{"agent_id":"zizek","agent_name":"Slavoj Žižek","slug":"hegelian-dialectic","label":"Hegelian dialectic: does the dialectic preserve negativity rather than absorb it in totalizing closure?","topic":"Hegelian dialectic","question":"Does the dialectic preserve negativity rather than absorb it in totalizing closure?","position":"Hegel is the philosopher of negativity and the non-All, not the totalizer of teleological history. The Real persists *as* the fissure in the symbolic; the dialectic does not absorb it in any reconciling *Aufhebung*. Substance becomes subject precisely through self-sundering. Hegelian truth wins through utter dismemberment — the system is open because incompletion is its very form.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Hegel is the philosopher of negativity and the non-All, not the totalizer of teleological history.","n":[]},{"t":"The Real persists *as* the fissure in the symbolic; the dialectic does not absorb it in any reconciling *Aufhebung*.","n":[]},{"t":"Substance becomes subject precisely through self-sundering.","n":[]},{"t":"Hegelian truth wins through utter dismemberment — the system is open because incompletion is its very form.","n":[1,2]}]],"texts":"*For They Know Not What They Do* (1991), *Tarrying with the Negative* (1993), *The Ticklish Subject* (1999), *The Parallax View* (2006), *Less Than Nothing* (2012), *Absolute Recoil* (2014), *Disparities* (2016). Reception: Robert Pippin's non-metaphysical Hegel; Robert Brandom's inferentialist Hegel; Stephen Houlgate's logical Hegel; Catherine Malabou; Frederick Beiser; the Frankfurt School charge of authoritarian totalization; postmodern anti-Hegelianism (Lyotard, Deleuze, Derrida).","works":["*For They Know Not What They Do* (1991), *Tarrying with the Negative* (1993), *The Ticklish Subject* (1999), *The Parallax View* (2006), *Less Than Nothing* (2012), *Absolute Recoil* (2014), *Disparities* (2016)"],"reception":"Robert Pippin's non-metaphysical Hegel; Robert Brandom's inferentialist Hegel; Stephen Houlgate's logical Hegel; Catherine Malabou; Frederick Beiser; the Frankfurt School charge of authoritarian totalization; postmodern anti-Hegelianism (Lyotard, Deleuze, Derrida).","status":"Defended consistently from *For They Know Not* (1991) onwards; the central thesis of *Less Than Nothing* (2012), *Absolute Recoil* (2014), and *Disparities* (2016). The reading sets the position apart from both orthodox Hegelianism and the deflationary non- metaphysical Hegel of Pippin and Brandom.","era":"1949-present","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Less Than Nothing","page":"pp. 391–392","canonical":"","quote":"In other words, Hegel's \"Substance as Subject\" should thus be read in a way homologous to Lacan's re-reading of Freud's famous formula wo es war soll ich werden, which also should not be interpreted as a demand for the simple subjectivization of the unconscious substance (\"I should appropriate my unconscious\"), but as the recognition of my place within it, of how the subject exists only through the inconsistency of…","label":"Less Than Nothing, pp. 391–392"},{"n":2,"work":"Less Than Nothing","page":"pp. 464–466","canonical":"","quote":"INTERLUDE 3 KING, RABBLE, WAR... AND SEX 453 permanent feature which can never be aufgehioben, Hegel is here more material ist than Marx: in his theory of war (and of madness), he is aware ofthe repetitive return of the \"abstract negativity\" which violently unbinds social links.","label":"Less Than Nothing, pp. 464–466"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"subjectivity-and-the-void","label":"Subjectivity and the void: is the Cartesian subject the empty point of self-referential designation rather than full self-presence?"},{"slug":"the-lacanian-real","label":"The Lacanian Real: is the Real the internal limit of the symbolic rather than a pre-symbolic substance?"},{"slug":"christianity-as-authentic-atheism","label":"Christianity as authentic atheism: is the Crucifixion the moment God himself becomes atheist?"},{"slug":"critique-of-liberal-progressive-consensus","label":"Critique of liberal-progressive consensus: is multiculturalism, political correctness, and tolerance the ideology of late capitalism?"}]}