Visiting Hegel at Dusk: A Conversation with Slavoj Žižek (Interview by Hisham Aqeel) Rethinking Marxism, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2020.1750193
Mao has this formula: One divides into Two. But I nonetheless correct Mao:
One is from the very beginning divided into Two. The One emerges through division.
You start with a confused field of multiplicities and then One emerges through division. One always means: “I am this and I am not that”—One is always a division.
[…] What Hegel means by “absolute recoil,” and the German term is absoluter Gegenstoß, is this closed circle when there is a cause which is generating effects, but, at some point, cause is only a retroactive effect of its effects. Let me give you a simple idea. We can say that—taking an extreme example —communists are inspired by the communist idea; the communist idea is their cause but at the same time this communist idea is only alive through the activity of communists. If you kill all the communists, there will be no communist idea.
So, you see, for Hegel it is the same with Subject. Subject expresses itself (it does something or says something), but there is no Subject prior to this expression. It is only through expressing itself that Subject emerges. In this sense you can link this to retroactivity—but very radically. Let me give you another example of retroactivity. Today we do not know what will happen; maybe there will be a new world war: Iran, Saudi Arabia, America, or China. We do not know what will happen, but if the war happens it will appear as if the war had to happen; that we were just postponing it. But if it doesn’t happen, we will be telling ourselves a story of how it was clear that it was a “false danger,” “the war couldn’t happen,” “we are not so stupid to ruin civilization,” and so on. I think that this is the deepest Hegelian insight: things become what they are only retroactively. My favorite example here is falling in love. You contingently fall in love, but once you are in love, it appears to you that all your life was moving to this point.
[…] The only thing I mean by communism is to somehow limit the market logic of capital. Capitalism works at a certain level, and very well so; look at what China has achieved through controlled capitalism. But I think capitalism must be controlled by some strong agency; we need to develop some kind of an international cooperation or agencies which are strong and have such power to coordinate not only how to fight global warming but also, for example, the problem of immigrants—this cannot be solved by nation-states. We need an international approach, where problems shouldn’t just be a humanitarian one, such as: “Will we allow more immigrants to come to Western Europe?” No! We should ask deeper questions: Why are immigrants leaving their countries? Who is responsible for those wars? Isn’t it clear that without the American intervention in Iraq, or the horrors today in Yemen and Syria (or Africa), we wouldn’t have had so many immigrants? So we should approach it in a different way, not just in a humanitarian way, such as, “Should we accept immigrants or not?” The problem is to tackle the situation which creates immigrants. You cannot do this in the level of capitalism and sovereign states.
Slavoj Žižek Sept 2020, International Philosophical Conference in Ljubljana
Implicit model of a future society Philosophy of Right. Marx thought Hegel got it right, the scheme of alienation, Hegel got it right for Fukuyama, liberal democracy. I disagree with Judith Butler, where Butler provides a vision of “we are not yet there Hegel.” Butler says about Hegel in a speech, we are not solitary creatures, though Hegel says that sometimes we see ourselves in this way. Who exactly is that idiot that says we are not solitary creatures disconnected from one another. What does Butler miss here: It’s not that if we are vulgar materialists, Hegel says we have to make the wrong choice, this is the immanent temporality. Hegel’s critique of Terror after French Revolution, its not French went too far, NO. His point is not usual critique of French Revolution, you HAVE to GO THROUGH TERROR. That is the only way we can get to reconciliation. NO, at the end the whole history is a succession of horrors. It’s totally wrong to read Hegel as nice world at the end totally reconciled. NO. At the end of Phil of Right you get the necessity of War.
Puerto Rico, Rosio Zambrana, with reference to Adorno, proposed a nice reading of Hegel, and rejects the notion of IMMANENT CRITIQUE. She sees in Hegel an ongoing critique which remains vigilant of the reversions of normative criteria. She knows Habermas, like you need normative criteria to criticize, but she says even the normative criteria have to FALL.
Robert Brandon’s The Spirit of Trust. Political Correct critiques, never see the evil in their own gaze. Say one work you are out forever. Forgiving Recollection. Our castigation of Hitler should be a reflexive determination of the evil in ourselves. Brandon’s take, he moves into this spurious infinity, our judgement is limited in the future they will recollectively forgive..
We have to introduce logical temporality of WILL HAVE BEEN. The meaning of your act can be determined retroactively. Somebody does something with the highest intentions and everything goes wrong. Bernard Williams, MORAL LUCK. you do something and it depends on the outcome of how it will be judged. For example KANT: every revolution is to be condemed, because you overthrow a legal power, but if the revolution is successful, you have to follow it.
An event retroactively become necessary, it retroactively contains its own presuppositions. The Hegelian motto, is the spirit of distrust. His basic procedure, something begins well with the best intentions and then everything goes wrong. One thing you can be sure with Hegel is don’t trust any ethical project. The only thing we can gain is the failure and the reaction to the failure.
Hegel is never a guy of happy endings. Fukuyama is the greatest anti-Hegelian. Because for Hegel,when a certain movement wins, its self-divides. Hegel offers the best way to think COVID. Hegel is much more autonomous in sense of admitting autonomy of nature.