absolute authority and power infinitely more firmly established than the being of. how many minutes do i have more? or should i stop?
Dominic (host)
you'll find you five minutes more.
you'll find you five minutes more.
Agon Hamza
there should be. therefore, the state is not a representative one, but is a strong body which does not represent the people but includes everyone. in itself. this inclusion is not, so to speak, an easy solution, but rather the crucial problem in every attempt to recuperate hegel's theory of the state. it is indeed a very difficult task. when we discuss the state in its philosophical aspect, the idea of the state cannot be identified with any form of the modern state. i'll skip some parts. so when hegel says, that men become conscious of themselves only in the state he thereby distinguishes between three levels of family, civil society, and the state. the family exists as a... at the levels of feeling with civil society as the field of self interest it is only within the structure of the state that there emerges a unity of subjective consciousness, intentions and objective order actions. the actuality of the state is reached only when the spheres of the public and private and the private are not one and the same. that is to say, contrary to civil society, where the individual can pursue his or her interest while
there should be. therefore, the state is not a representative one, but is a strong body which does not represent the people but includes everyone. in itself. this inclusion is not, so to speak, an easy solution, but rather the crucial problem in every attempt to recuperate hegel's theory of the state. it is indeed a very difficult task. when we discuss the state in its philosophical aspect, the idea of the state cannot be identified with any form of the modern state. i'll skip some parts. so when hegel says, that men become conscious of themselves only in the state he thereby distinguishes between three levels of family, civil society, and the state. the family exists as a... at the levels of feeling with civil society as the field of self interest it is only within the structure of the state that there emerges a unity of subjective consciousness, intentions and objective order actions. the actuality of the state is reached only when the spheres of the public and private and the private are not one and the same. that is to say, contrary to civil society, where the individual can pursue his or her interest while
Dominic (host)
i think we just lost argon. i think so.
i think we just lost argon. i think so.
Slavoj Žižek
he will come back. these albanians never really disappear.
he will come back. these albanians never really disappear.
Dominic (host)
okay. he's pretty frozen. what is this day? yeah. the internet. frank. can i invite you to step forward? indeed, the liquidation has. oh. are you bearagon. i now can only see his name.
okay. he's pretty frozen. what is this day? yeah. the internet. frank. can i invite you to step forward? indeed, the liquidation has. oh. are you bearagon. i now can only see his name.
Slavoj Žižek
and yes, he's not connected vocally. do you have to let him in? of.
and yes, he's not connected vocally. do you have to let him in? of.
Dominic (host)
years ago.
years ago.
Slavoj Žižek
i the microphone is cut. ah, he's... yeah, yeah. okay. he is there.
i the microphone is cut. ah, he's... yeah, yeah. okay. he is there.
Agon Hamza
i'm sorry, for some weird reasons the computer crashed. something. please. this can only happen to me. frankly, this is our second experience like this, if you remember well.
i'm sorry, for some weird reasons the computer crashed. something. please. this can only happen to me. frankly, this is our second experience like this, if you remember well.
Dominic (host)
agon, do you want to continue?
agon, do you want to continue?
Agon Hamza
no, it's fine. like, i mean, please let's slavo your franco.
no, it's fine. like, i mean, please let's slavo your franco.
Slavoj Žižek
no, but my god it... maybe he deserves some kind of a concluding thought.
no, but my god it... maybe he deserves some kind of a concluding thought.
Dominic (host)
i think so. i think so too.
i think so. i think so too.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, totally neutral concluding thought. like it's a great honor for me to be together here with frank and slboy, just some neutral reflection. curiously, add a finale arg.
yeah, totally neutral concluding thought. like it's a great honor for me to be together here with frank and slboy, just some neutral reflection. curiously, add a finale arg.
Agon Hamza
it. okay, okay, great. thank you. hegel goes against both liberal and conservative positions with his theoretization of the state. of course, that does not mean that he is in itself in a position of communism. uh... however, i think that we can try to push him into by conceiving his idea of the state on non-national grounds, that is to say, a state which is non-grounded on a national geist. the state. as a rational whole can realize itself only if it is held together by the figure of a monarch who is an ordinary human being. who becomes a monarch not by the virtue of his abilities, by the sheer arbitrariness of his birth. and in this capacity guarantees the state as an ethical order of society and makes it an actuality. thank you very much and i'm very sorry for that. crazy incident. i don't know what the hell happened.
it. okay, okay, great. thank you. hegel goes against both liberal and conservative positions with his theoretization of the state. of course, that does not mean that he is in itself in a position of communism. uh... however, i think that we can try to push him into by conceiving his idea of the state on non-national grounds, that is to say, a state which is non-grounded on a national geist. the state. as a rational whole can realize itself only if it is held together by the figure of a monarch who is an ordinary human being. who becomes a monarch not by the virtue of his abilities, by the sheer arbitrariness of his birth. and in this capacity guarantees the state as an ethical order of society and makes it an actuality. thank you very much and i'm very sorry for that. crazy incident. i don't know what the hell happened.
Dominic (host)
thanks, saigon. thanks ever so much. and... allow me to continue with some neutral remarks on frank, who i'd like to ask to step forward. to be our second speaker. at. so while you're getting ready, frank, i'll just. give a little intro. so frankie is senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Dundee. professor of philosophy with the european graduate school. he's the author of seven books and many articles, including the books Hegel's Rabble from 2011 and For Badiou: Idealism Without Idealism from 2015. frank is also the driving force behind our visiting speakers events in philosophy at dundee. so i'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for that. on behalf of the philosophy team. and absolutely delighted to be able to share in this event with you, frank, as a team. and so over to you. thanks so much, dom. thanks agon and slavoy for doing this great thing. and thanks for everyone else to have shown up. so i thought i'm just going to try and elucidate some things that concern the slightly weird chapter i put in this book. um because my attempt to read and make a contribution to reading hegel starts by bringing somehow together two strange contemporary and i think conjunctural facts that at first sight might seem a bit disjunctive but are i think inherently situationally connected. the first fact is that something rather surprising has happened recently, namely hgel has become digestible. he who had been identified as the conceptual omnivore for long and who had therefore been criticized as and scorned. to be all kinds of totalitarian has himself become stomacked by and deemed dietarily compatible with all kinds of contemporary positions. at least in philosophy. but therefore, the present hegel ingestion and digestion can raise some suspicions. what does one need to do to the thinker who was previously so much identified as the epitome of rationalism that he seemed to embody? its almost most irrational and gigantomaniac summit? that he right now is the friend you like inviting into your home constantly. the short answer is that hegel has been normalized, but normalization always comes at the price. and the price to be paid for conceiving of hgel no longer as a thinker of self-relating. form form and therefore self-negating and therefore abyssal and logically bewildering form of negativity was to take him to be a thinker of normativity. and more specifically of an already existing social bond whose paradigm can be found in our everyday language practices. this normalization was once by frederick jameson described as being part of a habermasian hegelian strategy, a liberal hegelian project, if you wish. and for reasons i will not go into now, i call them neo-geriatric hegelians. the bearded man who will speak after me has done a lot of great work in analyzing and problematizing this kind of appropriation. and the reasons for it. the contemporary higgle in indigestion has thus been a normalizing incorporation. and absorption but neither in the sense that it would have implied to just defend hegel's thought. entirely, rather, it tends to operate on hegelian grounds in such a way that it leaves aside everything that does not seem up to date and in the sense surprisingly naturalizes his thought. so the normalizing naturalization operates by making hegel into a thinker of the nature of human reason and its realization and by thus leaving it thus leaves aside all the things that seem too extravagant or historically biased or that seem to have aged badly. and if reason is all about norms, normative moves and commitments, and at the same time a natural component of human beings, the normative is natural and the natural is normative, both thereby become strangely intertwined and weirdly unproblematic. rationality qua form is thus naturally unproblematic. the second, that's the first fact. so something happened to the reading of hegel. something happened to the way hegel is read. second conjunctural and situational fact is that there has been a contemporary renewal of interest, but also a return of nature in contemporary philosophy that manifested inter alia in renewals of diverse forms of nature philosophies. nature philosophy had been discredited for quite some time and maybe for good reasons as a form of rather untenable metaphysical speculation which was replaced by a full-blown takeover by the natural sciences vis--a-vis any claims about natural entities and laws and so forth. but with the recent turns towards realism and renewed speculative conceptual gymnastics, nature philosophy in quite some impressive variety and diversity started to return. to the philosophical center stage. the problem with this return or with the return of this concept or category in contemporary discourses is is not only that it's not always, rarely actually clear what we mean when we speak of nature, and this is not me being intentionally stupid. rather, this is a point made by john salis already quite a while ago, notably that it is unclear what the precise extension of the concept of nature is. does it include the sky, the galaxy, other planets, the universe? it is just, is therefore crucial to say something about what we mean when we speak about nature, and it is crucial to do so because nature that we speak about is a concept. interestingly enough, with few exceptions, one of them we're going to hear soon, in the contemporary return of nature to the philosophical main stage, hegel's philosophy of nature, and this is part of the doctrineing operation of the neo-geriatric hegelians, hegel's philosophy of nature did not really play a crucial role thus far, even though he seems to have something to say about it because he himself, if i'm correct, was himself. natural-naturalized. william maker once stated over 20 years ago that today nothing is more dead than hegel's philosophy of nature. one can bring these two facts together by specifying in what way hegel's concept of nature can contribute to clarify first the demands that come with thinking and articulating a concept of nature and can second, thereby potentially also contribute to understanding in what way the normalizing naturalization of his start is problematic as it also ultimately relies on the non-hegelian concept of nature. so the way hegel is naturalized relies on the concept of nature because it's a process of naturalization. and hence, in this way, it would be very helpful to understand what kind of concept is at stake here. but here the real problems begin. certainly, the philosophy of nature was crucial for the formation of what was once referred to as absolute idealism, a label that has been taken to describe the common foundation of schellings and he's doctrine, so important. that frederick weiser once modified the inscription of plato's academy and stated that for the academy of this absolute form of german idealism holds. that let no one enter who has not studied naturphilosophie, nature philosophy. and certainly hegel will make an articulate and highly dense claim that anyone thinking what it means to think, so anyone who thinks what it means to think, and we certainly can only do so by means of thinking, so for anyone thinking, thinking, thinkingingly, in bracket for anyone acquainted with what dialectics is, it is no surprise that one needs three elements here and progresses through the three. so for anyone thinking, thinking, thinkingly, it will prove impossible. to not at one point in the imminent self-exposure, self-creation and discovery of thought also to generate or come across or unfold or stumble over the concept of nature. the reason for this is that if thinking starts to thinkingly create an idea of thinking.ep. that's the leaf fold. step, it cannot but also generate or come across an idea of the conditions of its own emergence. so it thinks the nature of thinking, but by thinking the nature of thinking, it also needs to think nature that is not thinking. now hegel describes this move from the process of self-examination and creation, the process of thinking, inventing what it discovers to be at the very end of the science of logic in terms that have bewildered and puzzled generations of readers of hegel. the reason for this was that it seems that at the end of this book, which you may know, and one should never forget, depicts god's thoughts before the creation of finite spirit and nature. exclamation mark i'd say, it seemed that thought, god's thought in this case, having reached an absolute idea of itself copulates with itself and releases nature from its loins. so to put it differently, god thought and at one point he just created stuff. nature. the reason for this was that it seemed, so that generated quite some criticisms. and in some of the most elaborate recent comment, i'm here thinking of robert pippitt's recent book on hegel's logic, one still encounters the claim this very last move is very difficult to understand if it is comprehensible at all. heagle. and this is part of what it means to conceive of how we move from thinking, thinking, thinking to the concept of nature. and we should not forget that nature is a concept, once again, describes this move. this move in terms of a peculiar operation that he calls release or endlassen in german. this obviously might immediately bring back heidegarian associations of a seinlassen, of a gesture of letting things be. but this would lead us down a road. and into the abysses of a reading that is quite opposite to the previous traditional critique of hegel. namely we would have to say something about nature as physics into which we are not even able to intervene at all. now, hegel already in 1803, 04 indicates that nature is a concept and is a concept that nature itself does not have. so nature does not have the concept. of itself, he calls that the privation of the concept. die entbehung des begriffs. and in this sense, the emergence of the concept of nature implies an unavoidable dimension of denaturalization. so something unnatural happening when we have a concept of nature. this is in line, i think, and this means that spirit is the entity that has the concept of nature. this is in line with hegel's later claim that spirit is only what it makes of itself. hence, if it does not make anything of itself, it's not even nothing. nothing. and and having the concept of nature is an essential part of making something of itself. and this is part of its own conceptual practice. but as part of this spirit also seeks to understand, it's because spirit also seeks to understand itself as emerging from nature. but as something that in nature is not natural, right? that was the point i tried to make for. it implies denaturalization that emerges from nature. to which strangely we for which strangely we have to give an account how nature enables such inherent denaturalization. but if spirit is what makes of itself, is what it makes of itself, and spirit emerges from and out of nature, the question is obviously more pressing what nature is, such that it allows for the emergence of the denaturalizing entity, that is what it makes of itself. hegel even declares in the most grandiose terms when he states that, i quote, if the miracle be the suspension of natural laws, spirit itself is the real miracle in the operations of nature, the real miracle in the operations of nature. but to understand such a miracle, one must understand paint deontological conditions, if there are any, that allow for the suspension of these material and lawful conditions. this means that the concept of nature plays a crucial role when spirit thinking these things, thinking and then cannot but also need to account for its own emergence. this is a real issue for spirit. in its attempts to conceive of itself because as hagophonously states, man is an amphibious animal because he now has to live in two worlds which contradict one another, namely the world of thinking, the logical world and the natural world from which it emerges. man is this contradiction, right the contradiction between these two worlds. it's the embodiment of this contradiction. in 1805 06, hegel indicates that nature is a concept that names the way spirit represents its own absence to itself. it's like spirit imagining a world without spirit. he will specify in what sense one can bring together these determinations by indicating that nature is an inherently incoherent concept. it means to think how the absence of the concept corresponds, entspricht, a material reality wherein this absence materializes, or in hegel's words, it is quite improper to expect from the concept to comprehend or as it is said, construe or deduce the contingent products of nature. it is so contingent that it's not. it is incoherent in the sense that it's not all lawful, it is not all chaos. rightit is incoherent within even its own incoherence.
thanks, saigon. thanks ever so much. and... allow me to continue with some neutral remarks on frank, who i'd like to ask to step forward. to be our second speaker. at. so while you're getting ready, frank, i'll just. give a little intro. so frankie is senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Dundee. professor of philosophy with the european graduate school. he's the author of seven books and many articles, including the books Hegel's Rabble from 2011 and For Badiou: Idealism Without Idealism from 2015. frank is also the driving force behind our visiting speakers events in philosophy at dundee. so i'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for that. on behalf of the philosophy team. and absolutely delighted to be able to share in this event with you, frank, as a team. and so over to you. thanks so much, dom. thanks agon and slavoy for doing this great thing. and thanks for everyone else to have shown up. so i thought i'm just going to try and elucidate some things that concern the slightly weird chapter i put in this book. um because my attempt to read and make a contribution to reading hegel starts by bringing somehow together two strange contemporary and i think conjunctural facts that at first sight might seem a bit disjunctive but are i think inherently situationally connected. the first fact is that something rather surprising has happened recently, namely hgel has become digestible. he who had been identified as the conceptual omnivore for long and who had therefore been criticized as and scorned. to be all kinds of totalitarian has himself become stomacked by and deemed dietarily compatible with all kinds of contemporary positions. at least in philosophy. but therefore, the present hegel ingestion and digestion can raise some suspicions. what does one need to do to the thinker who was previously so much identified as the epitome of rationalism that he seemed to embody? its almost most irrational and gigantomaniac summit? that he right now is the friend you like inviting into your home constantly. the short answer is that hegel has been normalized, but normalization always comes at the price. and the price to be paid for conceiving of hgel no longer as a thinker of self-relating. form form and therefore self-negating and therefore abyssal and logically bewildering form of negativity was to take him to be a thinker of normativity. and more specifically of an already existing social bond whose paradigm can be found in our everyday language practices. this normalization was once by frederick jameson described as being part of a habermasian hegelian strategy, a liberal hegelian project, if you wish. and for reasons i will not go into now, i call them neo-geriatric hegelians. the bearded man who will speak after me has done a lot of great work in analyzing and problematizing this kind of appropriation. and the reasons for it. the contemporary higgle in indigestion has thus been a normalizing incorporation. and absorption but neither in the sense that it would have implied to just defend hegel's thought. entirely, rather, it tends to operate on hegelian grounds in such a way that it leaves aside everything that does not seem up to date and in the sense surprisingly naturalizes his thought. so the normalizing naturalization operates by making hegel into a thinker of the nature of human reason and its realization and by thus leaving it thus leaves aside all the things that seem too extravagant or historically biased or that seem to have aged badly. and if reason is all about norms, normative moves and commitments, and at the same time a natural component of human beings, the normative is natural and the natural is normative, both thereby become strangely intertwined and weirdly unproblematic. rationality qua form is thus naturally unproblematic. the second, that's the first fact. so something happened to the reading of hegel. something happened to the way hegel is read. second conjunctural and situational fact is that there has been a contemporary renewal of interest, but also a return of nature in contemporary philosophy that manifested inter alia in renewals of diverse forms of nature philosophies. nature philosophy had been discredited for quite some time and maybe for good reasons as a form of rather untenable metaphysical speculation which was replaced by a full-blown takeover by the natural sciences vis--a-vis any claims about natural entities and laws and so forth. but with the recent turns towards realism and renewed speculative conceptual gymnastics, nature philosophy in quite some impressive variety and diversity started to return. to the philosophical center stage. the problem with this return or with the return of this concept or category in contemporary discourses is is not only that it's not always, rarely actually clear what we mean when we speak of nature, and this is not me being intentionally stupid. rather, this is a point made by john salis already quite a while ago, notably that it is unclear what the precise extension of the concept of nature is. does it include the sky, the galaxy, other planets, the universe? it is just, is therefore crucial to say something about what we mean when we speak about nature, and it is crucial to do so because nature that we speak about is a concept. interestingly enough, with few exceptions, one of them we're going to hear soon, in the contemporary return of nature to the philosophical main stage, hegel's philosophy of nature, and this is part of the doctrineing operation of the neo-geriatric hegelians, hegel's philosophy of nature did not really play a crucial role thus far, even though he seems to have something to say about it because he himself, if i'm correct, was himself. natural-naturalized. william maker once stated over 20 years ago that today nothing is more dead than hegel's philosophy of nature. one can bring these two facts together by specifying in what way hegel's concept of nature can contribute to clarify first the demands that come with thinking and articulating a concept of nature and can second, thereby potentially also contribute to understanding in what way the normalizing naturalization of his start is problematic as it also ultimately relies on the non-hegelian concept of nature. so the way hegel is naturalized relies on the concept of nature because it's a process of naturalization. and hence, in this way, it would be very helpful to understand what kind of concept is at stake here. but here the real problems begin. certainly, the philosophy of nature was crucial for the formation of what was once referred to as absolute idealism, a label that has been taken to describe the common foundation of schellings and he's doctrine, so important. that frederick weiser once modified the inscription of plato's academy and stated that for the academy of this absolute form of german idealism holds. that let no one enter who has not studied naturphilosophie, nature philosophy. and certainly hegel will make an articulate and highly dense claim that anyone thinking what it means to think, so anyone who thinks what it means to think, and we certainly can only do so by means of thinking, so for anyone thinking, thinking, thinkingingly, in bracket for anyone acquainted with what dialectics is, it is no surprise that one needs three elements here and progresses through the three. so for anyone thinking, thinking, thinkingly, it will prove impossible. to not at one point in the imminent self-exposure, self-creation and discovery of thought also to generate or come across or unfold or stumble over the concept of nature. the reason for this is that if thinking starts to thinkingly create an idea of thinking.ep. that's the leaf fold. step, it cannot but also generate or come across an idea of the conditions of its own emergence. so it thinks the nature of thinking, but by thinking the nature of thinking, it also needs to think nature that is not thinking. now hegel describes this move from the process of self-examination and creation, the process of thinking, inventing what it discovers to be at the very end of the science of logic in terms that have bewildered and puzzled generations of readers of hegel. the reason for this was that it seems that at the end of this book, which you may know, and one should never forget, depicts god's thoughts before the creation of finite spirit and nature. exclamation mark i'd say, it seemed that thought, god's thought in this case, having reached an absolute idea of itself copulates with itself and releases nature from its loins. so to put it differently, god thought and at one point he just created stuff. nature. the reason for this was that it seemed, so that generated quite some criticisms. and in some of the most elaborate recent comment, i'm here thinking of robert pippitt's recent book on hegel's logic, one still encounters the claim this very last move is very difficult to understand if it is comprehensible at all. heagle. and this is part of what it means to conceive of how we move from thinking, thinking, thinking to the concept of nature. and we should not forget that nature is a concept, once again, describes this move. this move in terms of a peculiar operation that he calls release or endlassen in german. this obviously might immediately bring back heidegarian associations of a seinlassen, of a gesture of letting things be. but this would lead us down a road. and into the abysses of a reading that is quite opposite to the previous traditional critique of hegel. namely we would have to say something about nature as physics into which we are not even able to intervene at all. now, hegel already in 1803, 04 indicates that nature is a concept and is a concept that nature itself does not have. so nature does not have the concept. of itself, he calls that the privation of the concept. die entbehung des begriffs. and in this sense, the emergence of the concept of nature implies an unavoidable dimension of denaturalization. so something unnatural happening when we have a concept of nature. this is in line, i think, and this means that spirit is the entity that has the concept of nature. this is in line with hegel's later claim that spirit is only what it makes of itself. hence, if it does not make anything of itself, it's not even nothing. nothing. and and having the concept of nature is an essential part of making something of itself. and this is part of its own conceptual practice. but as part of this spirit also seeks to understand, it's because spirit also seeks to understand itself as emerging from nature. but as something that in nature is not natural, right? that was the point i tried to make for. it implies denaturalization that emerges from nature. to which strangely we for which strangely we have to give an account how nature enables such inherent denaturalization. but if spirit is what makes of itself, is what it makes of itself, and spirit emerges from and out of nature, the question is obviously more pressing what nature is, such that it allows for the emergence of the denaturalizing entity, that is what it makes of itself. hegel even declares in the most grandiose terms when he states that, i quote, if the miracle be the suspension of natural laws, spirit itself is the real miracle in the operations of nature, the real miracle in the operations of nature. but to understand such a miracle, one must understand paint deontological conditions, if there are any, that allow for the suspension of these material and lawful conditions. this means that the concept of nature plays a crucial role when spirit thinking these things, thinking and then cannot but also need to account for its own emergence. this is a real issue for spirit. in its attempts to conceive of itself because as hagophonously states, man is an amphibious animal because he now has to live in two worlds which contradict one another, namely the world of thinking, the logical world and the natural world from which it emerges. man is this contradiction, right the contradiction between these two worlds. it's the embodiment of this contradiction. in 1805 06, hegel indicates that nature is a concept that names the way spirit represents its own absence to itself. it's like spirit imagining a world without spirit. he will specify in what sense one can bring together these determinations by indicating that nature is an inherently incoherent concept. it means to think how the absence of the concept corresponds, entspricht, a material reality wherein this absence materializes, or in hegel's words, it is quite improper to expect from the concept to comprehend or as it is said, construe or deduce the contingent products of nature. it is so contingent that it's not. it is incoherent in the sense that it's not all lawful, it is not all chaos. rightit is incoherent within even its own incoherence.
Dominic (host)
in the concept of nature, spirit thinkingly thinks its own emergency.
in the concept of nature, spirit thinkingly thinks its own emergency.
Dominic (host)
but it does so by needing to accept that it will not be able to deduce all the contingent elements in nature from the conceptual sphere, and thus there might always remain an opaque element in its own attempt to conceive of its own emergence. in the sense, nature also sets limits to philosophy, hegel explicit claims, and to think thinking. thinkingings, self-thinking, material conditions. all of this does certainly directly relate to the end of logic the logic and the notorious and last in the release that brought hgel so much criticism. i need about two and a half minutes. is that okay? okay, cool. the release um so um it directly relates to the release that brought hegel so much criticism as it precisely occurs with the concept of nature. the concept of nature originates in thinking, thinking, thinking. in hegel, all ends words, e and t words, come with a particular intricate internal movement of negation, and so does this particular one, the end lesson. the absolute idea, for example, is defined as entsprechung, as correspondence of concept and reality, like when thinking things itself, the concept it has of itself, it corresponds, this concept corresponds to its own reality, like thinking, things, thinking, that's the correspondence. and he does so thinking. but there's also a crucial anschluss, a resolve that appears in crucial passages in heckgel's work. the end thus always indicates a particular and peculiar imminent operation of negation. so what is the end lesson? the release move that appears to be constitutive at the end of hegel's logic for the concept of nature. he writes that the absolute idea i quote, freely releases itself absolutely certain of itself and eternally at rest, or in another formulation, the absolute freedom of the idea is that it resolves to release itself freely from itself. entsich entscheidet, sich zu entlassen. it resolves to release itself freely from itself as nature. this suggests that at the very end of a process in which thinking thinks thinking, we encounter a strange impasse, namely that thinking cannot itself reduce material reality in this sense. we are still. um confronted with what hegel calls a drive of the idea because thinking is somehow strangely shut up in subjectivity. so thinking cannot deduce right material reality. it... something that the idealist tradition always always assumed it can. hegel does not assume that. there's something like an incompleteness inherent to thought's own thinking, conception of itself and determination of itself, namely that it cannot deduce material reality from thinking alone. in the sense it is what one would have called materialism not so long ago. it's a materialist insight. but this inner incompleteness, this, let's say, impotence to deduce material reality corresponds to an inherent incompleteness in and of nature that manifests in its inherent incoherence and voidedness of concept. hegel calls that the ohnmacht der natur, the impotence and incapacity of nature. one has thus here to deal with the correspondence and entsprechung between an incompletion on the side of thinking, thinking, thinking. and the reality that within which and that manifests as incomplete also. but to establish this correspondence, one needs to take a step aside, move, make a move aside, namely one has to sidestep thinking, thinking, thinking and move from its inherent incapacity and impotence to derive material reality from pure thought to material reality in its inherent structure or non-structure as incomplete. this is, as hegel says not a transition. it's therefore nothing we derive. it's not an übergang in german rather it implies to leave thinking, thinking, thinking in its inherent stuckness, which is not a lack or inherent problem or privation for thought at such. we thus get two corresponding incomtes, one could say too much incomcompletion. to establish this correspondence is the act of end lesson. that cannot be notionally deduced, but can only be resolved and schlossen an end schluss resolved to end lassen release that establishes an endsprechung. correspondence between two incomplete thought and nature. if deleuze once stated, one must think with and, a and d. thinking through hegel's concept of nature, one might learn. why it is important to think with ends. en-n.
but it does so by needing to accept that it will not be able to deduce all the contingent elements in nature from the conceptual sphere, and thus there might always remain an opaque element in its own attempt to conceive of its own emergence. in the sense, nature also sets limits to philosophy, hegel explicit claims, and to think thinking. thinkingings, self-thinking, material conditions. all of this does certainly directly relate to the end of logic the logic and the notorious and last in the release that brought hgel so much criticism. i need about two and a half minutes. is that okay? okay, cool. the release um so um it directly relates to the release that brought hegel so much criticism as it precisely occurs with the concept of nature. the concept of nature originates in thinking, thinking, thinking. in hegel, all ends words, e and t words, come with a particular intricate internal movement of negation, and so does this particular one, the end lesson. the absolute idea, for example, is defined as entsprechung, as correspondence of concept and reality, like when thinking things itself, the concept it has of itself, it corresponds, this concept corresponds to its own reality, like thinking, things, thinking, that's the correspondence. and he does so thinking. but there's also a crucial anschluss, a resolve that appears in crucial passages in heckgel's work. the end thus always indicates a particular and peculiar imminent operation of negation. so what is the end lesson? the release move that appears to be constitutive at the end of hegel's logic for the concept of nature. he writes that the absolute idea i quote, freely releases itself absolutely certain of itself and eternally at rest, or in another formulation, the absolute freedom of the idea is that it resolves to release itself freely from itself. entsich entscheidet, sich zu entlassen. it resolves to release itself freely from itself as nature. this suggests that at the very end of a process in which thinking thinks thinking, we encounter a strange impasse, namely that thinking cannot itself reduce material reality in this sense. we are still. um confronted with what hegel calls a drive of the idea because thinking is somehow strangely shut up in subjectivity. so thinking cannot deduce right material reality. it... something that the idealist tradition always always assumed it can. hegel does not assume that. there's something like an incompleteness inherent to thought's own thinking, conception of itself and determination of itself, namely that it cannot deduce material reality from thinking alone. in the sense it is what one would have called materialism not so long ago. it's a materialist insight. but this inner incompleteness, this, let's say, impotence to deduce material reality corresponds to an inherent incompleteness in and of nature that manifests in its inherent incoherence and voidedness of concept. hegel calls that the ohnmacht der natur, the impotence and incapacity of nature. one has thus here to deal with the correspondence and entsprechung between an incompletion on the side of thinking, thinking, thinking. and the reality that within which and that manifests as incomplete also. but to establish this correspondence, one needs to take a step aside, move, make a move aside, namely one has to sidestep thinking, thinking, thinking and move from its inherent incapacity and impotence to derive material reality from pure thought to material reality in its inherent structure or non-structure as incomplete. this is, as hegel says not a transition. it's therefore nothing we derive. it's not an übergang in german rather it implies to leave thinking, thinking, thinking in its inherent stuckness, which is not a lack or inherent problem or privation for thought at such. we thus get two corresponding incomtes, one could say too much incomcompletion. to establish this correspondence is the act of end lesson. that cannot be notionally deduced, but can only be resolved and schlossen an end schluss resolved to end lassen release that establishes an endsprechung. correspondence between two incomplete thought and nature. if deleuze once stated, one must think with and, a and d. thinking through hegel's concept of nature, one might learn. why it is important to think with ends. en-n.
Dominic (host)
thanks. thank you, frank. wonderful talk. thank you very much. okay, we're going to move on to our third and final presentation. before our discussion. and i'd like to ask slav zijek to step forward to give this. allow me to do the same thing that i've done for both agon and. for frank and give a little bit of an introduction. so slavo ljijek is researcher in philosophy at the university of ljubljana. and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. he's the author of an incredible array of books spanning over 30 years. and reading hegel is barely even the most recent publication. and falling hot on the heels of 2021's heaven in disorder. so i was only half joking the other day. and i said to frank that if i attempt do just this Žižek bibliography. not to mention his filmography, i would end up filibustering Žižek, which would be obviously very tedious for everyone. so instead of doing this, i'm going to simply shut up. pass pass over slav slavoy floor slash webcam is yours.
thanks. thank you, frank. wonderful talk. thank you very much. okay, we're going to move on to our third and final presentation. before our discussion. and i'd like to ask slav zijek to step forward to give this. allow me to do the same thing that i've done for both agon and. for frank and give a little bit of an introduction. so slavo ljijek is researcher in philosophy at the university of ljubljana. and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. he's the author of an incredible array of books spanning over 30 years. and reading hegel is barely even the most recent publication. and falling hot on the heels of 2021's heaven in disorder. so i was only half joking the other day. and i said to frank that if i attempt do just this Žižek bibliography. not to mention his filmography, i would end up filibustering Žižek, which would be obviously very tedious for everyone. so instead of doing this, i'm going to simply shut up. pass pass over slav slavoy floor slash webcam is yours.
Slavoj Žižek
thank you very much. i'll try also not to speak for too long. i will. limit myself. two. a topic which i already covered but it's nowhere printed. in some of my last confused interventions, i have now a better version of my new reading of antigone. hegel and antiguor. we know hegel's reading of antigone. like embodying the conflict, the antagonism of the greek society between state. public space embodied in crayon and antigone, the divine family values and so on and so on. i think that. as. heellien. we can do as hegelians, we can offer better, a much better reading of antigone. at the beginning of antigone. the chorus reacts. to the news that someone. at that point, we don't know who. violated creon's prohibition and performed funeral right on. pina eico. h bobby. it is antigone herself. who is? implicitly castigated sd. cityless outcast engage in excessive demonic act which disturb deep. dmonia. kommen gut. embodied in the state. a quote. the most important part of happiness is therefore wisdom. not to act impiously. towards the g. for boasts of arrogant men bring on great blows of punishment, so in all a men can discover wisdom end of quote. so from the standpoint of eummonia. antigrone is definitely demonic. uncanny. her defying it. expresses a sense of excessive insistence which disturbedbs the beautiful order of the sh. pol. her... unconditional ethical uh. violate the harmony of the polish. and is as such. beyond human boundaries. the irony is that while antigone presents herself, as the guardian of the immemorial laws which sustained human order. she acts as a freakish and ruthless abomination. there definitely is something cold and monstrous about her. as it is rendered in the play by the contrast between antigone and her warmly human sister ismene. if we want to gr. the stance that leads antigone to perform. the funeral arrives on polineos. we should move forward. from the overquoted lines about the unwritten law. that everybody quotes to a later speech of her where she specifies what she. really means by the law that he cannot. nope. obey. this is the key passage, i think. it's not, you know, the usual. bullshit. like uh... after death, every human has the right to a funeral and so on and so on. i think these lines are crucial. later. quote. a standard correct translation. if i would never have done it. what she did for polineos. for children of my own. not as their mother. nor for a dead husband lying in decay. no. not in defiance of the citizens. what law do i appeal to claiming this? if my husband died, there would be another one. and if i were to lose a child of mine i would have another with some other man. but since my father and my mother too are hidden away. in h's house. i'll never have another living brother. that was the law i used to. honor. end of quote. these lines caused a scandal for centuries. with many interpreters. interpreters incidentally from from goethe to judith butler. claiming debt. maybe these lines are a later interpolation. even the translation of the first sentence. very. i would never have done it. for children of my own. uh. nor for a dead husband lying in decay and so on. there are some. translators. cool? totally turn around. the meaning of these lines like i found on the web this translation. whether a mother or children or a wife, i would always take up this struggle and go against the cities. losh. no. antigona says the exact opposite. then there are translations which delete the brutal mention of rotting corpses, with antigone just stating that she would never violate the public laws. for a dead husband or child. ben dish. be already quoted. translation which is correct and does mention corpses in decay. but just as a fat. not as something antigone subjectively. assume. i think... the best translation is the one in English by David Feldshuh. which fully renders antigonus subjective. stch. in a way, i claim it's better than the. original, here is this passage. in. for me, the definitive translation. for creons lo. i would bow to it if a husband or a son had died. i would let their bodies rot. in the steaming dust. unburied and alone. i would let their body... ro. as Alenka Zupančič pointed out. in her path breaking study on. antigone. which will appear. i hope. very soon now. as a small... book this is in english, this is not just the statement of the fact that unburied corpse. an unburied corpse is rotting in the open. but the expression of her active stance towards it. he would let. the body. h. now, it is clear from this passage that antigone is at the very opposite end of just applying to her dead brother the general unwritten primordial rule of the respect for the dead. therein resides the predominant reading of antigone. he enacts a universal rule. deeper than all social and political uh. regulations. now. there are attempts at this point of... again, renormalization of antigone. judy butler tries to save the day. by deftly pointing out that. the reference to a brother. who cannot be replaced is ambiguous. edipus himself is her father. but also her brother, they share the same mother. but i don't think that we can extrapolate. is opening into a new universality of the respect for all those who are marginal, excluded from the public order of community. antigonus reasoning is very strange. if her husband or her child were to die, he would let them rot. only because he would be able to replace them. why? should respect for the debt be unconditional only for those who cannot be replaced. doesn't the procedure of replacement she evokes? she can find another husband. breat another child. doesn't it strangely ignore the uniqueness of every person. why should another husband be able to replace a husband? whom? che. labs. in his singularity. Catherine Rosenfield. des in detail how antigone's exception is grounded in her unique family situation. her privileging of her brother only makes sense against the background. of all the misadventure's death. befel. the. edipus. family. okay. let's not go in that direction. my main point is... the fact remains that what antigone does is something quite... unique here my hegelian reading enters. h. universal rule. is's not respect all all the dead, their bodies no matter what their crimes are should be properly buried no her universal rule is let the bodies. bro. and she fully honors this rule. only with the exception of a particular case. the law that she obeys in properly burying polineicus is the law of accept. and this is a very brutal law. far from any human reconciliation. i would like to. mention here the distinction elaborated by Pierre Bayard between examples and exemplum. examples are just examples of universality. exemplum is... concret universali. it end. exceptional specific case which directly gives body to a universality. but at the same time, in work. antigonus monstrous egg. is not an example of anything. it clearly violates the universal law. but it is nonetheless its exemplum, the exemplum which not only functions as an exception with regard to the law, but which turns this exception itself into a law of its own. antigone makes that a hegelian step further. with regard to the trial of law. examples and it. exemplo. an example. directly gives body to universality. she transposes the gap that separates example from examples. back into the universality of the domain of the law. itself. he demonstrates how. the consequent actualization of the universal law has to turn it into its opposite. instead of opposing the pure law. respect for the dead. to its factual violations we often let them. she elevate. these violations themselves into a universal law. let them all rot. and elevate. the law of respecting the debt. into an exception. only for polineicos. antigonus stench. is thus absolutely incompatible. with any project of a new world ethic. that should unite all of humanity beyond all particular worldviews around a set of basic axioms. don't kill, respect the dead. follow the golden rule, don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you and so on. such projects are popular today. for example, the global ethic project. that arose out of the talk of the Swiss theologian Hans Küng. among the big translations of antigone. friedrich hölderlin is deservedly praised as unique. end. i cannot but note how. her exception. her readiness to perform. the proper burial of her brother. can be read in the light of a specific feature of kelderlin's slate. poetry. instead of first describing a state of things and then. mentioning the exception. back. things are like this, but he often begins a sentence directly with ah. bah. in german. without indicating which is the normal state. disturbed by the accept. s in the famous lines from his hym i'm denken. was bleibet aber? kften. die dichter. but poets establish what remains. the standard reading of this line is, of course, that after the event, poets are able to perceive the situation. from the mature standpoint. from the safe distance went. the historical meaning of the event becomes clear. what if, however there is nothing before the. but. just a nameless scale. and a world. concocted by a poet emergence is the back. as an act of. disturbing chaotic. void. what if at the beginning there is a... but. and this is how i would read even the bible itself. god was eternally bored, confused, didn't know what to do, and then he said, okay, but. let there be light or whatever. so what if we read heldernich's line literally? but poets establish what remains. boy. donate, create, establish. diff. verse, line, a strophe. the opening line of a poem, which is that which remains after, what? after a catastrophe. of course. show. antigonus choice. of brother. is a primordial ethical act. it does not. dist some preceding universal ethical law. it just interrupts. the pre-ethicalical chaos of letting them. bro. the pre-ethical chaos is cut short by that's cow, i would. h nice antigone. aber mein bruder. they can all rot, i don't care. but my brother. however, now you will of course say... is it not that antigonus' act is so problematic? because it does disturb. a pre-existing order of customs. there is only one conclusion to be drawn here. with her act. we could it. but antigone herself. devalues the preceding order of customs, reducing it to a chaos of rotting. corpps. an act does not just introduce order into chaos. it simultaneously annihilates a preceding order denouncing it as a false mask of g. and that's how i claim emancipatory action. function. here again. let me add. very general. polemical. point against, otherwise, my friend. rudy. butler i think judith butler is still caught in liberal perspective, which she just wants to. extrapolate, apply to everyone. like no, it's not just white people. we should extend the universal law to all of them. but what about women? what about immigrants what about children and so on and so on. no, i don't think. ethics works like this. ethics established that the existing order is. a mass of chaos it's false and then we begin with back. but black lives matter. doesn't mean. yeah! for liberals or humanitarians, all lives matter, but what about army not neglecting? black lives. no, it means precisely. but black lives matter. and out of this, a new universality, which is different. it's not just the extension of a previous universality emerges. that's how i also would like to reapply here. i don't have time to do it. i just need one minute to end. you know, this post-colonial reproach. to those like me who see. haiti revolution or anti-colonial struggle as a simple extension of the principles of the french revolution. they claim that my support of haiti revolution is still eurocentric. europe did something oh. kaiti, black. rebel slaves just applied it to also to them. no, they did not simply apply it, at the same time dislocated it. and all, this is the properly hegelian. idea of extension all extension dislocate the universality. it. put it into a different context. for example, lenin. and lenin should be mentioned today. because i am against putin today. you know why? i discovered, i looked at my old writing we dealt with it. did you notice that in the very speech where he justified sending russian military into ukraine? whom did putin blame? she mentioned the name, lenin. he said ukrainians don't exist. ukraine is an invention of lenin md. bolshevik revolution. he explicitly put. refers to... refers to ukrainians as a bolshevik invention and uh. and pretest return to he mentioned them to royal family, to the tsarist regime and so on. and so on. so okay, let's not get lost. but even, okay, even more with mao, it's stupid to say that mao just applies marxism to china. all the basic concepts are totally. are totally... are totally framed. d. crow. we need an example. october revolution, baaoist revolution, which? dr week all the bah! aars s. chaos and that's my heian point. you don't. begin with the new ethics with a direct universality or with just extending the old narrow ethics. like no, not only men, women are also free and so on and so on. no, you begin with. but women. bah. blacks and so on and so on. uh. so insofar as ethics is at its most basic dimension, the network of customs that regulate our communal life. and insofar as antigone's act. suspense. the communal ethical substance, this act can be characterized not as the ethical suspension of the. political. that's how antigone is usually read. creon, a guy who always thinks in pragmatic political terms, antigone has the universal ethical stance, no, no, there are basic ethical principles and so on, but on the contrary. as a moment of the political suspension of the ethical. she makes a choice, which is a crazy choice, political. again, remember what he said. he said, what univers? let them rot. only for my brother i do this. so the political is at its most basic the suspension of the predominant ethical substance. and today we need such acts more than ever. we don't need that good antigone care for all. all should be buried together. there are real enemies. there are corpses which should be let rot. let me give you, to conclude, i promise, a nice debate that i had with otherwise my very good friend, i respect him, although he's a little bit crazy like me, you know, the American black theologian, very to the left, Cornel West. he likes to do something very much. he. when she gives classes. maybe some of you know this. he. instead of naming the guy that he interprets. he uses brother and first, the christian name. like recently he gave a talk on, he likes chekhov, on chekhov's short stories. and you know what was the title of the talk? short stories by brother anton. and i asked him and he smiled and didn't give me a clear answer, asked him a very simple question. let's say you were to write a text on stalin and hitler pact in 19339. would you also be ready to say some remarks on the pact between brother adolf and brother glz? i. i would really appreciate him if. no. my point would be again, no. all brothers! let them rot. one brother. you pick it out as a symptonal point that grounds deep. universalally. sorry if i was too long. life is. thank you very much.
thank you very much. i'll try also not to speak for too long. i will. limit myself. two. a topic which i already covered but it's nowhere printed. in some of my last confused interventions, i have now a better version of my new reading of antigone. hegel and antiguor. we know hegel's reading of antigone. like embodying the conflict, the antagonism of the greek society between state. public space embodied in crayon and antigone, the divine family values and so on and so on. i think that. as. heellien. we can do as hegelians, we can offer better, a much better reading of antigone. at the beginning of antigone. the chorus reacts. to the news that someone. at that point, we don't know who. violated creon's prohibition and performed funeral right on. pina eico. h bobby. it is antigone herself. who is? implicitly castigated sd. cityless outcast engage in excessive demonic act which disturb deep. dmonia. kommen gut. embodied in the state. a quote. the most important part of happiness is therefore wisdom. not to act impiously. towards the g. for boasts of arrogant men bring on great blows of punishment, so in all a men can discover wisdom end of quote. so from the standpoint of eummonia. antigrone is definitely demonic. uncanny. her defying it. expresses a sense of excessive insistence which disturbedbs the beautiful order of the sh. pol. her... unconditional ethical uh. violate the harmony of the polish. and is as such. beyond human boundaries. the irony is that while antigone presents herself, as the guardian of the immemorial laws which sustained human order. she acts as a freakish and ruthless abomination. there definitely is something cold and monstrous about her. as it is rendered in the play by the contrast between antigone and her warmly human sister ismene. if we want to gr. the stance that leads antigone to perform. the funeral arrives on polineos. we should move forward. from the overquoted lines about the unwritten law. that everybody quotes to a later speech of her where she specifies what she. really means by the law that he cannot. nope. obey. this is the key passage, i think. it's not, you know, the usual. bullshit. like uh... after death, every human has the right to a funeral and so on and so on. i think these lines are crucial. later. quote. a standard correct translation. if i would never have done it. what she did for polineos. for children of my own. not as their mother. nor for a dead husband lying in decay. no. not in defiance of the citizens. what law do i appeal to claiming this? if my husband died, there would be another one. and if i were to lose a child of mine i would have another with some other man. but since my father and my mother too are hidden away. in h's house. i'll never have another living brother. that was the law i used to. honor. end of quote. these lines caused a scandal for centuries. with many interpreters. interpreters incidentally from from goethe to judith butler. claiming debt. maybe these lines are a later interpolation. even the translation of the first sentence. very. i would never have done it. for children of my own. uh. nor for a dead husband lying in decay and so on. there are some. translators. cool? totally turn around. the meaning of these lines like i found on the web this translation. whether a mother or children or a wife, i would always take up this struggle and go against the cities. losh. no. antigona says the exact opposite. then there are translations which delete the brutal mention of rotting corpses, with antigone just stating that she would never violate the public laws. for a dead husband or child. ben dish. be already quoted. translation which is correct and does mention corpses in decay. but just as a fat. not as something antigone subjectively. assume. i think... the best translation is the one in English by David Feldshuh. which fully renders antigonus subjective. stch. in a way, i claim it's better than the. original, here is this passage. in. for me, the definitive translation. for creons lo. i would bow to it if a husband or a son had died. i would let their bodies rot. in the steaming dust. unburied and alone. i would let their body... ro. as Alenka Zupančič pointed out. in her path breaking study on. antigone. which will appear. i hope. very soon now. as a small... book this is in english, this is not just the statement of the fact that unburied corpse. an unburied corpse is rotting in the open. but the expression of her active stance towards it. he would let. the body. h. now, it is clear from this passage that antigone is at the very opposite end of just applying to her dead brother the general unwritten primordial rule of the respect for the dead. therein resides the predominant reading of antigone. he enacts a universal rule. deeper than all social and political uh. regulations. now. there are attempts at this point of... again, renormalization of antigone. judy butler tries to save the day. by deftly pointing out that. the reference to a brother. who cannot be replaced is ambiguous. edipus himself is her father. but also her brother, they share the same mother. but i don't think that we can extrapolate. is opening into a new universality of the respect for all those who are marginal, excluded from the public order of community. antigonus reasoning is very strange. if her husband or her child were to die, he would let them rot. only because he would be able to replace them. why? should respect for the debt be unconditional only for those who cannot be replaced. doesn't the procedure of replacement she evokes? she can find another husband. breat another child. doesn't it strangely ignore the uniqueness of every person. why should another husband be able to replace a husband? whom? che. labs. in his singularity. Catherine Rosenfield. des in detail how antigone's exception is grounded in her unique family situation. her privileging of her brother only makes sense against the background. of all the misadventure's death. befel. the. edipus. family. okay. let's not go in that direction. my main point is... the fact remains that what antigone does is something quite... unique here my hegelian reading enters. h. universal rule. is's not respect all all the dead, their bodies no matter what their crimes are should be properly buried no her universal rule is let the bodies. bro. and she fully honors this rule. only with the exception of a particular case. the law that she obeys in properly burying polineicus is the law of accept. and this is a very brutal law. far from any human reconciliation. i would like to. mention here the distinction elaborated by Pierre Bayard between examples and exemplum. examples are just examples of universality. exemplum is... concret universali. it end. exceptional specific case which directly gives body to a universality. but at the same time, in work. antigonus monstrous egg. is not an example of anything. it clearly violates the universal law. but it is nonetheless its exemplum, the exemplum which not only functions as an exception with regard to the law, but which turns this exception itself into a law of its own. antigone makes that a hegelian step further. with regard to the trial of law. examples and it. exemplo. an example. directly gives body to universality. she transposes the gap that separates example from examples. back into the universality of the domain of the law. itself. he demonstrates how. the consequent actualization of the universal law has to turn it into its opposite. instead of opposing the pure law. respect for the dead. to its factual violations we often let them. she elevate. these violations themselves into a universal law. let them all rot. and elevate. the law of respecting the debt. into an exception. only for polineicos. antigonus stench. is thus absolutely incompatible. with any project of a new world ethic. that should unite all of humanity beyond all particular worldviews around a set of basic axioms. don't kill, respect the dead. follow the golden rule, don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you and so on. such projects are popular today. for example, the global ethic project. that arose out of the talk of the Swiss theologian Hans Küng. among the big translations of antigone. friedrich hölderlin is deservedly praised as unique. end. i cannot but note how. her exception. her readiness to perform. the proper burial of her brother. can be read in the light of a specific feature of kelderlin's slate. poetry. instead of first describing a state of things and then. mentioning the exception. back. things are like this, but he often begins a sentence directly with ah. bah. in german. without indicating which is the normal state. disturbed by the accept. s in the famous lines from his hym i'm denken. was bleibet aber? kften. die dichter. but poets establish what remains. the standard reading of this line is, of course, that after the event, poets are able to perceive the situation. from the mature standpoint. from the safe distance went. the historical meaning of the event becomes clear. what if, however there is nothing before the. but. just a nameless scale. and a world. concocted by a poet emergence is the back. as an act of. disturbing chaotic. void. what if at the beginning there is a... but. and this is how i would read even the bible itself. god was eternally bored, confused, didn't know what to do, and then he said, okay, but. let there be light or whatever. so what if we read heldernich's line literally? but poets establish what remains. boy. donate, create, establish. diff. verse, line, a strophe. the opening line of a poem, which is that which remains after, what? after a catastrophe. of course. show. antigonus choice. of brother. is a primordial ethical act. it does not. dist some preceding universal ethical law. it just interrupts. the pre-ethicalical chaos of letting them. bro. the pre-ethical chaos is cut short by that's cow, i would. h nice antigone. aber mein bruder. they can all rot, i don't care. but my brother. however, now you will of course say... is it not that antigonus' act is so problematic? because it does disturb. a pre-existing order of customs. there is only one conclusion to be drawn here. with her act. we could it. but antigone herself. devalues the preceding order of customs, reducing it to a chaos of rotting. corpps. an act does not just introduce order into chaos. it simultaneously annihilates a preceding order denouncing it as a false mask of g. and that's how i claim emancipatory action. function. here again. let me add. very general. polemical. point against, otherwise, my friend. rudy. butler i think judith butler is still caught in liberal perspective, which she just wants to. extrapolate, apply to everyone. like no, it's not just white people. we should extend the universal law to all of them. but what about women? what about immigrants what about children and so on and so on. no, i don't think. ethics works like this. ethics established that the existing order is. a mass of chaos it's false and then we begin with back. but black lives matter. doesn't mean. yeah! for liberals or humanitarians, all lives matter, but what about army not neglecting? black lives. no, it means precisely. but black lives matter. and out of this, a new universality, which is different. it's not just the extension of a previous universality emerges. that's how i also would like to reapply here. i don't have time to do it. i just need one minute to end. you know, this post-colonial reproach. to those like me who see. haiti revolution or anti-colonial struggle as a simple extension of the principles of the french revolution. they claim that my support of haiti revolution is still eurocentric. europe did something oh. kaiti, black. rebel slaves just applied it to also to them. no, they did not simply apply it, at the same time dislocated it. and all, this is the properly hegelian. idea of extension all extension dislocate the universality. it. put it into a different context. for example, lenin. and lenin should be mentioned today. because i am against putin today. you know why? i discovered, i looked at my old writing we dealt with it. did you notice that in the very speech where he justified sending russian military into ukraine? whom did putin blame? she mentioned the name, lenin. he said ukrainians don't exist. ukraine is an invention of lenin md. bolshevik revolution. he explicitly put. refers to... refers to ukrainians as a bolshevik invention and uh. and pretest return to he mentioned them to royal family, to the tsarist regime and so on. and so on. so okay, let's not get lost. but even, okay, even more with mao, it's stupid to say that mao just applies marxism to china. all the basic concepts are totally. are totally... are totally framed. d. crow. we need an example. october revolution, baaoist revolution, which? dr week all the bah! aars s. chaos and that's my heian point. you don't. begin with the new ethics with a direct universality or with just extending the old narrow ethics. like no, not only men, women are also free and so on and so on. no, you begin with. but women. bah. blacks and so on and so on. uh. so insofar as ethics is at its most basic dimension, the network of customs that regulate our communal life. and insofar as antigone's act. suspense. the communal ethical substance, this act can be characterized not as the ethical suspension of the. political. that's how antigone is usually read. creon, a guy who always thinks in pragmatic political terms, antigone has the universal ethical stance, no, no, there are basic ethical principles and so on, but on the contrary. as a moment of the political suspension of the ethical. she makes a choice, which is a crazy choice, political. again, remember what he said. he said, what univers? let them rot. only for my brother i do this. so the political is at its most basic the suspension of the predominant ethical substance. and today we need such acts more than ever. we don't need that good antigone care for all. all should be buried together. there are real enemies. there are corpses which should be let rot. let me give you, to conclude, i promise, a nice debate that i had with otherwise my very good friend, i respect him, although he's a little bit crazy like me, you know, the American black theologian, very to the left, Cornel West. he likes to do something very much. he. when she gives classes. maybe some of you know this. he. instead of naming the guy that he interprets. he uses brother and first, the christian name. like recently he gave a talk on, he likes chekhov, on chekhov's short stories. and you know what was the title of the talk? short stories by brother anton. and i asked him and he smiled and didn't give me a clear answer, asked him a very simple question. let's say you were to write a text on stalin and hitler pact in 19339. would you also be ready to say some remarks on the pact between brother adolf and brother glz? i. i would really appreciate him if. no. my point would be again, no. all brothers! let them rot. one brother. you pick it out as a symptonal point that grounds deep. universalally. sorry if i was too long. life is. thank you very much.
Dominic (host)
thank you, slavoy. thanks ever so much. okay, great stuff. we have 40 minutes for discussion. um just to reiterate, we've got a lot of questions that have come in through the chat dom dominic, you will direct. we don't have to worry.
thank you, slavoy. thanks ever so much. okay, great stuff. we have 40 minutes for discussion. um just to reiterate, we've got a lot of questions that have come in through the chat dom dominic, you will direct. we don't have to worry.
Slavoj Žižek
y.
y.
Dominic (host)
you don't have to worry. i'll be the master.
you don't have to worry. i'll be the master.
Slavoj Žižek
you. respect.
you. respect.
Dominic (host)
yeah. so keep posing the questions. please do post them in the chat rather than coming on camera. this is simply to do with the recording. i do apologize about this. having acted as censor in such a heartless way, what i will do is offer you a little gift. which is a discount on this wonderful that we are gathered together today. at to celebrate. one one show. so if you find that in the chat, that's a little link. if you put that code in, that will take you 20% down on the price of the book.
yeah. so keep posing the questions. please do post them in the chat rather than coming on camera. this is simply to do with the recording. i do apologize about this. having acted as censor in such a heartless way, what i will do is offer you a little gift. which is a discount on this wonderful that we are gathered together today. at to celebrate. one one show. so if you find that in the chat, that's a little link. if you put that code in, that will take you 20% down on the price of the book.
Slavoj Žižek
sorry, dominique, can i interrupt you? i have a wonderful idea that if you this under the sign of my antigone reading. let them rot. burn all the book. but! ruda,ams, reading hegel. that book. we'll not interrupt up.
sorry, dominique, can i interrupt you? i have a wonderful idea that if you this under the sign of my antigone reading. let them rot. burn all the book. but! ruda,ams, reading hegel. that book. we'll not interrupt up.
Dominic (host)
absolutely. so... indeed. um... let's move to the questions. so we've got some questions that have been directed to all three authors and some that are specific. and the first question comes from bbi. it's directed to all three. authors and the question is, why is hegel becoming popular now? so with the emphasis on now. um... why this particular conjuncture? and that's open to. all three of you. do you want to start, slavo?
absolutely. so... indeed. um... let's move to the questions. so we've got some questions that have been directed to all three authors and some that are specific. and the first question comes from bbi. it's directed to all three. authors and the question is, why is hegel becoming popular now? so with the emphasis on now. um... why this particular conjuncture? and that's open to. all three of you. do you want to start, slavo?
Slavoj Žižek
i know that you are my enemy. frank. okay, okay, but... please interrupt me. dominic, be my domina, interrupt me immediately. i think that our situation is much more close to that of hegel than to that of mark. the 20th century for us, stalinism and so on, was what for hegel? the french revolution was. first, do not forget hegel never renounced the french youth. and point two, he didn't provide a liberal meaning. you ro. who. simplify to the utmost. 89 is good, 93 is bad. jacobin terror. he always insisted 93 the terror was a necessary step. and his point is not. they should, instead of the egalitarian terror, pass directly to this normal bourgeois life. no. that period of terror was a deadlock, but a necessary deadlock. i think this is my very vague reading. death. back how. we should re. the 20th century. it was an incredibly important attempt to actualize. revolutionary projects it went wrong and our task today is. hegel's task. how to. in view of the catastrophic consequences of stalinist terror and so on, which we cannot simply ascribe to the enemy. it was something wrong in our own. prly. how to repeat it, how to remain faithful to it. and this is, in other words, we should renounce these last traces of historical teleology, which we still find in marx. we know where history is going. things can go wrong a little bit, but just no. we that today hegel's idea we can only describe the origin existing order in needs decay. is more actual than. ever. this doesn't mean we should do nothing, but just a little bit more of pessimism. things go wrong and something good can emerge. only. through. the failure of things going. brc. so hegel, what would he have said today with? ecological problems and so on and so on. he would resist just writing a clear scenario. he would set, have said, we are in deep shit. we will have to take r we should make plans and so on, but we should be aware of what i developed in my introductory chapter to the book. bet hegel's basic lesson is even the best plans project always go wrong. that's why i think in the same way that hegel read french's revolution, you begin with freedom, you end in terror. hegel would have experienced a kind of intellectual orgasm reading stalinism. you see, even the most noble attempt at freedom ends with... wait. bitcoin.com rat style on the top. that's where i see there are other g. there is a neoconservative heg. which is even rehabilitated today in china. we have what frank and agon were talking about, we have this liberal recognition hegel and so on. but i think the hegel that we. meet today. is this heaggle of how to save in view of all the incredible threat. threats that we have today. how to how to remain faithful. two. the big emancipatory projects of the 20th century, but not in this simply compromising. way, you like, i really don't like them. you know, this trotsky dream. if only lenin were to survive three years more, made the fact with trotsky out stalin, then what? what? do you really think we would have had a thriving socialist democracy? i don't know what we would have had, but it's not as simple as that. that's the and you know where what i'm writing now sorry i will finish then you cut me off for example, the latest example. offers itself to hegel is cryptocurrencies and nft. hegel again would have a multiple orgasm by claiming, analyzing how a project which was originally meant as get rid of the institutions of all the mediation, you know, it's money without a guarantee in state institutions. and it would have been immediately clear to hegel what millions today experience quite empirically. how what we get in this apparently egalitarian space of free exchange, no institutional control, it's a total opacity with new masters. stronger than even the old political masters.
i know that you are my enemy. frank. okay, okay, but... please interrupt me. dominic, be my domina, interrupt me immediately. i think that our situation is much more close to that of hegel than to that of mark. the 20th century for us, stalinism and so on, was what for hegel? the french revolution was. first, do not forget hegel never renounced the french youth. and point two, he didn't provide a liberal meaning. you ro. who. simplify to the utmost. 89 is good, 93 is bad. jacobin terror. he always insisted 93 the terror was a necessary step. and his point is not. they should, instead of the egalitarian terror, pass directly to this normal bourgeois life. no. that period of terror was a deadlock, but a necessary deadlock. i think this is my very vague reading. death. back how. we should re. the 20th century. it was an incredibly important attempt to actualize. revolutionary projects it went wrong and our task today is. hegel's task. how to. in view of the catastrophic consequences of stalinist terror and so on, which we cannot simply ascribe to the enemy. it was something wrong in our own. prly. how to repeat it, how to remain faithful to it. and this is, in other words, we should renounce these last traces of historical teleology, which we still find in marx. we know where history is going. things can go wrong a little bit, but just no. we that today hegel's idea we can only describe the origin existing order in needs decay. is more actual than. ever. this doesn't mean we should do nothing, but just a little bit more of pessimism. things go wrong and something good can emerge. only. through. the failure of things going. brc. so hegel, what would he have said today with? ecological problems and so on and so on. he would resist just writing a clear scenario. he would set, have said, we are in deep shit. we will have to take r we should make plans and so on, but we should be aware of what i developed in my introductory chapter to the book. bet hegel's basic lesson is even the best plans project always go wrong. that's why i think in the same way that hegel read french's revolution, you begin with freedom, you end in terror. hegel would have experienced a kind of intellectual orgasm reading stalinism. you see, even the most noble attempt at freedom ends with... wait. bitcoin.com rat style on the top. that's where i see there are other g. there is a neoconservative heg. which is even rehabilitated today in china. we have what frank and agon were talking about, we have this liberal recognition hegel and so on. but i think the hegel that we. meet today. is this heaggle of how to save in view of all the incredible threat. threats that we have today. how to how to remain faithful. two. the big emancipatory projects of the 20th century, but not in this simply compromising. way, you like, i really don't like them. you know, this trotsky dream. if only lenin were to survive three years more, made the fact with trotsky out stalin, then what? what? do you really think we would have had a thriving socialist democracy? i don't know what we would have had, but it's not as simple as that. that's the and you know where what i'm writing now sorry i will finish then you cut me off for example, the latest example. offers itself to hegel is cryptocurrencies and nft. hegel again would have a multiple orgasm by claiming, analyzing how a project which was originally meant as get rid of the institutions of all the mediation, you know, it's money without a guarantee in state institutions. and it would have been immediately clear to hegel what millions today experience quite empirically. how what we get in this apparently egalitarian space of free exchange, no institutional control, it's a total opacity with new masters. stronger than even the old political masters.
Dominic (host)
i'm sorry, stop. awesome. yeah, frank agon, anything to add to that? i think agon disappeared again. he may return or he's hiding. i can just maybe add one tiny point along the lines that slav described because i mean, the problem that the french revolution brought to the fore is an organizational problem and there are different types of of reading what follows from it. there was a german debate between jürgen habermas and joachim ritter quite some time ago, and habermas basically suggested that hegel implemented. ritter thought the state solves the problem that the french revolution generated right and habermas basically made the french revolution into some kind of purgatory. event that then justified the hegelian state and thereby hegel mobilized even the historical sources and so forth for the justification of what then later what then will just have become prussia, right? i mean that so that was the evil critique. i think if one looks precisely at what hegel says about that problem that was brought to the world by the french revolution, one immediately sees that it is linked to of of the very few passages where hegel actually talks about the future and where hegel actually talks about the future, it is that the future will possibly bring solutions to the problem that was brought about forth by the french revolution. so he is clearly indicating that the only thing that we can see and that is almost a, i mean depending on how to phrase it, but a fatalist aspect to this, that one does not learn simply from a certain catastrophe. so sometimes the lesson, or maybe always the lesson from history is that there is no lesson from history. one cannot derive the solution from the past material, but it's a.
i'm sorry, stop. awesome. yeah, frank agon, anything to add to that? i think agon disappeared again. he may return or he's hiding. i can just maybe add one tiny point along the lines that slav described because i mean, the problem that the french revolution brought to the fore is an organizational problem and there are different types of of reading what follows from it. there was a german debate between jürgen habermas and joachim ritter quite some time ago, and habermas basically suggested that hegel implemented. ritter thought the state solves the problem that the french revolution generated right and habermas basically made the french revolution into some kind of purgatory. event that then justified the hegelian state and thereby hegel mobilized even the historical sources and so forth for the justification of what then later what then will just have become prussia, right? i mean that so that was the evil critique. i think if one looks precisely at what hegel says about that problem that was brought to the world by the french revolution, one immediately sees that it is linked to of of the very few passages where hegel actually talks about the future and where hegel actually talks about the future, it is that the future will possibly bring solutions to the problem that was brought about forth by the french revolution. so he is clearly indicating that the only thing that we can see and that is almost a, i mean depending on how to phrase it, but a fatalist aspect to this, that one does not learn simply from a certain catastrophe. so sometimes the lesson, or maybe always the lesson from history is that there is no lesson from history. one cannot derive the solution from the past material, but it's a.
Slavoj Žižek
you know, he says the sleep. real.
you know, he says the sleep. real.
Dominic (host)
exact we can learn from history that we cannot learn. exactly. and this is an important lesson. this is an absolutely important lesson, right? because otherwise you have a very tricky relationship to the past and you think that the past will provide the answers that it doesn't have. but what one can learn is that no one ever learned from history, right? so it necessarily almost goes wrong at one point. and particularly when it comes to organizational dilemmas, that seem to be astoundingly compatible. or comparable between hegel's times and ours. so right, i mean, the political question was a problem that the french revolution brought to the floor was a problem of how to organize a collective of the free and equal in such a way. that it does not end where it ends if one does organize it the way the french revolution did. and the insight into that necessity closes a problem. of which one does not know from hegel's perspective how to solve it.
exact we can learn from history that we cannot learn. exactly. and this is an important lesson. this is an absolutely important lesson, right? because otherwise you have a very tricky relationship to the past and you think that the past will provide the answers that it doesn't have. but what one can learn is that no one ever learned from history, right? so it necessarily almost goes wrong at one point. and particularly when it comes to organizational dilemmas, that seem to be astoundingly compatible. or comparable between hegel's times and ours. so right, i mean, the political question was a problem that the french revolution brought to the floor was a problem of how to organize a collective of the free and equal in such a way. that it does not end where it ends if one does organize it the way the french revolution did. and the insight into that necessity closes a problem. of which one does not know from hegel's perspective how to solve it.
Slavoj Žižek
can i just add, please, and then the albanian friend can enter, because i have an important brief reply to you. would you agree, frank, that... i'm here relying on Adrian Johnston. who wrote i think he even gave it to you by this i mean to crisis and critique. about late. the last hegel's political text. the analysis of the reform bill, the english law from 31. uh... was the first step towards this mass democracy, not quite yet, but the idea is that independently of your specific social political situation, your specific place in hierarchic social structure, everyone can directly participate vote in public life. and it's usually dismissed as keagels's panic. when he. so... the birth of modern democracy. but as adrian johnston shows, kegels worry was well justified because his problem is this one. he i think you frank already wrote about it, am i confusing link? kegel! h at the terrifying prospect that this formal egalitarian democracy not only can give the vote, this is not hegel's problem to rebel to those with no position. but that with modern capitalist wealth. we get something that like that we can get, well, one can clearly in the way hegel describes the new rich, lumpur. this totally corrupted bourgeoisie with no proper place in social hierarchy, which that's hegel's fear, although we get formally free elections. this lumpen bourgeoisie through controlling public space, corruption and so on, manipulates the rebel and keeps power even stronger and more non-transparent than the old hierarch power. in other words, hegel was describing united states today, more or less. so you see, this is what i like in hegel. be careful even when he appears to be just conservative. no, he sees a danger which is our danger today. i'm very sorry for this.
can i just add, please, and then the albanian friend can enter, because i have an important brief reply to you. would you agree, frank, that... i'm here relying on Adrian Johnston. who wrote i think he even gave it to you by this i mean to crisis and critique. about late. the last hegel's political text. the analysis of the reform bill, the english law from 31. uh... was the first step towards this mass democracy, not quite yet, but the idea is that independently of your specific social political situation, your specific place in hierarchic social structure, everyone can directly participate vote in public life. and it's usually dismissed as keagels's panic. when he. so... the birth of modern democracy. but as adrian johnston shows, kegels worry was well justified because his problem is this one. he i think you frank already wrote about it, am i confusing link? kegel! h at the terrifying prospect that this formal egalitarian democracy not only can give the vote, this is not hegel's problem to rebel to those with no position. but that with modern capitalist wealth. we get something that like that we can get, well, one can clearly in the way hegel describes the new rich, lumpur. this totally corrupted bourgeoisie with no proper place in social hierarchy, which that's hegel's fear, although we get formally free elections. this lumpen bourgeoisie through controlling public space, corruption and so on, manipulates the rebel and keeps power even stronger and more non-transparent than the old hierarch power. in other words, hegel was describing united states today, more or less. so you see, this is what i like in hegel. be careful even when he appears to be just conservative. no, he sees a danger which is our danger today. i'm very sorry for this.
Dominic (host)
no need to apologize. do you want to keep batting back for a little while or because what you're actually doing is covering quite a number of the questions. implicitly or i can simply go to one of the questions and ask that. albanian guy. i think agagon is. he's either hiding or disappeared. i mean, i mean, maybe he froze again, hopefully not to death. i can't see agon in the list of participants. so i think. maybe he will return at one point. yeah. oh kids. allow me to then just come in with another question. i'm going to be arbitrary. i'm not going in a chronological order. apologies if we miss your question. there are many. very good questions that have come in. but i think. thematically, this question makes quite a bit of sense. this is a question from linda. um... why do you think? and who is you?
no need to apologize. do you want to keep batting back for a little while or because what you're actually doing is covering quite a number of the questions. implicitly or i can simply go to one of the questions and ask that. albanian guy. i think agagon is. he's either hiding or disappeared. i mean, i mean, maybe he froze again, hopefully not to death. i can't see agon in the list of participants. so i think. maybe he will return at one point. yeah. oh kids. allow me to then just come in with another question. i'm going to be arbitrary. i'm not going in a chronological order. apologies if we miss your question. there are many. very good questions that have come in. but i think. thematically, this question makes quite a bit of sense. this is a question from linda. um... why do you think? and who is you?
Slavoj Žižek
both of us who is you?
both of us who is you?
Dominic (host)
to both of you, to both of you. i'll leave it to you to decide who should start with this. and why is is there a wrong conception of hegel that prevails today. so to what extent is the normalization of hegel integrated into the larger context of ideological obfuscation. in the context of capitalist domination.
to both of you, to both of you. i'll leave it to you to decide who should start with this. and why is is there a wrong conception of hegel that prevails today. so to what extent is the normalization of hegel integrated into the larger context of ideological obfuscation. in the context of capitalist domination.
Slavoj Žižek
frank, this is your domain more, i think.
frank, this is your domain more, i think.
Dominic (host)
but can i give an answer drawing on your work then directly? no, i thought, i mean, in on some sense, one could say that so slavo's argument, inter alia and less than nothing, is that hegel was so traumatic for the for the history of philosophy and the discourse of philosophy that the entire post-hegelian aftermath is a series of defense mechanisms against that kind of trauma, that kind of and this is why it certainly is not a surprise that that itself takes the form of a rethinking, a fundamental rethinking of a negativity that is so negative that it self-relates or self-negates and hence destabilizes everything. and it's in the different forms it takes. now one could say that ass. when you're in analysis, right, there are different ways in which you can try to defend yourself against the impact of analysis itself. and sometimes a full-blown endorsement is a very good way of getting rid of what you want to defend yourself from, right? so sometimes adorno once called it with a freudian slogan, the identification with the enemy. sometimes the identification with the enemy can be a very well-functioning defense mechanism if one seeks to get rid of that enemy. so if you can actually provide a reading wherein hgel is less crazy and where you basically bracket all the crazy, slightly extravagant, decay driven. exclusion-riven and negativityaden elements of his thought you get a heaggle which is i mean, much more much more friendly and i don't know, right? i mean, then it's simply the theorist that provides you with an account of intersubjective practices. and that is, i think, an interesting move that was allowed by a certain re-appropriation, a habermazianization or whatever one wants to call it, of and you get a very different account of reason and rationality and history from that front. but i'd say that clearly has something to do. and it emerged, i mean, it emerged when, let's say, politically the situation fundamentally was fundamentally transformed, right? so, i mean. certainly these readings emerged after the decline of, let's say, the soviet experiment and whatever happened in china. i think that is historically, i mean, that's a very vulgar historical materialist addition, but i think that is certainly not absolutely coincidental, and i shut up there.
but can i give an answer drawing on your work then directly? no, i thought, i mean, in on some sense, one could say that so slavo's argument, inter alia and less than nothing, is that hegel was so traumatic for the for the history of philosophy and the discourse of philosophy that the entire post-hegelian aftermath is a series of defense mechanisms against that kind of trauma, that kind of and this is why it certainly is not a surprise that that itself takes the form of a rethinking, a fundamental rethinking of a negativity that is so negative that it self-relates or self-negates and hence destabilizes everything. and it's in the different forms it takes. now one could say that ass. when you're in analysis, right, there are different ways in which you can try to defend yourself against the impact of analysis itself. and sometimes a full-blown endorsement is a very good way of getting rid of what you want to defend yourself from, right? so sometimes adorno once called it with a freudian slogan, the identification with the enemy. sometimes the identification with the enemy can be a very well-functioning defense mechanism if one seeks to get rid of that enemy. so if you can actually provide a reading wherein hgel is less crazy and where you basically bracket all the crazy, slightly extravagant, decay driven. exclusion-riven and negativityaden elements of his thought you get a heaggle which is i mean, much more much more friendly and i don't know, right? i mean, then it's simply the theorist that provides you with an account of intersubjective practices. and that is, i think, an interesting move that was allowed by a certain re-appropriation, a habermazianization or whatever one wants to call it, of and you get a very different account of reason and rationality and history from that front. but i'd say that clearly has something to do. and it emerged, i mean, it emerged when, let's say, politically the situation fundamentally was fundamentally transformed, right? so, i mean. certainly these readings emerged after the decline of, let's say, the soviet experiment and whatever happened in china. i think that is historically, i mean, that's a very vulgar historical materialist addition, but i think that is certainly not absolutely coincidental, and i shut up there.
Slavoj Žižek
maybe i will class briefly. add something, i think. basically. there is a very... timper! hegelian and a little bit, as you frank said, historical materialist explanation because of why wrong reading because you know, if there is a lesson from hegel, from his... kind of it's more complex radical historicism it is that when a certain wrong reading mistake becomes so strong, it's never simply a mistake. as a mistake, it is a moment of certain social totality. it not only justifies but participates in a certain order and so on and so on. for... for example, uh we have today the... we have today this, let's call it, recognition, hegelian liberalism and so on and so on. it is. clear debt. that what they are doing as you already said frank. it's a kantianization of hegel in the sense that. a certain ideal. of mutual recognition and so on, which is typically liberal ideal, is projected as the end point. and then. hegel is simply perceived as somebody who? if. part of this progress towards the ideal, but i call this in my book the not yet hegelians. those who are assertive of hegel. but think that because of historical limitation and so on, hegel was not yet fully there. for example, for mar k. hegel didn't because capitalism was not yet fully developed. the young lukak schgel wasn't able to see that the proletariat ich. the actual subject-object of history. hegel couldn't have seen it. we have fukuyama, the same. and we have, this is what really interests me. it's an obscenity. it doesn't work. do you know that there are Ray Kurzweil and other theorists of Neuralink, artificial intelligence singularity, which claim that no, you can be a true hegelian in the sense of total mediation of thinking and reality, unity, actualized spirit, only with artificial intelligence becoming a new entity. we are just moment of the collective. spirit and so on and so on it's also clear with. shalimi! ver. for example, dialectical materialism, i use this term to annoy.
maybe i will class briefly. add something, i think. basically. there is a very... timper! hegelian and a little bit, as you frank said, historical materialist explanation because of why wrong reading because you know, if there is a lesson from hegel, from his... kind of it's more complex radical historicism it is that when a certain wrong reading mistake becomes so strong, it's never simply a mistake. as a mistake, it is a moment of certain social totality. it not only justifies but participates in a certain order and so on and so on. for... for example, uh we have today the... we have today this, let's call it, recognition, hegelian liberalism and so on and so on. it is. clear debt. that what they are doing as you already said frank. it's a kantianization of hegel in the sense that. a certain ideal. of mutual recognition and so on, which is typically liberal ideal, is projected as the end point. and then. hegel is simply perceived as somebody who? if. part of this progress towards the ideal, but i call this in my book the not yet hegelians. those who are assertive of hegel. but think that because of historical limitation and so on, hegel was not yet fully there. for example, for mar k. hegel didn't because capitalism was not yet fully developed. the young lukak schgel wasn't able to see that the proletariat ich. the actual subject-object of history. hegel couldn't have seen it. we have fukuyama, the same. and we have, this is what really interests me. it's an obscenity. it doesn't work. do you know that there are Ray Kurzweil and other theorists of Neuralink, artificial intelligence singularity, which claim that no, you can be a true hegelian in the sense of total mediation of thinking and reality, unity, actualized spirit, only with artificial intelligence becoming a new entity. we are just moment of the collective. spirit and so on and so on it's also clear with. shalimi! ver. for example, dialectical materialism, i use this term to annoy.
Dominic (host)
our enemy.
our enemy.
Slavoj Žižek
but i'm well aware. you know, people, even some of my friends use the term dialectical materialism in the sense of this is what marx and lenin called it. i got a little bit of history. you know, when i was young, i had to study marxism. did you know that? marx and engels never used the term dialectical materialism. even in his most ignored, considered stupid collection of manuscripts. dialectics of nature. uh... how is he called engels only once uses the term conditionally. dik sozusagen in der natur dialectics so to speak as it were in nature. yes, i see there and then. ple! established. bet. made it. made it. off. but if there is something totally strange to hegel and marx, is this idea of a dialectical materialism as a general ontology and then historical materialist. sorry, historical materialism is just an application of dialectical materialism. this specific domain. many ecologists, i think today even, fell into this, as if the solution to our ecological trouble is to. supplement historical materialism to focus on human history with a kind of a general view of nature. again, i in principle, agree with it, but the nature you will get there is a terrifying, brutal nature, it's the nightmare. of it's the nightmare of a nature. so i think again d. answer why it went wrong is that and with this i will conclude. you know what's the basic rule of hegel and of freud? theoretical categories are never glass. wrong theoretical categories. are never just a wrong description of reality. they describe... illusion illusion, reversal, alienation, use, whatever term you want, which is part of reality. itself even for psychoanalysis this holds it's not a joke. i read recently forgot the author a good text which proves it's not just that we have the unconscious and then we have freudian jungian ego. no, you have literally. patient symptoms who enact jungian symptoms, who enact anaphroidean symptoms. you know, this is ideology. it's not just a wrong vision of reality reality it wrong vision which is adequate to be okay, in some sense wrong reality, inverted reality. so we cannot answer the question but i think the basic point is this hegelian. heellian. reversal of wrong theory is part of a wrong history which is in itself which is in itself in sorry i speak
but i'm well aware. you know, people, even some of my friends use the term dialectical materialism in the sense of this is what marx and lenin called it. i got a little bit of history. you know, when i was young, i had to study marxism. did you know that? marx and engels never used the term dialectical materialism. even in his most ignored, considered stupid collection of manuscripts. dialectics of nature. uh... how is he called engels only once uses the term conditionally. dik sozusagen in der natur dialectics so to speak as it were in nature. yes, i see there and then. ple! established. bet. made it. made it. off. but if there is something totally strange to hegel and marx, is this idea of a dialectical materialism as a general ontology and then historical materialist. sorry, historical materialism is just an application of dialectical materialism. this specific domain. many ecologists, i think today even, fell into this, as if the solution to our ecological trouble is to. supplement historical materialism to focus on human history with a kind of a general view of nature. again, i in principle, agree with it, but the nature you will get there is a terrifying, brutal nature, it's the nightmare. of it's the nightmare of a nature. so i think again d. answer why it went wrong is that and with this i will conclude. you know what's the basic rule of hegel and of freud? theoretical categories are never glass. wrong theoretical categories. are never just a wrong description of reality. they describe... illusion illusion, reversal, alienation, use, whatever term you want, which is part of reality. itself even for psychoanalysis this holds it's not a joke. i read recently forgot the author a good text which proves it's not just that we have the unconscious and then we have freudian jungian ego. no, you have literally. patient symptoms who enact jungian symptoms, who enact anaphroidean symptoms. you know, this is ideology. it's not just a wrong vision of reality reality it wrong vision which is adequate to be okay, in some sense wrong reality, inverted reality. so we cannot answer the question but i think the basic point is this hegelian. heellian. reversal of wrong theory is part of a wrong history which is in itself which is in itself in sorry i speak
Dominic (host)
all good. frank, would you like to come back on that very briefly or we can skip to another question? it no, maybe we go ahead. there are a couple of questions about the antigone discussion. i think that might. yeah, you've read my mind. some very good questions that have come in on this. so this is a question from cheyenne and we're going to try and draw some of the other questions with it. well. um so it's regarding this is tijek. it's regarding the letting the brothers rot. how would you say this applies to modern political engagement? in terms of developing new forms of practice praxis, your pardon. particularly in developed countries in which the classical proletariat has disappeared.
all good. frank, would you like to come back on that very briefly or we can skip to another question? it no, maybe we go ahead. there are a couple of questions about the antigone discussion. i think that might. yeah, you've read my mind. some very good questions that have come in on this. so this is a question from cheyenne and we're going to try and draw some of the other questions with it. well. um so it's regarding this is tijek. it's regarding the letting the brothers rot. how would you say this applies to modern political engagement? in terms of developing new forms of practice praxis, your pardon. particularly in developed countries in which the classical proletariat has disappeared.
Slavoj Žižek
letler. very good question. i think i don't have a simple formula. but i think this is again my. revolutionary. pessimism. i think that we are today in a very... strange situation. for we. the old standard categories no longer apply. so i think, let me elaborate this. to be a member of a working class in a developed western country. ich. almost a privilege today. okay, you are exploited, but... you have a certain. although it's more and more diminished. basic. security, healthcare and so on and so on. it's a privilege. i think that to understand today's situation. we have two. ed adder. forums of. proletarization. first, as my good friend david harvey pointed out, the basic rule of today's capitalism is that. there is no. classical. valorized exploitation. by valorized, i mean classical marxist exploitation. you frank, i take a neutral example.. you are a rich capitalist, you employ me. you'll pay me. relatively well, but you know, i work for you, you appropriate surplus value and so on and so on. but we are. this is valorization. exchange of commodities since my commodity is specific labor force it produces surplus value you appropriate. but the big rule of today is that. there is no valorization without non-valorized work. in many forms, those who are illegally employed, immigrants, women's work all even. i think it's crucial to add today. those who are maybe the most exploited, but are even not. formally, in the formal marxist sense exploited at all. for example, i know the situation from my friends, for example, in ecuador. after it's an abomination, after they overthrew Correa and that guy whose name is Lenín, this is a crime against history, is now the moderately right-wing president. the exploitation there is not so much hiring local people, it's destroying their habitat. it's horrible what they are doing. and now this is even a big problem and there is no simple solution in bolivia. and i don't see a simple solution. in know they discovered now in bolivia arguably the greatest reserves in the world of lithium. now on the one hand if they fully exploit this libya. the poorest almost country in latin america could become the version of saudi arabia. on the other hand, exploitation of lithium. then be. catastrophic for the environment. but nobody is clear here. even those who, you know, the arrogant ecologists who said, no, keep. nature pure there it's very simple so although bolivia although bolivia ruins environment now much less than us so they the non-developed should sacrifice themselves for us remaining poor and so on it's a it's a big problem so again this type of it's orb, the big example every canadian tells me, in spite of all his small good gestures, blah, blah, blah, justin trudeau didn't even touch basically. the fracking, you know. fracking this getting oil just by, i don't know, you blew some chemical waters. and this is a catastrophe for the environment. and it's no exploitation. it's just the people who, as a rule, live there, these are indigenous people, their environment is ruined. statistics and so on and so on. so i think that that's the first thing. to do and this is what i'm sorry that he is not here our good friend Álvaro García Linera is aware of. that was the basis of. morales. polit. i think we should emphasize. today. bolivia because it really is it really is. one country where at least radical left came to power, it remained radical left. but it, proceeded in such a wonderful pragmatic way. they didn't screw it up the standard of living of ordinary people cannot. but. linera also. and i'm coming back to another point, what to do today. linera wrote, i think it's a game for you, frank, and agon. in your... she and he didn't linera published there. in the pandemic volume, the text on the role of state. and he makes a wonderful element. principled but very realistic. that we should stop with this bullshit of, you know, authentic politics only takes place at a distance from state, state alienation. he, linera, gives a wonderful description of the first month of the pandemic when. international cooperation, everybody was in a panic more or less collapsed then the... the company broke down, people were unemployed, healthcare didn't work. and we suddenly discovered we did put all our hopes into a state. we all expect that and the state did even have to act like this, print trillions of money and so on and so on. and clinera's point is that in spite of course all partial hypocritical things that the state did. we the left should nonetheless. but... take into account that in critical situation, state is the only global, at least in a country. representing all population, instrument that we have and taking state power, you can do some good things. it's not automatically that state is the instrument of the capital and so on and so on. so again, in the hegelian view, i think we discovered today that you you cannot do it without state. state is needed today. even. you know, all these dreams of having democracy and direct democracy without state. turn into new form of violent non-transparent exploitation. just to conclude, you know where i see another problem? the trick is this one. we all know the theory, maybe the term is not good, but it points out something. this neo-feudal lords. like bill geake, who. they don't exploit us in the old way. surplus value through all. profit. no, we pay rent to them. they owe. a common, if you want to buy a book, you practically have to go to amazon. on and you pay them a rent because they owe the very commons. the problem is another one here and this for me is the most ingenious invention, ingenious means horrible of today's capitalism, precarious workers. on the one hand, you are all the time in anxiety, never sure. will you keep the job? but at the same time. it's no longer the old type of exploitation. why? because look, if you're an uber driver, you own your own means of production you. you own a car, if you are a programmer, you own your own pc. so it's no longer that the capitalist owns means of production. and even worse, ideologically, you then perceive yourself as a small-scale free entrepreneur. you know, it's no, and you perceive as competition, not up the bosses, but other precarious.
letler. very good question. i think i don't have a simple formula. but i think this is again my. revolutionary. pessimism. i think that we are today in a very... strange situation. for we. the old standard categories no longer apply. so i think, let me elaborate this. to be a member of a working class in a developed western country. ich. almost a privilege today. okay, you are exploited, but... you have a certain. although it's more and more diminished. basic. security, healthcare and so on and so on. it's a privilege. i think that to understand today's situation. we have two. ed adder. forums of. proletarization. first, as my good friend david harvey pointed out, the basic rule of today's capitalism is that. there is no. classical. valorized exploitation. by valorized, i mean classical marxist exploitation. you frank, i take a neutral example.. you are a rich capitalist, you employ me. you'll pay me. relatively well, but you know, i work for you, you appropriate surplus value and so on and so on. but we are. this is valorization. exchange of commodities since my commodity is specific labor force it produces surplus value you appropriate. but the big rule of today is that. there is no valorization without non-valorized work. in many forms, those who are illegally employed, immigrants, women's work all even. i think it's crucial to add today. those who are maybe the most exploited, but are even not. formally, in the formal marxist sense exploited at all. for example, i know the situation from my friends, for example, in ecuador. after it's an abomination, after they overthrew Correa and that guy whose name is Lenín, this is a crime against history, is now the moderately right-wing president. the exploitation there is not so much hiring local people, it's destroying their habitat. it's horrible what they are doing. and now this is even a big problem and there is no simple solution in bolivia. and i don't see a simple solution. in know they discovered now in bolivia arguably the greatest reserves in the world of lithium. now on the one hand if they fully exploit this libya. the poorest almost country in latin america could become the version of saudi arabia. on the other hand, exploitation of lithium. then be. catastrophic for the environment. but nobody is clear here. even those who, you know, the arrogant ecologists who said, no, keep. nature pure there it's very simple so although bolivia although bolivia ruins environment now much less than us so they the non-developed should sacrifice themselves for us remaining poor and so on it's a it's a big problem so again this type of it's orb, the big example every canadian tells me, in spite of all his small good gestures, blah, blah, blah, justin trudeau didn't even touch basically. the fracking, you know. fracking this getting oil just by, i don't know, you blew some chemical waters. and this is a catastrophe for the environment. and it's no exploitation. it's just the people who, as a rule, live there, these are indigenous people, their environment is ruined. statistics and so on and so on. so i think that that's the first thing. to do and this is what i'm sorry that he is not here our good friend Álvaro García Linera is aware of. that was the basis of. morales. polit. i think we should emphasize. today. bolivia because it really is it really is. one country where at least radical left came to power, it remained radical left. but it, proceeded in such a wonderful pragmatic way. they didn't screw it up the standard of living of ordinary people cannot. but. linera also. and i'm coming back to another point, what to do today. linera wrote, i think it's a game for you, frank, and agon. in your... she and he didn't linera published there. in the pandemic volume, the text on the role of state. and he makes a wonderful element. principled but very realistic. that we should stop with this bullshit of, you know, authentic politics only takes place at a distance from state, state alienation. he, linera, gives a wonderful description of the first month of the pandemic when. international cooperation, everybody was in a panic more or less collapsed then the... the company broke down, people were unemployed, healthcare didn't work. and we suddenly discovered we did put all our hopes into a state. we all expect that and the state did even have to act like this, print trillions of money and so on and so on. and clinera's point is that in spite of course all partial hypocritical things that the state did. we the left should nonetheless. but... take into account that in critical situation, state is the only global, at least in a country. representing all population, instrument that we have and taking state power, you can do some good things. it's not automatically that state is the instrument of the capital and so on and so on. so again, in the hegelian view, i think we discovered today that you you cannot do it without state. state is needed today. even. you know, all these dreams of having democracy and direct democracy without state. turn into new form of violent non-transparent exploitation. just to conclude, you know where i see another problem? the trick is this one. we all know the theory, maybe the term is not good, but it points out something. this neo-feudal lords. like bill geake, who. they don't exploit us in the old way. surplus value through all. profit. no, we pay rent to them. they owe. a common, if you want to buy a book, you practically have to go to amazon. on and you pay them a rent because they owe the very commons. the problem is another one here and this for me is the most ingenious invention, ingenious means horrible of today's capitalism, precarious workers. on the one hand, you are all the time in anxiety, never sure. will you keep the job? but at the same time. it's no longer the old type of exploitation. why? because look, if you're an uber driver, you own your own means of production you. you own a car, if you are a programmer, you own your own pc. so it's no longer that the capitalist owns means of production. and even worse, ideologically, you then perceive yourself as a small-scale free entrepreneur. you know, it's no, and you perceive as competition, not up the bosses, but other precarious.
Dominic (host)
workers.
workers.
Slavoj Žižek
so solidarity organize to organize solidarity is almost impossible. sorry that i talked too much but at this level, i think that to remain a marxist today. we have to think a lot and change many basic. coordinate.
so solidarity organize to organize solidarity is almost impossible. sorry that i talked too much but at this level, i think that to remain a marxist today. we have to think a lot and change many basic. coordinate.
Dominic (host)
excellent. frank hit back. i don't have no, i mean... maybe i can only say one thing vis-à-vis the politicization of the concept of the state, because on some level, there is this tendency that one can inter alia find in thinkers like suran lazarousse or so forth, who thinks that the state is necessarily a machine of corruption. that is the assumption, right? i mean, that is his term, a machine of corruption. yeah yeah. that means as soon as any contact of a political movement with any type of state organization takes place, the movement will internally be corrupted. but that is the purest fantasy of what a political movement is in the first place, right? i mean and so what if corruption, i mean, in the sense that we indicated, i think, that you pointed out in some of the previous answers, what if that element of corruption is absolutely necessary for the very maintenance so a necessary element of failure for the maintenance of any kind of movement that wants to sustain and not fall back into the problems of horizontalism and all the nightmares implied there. so i don't have any means to hit back and any intention.
excellent. frank hit back. i don't have no, i mean... maybe i can only say one thing vis-à-vis the politicization of the concept of the state, because on some level, there is this tendency that one can inter alia find in thinkers like suran lazarousse or so forth, who thinks that the state is necessarily a machine of corruption. that is the assumption, right? i mean, that is his term, a machine of corruption. yeah yeah. that means as soon as any contact of a political movement with any type of state organization takes place, the movement will internally be corrupted. but that is the purest fantasy of what a political movement is in the first place, right? i mean and so what if corruption, i mean, in the sense that we indicated, i think, that you pointed out in some of the previous answers, what if that element of corruption is absolutely necessary for the very maintenance so a necessary element of failure for the maintenance of any kind of movement that wants to sustain and not fall back into the problems of horizontalism and all the nightmares implied there. so i don't have any means to hit back and any intention.
Slavoj Žižek
sorry if i may add one thing, frank, would you agree then that and but you. show this very well because you know that laszararus broke with alain badiou. when apro propos of villelet jeune, yellow ve, but you proposed a wonderful slogan. when we take power, but you will be our propaganda writer. he said, tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge. all that moves introduce disorder order is not necessarily red. goodut. nope. you work. al. civil society, out of-state mobilization. e. today, not exclusively, but quite often. right-wing nationalist, conservative and so on. don't forget that trumpism and all that stuff began as civil society movement. that's another reason for yes, i agree with all. about what you said. but you know, i read a good leftist analysis of even in the united states of the this legal conflicts when a civil society organization prosecuted the state for infringing on individual freedom. and they discovered that in 80 to 90 percent of the cases they were leftists for the state. because the protests were like your anti-racial laws, school bashing and so on infringe on our freedom and so on and so on. no, i have unfortunately. also a deep distrust in civil society. it's not automatically ours in the sense of and here is the problem of lazarus. you know that what led to the split between lazarus and alain bab you, that lazarus totally balked. religion. eh. that's it, the new type of politics and so on and so on.
sorry if i may add one thing, frank, would you agree then that and but you. show this very well because you know that laszararus broke with alain badiou. when apro propos of villelet jeune, yellow ve, but you proposed a wonderful slogan. when we take power, but you will be our propaganda writer. he said, tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge. all that moves introduce disorder order is not necessarily red. goodut. nope. you work. al. civil society, out of-state mobilization. e. today, not exclusively, but quite often. right-wing nationalist, conservative and so on. don't forget that trumpism and all that stuff began as civil society movement. that's another reason for yes, i agree with all. about what you said. but you know, i read a good leftist analysis of even in the united states of the this legal conflicts when a civil society organization prosecuted the state for infringing on individual freedom. and they discovered that in 80 to 90 percent of the cases they were leftists for the state. because the protests were like your anti-racial laws, school bashing and so on infringe on our freedom and so on and so on. no, i have unfortunately. also a deep distrust in civil society. it's not automatically ours in the sense of and here is the problem of lazarus. you know that what led to the split between lazarus and alain bab you, that lazarus totally balked. religion. eh. that's it, the new type of politics and so on and so on.
Dominic (host)
we are almost out of time and i think in the spirit of keeping things masterly, we ought to end on time.
we are almost out of time and i think in the spirit of keeping things masterly, we ought to end on time.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, but please if you want, i would like to just get one and now i will be accused of being a fascist or male slovinist. but... you know, here i am for quotas, like, add at least one woman, i mean. not in a patronizing way, but. today, i hope, no, no, no, i will prove it to you that i don't mean it in a male chauvinist way. the reason i only don't like our book, frank owl triple orgy book, are got. butank you and me. is that. there are no women in it. wait a minute! i don't mean it in this patronizing way, yeah you have to be a quota, one asian woman or whatever. there is a simple fact. that in the last, i would say, 20 years. the big majority of. books on hegel. the bech! are we aware of this? we're written by women. it began with not jacqueline but gillian her sister. you remember gillian rose hegel contra sociology. Béatrice Longuenesse, then she became a Kantian, very good early book. egalale la critique de la métaphysique, then we have of course. Catherine Malabou, then we have the one with whom you, frank, co-wrote a book, rebecca comay, then we have now a younger generation like Rocío Zambrana and others. very good. top! politically engaged. post- anti-colonialist but heellians, so. we need more women, not for any politically correct quotas, but there is something strange and for me beautiful happening lately. women are taking over art. the predominant force of hegel studies. great. yes, karen, and i only don't know how to pronounce it. and and g but. her also and there are some ricci or what's some italian name i'm very sorry i'm old and senile but it's not just the names that type. bench. i mean, it's incredible what is happening now. so you know that when i tried, but because of covid, we had to cancel it. hegel conference and birbeck. col it. you know better. the problem was when i just followed my wishes that some people said the opposite of usual political correctness. not enough men, we need more balance, where are the men? and so on. and even in the third so-called, i hate the term, third world. you have in india. two or three we mean, i'm sorry even to emphasize this. hegelians who did a wonderful job on thinking about hegel and india. not just making the usual point, you know, hegel from his european racism didn't see it, but how nonetheless hegel can be read in an extremely productive way. through indian experience and so on and so on. i think that i don't know what will happen generally with philosophy. but. in. kegel studies. it womenstein. so what do we do, frank? we retire to some countryside, no end. drink beer every evening and reflect those good old times where we were still the bosses, you know.
yeah, but please if you want, i would like to just get one and now i will be accused of being a fascist or male slovinist. but... you know, here i am for quotas, like, add at least one woman, i mean. not in a patronizing way, but. today, i hope, no, no, no, i will prove it to you that i don't mean it in a male chauvinist way. the reason i only don't like our book, frank owl triple orgy book, are got. butank you and me. is that. there are no women in it. wait a minute! i don't mean it in this patronizing way, yeah you have to be a quota, one asian woman or whatever. there is a simple fact. that in the last, i would say, 20 years. the big majority of. books on hegel. the bech! are we aware of this? we're written by women. it began with not jacqueline but gillian her sister. you remember gillian rose hegel contra sociology. Béatrice Longuenesse, then she became a Kantian, very good early book. egalale la critique de la métaphysique, then we have of course. Catherine Malabou, then we have the one with whom you, frank, co-wrote a book, rebecca comay, then we have now a younger generation like Rocío Zambrana and others. very good. top! politically engaged. post- anti-colonialist but heellians, so. we need more women, not for any politically correct quotas, but there is something strange and for me beautiful happening lately. women are taking over art. the predominant force of hegel studies. great. yes, karen, and i only don't know how to pronounce it. and and g but. her also and there are some ricci or what's some italian name i'm very sorry i'm old and senile but it's not just the names that type. bench. i mean, it's incredible what is happening now. so you know that when i tried, but because of covid, we had to cancel it. hegel conference and birbeck. col it. you know better. the problem was when i just followed my wishes that some people said the opposite of usual political correctness. not enough men, we need more balance, where are the men? and so on. and even in the third so-called, i hate the term, third world. you have in india. two or three we mean, i'm sorry even to emphasize this. hegelians who did a wonderful job on thinking about hegel and india. not just making the usual point, you know, hegel from his european racism didn't see it, but how nonetheless hegel can be read in an extremely productive way. through indian experience and so on and so on. i think that i don't know what will happen generally with philosophy. but. in. kegel studies. it womenstein. so what do we do, frank? we retire to some countryside, no end. drink beer every evening and reflect those good old times where we were still the bosses, you know.
Dominic (host)
i leave that to the future to decide if that's going to happen. what does the master say? do we have one final? question or if you're willing to take one final question, we can do it. certainly. yeah.
i leave that to the future to decide if that's going to happen. what does the master say? do we have one final? question or if you're willing to take one final question, we can do it. certainly. yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
concluding.
concluding.
Dominic (host)
okay. okay, go with the concluding song. no, no, no, let frank
okay. okay, go with the concluding song. no, no, no, let frank
Slavoj Žižek
no, you know what i, okay, i will say just to amuse people, but i mean it in a bloodily curious way. now i will say something for which you, dominic, will immediately cut the links and prohibit me to approach, like you will give me a restraining order, not even edinburgh, 100 miles out of dundee, that i'm not. i moderately liked it's a disgusting movie. now comes the moment which will ru in me. Roland Emmerich Moonfall. new catastrophe movie. which has a wonderful fantasy for me. you know, moon is approaching the earth. and they discovered that moon is not, it's a hyperstructure. it just looks. it's a fake natural object. inside there is an artificial intelligence which controls us, but it's a good artificial intelligence. and i always like the hegelian potential of this idea. it's not, i don't read it in this primitive idealist way. there is no nature. behind even pure nature there is some other subjectivity. but this idea of there is no nature in the sense that nature is... in itself an artificial mega structure. that this our basic idea propagated even by ecology of nature like what do you think by nature? even feet. chaos, heavy earth. organicique. spontaneous, no. if there is a lesson from biogenetics, from quantum physics, if that. nature is not. d. nature is something mechanic, formal, artificial, that precisely when people talk about we have to find our roots in nature. we project omtop. nature. this uh... this... fantasy of nature is again chaotic, spontaneous, or even worse, some kind of a natural homostatic balance that we humans are ruining, you know. so. i tend to write something about moonfall i cannot go lower you the lowest of the key but i like this idea because it happened to me once. i was in the countryside. in a small house and i walked down a small forest and then all of a sudden i heard artificial sounds like some some. canalization, something leaking broken and of course.
no, you know what i, okay, i will say just to amuse people, but i mean it in a bloodily curious way. now i will say something for which you, dominic, will immediately cut the links and prohibit me to approach, like you will give me a restraining order, not even edinburgh, 100 miles out of dundee, that i'm not. i moderately liked it's a disgusting movie. now comes the moment which will ru in me. Roland Emmerich Moonfall. new catastrophe movie. which has a wonderful fantasy for me. you know, moon is approaching the earth. and they discovered that moon is not, it's a hyperstructure. it just looks. it's a fake natural object. inside there is an artificial intelligence which controls us, but it's a good artificial intelligence. and i always like the hegelian potential of this idea. it's not, i don't read it in this primitive idealist way. there is no nature. behind even pure nature there is some other subjectivity. but this idea of there is no nature in the sense that nature is... in itself an artificial mega structure. that this our basic idea propagated even by ecology of nature like what do you think by nature? even feet. chaos, heavy earth. organicique. spontaneous, no. if there is a lesson from biogenetics, from quantum physics, if that. nature is not. d. nature is something mechanic, formal, artificial, that precisely when people talk about we have to find our roots in nature. we project omtop. nature. this uh... this... fantasy of nature is again chaotic, spontaneous, or even worse, some kind of a natural homostatic balance that we humans are ruining, you know. so. i tend to write something about moonfall i cannot go lower you the lowest of the key but i like this idea because it happened to me once. i was in the countryside. in a small house and i walked down a small forest and then all of a sudden i heard artificial sounds like some some. canalization, something leaking broken and of course.
Dominic (host)
later it was explained. there was some kind of
later it was explained. there was some kind of
Slavoj Žižek
but for a moment, i got caught for half a minute into this paranoia. my god, this is not really a forest. it's all artificial and, you know, just the machinery is breaking down and i like this vision of nature. sorry. that's my final heellian thought.
but for a moment, i got caught for half a minute into this paranoia. my god, this is not really a forest. it's all artificial and, you know, just the machinery is breaking down and i like this vision of nature. sorry. that's my final heellian thought.
Dominic (host)
long live moonfall.
long live moonfall.
Slavoj Žižek
frank, did you see another interesting movie? do you see hegelian potentials in don't look up?
frank, did you see another interesting movie? do you see hegelian potentials in don't look up?
Dominic (host)
i very much liked it, to be honest. i think it's absolutely great. yes. i mean, it ineffacy, practical inefficacy of knowledge, right? i mean, knowledge can be practically.
i very much liked it, to be honest. i think it's absolutely great. yes. i mean, it ineffacy, practical inefficacy of knowledge, right? i mean, knowledge can be practically.
Slavoj Žižek
also alenka wrote something very important that what bothered the critics. you remember. is that. it's too ironic, it's not convincing enough and so on whatever. no, they missed it. that's precisely the point of the movie because you know what also critics missed Alenka Zupančič in unfortunately Slovenian text developed this. uh. all. it's not the target of the movie, is not simply trumpian popul. no, the president, meryl streep remembered. she's seen in a photo embracing bill clinton. he is the enlightened democrat and also even those who. protest against ignorance and have meetings. do look up. look up. they just turn it into a performance, you know, like another performance and so on and so on. you know, like it's a much more dark, ambiguous movie. it confirms my old point. that when we are really in deep c. you cannot do a trap. it must be. something appears to us as comedy. and incidentally. that's right. i want to make some propaganda because two weeks from now i will have a round table with her. Sheila Fitzpatrick, now an old lady, i think she's the best historian of stalinism. and she is hated now by the right and by the left. uh... h. her focus is this one. stalinism was not just an elite. screwing up the ordinary people who were totally scared and so on. believe no. cl. she said that if you study sources she speaks fluently russian. you discover that many ordinary people will also gladly corrupt, you know, don't idealize the ordinary people in totalitarian. and this is what borders again. both types. in the debate. and i want to develop now in the review of her new book, a brief history of soviet union, how precisely this approach is specifically. feminine. if. same skepticism also about ordinary people. it's not just some top nomenclatura terrorizing everybody and then ordinary it's in a way a much more sad and darker ra.
also alenka wrote something very important that what bothered the critics. you remember. is that. it's too ironic, it's not convincing enough and so on whatever. no, they missed it. that's precisely the point of the movie because you know what also critics missed Alenka Zupančič in unfortunately Slovenian text developed this. uh. all. it's not the target of the movie, is not simply trumpian popul. no, the president, meryl streep remembered. she's seen in a photo embracing bill clinton. he is the enlightened democrat and also even those who. protest against ignorance and have meetings. do look up. look up. they just turn it into a performance, you know, like another performance and so on and so on. you know, like it's a much more dark, ambiguous movie. it confirms my old point. that when we are really in deep c. you cannot do a trap. it must be. something appears to us as comedy. and incidentally. that's right. i want to make some propaganda because two weeks from now i will have a round table with her. Sheila Fitzpatrick, now an old lady, i think she's the best historian of stalinism. and she is hated now by the right and by the left. uh... h. her focus is this one. stalinism was not just an elite. screwing up the ordinary people who were totally scared and so on. believe no. cl. she said that if you study sources she speaks fluently russian. you discover that many ordinary people will also gladly corrupt, you know, don't idealize the ordinary people in totalitarian. and this is what borders again. both types. in the debate. and i want to develop now in the review of her new book, a brief history of soviet union, how precisely this approach is specifically. feminine. if. same skepticism also about ordinary people. it's not just some top nomenclatura terrorizing everybody and then ordinary it's in a way a much more sad and darker ra.
Dominic (host)
dominic. yep. we're all good here. i think with that we ought to conclude. and this has been a wonderful event. thank you everyone for coming along. just to let you know, if you are in the wonderful city of dundee. and slavoy is still very welcome in dundee despite his reference to Moonfall. and
dominic. yep. we're all good here. i think with that we ought to conclude. and this has been a wonderful event. thank you everyone for coming along. just to let you know, if you are in the wonderful city of dundee. and slavoy is still very welcome in dundee despite his reference to Moonfall. and
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Dominic (host)
the great reproach to you.
the great reproach to you.
Slavoj Žižek
the last time i was there, since i love movies, i expected a crocodile big. i want to, you know that that stupid movie from years ago? i want to see a crocodile there. even if it's in a
the last time i was there, since i love movies, i expected a crocodile big. i want to, you know that that stupid movie from years ago? i want to see a crocodile there. even if it's in a
Dominic (host)
we'll try that next thing. um so wonderful to see you all. if you're in dundee, you're very welcome to join members of our team at the dundee contemporary arts centre. they're going for a drink. and if you're far away from dundee, perhaps you can. charter a plane or swim
we'll try that next thing. um so wonderful to see you all. if you're in dundee, you're very welcome to join members of our team at the dundee contemporary arts centre. they're going for a drink. and if you're far away from dundee, perhaps you can. charter a plane or swim
Audience Member
excuse me, sorry to interrupt dominic, where the dca, are you going right now? because i'm. here in dundee.
excuse me, sorry to interrupt dominic, where the dca, are you going right now? because i'm. here in dundee.
Dominic (host)
yep, i believe so. so frank, perhaps over to you on this point. yeah, we will be there soonish. thank you, dominic. thanks, laoy. thanks the absent albanian. thanks everyone for.
yep, i believe so. so frank, perhaps over to you on this point. yeah, we will be there soonish. thank you, dominic. thanks, laoy. thanks the absent albanian. thanks everyone for.
Slavoj Žižek
now i know what's the point. you really want to cut it short because you have already a meeting to drink in a pub just to make it clear
now i know what's the point. you really want to cut it short because you have already a meeting to drink in a pub just to make it clear
Dominic (host)
it's scotland. thank.
it's scotland. thank.
Slavoj Žižek
exactly. thanks ever so much. thanks very much. really, thank you. bye-bye.
exactly. thanks ever so much. thanks very much. really, thank you. bye-bye.
Dominic (host)
thank you.
thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
take care.
take care.