Slavoj Žižek - Reading Hegel

1 Cover

2 Title Page Reading Hegel Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda, and Agon Hamza polity

3 Copyright Copyright © Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda, and Agon Hamza 2022 The right of Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda, and Agon Hamza to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2022 by Polity Press Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 101 Station Landing Suite 300 Medford, MA 02155, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4591-9 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939021 The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

4 Notes on the text Notes on the text The first chapter, Hegel: The Spirit of Distrust , was written by Slavoj Žižek; the second chapter, Hegel on the Rocks: Remarks on the Concept of Nature , by Frank Ruda; and the third, The Future of the Absolute , by Agon Hamza. The introduction is coauthored.

5 Introduction Notes

6 1 Hegel: The Spirit of DistrustHegel in a Topsy-Turvy World Reconciliation in Hegel “Forgiving Recollection”: Yes, but … From Concrete Universality to Subject How does “Stubborn Immediacy” Arise? The Alethic versus the Deontic What is Absolute in Absolute Knowing “Ungeschehenmachen” The Parallax of Truth Method and Content Notes

7 2 Hegel on the Rocks: Remarks on the Concept of Nature New Geriatrics, or: Newly Born Old Nature’s Compulsion to Return Philosophy Begins. The (Eight) Dialectics of Nature Notes

8 3 The Future of the Absolute Hegel Today Marx’s Critique of Religion Theory of the State Dialectic and Politics in Hegel Notes

9 Index

10 End User License Agreement

1 Cover

2 Table of Contents

3 Title Page

4 Copyright

5 Notes on the text

6 Introduction

7 Begin Reading

8 Index

9 End User License Agreement

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Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda, and Agon Hamza

polity

Copyright © Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda, and Agon Hamza 2022

The right of Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda, and Agon Hamza to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2022 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

101 Station Landing

Suite 300

Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4591-9

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939021

The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

The first chapter, Hegel: The Spirit of Distrust , was written by Slavoj Žižek; the second chapter, Hegel on the Rocks: Remarks on the Concept of Nature , by Frank Ruda; and the third, The Future of the Absolute , by Agon Hamza. The introduction is coauthored.

According to Marx’s famous saying, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” 1Displacing this well-known quip, if only a bit, we might ask: Does this also hold for world-historic personages and facts in and of philosophy? Could one read Hegel’s philosophy itself as the first, the tragic event? Such a reading would in some respects not be entirely alien to a certain phase in the reception of Hegel’s thought in general. Many of his readers have asserted that he can and must be considered an essentially tragic thinker – one may here just in passing refer to the famous “tragedy in ethical life” which is often taken to provide a paradigmatic articulation not only of the constitution of the Greek, but also of modern political life and ethical communities, despite this view being repeatedly contested. However, if – for the sake of following this hypothesis – Hegel represents the tragic event, not only of ethical life, but also of modern philosophy in general, where and how do we locate its repetition in the form of the farce? Where are we to find Hegel’s inverted twin?