Less Than Nothing: Hegel And The Shadow Of Dialectical Materialism

Update 2: The work of Zizek is a tremendous mystification and a distraction from the need to create a new 'post-marxism' for a new era of a communist project. Is Zizek a crypto-Stalinist or not? Is his dialectical materialism anything more than a prose style exercise for a fan club? The left cannot advance because it is confused, and has been confused from the start by Hegelian misinterpretation, muddle over dialectics, out of date economic theory, darwinian illusions carrying social darwinist ideologies....The left needs to recall communism before marxism, what to say of Zizekian brands, and focus on the realities of marginalist economics and its ideologies, the questions of postdarwinism, the redefinition of a 'new communism' beyond the corrupted Bolshevik version....For a new approach to the issues of postcapitalism and communism: Last and First Men 1848+: Capitalism, Communism, And The End of History This review is from: Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (Hardcover)Some first impressions: review to be updated:In one way, Zizek is right: the question of Hegel has haunted all of his successors. Certainly he is haunting Zizek, who seems entangled in that legacy, as was Marx, who escaped from it, but who left a false hybrid, dialectical materialism. It seems as though the author is frozen in the 1830′s, when the legacy of Hegel had yet to pass away from its great dominance. But the question of Hegel is simple: if he dominates the future of philosophy, it is because Kant dominates the future of Hegel, who tries by artifice, and mystification to resolve the questions posed at the beginning of German Classical philosophy. And it was Schopenhauer who protested the slick reduction of the larger legacy of transcendental idealism into the pop hegelianism dressed up as esoteric science fiction in Hegel's curious tour de force, the Phenomenology. We see the exact phenomenon in Zizek, protested by Schopenhauer, of trying to create a new logic beyond contradiction, an old pastime, and a failed project. Hegel's hidden sources in the occultism of the magic triangle have been documented. The mystique of the dialectic is therefore a tired game.It is hard to deal with a work as oddly sophistical as this one by Zizek, but in a way it should prove itself testimony not to the future of Hegel for the 21st century but to his endgame, and perhaps the gateway to a larger vision that includes the foundation in Kant. As in the 1840′s the phantom can dissipate rather suddenly. The exotic brand of poison is freakish, and its curious nihilism and platform for political/stalinist gangsterism is a dangerous brew. Hegelian sublation should speak to a larger framework, one that sees German Classical philosophy in its totality as a single moment.In any case, what is the meaning of this for leftists, in the Marxian vein? Zizek has hopelessly confused the already muddled dialectical materialism with a text that celebrates Hegel but nowhere cites the discourse of `Geist'. The term is absent from the index in a thousand page work on Hegel. The evidence of the chronic schizophrenia here between the idealist and the materialist remains unresolved, and deadly.The sad reality is that dialectical materialism is faked philosophy of history, and an unnecessary muddle of Hegel, economics, and historical theory. Something new is needed.It is time to see how Zizek has completely finished off Hegel in a final resting place as a mess of pottage, and move on.The reality is that Hegel's philosophy is very brittle, too brittle to support a foundation for socialism or communism. To which must be added the failure of Hegel to achieve an understanding of Kantian ethics. And we see the outcome perhaps in the Stalinist psychopathy of the Politician that looms over Zizek's account.Let in some fresh air:There are many alternate strains, consider the legacy of Kantian ethical socialism of the late nineteenth century. Kantian Ethics and Socialism // Kantian Ethics and Socialism The point is that Marx hijacked the socialist legacy, and injected Hegel into it.Why not deal with the originals?For a view of history that answers to historical evolution in a way that illuminates Hegel without succumbing to his metaphysics consider: Descent of Man Revisited World History: The Hidden Clue to Human Evolution Update 1: A question for Mr. Zizek ...Is Zizek a Darwinist?The text of a thousand pages on the dialectics of history has barely a reference to evolution, no mention of Darwin, and what I suspect is the usual bluff with academic Hegelians (and Kantians) that Hegel could have been a Darwinist and that the entire apparatus of Geist is not an Intelligent Design argument. Marxists will claim that `dialectical materialism' would answer such objections, but we should wonder if this apparatus of dialectic (never clarified) could coexist with random evolution.I would not fault Zizek for honestly stating he was not a Darwinist, but most would, and that would jeopardize his media position, sales, and celebrity status. This situation shows the futility of trying to base Marxist or capitalist-critique historicism on a Hegelian foundation. If you modify the foundation, why bother with it. If you maintain it then you are proposing an idealist theory of history. I am often puzzled that Marxists could never get beyond this Hegelian schizophrenia.In any case, Hegel's core is a teleological argument, an historicism of freedom, and a complex variant of an Intelligent Design argument. The monumental sophistries of academic Hegelians to maintain the pretense of an Hegelian Darwinism is ludicrous.This inchoherence pervades the core of Zizek's book, and we have to ask how a consistency can be recovered for a leftist historical/evolutionary viewpoint.

This is a sweeping review of Hegel's "dialectical method", its application in his history and phenomenology, and then its outworking in the thought of Hegel's contemporaries and successors. All of this is Zizek applying Hegel (beginning with the genesis of Hegelian-ism in Kant) to [mostly] continental philosophers influenced by Hegel, which comes out to just about everybody in the European antirealist tradition that Kant began. Besides Hegel Lacan takes up the most consideration but beyond him there are many many others to numerous to name.Philosophers never declare themselves for "realism" or "antirealism", a division always reflected in their thought. Zizek is an acknowledged heavyweight in the antirealist domain and his dominant interests, psychology, and political history, reveal themselves in all the threads of this book. He covers these and many more subjects (and philosophers) as he interprets them through Hegel. Sometimes he notes where he thinks their thought "goes wrong" (relative to Hegel) but more often he uses their material to illustrate the added insights they bring to the subject matter via their Hegelian influence.It is impossible to cover this book in detail, but I can describe its broad structure. Imagine a wheel with a hub and spokes, perhaps a bicycle wheel. Zizek begins at the hub with a theme "truth has the structure of fiction", almost his opening line. His writing spirals around the hub in tight circles outward toward the rim. On the way, he crosses the same spokes which in this analogy stand for both discrete subjects within the universe of his interests (and they are broad) and the philosophers whose thought he uses to illustrate his point. Round and round he goes touching the same spokes again and again each time adding more or new context with which to understand the particular subject and philosopher involved. Throughout the book, Zizek weaves together his own commentary with extensive quotes from dozens of philosophers from Kant to Meillassoux. As he crosses each spoke over again their thought is re-illustrated, re-applied to the subject matter at hand whether it be language, sex, politics, economics, history, or quantum mechanics.I am a realist philosopher and it has been a long time since I've read Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Freud, Nietzsche, or Marx. I've not read Lacan, or any of the many other continental antirealists of the later 20th century Zizek uses here. Zizek's vocabulary, evolved over two centuries of antirealism, is dense, obscure, and difficult for me. But as the many subjects are touched on again and again his meaning became clearer. Thanks to the enhancing repetition, retouching each spoke, his central arguments became clearer. Was Zizek's repetition solidifying my impressions, or was I just getting used to the lingo? Probably some of both.There is probably more than one legitimate way to interpret Hegel, Lacan, and the rest. Zizek's authoritative grasp of this material certainly makes his interpretation one of them, an approach to be taken seriously. He runs into trouble only when he crosses into the subject of science, represented by the association between quantum mechanics and cosmology, where he seems a bit out of his depth. His description of the relation between the Higgs field and the "true and false vacuum" (the next-to-last chapter) quotes Paul Steinhardt and is clear enough, but then Zizek goes back and casts this phenomenon in Hegelian, Lacanian, and even Freudian terms! None of this could be more than poetic metaphor, but Zizek doesn't seem to take it that way. To me (and I opine here because I've read so much physics and cosmology) quantum physics as described by modern physicists, can only be understood in realist terms. If I understand antirealism properly nothing in the corpus of antirealist thought can possibly be about (signify) the quantum world which is washed out long before the point where the external horizon appears to phenomenal experience.Although I am not an antirealist, I enjoy reading Zizek. This book is long and dense, but his enthusiasm and humor reveal themselves throughout. I enjoy reading philosophers who are passionate about their work and at the same time refuse to take themselves too seriously. It's hard to tell if Zizek takes himself too seriously. I don't think so, but this ambiguity coupled with a little self-deprecating humor (where do you see that otherwise in philosophy these days) is all a part of the book's charm.To finish this review, I do want to give kudos to the publisher (Verso Books)! I recently read a 125 page Kindle book priced at $40 (greedy publisher who shall remain unnamed). This book is 1000 pages long and only $11! Very reasonable! Highly recommended for Zizek fans and anyone interested in a forcefully argued interpretation of Hegel and much of antirealist thought from Kant to Meillassoux.

Standard Zizek: all over the place, dense, difficult to understand, going round in intellectual circles, jumping through hoops, that seem like they don't need to exist... and then something riveting and insightful. Far too long, of course, and far too many commentaries on familiar Zizekian tropes that can be found in previous books, but when he writes, there are few like him.

So what do we have here? (Yet another) trip through the wonderland of dialectics. "It is everywhere, one just has to know how to see it" - Zizek seems to say. But how about the historical core of Hegel's (and Marx's, for that matter) philosophical endevour? In other words: what is there Zizek wants us to learn besides some dialectical magic tricks (unveiled curtesy to the expert Father-author)? To ask some even more unsettling questions: what about the "born of crisis" unfolding of the Spirit? Is Zizek really trying to convince us that there's no difference in the dialectics of, to take some examples from the book, the use of English in India, some piece of american pop culture, a Rabinovitch joke and nanotechnology? Clearly, we are lacking a "molar" context here. Cultural, economical, social, any. In that respect could it be argued, that rather than in dialectics, Zizek is in fact rather involved in an introduction to the joys of dialectics?

I enjoy reading Zizek, but I sometimes gain the impression that he is repeating what he has been told and without checking or acknowledging the source. For example on page 458 there is a long footnote about J.S.Bach where Zizek refers to Bach's composer son but without naming him. In English even though he may have more than one son, to refer to a composer son is to imply that there was only one son who composed. In the case of J.S.Bach however he had three composer sons: W.F.Bach (perhaps the most innovative of the three) C.P.E.Bach (the one Zizek is presumably referring to) and J.C.Bach (otherwise known as the London Bach).

Completely useless from the political point of view, Zizek is a great writer and a genius in finding original connections between philosophies and popular culture

Don't believe the freeze dried academic philosophers. Zizek is where it's at. But a little less than nothing would have been more than enough.