{"id":9512,"date":"2012-10-11T22:59:24","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T03:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9512"},"modified":"2012-10-11T22:59:24","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T03:59:24","slug":"change-universal-term-itself-so-it-doesnt-need-symptom-as-its-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/10\/11\/change-universal-term-itself-so-it-doesnt-need-symptom-as-its-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"change universal term itself so it doesn’t need symptom as its unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

With regard to the opposition of liberal individualism and fundamentalism, today\u2019s communitarians<\/strong> advocate a kind of Jungian \u201ccompensation theory\u201d: we in the West put too much emphasis on individualism, neglecting the bonds of community, which then return to haunt us in the guise of the fundamentalist threat; the way to fight fundamentalism is thus to change our own view, to recognize in it the distorted image of the neglected aspect of our own identity. The solution lies in restoring the proper balance between individual and community, creating a social body in which collective and individual freedom organically supplement each other.<\/p>\n

What is wrong here is this very figure of a balanced harmony of the two opposed principles. We should start, on the contrary, with the immanent \u201ccontradiction\u201d (antagonism) of capitalist individualism\u2015fundamentalism is ultimately a secondary, \u201creactive\u201d phenomenon, an attempt to counteract and \u201cgentrify\u201d this antagonism.<\/p>\n

For Hegel, the goal is thus not to (re)establish the symmetry and balance of the two opposing principles, but to recognize in one pole the symptom of the failure of the other (and not<\/em> vice versa<\/em>)<\/span>:<\/p>\n

fundamentalism is a symptom of liberalism, Antigone is a symptom of Creon, etc.<\/p>\n

The solution is to revolutionize or change the universal term itself (liberalism, etc.), so that it will no longer require its symptom as the guarantee of its unity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, the way to overcome the tension between secular individualism and religious fundamentalism is not to find a proper balance between the two, but to abolish or overcome the source of the problem, the antagonism at the very heart of the capitalist individualist project.<\/span> 303<\/p>\n

From the Hegelian standpoint, what is missing here is the properly dialectical paradox of a Nothingness which is prior<\/em> to Somethingness<\/span> and, even more, of a weird Something which is less<\/em> than nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, the Buddhist inter-relation and de-substantialization of reality remains at the level of the thorough interdependence of the opposite poles: no good without evil, no something without nothing, and vice versa\u2015and we can overcome this duality only by way of withdrawing into the abyss of the absolute and unconditional Void.<\/p>\n

But what about a properly Hegelian dialectical process in which negativity is not reduced to a self-mediation of the positive Absolute, but in which, on the contrary, positive reality appears as the result of self-relating negativity (or, with regard to ethics, in which the good is a self-negated or self-mediated evil)?<\/span> 304<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With regard to the opposition of liberal individualism and fundamentalism, today\u2019s communitarians advocate a kind of Jungian \u201ccompensation theory\u201d: we in the West put too much emphasis on individualism, neglecting the bonds of community, which then return to haunt us in the guise of the fundamentalist threat; the way to fight fundamentalism is thus to … Continue reading “change universal term itself so it doesn’t need symptom as its unity”<\/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":[100,20],"tags":[116],"class_list":["post-9512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hegel","category-zizek","tag-ltn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9512","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=9512"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9515,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9512\/revisions\/9515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}