Contemporary Readings of Hegel (Session 7)

Hello and welcome to the seventh session of Contemporary Readings of Hegel with Ray Bracier. I'm going to pass the mic off to him right now. Okay, hi. So today we're going to focus on three texts which propose in a way psychoanalytic readings of Hegel. or more accurately, they suggest profound parallels between Hegel's thinking, Hegel's speculative philosophy, and the structure of the unconscious.

So in other words, there's a claim that the negativity that is proper to the unconscious unconscious, according to Freud and Lacan, has a profound affinity with the negativity that Hegel, in a way that is at the core of Hegel's thinking. And what's at stake in this comparison between Freud's discovery of the unconscious and Hegel's speculative thinking of negativity, or the link he establishes between subjectivity

and negativity, the relationship between negativity and conceptuality. So in other words, both Mladen Dolar and Rebecca Comey, who we'll be discussing today, there are two modes of negativity at work in Hegel's thinking. One is determinate negation, which is to say the negation of the negation. ...each successive shape of spirit and the phenomenology of spirit, but also which motors the unfolding of Hegel's speculative logic and the science of logic,

but also a negation which would not be determinate. So the suggestion is that there is, hidden within Hegel's own thinking is an account of non-conceptual negativity and that this non-conceptual negativity is actually the key to understanding conceptual negativity. So this is really the issue that I want to kind of examine today. So we're going to focus on, especially on Mladen Dolar's text Hegel and Freud and Rebecca Comey's text Resistance and Repetition.

Okay so first of all here's a quote the first quote on the handout is from Freud, the introduction lecture on psychoanalysis and again I'm just simply quoting a passage that Mladen Dolar himself quotes in his paper. The contrast that Freud establishes between philosophy and psychoanalysis is that philosophy is engaged, is basically a kind of world view which attempts to make sense of the world by postulating some kind of fundamental unifying principle. psychoanalysis is no longer beholden to this, well, so I guess what is a kind of, you know,

an illusion generated by rationality which is the need to make sense of the world, to make things hang together or cohere. So Freud writes, this is quote number one, philosophy departs from science by clinging to the illusions of being able to present a picture of the universe which is without gaps and is coherent it goes astray in its method by overestimating the epistemological value of our logical operations and it often seems that the poets derise of comments is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher and this is Freud here is quoting Heine a famous verse of Heine's which is supposedly about Hegel I'll just read the English translation with

his nightcap and the tantrum of his dressing gown, he, the philosopher, patches up the gaps in the structure of the universe. And as Madden Dorar points out in his essay, there's a famous lithograph of Hegel where he's sitting in his dressing gown, slippers and nightcap. And it's this image of Hegel that Heine has in mind in this fragment. The philosopher is somehow desperately trying to plug in the gaps, the inconsistencies in the structure of reality and trying to conjure up some master narrative, some grand narrative which would impose some ultimate cohesiveness on a reality which

actually lacks it. So this is the, I guess, the fundamental Freud's own conception of the difference between philosophy, which is not scientific, which is therefore still kind of based on a kind of self-deception or kind of ideological delusion and science and at this stage Freud obviously sees psychoanalysis as a kind of science. So the contrast is between a focus on, you know, an assumption that the world is fundamentally

intelligible and makes sense and a challenge to this claim was the discovery that, you know, the conditions for our making sense of the world are actually determined by these senseless mechanisms. These senseless mechanisms which are unconscious. Now this, now, according to, I think what is really philosophically striking about the Slovenian, Lacanian interpretation of psychoanalysis is the insistence that, in a way, just as Hegel is engaged in a kind of a radical desubstantialization, in a way almost like, you know, even pushing Kant's

desubstantialization of traditional metaphysics even further. So the Freudian unconscious cannot be understood or must not be understood as some kind of substance, which is to say, a thing, despite the obviously the use of the term you know ding in psychoanalytic vocabulary. So in other words the claims that what is most radical about psychoanalysis is its discovery unconscious as this uncanny entity this you know something this thing which is

neither something nor nothing which cannot be given which cannot be ontologically situated and this in the large interpretation means that it's not just that consciousness and philosophical consciousness in particular superimposes meaning and narrative order upon some kind of primary meaningless or senseless stratum of reality, but rather that the unconscious itself in a way

is also kind of a meaning-making or narrative-generating faculty. So in other words, even at the level of the unconscious, there is a production of meaning or a production of narrative, some kind of narrative cohesiveness, which occurs before any conscious representation of any conscious representation, which would attempt to impose meaning upon meaningless phenomena. And here's the second quote. Now, this is Mardin Dolar. To put it in a nutshell, to follow Freud's image,

the unconscious is a gap, and meaning is a stopgap. Unconscious is a gap precisely because it is not a substance. It cannot be positively characterized as a thing with determinate properties and characteristics. So he continues. Meaning provides a narrative which begins already in the work of the unconscious philosopher. Meaning is a counterpart to the workings of the unconscious. The unconscious and the philosopher are a couple in an odd division of labor. One makes the holes, the other fills them in. If there is a diagnosis of the philosophical endeavor as such, at stake,

then this business of philosophy starts already in the unconscious. The philosopher has an accomplice in the unconscious which starts stopping the gaps even before philosophy starts filling them in. So the unconscious is effaced at the same time that it is produced. And the one who effaces it is the unconscious philosopher struggling to make sense and provide a narrative account free of gaps. The philosophical illusion is structural. It has its basis in the unconscious itself as effacement. This is a very interesting, I think, a very interesting characterization of the nature of the unconscious,

and why Freud's discovery is so radical. It's not just that one can simply juxtapose a meaningless unconscious with a meaning-making consciousness. It's not, and one can simply juxtapose, you know, philosophy as some kind of ideology which is always desperately trying to make sense of things, contra say psychoanalysis which shows that nothing ever really makes sense, that, you know, everything, every cohesive narrative that we construct about ourselves or the world is a kind of illusion. Now the claim is, the idea is

that the unconscious itself generates narratives and constructs a kind of cohesive structures or holes and it is this it's the own generation of meaning also produces its deregulation it's not as if you've got this first you've got this meaningless domain upon which meaning is superimposed. It's in a way that the

superimposition or in a way the imposition of meaning creates the disruption of meaning or the interference which prevents it from succeeding. And this is crucial to, I think, to Lars' reading of Freud in particular. This is tied to the idea of that the unconscious must be understood in terms of repression or a kind of negativity, which is very peculiar. Because it's a negativity which is never the negation of some pre-existing thing, some pre-existing positive reality. So this is, I think, what Dolar means when he says the unconscious is effaced at the

same time that it's produced. In other words, it's repression. In other words, it's the, let's say, the repression of senselessness, okay, which both generates, which is a condition of generating sense, but also which generates the senselessness that prevents the construction of sense from succeeding or prevents the the the production of meaning from ever kind of successfully grounding itself or encapsulating all of reality so this is why in a way so this is why the

the philosophy, the philosophical illusion. It's possible to make sense of the world, that the world makes sense of some kind of intelligible totality. Not accidental. And it is itself rooted in the unconscious because the unconscious is its own effacement. It produces itself by effacing itself or repressing. and this then so this it's this peculiar structure then that's Dolores will know ties or relates back to Hegel because he sees he thinks that this is in fact Hegel's most profound insight so this is called this claim that there's a

productivity to negation but which isn't simply about which can't be understood in terms of the negation of a pre-existing positivity which is then in turn negated to re-establish another kind of positivity. This is a classical, in a way, this is a traditional metaphysical reading of, you know, determinate negation in Hegel where you've got a positive, you know, a positivity, a positive substance or state of affairs which is negated, so it's cancelled but then this negation is negated in turn and the negation of the negation somehow you know produces or generates some new positive entity or

state of affairs this is exactly the how not to understand a Galian negativity according to Dolar because the negation is generative precisely by exposing or releasing the constitutive cracks. In other words, Hegel is emphasizing what I've called fission or the splitting as the condition for the consistency of any phenomenon. So here we have quote number three from Dolar.

If there is something bewildering and interesting in Hegel, then it resides in his grandiose effort to pursue the crack, not as a failure, a malfunction, but as enabling principle, to take it as the productivity of the negative. He, or Hegel, saw his task not as filling in the cracks, but as producing a scission where there seemed to be none. A scission that enables any positive entity. So already there's a, so the claim is that there's a kind of a profound continuity or profound kinship between Freud's radical thinking of negativity, the unconscious, not simply as the negation of consciousness,

you know, this kind of pre-existing stratum upon which consciousness is somehow kind of superimposed, but actually as something which itself, rather as a kind of, some kind of movement which generates consciousness as its own repression. So in other words, which generates both the positive instance, whose negation it is, but generates this positivity and this negated instance in one and the same movement.

And this then, Dohlar is going to tie to, well, Dohlar will propose a materialist reading of Hegel on the basis of this psycho, you know, this parallel with Freud, with the discovery of the unconscious, where he emphasizes Hegel's own reading of what is a profoundly insightful but also perplexing claim that Hegel makes about atomism, which on the face of it would seem to be the kind of crude philosophical materialism which is the most removed from his own speculative ideals.

But the idea is that there is an ultimate stude. Atomism is the key to understanding speculative idealism. So, I'd use it so that there's a connection. So, quote from number four from Hegel, section 37 in the preface of the phenomenology, and this is Pinkert's translation. the disparity which takes place in consciousness between the eye and the substance which is its object is their distinction itself it can be viewed as the lack of the two but it is their very soul that is it is what moves them

just conceived of the void as what moves things since they conceived of what moves things as the negative but they did not yet grasp this negative as the self so again the really kind of so the radical Higgins claim is that you know the decision or the gap between subject and substance is not just you know an an interval, it's not kind of just simply an absence, but it's actually what holds them together, what articulates both subject and substance, such that both subject and substance

are modalities of this fundamental lack or gap, which Hegel explicitly links to the void. And the claim then is that this lack is the moving principle, which is to say it's precisely this lack, this gap that articulates subject and substance. And if you remember that Hegel's famous encapsulation of his entire project is the claim that the true must be grasped not only as substance, but also as subject, so that the becoming subject of substance is in fact the only proper understanding of the true as the whole.

But now this becoming is articulated around this gap or this lack. And this is why becoming now can't be understood in terms of an Aristotelian or substantial conception. And this is why I've tried to suggest that the way to understand the becoming subject of substance is in terms of desubstantialization. So, Dolar pursues then, the rest of his essays is, I think, this really brilliant exploration of this affinity, this unexpected affinity between Hegel's conception of the negative and atomism.

From Vlad and Dolar again. And elements and the void don't simply exist one beside the other, they belong together to the point of forming a single redoubled entity, composed of the atom and the void, one in lack. However far and wide we seek a minimal element, we never arrive at one minimal and indivisible, one that is minimal and indivisible, but rather at the division as irreducible. The minimal element is this division itself, not any positive entity. Hegel's atom, his elementary particle, is thus the atom itself in this precise sense. That which cannot be divided any further is the division, the split on which any unity is premised.

so what hegel suggests in his reading is a kind of the atomist is that it's a mistake to think of when the atomists say that everything is just particles and void these are the two fundamental principles and everything can be explained in terms of particles in the void it's a mistake to think of the void as some kind of container within which some kind of spatial container within which are arrayed because this is to substantialize the void to think of the void spatially is to substantialize it was the whole point is that the void is not a space extension and space this is why space is substantial because it

has dimensions but the void is just like the you know a point is unextended it has no extension whatsoever so that what's so the void is actually internal to not it's not the the atoms are not separated by the void it's at the each atom is an atom of the void it has to be thought of as a subtraction from the void as opposed to a positive point inscribed within a pre-existing so so in other words that this what the atom is is the unity of

what that you calls mark and lack or of the the one and the lack and in fact the only unity that the atom has is as a point of subtraction. Now, the question is what is subtraction from? And because here, now, we're going to have to introduce, this is where the idea of self-relating negativity comes in because if everything can be explained in terms of the atom and void, where the atom is itself an atom of the void, a point of subtraction, it's clear that the negativity at stake here is simply not the negation of a pre-existing positivity.

It's not the negation of a substance. So this is why it's already a kind of negation of negation or a self-relating negativity. And this is, here Dullar I think is honing in on the, you know, the crux of Hegel's entire philosophy. But we introduced, he introduces one further component in order to kind of tie this understanding of the void or the claim that the ultimate atom of Hegel is a scission. He introduces the notion of clinamon, so that we understand that once we no longer conceive

of the atoms in juxtaposition to a void, conceived of some kind of empty space or container, then we have to, we can no longer hold on to a kind of the traditional conception of the so-called the fall of atom. The ancient atomists described the atoms as falling or as reigning in the void. And then Lucretius introduces this idea of the clinium, or the swerve, as the deviation, which explains how the atoms can combine, in a way can kind of collide

and form composites or aggregates. But the proper understanding of the Klinumen as this deviation is that it's not, once again, it cannot be understood as a deviation from a pre-existing trajectory, a pre-existing linear trajectory. Rather, the trajectory itself is nothing but the Klinumen or the Swerve. So, and here, Deleuze cites Deleuze. Deleuze's appendix on Lucretius from the logic of sense. So this is code number six. Klinumen, or declination, has nothing to do with the slanting movement, which would come to modify by accident a vertical fall.

So the Klinumen is not a deviation from a kind of a vertical trajectory. It is, rather, it is present since always. it is not a secondary movement nor a secondary determination of movement which would occur at a certain moment at a particular place the original determination of the direction of movement of an atom so this then leads straight into kind of uh you know dollars claiming quote number seven that the subject is the clinamen of substance the way that it always necessarily strays from itself so if the clinamen if this swerve this deviation is to be thought of as originary so it's not as

if you have a line which is then caused to deviate it's rather that the deviation constitutes the trajectory of the atom or the movement which is constitutive of the atom. So now Dolar ties this now to this claim that's yeah so that the subject is the cliniment of substance the way that it always necessarily strays from itself. and here now that he's going to make to tie this account of the Hegelian subject as a kind of as

an Aboriginal deviation or a kind of a crack or a gap in substance you know the inconsistency of substance so that you know subject is merely the inconsistency of substance he's going to tie this to the unconscious and he here he this is in quote number eight now he makes the connection to he says that there's a version of the negation of the negation in in Freud so he lists the end of the six words which encapsulate Freud's conception of negativity. They're all prefixed by ver. The prefix ver. Verneingung, negation, verd. I apologize for my pronunciation in advance.

Verneingung, repression. Verfervung, forclosure. Verlugnung, disavowel. And verdichtung, condensation and finally the shift boom displacement so I'm not going to read the whole of the of the code here but just focus on the passage in both so the claim is that the ver is the is an index of deviation so it's it's a it's a marker is a cipher for the clinamen so that dollar will write this is a section well there's a deviation of negation at stake and if hegelian negation is already a deviation one deviation

from its track and splitting into two then what is at stake here we could describe as a deviation of deviation a clinamen of kind of a redoubling of clinton ver is like a clip number of nine something inside and within the Hegelian negation of negation, yet slightly off track. In all of them, negation, in all of these six modalities of Freudian negativity, negation produces something that it cannot itself negate. There is a persistence of negativity in the very failure of negativity.

So, again, so this is this idea which that, in a way, the unconscious is constituted by negativity, but not, you know, not as a negation of, again, a pre-existing positivity, but as a negation which in a way generates the positivity that negates it in turn. This is why, and again, this is important, this is why, you know, the unconscious is effaced at the same time that it is produced. This is why it's the structure of self-effacement. Now, so this is, now there's two things to note here.

is one that this is where there's a in a way this is where the break both you know there's a rapprochement with between Freud and Hegel is over this kind of thinking of negativity so Hegel contrary to kind of you know the kind of traditional metaphysics is a is a thinker of gaps or inconsistencies or breaks so he will unlike traditional metaphysicians is not just you know contriving a grand narrative in which everything adds up everything is seamlessly you know integrated but rather you know the whole he goes home all account is to show her any moment of stability or union or coherence it's

constituted by a disequilibrium and incoherence and inconsistency and this is explicit in Hegel's claim that contradiction is a ground of being everything is essentially contradictory but it seems that this is this is not quite enough that that Freud is adding something to this again in negativity which in a way kind of goes beyond that so that Freud, you know, the Freudian unconscious redoubles the, or rather does something to Hegel's self-relating negativity, which in a way prevents it from, you know,

prevents it from from what from from stabilizing in some kind of coherent conceptual structure and this is now this is something I want to focus on now because this is where what we're talking about today connects back to the discussion of the logic of essence which we from last week so so the claim is this is that there's so in Hegel there's a kind of there's a run you know Hegel's discovered a self-relating negativity but there's an even more radical form of

negativity in Freud in a way which in a way which as he will later as dollar with later putter is a kind of a lack of the lack or you know a crack within the crack itself so in other words so that the the generativity that Hegel you know attributes to negation when he talks about the labor of the negative and the the formative power of negativity is somehow vitiated by some kind of by a let's say a workless negative a negativity that cannot be put to work or that kind of you know with that conditions this what Hegel calls

determinate negation but that somehow resists conceptualization or or at least resist philosophical conceptualization this is the crux of the you know I think of the point, the rapprochement between Hegel and Freud being made here, but it raises a fundamental issue about what kind of theoretical account is this? In other words, what is the status of this psychoanalytic conceptualization of negativity, of this radical, irrecuperable, or self-effacing negativity, which is that of the unconscious. And Dolar himself is aware of this when he writes,

this is quote number nine, how can one make 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? So if the unconscious only has no kind of substantial positivity, if it only manifests itself in these symptoms, basically, it manifests itself in these symptoms, but the symptoms are also, it's only through these symptoms that it can be given any kind of positive characterization at all.

then, you know, what do we, you know, what kind of thing, I mean, it's not just enough to say that the unconscious is uncanny and ontologically anomalous, there's even, even naming it the unconscious seems, and of course this, it's also perplexing because it's actually at the core of the whole theory of the unconscious is the notion of the drive and what everything that Dolar is saying about the unconscious, you know, must be understood by, you know, the so-called the primary process, unconscious primary process

is made up of these drives. But the drive itself is nothing, according to this, you again the kind of the unconscious but it's its own self effacement so in other words the drive produces the symptom in a way that seeks to efface or kind of yes or erase the positivity of the drive that generates it and question is that what kind of concept is the concept of a drive or what kind of universality can one construct on the basis of this flimsy vanishing

factuality something that vanishes the moment is produced and what's striking here is that this claim about you know something that vanishes the moment is this is precisely Hegel's account of essence of the logic of essence which we discussed that this is remember that no a few words simply to recapitulate who absolutely kind of crucial it is to the structure of Hegel's logic Hegel's logic you know his greater logic or the 1812 science of logic is that it's split into two. There's an objective logic and a subjective logic. The objective logic is itself subdivided into two parts.

The logic of being and the logic of essence. Whereas the subjective logic just has one part. It's the logic of, you know, the doctrine of the concept. And the reason why the logic of essence is so important, because it turns out so it's the it's a doctrine of essence that articulates in a way being and the concept but it also articulates the sphere of objectivity and the sphere of subjectivity so it has this absolutely decisive articulating role within the structure of Hegel's account and again just to try to kind of you know be as

you know straightforward as possible about what's no whole essence emerges from being by saying that the end of being there is a becoming of being okay There is, you know, becoming is one of the categories articulated in the logic of being. But becoming in the sphere of being is always becoming something. So it's the becoming of a determinate something. And the determinate something is always determined as the negation of its other. so there's a relationship in a way between the thing and its other and it's

precisely this kind of this negative relation that is determining for each for every entity so being determines itself through another but what happens at the you know at the culmination of the logic of being is that being exhausts the possibility of determinations through another after going through the determinations of quantity and quality and it discovers

there's a dimension of infinity which is proper to being where infinity is beings you know self surpassing so you know the infinite for Hegel is nothing but the overcoming of finite determination. It's the self-overcoming of the finite. The problem is that there's a link between finitude and determination. In order to be something, in order to have determinants, characteristics, whether they are quantitative or qualitative, you have to be something, and this something is a finite entity. And the problem is that in the shift from the finite,

or in the passage from the finite to the infinite, there's, in a way, a liquidation of determination. The logic of determination falters in the infinite, because being a finite being is determined in relationship to another finite being through negation. But when this process is pushed to the limits, you have being simply relating to itself and therefore cancelling every finite determination. So being becomes its own self-negation, and what is being negated here is its own finite determinacy.

And at this stage in the logic of being, Hegel brings up Spinoza, where this is the problem of Spinozism, as Hegel sees it, is that in Spinozism you have an infinite substance, which possesses an infinity of attributes, and infinity of modal differentiations. But although this substance can be partly grasped from the vantage points of thought, because thought is an expression of its infinite and eternal essence, it's not possible to enumerate all the attributes of substance.

In other words, what is missing in this, when substance is infinitized or when substance goes to the limits and goes beyond the realm of finite determination, is that every finite determination or characterization is immediately kind of negated or canceled. So you have the idea of an infinite substance, which is, in a way, the dissolution of all finite determinacy. And this is still a kind of a negative conception of the infinite as simply the annihilation of finite determinacy.

This is an essence emerges at this very point where being in a way is, once being is infinitized, it's nothing but there is a tension between, it can only be conceived of as the vanishing of its finite determinations. This vanishing is the point at which essence emerges, or what Hegel would call shine, or appearance, or semblance. So in other words, in the infinite, finitude is a mere semblance, or a mere vanishing.

The determinations of the finite are evanescent and have no substantiality to them. and this account of essence or appearance as in a way it's the as the this it's a form of the self-relation of substance where substance appears to itself as finite but this appearance cannot have has no fixity or cannot be given a positively determined a positive determination that would anchor it

within the infinite as such and hegel then introduces the contrast between the becoming of being which is the becoming something becoming something else becoming within being is the becoming of something the passage of from something to something else to becoming in the sphere of essence which he characterizes the movement from nothing to nothing okay so here's quote number 10 okay which I think encapsulates the this key passage in the logic of essence so he writes in essence therefore the becoming the the reflective movement of essence is the movement from nothing to nothing and thereby back to itself transition or becoming sublates itself in its

transition the other which comes to be in this transition is not the non-being of a being but the nothingness of a nothingness and this to be the negation of a nothingness constitutes being this is why essence is the essence of being so what's going on the being doesn't have once at the once you reach the infinite being has no other because the other can only be a determinant of an infinite being has no determined other so this is why the movements that animates this infinite becoming is a movement of which is under

as the vanishing the immediate vanishing of determinacy as such and it's a good puts it it's actually the only determination that's left is the determination of determinants as such and it's determined as such that it is always vanishing and being negated in this the movement whereby essence is essence is this movement of appearance where what appears is nothing what appears is nothing because it has no substantial determinacy because the

realm of finite determination no longer pertains in the movement of the infinite so this is why be in a transition the transition from appearance to appearance is not the transition from a determinate something to another determinate something but it's a transition from nothingness to nothingness here he he introduces his own accounts of the negative of this radical negativity negative a negation which is not the negation of something, but the negation of nothingness. This is what essence is.

Essence is the negation of a nothingness, the movement from nothing to nothing. And this, it seems, is exactly what Dolar, but also Zizek, have in mind when they kind of tie, you know, the psychoanalytic negative, the negativity proper to the unconscious to Hegel. So this is the only way in which you know one can make sense of an evanescence, of a vanishing factuality or as he puts it a self-effacing is in terms of Hegel's

account of essence. Now however, I think there's a question here because obviously so Hegel, essence in Hegel is you know will ultimately culminates you know essence culminates in you know the determinations of reflection which themselves culminate in contradiction similarly contradiction is the essence of being this is it really what he means when he says that contradiction is the essence of being and this is absolutely you know obviously crucial for Hegel's whole

account and it's this account then which ushers in the transition to the concept or the subjective logic so in a way essence articulates substance and subject but the core and it articulates them as a self relating negativity this movement from nothingness to nothingness but the question is whether or not this movement you know in Hegel this movement the movement of essence in essence is the essence of being whereas in the psychoanalytic account being proposed here it's that no this is precisely this movement from nothing to nothing of this

you know self-relating negativity is precisely what prevents or rather what what will constitute a positive being or a positive moment but only as something that is a symptom, something that can only ever be read as a symptom of this self-relating negativity. What I'm saying is this, is that although the logic of essence and the movement from nothing to nothing is itself a kind of something which is the subversion of ontological

of finite determination, it will itself be integrated within the unfolding of the concept for Hegel. So in other words, it plays a kind of an integrating role within Hegel's science of logic and it is related is reinscribed within the concept this self-relating negativity is ultimately reinscribed within the concept so the question is what it means to say that there's a form of self-relating negativity which is almost indistinguishable from Hegel's but somehow cannot be reinscribed or reintegrated within the concept

So, I will continue now. I think this is, I guess, a kind of, or at least a potential ambiguity in this fascinating kind of rapprochement between Hegel and Freud proposed by Doar. So like, here now we have code number 11. Doar writes, he proposes then to, you know, We reinterpret Hegel, contra the metaphysical interpretation, as emphasizing these cracks, these discontinuities, but even this Hegelian gesture, somehow insufficient, it needs to be supplemented by another negation, or what he calls a crack.

The Hegelian crack needs to be cracked itself. he writes if a galen absolute knowledge is to be conceived not as an ultimate filling in of the crack you know this is as philosophy no philosophy according to Freud is simply filling in the gaps in reality and trying to make everything hang together but as the way to ultimately maintain it if hegel wants to maintain the cracks and as gesture whether crack would be self reflexively predicated upon itself unconscious is a crack within this crack itself now here So it's a claim that the Hegelian crap is self-reflexively predicated upon itself. This is how it's reintegrated within the movement, speculative unfolding of the concept.

Essence is, you know, the essence of being, but ultimately, you know, essence is the essence of the concept. So the essence is also is re-inscribed within the concept. It's not foreign to the concept. You know, Hegel's logic, I think, is not progressive, it's not moving forward, but it's, you know, where he begins with being, you know, it's kind of sheer immediacy, but then shows how being itself presupposes the essence as this anteriority, this always already-ness which is prior to being. Essence is what being always already has been. And then ultimately the concept in which the essence of being is inscribed

as contradiction. So the concept encompasses contradiction. So the question is, so if this is the case, what does it mean then to say that the Freudian unconscious is a crack within this crack? How can the Hegelian crack be subjected to a further cracking or further splitting? How can you, you know, re-divide this division? This is an interesting question, which I'm going to return to, but first then I'm going to simply conclude now by looking at Rebecca's Comay's, you know, in a way extrapolation, it's not, it's again, it's a Freudian reading

of Hegel, which says that Hegel is not a thinker of, you know, kind of ineluctable teleological progression where the negation of the negation is cumulative and positively constructive and generates this kind of spirit as this all-encompassing whole or totality, but rather that spirit progresses through these kind of ruptures, seizures and crises. And this is where she explicitly challenges the claim that the

The phenomenology is a kind of a building's roman. It's about the self-education of spirits. So here's quote number, this is quote number 12. The phenomenology is often read as a building's roman, the story of the steady accumulation of insight regarding the world, my place in it, and above all, regarding my own normative commitments in securing that place, including the social conditions necessary for making and sustaining such commitments. Here she has in mind the reading of Hegel proposed by Robert Pippen and Robert Brandom. I think this talk of normative commitments is clearly targeting them. So

in other words, she thinks that this is still a kind of, even if it's allegedly non-metaphysical, still a kind of progressivist cumulative account of the Hale Phenomenology of Spirit. So I'll continue. As such, it tends to be read as the story of progressive demystification or consciousness raising, the gradual but inexorable overcoming of illusions or blind spots, the clearing away of impediments to rationality, including the new impediments inevitably generated in the course of overcoming these impediments, and above all, those impediments generated by reason itself. The ultimate obstacle to enlightenment turning out to be

not the opacity of things, the inscrutability of other minds, the recalcitrance of the passions or the unruliness of the body, but the resistance mounted by reason itself to its own inexorable demands. The ultimate obstacles to reason are those generated by reason. So this is, again, a claim that resistance, you know, it's reason that resists itself. The resistance to reason is not coming from some, you know, foreign or external source. is already obvious from Hegel's account when he says that self-consciousness is is itself its own other it's it's all positing the other you know through

which it kind of identifies itself what is being charted in the firm phenomenology is a kind of disease in a way the the pathologies of rationality itself not not pathologies which are somehow kind of deformations of some kind of pre-existing you know positively characterized rationality but actually the pathologies that constitute rationality so in other words so that the normativity that is proper to and constitutive of rationality is constituted by its own disruption or its own failure in other

that the reason succeeds by failing so the the successful you know deployment of conceptual rationality is indissociable from its failure because the success is and as she will suggest the success is constituted by the failure This is Hegel's key insight. This is why it's not about overcoming resistances. It's not about simply kind of reason overcoming all these pathological resistances or obstacles, but it's reason in a way, you know, I guess, succeeding through its failures,

succeeding through the failure which, you know, causes it to keep on, to keep on seeking an integration I guess you can tie this back to kind of the the Freud quote at the beginning so that the in a way the holes and the inconsistencies and the fabric of being are not simply impediments to rationality which need to be kind of plugged or kind of filled in. They are themselves what make this, you know,

it's those kind of discontinuities or inconsistencies that are the condition of continuity and consistency. This is the radical claim. This is why she, you know, so it's not just so I think the claim is not just, you know, reason generates its own obstacles. It's that those obstacles are enabling conditions for reasons achievements. So it's not just that reason resists itself, it's that this resistance is what allows reason to overcome, you know, overcome itself and succeed. but the relationship then between success and failure becomes enigmatic

so she this is the the concluding quote number 13 to speak philosophically you to learn to read every sentence as a speculative sentence which is what hegel enjoins us to do is like driving with both the brake and the accelerator pedals down at once. To think philosophically is to dash again and again against the same wall, digging the same hole, skipping and turning like a stuck record, forever repeating. Now, the question is this repetition. So I think there's an ambiguity here in that it's one thing to say that the ultimate obstacles to reason are those generated barriers. So

in other ways that what Hegel is diagnosing in the phenomenology of spirit are reasons, the pathologies proper to reason as such, the pathologies through which reason, you know, undergoes these kind of structural transformations. and it's another thing to say that these the pathologies are being repeated and Komei you know suggests in this very same paper that you know one country there are kind of there are certainly repetitions in the phenomenology you can see the same structure being repeated at

at different stages in this, you know, different sections, different stages in the book. So it seems that there are these same kind of, it would seem that it's reason falling into these same kind of pathologies, these pathologies kind of re-arising and impeding at various kind of stages of the dialectic. But actually, if one takes this, you know, if one takes, you know, if one is properly Hegelian, then the claim is clearly that, you know, these obstacles are enabling, you know, they're not just impediments,

they are actually what allow reason to function, so that these dysfunctions are also constitutive of proper functioning. So therefore they can't, they're also what explain the, you know, reason successes, it's successful integrations. So this means that the repetition can't simply be, it must be, you know, repetition with a difference. So that the way in which it's not, in other words, what is being repeated is not some aboriginal pathology. And I think this is why this reading is particularly, I think, is more advanced in a way philosophically richer than the reading, the famous kind of critique of Hegel outlined by Adorno.

Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment. where for in that account a reason is vitiated by a single pathology which is the compulsion to dominate so because it's the same ultimately there's the same pathology which keeps on reoccurring and it's the need to dominate which constitutes which is necessary in order to kind of for for subjectivity to kind of, you know, to integrate itself is also because it can never be satisfied, it keeps on reoccurring, but then it keeps on reoccurring in the same way. And what's striking in the Dialectic of Enlightenment narrative of Adorno and Horkheimer is that, you know,

reason itself, the disenchantment of the world or the demythologization simply repeats the logic of mythology, of enchantment. Every disenchantment is a re-enchantment, every explanation is a mystification, etc. And the problem in that account is that it's the same pathology, the same, you know, almost kind of ahistorical fixed pathology that is always being repeated. and this is unhegelian I think

it's also unhegelian but it's also based on a kind of an arguably a reading of Freud which substantializes the unconscious by giving it a characterization in terms of one fixed invariant drive which is the compulsion to dominate I think that's the problem with this kind of adornian account it reifies drive as a drive to dominate whereas I think on what's more interesting in this kind of the account proposed by Dollar and Comey is that there is a repetition so reason compulsively repeats

these kind of its own its self-inhibition But in doing so, this is exactly what allows it to kind of, you know, to move, to become. This is the, you know, what propels it forward. So this is why it's like driving with a brake and accelerator pedal pushed down at once, because it's not paralysis. It's not simply, this is why I think, I think Komei, there's an equivocation in Komei's final quote here, because there's an equivocation between the account being proposed by Dolar, where repetition at the level of the unconscious is always repetition with a difference,

and it's repetition that constructs or generates something that was not there before, and this claim, which is more like the Adornian claim, that what is being repeated is something that has always been there. You're stuck, you're never going forward, you're always repeating the same thing. So it's, you know, the repetition of identity. And I think it's clear that if Hegel and Freud are going to be brought together, that Hegel's, if Hegel is actually thinking about or, you know, exposing the pathologies constitutive of rationality as such,

reason being its own unconscious, then these blockages are productive. Because in a way, what has to be overcome, in a way, is the opposition, the undialectical opposition, between progression and stasis. In a way, there's something going on here that there's an undialectical assumption, I think which underwrites the Adornian critique of Hegel that you can have it's either you have you've got kind of linear progression and Hegel is supposed to be enthralled to this kind of mythological concept of linear progress where reason

just becomes more and more powerful and autonomous or you've got this kind of stasis where reason in insisting upon its own sovereignty and autonomy is actually perpetuating its own incapacity. But this is an undialectical contrast, because I think that the Hegelian point is that it's exactly this paralysis that is itself the movement. This is why I think that the image of, Kamei's image of driving with a brake and the accelerator pedal down at the same time is brilliant. But if one thinks this dialectically, one sees that it's not just like a stock record. It's never the same hole that's being dug, okay?

Because it's a different hole every time. and this you know and this whole is actually going once again it's not just a kind of a deficiency or an impediment but something that is generative okay okay I'll stop I think I'll stop here and then let's take a look at the questions we have. Okay, so I think the the first remark is from Christian. Positivity was always already a result of negativity seems my German lack is

etymology is attached to my... Okay, okay, yeah, this is just yes. I mean there's an obvious etymological link I think between Manger and monk maybe it comes from the Latin I don't know but yes and obviously you know Dolar is proposing a Lacanian reading so he wants to associate you know what Hegel calls a Manger with with lack was what Lacan calls lack lack is productive okay so So that's... Then Hunter's got a question. Is Dolar misreading Hegel? He seems to suggest that for Hegel, negativity is re-inscribed in a determinate, totalizing concept.

But isn't Hegel's absolute concept a dynamic activity involving judging, willing, conceiving, specters of creation? Well, this is it. It's ambiguous, I think, because Dolar is too careful and too sensitive a reader of Hegel to buy into, you know, to think, to claim that, oh, there's this moment. He's not making the claim, oh, yeah, there's this really interesting moment where you've got this kind of what looks like a non-dialectical negativity, which, you know, which then is inevitably dialecticized by Hegel, which is to say reintegrated within the concept.

The question is, I think this is a very difficult question, is to understand ultimately, I mean obviously so essence is, becomes part of the absolute concept as this dynamic activity. but it's also and yes and this is why it's not it can't be separated as an independent moment and I think this is where we get you know if we take Hegel seriously we would see how

you know that's not going to be possible for him it's not possible to abstract you know any moment in the you know the unfolding of the notion as some kind of self-standing you can't surreptitiously absolutize any any movements in the unfolding of the concept and not because it's not because of not because of a teleological necessity because it's no I think it should be I think relatively clear that this whole account of this Aristotelian reading of Hegel where there's a there's a kind of an essence a realm of essence which determines the

kind of the potentialities proper to the notion so that the notion unfolds a you know, has this organic unfolding, you know, it's like the acorn becoming an oak tree. It's clear that this is not, this crude teleological reading is impossible. So it seems that essence is again the kind of the mediating link between substance and subject, and as precisely as such it cannot be although I think it's tied to what he calls you know the absolute essence this you know the coincidence of fission and

fusion it can simply be again abstracted and turned into this kind of you know known this pure or absolute negativity which could somehow you know be used to puncture the the I guess the sovereignty of the Hegelian concept so I think this is well okay I think the last claim is particularly this okay he'll say that there there is the beginning of the logic there's already the vanishing of being into nothing and becoming this is already a kind of a non-conceptual negative, it's a non-conceptual difference. It's a distinction that is not, that is

explicitly not dialectically articulated because it's always already happened, but it's the matrix within which dialectical difference unfolds. So the claims that the whole, or every dialectical transformation in the logic is inscribed within this non-dialectical matrix, which is this, you know this coincidences this vanishing difference which is the coincidence of fission and fusion and it occurs at the very beginning of the logic and it occurs again in the essence in the logic of essence so it's but it's the the matrix within which the unfolding of the concepts happen so and so in a way

according to the large reading all every kind of all all negation within the concept or conceptual negativity he supposes a non conceptual negativity which obviously he thinks is the unconscious so I think that's the way he reads it no it's not a kind of a dirty and deconstructivity it's not something that is simply impeding or undoing the kind of the movement of the concept in Hegel but it's it's somehow it's kind of it's enabling condition but only if it's this it's or he he counterizes as a stain the stain which in a way I guess

saturates every conceptual mediation in Hegel. But it's still not clear. This is not clear to me exactly how this, you know, how it's to be properly understood. Or the extent to which, again, you can call it, you know, a crack within the crack. It just seems like Hegel could have... Oh wait, I'm feeling back into myself. that if Hegel had really wanted to just go out and say that there is a non-dialectical matrix within which the dialectic unfolds, he could have written his books in a much more clear way.

And that their difficulty and the poetry in them is, and just their obscurity is sort of already that crack within the crack because it's so difficult to like it takes so much work you sort of have to conceive in reading yes um i mean i mean i agree with i mean i think hegel you know see there's a problem there's a problem as soon as you distinguish the conceptual from the non, what does the non in non-conceptual mean? This is the problem. For Hegel non, this is what you know, Dolor discusses, you

know, Hegel uses the kind of the Latin as opposed to the kind of the standard German you know Freud's Verneignung, it's uh yeah Verneignung, okay that which I guess, correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess it's just kind of the standard German for um and I think this is not just, so I think that once Hegel has and as he insists over and over as we've seen in the preface of and neurology, when he insists on this link between negativity and consciousness as being

its own notion and consciousness as precisely being conceptual self-consciousness, there's something kind of puzzling about wanting to invoke a non-conceptual negativity, about saying that there's a there's a negativity which is somehow which transcends the you know conceptual determinants that cannot be grasped within the concept this is really about I mean not to put too fine upon it's a question about the relationship between reason and unreason. Is unreason the unreason that is enabling for reason, as,

you know, I think that would be the Hegelian claim, or is unreason something that is, you know, inhibits reason and prevents reason from achieving the kind of the sovereignty and autonomy that it believes? Excuse me just a minute. Thanks, Jelati. Or is it the claim that the unconscious is precisely what forever impedes and obstructs reason?

But this is a problem now. If you desubstantialize the unconscious, okay, and if you've got this claim that the unconscious is this self-effacing kind of dimension of negativity, in what way is it, you know, it's not so easy to simply juxtapose it to consciousness or conceptual rationality as its other and I guess this is well this is you know I think this is what is puzzling in this otherwise you know I think really incredibly not really brilliant rapprochement between Freud and Hegel in other words how does one

again how does one conceptual discourse to psychoanalysis what kind of serious psychoanalysis given that it's conceptualizing a dimension of negativity which is both you know enabling and disabling for thoughts and analysis is both a theory and a practice and the theory is shaped by the practice and cannot be a practice so that it's in the practice in the practice of analysis that these symptoms the symptoms of the unconscious manifest themselves and

this is where the analyst has to kind of you know decipher them but the problem is that if the unconscious see according to again this this radical reading this This is not a hermeneutic reading of the unconscious. The unconscious is, you know, it generates a kind of a semblance of meaning, and, yeah, semblance of meaning, which is precisely a lure and a decoy. Freud said that's not the real meaning. That's not the real meaning of this dream or of this symptom. So there's a problem about relating the drive to its symptom

because it's not the relationship of cause and effect. The drive does not stand to its symptom as the cause stands to its effect because you know there you've got you know cause effect is just you know the cause is a substance obviously but here the claim is that the the drive is nothing but its kind of manifestation in the symptom in the symptom which also kind of occludes the true character of because the drive doesn't is not this pre-existing positive substance-like entity. So yeah, this is a very, I think this is a very tricky issue. So it's not, so I don't think it's a misreading, so you know, I don't

think it's a misreading, but I think there's a, I think there's a tension, right, it's part of the challenge of reading Hegel, you never know, it's foolhardy to say that you've identified something that he hasn't thought of or something that you've spotted an underside or a presupposition that he himself is unaware of. I think that that, you know, one of the kind of intimidating things about Hegel, it's not Not that Hegel is faultless or uncircumvencible, but... ...thelectical thinking is explosive because it's about these amazing reversals and kind

of these reversals where he's... can see I think what he's not simply trying to kind of shoehorn the the movement of a concept into a pre you know a predetermined shape he's extraordinarily attentive to the way in which concepts undermine themselves okay there's um thanks yes you continue uh i wonder if freud is unfair to philosophy as a whole in characterizing as attempt to fill in the gaps easy to argue that both socrates and plato are not doing it yes it's clear and i think dolar himself is critical he says that you can't simply do this you can't simply juxtapose um philosophy to say psychoanalysis where yeah philosophy is just um

you know delusional because it's trying to make sense of a world that doesn't really make sense So every philosophical theory is just like a fairy tale. And that's obviously unsatisfying because every theoretical construction is going to involve this attempt to generate, to make sense. It's going to be a conceptual construction which tries to kind of integrate and homogenize. however complicated a way. And I think it's a great virtue of Dolar's reading that he doesn't just do the easy thing. He doesn't just juxtapose a naive...

It's not just a standard kind of anti-philosophical move. And I think this is why it's very interesting that he's enlisting Freud, not Hegel, and try to read Hegel and Freud together so that you know well the claim seems to be that philosophy is its own you know secretes its own anti philosophy that you know whatever kind of is a what makes philosophy philosophy as a conceptual integration possible is also what makes it impossible but then the words possible and impossible change meaning and this is what Hegel's whole point is that only what this is this familiar Derrida in contrast it's very

striking you know you have to have an Aristotelian conception of possibility to view this as a paradox Aristotle as I think Hegel does you see you this this isn't a paradox at all this is what it means to kind of to think possibility and impossibility are not you know antithetical anymore it's perfectly you know what is you know what enables something disabled the enabling and the disabling are one in the same and this means you have to change your understanding what it means to be able to do something that is another question here so I'm very unread in psychoanalysis but I was sort of curious

that what Ray was driving at when he alluded to the peculiarity of the unconscious as a motor that it faces itself what then is identification of this thing and what makes its practice practice scientific okay yeah I think you start to address that a little bit. If it's not a Christian fault reason, and if it's not a Christian fault, then is it a sort of attempt to create conditions of equilibrium? Psychoanalysis, or is the question about psychoanalysis? Perhaps it applies to psychoanalysis too, but I'm thinking more about the way in which this reading of Hegel is being applied, as not sort of this, you know, progress towards a uniform like hole that looks like a God,

but, and nor is it like just a downward spiral, but it seems like it's this sort of dynamic movement. And is it as an attempt to, I don't know, create like a passage of least resistance or a moment of equilibrium? This is, well, this is, you know, I'm really not sure. I mean, I think, you see, psychoanalysis, you know, initially Freud once, you know, identifies very strongly with science and sees himself as a scientist and as, you know, and then he sees himself as founding this new science,

a science of the mind which will bridge the gap between, you know, the sciences of nature and the sciences of the spirit. in the human sciences and the natural sciences. And then, I guess the, you know, for a philosopher the most, I guess this is kind of the sticking point, where a philosopher is always going to hesitate in relationship to psychoanalysis, is that, clearly, if one, even if one acknowledges, yes, there is, you know, the evidence for an unconscious, is that, you know, these kind of automatisms, these, you know one doesn't need to have read Freud to notice kind of that's you know

there is you know the manifestations of the unconscious in one's own thinking and acting it is stuff you know going on one is not aware of and is actually not trivially so stuff that is kind of seems to kind of betray some profound underlying compulsion or something, which is at work. But the question is then, how do you get to the unconscious from the conscious? And obviously it's through the symptom. And then I guess, so the question is, how does one decipher the symptom? And I guess there's a straight, you know, initially one can have a straightforward,

you know, a hermeneutic conception of the unconscious, but that means that the unconscious is meaningful, it's leading with symbols, but given Dolar's Lacanian interpretation, no, this is not, and precisely the radical Lacanian claim is that the unconscious is not meaningful, is that even if it's structured like a language, it's the mechanisms through which the unconscious are articulated are these kind of automatisms where the logic of the signifier in a way kind of asserts itself independently of any

conscious intention so that there's a register of it's there's a meaning but it's a meaning that doesn't make sense it's a meaning that doesn't make sense in a sense of like in terms of the categories or the narratives with which we are familiar so and that's that's what's challenging about the Lacanian understanding doesn't that make it kind of inhuman uh yes it is it's precisely the unconscious is um it's the inhuman core of the human i just had kind of a follow-up question i mean i feel like i was trying to understand i'm kind of stuck on this thing about uh the absolute or this problem with spinoza we were that was being discussed um where you know you

have this substance which you can say well spinoza says different things about it but he says it's infinite um and this this ends up becoming uh related to this concept of conatus for spinoza later and uh which you could say is very similar to something like the drive i mean isn't the drive at this point where we're talking about the secondary negativity that I think I think we were saying Komei was talking about uh the sec uh the secondary negativity I mean this sounds like an infinite determination which is exactly the thing Hegel says doesn't Hegel say this isn't possible because we just get subsumed into the infinity of the absolute I mean on the flip side

if we said drive was finite I mean then that would mean it would be exhaustible and that the unconscious would be meaningful so i guess maybe my question is just like i don't understand the original problem with the uh substance being infinite okay the okay the problem or the um like i think sorry maybe to make it more specific the substantial like we can't substantialize the unconscious, right? Well, what if we just say that the substantialization is infinite? See what I'm saying? Therefore, all of the finite determinations we make are still going to have this trace of some kind of error or symptom, right? Because we're simply just selecting a

sequence of what we call relevant. Yes, but I think, well, certainly from an the Canadian point of view, you know, to substantialize the unconscious as infinite is precisely the temptation to be resisted because this would be a reference to the physics. This is young. Okay? You're going to get, if you do, you're going to get something like the cosmic unconscious, which is exactly what Freud and Lacan set themselves against. I see. That's not how I'm understanding. I see what you're saying. That's not what I mean exactly by substantializing an infinite unconscious or something like that. But I just mean precisely that that sounds very similar to the second

kind of negativity to me where it's not totalizable in any sense whatsoever. Okay, but there's a I mean look, I mean you could what is the problem? First of all, infinity is a category and Hegel you know as you can't infinity is a category and it's deduced in the kind of the logic of being after these other I got nations yeah so it's a it's only it's in the you know being they're going to be still something I say yes yes it's still something okay being something infinite but the point is that now there's a crisis because um it's impossible to see what it is

in other words it's an infinite something has no recognizable essence has no determinant essence and so you get the spinoza problem what is spinoza substance it's an infinite something which is both thought extension and he just says it has these two and it has an infinity of others The question is, one, what is the principle of the distinction between attributes? Right. Is the distinction, you know, the qualitative distinction between the attributes merely, you know, is it identified from the vantage point of thought and of a finite thought

of thought as it expresses you know the uh you know the uh and the immediate infinite mode okay so but wait a second here though isn't really the principle distinction the whole point of the ethics which is the question of what can the body do and when we're talking about the unconscious and i think you're very right to point out adorno sort of like substantialization of the unconscious I mean, to me, my understanding of the unconscious is like anything that's not my body, basically. But I mean, maybe that's too much to what we're talking about. But that's my understanding of what Spinoza's sort of proto-psychoanalytic thing he builds in the third and fourth books is saying.

When we're trying to understand what the body can do, there is this negativity, the secondary type of negativity we were speaking of before. But to understand what a body can do, I mean, clearly, bodies are extended. Right. And extension can be one attribute of substance, of this infinite and eternal substance. so why would the question what can a body do be to understanding you know the substantial this infinite unconscious right I mean I'm sort of just trying to ask questions because I'm trying to understand Hegel really but because I mean to me the question of what can the body do is the same

motivating it is exactly what is motivating Hegel to write the science of logic it's the same question of like what can we do with this you know okay well yes I mean I mean it's a sense of what can we do but then I think there's a reason why he doesn't you know not a logical category for him it turns up in his philosophy of nature but I think that's I mean look I mean, I think these are good questions to ask, but I'll say two things. One is that, you know, if you take psychoanalysis seriously, there's a whole problem about, you know, ontologizing the unconscious.

Secondly, and because the unconscious is not this kind of, you know, mysterious, you know, it's not simply kind of supposed to be an unexplained explainer or something in which a mysterious force, you know, whose operations are supposed to be kind of ineffable. No, they're supposed to be described and explained by psychoanalytic categories. The point of understanding the unconscious is to understand our own consciousness, you know, the limitations of our own self-consciousness. And then the question is, is this understanding enabling or disabling? Well, part of what Freud says is very like Spinoza.

He says, once you understand your unconscious compulsions, you can stop being miserable and just be unhappy. That's the best you can hope for. And that understanding is enabling, understanding the way in which your own pathological compulsions allows you to exert a measure of control over them. That's very like Spinoza's claim, if you understand how you're determined, the more you understand, the more you're liberated from these automatisms. So I think it is tied to this practical question about human capacity, human cognitive and

practical capacity. But the specific claim, you see, what has to be resisted is the naturalization of the unconscious. If you're a Freudian or a Lacanian, you don't want to naturalize the unconscious as another kind of as an addition to the world's ontological furniture and this is I think this is this thing that kind of look you know like dollar in particular G jack also insists upon time and time again that what makes Freud so radical is that the unconscious cannot be situated on neither side of the nature culture divide but not because it is this single substance of which these are

simply attributes if you do that for them you kind of you've made it into a kind of into this force or energy explains far too much you've made it into this kind of cosmic principle which kind of of which everything is a manifestation and this is exactly this is why it's tied to sexuality and this is why sexuality is a peculiar you know only humans have sexuality sexuality is what distinguishes humans from animals as this as this kind of you know constitutive deformation as this kind of you know sexuality is this kind of this

swerve this deviation from sexual instinct right is precisely not this sexual instinct and so for all these I mean so the explanatory remit of psychoanalysis places certain constraints upon you know any kind of hasty ontologization and certainly if you an infinity Freud I think Well, let's just, I mean, Hegel says if you want to use the word infinity properly, you have to understand, you know, what it means, what it's derived from or what it's deduced from. What is infinite? You know, there's no difference between the finite and infinite.

The infinite is simply the self-overcoming or the self-supercession of the finite, which is to say it's the way in which the finite relates to itself. precisely it's this is why the infinite is the first kind of self-relation which will then lead into the self-relating negativity in other words the infinite as a self-relating positivity is indeterminate it's this determinateness um which is it's determinateness without any in that determination and that is how essence or you know appearance emerges and in order to think infinity properly you have to think the transition from

you know from a positive mode of self-relation which perpetuates indeterminacy to a negative mode of self-relation which generates a new order of determinacy and this is how to think the infinite you have to think the infinite through essence if you stop at being you'll never get you remain stuck in substantial metaphysics for hegel and no okay so and so as far as these are you know kind of the this location in appropriation or what seems to be this appropriation of essence. So essence is self-relating negativity, but yes, essence also culminates in contradiction.

And I think the key question is, you see, it's very interesting why contradiction is not one of the categories, one of the modes of negation proper to the unconscious, because contradiction is conceptual. and that's exactly what the unconscious you know cannot countenance it cannot be structured around contradiction if it was structured around contradiction it would have a logical structure and the way it would have the unconscious would be dialectical and the whole point of this interpretation is to say that the unconscious is non-dialectical So they want to say that the unconscious is non-dialectical, but they don't want to ontologize it and to make it into this infinite power over force.

so so no I mean this is all about the notion of the unconscious as a philosophical history and always say it's there you know in German idealism and romanticism and you know and Freud you know I think is aware of this but he thinks that his he's his is a scientific discovery you know he he thinks that the unconscious in a way the unconscious as postulated by philosophers is just a glue that holds everything together as he wants to say no my unconscious is it explains the holes in reality the malfunctions you know the chronic

malfunctions and dysfunctions I think the fundamental difference is there some sort of connection that you can make between the infinity and self consciousness in Hegel in Hegel yeah yes because the infinity then once it's kind of be after essence so that you can just you know the you can you know self relating negativity is proper is the essence of the infinite it's also the essence of the infinite but this essence can be conceptualized and this is why able to we can understand the infinite it so it's not if you just remain at the

level self releasing negativity you would just you know you wouldn't you'd have another abstraction he thinks so in other words you have to think the infinite what you think it's self releasing positivity that doesn't work and then separating negativity but it's only when you hit upon contradiction that's the self-reaching negativity crystallizes in determinate contradictions that you then have you can think it you can it can become self-conscious that self-consciousness can you know recognize itself within the medium of the infinite in other words that there's nothing it can't think and

Great. I think Ivan has a question here on the sidebar. It says, can you situate this Hegelian-Freudian non in relation to Parmenides, for whom there is no non-being, and for Laruel, for whom non-philosophy entails a withdrawal from the philosophical decision to privilege one term of a binary over the other, including negation itself? Okay, yes, I mean, well clearly it's already, you know, so Parmenides, you know, only what is, is, you know, you can never, we mustn't, you know, we cannot countenance the being

of non-being at the price of contradiction so only being is you know nothing is not and nothing is nothing is nothing basically so in other words the point is that there's no there's no accounts of negation the Parmenidee and it in the kind of the Parmenidee paradigm we're thinking and being of the same this this of thinking and being is based on well it's based on a kind on the disavowal of negation seek of parmenides he says you are in order to say you know

non-being is not or nothing is not you know you need to deny okay and you need deny and how can you even it how can you how can this assertion make any sense okay unless you are denying something and the platonic you know say no there is a way in which non-being is and there's a way in which being is not and there's it's this kind of mixture of being a non-being which is which is fundamental it's it's it's the participation of the intelligible and the sensible but this participation is accessible only through thought because thought itself is

precisely I mean I think already in Plato thinking itself is the key to the participation, it's the medium within which the sensible and the intelligible are woven together, is a kind of negativity or is something that is not. And I think that Hegel, who is an Aristotelian, is also arguably more profoundly platonic than Aristotelian, because his whole account of negativity I think can be you know you know traced back to Plato so so I think there's a

tie to Plato's critique of Parmenides which is the enabling condition of dialectics of dialectics and as far as Laruel goes well so yeah Laruel's known is well again it's a complicated so he claims that it's not as precisely kind of notes it's not dialectical and especially can't be dialectically inscribed it said but it's a suspension he says it kind of the non operates a suspension of what he calls of decision of philosophical decision of which

dialectics is a variant but this suspension is you know this work progresses this suspension in a way is a symptom of philosophy because what he's it's philosophy because the one is not self-positing and the one can't directly intervene or can't directly kind of intervene or have effects upon philosophy in a way the compulsion to philosophize or the compulsion to decide in L'Aruelle is a symptom of the one decisional imminence etc and it's the the

suspension of the symptom that enables what he calls you know non-standard philosophy so I think he's quite close and he's explicit with the panels with psychoanalysis although he doesn't well he does especially in theory of theory of strangers I don't know if it's translated in into English but there's a along this is where he discusses psychoanalysis or kind of standard like Kenyanism so there is a kind of there's a negativity but again it's a negativity which is not the negation of any kind of pre-existing positivity so

for him he says that philosophy is constructed around the foreclosure of of what he calls the real or the one, so that non-philosophy, in a way, is the suspension of this foreclosure. But it's a suspension that's generated through the symptom itself. You use resistance, philosophical resistance, to the one to generate non-philosophy. You work, you use philosophy's resistance to radical imminence to generate a kind of a non-philosophy which is thinking according to this radical eminence. So I think there's a close affinity between L'Aruel's paradigm

and a kind of Freudian one. I just want to ask a sub-question about the Plato reference. Are you talking about Plato's Parmenides itself, or is there another? the soft I'm thinking of the sophist in mind here okay so it's a dialogue between or kind of the Iliatic stranger and yes and and that's a it's I think that is where the dialogue culminates and first of all there's a problem with how do we

define the sophist and the sophist is this kind of it's hard to define because he evades kind of the patient but also what does the sophist generates which is you know illusion or falsity is difficult to categorize so we have to we have to come up with a theory of the false to understand to be able to define sophistry but in order to generate a theory of the false we have to you have to acknowledge the the former falsity or the form of appearance itself form is an aidos so what he's saying is that already in order to deal with the problem of

sophistry we have to acknowledge the being of the being or the being of illusion and it's this and then there's an explicit discussion of Parmenides where we have to think that non-being somehow is and being somehow is not so we have to mix being non-being and we have to you know commit this crime against the father Parmenides our father in dialogue if you haven't read it so really amazing dialogue no that's great thank you and just to just to just an aside question you don't have to go into it but it does this somehow bear upon

Plato's use of our Hegel's use of the term dialectic in relation yes I mean I think the term dialectics, it's Plato, you know, is the first kind of, it takes a sophist, I think, kind of talked about dialectics, but it's a term theorized in Plato himself, and it's even disparagingly characters. Aristotle, for instance, is very disparaging about dialectics and his metaphysics. He says what he's doing is a science, you know, kind of this first science,

as he calls it, or this kind of theology, unlike dialectics, because it's properly, it's rigorous and scientific, whereas dialectics is more kind of, is seen there to be a more sophisticated, and I think that Hegel, well actually also Hegel is actually more sparing in his use of the term dialectics and I guess it often I assume it doesn't crop up it certainly doesn't crop up that often either in the phenomenology or the science of logic I think in his lectures on the history of philosophy he says something about I just I can just look Right now and it doesn't have an index unfortunately but

yeah the first volume of his lectures on the history of philosophy you you there's no separate for for dying no he discusses the Greeks a great length yes okay yes in also so in volume 2 chapter 3 so the a the philosophy of Plato the

first it opens with a discussion of dialectics on page 49 so there is this is his one extended discussion of Plato and dialectics we were uses that so he says here we have already remarked by way of preparation that the notion of true dialectic is to show forth the necessary movement, your pure concepts, without thereby resolving these into nothing. But the result simply expressed is that they are this movement, it's just the unity of these opposite notions. We certainly do not find in Plato a full consciousness that this is the nature of dialectic, but

we find dialectic itself present, that is, we find absolute existence, thus recognized in pure notions movement of these notions what makes the study of the platonic dialectic difficult is a development and the manifestation of the universal out-of-ordinary conceptions so in other words he's saying that in a way to understand what you know hegel in a way is formalized a dialectic or dialectic because he wants to make dialectics you know fully you know and explicitly self-conscious this is why although dialectics can't work can begin from first principles and definitions and he and this is it's striking that

you know Hegel's to kind of you know took any axiomatic or you know foundation foundationless kind of methodology and philosophy is again very kind of but you know it's platonic it's it's dialectical but the difference is that he wants to construct to make dialectic self-conscious which means that concepts be simply drawn from you know non philosophical discourse they have to be they have to be staged they have to be kind of self-consciously constructed you know a dialectical unfolding and I think and the science of logic is the

most you know exemplary example I mean anyone who wants to see you know what Hegel means by dialectical thinking just look at the science of logic I think and and it's there in its purest form because he is really generating these notions out of one another and, you know, claiming that each notion is contradictory. It's not just that, you know, the contradictions are not in discourse and external to the concepts and categories. Contradictions turn out to be internal and constitutive of every concept and category. he means by dialectics, which is why contradiction is at the very core,

or the suspension of non-contradiction is at the very core of his conception of dialectics. It looks like Hunter has another question here in the sidebar too. Okay. It starts with how is it that indeterminacy can relate to itself? it's, or rather failed, even though there is no term on either side, so to speak. I know that the question is naive, perhaps. I don't know whether there are parts of the logic where Hegel particulates more about relation. In other words, when substantialized indeterminacy faces and negates itself, how is that a relation? Is there a certain subterfuge here with the concept of relation having indeterminacy that it shouldn't be allowed to, so to speak? Okay, that's a very good question. and it is deduced

in the logic of being so he does use the word relation quite deliberately it's it first there are three modalities of relation and logic first at first appears it under you know and you know when he's talking about magnitude and he talks about the quantitative relation okay so first the first form under which relation appears is under the you know the the notion of quantity

and then it re-emerges in the logic of essence talks about the essential relation and then again in the discussion of actuality under the heading of the absolute relation so yes the concept of relation is simply thematized under the heading of quantity and in a way it's because quantity has to be understood in terms of a relation relation between magnitudes this relation turns you know kind of eventually kind of turns into quality and then qualities are related to one another so in other words you

know the quantitative relation no into quality which is not a relation but then qualities are relationally determined it's the difference between qualities is a relation. Now this is, so when he's talking about this whole account of being as infinite and this problem of determinacy, it's because the qualities are I think I have a court from last week that might help here actually.

A court from last week's handouts. It's really the first court from last week's handouts. when he says so absolute indifference is the final determination of being why is absolute indifference of final determination of infinite being because it is qualitatively differentiated but none of these qualities can be

distinguished from one another they can't be determinately distinguished from one another and this is why you know no infinite being it can only be determined as indifferent as in different difference he says this it is determined as indifferent and therefore difference is external to it is quantitative so in other words difference if memory serves because I'm not absolutely confident of these claims qualitative difference is internal to something quantitative difference is

external but if if you have an infinity if once you have a an infinity of qualities it's not possible to differentiate these qualities from one another internally and therefore the only determination is external which is to say quantitative which is to say this infinite being is simply indifferent it's indifferent to every qualitative determination so he doesn't use the

term maybe when I was explaining I was talking about a kind of a self-relation and maybe that was a you know I shouldn't have said that but he says there's a kind of a well there's a tension between the externality of infinite beings existence So, yes, there is a kind of a tension or contradiction between it exists, okay, it exists in itself and it is allegedly qualitatively differentiated in itself, but these qualitative differentiations cannot be externally apprehended.

so in other words they cannot be thought okay so once you have an infinite substance because it's part of the nature of substance to be internally differentiated it follows that an infinite substance is also internally differentiated but these you know it's a quarter of differentiation but these qualitative differentiations can no longer be conceptualized, they can't be thought anymore. The determination that you can attribute to this infinite substance is its indifference. It's indifferent to any qualitative

determination that one tries to attribute to it from the outside. so and here this is he also brings in yes between what he brings in the notion of external reflection here so what he's saying is that here the infinites you know that the determination of infinity is external to substance and it's because the determination of infinity is external to this substance so the thing that is being thought that there are no specific determinations that are

discernible within it so the claim what's going on here is that Hegel says that's at every stage remember he's this is also a logic so he's talking about the concept of infinity or the concept of determination or the concept of a being and he's saying that logical determinations in other words when you're if you're thinking of something you know you have to think of it using these categories which he's deducing so if you're thinking of an infinite something you're going to have to sing these categories but now there's

a tension between these categories these categories start to contradict one another you know they come into tech he doesn't use the word contradiction you only use it once he's introduced the category in the logic of essence but there's a chin between the logical categories that you need to think something as infinite on the one hand and as internally you know as as as determinant, as internally differentiated on the other. And it's this logical tension which, you know,

for him generates the transition to essence. So, it's also, I mean, but look, I mean, look I mean like like like how does the concept of relation itself get away with not being sublated somehow sublated in the infinite and this infinite substance yeah in the in the self relating negativity there's just this this the self-relating there's this positivity to the idea that it's relating it seems to me i mean i guess

you could say you have to go through the whole dialectic to understand what that is but it's just it's just kind of abyssal to me i'm i don't feel like i totally understand it well okay this is maybe the expression is misleading because it's not i mean as far as i know unless um and this is something I haven't yet tracked down I don't know if the expression self releasing negativity is Hegel's own or simply this no popular gloss I think I seem to remember you know reading it somewhere in Hegel I think it you know it does occur at least once in Hegel but then it's taken up by Zizek and others as this key to understanding Hegel's thoughts but in the

logic of essence he doesn't use that's not what he uses that expression he talks about you know essence is absolute negativity and he talks about you know again the book uses of a cabbie of mediation and immediacy determinacy he he talks about movement you know and in the quote we use today he talks about the movement from nothing to nothing so this movement also I glossed it as a kind of self-relating negative because it seems that the movement from nothing to nothing which reflection which is what you know seeming or semblances it's where you

have this you know it's the idea of a kind of a reflection in which there is no you know there is no substantially existing entity that is the source or or the cause of the phenomenon of reflection. And this is why when he talks about appearance being reflected into itself, it seems, I mean, you know, the expression self-relation seems to make sense to describe this process, but then this self-relation seems to be

Well, the reason it's prefigured in the notion of an infinite substance is because the concept of something infinite is something that overcomes its finite determination. and maybe if I find the first place where he mentions this I think there's an expression he uses when he introduces the notion of the infinite I think the term relation comes in here as well

Thank you. Well, the first discussion of infinity occurs when he's talking about magnitude, and he's talking about the mathematical infinite. And already in the mathematical infinite, there is a relation...

yes because okay quantity is a relation of between magnitudes and an infinite quantity quantity he's talking about infinitesimals infinitesimals a relation between you know if you're vanishing a small magnitudes so he thinks that they're he first introduces that the idea of infinity in relationship to quantity okay and then he talks about and then it reoccurs in the context of quality but quality of infinity is precisely what remains unthinkable a quality of infinity the notion of quality I think only is only

determinable within for finite substances or you know determine at something every determinant something has a quality but once you have an infinite something it seems to have an infinity of qualities but the problem is that these qualities can't be differentiated but the qualities are related to one another because they are they have to be differentiated from one another so I think that the you go from an external relation to an internal relation with quantitative infinity an external relation between magnitudes if your

mathematical infinite and then a qualitative infinity you have an internal relationship between qualities, relation can't be thought. This relation is itself, it's not the relation between determinate qualities. So I think this is, it's in this sense that the concept of relation occurs in his discussion of qualitative infinity but already in his discussion of quantum he's

introduced the idea that and if I keep you know he actually praises his mathematicians for having for having already uncovered the causes of infinites he's saying that the most sophisticated sophisticated contemporary understanding, contemporary for him understanding of mathematical infinity was already qualitative, kind of a relation between magnitudes which... what's the expression he uses? Well, I think if I remember rightly and I haven't read this for a while, it's

because already the relation becomes more fundamental than the terms. So already I think that there's an idea that the relationship, the relation itself is, you know, persists independently of the terms, so that the terms become internally constituted. And I think it's, you know, the argument goes something like that, so I might be wrong. so the ideas of infinity relation and quantity and quality are all burned up together I'm sorry I'm not

yeah I don't know if this is helpful I mean it's not answer I mean it's a very real and it's not one I think I've got some I think if one reads that section, well, yes, I don't think the term relation is simply being kind of, you know, pulled out of nowhere. So it's certainly not kind of being smuggled in surreptitiously because it's already been introduced before. maybe maybe the concept or this issue is symptomatic within Hegel perhaps

symptomatic of a limitation or a problem symptomatic in a psychoanalytic sense I can you be more precise of what I haven't read enough of the logic to know but but like that that that it would be at this point that there could be a sort of a self overcoming of Hegel's own system that this is a sort of in a poria that is symptomatic of something repressed it could emerge and the

repressed being in this instance well maybe maybe the psychoanalytic reading of Hagel actually I don't know well you mean that what the you know the what is what the cell phone like the the the crack of the crack that the Laura talks about yes but I think that's very suggestive I think it's I mean and it's you know I think it's a fascinating reading but I think you have to be wary of like just gesticulating about something decisive. In other words, if you claim that there's a crack of the crack, I think it has to be kind of rigorously demonstrate. And

Dolar has done so. He's done it in lectures and he thinks that the two points at which this non dialectical negativity occurs is at the very beginning of the logic and then I think in the again in the logical essence so he thinks that the there are these kind of it's this you know this this remain there this kind of this negativity which refuses to be you know conceptually integrated arises. But he doesn't claim that it's kind of a... What's interesting is that he doesn't simply say it's like it's unthought in Hegel.

He doesn't do the kind of the standard deconstructive move where you say, oh, it's something that Hegel can't think, that resists Hegel's logic. because then the claim is, well, what is, what exactly is the nature of this, if you claim that something is a symptom, if you claim that a conceptual movement is a symptom of, you know, something that's being repressed, well except that this kind of self-relating negativity is not it's explicitly conceptualized in Hegel so in what sense is it being repressed

if you say it's being repressed because it's always being made to you know being conceptually reintegrated but I think the yeah the vocabulary of integration here I think is probably kind of misleading again I think this is a very profound issue but I think if one is going to kind of start talking about symptoms I was going to do a symptomatology of Hegel one can't do well there's a kind of a bad way to do it, which is to reduce everything. Psychoanalytic reading of Hegel is maybe Adorno's, where he says it's just

idealism is rage against vulgarity, this desire to kind of subsume and ingest and incorporate everything, blah blah blah. Subtle or you know, interesting reading, I mean, although very subtle in lots of other ways, but this basic kind of pathologization of Hegel's thinking is I think serving. There's another way then would be to say, well, no, there's a kind of, there's a more complicated symptomatology. The question remains is that what does it mean, you know, what's the difference, you know, yeah it's actually it's the one question between the ver and the um the nine

er which is the ver you know of uh of the the clinamen of the sword the deviation and the nine of you know of of no um i mean freud says you know the unconscious knows no negation and it knows no logical negation. The claim is that logical negation is determined by a more kind of fundamental form of negativity, a non-logical negativity. But this non-logical negativity only is nothing but its own, you know, kind of denial or kind of suppression.

The whole thing about the symptom is that the drive of which the symptom, the unconscious of which the symptom is a symptom, is nothing independently of the symptom. It doesn't have any kind of... And if the symptom is conceptual negativity, in what sense can you even say that this self-effacing, what constitutes and is effaced by this symptom is a non-conceptual negativity?

If you're calling it non-conceptual, the concept in the worst way for Hegel. Because the difference between the ver, the clinamen, the swerve, the deviation, the non-logical deviation, and the nine of determinate negation is supposed to be, it can't be logically determined. If it can't be logically determined, then you can't call it a kind of a negativity. So what can you call it? Well, you can call it, you characterize it in terms of its symptoms, but the symptoms and then all these kind of varieties,

I mean, this is where the catalog is very interesting, the catalog of symptoms are lists where you've got, you know, the vernonegation, repression, foreclosure, disavowal, condensation, and displacement. The problem is that you have to know, so each of these instances, you know, what is being, you know, being denied or repressed or foreclosed or disavowed or displaced is nothing separate. It's constituted by the displacement as such. So then you've got this peculiar position where you're saying that, in other words,

the claim what i'm saying is this okay is you have the concept of a deviation okay the concept of a deviation you know is we know what deviation means because we know what uh i don't know what this kind of country is um uh i don't know if there was such a term as via whatever but the d something to the positive term but if you say that's you know the deviation is originally and primary and you know the the positive term is only constituted through it then how can you you know what does the D mean here and I wait

see the worry here is that you're actually disavowing negation because I think this is a problem also in like in the concept of detail you know the D and detail organization for those in Guattari it's also supposed to be a kind of non conceptual non dialectical negation or suspense not negation at all suspension of a limitation you see that you know territorialization is only made possible by de-territorialization which is a positive but the fact that the positive productive force can only be negatively characterized as de-territorialization

means that you need the secondary positive instance with the negative characterization of the primary negative instance, or the primary, you know, the kind of the constituting instance. But what you've done there is you're in this move, unless you can explain, you have to explain what determines the deep. what is it the roots of the limitation okay if you say for instance that territorialization is merely you know a kind of limitation of de-territorialization

which is more fundamental then you need to how does this limitation come about How would something allegedly limitless, boundless, infinite come to limit itself? This is a problem of the one in the traditional metaphysical problem of the infinite. How does an infinite unity, et cetera, come to be... Sorry, I just need to plug in the power for a minute. So also just so everyone knows we're a little bit past our time here, so we can plan to wrap up soon. OK, yes.

Yes, I'm sorry I've gone over... No, that's fine actually. I was sort of wondering if Lou's just going to make his way in here somehow. It seems relevant. But yes, the problem is, I think it's very difficult to talk about negation and to say that there's this non-conceptual negativity, this original non-conceptual negativity, given that's you know the concept of negativity is so tied to conceptualization in other words that

how what is the relationship between the non-conceptual negation and the conceptual negation if it's not conceptual the problem is that conceptual negativity and negative determination is always conceptual. So when you juxtapose the ver, you know, the German ver to the nine of negation, and you say, and you have, you know, on the one at Freud's, the unconscious is the ver, the swerve, the kind of the deviation, whose modalities are, you know, repression, foreclosure, disavowal, condensation, displacement, etc.

What is the connection to these, to negation in the concept, or to logical negation? And there is a negative, see, all these, you know, these terms, the terms used by Freud himself are, you know, they have a straightforward, you know, they're easy to understand if you understand them conceptually you know but once you say that they're not they're no longer kind of conceptual negations then you know what is the you have to explain how they stand a conceptual I think this is a really difficult issue and it's a difficult issue which ironically you know

I think it emerges every, it's what Hegel says, every time you postulate a non-conceptual instance, you want to say there is some kind of fundamental phenomenon here, which, you know, manifest, but, you know, which is indirectly manifested in something straightforwardly conceptualizable. You have the problem of the relationship between, you know, the non-conceptual on the conceptual. And, you know, Hegel is famous for attacking the claim that there is, you know, fundamental non-conceptual ground, or some transcendence basis for, that underwrites,

you know, all conceptualization. This is, you know, his big debate with Schelling, etc., I think the challenge at this point for anyone who wants to kind of, in a way, even through a sympathetic reading of Hegel, who wants to claim that there is some kind of negativity, some more originary, you know, in a physical sense, but in this more sophisticated sense, kind of negativity, they're going to have to explain the relation. What is the relation of relation and non-relation? That's really the question. And Hegel, you know, Hegel said, yeah, there is a relation of relation and non-relation.

Realize that, you know, the speculative identity of relation and non-relation, which is to say, once you realize that every relation is also an is a non-relation, then the problem evaporates. It's a false problem for Hegel. it's a false problem you can understand it's based on a disavowed opposition and you know in psychoanalysis you know there's a lot of talk about the non-relation to which the question is what is that's yeah there's relation there's non-relation

but there's no relation of relation to non-relation how are you going to negate how you know what instance cancels out or assures the definitive postponement of the relation if not a disavowed positive instance. You think you're talking about something negative, but it's a kind of negative theology. You're really talking about something that you say can't be positively determined, can only be kind of talked about negatively, but what you're really doing is you're hypothesizing your own

your own denigation of determination and making that into kind of an unexplained determination and that's a gesture that Hegel criticizes you know over and over again I think Okay. That's a really excellent response. Thank you. So actually, maybe now is a good time to wrap up. I put something in the sidebar, but it wasn't really a question. It was more a comment to the thread that was happening. Structural realism?

Oh, yeah. That was really... Well, that's a claim that relations, you know, they're relations without relata. Right. But they're all mathematical relations. And ultimately, the distinction between physical structure and mathematical structure evaporates. There's no kind of, the assumption that there is a principal difference between physical structure and mathematical structure is based on a kind of metaphysical realism, which needs to be... okay well next week okay so next week which is next week week eight correct yeah this week is we get so what we'll do is we'll finish off and we'll talk

about so anyway this will be a straightforward continuation of today so I think yeah the reading is Zizek and Pippin Pippin's critique of Zizek and then Zizek's critique or response to kind of Pippin. So I think the readings, I think they're up. If they're not, I'll send them. Let me know. Okay. I can look right now. I can tell you is it the absolute recoil yes it's the chapter seven and eight okay and absolute absolute recoil pages 1 to 47 and then chapter 5 2 9 to 2 4 4 and

And then Pippin back to Hagel, I have a PDF of, which I can send. Okay, perfect. I think I have a PDF of one of the Zizeks, which I can forward. But I'll send whatever I have anyway, and then I'll try to track down the extra stuff. Okay, that sounds great. And then I'll post that to the classroom when you send that. Okay. All right. Thanks, Hunter. Thanks, everyone. Okay, thank you. Thanks again. Bye. Bye. Thank you, Ray. Have a good night. Okay, good night.