Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic

Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture

by Slavoj Žižek (Editor), Clayton Crockett (Editor), Creston Davis (Editor)

Catherine Malabou, Antonio Negri, John D. Caputo, Bruno Bosteels, Mark C. Taylor, and Slavoj Zizek join seven others―including William Desmond, Katrin Pahl, Adrian Johnston, Edith Wyschogrod, and Thomas A. Lewis―to apply Hegel's thought to twenty-first-century philosophy, politics, and religion. Doing away with claims that the evolution of thought and history is at an end, these thinkers safeguard Hegel's innovations against irrelevance and, importantly, reset the distinction of secular and sacred.

These original contributions focus on Hegelian analysis and the transformative value of the philosopher's thought in relation to our current "turn to religion." Malabou develops Hegel's motif of confession in relation to forgiveness; Negri writes of Hegel's philosophy of right; Caputo reaffirms the radical theology made possible by Hegel; and Bosteels critiques fashionable readings of the philosopher and argues against the reducibility of his dialectic. Taylor reclaims Hegel's absolute as a process of infinite restlessness, and Zizek revisits the religious implications of Hegel's concept of letting go. Mirroring the philosopher's own trajectory, these essays progress dialectically through politics, theology, art, literature, philosophy, and science, traversing cutting-edge theoretical discourse and illuminating the ways in which Hegel inhabits them.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, History

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 18, 2011

About the author

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.

He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).

Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."

Reviews

[Christopher Boerdam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of essays impressed upon me the divergent ways in which Hegel is interpreted in philosophical circles, and the many different ways thinkers of today are still inspired or angered by this difficult philosopher's work. For some, Hegel seems to be the ultimate rationalist and Enlightenment thinker whose conservative politics and Eurocentrism are things to be overcome, whereas others interpret him as a post-post-modern philosopher whose dialectic out-deconstructs the deconstructionists. I definitely do not know enough about Hegel to understand all of the arguments in this collection or to adjudicate which interpretation is the correct one, but for me the mind-altering contributions by Caputo, Johnston and Zizek made reading this collection more than worthwhile. This is a collection for readers who are already familiar with Hegel and issues surrounding interpretations of his philosophy - definitely not for beginners.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Reviewed here:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/28705-hegel-a...

[Eilif Verney-elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

All the usual suspects: turgid, perfidious and boring.