{"id":6150,"date":"2010-12-26T14:36:39","date_gmt":"2010-12-26T18:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=6150"},"modified":"2012-12-22T07:25:57","modified_gmt":"2012-12-22T12:25:57","slug":"6150","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2010\/12\/26\/6150\/","title":{"rendered":"\u017di\u017eek Hegel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj. <\/em>“Article on Hegel and Interview” The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism<\/em>. eds. Bryant, Levi., and Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman. Melbourne: Re.press, 2011. 202-223. 406-415.<\/p>\n

It is here that, in order to specify the meaning of materialism, one should apply Lacan\u2019s formulas of sexuation: there is a fundamental difference between the assertion<\/p>\n

\u2018everything is matter\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

(which relies on its constitutive exception\u2014in the case of Lenin who, in his Materialism and Empiriocriticism<\/em>, falls into this trap, the very position of enunciation of the subject whose mind \u2018reflects\u2019 matter)<\/p>\n

and the assertion \u2018there is nothing which is not matter\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n

(which, with its other side, \u2018not-All is matter\u2019<\/strong>, opens up the space for the account of immaterial phenomena).<\/p>\n

What this means is that a truly radical materialism is by definition non-reductionist: far from claiming that \u2018everything is matter\u2019, it confers upon the \u2018immaterial\u2019 phenomena a specific positive non-being.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is it Still Possible to be a Hegelian Today<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For this consciousness was not in peril and fear for this element or that, nor for this or that moment of time, it was afraid for its entire being; it felt the fear of death, the sovereign master. It has been in that experience melted to its inmost soul, has trembled throughout its every fibre, and all that was fixed and steadfast has quaked within it. This complete perturbation of its entire substance, this absolute dissolution of all its stability into fluent continuity, is, however, the simple, ultimate nature of self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure self-relating existence, which consequently is involved in this type of consciousness<\/em>. Phen of Spirit<\/p>\n

What, then, does the Servant get in exchange for renouncing all the wealth of his particular Self? Nothing\u2014in overcoming his particular terrestrial Self, the Servant does not reach a higher level of a spiritual Self; all he has to do is to shift his position and recognize in (what appears to him as) the overwhelming power of destruction which threatens to obliterate his particular identity the absolute negativity which forms the very core of his own Self<\/strong>. In short,<\/p>\n

the subject has to fully identify with the force that threatens to wipe him out: what he feared in fearing death was the negative power of his own Self.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is thus no reversal of negativity into positive greatness \u2014 the only \u2018greatness\u2019 there is is this negativity itself. Or, with regard to suffering: Hegel\u2019s point is not that the suffering brought about by alienating labour of renunciation is an intermediary moment to pass, so that we should just endure it and patiently wait for the reward at the end of the tunnel\u2014there is no prize or profit to be gained at the end for our patient submission, suffering and renunciation are their own reward<\/strong>,<\/p>\n

all that is to be done is to change our subjective position, to renounce our desperate clinging to our finite Self with its \u2018pathological\u2019 desires, to purify our Self to universality.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is also how Hegel explains the overcoming of tyranny in the history of states: \u2018One says that tyranny is overturned by the people because it is undignified, shameful, etc. In reality, it disappears simply because it is superfluous\u2019.\u00a0 It becomes superfluous when people no longer need the external force of the tyrant to make them renounce their particular interests, but when they become \u2018universal citizens\u2019<\/strong> by directly identifying the core of their being with this universality <\/strong>\u2014 in short, people no longer need the external master when they are educated into doing the job of discipline and subordination themselves. …<\/p>\n

Let us take social struggle at its most violent: war. What interests Hegel is not struggle as such, but the way the \u2018truth\u2019 of the engaged positions emerges through it, i.e., how the warring parties are \u2018reconciled\u2019 through their mutual destruction. The true (spiritual) meaning of war is not honour, victory, defence, etc., but the emergence of absolute negativity (death) as the absolute Master which reminds us of the false stability of our organized finite lives.<\/p>\n

War serves to elevate individuals to their \u2018truth\u2019 by making them obliterate their particular self-interests and identify with the State\u2019s universality. The true enemy is not the enemy we are fighting but our own finitude<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 recall Hegel\u2019s acerbic remark on how it is easy to preach the vanity of our finite terrestrial existence, but much more difficult to accept this lesson when it is enforced by a wild enemy soldier who breaks into our home and starts to cut members of our family with a sabre \u2026.<\/p>\n

In philosophical terms, Hegel\u2019s point is here the primacy of \u2018self-contradiction\u2019 over external obstacle (or enemy).<\/p>\n

We are not finite and self-inconsistent because our activity is always thwarted by external obstacles; we are thwarted by external obstacles because we are finite and inconsistent. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, what the subject engaged in a struggle perceives as the enemy<\/strong>, the external obstacle he has to overcome, is the materialization of the subject\u2019s immanent inconsistency<\/strong>: the fighting subject needs the figure of the enemy to sustain the illusion of his own consistency, his very identity hinges on his opposing the enemy, so that his (eventual) victory over the enemy is his own defeat, disintegration.<\/p>\n

As Hegel likes to put it, fighting the external enemy, one (unknowingly) fights one\u2019s own essence.<\/p>\n

So, far from celebrating engaged fighting, Hegel\u2019s point is rather that every struggling position, every taking-sides, has to rely on a necessary illusion (the illusion that, once the enemy is annihilated, I will achieve the full realization of my being).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This brings us to what would have been a properly Hegelian notion of ideology: the misapprehension of the condition of possibility (of what is an inherent constituent of your position) as the condition of impossibility (as an obstacle which prevents your full realization) \u2014 the ideological subject is unable to grasp how his entire identity hinges on what he perceives as the disturbing obstacle. This notion of ideology is not just an abstract mental exercise: it fits perfectly the Fascist anti-Semitism as the most elementary form of ideology, one is even tempted to say: ideology as such, kat\u2019 exochen<\/em>. The anti-Semitic figure of the Jew<\/strong>, this foreign intruder who disturbs and corrupts the harmony of the social order, is ultimately a fetishist objectivization<\/strong>, a standin, for the \u2018inconsistency\u2019 of the social order, for the immanent antagonism (\u2018class struggle\u2019) which generates the dynamic of the social system\u2019s instability (208).<\/p>\n

We can measure here clearly the distance that separates Hegel from Nietzsche: the innocence of exuberant heroism that Nietzsche wants to resuscitate, the passion of risk, of fully engaging in a struggle, of victory or defeat, they are all gone\u2014the \u2018truth\u2019 of the struggle only emerges in and through defeat.<\/p>\n

This is why the standard Marxist denunciation of the falsity of the Hegelian reconciliation (already made by Schelling) misses the point. According to this critique, the Hegelian reconciliation is false, it occurs only in the Idea, while real antagonisms persist \u2014 in the \u2018concrete\u2019 experience of the \u2018real life\u2019 of individuals who cling to their particular identity, state power remains an external compulsion.<\/p>\n

Therein resides the crux of the young Marx\u2019s critique of Hegel\u2019s political thought: Hegel presents the modern constitutional monarchy as a rational State in which antagonisms are reconciled, as an organic Whole in which every constituent (can) find(s) its proper place, but he thereby obfuscates the class antagonism which continues in modern societies, generating the working class as the \u2018non-reason of the existing Reason\u2019, as the part of modern society which has no proper part in it, as its \u2018part of no-part\u2019 (Ranci\u00e8re). …<\/p>\n

In other words, instead of rejecting the Hegelian false reconciliation, one should reject as illusory the very notion of dialectical reconciliation, i.e., one should renounce the demand for a \u2018true\u2019 reconciliation. Hegel was fully aware that reconciliation does not alleviate real suffering and antagonisms\u2014his formulas of reconciliation from the foreword to his Philosophy of Right<\/em> is that one should \u2018recognize the Rose in the Cross of the present\u2019, or, to put it in Marx\u2019s terms, in reconciliation, one does not change external reality to fit some Idea, one recognizes this Idea as the inner \u2018truth\u2019 of this miserable reality itself. The Marxist reproach that, instead of transforming reality, Hegel only proposes its new interpretation, thus in a way misses the point\u2014it knocks on an open door, since, for Hegel, in order to pass from alienation to reconciliation, one does not have to change reality, but the way we perceive it and relate to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj. “Article on Hegel and Interview” The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. eds. Bryant, Levi., and Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman. Melbourne: Re.press, 2011. 202-223. 406-415. It is here that, in order to specify the meaning of materialism, one should apply Lacan\u2019s formulas of sexuation: there is a fundamental difference between the assertion … Continue reading “\u017di\u017eek Hegel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,100,114,103,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concrete_universal","category-hegel","category-sexuation","category-universal","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6150"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6152,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150\/revisions\/6152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}