Hello and welcome to the last session of contemporary readings of Hegel with Ray Brace here. I'm going to pass the mic off to him right now. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Theodore. Okay, so today, I guess this is our final session. So we're just going to try to in a way kind of summarize or get to the gist of the discussion so far. So we're following on we're going to follow on from last week's discussion of the psychoanalytic interpretation of Hegel and obviously Zizek is its most famous
proponent and we're just simply going to focus on the disagreement between Zizek and Robert Pippin. As the best expressed in Pippin's review of Zizek's Less Than Nothing, which I hope you had a chance to look at. Zizek responds to Pippin's criticisms in the introduction to absolute recoil. So hopefully maybe I'm not going to cover I won't be able to cover that in the things I want to see to begin with but then you know people I hope we can
discuss this in the conversation afterwards. Okay so I mean okay once again the handout has just got a few I think useful quotes or kind of quotes when I think which I think pinpoints the gist of Zizek's argument or his you know what I take to be his you know radical reconstruction of Hegel and as As we saw, because Zizek, along with Nadine Dolarne and Lenko Zypanczyk are all part of this Hegelian-Lakanian triumvirate, or these scholars who are committed to proposing a radical Lakanianal hegel,
but all the while insisting that their reading is anchored in Hegel's own thinking. In other words, that they're not simply kind of, you know, superimposing a Lacanian scheme as on to Hegel, but actually exposing the most, you know, the radical kernel of Hegel's own thoughts, which has been passed over, both in a traditional metaphysical reading, but also in the many critical readings, the critical rejections of Hegel in 20th century European philosophy. So as we saw, if we remember from last week, it's really a disagreement about the status of negativity, about what Hegel means by the negative,
and it's linked to self-consciousness or spirit or geist. that we saw already when we were discussing last week with Laden-Dollar's interpretation, the parallels between Hegelian sublation, or of Hebel, and Freudian negativity, negativity or the negativity that is proper to the unconscious and the claim was that one that whereas hegelian negativity is ultimately conceptual
that determinate negation re-inscribes what has been cancelled within the concept in the Freudian unconscious you know as elaborated by Lacan you get a kind of a non-conceptual negativity a register of negation which cannot which resists reintegration within the con within what Hegel calls the concept so what's at stake here is the claim that there is a kind of a determinate negation to determinate negation which is the motor of Hegel's speculative dialectic or speculative idealism itself unfolds on the basis of some more radical or more
fundamental a logical negation a negation which is which is not determinate but as we'll see in Zizek's account which is a symptom of over-determination so we've got a contrast here between um determinate negation or the determination of negation as being the index of ideal of hegel's idealism i guess confidence in the power of the concept to you know to you know to in a way to kind of to work through contradiction contradiction is the essence of the concept, in a way, the the determinant negation of contradiction is
what allows the concept to unfold and to determine itself. And the the alternative claim is that there is, in Freud, there's a thinking of of negativity as over-determination. We'll see what over-determination means in for Zizek because he explains it where over-determination is to be understood in terms of well I think to put it very simply a determination an a logical determination of logical determination so in other words there's a kind of a second order determination which determines logical
determination but cannot itself be logically determined. So this is the the relevant contrast between determinate negation on the one hand, a safer of speculative idealism, and over-determination on the other hand as you know the the marker of you know material or a register of negativity which would be materialistic as opposed to idealistic. Once again, so I've just put up, okay, so the handout consists of, you know, a dozen quotes. First, from Zizek's account.
So the first move that Zizek makes is vis-a-vis this, you know, the understanding of, you know, negation of negation, of sublation, as it's called in English. and here he counters the traditional objection the traditional rejection in a way critical theory and poststructuralism that Hegel's negation of negation in a way leaves something out okay it leaves something out and this something is let's say difference in
itself or non-identity or the trace in data, whatever you want to call it, but that there is something in a way that resists determinate negation. So if determinate negation is understood in terms of the traditional understanding of of Hegel where you have a conceptual determination such as for instance a claim about the necessity of some conceptual predicates. Let's say that is
contradicted by a claim that something is something that was thought to be necessary turns out to be contingent then the claim would be that the Hegelian outhebern works by reinscribing this contingency within the concept so that you affirm the necessity of contingency as essential to logical necessity so you move from an assertion of necessity a claim that this necessity turns out to be merely contingent and then you know the
speculative resolution would be the claim that the very contingency of this necessity is in fact the reassertion of its necessity so that contingency is integrated into conceptual necessity and here Hegel's philosophy of nature is a prime example so when Hegel says that if one opposes the necessity of the concept, the necessity of conceptual law or of the conceptual credit, you know, some kind of conceptual identity to the contingency of material particularity the the first objection would be that what seems to be yet that
there's an opposition there's an opposition between the universe on the particular where the only the universal is necessary and the particular is is contingent. So the universal characteristics of spirit manifest themselves in contingent particular instances. And then the Hegelian move is to say that the particularity of the, the contingent particularity of the instantiation of the universal is in fact essential to the universal as such, is in fact necessary for the universal to be universal.
And this is how some material contingency or natural particularity is reintegrated into the concept or the notion. So nature then is spiritualized according to the traditional reading of idealism. now Zizek proposes so Zizek proposes an interesting in a way not a kind of an antithetical reading but he thinks that this reading gets the emphasis wrong he thinks that this when Hegel affirms the necessity of contingency for spirit self-realization
he's not simply cancelling out particularity in the universality, the necessary universality of the notion. The claim is that the universality itself is nothing apart from its contingent instantiation. so that it's not only that contingency is necessary, but that necessity is also contingent. And so in a way, both the difference between contingency and necessity can only be properly registered
if one adopts a properly dialectical vantage point through what Zizek will call a paralactic superposition. In other words, from one point of view, contingent particularity is swallowed up or is integrated within universal necessity. But from another point of view, this universal necessity is entirely dependent upon contingent particularity. So Zizek's proposal is that, in a way, because necessity depends upon contingency, contingency itself is necessary for the realization, the proper actualization,
or the proper actuality of conceptual necessity. So this is a properly Hegelian or dialectical resolution, so the opposition between necessity and contingency um so you don't have you know necessity which is you know negated by contingency and then the this negation is itself negate you know negated in turn to yield the necessity of contingency you have um the uh um contingency the contingency of necessity is the starting point that's the first thesis if you want the contingency of necessity
okay which is then negated So then you then have the necessity of contingency and this This it must itself be negated so that the necessity of contingency is also yields the contingency of necessity but at a higher order so this is a sense in which contingency the contingency is not just an obstacle you know exhibiting necessity but actually it's constitutive condition okay so the first quote is on the hand
there is Zizek's I think characterization of this point the exemption from sublation in other words precisely what is taken to resist sublation turns out to be constitutive of it so Zizek's quote is the direct attempt of aufhebung is the initial position it is negated in its failure in the element that resists it thus the negation of negation is then the insight into how this resisting element this obstacle is in itself a positive condition of possibility the aufhebung has to be sustained by its constitutive exception so so what if the lesson of the of the hegel
is that the loss itself the failure is to be celebrated um so and i think this is once again so this is very important for zizek's entire strategy his reading strategy uh vis-a-vis hegel is that the point is not to read uh you know uh negation and the negation of negation consecutively um but rather to understand how you know with the negation of negation actually constitutes the initially negated term and this this falls from his emphasis on you know the logic of reflection um in hegel which is why he thinks that you know the essence is the is the you know the key to Hegel's
speculative thinking the logic of essence is the core of Hegel's entire philosophy so in other words the very thing to make this you know to make this more kind of concrete in a way. So if you think in a standard critique of Hegel, you'll have, let's say, you know, the claim that the negation, you know, what Hegel attempts to achieve for the negation of the negation is subverted by something that refuses to be negated. So that, you know, let's say you know if in derrida it'll be something it'll be the trace
in a dawn it'll be non-identity so there'll be some kind of uh you know a conceptual or a logical residue that prevents that resists um uh the the second negation um so zizek's proposes that we take this as a starting point that um if the first attempt at determinant negation is a starting point, it fails, and it fails because if we try to simply affirm the necessity of contingency simply by, you know, by swallowing up contingency within necessity it's always possible for someone to point out to identify
a dimension of contingency that simply refuses that cannot contribute to necessity you know that cannot be converted into a part of necessity in this way but then this very um you know that The identification of this resistant element is precisely the condition for realizing that the failure of integration, in other words, the resistance to contingency's resistance to incorporation into necessity, is precisely how contingency actually enables the actualization or the effectivity of necessity.
So this is why the loss of the realization that what was thought to be necessary contingency that was thought to be necessary for the universal is in fact not really necessary it's this realization that successfully effectuates the necessity of the true necessity of the universal now this has a a kind of a corollary and it's a corollary at the level of let's say ideology critique in terms of
so the key move here is to convert what is taken to be an epistemological obstacle into you know into an ontological data this is you know the classic he says when Adorno's interpreting Hegel's advanced vis-a-vis Kant, he says that what Hegel does is that Hegel affirms the being of contradiction, so that what things, the The antimonies of reason, what is antinomic for reason, the distinction between the finite and the infinite, etc., marks an epistemic limitation for Kant, and the speculative move
is to realize that what was taken to be a limitation is in fact the thing itself. So that the thing itself is nothing but the contradiction in the phenomenal field, or the field of appearances. So this is, you know, an epistemological limit is converted into the thing itself. in the social domain on the psychic and social domain this means that things let's say political or practical impossibilities if they are ontologized in this way
become fatalities if you say that what is psychologically or practically or political impossible for me is actually real, is actually subsists in itself, then it seems that the only conclusion to be drawn is one of fatalism. We can only accept the irresolvability of the antagonism. okay there are antagonisms there's a contradiction between um you know what i need and what exists or what ought to be what is but this antagonism can never be overcome and all we can do is you
know accept that the antagonism is structural and um you know is as a kind of a substantive ontological status but this leads to a very conservative position which in which we simply you know we simply we have no option but to kind of resign ourselves to this impossibility so the claim is that or Zizek's claim is that there's another way of understanding or the psychoanalytic perspective allows us to avoid this tragic resignation okay in other words that the lesson of psychoanalysis is not simply that we have
to resign ourselves to what is impossible but that's because the impossible is nothing you know the impossible is nothing but a crack or a fissure in the order of possibility it's also just as possibility is structured around the impossible the impossible is nothing but this gap or fissure in the order of the possible so in other words this is why the you know in a way they you know the contradiction is is unstable it's a mistake to substantialize it or to ontologize it it's it's something that can be redeployed through some kind of
intervention so I'll just read the end of the passage in bold from the second quotation on the handout the premise of psychoanalysis is that one can intervene you know one can intervene in the social field or in in reality one can intervene with the symbolic into the real because the real is not external reality in itself but a crack in the symbolic so one can intervene with an act which reconfigures the field and thus transforms impossibility Traversing the fantasy doesn't mean accepting the misery of our lives. On the contrary, it means that only after we traverse the fantasies, obfuscating this
misery can we effectively change it. So the claim is that because the real is nothing but the crack in the symbolic, and because the symbolic is the order of signification within which we, in terms of which we understand ourselves and our lives there is something we can do there is an in other words by except no by once we once we understood the way in which Once we've understood the fantasies that through which this crack in the symbolic is hidden
from us, you know, the various ideological fantasies through which one tries to kind of shore up the gap or the contradiction in symbolic order once those ideological narratives are exposed then we realize that our existence is structured around this you know this impossibility or this kind of fundamental antagonism. And it's this realization that allows us to do something. In other words, so, I mean, dialectically, the claim is that what is disabling,
what is truly disabling is the occlusion of disability or like the attempt to disguise or mask a constituent of disability. But the recognition of disability is itself enabling. So this is the claim that once you recognize your symptom, once you recognize that you're suffering from some kind of holdability, that there's something wrong with you, This recognition allows you to do something on the basis of this acceptance of one's disability.
Acceptance here doesn't mean resignation. Acceptance here would have to be a kind of a cognitive understanding which allows you to act, to make a decision in a way which will have transformative consequences for yourself and obviously Zizek thinks that this or controversially he believes that this kind of can be transposed into a political register. Okay but so traversing the fantasy converts a blockage into an access point so this is the the second consequence of this of Zizek's rereading of determinant negation
still but nevertheless he he wants to mark out okay the question that arises then is this is that if this if one can intervene through the symbolic into the real okay this is this is the claim that you know that the task is to intervene with the symbolic into the real the question is what is the the medium of this intervention in other words the symbolic we know encompasses both the conceptual but the symbolic in Lacan is also in a way has a kind of a
non-conceptual structure in other words it has a symbolic unconscious is structured like a language but the signifying order of the order of signification which makes conceptualization possible does not itself have a straightforward you know logical or conceptual towards a symbolic order which is a condition of all conceptualization that has a structure and you know is is a kind of machine but it's a machine that doesn't have conceptual form this is why you know you need kind of sticks to understand how this machine works or the symbolic order functions but you
realize that it's not it doesn't itself that this this structure itself is you know a signifying the chains of signification are anchored in you know mechanical processes which are themselves non signifying so if we're going to intervene how do we intervene within the symbolic order is it through I can see is it through some kind of conceptualization or on the contrary by understanding her or attempted conceptualizations are themselves symptoms of this non conceptual functioning of this kind of these automatisms of the unconscious, these automatisms that are constitutive of the unconscious
structure of the symbolic order. here Zizek thinks that there is something that's well very simply the idealist Hegel's idealist dialectic or Hegel's dialectic is idealist to the extent that it privileges form conceptual form in a hegelian sense over let's say a dimension of materiality which is non-conceptual so in other words there's a surplus of
dialectical form but this surplus of dialectical form is can't be directly situated within the conceptual register so I think I know I take G's critique or rejoinder to people just you know to philosophical critiques of Hegel by Derrida Adorno and others it's not different it's not the trace or known identity that inhibits the determined negation and the kind of the the articulation of conceptual form in Hegel it's something else something which is unconscious and something which is formless okay so in other words we've got now we have to kind
of think about uh kind of a distinction in terms of uh conceptual form as the medium within which determinate negation unfolds and a kind of material formlessness as precisely what is always you know the ineliminable surplus or residue of mediation through conceptual form so this is if we come down to quote number three on the handout I'll just, once again, I'll just read out the short sentence, the sentence in bold at the very end.
This limitation, so Zizek thinks he has identified the proper limitation of Hegel's speculative idealism. And this limitation, this inability to think the indivisible remainder of the dialectical form, not as an excess of the real, which simply eludes dialectical mediation, but as a product of this mediation as its concluding moment is clearly discernible Higgins theory of marriage so Jesus claim here is that's what resists or no work in a way exceeds integration through conceptual form is
is not the real understood as some excess or surplus, because the real is nothing but a puncture in the symbolic order. the real if you claim that the real is um in other words if you claim that the real um the excess of the real um simply transcends a symbolic inscription what you're doing is you're substantializing the real in other words and as soon as you have transcendence you have substantialization So the Lacanian real is precisely not some kind of substantial thing or some substantial process or force that transcends conceptual mediation.
mediation it's simply rather it's it's a blockage or inhibition which is entirely imminent to conceptual mediation it's a real of the symbolic it's a puncturing of the symbolic but not through some object that is somehow kind of that transcends symbolic inscription, but it simply arises through the impasses of symbolization, or some kind of short circuits, or dysfunction in the order of symbolization or in the order of conceptualization.
So, what is real or what blocks the autonomy of dialectical form is a a formlessness you know is a formlessness which can't simply be juxtaposed to form but is it is inherent to form okay so that there is a formlessness that is inherent to conceptual form and this formlessness can simply is not a thing some kind of substance that can that can be kind of a juxtaposed to conceptual form um now the reference to um hegel's theory of marriage i mean
I take it what Zizek has in mind here is he thinks that he, I think, well, this is just an aside, but he juxtaposes, you know, Zizek often points out, refers to Hegel's account of monarchy. in the philosophy of right and elsewhere where he says the king's ratification of law, which seems to be this absurd, you know, non-rational residue, is in fact the condition for the effectuation, turns out to be constitutive for the legality of the law.
So in other words, the divine right of the king isn't simply a kind of an absurd interruption of the autonomy of law, but is in fact the condition for its effectuation. So it's the, you know, ultimately kind of is, it's the legality or the rightness of law. And Zizek, I think, has in mind, when he's talking about Hegel's account of marriage,
It means that the institution of marriage is somehow seen as, I guess, ratifying or properly effectuating love between individuals but the claim there is that the institution here the institution isn't
institution of marriage doesn't properly undermine the you know the positivity or the metaphysical substantialization of love so the claim the disanalogy between a kind of marriage and the account of law and king is that it's precisely the seeming absurdity of the gratuitous of divine decree, which consummates or realizes the essence of right in one case, whereas in the case of love, Hegel seems to see the institution of marriage as, in a way,
verifying, you know, verifying and thereby kind of substantializing the positivity of individual love. And he thinks that there's something wrong here. He thinks that there's a disanalogy between these two instances, and that one is, you know, the former is Hegel at his most radical, you know, where the thing itself is nothing. the absurdity of divine rights is the ground for all rational, right? The rationality of justice is grounded in the irrationality of, you know, a royal decree. whereas in the case of marriage it seems that you know it's you know the
irrationality of individual romantic love is somehow rationalized by the institution of marriage okay I apologize that took me that's not as clearly stated as it could have been but I think that's the basic idea that's what he means in this remark about this contrast between Hegel's account of divine right and Hegel's account of marriage so so now he's identified this what he thinks is the genuine kind of the structural limitation of Hegel's idealist dialectic. And here, okay, and now he thinks that this surplus, this surplus of formlessness, which
is intrinsic to conceptual form, is in a way indexed by the notion of repetition. and he thinks that the one way of understanding the crux of the philosophical critiques of hedalianism in the 20th century is in terms of a contrast between sublation and repetition so this is quote number four so the first part of the court is saying that if from a hegelian point of view you can't the new is simply the repetition of the old it's precisely the repetition of the old in a way which doesn't
try to vary it it's in a way it's it's the it's the blockage of the old that ushers in or generates the new. The attempt to produce or manufacture the new through some kind of self-conscious innovation is simply kind of never generates, you know, genuine novelty. But it's the refusal, in a way, it's the refusal of notion of evolution or of adaptive evolution that constitutes the new as a rupture or as a break. That's the blockage of evolution that initiates some kind of
radically emergent novelty. That's the first part of the quote. And then I'll read the passage in bold and from quote number four so here's the crux of the post-hegelian rupture it's most elementary feature from Kierkegaard to Marx sorry it's most elementary feature from Kierkegaard to Marx is the gap that emerges between sublation and repetition that is repetition acquires autonomy with regard to sublation and the two are now opposed either a thing is sublated into a higher mode of its existence drags on in its inertia this liberation of repetition from the hold of
sublation this idea of a non-cumulative repetition which just runs on empty not generating anything new is usually taken as the minimal index of post-hegelian materialism and it's a break with the Hegelian circle of total conceptual mediation. So here's the idea that, again, there's an idea of blind repetition, the blind repetition of the drive, you know, in Freud and Lacan, or the blind repetition of instinct, or the repetition that is peculiar to subjectivity for Kierkegaard. this is exactly what what resists sublation okay what is sublation sublation is determinate negation
the determinate negation is in a way a kind of repetition you know what is the termination it's the repetition of negation you've got negation and then the negation of the negation but this the repetition of negation is precisely what yields a conceptual transformation was you know what you know generates the you know the the inversion of subject and predicate and speculative problem of Hegel's you know speculative dialectic so she is saying that the crux of all the kind of the critiques of Hegel from Kierkegaard Marx and Nietzsche through I guess Adorno Derda and Deleuze etc is in this idea this attempt to
identify a register of repetition would not simply be which would not be dialecticizable which cannot be sublation for the words that this is so the question is how do we understand this kind of repetition well there's an ambiguity here between because clearly one attempt if you think of a philosopher like Kierkegaard you know the repetition undertaken by repetition can only be undertaken by subjectivity and
the way in which subjectivity repeats is precisely what resists objectification or something that can be it's a mode of differentiation that cannot be objectively inscribed or that cannot be described and explained using some kind of neutral or impartial point of view upon reality so here that the no the repetition of the subject and you know
is a mode of differentiation with ends the the objective cataloging of difference and here I mean it's not too hard to see here there's a direct link with you know Berkson's account of time that what happens that you know the time of consciousness the time of lived experience involved because it's it involves a kind of a radical qualitative heterogeneity so that every repetition at the level of duration or lived experience is the repetition of a difference is it makes a difference it's repetition that makes the difference and obviously alter de leuze's all account um um
on the other hand with psychoanalysis the repetition is taken to be in a sense or perhaps machinic in a sense which is both which is juxtaposed to kind of spiritual repetition or the repetitions that are constitutive of conscious life on the one hand but also to the kinds of repetition which one finds in some kind of purely let's say kind of physicalist mechanicism so that and I think what she is pointing to here is
the idea of a what he's crediting psychoanalysis with the discovery of a mode of repetition which is in a way which is mechanical but non objective Hey Ray, I think we lost you. Can everyone hear me right now? Yeah, I'm still here. Okay. Yeah, I can hear you.
Okay, great. I think we'll just wait a couple seconds to see if he comes back in. All right, I'm going to try and send him an email and invite him again.
So, I still have not heard back from Ray right now. I want to give him a couple more minutes, but in the case that we don't hear back from him in, say, five minutes. Would people be interested in rescheduling a short last session? Yeah, that's fine with me. Yeah, I can stick around too. Okay, yeah, I don't want to make people wait for 20 minutes and then nothing happens. Right. Yeah, I'd be open to waiting up to 10
and then maybe reschedule after that. Or five, whatever. Okay, yeah, let's wait just a little bit more then, and then I'll let you guys know. I'm in contact with Mo right now too, so. Thank you.
we've waited more than 20 minutes now. So I think I'm going to send an email to Ray just asking him to reschedule. Would next Sunday at 10 a.m. to like 11 a.m. EST work for people? It works for me. Okay, cool. Awesome. Next Sunday? Yeah, we'll just push it back one week and we'll do like an hour long. Say that again? I'm sorry. Oh, we'll just push it back one week for next Sunday and then we'll just do an hour long. Just type it to me. Okay. Alright.