Slavoj Žižek - Hegel at Middlesex (2010) [Remaster]
Lecture · WhereAreWeSeeing ·
2010 · 1:09:44 · 9,363 words
philosophy-generalideologyhistorycinema-art-culturehegel-dialecticseveryday-life
Žižek defends Hegel against post-Hegelian critiques by arguing that Hegel is the 'vanishing mediator' between traditional metaphysics and post-metaphysical thought. He contends that the 'post-Hegelian break', characterized by a return to pre-logical positivity and the autonomization of science, is not a rejection of Hegel but a traumatic event that Hegel himself anticipates and mediates. Žižek rehabilitates Hegel's concepts of totality, Verstand/Vernunft, and the Cunning of Reason, arguing that true totality includes inconsistency and that Hegel is more Kantian than Kant. Žižek argues that the post-Hegelian opposition between 'productive presence' and 'representation' is a fundamental ideological error, using film examples of ventriloquism to illustrate the disruptive nature of the voice. He critiques Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, and naive Marxism for remaining within this binary, arguing instead for a Hegelian view where representation (specifically theological mystification) is constitutive of reality itself, as seen in commodity fetishism. He further reinterprets Hegel’s 'cunning of reason' not as teleological determinism but as retroactive constitution, where contingent acts define essence. Žižek argues that Hegelian totality is not a static linear progression but a retroactive process where the present reconfigures the past, rendering contingent events necessary in hindsight. He illustrates this through political history, speech acts, and literary theory, claiming that actions often reveal their true meaning only after they occur. The talk culminates in a series of vulgar jokes and film references (Brassed Off, Ninotchka, Soviet jokes) to demonstrate how dialectical negation operates in everyday life and desire, moving from empty symbolic offers to concrete, 'real' satisfaction.
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
The title of Žižek's upcoming book, referencing Bret Easton Ellis, used to frame his defense of Hegel's philosophy of nature and absolute knowing.
Hegel's term for the faculty that breaks apart what belongs together, creating abstractions that have actuality in bourgeois society.
The historical and philosophical rupture after Hegel, characterized by a return to pre-logical positivity (Schelling, Marx) and the autonomization of mathematized science (Freud, Einstein).
as “absolute ontological scandal”
Žižek's description of the original encounter with the Other in Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic: not mutual recognition, but a traumatic intrusion of another subject claiming equality.
Freud's 'secondary revision' of dreams; Žižek uses it to critique the idea of philosophy as patching up inconsistencies, arguing instead that philosophy (Kant/Hegel) opens gaps.
Rehabilitated by Žižek to mean accounting for all inconsistencies and 'bullshit' as part of the self-movement of the whole, rather than subsuming them into a harmonious ideal.
Žižek's reading of Jesus Christ in Hegel: not an imperfect copy of an idea, but an example that contains a surplus of inconsistency, making it 'atheism'.
as “List der Vernunft”
The 'Cunning of Reason'; Žižek reinterprets this not as a guarantee of positive outcomes, but as the name for the fact that things always go wrong and inconsistencies are part of the whole.
as “vanishing art mediator”
Žižek's formulation of Hegel as the transitional figure between traditional metaphysics and post-metaphysical anti-philosophy, whose 'breakthrough' is traumatic.
as “Deckerinnerung”
Screen memory; Žižek uses this psychoanalytic concept to explain the 'ridiculous image of Hegel' (the totalizer) as a fantasy covering the true trauma of the post-Hegelian break.
as “ventriloquism of reality”
The insight that voice/speech is not a natural extension of the self but a foreign intruder that disrupts identity, revealing the constructed nature of our reality.
as “productive presence”
The post-Hegelian claim (found in Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Badiou) that there is an irreducible, pre-conceptual reality or life that representation obscures or alienates us from.
The French ambiguity Badiou exploits, conflating 'state' as political entity with 'state' as situation, which Žižek argues is an illegitimate identity.
as “late Badiou's weird political turn of subtraction”
Badiou's political strategy of staying at a distance from the state to avoid totalitarian catastrophe, which Žižek critiques as an illegitimate ideological move.
Moishe Postone's distinction between Marx's actual critique (influenced by Hegel) and the later dogmatic 'Marxism' (base/superstructure model) that Stalin quoted.
as “theological eccentricities of commodity”
Marx's description of commodity fetishism as a mechanism where theological mystification is inscribed into the core of material reality, not just superstructural ideology.
The idea that reality itself requires illusory representation (like commodity fetishism) to sustain itself, rather than representation being a mere overlay on a pure base.
as “absolute spirit”
Hegel's concept reinterpreted by Žižek as the moment when objective spirit needs subjective illusion to sustain itself, not an addition of something more.
The philosophical problem of whether the finite mind can reach reality-in-itself, which Žižek dismisses as the wrong question for Hegel.
as “substance not subject”
The misreading of Hegel as positing a mega-subject (substance) pulling strings, whereas Žižek argues Hegel posits subjectivity as the moment of illusion and split.
The Hegelian principle that essence is not a pre-existing hidden truth but is constituted by the contingent actualization of events, which are then read back as necessary.
The Hegelian principle that when a contingent event occurs, it retroactively posits itself as necessary, changing the meaning of all prior events.
The idea that a great writer (like Kafka) does not just have predecessors but retroactively creates them, defining who counts as a precursor only after the new work appears.
as “totality of change”
The concept that things happen as a total process, but the totality itself is constantly retotalized and changed by new events.
A German term (from Kleist) meaning to say more than one intended, creating an excess or failure that forces the emergence of a 'big thought' or political gesture.
The dialectical movement where the second negation does not return to the original zero point but produces a new, concrete gain (e.g., sexual satisfaction).
as “symbolic to the real”
The transition in dialectics where an empty symbolic offer (coffee without cream) is filled by a concrete, 'real' element (milk/toy) to achieve satisfaction.
Stories he reaches for 6
In Ninotchka, a waiter tells a customer who ordered 'coffee without cream' that they are out of cream but have milk, offering 'coffee without milk.' Žižek uses this to show how negativity must be inscribed into positive identity.
“Sorry sir we ran out of cream so I cannot give you coffee without cream but we still have milk so can I give you coffee without milk?”
In the film Brassed Off, a woman invites a man up for coffee; he says he doesn't like coffee, and she replies, 'No problem I don't have any.' Žižek calls this 'pure Hegelian negation of negation,' where the empty offer is filled by the 'real' gain (sex).
“No problem I don't have any.”
Robespierre presents a black book of traitors, then claims that anyone who trembles is guilty because 'innocence never fears public scrutiny,' exploiting the audience's fear to create guilt.
“innocence never fears public scrutiny.”
Adorno's claim that after Schönberg, writing old tonal music is kitsch (like Rachmaninoff); Žižek applies this to Hegelians: playing Hegel after the break is a 'fake' or kitsch.
Chaplin plays two roles: the silent Jewish barber (old silent film) and Hitler (priority of the voice). The voice is presented as a shouting, disruptive force before the figure is seen, illustrating that voice is a foreign intruder, not natural.
“Hitler is the priority of the voice. It's usually even first presented as shouting voice and only then as a figure that we see.”
Žižek speculates that Stalin's order to fight those who oppose collectivization 'in their thoughts' was a rhetorical blunder made in enthusiasm, which Stalin then retroactively justified as a virtue rather than retracting.
“we should detect I quote and fight without mercy even those who oppose collectivization only in their thoughts.”
Works invoked 22
Capital book
Cited for its description of commodity fetishism as abounding in 'metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties'.
Ninotchka film
A film Žižek 'doesn't like in general' but uses for a detail illustrating Hegelian logic (coffee without cream).
Brassed Off film
A British melodrama featuring a scene Žižek identifies as 'purely Hegelian negation of negation.'
The Great Dictator film
Praised for revealing the genius of Chaplin and the disruptive nature of voice.
The German Ideology book
Cited as the best expression of 'Marxism of Marx' (naive base/superstructure model) and Young Marx's opposition of abstraction to concrete reality.
T.S. Eliot's essay, which Žižek critiques personally but uses for its point on retroactive change.
Hegel's Logic book
Cited for its structure (Being -> Appearance -> Essence) illustrating retroactive constitution.
Le Monde journal
Magazine where the Balladur quote was found.
Hegel's work; Žižek defends it against charges of historicism, noting Hegel's honest admission of ignorance about physics.
Cited as the dogma quoted by Stalin, representing naive Marxism.
Heinrich Kleist's text, described as 'wonderful' and used to develop the theory of speech acts.
Das Ganze ist das Wahre other
Hegel's phrase 'The True is the Whole'; Žiženg rehabilitates this against Adorno's critique.
Einstein on Einstein book
A book by Einstein on Einstein; cited to show Hegel's critique of Newtonian time/space anticipates Einstein.
Critiqued for remaining within the correlationist Kantian topic.
Called 'really a bad book' for misreading Hegelian Geist as a mega-subject.
A posthumous manuscript used to support the point about retroactive necessity and lack of providential necessity.
Cited for a specific story illustrating ventriloquism and Hegelian negation.
How to Be an Alien book
George Mikes's satire, cited for the theory of British tea with milk.
Less Than Zero book
Title of Žižek's upcoming book; used to frame his Hegelian reading of quantum physics and nature.
Phenomenology book
Hegel's work; cited for the passage praising 'Verstand' (Understanding) as absolute power.
Pulp Fiction film
Called a 'shitty pretentious movie' by Žižek, used only as a visual reference for a 'third degree' interrogation joke.
Think Again book
Edited by Peter Hallward, containing Alenka Zupančič's essay critiquing Badiou.
People invoked 62
Location of the anecdote about the leaflet denying mystification in speculation.
A Slovenian woman with whom Žižek planned a 'vulgar' dialectical interaction.
Pittsburgh Hegelians negative
Criticized for providing a 'deflated image' of Hegel, reducing him to a Habermasian theory of discourse and ignoring ontological metaphysics.
Used as an example of contingent action (crossing the Rubicon) that retroactively constitutes essence.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
French rational choice theorist who quotes the Balladur anecdote.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Cited for her essay critiquing Badiou and anti-philosophy, specifically the motive of 'productive presence'.
Ocna de Fier positive
Cited alongside Chaplin as a great artist of the cinematic break.
French presidential candidate used in an anecdote about retroactive necessity.
Robert Brandom negative
Cited as turning Hegelian but arguing Hegel's logic is just a 'general theory of discourse' with no metaphysical commitment.
Sergei Rachmaninoff negative
Cited by Adorno as an example of 'kitsch', writing old tonal music after Schönberg.
Chinese Cultural Revolution negative
Cited as an example of totalitarian catastrophe.
Charlie Chaplin positive
Cited as a 'conservative skeptic' and true great artist of the transition from silent to talking movies.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Cited for the claim that 'after Schönberg you cannot simply write the old tonal music'; Žižek agrees with this structural point but disagrees with Adorno's polemics against Hegel's totality.
Emmanuel Levinas negative
Cited as representing the 'Levinasian other' (ooh, but also), which Žižek rejects in favor of Hegel's traumatic Other.
Ernest Renan positive
French positivist proto-racist who provided a 'stroke of genius' definition of a nation based on shared lies.
Cited alongside Bradley as reading Hegel's absolute idea as a mega-subject.
Žižek says he is 'bored by it' but reads him because he shamelessly approaches naive realist metaphysics (origin of universe).
Not explicitly named but 'German Ideology' and 'Marxism of Marx' critique target the orthodox Marxist dogma often associated with him.
Gilles Deleuze negative
Hallward is said to misread Deleuze, who is 'very Hegelian' regarding Caesar.
George Mikes positive
Author of 'How to Be an Alien,' cited for the satire on British tea with milk.
Fritz Lang positive
Cited as an early director who noticed the unnatural nature of voice in movies.
Shining Path negative
Shining Path, cited as an example of totalitarian catastrophe.
French revolutionary figure whose spontaneous speech to the Assemblée nationale is used as a key example of Versprechen.
Judith Butler negative
Debated by Malabou; represents the view of intersubjectivity as mutual recognition, which Žižek rejects as missing the traumatic intrusion of the Other.
Author of 'Less Than Zero', referenced for the book title.
Cited as a radical Hegelian.
Heinrich von Kleist positive
Author of 'On the Gradual Formation of Thoughts in the Process of Speech,' used to illustrate how speech acts generate thought.
Jesus Christ positive
Cited as 'the example of examples' in Hegel, meaning 'atheism' because it contains the surplus of the real.
Alain Badiou negative
Critiqued for remaining within the opposition of productive presence and representation and for an 'illegitimate ideological move' regarding the state.
Charles Taylor negative
Author of a book on Hegel that Žižek calls 'really a bad book' for misreading Geist as a mega-subject.
Gérard Lebrun positive
Author of a book on Hegel and Nietzsche which Žižek uses to support the point about retroactive necessity.
Leader of Sendero Luminoso; gave Žižek a book with a dedication from prison, which Žižek cites with 'admiration' ironically.
Horace Pippin negative
Described as the 'most intelligent' of the Pittsburgh Hegelians, but still accepting the 'scarecrow image' of Hegel.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad negative
Described as 'Iranian goat-fucking idiot'; cited as someone who does not like Žižek.
Cited alongside McTaggart as reading Hegel's absolute idea as a mega-subject.
Called 'the bad NATO poet'; Žižek critiques him but acknowledges his essay on tradition and individual talent.
Vulgarized Schelling's assertion of the abyss of pre-logical will.
Pol Pot negative
Cited as an example of totalitarian catastrophe resulting from asserting pure presence.
Friend who instigated Žižek to reread Freud's anti-philosophical statements.
Evo Morales negative
Described as 'that idiot who thinks capitalism killed Mother Nature'; Žižek mocks his anti-capitalist environmentalism.
Kojin Karatani positive
Cited for pointing out Marx's paradoxical return to religion/critique of religion through political economy.
Catherine Malabou positive
Appreciated for her debate with Judith Butler, specifically her point that Hegel's intersubjectivity begins with 'absolute antagonism'.
Maximilien Robespierre positive
Used as an example of totalitarian rhetoric and exploiting fear through speech acts.
Michel Foucault negative
Cited for 'Foucauldian deadlocks' where ontological questions are displaced into discursive/power questions.
Cited for an ironic stab at philosophy (the philosopher with nightcap fixing gaps), which Žižek argues targets Hegel.
Martin Heidegger negative
Criticized for 'finding one quote... isolates the basic structuring principle' rather than reading Hegel step-by-step.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling positive
Cited as asserting the 'abyss of pre-logical will' and the 'indivisible remainder' that resists totalization.
Quentin Meillassoux negative
Critiqued for remaining 'too Leninist' and within the 'correlationist Kantian topic' of reaching reality.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Cited as insisting on the uniqueness of faith/subjectivity and focusing on 'repetition' beyond dialectical mediation.
Moishe Postone positive
Marxist who distinguished 'Marxism of Marx' from later dogmatic Marxism, arguing Marx returned to Hegel after the revolution's failure.
Editor of the volume 'Think Again' containing Zupančič's essay; also noted to misread Deleuze regarding Caesar.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Cited for early work and a specific 'Hitchcock Presents' story illustrating ventriloquism.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Criticized for being 'necessarily split' between agnosticism and an implicit transcendental idealism; represents the 'deflated' Hegel.
Joseph Stalin negative
Cited for quoting the preface to Critique of Political Economy as dogmatic base/superstructure Marxism.
Plato negative
Contrasted with Hegel: for Plato, examples are imperfect; for Hegel, the example has a surplus of inconsistency.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for asserting 'actual socio-economic life process' as a return to pre-logical positivity.
Jorge Luis Borges positive
Cited for the idea that great writers retroactively create their forerunners (e.g., Kafka).
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the 'death drive' as repetition insisting beyond dialectical mediation; Žižek uses Freud's 'secondary revision' to critique philosophy.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
See G.W.F. Hegel.
Immanuel Kant negative
Associated with the 'correlationist' problem of whether the mind can reach reality, which Žižek rejects as the wrong question.
Friedrich Nietzsche positive
Cited as an anti-philosopher asserting 'will' as productive presence.
Albert Einstein positive
Cited in a book 'on Einstein' to show Hegel's critique of Newtonian time/space anticipates modern physics.
Transcript 12 turns
unknown
Ah this is the mystery. People already were accusing me that this will be you know
Ah this is the mystery. People already were accusing me that this will be you know
Slavoj Žižek
like Le Livre of Mallarmé, this forever being promised. No no, to put it in Stalinist terms, it exists, the manuscript in objective reality independently of my mind, no? I am just now I am trying to make a real book out of it, which means I am now I want to take another half a year to you know cut all the repetitions what I am famous for, you know all that stuff, and really provide a line of thought and so on. No no no but the book is there. It will be like seven-eight hundred pages at least and so on. And the title will probably be Less Than Zero. Less Than Zero I will be playing because there it is a very pretentious book. It ends up with a long chapter on quantum physics, a Hegelian reading. So this is another point, you know. I wouldn't dismiss as easily as you did Hegel's philosophy of nature. I mean wait a minute, do you know that now there is an entire school in Germany trying to rehabilitate it? Of course it is clear, let's be clear, we cannot play stupid games here. Generally what we call modern natural sciences are a problem for Hegel. Hegel still looks for speculative meaning and so on. But nonetheless if you read, you know with Hegel you shouldn't do what unfortunately I claim Heidegger is often doing, which is kind of a you know find one quote which as it were isolates the basic structuring principle and then like you take whatever one passage on negativity, on substance-subject, and then with ultra-deep reading of that passage. No you have to go step by step through all argumentations. Hegel has to be read in detail. And if you do this beware you can first you know what did strike me in his philosophy of nature which which brings in a totally new perspective I think also his absolute knowing, which should absolutely not be taken in this idiotic way oh there was a guy a Prussian bureaucrat who thought he knew everything reading mind of God. You know how often in philosophy of nature he simply says, and it's crucial not to read this as cheap historicism but nonetheless as some unheard of version of self-limitation however you call it, how often he says very honestly oh about this we don't yet know enough, I cannot develop a theory and so on and so on. Problems in physics and so on and so on quite often. Point two, how often you have like for example I read recently in a book of Einstein on Einstein how Hegel's critique of Newtonian notion of abstract time and space is like as if you've taken it from Einstein and so on and so on. But okay let me not get lost here. The book will be out. I first want to react to what you said just briefly, this would be a good beginning, about this Kant Hegel. Hegel as always standing on the shoulders of Kant getting over. I would just add a complication here because I think that this you cannot even take it as an argument against Hegel. Let me take and I often do this line in some of my books, Vernunft Verstand, understanding reason. It's incredible how often Hegel is misread here as if he is saying you know Verstand understanding is this crude metaphysical thinking in distinct fixed categories and then Vernunft is reason the properly dialectical self-movement of notions and so on and so on. It's much more complex. Like you know one of the best known passages in Phenomenology, there he praises as the absolute power to which nothing can resist Verstand not Vernunft. My reading is here totally different. My reading is that Verstand to pass from Verstand to Vernunft you don't have to add anything, you just have to take it away. Verstand is already Vernunft. What makes it Verstand, for example when you have some categories, what makes it Verstand is if you take these categories in a formal way. That you think oh these are just abstract categories, there is out there reality to which we have to apply them. But if you see that everything already is in Verstand, this is Vernunft. In other words, the Hegelian answer to this Kantianism problem would have been that he is in a way more Kantian than Kant. He takes Kant more literally than Kant took him. That is to say this very idea that you have to add something to abstract categories to make them alive, introduce some stupid movement or whatever, this is the illusion of reason. The illusion of reason, sorry the illusion of Verstand, understanding, is precisely that categories of reasons are an abstract frame and then to make them alive you have to add something. You become Hegelian when you see that you don't have to add, but that's another topic. Let's nonetheless okay I will do my job now. First let me begin with line of thought maybe known to some of you but I want to do it very systematically with no dirty jokes and so on today. The ultimate anti-Hegelian argument is the very fact as you emphasized of the post-Hegelian break. What even the most fanatic partisans of Hegel cannot deny is that something changed after Hegel. A new era of thought began which can no longer be accounted for in Hegelian terms of absolute conceptual mediation. This cut occurs in different guises, from Schelling's assertion of the abyss of pre-logical will vulgarized later by Schopenhauer, then up to Kierkegaard's insistence on the uniqueness of faith and subjectivity and of course Marx's assertion of actual socio-economic life process. This is one aspect of the post-Hegelian break, this idea that Hegel as the last metaphysician gets caught in this circle of conceptual representations but what we need is a return to some pre-logical positivity of being as true productive force which again can have different forms the the Schellingian will, Marx's actual life process, Kierkegaard belief and so on and so on. But then we have another aspect of post-Hegelian break, the full autonomization of mathematized natural sciences up to Freud's motive of death drive as a repetition which insists beyond all dialectical mediation. So we have again on the one hand this positivity of being and then you can use all these vulgar metaphors which I think are totally wrong by young Marx like you know Hegel towards real life is like masturbation towards sexual act as if this self-enclosure of idea against the site of true productivity of being and on the other hand this formalist repetition pure repetition where we find strange bedfellows Kierkegaard and Freud whose work both the work of both of them focuses on a certain notion of repetition. So again the main anti-Hegelian argument is that something happened here after Hegel, a clear break between before and after and while so the story goes one can argue that Hegel already announces this break that he is as it was popular to say when I was young the last idealist metaphysician and the first post-metaphysical historicist one cannot you cannot really be a Hegelian after this break. Like Adorno says somewhere very nicely that after Schönberg you cannot simply write the old tonal music. You can but then you are like Rachmaninoff, you are kitsch. I mean even if you do the same it lost its innocence. So again isn't it the same with Hegel that we can play Hegelians but it's a fake. Here I would like to complicate things as you already pointed out vaguely we can say that till now there were there was an animosity between Hegel and liberalism. There were two main Hegelian orientations either conservative Hegelians which was some kind of communitarian organicist criticism of liberalism or radical Hegelians from Bakunin to Marx and so on and so on. And I agree with you that the great so-called revolution of these Pittsburgh Hegelians is that it's the first big movement to regain Hegel for the third option for liberalism, neither conservatism nor radicalism but liberalism. The catchword the that you identify this like I'm talking to you now like philosophical KGB agent how you catch traitors is recognition. I think the politically their point is recognition. And what you said about intersubjectivity and so on politically but that's another line of thought this is my problem with them. As Catherine Malabou whom I appreciate very much pointed out very nicely in her debate with Judith Butler is that for Hegel no intersubjectivity is not simply the ultimate horizon. If you read closely the chapter on Master Servant and so on struggle to death, you should be careful very attentive not to miss how it begins. You have self-consciousness or rather a subject which perceives among the objects in the world which from the transcendental horizon are constituted by subject another object who claims fuck you I'm also a subject. And as he points out very nicely this is an absolute ontological scandal. The original situation is not I am a subject you are a subject let's play this what in sexuality we call position and lick each other recognize each other. No there is an absolute antagonism. I am as a subject singular absolute. I am all. Fuck you now there is another guy there who claims I'm also like you. You know like there is as they put it in cruel capitalist competition there is place only for one on the top here and now you have two guys competing for the place. So I think again that originally for Hegel the other is neither the Levinasian other this ooh but also not this recognized other like you recognize me I recognize you we are both happy. No the other is originally an absolutely shattering traumatic inclusion sorry intrusion. But more with what I disagree more fundamentally in this Pittsburgh Hegelianism is basically what you said is that the way they concede too much to critics of Hegel because their basic move even with the one who is I agree with you the most intelligent of them Pippin, they basically even if they don't admit it, they accept the idea that we have this scarecrow image of Hegel the absolute idealist we must get rid of that. So they provide a kind of a deflated image of Hegel. Hegel freed of all as they put it ontological metaphysical baggage, Hegel reduced to a kind of a Habermasian general theory of discourse. The idea for example in Brandom who is also now in some strange way turning Hegelian is that Hegel's logic is not contains no metaphysical commitment, is basically just a kind of a transcendental a priori of all possible forms of rational argumentation. It's just kind of a general theory of discourse of modes of argumentation. I claim that at least one thing we should learn from Hegel and from history of philosophy today post-Hegelian that this avoiding or suspending the so-called big ontological questions never really works. Radical questions return. You know this is for example take someone like Habermas. He brings this game almost to the end because recently I read an interview with Habermas about religion and he defines his position as agnostic. I don't know and so on and so on. And I claim Habermas is necessarily split here. Let's make a stupid game. If one were to ask Habermas privately but are you really agnostic, he was privately said no I accept probably Darwin people somehow human race developed out of nature but in the very form of his thought he would say it's transcendentally impossible to develop this. You always already have to have some idealist transcendental a priori even to talk about this and so on and so on. Or not to mention for example all these Foucauldian deadlocks. You know by Foucauldian deadlocks I mean this discourse theory historicism where to be a little bit ironic for Foucauldian you cannot ask the question for example do we humans have an immortal soul. The only question you can ask is it's so boring under what discursive position are you allowed and power relations can you even talk about immortal soul and so on. So all ontological questions are displaced into questions about some discursive field transcendental even if it's historical transcendental a priori. Like I again I think that if nothing else this kind of suspension of big ontological questions undermines itself, usually implicitly involves the worst historicism plus I think more and more that it is this suspension in deconstructionist circles of ontological questions which opens up the path to the violent return of most naive realist metaphysics in either cognitivism or today's neo-Darwinism no? Because I think why do we if you do I'm bored by it but nonetheless why do we read Stephen Hawking? Because precisely he shamelessly approaches these questions no? What's the origin of the universe and so on all that. So my thesis is that such a deflated image of Hegel is not enough. I propose a different approach to this post-Hegelian break. True there is a break but in this break I claim this is my formal structure of my argument Hegel is the vanishing art mediator between before and after between traditional metaphysics and post-metaphysical 19th-20th century anti-philosophy. That is to say something happens with Hegel, a breakthrough into a unique dimension of thought. I think that this breakthrough does begin already with Kant. You know I was recently on behalf of my friend he instigated me with Mladen Dolar rereading this the worst Freud's anti-philosophical statements. Like you know Freud quoting that famous Heinrich Heine ironic stab at philosophy but the way Freud quotes it but I wonder if Freud even knew it that Heine really the target of Heine was Hegel. You know that the philosopher with his nightcap tries to fix it in the gaps in the structure of the universe to make it whole and so on and so on. This is obviously a reference to that most famous drawing portrait of Hegel with the nightcap and so on. Now there are many very interesting things to say here because this idea of a philosopher filling in the gaps so that the inconsistencies reducing the diversity of reality to a homogeneous image. This is not this and Freud doesn't notice it that basically what he is describing here is Sekundäre Bearbeitung so-called in the in the Traumarbeit work of dream no? It is as if already in a dream we have the ur-philosopher. You know Freud's theory no? You have this wild dream pre-formed and then in order for the dream to become presentable as a contingent story you need the so-called Sekundäre Bearbeitung you know to to cut off the inconsistencies to make a narrative no? But is this really philosophy? I think that we should be here proud defenders from philosophy and say at least from Kant this idea of a philosopher who presents a global vision and patches up it's already from Kant a bullshit. Kant's whole point is precisely to open up a gap inconsistency much more radical than our everyday pluralist whatever common sense. No philosophy is not patching up things in a unique Weltanschauung. From Kantian philosophy opens up radical inconsistencies and Hegel I claim not only doesn't patch it up again but even radicalizes it because you know what is Hegel's key approach to Kant as he puts it very nicely that he is too gentle towards the things. The problem with Kant is that he sees antinomies but he epistemologizes the antinomies. For Kant antinomy means it cannot really affect things in themselves. Antinomies for Kant always a sign that the thing itself is inaccessible to us. So Hegel goes even to the end here but incidentally another the other two prejudices about Hegel usually linked to this Hegel as a totalizer filling it on the all the gaps is this idea of totality. This so-called postmodern dogma that you know Hegel wants totality but isn't there in every totality some I quote ironically myself quoting Schelling an indivisible remainder something that resists to be totalized something that introduces inconsistency and so on and so on. Well I think the time has come to fully rehabilitate Hegel's idea of totality. Hegel's totality is precisely this I think. Here Adorno got it wrong with his the with his polemics against Das Ganze ist das Wahre the whole is the truth and his point the truth is no the whole is not true. What Hegel means with totality is not an ideal structure which sublates Aufhebung all inconsistent elements. It's on the contrary to observe an element or a structure in its totality means that all that you know here we come to Hegel's wonderful play with words theory of example you know Hegel uses consciously wrong etymology Beispiel Beispieele what plays itself arrives along. That is to say we have usually let's say an ideal structure and then of course in contingent empirical reality all kind of bullshit happens to this you know contradictions it goes wrong. Hegelian totality means when you speak about something you should account for all precisely all these inconsistencies antagonisms and so on as part of the original whole. So for Hegel on the contrary to observe an element in its totality means precisely breaking its consistency and introducing into it the entire bullshit which appears contingent as part of what Hegel would have called the self-movement of totality. Which is why for this is where Hegel is absolutely anti-Platonic. Because you know for Plato to put it naively every example is imperfect because it cannot really exemplify the purity of the idea. For Hegel on the contrary there is also a gap between example and what it exemplifies but the surplus is on the side of example. You confront a notion, you exemplify it, stage it even Hegel and then you discover you got more than you asked for. Immediately you stumble. So this is in this sense I claim Hegel is right to say that Jesus Christ is an example. The example of examples the absolute example which means atheism and so on. Okay that's another thing here even this infamous List der Vernunft, cunning of reason. They say oh but Hegel thinks that there is some secret reason transcendent force which somehow guarantees that even if things appear confused somehow in the end they will turn out well. My God just read closely what Hegel is doing when he talks about List der Vernunft. You will see that List der Vernunft is effectively a name for its very opposite. List der Vernunft basically means whenever you want to impose a project onto reality you can be sure that something will go wrong. It's practically the opposite it's that this is if there is a Hegelian a priori is that things always go wrong in some way and necessarily and even at the end you don't get but at the end you get no at the end you just get a theory of how things necessarily go wrong. Okay but this was just a detour so to give you an abstract frame my idea is this one. We have something called metaphysics then we have this post-Hegelian bullshit positivity of being and so on and so on. Hegel is the in-between vanishing mediator in the sense of no longer before but not yet after. Something very traumatic happens in Hegel and I claim that precisely to cover up this in-between we had to invent this ridiculous image of Hegel you know the crazy guy who thought he reads the mind of God and knows everything which is exactly what in psychoanalysis we call screen memory Deckerinnerung a fantasy formation to cover to cover the true trauma. It has something to do with as you pointed out these moments of historical passage like between traditional authoritarian society and modernity. It's every dialectician knows this that in the moment of passage you see something that in the old previous order they didn't see but which becomes invisible also the moment the new settles in. I can tell you this from my personal experience for example years ago the dissolution of communist regimes. We were lucky we saw something which the moment the parliamentary liberal capitalist everyday life established itself it became invisible. Or we can go endlessly here to give you another example that I like, I'm sorry if some of you know it I repeat myself I know, take the history of cinema the passage from silent movies to talkies talking movies. The the truly great artists of the passage that's why they were conservative skeptics artistically Chaplin Eisenstein. They knew what the moment talking movies movies became the settled standard we took them as simply an expansion of realism. You know before we just saw figures blah blah but now that we also hear the voice it becomes much more realistic we get closer to the whole person being alive on screen. But what those early directors noticed like exemplarily Fritz Lang early Hitchcock and so on Chaplin in an ingenious way is that no the voice is not natural. What we get is this deep insight into how ventriloquism is our reality how in its most radical dimension voice is not just our natural extension but it's kind of a foreign intruder which disrupts our identity. You know this is for me for example the genius of Chaplin's The Great Dictator. You know the no he plays two figures there. The the good Jewish barbers Jewish barber is the old silent figure the tramp. Hitler is the priority of the voice. It's usually even first presented as shouting voice and only then as a figure that we see. So there was something very deep that again that that Chaplin saw there. Something which you find if there ever was a wonderful example of Hegelian movement of self-relating negation you find it. I recently saw look they are rereleasing them now those old black and white Hitchcock Presents from late 50s series and I think it's the first one of the second year. It's such a traumatic short minutes a story that even I with all my decadent experience was shocked. It's a story of a ventriloquist you know sits and has a doll blah blah and a lone desperate woman gets terribly in love with him and watches every performance and so on and then one evening she gathers the courage and approaches him and comes too close and says but sir I love you approaches him and wants to embrace him. Okay you can guess what happens. She discovers with horror that it's the big man who was really a doll. It was a midget a small guy you know that the puppet was the only living person. Then you have it's really horrific how she's embracing just a doll and a small guy steps out the puppet starts to move and so on and so on. This is if you want Hegelian negation. So again what I am saying is that there is something we have on the one hand this standard stupid idealism you know you develop everything out of the one idea then you have this post-Hegelian as you would have called it anti-philosophy positivity that something became visible between the two and maybe it's still too strong for us today. And I claim that we are in a similar predicament one can argue together a certain epoch going to the end that's why Hegel is again the question of the day. Okay let me go on because now obviously you will ask me okay it's easy to say is but how do Americans say where is the beef like what is this dimension no? Okay I will to specify this uniqueness of Hegel I would like to begin by an essay by Alenka Zupančič published in the volume Think Again edited by Peter Hallward which is basically a critique of Alain Badiou and of anti-philosophy in general. Her starting point of Alenka Zupančič is the basic motive of anti-philosophers, the assertion of some productive presence like real life of society for Marx, existence for Kierkegaard, will for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, which is irreducible to and excessive with regard to the network of philosophical concepts or representation. And I think this is maybe the basic as it were matrix of what Badiou calls anti-philosophy. The excess of pre-conceptual productivity over representation. This idea that representation is a theater of representation which is always as such blind for or obliterating, mystifying, displacing whatever its own decentered site of production. A quote from Alenka here: The post-Hegelian philosophy started off with this fundamental claim: symbolic representations which were traditionally considered as access to the truth and to the real of being do in fact alienate us from being and deform it. As classical philosophy was suddenly recognized and classical philosophy was suddenly recognized as the queen of this representative misrepresentation. Indeed if one were to name one central issue that singularizes the rise of modern thought it is perhaps none other than precisely the issue of representation, its profound interrogation and the consequent vast turn against the logic of representation. And then she goes on in a very nice way how in all different domain like in art representation representative art become problematic, in politics precisely when we get representative democracy, always the questions exploded but are all properly represented, isn't there some part like pöbel plebs or whatever which cannot be adequately represented in representative democracy. The big topic is the excess of presence over representation. Even in love in sofar as we can say marriage should in bourgeois ideology represent true love. And then you have all this topic but can marriage represent love? And you have always this oscillation between celebrating democracy or marriage based on love as true representation like we can all be represented, freedom to vote for all of us, and this deep doubt: but isn't there something in the very form of representation political which exclude some, isn't there something in the very form of marriage that as excludes true love and so on and so on. So I claim this would be one of my critiques at the end if you will have time I want to add I was thinking a long about it a critique of Meillassoux and so on also. This is for me one of the limitations maybe of Badiou that he still remains within this field of opposition between pure productive presence and representation. Because on this his entire almost politics is based and I think this is pure ideological move where Badiou consciously plays on the ambiguity of the French term l'état no which is state as l'état français French state and state as simply situation the state of things. Out of this he draws I think in a totally illegitimate ideological move the identity of the two because state and state in both meanings is always present, we cannot split one from the other. This means that on the one hand we cannot get rid of the state we cannot get pure productive presence but state always mystifies the productive presence and then from here comes the late Badiou's weird political turn of subtraction. The my problem with it is that it involves an all too simple anti-totalitarian move. The idea is if you want to assert directly the presence you end up in totalitarian catastrophe like who tried to do it he enumerated this to me Sendero Luminoso, Pol Pot, Chinese cultural revolution. So since it's impossible to assert directly pure presence to get rid of representation but since representation is always mystifying however you put it, this means authentic politics must be at a distance from state. In all the sympathies that I have for this position because now comes the small obscenity I cannot resist telling you I was a month and a half ago in Bolivia and Peru and after a talk a guy approached me and said here I have a book for you with a dedication. I was in strange way proud of it you know from whom? Will you guess with your dirty... Morales? Fuck Morales that idiot who thinks capitalism killed Mother Nature. They didn't like it I said there at least one good thing that capitalism did no? Ahmadinejad? Fuck... no this is theory Iranian goat-fucking idiot fucking. Abimael Guzmán, Presidente Gonzalo from prison, the boss of Sendero Luminoso. With admiration blah blah blah. So it's interesting to know where one has friends. Sorry let me go on. So I claim that here Badiou remains again too much in this within this space of opposing productive presence and representation. And and that what we should do is complicate things here. Second thing I claim that here I follow politically I don't agree with him the American Marxist okay Moishe Postone who developed very nicely a thesis with which I sympathize namely how Marx that we should strictly distinguish the Marxism of Marx by Marxism he means what later passed as the Marxist doxa. The best expression of it would have been German Ideology and the last attack of it the Indian summer of this Marxism of Marx would have been that famous preface to the critique of political economy you know that dogma fully quoted by Stalin you know people there are different formations and then superstructure follows the base and so on and so on. This is for me purely post-philosophical naive Marxism. But as Postone shows very clearly after the failure of the revolution Marx of course started to read Hegel Logic and then when based on this Marx returned to critique of political economy he no longer followed this line of thought. And you can see why when you ask yourself a simple question what is commodity fetishism. It's typical how Marx never calls it ideology but calls it you know theological eccentricities of commodity. It is as if Marx here I rely on Kōjin Karatani who pointed out how Marx begins with critique of religion then critique of state blah blah then critique of political economy which in a paradoxical way brings us back to the beginning. All of a sudden Marx discovers that there is a theological dimension, not in the sense that there is God of course in material but as a mechanism which is not simply a false representation but representation which is inscribed precisely as a false representation into the very core of a reality itself. Which is why Marx has problems calling commodity fetishism ideology. Because ideology is superstructure, whatever commodity fetishism is it's not superstructure. And you know this is I always quote it sorry for repeat to quote a wonderful beginning of the subchapter on commodity fetishism in Capital. You all know it but nonetheless let me repeat it. A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious trivial thing but analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. Are you aware how strange it is measured by capital by sorry standard Marxist standards what Marx is claiming here? The standard critique of ideology here I agree with what you said before would have been to say in our ordinary life we are caught in ideological mystifications but critique of ideology should demonstrate how real life process engenders these ideological mystifications. Marx is saying here almost not quite of course he is not idealist the opposite he says no in everyday life we think oh we are just dealing with ordinary material reality. The theological mystification is not that what you should dispel, it's what you should bring out it's there implicitly. The critique doesn't criticize theological mystification it brings it out. You don't see it that it's already there. And I claim again that that okay don't have time to go too deep but that the moment you take this into account all this standard topic of presence representation explodes because it's no longer a problem of base superstructure infrastructure blah blah blah. You have an infrastructure superstructure which is not superstructure but in the very core of material production. Because again you know my old point I nonetheless repeat it the paradox of commodity fetishism for Marx it's not our illusion. No in everyday reality bourgeois subjects don't live in illusions. You are okay you do but in a more complex way. You are usually what a British empiricist no? I mean no capitalist believes that there is something magic in money or whatever. They think what? Visit British Stock Exchange. I did years ago and got a wonderful message there where it simply says my God I thought wait a minute are they Marxists but of course they are not. You get a free leaflet where they tell you the following: You may think that there is something mystical almost theological in speculations on the stock market. No it's all about people exchange between people people relating to each other and so on and so on. So you see the paradox the first step of critique is not to say no it's only relations within people which appear as relations within things or whatever no it's to say you think that it's only concrete people but you do not see how in order in commodity in capitalist society in order to be active as concrete people you need abstractions you need theological mystification which sustains reality itself. Or to put it in the terms of the excess. The standard post-philosophical anti-philosophical excess you have this boring topic of how idealist philosophy tries to represent reality actual life process but there is an excess something that... the true Hegelians we should do is to make a passage from the excess over representation excess in the sense of an excessive element which cannot be represented like true love or or rebel which cannot be represented politically to the excess of representation itself. The true enigma is why does reality itself need representation to sustain itself as as a reality. So this brings us to Hegel. What Hegel means by either absolute spirit or actual infinity, I approach the same thing from two perspectives, it's precisely this inclusion of illusory representation into actuality itself. What do I mean by this what do I mean by this? For example if I maybe begin with the status of abstraction. Or for example you know the young Marx let's approach the topic of abstraction. The young Marx in German Ideology would still have played this boring I think game of opposing abstraction to concrete reality. He would say yes in ideology you appear an abstract subject but in social reality you are concrete human being blah blah blah with all your needs blah blah and being pure Cogito is just an abstraction. Late Marx would have said something very different. He would have said the whole problem of abstraction in bourgeois society is that it's not only abstraction. It's that as abstraction it has actuality. Okay to give you a classical example I'm sure you all know it. We cannot simply say that abstraction is a mystification. In a developed bourgeois society where I can change my job all the time my desires wishes fluctuate and so on I effectively relate to myself in reality as an abstraction. That is to say I don't see the core of my being in any concrete particular properties I say what I eat oh I can be this or that I can work this or that so that I'm in a way reduced to to Cogito in my social reality itself. There is more reality if you describe yourself as full human being with multiple properties desires part of concrete social life you are not adequately describing your social reality which is that of which is that of abstraction. And the same goes for example for what Marx calls absolute spirit. Subjective spirit it's clear it's like representations and so on. Objective spirit is let's call it the big Other the social substance. What Marx means by sorry Hegel by absolute spirit is not that you add something more. The only thing you add to objective spirit is illusion itself. You enter absolute spirit the moment you become aware that objective spirit needs subjective illusion in order to in order to sustain itself. So again just as a hint where I see Hegel undermining from within and Marx at his best following it this naive realist assertion of positivity of being and so on and so on. And incidentally if I will have time I will return to it at the end here I see the problem for example with Meillassoux after finitude. It's too Leninist for me in the naive sense. He remains too much within this precisely correlationist Kantian topic of I am here reality is out there can I reach it or not and then these boring games you know like yes we can and so on and so on. No the problem is not can I reach reality. The problem is how is me not being able to reach reality possible within reality itself. Which is why to put it in more speculative terms for Hegel the problem is not can our finite mind know reality the way it is in itself. Reality in itself is never a great mystery for Hegel and he was right. It's just some stupid atoms or whatever who cares. The true mystery for Hegel he says it is exactly the opposite one. Not are we caught in our illusions and then can we reach the thing in itself but how can something like phenomenon like things appearing like abstraction what Hegel celebrates as understanding Verstand you know that you break apart what belongs together you make abstractions exist. How is this possible in reality? How is it that reality is not just flat reality but becomes redoubled in itself into reality and meaning or whatever and so on and so on. Okay let me stop here with this first part and then go on. The same goes for another big misunderstanding namely the misunderstanding of history. Hegel here re-enters again the infamous List der Vernunft, cunning of reason. The way usually Hegel is read is that the absolute idea, nobody knows what this is, the objective spirit uses teleologically individuals their passions to realize some transcendent goal. As if there is in history a kind of this is where not only Bradley McTaggart but even it's really a bad book I think on Hegel Charles Taylor Hegel. This is the biggest mistake of that book. It reads Hegelian Geist Spirit precisely as this kind of objective side mega-subject as if in history we are just puppets there is a mega-subject who pulls the strings and so on and so on. But I think that if you read Hegel really closely you will see that his necessity is always a retroactive one. Because if Hegel's position were to be there is an absolute spirit which pulls the strings then we have substance not subject. Subject is for Hegel always also the moment of illusion split finitude limitation and so on and so on. So for example when Hegel says things become what they always already are in their essence you should read this very literally. Not things have an internal essence and their temporal actualization is just the actualization of this eternal essence. No through contingent actualization retroactively the essence is constituted. Now you will say bullshit you are dreaming you are projecting your postmodern contingency. Ah for example if you don't believe me just think about the structure of Hegel's logic. Hegel doesn't begin with essence. He begins with being which is reflected into appearance and so on and as he puts it very precisely essence is the return of being into its essence itself. But then he makes it repeatedly clear that there is no essence preceding appearance. This return to when we think we are discovering a hidden essence is the very constitution of essence. What does this mean? For example and I rely here on a very good book which is critical of Hegel but nonetheless makes the point nicely this one Gérard Lebrun his a new new one again on Hegel on Hegel and Nietzsche a posthumous manuscript published where he points out how there is no providential necessity in Hegel. For example he takes the example wonderful one best known of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Here also I think incidentally that Peter Hallward who uses this very example misreads Deleuze who is very Hegelian here. It's not that it was from the very beginning inscribed into the essence of Julius Caesar that he will cross the Rubicon. So you know when he confronted that stupid small stream he said ah now it's the historical moment of which my mother was already dreaming when she was screwed by my father whatever and now I do it. No it was totally contingent. But the moment he did it it was retroactively posited as essence. You know it's like falling in love. No wonder that Hegel is sometimes considered philosopher of love. You know like I stumble upon a person in a totally contingent way and then if it's true love of course it's I was waiting for you all my life and so on and so on. Permit me to make one further quote which I repeat all the time I know from Le Monde magazine Jean-Pierre Dupuy the French rational choice theorist quotes it where he found a wonderful quote when there were some presidential pre-elections not proper when Édouard Balladur was candidate and the journalist of Le Monde wrote if next Sunday if Balladur will win then his victory will be necessary. You see the point? The moment something contingent happens it retroactively posits itself as necessary. You should never forget that this is what Hegel is talking about. Now let me go a little bit further of trying to convince you to be very brutal that I am not that I am not that I am not dreaming here. If do you know that T.S. Eliot the bad NATO poet was also his doctor's thesis was on Bradley on Hegelian philosopher. Okay all my critique applied to Eliot but in his best known essay he nonetheless makes a nice point. You know tradition and individual talent or the other way around. Okay we know which one. You know that famous everybody quotes it line how each really new work of art creates not only something new but retroactively changes the totality of what happened before. This is Hegelian notion of totality that totality is not a linear deployment of everything was already there. No totality is always retroactively refashioning itself changing the past. I think that the best in this sense the best maybe Hegelian definition of a nation for example would have been I know he was a proto-racist but here he did have a stroke of genius. You know Ernst Renan the French positivist proto-racist but he said something very nice. He said that nation is a large group of people who share the same the same lies about their past the same hatred of their present neighbors and the same illusions about their future. No I don't know if this is true generally for my nation it's strictly true Slovenians no. We share the same illusions about the past like our dream is we are not Slavic at all we are really Etruscans you know the foundation of Rome and so on and you can prove it as a good Slovenian like you take a Slovenian word with five letters you change three letters you change the order of others and of course you get an Etruscan word. Then the hatred of present neighbors of course first it was Albanians then Serbs now there are Croats and who knows who will be tomorrow. And the same illusions about the future no which is that give us three four years and get rid of communists who still secretly control economy and we will overcome Switzerland. This is the motto of Slovenian right five years we will overcome Switzerland. But what I'm saying again this is the idea which I quoted it often very nicely formulated by Borges you must know it that a truly great writer not only has forerunners he retroactively creates them. For example Borges's example is of course Kafka. Of course we can say the predecessors of Kafka were who are the usual suspects Dostoevsky, Edgar Allan Poe, William Blake and so on. But nonetheless we can only say this once Kafka is already here. And again this totality means that precisely it's not the totality of change in the sense of no things happen as a total process. Hegelian totality is something much more precise is that totality itself changes all the time in the sense that things are retotalized again and again. At the level of speaking here Hegel really says it. Namely I think that and you can find it for free on the internet there is a wonderful text by Heinrich Kleist from the title is in English On the Gradual Formation of Thoughts in the Process of Speech where he develops systematically with wonderful examples from political history and so on how all the big thoughts or big political gestures happened not that you thought well about it in advance but you said something too much you were in a panic and then to to pull yourself out of shit you had to invent something quickly. But the point being there had to be this moment of in German Versprechen how do you translate into English Versprechen you know when you say more than you wanted to say and then there must be this kind of a failure you said more than you wanted to say in a totally contingent way excess and then reacting to this the big thought comes. For example the famous example of Kleist is Mirabeau's famous famous reply to you know when king's representative came to the to the Troisième État Assemblée nationale and asked them to disburse go home. Mirabeau's reply is well known the nation gives orders it does not receive orders. But he shows how reproducing the whole speech how Mirabeau first didn't know what to answer then he got entangled and then op to pull out of his confusion. And I think we should go here we should go here to the end. I even think that you know the one that I really like Robespierre's Robespierre's famous moment of terror in Assemblée nationale where he came with the black book and said I have here names of the traitors. And then he added of course after a little bit of silence to make an effect I say that anyone who trembles at this moment is guilty for innocence never fears public scrutiny. You know this wonderful totalitarian I love it rhetorics no? He showed the book of course everybody was afraid is my name in it and then he said if you are afraid it's a proof that you are guilty. But I think that one can imagine his reasoning. After the first statement he noticed signs of unrest and fear among the listeners. He quickly thought about how to exploit this fear. Should he offer the carrot and add something like but if you are innocent you have nothing to fear should he do some Franklin Delano Roosevelt platitude like you only have fear fear itself and then he thought to himself no no no better use this fear itself as an argument for guilt. Even I claim that there is Stalin's speech from the early 1930s where he proposes radical measures against all those who even secretly oppose collectivization of farms. Stalin says we should detect I quote and fight without mercy even those who oppose collectivization only in their thoughts. Yes I mean this we should fight even people's thoughts. I claim that what probably happened is that this passage was not prepared in advance. Stalin got caught into his rhetorical enthusiasm and was spontaneously carried away saying even people's private thoughts should be controlled. Then he become aware oh my god what did I say and then he said oh no no no I shouldn't retract let's make a virtue out of this blunder and say yes precisely this what I meant and so on and so on. Now you will say I'm bullshitting this is romantic reaction to Hegel. No the whole Hegelian theory of speech act and of act in general goes like this that you want to say something then you do the act or say it and in doing it you discover what you really wanted. Traitors yeah familiar with yeah yeah but this is elemental liberal well no seriously if you have some question more otherwise listen I would be glad I'm often here what I would be glad to do really glad it's not this kind of rhetorical offer when this shitty book that I was making will be out why don't I come here without my boring repetitive talk and you give me a true what in police they call third degree you know. Like you really ask me the hard questions but we can presuppose maybe that you read a little bit the book not for my narcissism but so that I don't feel this it's much easier for me if I can count on you knowing the topic then I can be much less repetitive. What what about like putting you in like Pulp Fiction with one of those things in your mouth yeah and then you just listen to the critique for three hours yeah you cannot say anything yeah? Ah first first I'm a severe cultural conservative here I hate the Pulp Fiction. It's a shitty pretentious movie and so on and so on. I even prefer if you want to understand Hegel what is negation of negation to conclude. Did you see that modest British comedy not it's not even a comedy it's more a kind of melodrama with the young how do you pronounce his name Ewan McGregor Ewan McGregor Brassed Off. You know that working class they are closing a mine okay he there falls in love with a girl who works for those who are closing down the mine so there is tension but then there is love she turns good the point is this there is a scene there purely Hegelian negation of negation where she she accompanies her after dinner at home and in front of the building she tells him would you mind coming up for a coffee no and he says yeah but there is a problem I don't like coffee. You know what she answers: No problem I don't have any. Isn't it wonderful how the extremely vulgar message come up and screw me. You know it's said only through making an empty offer and then saying something like it's I consider this simply this is what Hegel means that you know the negation of negation doesn't bring you to the same zero point no in between you you gain a beautiful girl to screw her no. Or to give you a similar example dialectic in Hollywood. Did you see Ninotchka? But there is a wonderful detail there nonetheless. I don't like it in general but nonetheless. You remember how a guy there enters a cafeteria and asks can I get coffee without cream please. You know what the waiter answers? Pure Hegel. Sorry sir we ran out of cream so I cannot give you coffee without cream but we still have milk so can I give you coffee without milk? It's absolutely correct. This is what Hegel means you know negativity has to be inscribed into positive identity. Now you will say but what's the point don't you get the same plain coffee. I don't have time to develop theory the point is no you don't. Because the whole point is that here you have to pass from symbolic to the real. Precisely coffee is not fully coffee it needs something like my stupid example of those Kinder Surprise eggs you know where you get a plastic toy. And you need something like milk cream whatever by god you British know this the best theory of tea with milk I know I took it from that George Mikes's classic How to Be an Alien you know the classic satire. But they said British admired tea when they discovered it in India but they had a problem they are masochists in character. So the point was how to spoil the pleasure of the tea. They tried with honey with this with that it didn't work then they discovered if you add a little bit of milk to tea it looks like how do you call this the water that remains after you wash dishes and so on. So they were satisfied with okay but that is the Hegelian logic sorry. Now who who was the woman who asked for coffee was it you who who offered the coffee I mean off- offered... no I my version is infinitely more vulgar
like Le Livre of Mallarmé, this forever being promised. No no, to put it in Stalinist terms, it exists, the manuscript in objective reality independently of my mind, no? I am just now I am trying to make a real book out of it, which means I am now I want to take another half a year to you know cut all the repetitions what I am famous for, you know all that stuff, and really provide a line of thought and so on. No no no but the book is there. It will be like seven-eight hundred pages at least and so on. And the title will probably be Less Than Zero. Less Than Zero I will be playing because there it is a very pretentious book. It ends up with a long chapter on quantum physics, a Hegelian reading. So this is another point, you know. I wouldn't dismiss as easily as you did Hegel's philosophy of nature. I mean wait a minute, do you know that now there is an entire school in Germany trying to rehabilitate it? Of course it is clear, let's be clear, we cannot play stupid games here. Generally what we call modern natural sciences are a problem for Hegel. Hegel still looks for speculative meaning and so on. But nonetheless if you read, you know with Hegel you shouldn't do what unfortunately I claim Heidegger is often doing, which is kind of a you know find one quote which as it were isolates the basic structuring principle and then like you take whatever one passage on negativity, on substance-subject, and then with ultra-deep reading of that passage. No you have to go step by step through all argumentations. Hegel has to be read in detail. And if you do this beware you can first you know what did strike me in his philosophy of nature which which brings in a totally new perspective I think also his absolute knowing, which should absolutely not be taken in this idiotic way oh there was a guy a Prussian bureaucrat who thought he knew everything reading mind of God. You know how often in philosophy of nature he simply says, and it's crucial not to read this as cheap historicism but nonetheless as some unheard of version of self-limitation however you call it, how often he says very honestly oh about this we don't yet know enough, I cannot develop a theory and so on and so on. Problems in physics and so on and so on quite often. Point two, how often you have like for example I read recently in a book of Einstein on Einstein how Hegel's critique of Newtonian notion of abstract time and space is like as if you've taken it from Einstein and so on and so on. But okay let me not get lost here. The book will be out. I first want to react to what you said just briefly, this would be a good beginning, about this Kant Hegel. Hegel as always standing on the shoulders of Kant getting over. I would just add a complication here because I think that this you cannot even take it as an argument against Hegel. Let me take and I often do this line in some of my books, Vernunft Verstand, understanding reason. It's incredible how often Hegel is misread here as if he is saying you know Verstand understanding is this crude metaphysical thinking in distinct fixed categories and then Vernunft is reason the properly dialectical self-movement of notions and so on and so on. It's much more complex. Like you know one of the best known passages in Phenomenology, there he praises as the absolute power to which nothing can resist Verstand not Vernunft. My reading is here totally different. My reading is that Verstand to pass from Verstand to Vernunft you don't have to add anything, you just have to take it away. Verstand is already Vernunft. What makes it Verstand, for example when you have some categories, what makes it Verstand is if you take these categories in a formal way. That you think oh these are just abstract categories, there is out there reality to which we have to apply them. But if you see that everything already is in Verstand, this is Vernunft. In other words, the Hegelian answer to this Kantianism problem would have been that he is in a way more Kantian than Kant. He takes Kant more literally than Kant took him. That is to say this very idea that you have to add something to abstract categories to make them alive, introduce some stupid movement or whatever, this is the illusion of reason. The illusion of reason, sorry the illusion of Verstand, understanding, is precisely that categories of reasons are an abstract frame and then to make them alive you have to add something. You become Hegelian when you see that you don't have to add, but that's another topic. Let's nonetheless okay I will do my job now. First let me begin with line of thought maybe known to some of you but I want to do it very systematically with no dirty jokes and so on today. The ultimate anti-Hegelian argument is the very fact as you emphasized of the post-Hegelian break. What even the most fanatic partisans of Hegel cannot deny is that something changed after Hegel. A new era of thought began which can no longer be accounted for in Hegelian terms of absolute conceptual mediation. This cut occurs in different guises, from Schelling's assertion of the abyss of pre-logical will vulgarized later by Schopenhauer, then up to Kierkegaard's insistence on the uniqueness of faith and subjectivity and of course Marx's assertion of actual socio-economic life process. This is one aspect of the post-Hegelian break, this idea that Hegel as the last metaphysician gets caught in this circle of conceptual representations but what we need is a return to some pre-logical positivity of being as true productive force which again can have different forms the the Schellingian will, Marx's actual life process, Kierkegaard belief and so on and so on. But then we have another aspect of post-Hegelian break, the full autonomization of mathematized natural sciences up to Freud's motive of death drive as a repetition which insists beyond all dialectical mediation. So we have again on the one hand this positivity of being and then you can use all these vulgar metaphors which I think are totally wrong by young Marx like you know Hegel towards real life is like masturbation towards sexual act as if this self-enclosure of idea against the site of true productivity of being and on the other hand this formalist repetition pure repetition where we find strange bedfellows Kierkegaard and Freud whose work both the work of both of them focuses on a certain notion of repetition. So again the main anti-Hegelian argument is that something happened here after Hegel, a clear break between before and after and while so the story goes one can argue that Hegel already announces this break that he is as it was popular to say when I was young the last idealist metaphysician and the first post-metaphysical historicist one cannot you cannot really be a Hegelian after this break. Like Adorno says somewhere very nicely that after Schönberg you cannot simply write the old tonal music. You can but then you are like Rachmaninoff, you are kitsch. I mean even if you do the same it lost its innocence. So again isn't it the same with Hegel that we can play Hegelians but it's a fake. Here I would like to complicate things as you already pointed out vaguely we can say that till now there were there was an animosity between Hegel and liberalism. There were two main Hegelian orientations either conservative Hegelians which was some kind of communitarian organicist criticism of liberalism or radical Hegelians from Bakunin to Marx and so on and so on. And I agree with you that the great so-called revolution of these Pittsburgh Hegelians is that it's the first big movement to regain Hegel for the third option for liberalism, neither conservatism nor radicalism but liberalism. The catchword the that you identify this like I'm talking to you now like philosophical KGB agent how you catch traitors is recognition. I think the politically their point is recognition. And what you said about intersubjectivity and so on politically but that's another line of thought this is my problem with them. As Catherine Malabou whom I appreciate very much pointed out very nicely in her debate with Judith Butler is that for Hegel no intersubjectivity is not simply the ultimate horizon. If you read closely the chapter on Master Servant and so on struggle to death, you should be careful very attentive not to miss how it begins. You have self-consciousness or rather a subject which perceives among the objects in the world which from the transcendental horizon are constituted by subject another object who claims fuck you I'm also a subject. And as he points out very nicely this is an absolute ontological scandal. The original situation is not I am a subject you are a subject let's play this what in sexuality we call position and lick each other recognize each other. No there is an absolute antagonism. I am as a subject singular absolute. I am all. Fuck you now there is another guy there who claims I'm also like you. You know like there is as they put it in cruel capitalist competition there is place only for one on the top here and now you have two guys competing for the place. So I think again that originally for Hegel the other is neither the Levinasian other this ooh but also not this recognized other like you recognize me I recognize you we are both happy. No the other is originally an absolutely shattering traumatic inclusion sorry intrusion. But more with what I disagree more fundamentally in this Pittsburgh Hegelianism is basically what you said is that the way they concede too much to critics of Hegel because their basic move even with the one who is I agree with you the most intelligent of them Pippin, they basically even if they don't admit it, they accept the idea that we have this scarecrow image of Hegel the absolute idealist we must get rid of that. So they provide a kind of a deflated image of Hegel. Hegel freed of all as they put it ontological metaphysical baggage, Hegel reduced to a kind of a Habermasian general theory of discourse. The idea for example in Brandom who is also now in some strange way turning Hegelian is that Hegel's logic is not contains no metaphysical commitment, is basically just a kind of a transcendental a priori of all possible forms of rational argumentation. It's just kind of a general theory of discourse of modes of argumentation. I claim that at least one thing we should learn from Hegel and from history of philosophy today post-Hegelian that this avoiding or suspending the so-called big ontological questions never really works. Radical questions return. You know this is for example take someone like Habermas. He brings this game almost to the end because recently I read an interview with Habermas about religion and he defines his position as agnostic. I don't know and so on and so on. And I claim Habermas is necessarily split here. Let's make a stupid game. If one were to ask Habermas privately but are you really agnostic, he was privately said no I accept probably Darwin people somehow human race developed out of nature but in the very form of his thought he would say it's transcendentally impossible to develop this. You always already have to have some idealist transcendental a priori even to talk about this and so on and so on. Or not to mention for example all these Foucauldian deadlocks. You know by Foucauldian deadlocks I mean this discourse theory historicism where to be a little bit ironic for Foucauldian you cannot ask the question for example do we humans have an immortal soul. The only question you can ask is it's so boring under what discursive position are you allowed and power relations can you even talk about immortal soul and so on. So all ontological questions are displaced into questions about some discursive field transcendental even if it's historical transcendental a priori. Like I again I think that if nothing else this kind of suspension of big ontological questions undermines itself, usually implicitly involves the worst historicism plus I think more and more that it is this suspension in deconstructionist circles of ontological questions which opens up the path to the violent return of most naive realist metaphysics in either cognitivism or today's neo-Darwinism no? Because I think why do we if you do I'm bored by it but nonetheless why do we read Stephen Hawking? Because precisely he shamelessly approaches these questions no? What's the origin of the universe and so on all that. So my thesis is that such a deflated image of Hegel is not enough. I propose a different approach to this post-Hegelian break. True there is a break but in this break I claim this is my formal structure of my argument Hegel is the vanishing art mediator between before and after between traditional metaphysics and post-metaphysical 19th-20th century anti-philosophy. That is to say something happens with Hegel, a breakthrough into a unique dimension of thought. I think that this breakthrough does begin already with Kant. You know I was recently on behalf of my friend he instigated me with Mladen Dolar rereading this the worst Freud's anti-philosophical statements. Like you know Freud quoting that famous Heinrich Heine ironic stab at philosophy but the way Freud quotes it but I wonder if Freud even knew it that Heine really the target of Heine was Hegel. You know that the philosopher with his nightcap tries to fix it in the gaps in the structure of the universe to make it whole and so on and so on. This is obviously a reference to that most famous drawing portrait of Hegel with the nightcap and so on. Now there are many very interesting things to say here because this idea of a philosopher filling in the gaps so that the inconsistencies reducing the diversity of reality to a homogeneous image. This is not this and Freud doesn't notice it that basically what he is describing here is Sekundäre Bearbeitung so-called in the in the Traumarbeit work of dream no? It is as if already in a dream we have the ur-philosopher. You know Freud's theory no? You have this wild dream pre-formed and then in order for the dream to become presentable as a contingent story you need the so-called Sekundäre Bearbeitung you know to to cut off the inconsistencies to make a narrative no? But is this really philosophy? I think that we should be here proud defenders from philosophy and say at least from Kant this idea of a philosopher who presents a global vision and patches up it's already from Kant a bullshit. Kant's whole point is precisely to open up a gap inconsistency much more radical than our everyday pluralist whatever common sense. No philosophy is not patching up things in a unique Weltanschauung. From Kantian philosophy opens up radical inconsistencies and Hegel I claim not only doesn't patch it up again but even radicalizes it because you know what is Hegel's key approach to Kant as he puts it very nicely that he is too gentle towards the things. The problem with Kant is that he sees antinomies but he epistemologizes the antinomies. For Kant antinomy means it cannot really affect things in themselves. Antinomies for Kant always a sign that the thing itself is inaccessible to us. So Hegel goes even to the end here but incidentally another the other two prejudices about Hegel usually linked to this Hegel as a totalizer filling it on the all the gaps is this idea of totality. This so-called postmodern dogma that you know Hegel wants totality but isn't there in every totality some I quote ironically myself quoting Schelling an indivisible remainder something that resists to be totalized something that introduces inconsistency and so on and so on. Well I think the time has come to fully rehabilitate Hegel's idea of totality. Hegel's totality is precisely this I think. Here Adorno got it wrong with his the with his polemics against Das Ganze ist das Wahre the whole is the truth and his point the truth is no the whole is not true. What Hegel means with totality is not an ideal structure which sublates Aufhebung all inconsistent elements. It's on the contrary to observe an element or a structure in its totality means that all that you know here we come to Hegel's wonderful play with words theory of example you know Hegel uses consciously wrong etymology Beispiel Beispieele what plays itself arrives along. That is to say we have usually let's say an ideal structure and then of course in contingent empirical reality all kind of bullshit happens to this you know contradictions it goes wrong. Hegelian totality means when you speak about something you should account for all precisely all these inconsistencies antagonisms and so on as part of the original whole. So for Hegel on the contrary to observe an element in its totality means precisely breaking its consistency and introducing into it the entire bullshit which appears contingent as part of what Hegel would have called the self-movement of totality. Which is why for this is where Hegel is absolutely anti-Platonic. Because you know for Plato to put it naively every example is imperfect because it cannot really exemplify the purity of the idea. For Hegel on the contrary there is also a gap between example and what it exemplifies but the surplus is on the side of example. You confront a notion, you exemplify it, stage it even Hegel and then you discover you got more than you asked for. Immediately you stumble. So this is in this sense I claim Hegel is right to say that Jesus Christ is an example. The example of examples the absolute example which means atheism and so on. Okay that's another thing here even this infamous List der Vernunft, cunning of reason. They say oh but Hegel thinks that there is some secret reason transcendent force which somehow guarantees that even if things appear confused somehow in the end they will turn out well. My God just read closely what Hegel is doing when he talks about List der Vernunft. You will see that List der Vernunft is effectively a name for its very opposite. List der Vernunft basically means whenever you want to impose a project onto reality you can be sure that something will go wrong. It's practically the opposite it's that this is if there is a Hegelian a priori is that things always go wrong in some way and necessarily and even at the end you don't get but at the end you get no at the end you just get a theory of how things necessarily go wrong. Okay but this was just a detour so to give you an abstract frame my idea is this one. We have something called metaphysics then we have this post-Hegelian bullshit positivity of being and so on and so on. Hegel is the in-between vanishing mediator in the sense of no longer before but not yet after. Something very traumatic happens in Hegel and I claim that precisely to cover up this in-between we had to invent this ridiculous image of Hegel you know the crazy guy who thought he reads the mind of God and knows everything which is exactly what in psychoanalysis we call screen memory Deckerinnerung a fantasy formation to cover to cover the true trauma. It has something to do with as you pointed out these moments of historical passage like between traditional authoritarian society and modernity. It's every dialectician knows this that in the moment of passage you see something that in the old previous order they didn't see but which becomes invisible also the moment the new settles in. I can tell you this from my personal experience for example years ago the dissolution of communist regimes. We were lucky we saw something which the moment the parliamentary liberal capitalist everyday life established itself it became invisible. Or we can go endlessly here to give you another example that I like, I'm sorry if some of you know it I repeat myself I know, take the history of cinema the passage from silent movies to talkies talking movies. The the truly great artists of the passage that's why they were conservative skeptics artistically Chaplin Eisenstein. They knew what the moment talking movies movies became the settled standard we took them as simply an expansion of realism. You know before we just saw figures blah blah but now that we also hear the voice it becomes much more realistic we get closer to the whole person being alive on screen. But what those early directors noticed like exemplarily Fritz Lang early Hitchcock and so on Chaplin in an ingenious way is that no the voice is not natural. What we get is this deep insight into how ventriloquism is our reality how in its most radical dimension voice is not just our natural extension but it's kind of a foreign intruder which disrupts our identity. You know this is for me for example the genius of Chaplin's The Great Dictator. You know the no he plays two figures there. The the good Jewish barbers Jewish barber is the old silent figure the tramp. Hitler is the priority of the voice. It's usually even first presented as shouting voice and only then as a figure that we see. So there was something very deep that again that that Chaplin saw there. Something which you find if there ever was a wonderful example of Hegelian movement of self-relating negation you find it. I recently saw look they are rereleasing them now those old black and white Hitchcock Presents from late 50s series and I think it's the first one of the second year. It's such a traumatic short minutes a story that even I with all my decadent experience was shocked. It's a story of a ventriloquist you know sits and has a doll blah blah and a lone desperate woman gets terribly in love with him and watches every performance and so on and then one evening she gathers the courage and approaches him and comes too close and says but sir I love you approaches him and wants to embrace him. Okay you can guess what happens. She discovers with horror that it's the big man who was really a doll. It was a midget a small guy you know that the puppet was the only living person. Then you have it's really horrific how she's embracing just a doll and a small guy steps out the puppet starts to move and so on and so on. This is if you want Hegelian negation. So again what I am saying is that there is something we have on the one hand this standard stupid idealism you know you develop everything out of the one idea then you have this post-Hegelian as you would have called it anti-philosophy positivity that something became visible between the two and maybe it's still too strong for us today. And I claim that we are in a similar predicament one can argue together a certain epoch going to the end that's why Hegel is again the question of the day. Okay let me go on because now obviously you will ask me okay it's easy to say is but how do Americans say where is the beef like what is this dimension no? Okay I will to specify this uniqueness of Hegel I would like to begin by an essay by Alenka Zupančič published in the volume Think Again edited by Peter Hallward which is basically a critique of Alain Badiou and of anti-philosophy in general. Her starting point of Alenka Zupančič is the basic motive of anti-philosophers, the assertion of some productive presence like real life of society for Marx, existence for Kierkegaard, will for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, which is irreducible to and excessive with regard to the network of philosophical concepts or representation. And I think this is maybe the basic as it were matrix of what Badiou calls anti-philosophy. The excess of pre-conceptual productivity over representation. This idea that representation is a theater of representation which is always as such blind for or obliterating, mystifying, displacing whatever its own decentered site of production. A quote from Alenka here: The post-Hegelian philosophy started off with this fundamental claim: symbolic representations which were traditionally considered as access to the truth and to the real of being do in fact alienate us from being and deform it. As classical philosophy was suddenly recognized and classical philosophy was suddenly recognized as the queen of this representative misrepresentation. Indeed if one were to name one central issue that singularizes the rise of modern thought it is perhaps none other than precisely the issue of representation, its profound interrogation and the consequent vast turn against the logic of representation. And then she goes on in a very nice way how in all different domain like in art representation representative art become problematic, in politics precisely when we get representative democracy, always the questions exploded but are all properly represented, isn't there some part like pöbel plebs or whatever which cannot be adequately represented in representative democracy. The big topic is the excess of presence over representation. Even in love in sofar as we can say marriage should in bourgeois ideology represent true love. And then you have all this topic but can marriage represent love? And you have always this oscillation between celebrating democracy or marriage based on love as true representation like we can all be represented, freedom to vote for all of us, and this deep doubt: but isn't there something in the very form of representation political which exclude some, isn't there something in the very form of marriage that as excludes true love and so on and so on. So I claim this would be one of my critiques at the end if you will have time I want to add I was thinking a long about it a critique of Meillassoux and so on also. This is for me one of the limitations maybe of Badiou that he still remains within this field of opposition between pure productive presence and representation. Because on this his entire almost politics is based and I think this is pure ideological move where Badiou consciously plays on the ambiguity of the French term l'état no which is state as l'état français French state and state as simply situation the state of things. Out of this he draws I think in a totally illegitimate ideological move the identity of the two because state and state in both meanings is always present, we cannot split one from the other. This means that on the one hand we cannot get rid of the state we cannot get pure productive presence but state always mystifies the productive presence and then from here comes the late Badiou's weird political turn of subtraction. The my problem with it is that it involves an all too simple anti-totalitarian move. The idea is if you want to assert directly the presence you end up in totalitarian catastrophe like who tried to do it he enumerated this to me Sendero Luminoso, Pol Pot, Chinese cultural revolution. So since it's impossible to assert directly pure presence to get rid of representation but since representation is always mystifying however you put it, this means authentic politics must be at a distance from state. In all the sympathies that I have for this position because now comes the small obscenity I cannot resist telling you I was a month and a half ago in Bolivia and Peru and after a talk a guy approached me and said here I have a book for you with a dedication. I was in strange way proud of it you know from whom? Will you guess with your dirty... Morales? Fuck Morales that idiot who thinks capitalism killed Mother Nature. They didn't like it I said there at least one good thing that capitalism did no? Ahmadinejad? Fuck... no this is theory Iranian goat-fucking idiot fucking. Abimael Guzmán, Presidente Gonzalo from prison, the boss of Sendero Luminoso. With admiration blah blah blah. So it's interesting to know where one has friends. Sorry let me go on. So I claim that here Badiou remains again too much in this within this space of opposing productive presence and representation. And and that what we should do is complicate things here. Second thing I claim that here I follow politically I don't agree with him the American Marxist okay Moishe Postone who developed very nicely a thesis with which I sympathize namely how Marx that we should strictly distinguish the Marxism of Marx by Marxism he means what later passed as the Marxist doxa. The best expression of it would have been German Ideology and the last attack of it the Indian summer of this Marxism of Marx would have been that famous preface to the critique of political economy you know that dogma fully quoted by Stalin you know people there are different formations and then superstructure follows the base and so on and so on. This is for me purely post-philosophical naive Marxism. But as Postone shows very clearly after the failure of the revolution Marx of course started to read Hegel Logic and then when based on this Marx returned to critique of political economy he no longer followed this line of thought. And you can see why when you ask yourself a simple question what is commodity fetishism. It's typical how Marx never calls it ideology but calls it you know theological eccentricities of commodity. It is as if Marx here I rely on Kōjin Karatani who pointed out how Marx begins with critique of religion then critique of state blah blah then critique of political economy which in a paradoxical way brings us back to the beginning. All of a sudden Marx discovers that there is a theological dimension, not in the sense that there is God of course in material but as a mechanism which is not simply a false representation but representation which is inscribed precisely as a false representation into the very core of a reality itself. Which is why Marx has problems calling commodity fetishism ideology. Because ideology is superstructure, whatever commodity fetishism is it's not superstructure. And you know this is I always quote it sorry for repeat to quote a wonderful beginning of the subchapter on commodity fetishism in Capital. You all know it but nonetheless let me repeat it. A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious trivial thing but analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. Are you aware how strange it is measured by capital by sorry standard Marxist standards what Marx is claiming here? The standard critique of ideology here I agree with what you said before would have been to say in our ordinary life we are caught in ideological mystifications but critique of ideology should demonstrate how real life process engenders these ideological mystifications. Marx is saying here almost not quite of course he is not idealist the opposite he says no in everyday life we think oh we are just dealing with ordinary material reality. The theological mystification is not that what you should dispel, it's what you should bring out it's there implicitly. The critique doesn't criticize theological mystification it brings it out. You don't see it that it's already there. And I claim again that that okay don't have time to go too deep but that the moment you take this into account all this standard topic of presence representation explodes because it's no longer a problem of base superstructure infrastructure blah blah blah. You have an infrastructure superstructure which is not superstructure but in the very core of material production. Because again you know my old point I nonetheless repeat it the paradox of commodity fetishism for Marx it's not our illusion. No in everyday reality bourgeois subjects don't live in illusions. You are okay you do but in a more complex way. You are usually what a British empiricist no? I mean no capitalist believes that there is something magic in money or whatever. They think what? Visit British Stock Exchange. I did years ago and got a wonderful message there where it simply says my God I thought wait a minute are they Marxists but of course they are not. You get a free leaflet where they tell you the following: You may think that there is something mystical almost theological in speculations on the stock market. No it's all about people exchange between people people relating to each other and so on and so on. So you see the paradox the first step of critique is not to say no it's only relations within people which appear as relations within things or whatever no it's to say you think that it's only concrete people but you do not see how in order in commodity in capitalist society in order to be active as concrete people you need abstractions you need theological mystification which sustains reality itself. Or to put it in the terms of the excess. The standard post-philosophical anti-philosophical excess you have this boring topic of how idealist philosophy tries to represent reality actual life process but there is an excess something that... the true Hegelians we should do is to make a passage from the excess over representation excess in the sense of an excessive element which cannot be represented like true love or or rebel which cannot be represented politically to the excess of representation itself. The true enigma is why does reality itself need representation to sustain itself as as a reality. So this brings us to Hegel. What Hegel means by either absolute spirit or actual infinity, I approach the same thing from two perspectives, it's precisely this inclusion of illusory representation into actuality itself. What do I mean by this what do I mean by this? For example if I maybe begin with the status of abstraction. Or for example you know the young Marx let's approach the topic of abstraction. The young Marx in German Ideology would still have played this boring I think game of opposing abstraction to concrete reality. He would say yes in ideology you appear an abstract subject but in social reality you are concrete human being blah blah blah with all your needs blah blah and being pure Cogito is just an abstraction. Late Marx would have said something very different. He would have said the whole problem of abstraction in bourgeois society is that it's not only abstraction. It's that as abstraction it has actuality. Okay to give you a classical example I'm sure you all know it. We cannot simply say that abstraction is a mystification. In a developed bourgeois society where I can change my job all the time my desires wishes fluctuate and so on I effectively relate to myself in reality as an abstraction. That is to say I don't see the core of my being in any concrete particular properties I say what I eat oh I can be this or that I can work this or that so that I'm in a way reduced to to Cogito in my social reality itself. There is more reality if you describe yourself as full human being with multiple properties desires part of concrete social life you are not adequately describing your social reality which is that of which is that of abstraction. And the same goes for example for what Marx calls absolute spirit. Subjective spirit it's clear it's like representations and so on. Objective spirit is let's call it the big Other the social substance. What Marx means by sorry Hegel by absolute spirit is not that you add something more. The only thing you add to objective spirit is illusion itself. You enter absolute spirit the moment you become aware that objective spirit needs subjective illusion in order to in order to sustain itself. So again just as a hint where I see Hegel undermining from within and Marx at his best following it this naive realist assertion of positivity of being and so on and so on. And incidentally if I will have time I will return to it at the end here I see the problem for example with Meillassoux after finitude. It's too Leninist for me in the naive sense. He remains too much within this precisely correlationist Kantian topic of I am here reality is out there can I reach it or not and then these boring games you know like yes we can and so on and so on. No the problem is not can I reach reality. The problem is how is me not being able to reach reality possible within reality itself. Which is why to put it in more speculative terms for Hegel the problem is not can our finite mind know reality the way it is in itself. Reality in itself is never a great mystery for Hegel and he was right. It's just some stupid atoms or whatever who cares. The true mystery for Hegel he says it is exactly the opposite one. Not are we caught in our illusions and then can we reach the thing in itself but how can something like phenomenon like things appearing like abstraction what Hegel celebrates as understanding Verstand you know that you break apart what belongs together you make abstractions exist. How is this possible in reality? How is it that reality is not just flat reality but becomes redoubled in itself into reality and meaning or whatever and so on and so on. Okay let me stop here with this first part and then go on. The same goes for another big misunderstanding namely the misunderstanding of history. Hegel here re-enters again the infamous List der Vernunft, cunning of reason. The way usually Hegel is read is that the absolute idea, nobody knows what this is, the objective spirit uses teleologically individuals their passions to realize some transcendent goal. As if there is in history a kind of this is where not only Bradley McTaggart but even it's really a bad book I think on Hegel Charles Taylor Hegel. This is the biggest mistake of that book. It reads Hegelian Geist Spirit precisely as this kind of objective side mega-subject as if in history we are just puppets there is a mega-subject who pulls the strings and so on and so on. But I think that if you read Hegel really closely you will see that his necessity is always a retroactive one. Because if Hegel's position were to be there is an absolute spirit which pulls the strings then we have substance not subject. Subject is for Hegel always also the moment of illusion split finitude limitation and so on and so on. So for example when Hegel says things become what they always already are in their essence you should read this very literally. Not things have an internal essence and their temporal actualization is just the actualization of this eternal essence. No through contingent actualization retroactively the essence is constituted. Now you will say bullshit you are dreaming you are projecting your postmodern contingency. Ah for example if you don't believe me just think about the structure of Hegel's logic. Hegel doesn't begin with essence. He begins with being which is reflected into appearance and so on and as he puts it very precisely essence is the return of being into its essence itself. But then he makes it repeatedly clear that there is no essence preceding appearance. This return to when we think we are discovering a hidden essence is the very constitution of essence. What does this mean? For example and I rely here on a very good book which is critical of Hegel but nonetheless makes the point nicely this one Gérard Lebrun his a new new one again on Hegel on Hegel and Nietzsche a posthumous manuscript published where he points out how there is no providential necessity in Hegel. For example he takes the example wonderful one best known of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Here also I think incidentally that Peter Hallward who uses this very example misreads Deleuze who is very Hegelian here. It's not that it was from the very beginning inscribed into the essence of Julius Caesar that he will cross the Rubicon. So you know when he confronted that stupid small stream he said ah now it's the historical moment of which my mother was already dreaming when she was screwed by my father whatever and now I do it. No it was totally contingent. But the moment he did it it was retroactively posited as essence. You know it's like falling in love. No wonder that Hegel is sometimes considered philosopher of love. You know like I stumble upon a person in a totally contingent way and then if it's true love of course it's I was waiting for you all my life and so on and so on. Permit me to make one further quote which I repeat all the time I know from Le Monde magazine Jean-Pierre Dupuy the French rational choice theorist quotes it where he found a wonderful quote when there were some presidential pre-elections not proper when Édouard Balladur was candidate and the journalist of Le Monde wrote if next Sunday if Balladur will win then his victory will be necessary. You see the point? The moment something contingent happens it retroactively posits itself as necessary. You should never forget that this is what Hegel is talking about. Now let me go a little bit further of trying to convince you to be very brutal that I am not that I am not that I am not dreaming here. If do you know that T.S. Eliot the bad NATO poet was also his doctor's thesis was on Bradley on Hegelian philosopher. Okay all my critique applied to Eliot but in his best known essay he nonetheless makes a nice point. You know tradition and individual talent or the other way around. Okay we know which one. You know that famous everybody quotes it line how each really new work of art creates not only something new but retroactively changes the totality of what happened before. This is Hegelian notion of totality that totality is not a linear deployment of everything was already there. No totality is always retroactively refashioning itself changing the past. I think that the best in this sense the best maybe Hegelian definition of a nation for example would have been I know he was a proto-racist but here he did have a stroke of genius. You know Ernst Renan the French positivist proto-racist but he said something very nice. He said that nation is a large group of people who share the same the same lies about their past the same hatred of their present neighbors and the same illusions about their future. No I don't know if this is true generally for my nation it's strictly true Slovenians no. We share the same illusions about the past like our dream is we are not Slavic at all we are really Etruscans you know the foundation of Rome and so on and you can prove it as a good Slovenian like you take a Slovenian word with five letters you change three letters you change the order of others and of course you get an Etruscan word. Then the hatred of present neighbors of course first it was Albanians then Serbs now there are Croats and who knows who will be tomorrow. And the same illusions about the future no which is that give us three four years and get rid of communists who still secretly control economy and we will overcome Switzerland. This is the motto of Slovenian right five years we will overcome Switzerland. But what I'm saying again this is the idea which I quoted it often very nicely formulated by Borges you must know it that a truly great writer not only has forerunners he retroactively creates them. For example Borges's example is of course Kafka. Of course we can say the predecessors of Kafka were who are the usual suspects Dostoevsky, Edgar Allan Poe, William Blake and so on. But nonetheless we can only say this once Kafka is already here. And again this totality means that precisely it's not the totality of change in the sense of no things happen as a total process. Hegelian totality is something much more precise is that totality itself changes all the time in the sense that things are retotalized again and again. At the level of speaking here Hegel really says it. Namely I think that and you can find it for free on the internet there is a wonderful text by Heinrich Kleist from the title is in English On the Gradual Formation of Thoughts in the Process of Speech where he develops systematically with wonderful examples from political history and so on how all the big thoughts or big political gestures happened not that you thought well about it in advance but you said something too much you were in a panic and then to to pull yourself out of shit you had to invent something quickly. But the point being there had to be this moment of in German Versprechen how do you translate into English Versprechen you know when you say more than you wanted to say and then there must be this kind of a failure you said more than you wanted to say in a totally contingent way excess and then reacting to this the big thought comes. For example the famous example of Kleist is Mirabeau's famous famous reply to you know when king's representative came to the to the Troisième État Assemblée nationale and asked them to disburse go home. Mirabeau's reply is well known the nation gives orders it does not receive orders. But he shows how reproducing the whole speech how Mirabeau first didn't know what to answer then he got entangled and then op to pull out of his confusion. And I think we should go here we should go here to the end. I even think that you know the one that I really like Robespierre's Robespierre's famous moment of terror in Assemblée nationale where he came with the black book and said I have here names of the traitors. And then he added of course after a little bit of silence to make an effect I say that anyone who trembles at this moment is guilty for innocence never fears public scrutiny. You know this wonderful totalitarian I love it rhetorics no? He showed the book of course everybody was afraid is my name in it and then he said if you are afraid it's a proof that you are guilty. But I think that one can imagine his reasoning. After the first statement he noticed signs of unrest and fear among the listeners. He quickly thought about how to exploit this fear. Should he offer the carrot and add something like but if you are innocent you have nothing to fear should he do some Franklin Delano Roosevelt platitude like you only have fear fear itself and then he thought to himself no no no better use this fear itself as an argument for guilt. Even I claim that there is Stalin's speech from the early 1930s where he proposes radical measures against all those who even secretly oppose collectivization of farms. Stalin says we should detect I quote and fight without mercy even those who oppose collectivization only in their thoughts. Yes I mean this we should fight even people's thoughts. I claim that what probably happened is that this passage was not prepared in advance. Stalin got caught into his rhetorical enthusiasm and was spontaneously carried away saying even people's private thoughts should be controlled. Then he become aware oh my god what did I say and then he said oh no no no I shouldn't retract let's make a virtue out of this blunder and say yes precisely this what I meant and so on and so on. Now you will say I'm bullshitting this is romantic reaction to Hegel. No the whole Hegelian theory of speech act and of act in general goes like this that you want to say something then you do the act or say it and in doing it you discover what you really wanted. Traitors yeah familiar with yeah yeah but this is elemental liberal well no seriously if you have some question more otherwise listen I would be glad I'm often here what I would be glad to do really glad it's not this kind of rhetorical offer when this shitty book that I was making will be out why don't I come here without my boring repetitive talk and you give me a true what in police they call third degree you know. Like you really ask me the hard questions but we can presuppose maybe that you read a little bit the book not for my narcissism but so that I don't feel this it's much easier for me if I can count on you knowing the topic then I can be much less repetitive. What what about like putting you in like Pulp Fiction with one of those things in your mouth yeah and then you just listen to the critique for three hours yeah you cannot say anything yeah? Ah first first I'm a severe cultural conservative here I hate the Pulp Fiction. It's a shitty pretentious movie and so on and so on. I even prefer if you want to understand Hegel what is negation of negation to conclude. Did you see that modest British comedy not it's not even a comedy it's more a kind of melodrama with the young how do you pronounce his name Ewan McGregor Ewan McGregor Brassed Off. You know that working class they are closing a mine okay he there falls in love with a girl who works for those who are closing down the mine so there is tension but then there is love she turns good the point is this there is a scene there purely Hegelian negation of negation where she she accompanies her after dinner at home and in front of the building she tells him would you mind coming up for a coffee no and he says yeah but there is a problem I don't like coffee. You know what she answers: No problem I don't have any. Isn't it wonderful how the extremely vulgar message come up and screw me. You know it's said only through making an empty offer and then saying something like it's I consider this simply this is what Hegel means that you know the negation of negation doesn't bring you to the same zero point no in between you you gain a beautiful girl to screw her no. Or to give you a similar example dialectic in Hollywood. Did you see Ninotchka? But there is a wonderful detail there nonetheless. I don't like it in general but nonetheless. You remember how a guy there enters a cafeteria and asks can I get coffee without cream please. You know what the waiter answers? Pure Hegel. Sorry sir we ran out of cream so I cannot give you coffee without cream but we still have milk so can I give you coffee without milk? It's absolutely correct. This is what Hegel means you know negativity has to be inscribed into positive identity. Now you will say but what's the point don't you get the same plain coffee. I don't have time to develop theory the point is no you don't. Because the whole point is that here you have to pass from symbolic to the real. Precisely coffee is not fully coffee it needs something like my stupid example of those Kinder Surprise eggs you know where you get a plastic toy. And you need something like milk cream whatever by god you British know this the best theory of tea with milk I know I took it from that George Mikes's classic How to Be an Alien you know the classic satire. But they said British admired tea when they discovered it in India but they had a problem they are masochists in character. So the point was how to spoil the pleasure of the tea. They tried with honey with this with that it didn't work then they discovered if you add a little bit of milk to tea it looks like how do you call this the water that remains after you wash dishes and so on. So they were satisfied with okay but that is the Hegelian logic sorry. Now who who was the woman who asked for coffee was it you who who offered the coffee I mean off- offered... no I my version is infinitely more vulgar
unknown
and I proposed
and I proposed
Slavoj Žižek
it she was so mad at me
it she was so mad at me
unknown
to that journalist Orlanne Sallin.
to that journalist Orlanne Sallin.
Slavoj Žižek
You know there is a wonderful vulgar joke very Hegelian very vulgar where no no no very briefly where I use it yesterday I know at ICA where two guys Soviet joke two guys are on a train and one says after half an hour silence one says to the other did you already fuck a dog. The other says this is disgusting horrible of course not did you. The first guy says of course not I agree
You know there is a wonderful vulgar joke very Hegelian very vulgar where no no no very briefly where I use it yesterday I know at ICA where two guys Soviet joke two guys are on a train and one says after half an hour silence one says to the other did you already fuck a dog. The other says this is disgusting horrible of course not did you. The first guy says of course not I agree
unknown
with you it's disgusting. Then the first says but why why again did you ask me? You know what the first guy says? Oh it was just I was
with you it's disgusting. Then the first says but why why again did you ask me? You know what the first guy says? Oh it was just I was
Slavoj Žižek
looking for a good line to start a conversation you know and so on. So this Orlanne Sallin we talked in Slovenia about what question she should ask me at a debate and I told her after you should do this to me after the talk if I accompany you to the hotel you should ask me would you care to come up to my room and ask you for what and you would say oh you can fuck a dog there. And then I say but I don't want to fuck a dog. And she tells me then the version of Brassed Off: no problem I also don't have a dog you know. Incredible Hegelian. I hope you got
looking for a good line to start a conversation you know and so on. So this Orlanne Sallin we talked in Slovenia about what question she should ask me at a debate and I told her after you should do this to me after the talk if I accompany you to the hotel you should ask me would you care to come up to my room and ask you for what and you would say oh you can fuck a dog there. And then I say but I don't want to fuck a dog. And she tells me then the version of Brassed Off: no problem I also don't have a dog you know. Incredible Hegelian. I hope you got
unknown
the point.
the point.
Slavoj Žižek
These questions to me were the academic version of did you already fuck a dog. Admit it okay. We're going to stop it there before it gets any worse. Well this is good tendency it can get worse yeah. We'll be back in past past because a couple of people were able to take the talk slightly earlier and it's not going to be quite as long as we expected
These questions to me were the academic version of did you already fuck a dog. Admit it okay. We're going to stop it there before it gets any worse. Well this is good tendency it can get worse yeah. We'll be back in past past because a couple of people were able to take the talk slightly earlier and it's not going to be quite as long as we expected
unknown
so we'll be back
so we'll be back
Slavoj Žižek
here in in about minutes past Thank you very much. Oh no thank you and I mean it serious it's easy for me you know this time it was shit because I didn't have the book out.
here in in about minutes past Thank you very much. Oh no thank you and I mean it serious it's easy for me you know this time it was shit because I didn't have the book out.