A New German Idealism

Hegel, Žižek, and Dialectical Materialism

Adrian Johnston

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780231545242
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Idealism in Philosophy

In 2012, philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek published what arguably is his magnum opus, the one-thousand-page tome Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. A sizable sequel appeared in 2014, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. In these two books, Žižek returns to the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel in order to forge a new materialism for the twenty-first century. Žižek's reinvention of Hegelian dialectics explores perennial and contemporary concerns: humanity's relations with nature, the place of human freedom, the limits of rationality, the roles of spirituality and religion, and the prospects for radical sociopolitical change.

In A New German Idealism, Adrian Johnston offers a first-of-its-kind sustained critical response to Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil. Johnston, a leading authority on and interlocutor of Žižek, assesses the recent return to Hegel against the backdrop of Kantian and post-Kantian German idealism. He also presents alternate reconstructions of Hegel's positions that differ in important respects from Žižek's version of dialectical materialism. In particular, Johnston criticizes Žižek's deviations from the secular naturalism and Enlightenment optimism of his chosen sources of inspiration: not only Hegel, but Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud too. In response, Johnston develops what he calls transcendental materialism, an antireductive and leftist materialism capable of preserving and advancing the core legacies of the Hegelian, Marxian, and Freudian traditions central to Žižek.

Notes

Preface

1. Karl Marx, “Marx to Engels in Manchester, 16 January 1858 [London],” https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1858/letters/58_01_16.htm.

2. Ibid.

3. Karl Marx, “Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann in Hanover, 6 March 1868 [London],” http://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_03_06.htm; Karl Marx, “Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann in Hanover, 27 June 1870 [London],” http://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_06_27.htm.

4. Henri Lefebvre, La pensée de Lénine (Paris: Bordas, 1957), 126.

5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I and II, trans. Bayard Taylor (New York: Washington Square, 1964), pt. 1, scene 4 (“The Study [The Compact]”), lines 2038–2039 (65).

6. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 217–218.

7. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind: Part Three of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze, trans. William Wallace and A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), §467 (226).

8. H. S. Harris, Hegel’s Development, vol. 1, Toward the Sunlight, 1770–1801 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 176; H. S. Harris, Hegel’s Ladder I: The Pilgrimage of Reason (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 49, 265; Klaus Düsing, Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik, Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 15 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1976), 246; Crawford Elder, Appropriating Hegel (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1980), 39; Bernard Bourgeois, Hegel à Francfort ou Judaïsme-Christianisme-Hegelianisme (Paris: Vrin, 2000), 119–120; Frederick Beiser, Hegel (New York: Routledge, 2005), 164.

9. G. W. F. Hegel, “Aphorismen aus Hegels Wastebook (1803–1806),” in Werke in zwanzig Bänden, vol. 2, Jenaer Schriften, 1801–1807, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), 551; G. W. F. Hegel, “Aphorisms from the Wastebook,” trans. Susanne Klein, David L. Roochnik, and George Elliot Tucker, in Miscellaneous Writings of G. W. F. Hegel, ed. Jon Stewart (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 250.

10. G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Dritter Teil: Die Philosophie des Geistes mit den mündlichen Zusätzen, in Werke in zwanzig Bänden, vol. 10, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), §467 (286); Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, §467 (226).

11. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 16.

12. Ibid., 9.

13. Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso, 2012), 395.

14. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, in Werke in zwanzig Bänden, vol. 3, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), 36; Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 18.

15. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 36; Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 19.

16. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 36; Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 19.

17. Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly, Conversations with Žižek (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), 61, 64–65; Žižek, Less Than Nothing, 333–334, 338–339, 410, 492–493, 830; Slavoj Žižek, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso, 2014), 321–324; Adrian Johnston, Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 109, 125–126, 166, 178–210, 222–223, 236–238.

18. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 36.

19. G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), 28.

20. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik II: Erster Teil, Die objektive Logik, Zweites Buch; Zweiter Teil, Die subjektive Logik, in Werke in zwanzig Bänden, vol. 6, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969), 285–286; Hegel, Science of Logic, 610.

21. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik II, 286; Hegel, Science of Logic, 610.

22. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik II, 287; Hegel, Science of Logic, 611.

23. Düsing, Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik, 58.

24. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 3, trans. David Fernbach (New York: Penguin, 1981), 570–573.

25. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik II, 287–288; Hegel, Science of Logic, 612.

26. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 15, 51–52.

27. G. W. F. Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), §79 (125).

28. G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaf...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraphs
• Contents
• Preface: Drawing Lines—Žižek’s Speculative Dialectics
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Sublating Absolute Idealism—Žižekian Materialist Reversals
• One: “Freedom or System? Yes, Please!”: Spinozisms of Freedom and the Post-Kantian Aftermath Then and Now
• Two: Where to Start?: Deflating Hegel’s Deflators
• Three: Contingency, Pure Contingency—Without Any Further Determination: Hegelian Modalities
• Four: Materialism Sans Materialism: Žižekian Substance Deprived of Its Substance
• Five: Bartleby by Nature: German Idealism, Biology, and Žižek’s Compatibilism
• Conclusion: Driven On—the (Meta)Dialectics of Drive and Desire
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index