Contemporary Readings of Hegel (Session 8.2)

Yeah, shall I just start? Yeah, go for it. Okay. So I'll try to kind of, yes, to carry on. From last time's kind of aborted session, so I'm going to be using the same handouts, which I hope everyone has. So it's basically the same handouts as I sent for what was supposed to be the last session. So it's the one called Logic of the Gap. And I'll start, I guess what I'll do is I'll start from quotation number three,

which I think, yes, I think it's running by then that things are cut out. this is the one called the surplus of dialectical form. So what's at issue, so we're discussing Zizek's Lacanian interpretation of Hegel and his claim that, his suggestion that instead of trying to think of what resists determinate negation in terms of some surplus of immediacy, whether it's called imminence or particularity or known identity or difference, he suggests

that what actually, the one thing that Hegel's determinate negation is incapable of incorporating within itself is what he calls the surplus of formalization, or the surplus of dialectical form. So this is, again, I'm just reading quotation number three on the handouts. what Hegel, you know, this limitation, this inability to think the indivisible remainder of the dialectical form, not as an excess of the real, which simply eludes dialectical mediation, but as a product of this mediation, as its concluding moment.

And then he goes on to say that it's clearly visible in Hegel's Theorem of March, which I think, you know, I tried to explain last time, but in a way that's, I mean, the evidence for this claim in Hainsey-Majis is irrelevant. The points, the significant points is that Zizek is going to link this, the non-dialecticizable surplus at the level of form of conceptual form rather than of non conceptual content but then he's going to connect then he will this the second move of his I think very interesting tradition is to connect this surplus of

this non dialectical formal surplus with a non dialecticizable content or a non dialecticizable particularity and just to make the connection with the you know the previous quotation why is this important well because the claim is that according to the psychoanalytic interpretation you know the real itself is nothing but a crack in the symbolic or the fissure or a gap in the symbolic order so that it's the real itself cannot be substantialized as a positive

entity but rather it's simply it emerges at the point where the resources of conceptual formalization run into some kind of aporia or fundamental deadlock and it's this aporia which provides the point of leverage for the intervention into the real. So the point is that the real, once again, if one is going to be a Hedgen, the claims that the real, what is is not some pre-constituted substance but rather what is the point at which thought

connects with reality is articulated around the contradiction so conceptual contradiction is the index of the non-conceptual but precisely because contradiction is the index of the non-conceptual it provides this point of leverage for a transformation for transformation or transformation within the conceptual order which in a way reconfigures the horizon of conceptual possibility and the horizon of intelligibility such that something that was previously

unexperienceable will become experienceable. This is what you know this is what Zizek characterizes as traversing the fantasy. Why is this important? This is important because it's, according to Zizek, it shows how, in a way, to be a Hegelian, to accept that there's nothing in the real, nothing at the level of what is that simply transcends conceptual form or the the structures imposed by conceptual necessity does not mean that we can only

we have to resign ourselves to accepting that's the world is the way it is and and there's nothing we can do about it. So in other words, what's going on here is that the distinction between the possible and the impossible is not to be substantialized. And this is a consequence of this, the anti-Aristotelian reading of Hegel, I think that we've been pursuing from the beginning. The point is that once, one's possibility is decoupled from essence and rearticulated around contradiction.

For Hegel, contradiction is essence, contradiction is the ground of being, so that the essence of anything is contradictory. And that means that to understand this is to say that what the limits or the separation between the possible and the impossible is articulated around contradiction. So in other words, it's something that seems, what seemed to be possible so long as one assumed

a certain understanding of what is, can be, you know, converted into an impossibility and vice versa. Hegel's dialectic shows how to understand the movement of becoming through which the things become effectively actual involves a series of radical transformations which involves a transformation in the structure of possibility

because the transformation, the kernel of this transformation is contradiction. So, in the psychoanalytic context, this means that what was previously impossible for us, The point is not simply to keep on to continue to believe in a predetermined or a pre-recognized distinction between the possible, between what we can and cannot do, but in a way to recognize that what we thought we could do in fact cannot be done, but in

such a way that this recognition that what we thought we could do cannot be done, what we thought was possible is in fact impossible, in a way transforms, creates a new possibility, it creates a new possibility. And this is, you know, once again the way in which the obstacle or the resisting element, you know, becomes an enabling condition, becomes again of a doorway to the transformation of the situation. Now, in a way, so what's interesting now I think is that if the...

Zizek will link this to what he calls the formal unconscious. That's an unconscious. There's a conception of the unconscious in Hegel. It's the conception, it's the unconscious of self-consciousness, the unconscious of conceptual self-consciousness. So in the initial stage, what Hegel's, what post-Hegelian thinkers try to elaborate in an attempt to get it to think beyond Hegel is something again is an instance that resists sublation and Zizek suggested what resists sublation is repetition

but a repetition which is not simply a repetition which is not determined as the negation of its precondition or its you know just seeding instance so this is code number four in the handout the crux of the post-hegelian rupture it's mostly elementary feature from Kierkegaard to Marx is the gap that emerges between sublation and repetition. That is, repetition acquires autonomy with regard to sublation. And the two are now paused. Either a thing is sublated into a higher mode of its existence or it just drags on in its inertia. This liberation

of repetition from the hold of sublation, this idea of a non-cumulative repetition which runs on empty not generating anything new is usually taken as a minimal index of post-Hegelian materialism in its break with the Hegelian circle of total conceptual mediation. Okay so there is a repetition in Hegel's Speculatives of Dialectics. If one looks at both the Phenology and the Science of Logic one sees the same kind of structures or the same kind of motifs reappearing in different contexts but the point is that there's always a fundamental difference between these repeated instances

and this is the difference, this difference is secured by determinate negation The term negation is simply a negation that is basically transformative, a negation that cancels the negated instance in a way which generates something new. the repetition that is juxtaposed to this is a non conceptual repetition so in other words it's a repetition that has no concept that is you know that is allegedly devoid of conceptual form Kierkegaard is its you know first

important theorist but it's also there in Martin ultimately and you know the claims Zizek's claim is that it's in in the Freudian death drive the compulsion to repeat that this non conceptual repetition finds its you know finds proper theoretical articulation this compulsion to repeat is the return of the inorganic within the organic that's exactly how the death drive is the compulsion to return to the inorganic and the Lacanian wager is that all of

psychic life psychic existence is this is another fundamental kernel of psychic life, that there is a death in life, in psychic existence, but this death is not Hegel's, this death doesn't assume the form of negativity that Hegel characterized in terms of tarrying with the negativity. Once again, if you remember the famous passage from the Phenomenology of Spirit, where Hegel says that the life of spirit is that which does not shirk, does not shy away from death,

but tarries with the negative and basically incorporates death within itself. But this incorporation for Hegel, the way in which self-consciousness pivots around nothingness or negativity is in terms of sublation or determinant negation which is to say you know which is it self-consciousness is structured is can only be itself by encountering related relate to itself through another and this this identity indifference is precisely what

allows it to to keep on re-relating to itself and transforming its its structure so that and the suggestion here Zizek's suggestion is that Freud discovers a form of negativity which is irreducible to this Hegelian the logic of sublation and this is the drive the notion of the drive which we already discussed I think in the session a couple of weeks ago when we were discussing Mladen Dolar's interpretation of Hegel and his comparison of Hegel and Freud on this issue. The distinction between conceptual, the distinction

between the negativity that is in a way the life of the concept and the negativity which in a way disarms you know the power of the concepts is the difference between two conceptions of death death is something that is you you know, death is something that is an obstacle or limitation in and for self-consciousness and death as something that is, in a way, the impossibility around which self-consciousness

is articulated. This death is tied to the notion of drive, and the death drive is the most, in a way, the paradigm of the drive is such, which is to say it's this kind of blind, purposeless repetition, which can be characterized as machinic, hence the claim, in quotation number Number five, that there is no spirit without a machine. The appearance of spirit is a machine which colonizes the organism and the victory of spirit over mere life appears as a regression of life to a mechanism.

Here this is, you know, once again, this is a, I think, a very, very important passage. of all this it means on the one hand it's it's it's tied to the Lacanian claim that's the unconscious is structured like a language and language is basically a machine governed by the logic of the signifier and the logic of the signifier is articulated in terms of the categories of structural linguistics so

There is a logic to signification, but this logic is not conceptual in the sense in which Hegel understands. The conceptual is tied to self-consciousness. so the claim would be that there is no subjectivity without linguistic machination and language colonizes in a way that the earth's subjectivation is tied to languages to the pulverizing of the unity of the organism

by the differentiation of the signifying order. This is how we, you know, I think one way, Archie Jack intends us to understand the claim, the appearance of spirit is a machine which colonizes the organism. The machine in question here is language, which is the key to the structure of the unconscious. But this means that the relationship between spirit and life, spirit transcends life precisely by reincorporating death of the inorganic within itself.

And this is, I think, a very powerful rejection of, I think this is a very Hegelian claim, but it's a rejection of the Aristotelian reading of Hegel, which insists, which reads a distinction between organic life and self-consciousness in terms of a distinction between first and second nature. this classic Aristotelian distinction between first and second nature. In Aristotle natra sasphusis, natural becoming, is governed by actualization and the forms

of becoming which are proper to human existence consists in the actualization of potentials which are not merely not the potentials proper to material substances but proper to the the mind is the form of the body and here in this reading in this kind of a Kenyan reading the claim is that yes there is a discontinuity between spirit and life but spirit is not a kind of a second order like it's not a kind of a heightened form of life it's not as if you get or you get you

know biological organization or biological autonomy and then the autonomy that is proper to consciousness somehow supervening on this kind of biological self-organization but rather that's self-consciousness or subjectivity emerges through a regression you know the repetition of the inorganic within the organic in the form of language so this is why you know the victory of spirit over mere life appears as a regression of life to mechanism in other words what explains

spirits irreducibility to mere life it's not that spirit is more than life it's that it's both you know it's rather that what renders it more than like is you know being less than life there's something undead in spirits which renders it irreducible to life and it's precisely because spirits has a constitutive relationship to death that it can't be that the potencies of spirits cannot be tracked it can't be read off the potentialities of the organism. Finally this is I think a

powerful kind of dialectical supersession of the simple opposition between progression and regression. In other words, in the standard kind of Aristotelian reading of Hegel you've got you know physical matter progressing, evolving into biologically organized matter, the organism, and then the organism progressing to the stage of self-consciousness. This is seen as a kind of a teleological progression. I see the ascension from the inorganic to the organic.

from the organic to self-consciousness. According to this schema, there's no progression because progression is nothing but... Progression is only possible on the basis of a regression. In fact, it's precisely the repetition of the return of what had been cancelled or negated in the previous stage which you know allows the generation of something new something that is genuinely unprecedented at the existing stage this is why the victory of spirit over mere life appears as a regression

of light to mechanism okay so this means then that's Now I actually think that this is the correct way to understand Hegel's account of the relationship between self-consciousness and life and I think that this is why the standard of the orthodox Aristotelian reading which views self-consciousness as some kind of emergent property of biological organization is a kind of, you know, it's a kind of, it's a philosophic, it's an extremely conservative

neo-Aristotelian view, which I think, and in a way, this is one, the first not the first but one I think the major point of demarcation between the two readings of Hegel's which we've been comparing and contrasting in the previous session on the one hand you've got the Pippin-Brandom reading which insistence sapience of self-consciousness is something that somehow emerges from from the biological without being reducible to it so that there is a kind

of a continuity in this continuity there's a discontinuity is only possible within an underlying continuity. Whereas in this psychoanalytic reading or Lacanian reading, we have the claim that there's a fundamental discontinuity. There's a radical discontinuity between the psychic and between mind and life. It's not that mind never emerges simply within life. Contra, you know, the thesis of, you know, some of, Evan Thompson, for instance. And that the proper characteristics of mind

are radically discontinuous with those of life. This means then that, this, so what enables a kind of, the crystallization of self-consciousness is a point of subtraction again this negativity which is inscribed at the very heart of psychic life is it's not a surplus it's not a kind of a transcendent excess over biological organization but rather a point of subtraction or a lack and the suggestion

no she's a suggestion will be that there's just as Hegel inscribes a certain kind of lack within rationality you know he as he could say he discovers an unreason in the heart of reason Freud discovers a kind of rationality in the core of the unconscious so that's again this is now if we look at point number six on the handout this gives us a new way of understanding the relationship between

absolute knowledge and the unconscious. So Zizek writes, What if the absoluteness of knowing refers not to our access to the divine absolute in itself or to a total self-reflection through which we would gain full access to our unknown knowing and thus achieve subjective self-transparency but to a much more modest and although more difficult to think overlapping between the lack of our conscious knowledge and the lack inscribed into the very heart of our unknown knowledge. So again, there are two lacks here. One is, the claim is that according to Hegel's account,

remember this, Hegel insists that there's an in-itself of the for-itself. so that's and the whole process of the phenomenology was to show you know the phenomenological study of what he calls phenomenal consciousness phenomenal knowledge would reveal for the transformations in the structure of phenomenal knowledge were these points of determinate negation which were imperceptible to the experiencing subject but were in fact tracked by the science of the experience of consciousness. So in other words what the phenomenological observer tracks but which is imperceptible to the subject of

experience is the points is the in itself of self-conscious what self-consciousness is in itself which you know it cannot incorporate within itself immediately and this is this is exactly the points that is constituted by determinate in a transition from the first to the second object of knowledge. So in other words, what phenomenology studies is the unknown knowing that conditions, you know, self-consciousness. So in other words, that we, and this is the excess of formalization,

that there's a known knowing, but also an unknown knowing. There's an unconscious of self-consciousness, which can ultimately be integrated within self-consciousness at the point of where we achieve absolute knowing. Absolute knowing then would be a kind of absolute transparency, but there would be no opacity, there would be no resistances, there would be nothing left out of, or no non-conceptual residue in the life of self-consciousness. This is exactly what Zizek is suggesting, that instead of understanding it this way,

we can think of the coincidence between the in itself of the for itself, you know, what the unconscious of self-consciousness, and the, you know, another in itself, which is the, basically the drive, which is the you know the the irrational motor of the era I've got to be careful our phrases because it's very easy this is a subtle point the point the Freudian discovery is not that the unconscious is not to be thought of as some kind of

positive substance crystallized around these nearly irrational beliefs and desires but as something that has that is constituted in and through repression And the claim, if we remember Mladen Dular's very important claim that the, about how the unconscious is constituted through repression, it's that the unconscious also is form generating. so that the clue to the repressed content of a dream, for instance, is in its form and not its content.

In other words, what is really being repressed, and was the content generated in and through repression is manifested by form at the level of the form the form of signification the logic of signification so in other words it's the form of the dream that provides the clue to its repressed content. In fact, that is its repressed content. So in other words, this allows you, it's not simply about opposing form to content,

but understanding the coincidence between, in a way, a surplus of form and a lack of form. The lack of form, what is the lack of form? It's simply the claim that the dream has to generate, the dream work has to give form to something which cannot find, which doesn't yet have conceptual form. So in other words, the claim is that unconscious desires cannot simply be kind of propositionally articulated. so this is why they are manifested through a reconfiguration of of

propositional form which means it what does this mean it means that what's the kind of meaning that is being generated through the dream is not something that can be asserted in a proposition but something in a way that can only be constructed through the relationship the relations between these these anomalies in the operation of signification metonymy, synedotes, the whole catalogue of

you know signifying operations which you know Lacan deploys following structural linguistics the point about this this register of signification is that it's mechanical and not and not logical okay there's a distinction between mechanism and inference which I think is important here like if language Language is a mechanism, it's that language has, you know, the way in which language signifies

is an intelligible structure, but this structure can't be understood at the level of signified content because it's simply about these series of mechanisms. of mechanisms which have no logic, no discernible logic at the level of content. So again, the claim is then that the unconscious of self-consciousness, which in a way is a surplus of conceptual formalization can be tracked, can be correlated with the lack,

The lack at the level of the signified, at the level of meaningful content, content which there's something that cannot be expressed, cannot be meaningfully articulated in terms of propositional form, but can only manifest itself through a series of symptoms which can be tracked at the level of the order of signification itself and this is so now we're getting to the distinction between the two unconsciousness okay the formal unconscious and the material unconscious okay this is point seven and eight on the handout the Hegel unconscious is formal it is a form of

enunciation this is Zizek again is a form of enunciation invisible and the enunciated content. It is systemic, not a contingent bricolage of lateral links. That is, it resides in the universal symbolic form on which the subject unknowingly relies, not in the contingent pathological desire which transpires and slips of the tongue. So Hegel's unconscious is the unconscious of self-consciousness. It's own necessary non-transparency, the necessary overlooking of its form in the content it confers. By way of contrast, we have number eight, the material unconscious. And this, Fuszek writes again, what eludes Hegel is over-determination. In a Hegelian dialectical process, negativity is always radical or radicalized and consistent.

Hegel never considers the option of a negation that fails, so that something is just half negated and continues to lead a subterranean existence. So here we now have a definitive statement of the contrast between the two, the formal unconscious, the unconscious of self-consciousness, which Hegel has discovered, and the psychoanalytic unconscious, the Freudian and the Kahnian unconscious. And the relevant contrast is between determinate negation and over-determination. So we know determinate negation is precisely what is operating behind the back

of self-consciousness. Whereas over-determination is in a way what is repressed in a way it's the over-determination is the you know the logic of the unconscious as such and how what is the what is the logic of over determination this logic in Lacan is characterized in terms of the categories of structural linguistics and there again you know know it's metonymy, synodotes, condensation, etc, etc. and what's interesting about these

or what's more characteristic of these is that they are all forms of, they're not logical operations, none of these are logical operations so they have no, the claim is that they have no conceptual form which is not to say that they're unconceptualizable, clearly they are conceptualized by structural linguistics but the claim is that they're they can't be conceptualized in a way which would be imminent to the way which would be eminent to the experience of self-consciousness as such okay

I'll say a few okay let's try to kind of conclude this characterization of the contrast here and again passages nine well passage number nine is the elaboration of this contrast so what is how does over determination if over determination is a characteristic of you know this material unconscious then this material unconscious is constituted by you know what Zizek calls pure repetition which which is the fixation on a contingent pathological element. In other words, what is the drive gets stuck on?

It gets stuck on some pathological particularity. And this is the objet petit. is and again the contrast is with the the determined negation as that which is universal you know the universal that you know the form of enunciation in a way that exceeds that cannot be inscribed within the enunciated context box and this is huge most interesting suggestion the point is to not just

not to substantialize the drive, not to substantialize the particularity of the particular elements around which the drive coagulates, but to understand this you know, this pathological element as something which is itself generated through what Zizek will call the formal curvature of symbolization itself. You know, the Lycanian obje-i is not a substantial element disturbing the formal mechanism of

symbolization, but a purely formal curvature of symbolization itself. So in other words, instead of making the standard anti-Hegelian move where you try to identify some kind of absolute difference or absolute particularity which resists determinant negation, the point is to think of this is to think of of repetition of the drive you know the repetition of the drive as somehow constitutive of the surplus of formalization and I think this is what you know this expression formal curvature of symbolization itself so that they're the the symbolic order is

is constituted around some kind of impossibility, some kind of structural impossibility. Ok, now, I hope we can discuss all this, obviously there's a lot to say about this and about Shíkak's hefrasation, but right now I just want to point out what he thinks are the radical political implications of this and this means that the claim is that any any structure is articulated around a contradiction or a point of an

inconsistency an incompleteness or you know an impossibility and this means that it's and of course this is going to be true of the social you know social structure as such so it's a mistake to think of a social structure as some kind of as a kind of systemic totality coordinated around you know discreetly articulated levels or components. The point is that every social structure is going to be articulated around this impossibility or contradiction. And obviously this ties into

the Marxian account where it's obviously class struggle, you know, the class antagonism that around which a social totality is, an alleged totality is coordinated. What does this mean? This means that there is no social relation. There's no social... It's a mistake to think of sociality in terms of a contract or a bond between an aggregate of individuals. Sociality is constituted around the default of a relation,

which is to say it's constituted by a contradiction, so that the truth of social structure is the contradiction and obviously the fundamental contradiction being the contradiction between capital and labor if one is a Marxist of which class antagonism is a symptom and this is what allows Zizek and final quote you know on number 10 final quote from Zizek is that there's a link between the drive and

capitalism the driving here is in capitalism at a more fundamental systemic level the drive is that which propels forward the entire capitalist machinery it is the impersonal compulsion to engage in the endless circular movement of expanded self-reproduction no this is a I think a kind of a controversial and and that's a very radical claim, but also kind of a perplexing claim, because on the one hand, okay, it seems to follow from what he said so far, because the claim is that the... the drawing is this kind of

this stain which around which all of the social and psychic existence with regard to which social and psychic existence is you know concatenated but the danger here is of no resubstantializing the drive and there's an ambiguity here between the claim that you know the drive is the capitalism is a symptom of the drive which seems to be the suggestion here but if capitalism is a symptom of the drive and then this claim is the dangers

that this we risk resubstantializing the drive in the way in which obviously both Mladen Dolar and Zizek as as Lacanians would refuse to do this is precisely what they don't want to do the dangers that you're ontologizing a drive by making you know the value form and the self valorizing value and in capital a mere kind of symptom of this thing which it's hard then not to substantialize on the other hand you know the question can also be reversed

is capitalism is a driver symptom of capitalism One could also ask whether well isn't the kind of the very logic of the drive which has been kind of identified in this account itself a symptom of the logic of capital as this blind kind of you know compulsion this self-valorizing value this the blind reproduction and you know accumulation of capital. Two things okay

two things to say. One, the conclusions of this kind of Macaen account is that the contrast between the formal unconscious and the material unconscious means that, okay, because there is, in a way, the resources of conceptualization can never become fully transparent to themselves and in a way what compels conceptual formalization is something that can't at least not determine negation and this would be the drive, okay?

And it's because of this then that politics is necessarily antagonistic, that politics politics is not simply about the discursive adjudication of disagreement, it's not about trying to reach consensus, but rather it must be politics proceeds on the basis of fundamental antagonism or a radical opposition. And this antagonism cannot be encapsulated or subsumed by some kind of higher mediating

instance. It can only be worked through and it can only be in a way superseded by some kind of radical structural transformation. So this is the difference between revolution and reform. If you're committed to this claim about the link between how the logic of formalization is compelled by something that itself cannot be formalized, then a deadlock in formalization can only be overcome through some kind of break, through some kind of revolutionary

break or some kind of radical transformation. The nature of this transformation is obviously kind of perplexing because it's not clear this is where you know, Zizek's account is decoupled from the classical Marxist accounts where the transformation is one you know seizing the revolutionary seizure of the means of production and the rearranging relations between the mode and relations of production. Revolution can't simply, no longer takes this kind of, there's no, you know, it's not obvious

it can and must take this form on this account. The second obvious claim is that impossibility or inconsistency or contradiction, whatever you want to call it, and actually I think it's important, it's actually very important to distinguish all these terms and not to run them together in the way in which Zizek does too often, but that these, let's see, contradiction is real. has in fact it's a cipher of the real and this is obviously precisely the claim that's Pippin and Brandon will reject okay so Pippin's critique of Zizek and his rejection of this entire kind of Zizekian Lacanian reading of Hegel is

first that there's it's predicated on a misunderstanding of the nature of self-consciousness. So the first claim is that Zizek misunderstands the apperception claim which is the core of idealism according to Pippin, Hegel's idealism. All self-consciousness, self-consciousness relates itself through another which is to say it is always conceptualizing. So self-consciousness relates to itself conceptually but this relation is not a reflexive relation this is why self-consciousness is not consciousness of

an object and so the first the first step in Pippin's critique is that he thinks that Zizek confuses the mode of self-relation that is characteristic of self-consciousness for a kind of reflexivity which encourage you know which encourages Zizek to ontologize negativity or ontologize with the gap and Pippin thinks that this is a complete this is completely unnecessary I'll just read the last sentence in bold from quote number nine from Pippin.

What there is in the sense of this inquiry is a possible space of reasons into which persons may be socialized and within which content of self-correction and self-negation is possible. so one is it so the first accusation against Zizek is that because he misunderstands you know our perceptive self-relation he ontologizes self-relating negativity in terms of this self-repelling gap or this fission is fusion you know what Heidel calls you know the absolute notion not the absolute difference contra contra Zizek but the absolute the absolute essence and Pippin is saying it's this is completely unnecessary what Hegel is

really talking about is you know what sounds called the space of reasons and the the negativity that is characteristic of self-consciousness is simply about this this critical self relation where you know whereby self consciousness is capable of correcting and revising its commitments its discursive commitments so you know this self negation that is at work here is simply about a kind of self correct cognitive self correction okay second point, non-being of the normative is not a lack. There is a non-being, if one

distinguishes sapience from sentience as you know, Hepburn does following Brandon, so the claim is that you know obviously self-consciousness unfolds as you know the hallmark of sapience, but sapience you know ought not to be, sapience constitutes the space of reasons and rationality in the sense is not something that needs to be ontologized so in other words it's not it's not it's neither some it's neither a surplus in being it's not some some kind of additional dimension of being but nor is it some kind of inconsistency or you

know gap or lacuna in the in the in the order of being rules you know the rules around which discursive self-consciousness is articulated which is to say that these norms these norms do not be do not need to be on It's a kind of category mistake to think that they constitute either, you know, a surplus or a deficit vis-a-vis the ontological order. But note here that when he says this, Pippin doesn't clarify, you know, the right way, the question of what it means for something to be. And this is something I think a little bit puzzling in his critique in that he's criticizing Zizek for ontologizing lack.

You know, he says we don't need a gappy ontology to account for the possibility of non-responsive bridge following. But he doesn't tell us what exactly is, you know, which ontology are you enjoining us to accept as a standard. And it seems he's what I think, you know, the implicit claim is that look, ontology is unfolds at the level of fact and propositional discourse. So, you know, truth stating discourse. So what there is, is whatever, you know, makes our claims true. So the truth makers for our assertions constitutes the furniture of the world.

And the only difference between this, I guess this kind of this ontology and positivism is that it's not, it doesn't privilege any fact stating vocabulary. The point is that there are many different vocabularies that allow us to state many different facts about the world, and we need not privilege any fact-stating vocabulary over any other. It's a mistake to think that physics constitutes the privileged fact-stating vocabulary, the ultimate vocabulary in terms of which you could state every other fact about the world.

that's to be rejected simply a kind of there's an open-ended multiplicity of facts stating vocabularies and this is all there is to kind of to ontological claims what there is is factual and whatever discursive resources we need to state facts well those things you know those those descriptive or explanatory categories will count as part of the furniture of reality. Okay, finally then this is because, finally this means that contradiction is epistemic, not ontological.

spirits this is number 11 spirit emerges and imagined social contestation in what we come to demand of each other not in the interest of the being so in other words spirit or self-consciousness emerges through you know dispersive contestation so in other words the game of giving and asking for reasons and obviously there is disagreement there's disagreement but these disagreements can always be discursively adjudicated. So which means that disagreements must ultimately be of some kind of a dialogical resolution. So there are no real contradictions. This is the most, you know, I guess the

the clearest statements of Pippin's rejection of Zizek's entire stance. He says there are no material contradictions, and this is what distinguishes Pippin's dialectical idealism from Zizek's dialectical materialism. Dialectical idealism is a claim that contradictions are operative in discourse or in thought, but not in being. And of course, you know, to which one am I asking? Well okay, but what is the, you know, if one admits that everything we can say about what is depends upon a discursive or conceptual resources,

What exactly does it mean to distinguish between contradiction at the level of assertion? Well we will distinguish contradiction and incompatibility. There's an incompatibility at the level of the properties of the characteristics of objects and an incompatibility at the level of assertions about objects. And even if there's a kind of correlation between these two registers of incompatibility, such that discursive incompatibilities condition objective incompatibilities, it's a mistake to kind of run them together, according to Pippin.

And finally, yes, this is why all antagonism is dialogical. Pippin writes, to claim something or to do something is to offer to give reasons for the claim or the deed, and if there are reasons, either to reject the reasons or to reject the claim of sincerity, we are still and cannot exit the space of reasons. Here I think Pippin is most expensive. I think that the key question here is the space of reasons is clearly the space of conceptualization. space within which conceptual form is deployed.

And I guess even if this space is open-ended, it doesn't have clearly demarcated boundaries, it does have a kind of, you know, there's a clear distinction between the sable, the meaningful and the meaningless, or what is assertable and what is, you know, what cannot be assertive. And it's this, I think it's, you know, Zizek, you know, resists, you know, rejects the claim that either what there is or what can be done can be tracked in terms of what can be said.

This is, I think, the fundamental, the crux of the disagreement between Zizek and Pepin. Pepin wants to say, look, anything that can be done must be commensurate with the resources of propositional assertion. It must be possible to understand what it means to say about what is or what it means to say about what can be done. And I think this is exactly the claim that Zizek rejects.

He wants to say that, no, there are things that can be, you know there are things that are that cannot be recognized as being and there are things that can be done that may not be you know that's imperatives you know imperatives to action that cannot be propositionally encapsulated or they cannot be formulated using our extant discursive resources. Which boils down to the kind of the radical disagreement between someone who thinks, who

believes in a kind of a you know a meleuristic conception of politics where politics is simply about trying to kind of maximize consensus and minimize irrationality and achieve a kind of optimum discursive consensus about who we are and what's best for us. And I claim on the other hand that no, there can be no such consensus because every dialogical situation or every dialogical interaction is, you know, unfolds on the basis of, you

know, a suppressed antagonism. A suppressed antagonism. fundamental clash between incompatible cognitive and practical commitments. Okay, now I'll stop here because I think it's important that we have time to discuss this. So I'm going to stop here and then just try to respond to the questions. Is that okay? Yeah, that sounds great. Hunter's is at the first step. Okay. So Hunter's question is, does this idea of repetition as that around which self-consciousness turns require a canned psychism?

It seems like it would mean that any reality human otherwise would need some sort of version of self-consciousness, e.g. at the quantum level, to have existence determinacy. does the lack only pertain to the human world or is it a sort of cosmic but not substantial as principle well okay no if you're a Freudian or Lacanian you're going to say well no this this repetition is precisely you know it it doesn't involve any, it doesn't require the partial of panpsychism. Why not? Because, because the drive,

in a way because the drive is only manifests itself through a symptom but the drive the drive first of all is non-intentional which is to say that there is no the drive cannot be correlated with an object and this is why the drive is not a relation and actually if you remember that is do our account of the drive we talks about as a a kind of in terms of you know the deviation of the deviation of the

the clenomen of the clenomen it's this kind of originally you know this crack in the crack okay and it's a kind of a redoubling of the you know okay a alien crack of the what he'll call fission as fusion which means to see that it has no positive characteristics whatsoever which is to say that it It can't be thought of as contraction. I think if what you have in mind here is the kind of Deleuze, you know, kind of difference in repetition, Deleuze tries to kind of, you know, in a way what Deleuze does is he tries to kind of reconcile the Freudian unconscious and the Leibnizian unconscious or the kind of the unconscious of pre-Kantian.

rationalism and the unconscious in Freud and Lacan is not well first of all it doesn't have any kind of it's completely disconnected from only from from sentience it's not it's not the unconscious understood in terms of a certain kind of receptive faculties which are commensurate with the functioning of the organism it's got it's not like this is the petite perception

So in other words, there is no gradation, there is no continuity from the unconscious to the conscious or vice versa. There's an absolute discontinuity, which is a complete dissimilarity or non-resemblance, which is why the psychoanalytic unconscious, and there's an equivocation in the term consciousness. If you think that the unconscious is simply a more expansive or a more all-enveloping register of consciousness, from this kind of psychoanalytic point of view, that's a

kind of a mistake. Because the unconscious is constituted by repression. that the repression is not, it's not the kind of, it's not the repression of a surplus. In other words, it's not that there's more in the unconscious than in the conscious. It's not as if the unconscious is this plenitude of, you know, perceptual detail, particularity, okay, which is kind of, you know, filtered out by consciousness. In a way, that's already, that's a classic metaphysical understanding of the unconscious, which is to substantialize it. You think that the unconscious is this kind of, this, you know, flow of petite perception

of minute or micrological kind of impressions or sensations or discriminations, which are somehow kind of you know filtered out which are too kind of to find to pass through the kind of the gross you know filters of consciousness so that we're only conscious of a fraction of what we are unconsciously experiencing this is And I think this is the panpsychist in parallel. If you think of, if you're a panpsychist, you'll say, obviously everything, all the conscious organism is simply a concatenation of these micro-consciousnesses,

which are kind of, have to be concatenated in a certain way in order to yield this kind of governing consciousness. But that's based on a kind of substantialization of consciousness. Because you're tying the Deleuzean account, I mean, it's like the monad, it's like Nietzschean monad, where it's a point of apperception. And the point is that the unconscious has got nothing to do with apperception. And in fact, the unconscious doesn't perceive either, for Freud and Lacan. can so the claim is rather that the unconscious is I think it's a claim that

it's organized around negation it's to say that it's there's this work of repression or disavow or displacement and it's these operations of repression disavow displacement remember the six registers of negation explained in not in dollars paper which we looked at I'll get them up so I'll just get them up right now and metaphor and metaphor that's it yes yes from Yes, remember the eight Verwurfs, the eight Freudian negativities can be characterized

in terms of these six kind of negations, Vernaugen, negation, Vernaugen, repression, negation, repression, referring for closure, disavowal, condensation, displacement. So these are the modes of negation. They're not conceptual. They're not conceptual because they're incomplete and because they're not conceptual, they don't cancel. In a way, they're failed negations. they don't cancel what it is that they are negating. So in other words, the repressed always persists in this repression, the foreclosed insist in

this foreclosure, etc., etc. And I think the key claim is that it's nothing but, it's here, it's the negation that generates the negated instance. the negated instance does not pre-exist its negation. So in a way, so this is a mode, the claims that negativity is generative here, and it's this negativity that generates the unconscious, but this unconscious was not some kind of, you know, pre-existing kind of substance or medium. So yeah, this is I think why I mean.

Okay, so but like. I think I need to get shut, but like. I'm echoing. Hello. Can you hear me? I'm not echoing now. Yeah, just muted Ray so you can talk. Okay, like Zizek seems to suggest that there's a non-substantial substantial negativity that is nevertheless sort of cosmic? When he talks about quantum physics, or what do you think about what he says about the way that like, you know, the collapse of the wave function is sort of the same, like there's sort of a gap in symbolization. Like it was confusing to me because it seems,

it seems almost like he's saying it's a cosmic principle that generates all sorts of letters of materiality. Yeah, I'm curious what you think about his use of quantum physics. Okay, well I think this is where Zizek invites this misreading. I think it's a mistake, first of all, by, and I think this is where the conflation between you know, contradiction, inconsistency, incompleteness, lack, and next is very dangerous. I think he runs, Zizek runs all these things together. There's obviously a big difference between incompleteness, indeterminacy, and inconsistency. These are conceptually distinct instances.

And he tends to run them all together and equate them with contradiction, which is, I think, a mistake. And it's very curious. This is exactly why I think Madan Dolar is much clearer, because this is exactly what he refuses to do. He never resorts to any... He doesn't seek a kind of substantiating analog for self-relating negativity in any positive discourse. I think Zizek's attempt, I mean, I think it's good that Zizek takes kind of, you know, natural science and physics seriously,

but I think he's making a mistake by thinking that, you know, quantum indeterminacy is some kind of ratification for the incompleteness, for the not-allness of reality. I mean that's his basic argument. He says, look, Lacan says that there's no whole, reality is not all, and this is exactly what quantum physics shows, that reality is not all, and what is the subject? The subject is merely this kind of the fissure, or the gap, or the caesura in the kind of the positive order of being. and in doing this he just generates

I think that that is weirdly kind of undialectical because he generates in a way he resubstantializes the lack through this very move and I think this is the move to be resisted and I think Mladen Dolar is very I think much clearer on this point and this is why he refuses to do this and he thinks I think this is something upon which they fundamentally disagree because in a way because as soon as you make that move, you invite the claim that, well, then yes, then that means that, in a way, subjectivity, if reality is not all, and if reality is incomplete, then that means that, yes, there must be fissures in being everywhere. And clearly that makes

no sense because the whole point of I mean there's a really really important difference between the way in which you know a contradiction or an inconsistency you know appears in you know signifying structure an axiomatic system or you know within the conceptual order and the way in which the characteristics of quantum indeterminacy. I think this is really, I think this is dangerous, you know, Zizek has been, you know,

resorts again in metaphor here. I think precisely in the, I mean look, I don't pretend to understand quantum mechanics but I think that there are fundamental structural disanalogies between the phenomena of quantum indeterminacy or the collapse of the wave function and quantum superposition and the inconsistency inconsistency in the conceptual register I think it's a mistake to run them together so yes and I think it's it's this claim of it's in a way yeah it's she's a goal seems to be kind of the

cosmologizing the lack of the subject by through these invocations of things like quantum indeterminacy. And in a way, I mean, the point is that you don't even need to do this because, well, I mean I think that there's a problem in a way both. what's interesting here is that both Zizek and Pippin share there's something problematic about their relationship to naturalism in a way Zizek tries to kind of Zizek doesn't want to be you know he doesn't want to be a kind of a

traditional Lacanian where everything is about if the real is just about the inconsistency of the symbolic then you seem to be privileging the symbolic and you're saying that the real is only only erupts through the kind of the puncturing of the symbolic and this is kind of I mean there's a vulgar reading of that claim which makes it sound like a kind of you know standard kind of discursive ideals okay the symbolic order is primary and you know the real is just as kind of whatever this fissuring of the symbolic order that's And that means that the discourses of natural sciences don't have any kind of special purchase

upon the real, they're just kind of registers of symbolic conceptualization. But, you know, so anyway, it's because he doesn't want to, he's desperately looking for something, you know, in a way kind of a privileged, he's looking for something in the natural sciences that would kind of give him, you know, allow him to kind of break out of this discursive idealism. So I think he turns to quantum mechanics at this point. And I think it's unnecessary, but the way in which, in a way it mirrors the Pippin-Branda move, which is to say that we don't need to worry about the relationship between the normative and the natural,

between reasons and causes, because it's clear that there are, you know, We have lots of different vocabularies in terms of which we can state truths about the world. There are physical truths, biological truths, sociological truths, psychological truths. It's a mistake to think that these could be, you know, one of these could become this kind of privileged kind of meta discourse that allows us to, you know, this meta vocabulary that would allow us to state all the truths, you know, of the other vocabularies. this is obviously which is why know that the relationship between the conceptual or the normative or the space of reasons and the space of causes or nature is

also something that is insufficiently you know is not well I mean not to put you find a point in it they simply know the temptation is to simply account for it by distinction from first and second nature but second nature is just a residue of Aristotelian substantialism and I think that's a metaphysical regression and I think that simply you simply you know it's simply not acceptable it and it's It's a kind of a failure to confront the problem with the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity with which Hegel is dealing. And it's to try to kind of paste over the problem by using an Aristotelian distinction,

which ultimately resubstantializes the difference and you just get, you know, it's just completely unexplanatory. saying, yeah, there's first nature, which is physical or biological, and then there's second nature, which is, you know, purpose, you know, rational purposiveness, and that's a normative, and that's completely, you know, but there's no kind of principled explanatory account of the articulation of first and second nature. So in a way, and here I think that both in a way as much as Pippin rails against Zizek's ontologizing of lack I mean in Pippin's account what the hell is the relationship between self consciousness and our biological legacy there's no I mean I mean that that seems

to be just as glaring a gap in his account as the Zizek's ontologizing of indeterminacy via quantum physics. So I think both here, both their accounts, there's a fundamental, they're mirroring each other's weaknesses here. Maybe we can move on to Yes. Moving his question. Moving his question. So this is a question about Pippin's criticisms of Zizek. I think we can address that one. Okay. So Maria said... Would you say that Pippin's criticism precludes what I read is a modularity or generality of Zizek's Hegel,

that any structure is articulated around a contradiction? One sec, I'm going to unmute you. Yes, I can't actually read the... I can't see this question. It's not turning up in the... Could you repeat the question? Sorry. Oh yeah. Yes, okay. Would you say that Pippin's criticism includes what I read is a modularity or generality of Zizek's Hegel that any structure is articulated around a contradiction so is the question is yes

Pippin is explicitly denying you know that's there are real contradictions And he thinks that Zizek is falling back into this kind of standard Marxist, you know, Marxist materials reading which ontologizes contradiction. He says that, yeah, there are real contradictions. And for him that's a bad metaphysical reading of Hegel. was there more I mean maybe that's that there's I'm not getting on all of the question or there's more to the question that we

Murray are you there Murray are you there hello yes I'm seeing this girl back up Would you say that Pippin's criticism precludes what I read as modularity or generality of Zizek's Hegel? So the thing, it seems like Zizek, from what I've read so far, is quick to apply this, like, structure, like, this, this, the concept of, like, a structure being articulated around a contradiction to, like, across the board. in many different ways, which maybe is like his way of dealing with Hegel

and like constructing his arguments. But would you say that like Pippin kind of cuts that off in a sense, like brings it back down to maybe more specific articulation of Hegel, just generally speaking? One second. I'm just going to unmute you. Yes, Pepin definitely wants to cut that off. He rejects Zizek's account of the centrality of contradiction in Hegel. So he wants to say, well, from Zizek's point of view, Pippin's account of Hegel is cantium.

Why is it cantium? Because contradiction remains at the level of, is contained within thinking. So in other words, there are contradictions within thinking, and those contradictions mark the limits of thinking, but they show, no, we run into contradictions at the point where we overstep the permissible boundaries of what can be intelligibly stated. and Zizek is saying no, that Hegel has gone beyond Kant by showing how contradictions are not just in our thoughts about the world but are in the world.

Contradictions are not just at the level of representation but are actually, the contradictions don't just point up to the limits of representation but they are real, they're in the world. and when we because our thinking reflects you know connects to the fundamental structure of reality so that when we and in fact the task is to think contradiction and not to shy away from contradiction because the understanding contradiction is forbidden within the order of the

understanding and it's the understanding that kind of makes first order claims about you know judgments about what is and is not and for Kant reason is an account of you know the syllogistic structure of judgment the way in which thoughts about the world can be properly organized or properly coordinated so as to avoid contradictions and Hegel's famous claim is that no in fact that the contradictions are not just

points at which symptoms that something has gone wrong in our thinking about the world but they are precious clues to the fundamental structure of reality and this is where exactly what divides Pippin and Zizek Pippin says there are no real contradictions. Anytime that there's a contradiction, it's simply at the level of our thinking. We can contradict ourselves in thinking or in doing. We can also contradict ourselves in doing because our doing has a propositional structure.

we do something we do something for a reason and those reasons can you can come into conflict so we can do something for a reason that contradicts another reason to have but it's still at the level of reasons that these contradictions unfold and Zizek wants to say no that there are contradictions which are intelligible but they're not just at the level of our thinking or doing there's there they're inscribed in the fabric of reality, but as these kind of gaps or kind of punctures, which is the real, you know, the real in being. And the point, if you want to be a Hegelian, according to Zizek,

is by identifying those inconsistencies, that's when you kind of, you know, come into contact with the real. what reality is simply whatever is commensurable with representation. In other words, reality as we represent it is obviously kind of exclusive of contradiction, but the claim is that it's precisely contradiction that conditions our representation of reality without us knowing it. And this is why it's important to get beyond representation and to uncover the latent contradictions that structure our thinking and acting without us being aware of it.

So the disagreement is, so for Pepin, anytime we can never knowingly contradict ourselves. we contradict ourselves it's because we're not paying sufficient attention to the implications of what we're saying or doing. So we contradict ourselves and when we realize we contradicted ourselves we try to kind of eliminate the contradiction and that's how we make progress. That's how we make cognitive progress but also political progress because the contradictions between if we believe that it's wrong for people to to be poor and yet we engage in forms of interaction which can perpetuate poverty there's a

contradiction the level of our actions and these contradictions have to be it's by recognizing them that you can have you know eliminate them for Zizek the contradictions are not at the level of you know thinking or doing they are which is why they their contradictions which still do not have propositional form that's also why he doesn't like to use a term contradiction so much and in a way that this is very important because in in Hegel contradiction is not doesn't simply mean contradiction at the level of assertion saying one thing and contradicting it it means something more something a contradiction can be real

caught no the contradictions that constitute the essence of things do not have propositional form but they can be recognized through what Hegel calls dialect is through a kind of rationality, which is precisely thinking the unthinkable. That's what reason does for Hegel. It thinks the unthinkable. And by thinking the unthinkable, it allows you to, it makes what was undoable doable. That's why Marxists were interested than Hager. So yes, just to, I mean does this answer your question or have I missed the

point? Oh no, totally. I know totally. You kind of expounded on their core difference between these, Zizek and Pippin. Is there, is, I feel like I'm, I might be repeating something but is is the concept of drive or like um mechanism exist in pippin's reading like in um there not being a real contradiction so not knowingly like this negativity existing in kind of ignorance is that is that the is that where the drive um exist for Pippin or that be correct yeah this is this is actually the crucial question okay

there's obviously pipeline wreck no realizes different and brandon they realize I'm table long enough philosophers have known for centuries that human beings are irrational so we know it's the discovery of the irrationality the discovery of the unconscious is not that it's simply the discovery that human beings are irrational I mean we've known that for like millennia the claim is that this irrationality is the symptom of something which poses a more radical challenge to rationality than we get that philosophers had previously envisaged it so it's not it would just to say that it can't be eliminated by just work by being more scrupulously

rational so no Pippin you know so Pippin in a way will say yes okay so Freud's told us something very interesting yeah human beings yeah there's just unconscious and there are these kind of these drives and yeah but ultimately I think the bottom line is that Pippin is going to say for Pippin to be rational means to be able to incorporate you know the more you understand about yourself and the world the more you can incorporate that into your reasoning and your self-determination so in other words that you know greater conceptual comprehension facilitates your practical autonomy the

more you understand the more you can you know change yourself from the world okay so that the you know and there is nothing for pippin as for you know all you know there's nothing in principle that resists conceptual integration into self-conscious there's nothing that we cannot understand. It's not to say that we can understand everything. It's not we will understand everything, it's just that there's nothing we can't understand. So even if there is an unconscious, even if we are, we have these kind of unconscious drives and pathologies, you know, as catalogued by psychoanalysis, in a way we

can understand them and we can understand them and by understanding them we can somehow we can you know neutralize or overcome their debilitating consequences. We're at okay the the psychoanalytic claim is that this is you know philosophy no this is a serious underestimation of the radicality of the challenge posed to you know or the ideal of you know cognitive autonomy by the discovery of the unconscious why because the unconscious is not just because it's well the claim is that the unconscious

is secreted by consciousness and it's not simply something that it's not simply kind of an obstacle or a kind of a stumbling block which you could somehow kind of you know either kind of you could reclaim would you can somehow kind of reclaim for consciousness rather it's something that is sorry I just have to excuse me for a minute Does anyone else have a question that they'd like to ask next after this?

Oh, one sec. I'm just going to unmute you again, Ray. Sorry. Actually, if you could lower your volume on your computer, Ray, that might stop some of the echo. okay you're You're unmuted now. OK, you're unmuted now. If no one else has a question, I can... If no one else has a question, I can... that's kind of close to what we were talking about but a little bit different

find it so would you know that so the question is I wonder what Pippin would say about the degree to which the nature of the unconscious interferes with slash motivates the practice of philosophy itself because it seems like the inevitable skepticism involved in asserting that it does so opens up the space for Zizek's more speculative idea um yes Yes. . Maybe, um...

Brad, do you want to answer that question? okay yes can you can you hear me now yes okay so this is that this Hunter's question was so did you mind just you know repeating it once more okay I

wonder what I wonder what Pippin would say about the degree to which the nature the unconscious interferes with slash motivates the practice of philosophy itself because it seems like the inevitable skepticism involved in asserting that it does so opens up the space for Zizek's more speculative ideas Pebham will claim that there's nothing about the the Freudian characterization of the unconscious that poses a kind of a radical challenge to

the to idealism so what he calls an idealism which is simply to say about the autonomy of conceptual self-consciousness so that there's nothing about there's nothing about ourselves that is in principle refractory to our self-understanding there's nothing about ourselves that we can't understand in principle and I take you know the Lacanians you know the Lacanians to be insistent that yes there are there are certain

kind of there are things that kind of subverts the pretensions of idealism as characterized by Pippin which is about you know the autonomy of conceptual self-consciousness because not because because they're generated by because they constitute our self-consciousness and they're in a way they're also generated by rates of the structure of self-consciousness includes

shouldn't buy something they can never you know integrate within itself there will never be transparent to it no this is okay does this before I get you know I like a laborator say expand on that does this address hunter does this address the question you asked yes it turns yes okay okay so the real issue is is this if we

think of the contrast between determinate negation which is conceptual and over determination which is allegedly which is intelligible but which is precisely what you know can be integrated within conceptual self consciousness so the question is what is it about over determination okay that's makes its refractory to integration within conceptual self-consciousness and And the Hegelian rejoinder to Zizek's claim is that, look, you're saying, in other words, what is it about overdetermination that prevents it from being determinately negated?

What is it about overdetermination? It means that determinant negation cannot get any traction upon it. and the Lacanian, Lacanian, Dolarian or Zizekian thing would be, well it's because it's a register, it's a mechanical determination. It's a mechanical determination which doesn't involve the negativity that Hegel thinks is constitutive of conceptuality, of the conceptual. and why not because it involves these registers of these incomplete or

logic no logically partial actually a logical negations as described you know the six forms of negation repression disabled foreclosure etc etc and all these are operations or mechanisms but they're not logical so they have no conceptual form but but they determine the functioning of conceptual formalization okay no again the hegelian question to ask at this point is look nevertheless the way in which you characterize these the modes of over-determination is using the resources of structural linguistics you use the

categories of structuralist linguistics to characterize the logic of over determination and then you're saying that this you know this logic of over-determination which is which is not conceptual but rather mechanical in the way in which it functions is conditions conceptual negation or determinant negation in a way which without determinant negation being able to condition it in return or being able to get, there's an asymmetrical determination here.

And I think this is the crux of the issue. And here, although I disagree with Pippin's specific criticism of Zizek, I do think that it's not quite clear what it is about over determination as characterized by Lacanian psychoanalysis that makes it in principle refractory to the term that negation which is to say why can't we simply comprehend the operations of

over-determination and integrate them within our conceptual self-understanding and that would be the you know the the hegelian rejoinder the claim that yeah you just you know well you say that these are you know you know there are these kind of causal factors that inhibits our self-understanding but surely once we understand how this inhibition works, we can integrate it within our self-understanding and that's already a kind of, it partially diminishes, we will no longer be in the grip of these compulsions.

So that's... So that's... Sorry for the echo. You can speak, I just muted Ray, sorry. But if they were integrated into our self understanding, wouldn't they still be operating, you know when they be underlying our conceptual frame still like it seems like like that there would still be a lap

well I okay yeah thanks that's that's exactly this is yeah that's exactly the question that's the but this is where the Lacanian has a problem because the Lacanian refuses to ontologize the drive okay and if you say so in other words this is the problem so what exact what is the drive what is you know the nature of the negated instance you know these these mechanisms if if precisely they don't you know if they have no independent substance so in other words you can't say that they keep on operating regardless of you know what we think and do you know the whole point

is that the on con because the unconscious is not a substance it doesn't have a determinate structure that functions entirely independently of our consciousness. And this is the problem in the Lacanian account, is that, I mean, if that was the case, then the process of analysis would not be possible. I mean, the process of analysis itself is a way to come to terms with these unconscious compulsions but in a way which is somehow in a way which you know is practical you know in a way which is therapeutic and not theoretical

so different in therapy and theory so psychoanalysis is the only way in which to deal with you know the functioning of the unconscious you know is through analysis and analysis is not a theoretical it's not no it's not as if you can just read you know the works of fraud and Lacan and you know and figure out and diagnose yourself and figure out what's wrong with you and then you know through a process of conceptual comprehension this is and this is remember the Latin dollars paper on so he goes is it really excellent about this this is why psychoanalysis is very peculiar this is why it's a theory and a practice it's not like a theory it's not like philosophical theory

philosophical theory which tries to make you know which tries to kind of spin some kind of coherent narrative about the world but nor is it a scientific theme cataloguing some kind of independently existing domain in fact Freud thought initially characterized his psychoanalytic project in those terms, but then abandoned that. But he still talked in the 1890s in his first program as a text. He thinks that the unconscious is somehow going to be understood in terms of quantum of energy. You know, he's got this kind of thermodynamic kind of hydraulic conception of the unconscious.

The unconscious there is still a substance. And the claim is that it's only at the end, you know, later Freud realizes he breaks with philosophy and metaphysics when he realizes the unconscious. and therefore that the workings of the unconscious cannot be described and explained in the way in which the operations of substances can be described and explained because it challenges the distinction between the universal and the particular. The unconscious is not a natural phenomenon where particular instances can be coordinated by universal laws. you know unconscious note no distinction in particularity and

universality is kind of usurped in the unconscious and this is why there's this great line by Mladen Dolar and let me see if I can find it yes it's on the handout for when we're talking about Dolar how can one make a a theory of what exists in spite of theory of what is recalcitrant to theory what kind of universality can one construct on the basis of this flimsy vanishing factuality something that vanishes the moment it is produced the unconscious vanishes the moon is in other words that the the

the nature of the unconscious effaces itself by producing itself this is Madden Dolar's formulation unconsciously faces itself at the same time as it is produced which is why it's this completely anomalous phenomenon which can't be understood in terms of nature or culture and this is why it can't be this is why psychoanalysis is not simply a theory about the unconscious in the way in which you know you know philosophers or scientists theorized about you know various you know about other kind of phenomena um but nor is it simply you know a kind of

practice it's a unity of theory and practice where it's only by through the process of analysis that you understand how the unconscious is working you know you know that you you know you uncover the operations the mechanisms of the unconscious in your in your own particular case with the assistance of the analyst and that's that's what makes you know psychoanalysis so peculiar and so anomalous but but it's also why in a way the more sophisticated you know the

more philosophically sophisticated psychoanalysts are you know and obviously Madan Dovar and Žižek are exemplary. They have to ward off the substantialization of the unconscious on the one hand, but then they have to explain, while at the same time continuing to insist that it can't simply be overcome through conceptual understanding alone. And yes, that's...

Has there been a problem with the sound while I've been speaking? No, you're fine. No, you're fine. Okay, okay. So, yes, I think this is a real problem is that when the unconscious, you know, it faces itself as it's producing itself, it's completely uncanny. You know, this is why the unconscious is uncanny and it manifests itself, you know, in and through uncanniness but that means that its status is no I think that there's a real yes I mean the key is a distinction between a symptom and a cause so the

claim is that the unconscious manifests itself symptomatically through its symptoms and the symptoms are there to be deciphered by the process of analysis as well as psychoanalysis as a theory and a practice however the unconscious isn't the you know the relationship between the drive and the symptom is not like the relationship between cause and effect because you know there's a there's a link between the cause and the effect you can infer from the effect back to the cause or from the cause to the effect but no such inference is valid between the drive and the

symptom because there's no logical connection between them so the link between the drive and and its symptom is the most difficult issue in psychoanalysis because on the one hand, because the claim is in a way that the unconscious faces itself at the moment, it is produced in a way that the symptom itself is, the drive itself is nothing that exists, is nothing over and above the symptom. It's not, this is why it's not like some, it's not this kind of subterranean force bubbling under.

It's something that it's nothing but its symptom, but the symptom itself is ambiguous as to the nature of the drive. This is why there's a problem about whether there's one or several drives. Mladen Duran says, well, it doesn't apply, no, the unconscious is neither one nor many. It's neither, it can't be understood in terms of the distinction between the one and the multiple. So that, whether there's a single drive or many drives, that's a bad question to ask, that's a metaphysical question to ask.

and you know it's the it's just as true to say that there's a single drive that underlies you know the heart that has various symptomatic manifestations as to say that the same symptom can manifest different drives but the claim is that the key claims identification of the drive of the death drive because there is a positive account that what is the drive as such it's the death drive and it's a death drive which is the compulsion to repeat with the death drive is the fundamental kind of the trucks of drive

as such so that every time that we all ultimately all these symptoms are manifestations of you know univocal or equivocal their manifestations of this death drive So I just wanted to... If you're continuing to this... If you're continuing to this... Yes, Hunter, so yes, I think that was the response or an attempted response to Hunter's question.

Okay, so should I go through? So we're actually at two hours and 20 minutes right now. I don't want to abuse your generosity. But it looks like Maria has a question on the sidebar for more readers and thinkers of Hegel recommendations. And I'll just unmute you in one second.

Yes, sorry. Yes, as well as those, you know, Catherine, you know, the plasticity of Hegel, Catherine Malibu's book, although it's not, I mean, there's some kind of issues with it, with its kind of accounts of, yeah, the way in which the content of plasticity is deployed there. Rebecca Comey's book, Morning Sickness, is a really, you know, very, very fine book. And that's, we looked at an excerpt, a very short excerpt from it, but I think we did. But yeah, definitely Rebecca Comey's Morning Sickness.

And in Frank Ruda's book, Abolishing Freedom, which is a contemporary defense of fatalism, there's an excellent chapter on Hegel in that book. That's a book that's just come out. And I mention these because they're kind of, you know, really innovative readings of Hegel. Terry Pinkard lines up with Pippin and Brandon. His work is excellent, but he's very much in the Pippin-Brandon axis, part of the triumvirate. And I really, well, okay, so we looked at Mladen Dolar's work, but I think he published

a two-volume book on Hegel and Slovenian which may or may not be translated but I think he has a forthcoming collection of essays on Hegel which will appear I hope sometime soon. And then another good book is Gillian Rose's Hegel Contra Sociology which is It's an oveless from 1981, but it's a kind of, I guess, defending Hegel against certain the reproaches made against him in critical theory.

Rose was a Hegelian, although... Oh yes, and Gérard Lebrun, La Patience du Consol, an excellent book, unfortunately not available in English. That's from 1973, I think, and really, yes. There's also a very good book by a guy called Olivier Tenland called L'idealisme Hegelian Idealism, but again, an attempt to make sense of, you know, a reinterpretation of the meaning of Hegelian Idealism. Who is that again? I'll write the name, Olivier Fernand.

It's very pedagogical, very clear. Okay, yes, Hunter's got a question. Oh, well, about Plato? I mean, for Plato, look, you can get his collected dialogues in a single volume by Hackett. And with Plato, just, you know, just read Plato. And then I think with Plato, ignore the secondary stuff.

I mean, obviously there's a mountain of secondary literature, but I think most of the, it comes, you know, there's either kind of philological work, which is often, you know, informative, but kind of philosophically unimaginative and quite tedious. And then there are the big kind of, you know, interpretations of Plato. In the 20th century, most of them are very bad. because they're just like, you know, they're attacks on Plato or criticisms of Plato, which I think are, you know, very, it's just straw man Plato. But if you read Plato, and especially if you're going to read Plato, I mean, you know, in terms of Hegel,

you need to read the Sophist and the Parmenides. They're very difficult dialogues, but they're like you know there's a straight line from from those dialogues to Hegel and so as far as a synthesis between common and let's agree with a figure well so so they both rejects the cop the they both reject the let's say the 19th century metaphysical reading where spirit is a kind of substance that is manifesting itself in the world and unfolding in human history and gradually progressing to ever

higher stages of self-consciousness in this kind of straight teleological sequence. all the thinkers we've discussed reject this reading. They think that this is a complete, this is a travesty. But they draw very different consequences from this rejection. One of them, so in a way, I mean, you could say that the Pepin-Brandon-Pinkard reading, in a way, kind of re-Kantionizes Hegel to a lesser or greater extent. And by re-Kantionizing Hegel, I mean

that they think that Hegel is simply kind of completing Kant's critical revolution, without you know certainly kind of without we know notes going back to getting traditional metaphysics but that means that he maintains well that means that he maintains this distinction between thoughts, thinking and being in a way. So

that Hegel's claim about the speculative identity of thinking and being doesn't involve a challenge to our understanding of ontology. I think that when Pippin's rejection of Zizek's gap in ontology, when he says look we don't need to ontologize gaps or lack or self-relating negativity, as far as ontology goes, you know, all there is to ontology is you know true assertions and truth makers for assertions and we don't need to worry about you know what it means for something to be or the

relationship between we don't need to worry about the relationship between being and nothingness okay whereas the continental thinkers we've looked at they do they take Hegelian negativity seriously while trying to avoid ontologizing it. So on the one hand you've got you know the analytic readers who say the negativity that Hegel is talking about is simply about discursive incompatibility. It's about incompatibility at the level of assertion or practice but it's an incompatibility which

doesn't involve some kind of negativity and this is why these random substitutes of incompatibility for negativity they want to avoid ontologizing negativity or nothingness whereas the Lacanian reading in particular says no that this Hegel's, you know, Hegel overcomes the distinction between being and nothingness. And he shows that what is not is fundamentally, you know, constitutive of what is. and indeed that everything that is, is essentially contradictory.

And more radically they claim that he does so in a way which involves a radical break with Aristotle. Because once you say that essence is contradiction, as Hegel does, then what is, you know, is not substance. What is, is not substance. Not substance as understood in terms of the distinction between essence and accident. every substance you know a substance is coordinated around the distinction between its essential

attributes the things that make it what it is and its accidents the things the contingent features or characteristics which it can you know which you can have or not have without its substantial nature being affected and I think Hegel you know overcomes this distinction between essence and accident I guess the speculative proposition is about the over the the reversal of relationship between essence and accidents subject and predicate and I and this is why I think that Hegel

makes it impossible to keep on to think that fact-stating discourse is sufficient to understand the nature of reality. So in a way the kind of the analytic reading is still it wants to kind of salvage the insights, Hegel's insights for an account of conceptual self-consciousness while saying that his claim about self-relating negativity doesn't have any broader kind of extra discursive implications whereas the continental say no it they do we have to

take its claims about negativity cannot simply be compartmentalized at the level of assertion and activity. Assertion and activity. so and okay and to sum up the the so i think that's so i think that the continent about um the the radical nature of hegel's claims about negativity

but i think that they get themselves into trouble when but they don't take hegel's claim about conceptuality seriously enough. In other words, they get themselves into trouble when they radicalize this negativity to the point where it seems to impede conceptualization. Or say, it seems to be something that kind of, you know, subverts or kind of short circuits the resources of conceptualization. And I think that the analytic people are right to say that as soon as you begin making those kinds of moves, you're going to end up in a kind of negative

theology. And as much as the Lacanians want to distance themselves from the Heideggerian or Adornian or Derridaian critiques of Hegel, where what Hegel can think is, you know, the ontological difference, the nothingness of being or non-identity or the trace. The question is, what separates the drive from those instances? In the final analysis, if the drive, if it's impossible to say, if it's impossible to conceptualize the drive in a determinate fashion.

So there's a comment here that Contes cut us off to going by substantialising being. Analytics of a sort of self-moving autonomous thought. Well the analytic philosophers, they, okay well the Pippenbrand, ultimately you have a kind of speculative pragmatism because ultimately it's about the primacy of discursive practice and these discursive practices are anchored in our social being, but they have no account of our social being. This is the weakness of the pragmatist account, is that they discount the great post-Hegelian thinkers of the social.

And here the figure of Marx is the most significant. You have to come to terms with Marx. and Marx and the mature Marx, the Marx of capital. And there the claim is that, yes, you have this, you know, you cannot start, once you take Kant and Hegel seriously, and if you engage in the critique of political economy, you understand how social existence is determined by forces and factors that are invisible at the level of social self-consciousness.

Which is why you need this theory, this critique of political economy, where critique is to be understood in a Kantian sense where you have to generate categories of analysis and explanation that are imminent to the social field under investigation and that are not simply imported into the social field from discourses that have additional

ideological commitments. So I think yes, I think that the key thing is that the pragmatist reading of Hegel, yes, I think it makes antagonism discursive and rules out any idea that there are some antagonisms that are so radical that they can't be put into words. They can't be put into words. And that has radical consequences for your politics. If you believe that there are antagonisms that are so radical that they can't be put into words, that means that you need to generate new discursive resources

in order to formulate them. And the very formulation is itself a challenge to a certain discursive status quo. So that's the limitation of the analytic. And the problem with the continentals is that they risk substantializing lack they risk substantializing lack and substance and in a way we reifying it on the one and they also laid between no on the one hand there's a danger of you know substantial I think like on the other hand the dangers is trying to ward off its substantial ization you end up in a kind of negative theology you end up doing exactly what Heidegger and Adorno and Derrida did by saying that there's this thing

which is the unthinkable condition of thinking and doing etc. And that's pre-Hegelian. Hegel's point is that it's not enough to critique reification because every you know, derefying critique of reification itself, you know, secretes a new reification. Okay, so that if you, you know, you have to understand how the dereification itself, you know, involves a re-reification. And then instead of like simply trying to perpetually dereify,

which is what these, you know, Hegel's traditional critics try to do, they try to find something that can't be reified. They end up reifying dereification by making it transcendent, by postulating a non-conceptual transcendence. And Hegel understood perfectly well that the point is not to try to dereify, absolutely the point is to reify dereify absolutely the point is to reify in a way which neutralizes the absolutization of the reifying absolutization of dereification that's dialectics and

I think Hegel is uncircumventable in this score I mean he as far as the logic of thinking and the logic of conceptualization goes, he shows how you cannot, the only way beyond the concept is through the concept. The only way through, you know, antagonism or the only way through a point of an intractable opposition or incommensurability is by pursuing, you know, pushing the opposition to its very very limits. And I think Hegel is, which is why I think in a way that Hegel has the resources for identifying the deficiencies of both his contemporary interpreters,

the pragmatists and the Lacanians. One, you know, I guess the kind of the primatists are too sanguine about, you know, too sanguine about kind of discursive negotiation. and maybe the Lucanians are too, you know, too pessimistic about the power of the concept, the power of conceptual self-consciousness. Thanks, Ray. Thanks, Ray. Okay. Yes.

Yes, I was in response to Hunter, yes. Now is a good time to end the course then? or should we does anyone else have any final questions I don't want to keep ray up into the I know it's very late where you are okay yes thanks no it's

Thanks for your patience and yes I will say this is that I still I realize you know I never I still have the text that people produced and sometime in January because things have been chaotic frankly here well as far as at my end for several several weeks but I do intend to kind of you know to go through them and to give everyone some feedback on the little text that they wrote. So yes, I just wanted to say that.

And I'm very glad you enjoyed it. Okay, yes, thank you, will do. All right, thanks again. Thanks again. Thanks again. Thank you.