Journal of Philosophical Investigations

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Postdoctoral Researcher in Philosophy, University of Tabriz, Tabriz. Iran.

2 Ph.D. of Sociology, Kurdish Studies Institute Researcher, Kurdistan University, Sanandaj, Iran

Abstract

For Zizek, considering Hegel's philosophy as the culmination of absolute systematization and idealism which ultimately dissolves the diversity of reality into absolute idea and knowledge, is a cursory judgment of his philosophy. Zizek argues it is possible to remove the stains of absolutistic perception from Hegel's thought by using Lacan. Accordingly, Zizek’s reading of Hegel's subject, unlike his predecessor and contemporary thinkers, takes place in the space of Lacanian concepts and the context of the real. In this respect, the Hegelian subject is not a pre-predicative thing and it doesn’t have a priori coherence, but it is always bounded by the conditions of the external occurrence. The existence of the subject is the product of an abstract totalitarian negation that challenges the authoritarian and totalitarian structure of the substantial order. Lacan's excuse for rereading Hegel is not because Zizek assumes Hegel is trapped in a kind of semantic and structural self-referential subjugation. Rather, he always identifies a kind of surplus in Hegel's philosophy of spirit which can only be analyzed by using Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts. Zizek takes Hegel's dialectic from the level of the logic of the signifier, in which desire is recognized through the other and the subject is digested as the subject of a sign in the symbolic order, to the level of Lacan's logic in which there is no big and perfect other. It is always incomplete, barred, and not-all structured around a fundamental lack. According to Zizek, there is the real in the subject which is not impossible, and a desire does not fit in the framework of the production of fantasy, signifier and big other, and this is exactly the point where the subject is formed.

Keywords

-       Bowie, M. (1991) Lacan. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
-       Burman, Anders (2018) “A Lacanian Hegelianism: Slavoj Zizek’s (Mis-)Reading of Hegel” In: Hegelian Marxism: The Uses of Hegel’s Philosophy in Marxist Theory from Georg Lukács to Slavoj Zizek/ [ed] Anders Burman & Anders Baronek, Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, p. 185-198.
-       Daly, Glyn (2004) Conversations with Žižek, Cambridge & Malden: Polity.
-       Dews, P. (1996) The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy, London: Verso
-       Evans, Dylan (1997) An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London & New York: Routledge.
-       Horwitz, N. (2005) "Contra the Slovenians: Returning to Lacan and Away from Hegel," Philosophy Today, 49(1): 24-32.
-       Lacan, J. )1977( "The direction of the treatment and the principles of its power" In: Écrits: A selection. Tr. Sheridan, A., New York: W.W. Norton
-       Lacan, J. (1993) Book III: The Psychoses 1955-56. (ed. J.A. Miller, trans. R. Grigg), London: Routledge Press.
-       Lacan, J. (1977) The Four Fundamentals Concepts of Psychoanalysis (ed. J.A. Miller, trans. A. Sheridan), London: The Hogarth Press.
-       Lee, J. S. (1990) Jacques Lacan. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
-       Nobus, D. (1998) Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Rebus Press, London.
-       Parker, Ian (2004) Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction, London: Pluto Press.
-       Rasmussen, E. D. (2004) "Liberation Hurts: An Interview with Slavoj Žižek," Electronic book review available at: http://elecrtonicbookreview.com/thread.
-       Zizek, Slavoj (2008a) The Plague of Fantasies, London & New York: Verso.
-       Zizek, Slavoj (2012a) “From Democracy to Divine Violence”, in Giorgio Agamben Democracy in What State? trans. William McCuaig, New York: Columbia University Press.
-       Zizek, Slavoj (2014) The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan, trans. Thomas Scott-Railton, Cambridge, UK: Polity.
-       Zizek, Slavoj (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso.
-       Zizek, Slavoj (2006) The Parallax View, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press
-       Zizek, Slavoj (2012b) Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, London & New York: Verso.
-       Zizek, Slavoj (2008b) For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, London & New York: Verso.
-       Zizek, Slavoj (2019) The digital police state: Fichte’s revenge on Hegel, in Journal of Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 13, Issue: 28.
-       Zizek, Slavoj, (1999) The Zizek Reader, edited by Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright, Oxford and Massachusetts: Blackwell.
-       Zizek, Slavoj (2005) Slavoj Zizek’s Selected Essays, trans. Morad Farhadpour, Mazyar Eslami & Omid Mehregan, Tehran: Game No. (in Persian)
-       Zizek, Slavoj (2010) The Sublime Object of Ideology, trans. Ali Behruzi, Tehran: Tarhe No. (in Persian)
CAPTCHA Image