The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic

by Catherine Malabou

This book is one of the most important recent books on Hegel, a philosopher who has had a crucial impact on the shape of continental philosophy. Published here in English for the first time, it includes a substantial preface by Jacques Derrida in which he explores the themes and conclusions of Malabou's book. The Future of Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic restores Hegel's rich and complex concepts of time and temporality to contemporary philosophy. It examines his concept of time, relating it to perennial topics in philosophy such as substance, accident and the identity of the subject. Catherine Malabou's also contrasts her account of Hegelian temporality with the interpretation given by Heidegger in Being and Time , arguing that it is the concept of 'plasticity' that best describes Hegel's theory of temporality. The future is understood not simply as a moment in time, but as something malleable and constantly open to change through our interpretation.
The book also develops Hegel's preoccupation with the history of Greek thought and Christianity and explores the role of theology in his thought.
Essential reading for those interested in Hegel and contemporary continental philosophy, The Future of Hegel is also fascinating to those interested in the ideas of Heidegger and Derrida.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Catherine Malabou (b. 1959) is a French philosopher. She is a professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS and professor of modern European philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, London. She is known for her work on plasticity, a concept she culled from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which has proved fertile within contemporary economic, political, and social discourses. Widely regarded as one of the most exciting figures in what has been called “The New French Philosophy,” Malabou’s research and writing covers a range of figures and issues, including the work of Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida; the relationship between philosophy, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis; and concepts of essence and difference within feminism.

Born in Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, Catherine Malabou began her advanced studies at the Université Paris-Sorbonne before attending the prestigious École normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, where, in 1994, she submitted her dissertation on G.W.F. Hegel under the direction of Jacques Derrida. Her thesis was published in 1996 under the title L’avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, 2005) with a long preface by Derrida, whom she would later co-author La Contre-allée (1999; Counterpath, 2004). Before arriving at Kingston University, Malabou became assistant professor at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre in 1995 and, as a frequent lecturer in the USA, has taught at UC Berkeley, The New School in New York City, New York State University at Buffalo, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and, most recently, UC Irvine.

Catherine Malabou’s philosophical work forges new connections and intellectual networks that imaginatively leap across existing synaptic gaps between, for example, continental philosophy and neuroscience; the philosophy of neuroscience and the critique of capitalism; neuroscience and psychoanalysis; and continental and analytic philosophy (notably Kant). As well, her work is explosive and iconoclastic, shattering perceived understandings of Hegel, feminism and gender, and the implications of post-structuralism.

Starting with her 2004 book, Que faire de notre cerveau? (What Should We Do With Our Brain?, 2009), Catherine Malabou has argued passionately and provocatively for a connection between continental philosophy and empirical neuroscience. She centers her argument on a highly original interpretation of the concept of plasticity, an interpretation that she first uncovered in her reading of Hegel’s dialectic. Plasticity refers to the capacity both to receive form and to give form. Although the concept of plasticity is central to neuroscience, Malabou’s work shows that neuroscientists and lay people often misunderstand the basic plasticity of the brain, succumbing to an ideology that focuses solely on its capacity to receive form, that is, the capacity of the brain to be shaped in and through its experience of the world to the exclusion of its creative, form-giving power. In other words, the reigning ideology that governs both the neuroscientific community and the broader culture substitutes flexibility for plasticity, and flexibility, Malabou warns us, “is plasticity minus its genius.” The emphasis on flexibility also fits all too neatly with the demands of capitalism under neoliberalism, which demands efficiency, flexibility, adaptability and versatility as conditions of employability in a post-Fordist economy. The creative, form-giving power of the brain—its genius—consists in its explosive capacity, a capacity that unleashes new possibilities, and herein also lies the capacity for resistance. In her conclusion, Catherine Malabou writes: “To ask ‘What should we do with our brain?’ is above all to visualize the possibility of saying no to an afflicting economic, political, and mediatic culture that celebrate

Reviews

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a pretty amazing work. Malabou starts with Hegel and is able to present the change Hegel presents within the Dialectic. She thinks through subjectivity as a non-static dynamic, in order to highlight the split in past and future through the transitional movement. In that sense, Hegel's future is his past; a retroactive projection that overcodes the event.

Somewhat unsurprisingly Malabou reaches a Deleuzian-like plasticity showing how in many ways, how Deleuze is a post-structural Hegel, although she doesn't say this as her emphasis is on Hegel. Although Malabou does not spend too long on each chapter, she is able to explain in depth various themes that Hegel touches on, making this a pretty dense book. All in all, this is an amazing text.

[Randal Samstag · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the Hegelian dialectic as an experience of "voir venir": to see (what) is coming. With a glowing introduction by Derrida. This book is the best antidote to the conventional treatment of Hegel as an obscure version of Kant or Berkeley.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Derrida’s introduction is an insult to the reader’s intelligence and at times I thought he was purposely being incomprehensible to insult the reader.

Malabou in this short book gives the reader reasons why Hegel is just as worthwhile today as he was when originally published.

I knew that Nietzsche did no originate the expression “God is dead’, and that Hegel originated it, but Malabou in this book put that statement into context for me by quoting Meister Eckhart that “God is dead in order for me to die in regard to the entire world and in the face of all realities’, for Hegel will take the kenosis (emptiness, renunciation of the divine nature) of the human Jesus and shape it through a plasticity to the negation of what it was not. The sublimation of a sublimation ends with something. The empty must be negated in order for the divine to be real, and Kierkegaard (who is mentioned frequently in this book) knows that eternal life is most precious when we only believe in the finite, or is it finite life is most precious when we do not believe in eternal life? Also, only as a side not, Kierkegaard was not an anti-Hegelian as usually commonly thought, see Jon Stewart's book Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered for a definitive take on that.

Overall, when dealing with Hegel as a whole, one starts to realize that he takes an infinite set and applies finite rules and loses sight of the fact that ‘the sum of the parts is less than or equal to the whole’ is not true when applied to the infinite [God, Absolute, or even the laws of thought: 1) a thing equals itself, 2) a thing must be or not be, or 3)a thing can not be and be].

Malabou uses Hegel’s Science of Logic more so than his Phenomenology while telling her story of how Hegel is shaping the world through time, consciousness, and space beyond Kant and up to Heidegger.

I’m really tempted to take one-star off for the rambling Introduction by Derrida, but Malabou mentioned that he was her advisor and this book was her dissertation, and I guess she had no choice but to keep that in as her introduction. I challenge any reader to read this book as a whole and see if that introduction is anything but a muddled mess. Besides that, this book is a delight.

[Ali Jones Alkazemi · Rating 5 out of 5]

One is not to underestimate the difficulty of this book — although the exposition only lasting 193 pages, the dense presence of theory is remarkable. The book opens up for the possibility of thinking the future in Hegel's philosophy, the future of his philosophy, as well as the future as such. Future is here not understood as a boring temporality, moving from future to past, while the present being the mediating term between these two poles. Rather, the real future is understood as a surprise, as something within the Same which, at the same time, is both a saturation and vacancy, as Malabou puts it: The future can neither be something totally other than the current state nor something totally familiar within the current. Rather, the possibility of a future has to lie in the ability of the Same to become more than it is. To illustrate this she uses the example of reading: “Only the reader who is already 'formed' could recognize the cancellation of form and 'inform' this very cancellation.” From this, the possibility of a future lies within the plastic element in being; the current state of being has to become habitual, thus alienating the habitués and marking a new state with new presuppositions. These presuppositions, as when one reads, are not something randomly posited by the “I”, the subject, but is rather an actualization of the presuppositions within the read book, needed in order for the book to reveal its intended content.

Moving! I will definitively re-read it once in the future, when something within the Same has surprised me and brought me further away — at the same time nearer — the current essence of my state; when I'm struck by a moment of placticity.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

So great! At times I would forget I was reading Malabou instead of Hegel - she “simplifies” Hegel like no one I’ve read thus far (including my master Zizek); however in being a fantastic Hegelian she does miss the material aspects of today’s world, when she says we are reaching the Sunday of life she surely is only referring to her bourgeois middle class readers and friends since the majority of the world’s population is still working and living in extremely precarious and brutal situations (more similar to a Tuesday). Also, in my (subjective) opinion I believe she does miss one aspect of Hegel’s thought by emphasizing his emphasis on using your mother tongue to express a philosophical concept or idea instead of relying on a foreign language like latin (a priori and a posteriori), but there are times where Hegel does in fact prefer to use the foreign form of a word as he believes it highlights the speculative nature of the content (instead of bringing forth the immediacy of the word it brings forth its more philosophical and mediated connotation) - for instance: lacan’s insistence that jouissance remains jouissance in translation instead of just “enjoyment”; as an English speaker reading the word jouissance instead of “ enjoyment” highlights for the English reader the surplus the term is trying to bring forth.

Also, in my copy of Science of Logic I circled the word plastic and wrote: plastic as adjective for a concept? And I’m glad to see that I was onto the same thing that inspired this mighty thinker and her book.

[Edward Backman · Rating 5 out of 5]

"One never learns Hegel once and for all."

"Apprehending the speculative content in its simplified form destines thinking to traverse anew its own route..."

"Hegel's philosophy announces that the future, from now on, depends on the way the shapes and figures already present can be put back into play, on the way the extraordinary and unexpected can only arise out of the prose of the well-known and familiar. Plasticity fulfils its promise for the future with its treatment of a past that has become rigid..."

[Holden Rasmussen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Malabou offers a an idiosyncratic approach to Hegel's text, but one that ultimately leaves her open to very common questions and rejoinders from die-hard Hegelians. She is sometimes a very careful reader, and at other times conspicuously ignores certain details of a text she is scrutinizing.

All in all, her Hegelianism is still rather conservative and I'm not convinced it offers an ontological account of surprises, events, chance, in short any futurity, as she claims it does.

[Egor xS · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une lecture très dense, avec un cheminement de pensée hautement complexe. Un compte rendu limpide et fiable, et pourtant très imaginatif dans son traitement de Hegel. Contient de nombreuses explications heuristiques éclairantes de son système ainsi que d'autres concepts, soit entièrement nouveaux, soit réinventés. Le jeu de mots subtil entre le français ou le latin, l'allemand et le grec ancien est à être apprecié.

Pourquoi la philosophie est-elle nécessaire, quelle est son importance ? Et surtout, précisément, la métaphysique spéculative en tant que science. Ses conséquences et son caractère essentiel sont inversement proportionnels à l'étendue et la transparence.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm... I take the main thesis here, put forward by both Derrida and Malabou, to be banally true, that Heidegger misreads Hegel on temporality as the mere passing moment of the present, and also to push past Kojève and Koyré in re-emphasizing the category of the future in Hegel's work through reading plasticity as the act of giving form (to the future). Perhaps it is because this understanding of Hegelian temporality has become more common since its publishing... The reading of habit in the Anthropology was interesting, but the later sections on theology and philosophy were less so.

[Jessica Kufa]

Pierwsze czytania pokazało mi raczej, ze nie znam kontekstu. Muszę do niej wrócić po kilku lekturach.

[Diego Asdrel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una de las aproximaciones más originales a Hegel que leído en mucho tiempo. Este es un texto que tanto iniciados como conocedores de la obra del filósofo de Stuttgart no deberían perderse.

[Leonardo]

Esta doble kenosis es lo que pierde la crítica marxista estándar de la religión como la autoalienación de la humanidad: «La filosofía moderna no tendría su propio sujeto si el sacrificio de Dios no se hubiera producido». Para que surja la subjetividad –no como un simple epifenómeno del orden ontológico global sustancial, sino como elemento esencial para la propia sustancia–, la grieta, la negatividad y la particularización, la autoalienación debe ser postulada como algo que se produce en el mismo corazón de la divina Sustancia; en otras palabras, el movimiento de la Sustancia al Sujeto debe suceder dentro del Mismo Dios. En resumen, la alienación del hombre respecto a Dios (el hecho de que Dios se le aparezca como un inaccesible En-Sí mismo, como un puro Más Allá trascendental) debe coincidir con la alienación de Dios de Sí Mismo (la expresión más conmovedora de esto está, desde luego, en las palabras de Cristo en la cruz: «Padre, padre, ¿por qué me has abandonado?»): «la conciencia» finita humana «solo representa a Dios porque Dios se representa a sí mismo; la conciencia está a una distancia de Dios solo porque Dios se distancia a sí mismo de sí mismo».

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