Hegel, Žižek, and Kafka w/

[@dissemination_1414]

This Antonio Wolf fellow hit on many potent insights. Great video!

[@Self-Duality]

Very nice work!!!

[@13hehe]

I subscribe to his blog Empyrean Trail. Such a pleasant surprise to see him on here!

[@estacoda545]

So glad you had Antonio on.

[@Inflames128gg]

Thank you for this, this has some great insights about how unorthodox is Zizek's Hegel

[@ChicagoMonsterPunk]

Fascinating stuff. Thank you

[@haenkules9538]

Loving the Kafka content 👌🏻💯

[@zachtupper3934]

Can’t wait to watch

[@glasselevator]

Love Mr. Wolf's thoughts on The Trial

[@somechannel2461]

There are lot of dialectics talkings/lectures by professor (of universities and of workers universities) on Russian speaking segment of KZbin So I glad to see conversations about dialectics on English sector couse not much people talk about philosophy which are basis and main element of our class struggle

[@vickychen6701]

Great stuff! Just great!

[@MetaverseMonk]

Fantastic discussion! I loved the section on freedom. Can anyone expand on Antonio’s claim “you can have deterministic relationships which are not formal in any normal way.” What does formal mean in this context?

[@estacoda545]

Formal as in formalistic (I think).

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

By deterministic I mean determinate, which are specifiable or definable relations that yield specific consequences. By formal I mean a relation indifferent to content (math equations are formal, or formal logic symbolic algebras where arguments are Ps and Qs). Free entities are determinate, and so we can look forward to what they may become or do given what they are, yet this is not given by some general equation or conception. It is always specific to the being, always its unique character and personality.

[@MetaverseMonk]

@@AntonioWolfphilosophy Thank you, you have a very clear way of explaining things!

[@thevulgarhegelian4676]

49:25-51:29 Beautiful, how did i miss it. The death of God is the death of the finite man. Transcending not radically but imminently That is Hegelian gospel ❤💯

[@Gabriel-im5zr]

We’re so back

[@gabrielsprach8323]

🔥🔥

[@SohailSiadat]

The sound quality is bad. This is because of noise from open space although you cannot hear it, it is removed by embedded noise cancellation , which makes the sound bad. The solution is to do interview in a quiet place.

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

as far as it seems, Zizek never claimed that the subject can't see its own perspective. What Zizek seems to claim is that there is no way of stepping out of subjectivity as such, which has nothing to do with acceptance of instance of "knowing knowing knowing"

[@C.R.C.]

‘Knowing knowing knowing’ is not merely subjective for Hegel.

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

@@C.R.C. who said that ‘Knowing knowing knowing’ is only subjective?

[@C.R.C.]

@@elenabalyberdina2393 I'm referring to the description of Zizek’s position you gave.

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

@@C.R.C. what i said was that Zizek talks about completely different knowledge or lack thereof, than Antonio

[@C.R.C.]

@@elenabalyberdina2393 What I am telling you is that knowing knowing knowing does step outside subjectivity.

[@joaoboechat7637]

Zizek claims in his earlier work that absolute knowing is the end of analysis. Is the point in wich we realise the other is lacking. That sounds to me as strikingly Hegelian or am I missing something? If the object is divided it is also subject, the contradiction in the logical sense is always surpassed.

[@ramonoliveira6852]

Excellent talk! Congratulations, both Telosbound and Mr. Wolf! Maybe this is not a place for a proper comment, but i just want to remark that i don't agree with some of your intepretations of Zizek's reading of Hegel. I can't agree that, for Z, we, as finite beings, can't touch infinity. We may not move beyond our circle of subjectivity, but infinitude manifests itself in finitude, as well as in our subjectivity. I agree that God can't be equated with finitude, but the spiritual community it's not something outside God, outside Absolute, and then we, as finite beings can never be in touch with it. I think this point is very important for a proper undestanding of the terms "contradiction", "impossibility", "incompletness", and "failure". We can't interpret this terms by your face values. Zizek not absolutizes Understanding and limitations. His point is simply that, when we reach Reason proper, the very experience of "failure" becomes the solution, as a shift of perspective that opens up the entire field. This is why i completly agree with Mr. Wolf that the ideia of Absolute Knowing as the ideia that knowledge is impossible is wrong, and i'm convinced that for Z too. Even when Mr. Wolf mentions that AK is at stake at the very beginning of PhG, i totally agree, and i think this a very central point in zizekian interpretation. Again, "impossibility", "incompletness", "failure" in Z works has to be interpreted in a very specific way as concepts that functions in a specific domain. I think is a way to clarify for a larger public that Hegel is not a "crazy guy" always with your "head in the clouds" that believes that in the end the world becomes a paradise with all beings together in a "Unesco universality"; but at the same time, all Z was doing is to defend the greatness of Hegel's thought, acknowledging all his higher speculative insights in his full weight. Z is not a deflationist, he explicity rejects such readings. This is way i'm very happy with the effort of Mr. Wolf of calling attention to the theme of God and religion in Hegel. I think that his visions on the matter are quite compatible with zizekian interpretation, even in this topic. The theme of religion is central to zizekian thought and often a underrated topic for their readers (as well as for Hegel readers...). Anyway, thanks again for the initiative!

[@bradspitt3896]

Around 37:00 he talks about not being able to define certain Hegelian terms, and how things can be grasped by the intuition but not linear logic. I don't understand how that's philosophical or logical even in the Hegelian sense. It's something else. I'd say it's mystical but while avoiding the label, at least, in the way most people use it. I'd even say it's a type of picture-thinking.

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

I probably didn't make it clear, but I did specify that in standard propositional form there is no way to define Hegelian terms without at least making multiple contradictory propositions, and this still leaves lacking why they make sense. The intuition mentioned is the same intuition that makes you understand that from a minimally rectilinear enclosed 2d space you get all the specifications of a triangle. It's an intellectual intuition, the "sense" of sense as meaning. No pictures involved, it's pure conceptuality. This *is* a real sense like your physical senses, and some people have a much better developed sense and some people have it worse.

[@bradspitt3896]

@@AntonioWolfphilosophy But how is that philosophical? Or logical?

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

@@bradspitt3896 Well, if you don't understand a straight meaning there isn't anything I or anyone can do to help you. Believe it or not, just because reason is universally accessible does not mean you are universally capable of accessing it. Some people can't cognize Being and Nothing no matter how anybody explains it just as explaining colors to a color blind person won't get them to really understand what the big deal is beyond that it's another dimension of distinction that to them is not distinguished. You're focusing on the fact that I keep saying intuition, though I explained what I mean, and ignoring what I explained. Either you understand, or you don't. Either you see, hear, or touch the thing or you don't .

[@bradspitt3896]

@@AntonioWolfphilosophy I understand what he's saying, I just don't see how it's philosophy or logic he's using to do it.

[@RareSeldas]

@@bradspitt3896 because Logic and Philosophy encompass any sense of meaning, especially in the Hegelian that's what Greater Logic entails

[@dubbelkastrull]

1:24:29 bookmark

[@antichrist.superstar]

As soon as I hear someone say ‘people who think they believe X really believe Y but don’t realize it/won’t admit it’, they strike me as uncredible. Antonio is here to explain his understanding of Hegel, not our understanding of god.

[@MetaverseMonk]

Great points about Joseph K, and I thought the same thing about K in The Castle as well. Bureaucratic machinations aside, Kafka’s characters are such jerks! I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Kafka named these characters “K”. Kafka was a very troubled person, and I think he saw himself in these characters.

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

For Zizek, it seems that through death of Christ, what is revealed, not only a contradiction in the Big Other, but, utter non-existence of the Big Other in his attempt to move away from traditional binary

[@Booer]

Curious, serious question. Why telos?

[@alejandromatos7860]

Is there any place where I can read Wolf's explanation of Hegel's God?

[@RareSeldas]

We did a series called 'Hegel's Lectures on Proofs of God'

[@grilla4464]

There's a KZbin channel called Perspective Philosophy who is also a Hegelian theist

[@RareSeldas]

Although I suspect he misrepresents Hegel a lot.

[@grilla4464]

@@RareSeldas Honestly I'm new to Hegel and philosophy in general so I wouldn't know. I really enjoy his content though, you should check him out.

[@RareSeldas]

​@@grilla4464 Antonio recently did a video on PP showing some of how.

[@alejandromatos7860]

Ah yes... Spirit is gathering itself up.

[@mattiafabbri8944]

Great talk. As an hegelian I disagree with your views on God. The true infinity has to become finite, i.e. infinite finite and finite infinite. The true God has to become finite (and die). Hegel thinks that christianity shows the truth of every religion. Remember that Hegel wants to start his system from the kantian revolution, i.e. every philosophical discourse has to have inscribed the subjective side: it's impossible to get out of the phenomenic dimension. Then, logically speaking, if a community of christians didn't believe in a christian God, if a community of christians didn't sustain its identity, a christian God would not exist (because no subject would be affected by that significant). It's interesting that Hegel formulates the sentence "God is dead" at the end of the Phenomenology.

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

Well, disagreement aside, there is the problem I mentioned: you have to conceive God not as merely retroactively self-reflecting, but as *actually* positing their presupposition of Nature. Neither we the finite individual, nor we the finite community of individuals, does or could do this. To deny that God *knowingly and consciously posited the world,* which requires personality, is to deny that there is an Absolute at all, which is the same as having an incoherent and arbitrary view of reality. I again point to the final lines of the Encyclopedia: God is independent self-knowing. God does not *need* us to be God, that's nonsense. God is not waiting to be God, they already are. This is why understanding God as freedom itself explains why the natural world exists. The Idea freely self-determines its own release, posits its Otherness as Nature, and from this Other reveals its omnipotence in arising in it as Spirit. Absolute Spirit unifies finite subjective and objective spirit. *It can and does posit Nature, it is not merely a reflective understanding.* "This gives the second form of mind's revelation. At this stage mind, no longer poured out into the asunderness of nature, sets itself, as what is for itself, revealed to itself, in opposition to unconscious nature, which conceals mind as much as reveals it. Mind makes Nature into its object, reflects on it, takes back the externality of nature into its own inwardness, idealizes nature and thus in its object becomes for itself. But this first being-for-self of mind is itself still an immediate, abstract, not an absolute being-for-self; the self-externality of mind is not absolutely sublated by it. The awakening mind dues oat yet recognize here its unity with the mind that is in itself, hidden in nature, it stands, therefor, in external relation to nature, it does not appear as all in all, but only as one side of the relationship; is is true that in is relationship to the Other it is also reflected into itself and so is self-consciousness, but it lets this unity of consciousness and self-consciousness still subsist as a unity that is so external, empty and superficial that at the same time self-consciousness and consciousness still fall asunder, and mind, despite its being-together-with-itself, is at the same time together not with itself but with an Other, and its unity with the mind that is in itself and active within the Other does not as yet become for mind. Here, mind posits nature as something reflected-into-itself, as its world, strips nature of its form of an Other opposing it and make the Other opposing is into something posited by mind itself, but at the same time this Other still remains independent of mind, something immediately present, not posited but only presupposed by mind, something, therefor, the positing of which precedes reflective thinking. Hence at this standpoint the positedness of nature by mind is not yet absolute but comes about only in reflective consciousness, nature is therefore, not yet comprehended as subsisting only through infinite mind, as its creation. Here consequently, mind still has in nature a limitation and by this very limitation is finite mind. -Now this limitation is sublated by absolute knowledge, which is the third and highest revelation of mind. At this stage the dualism disappears, of, on the one hand, a self-subsistent nature or mind poured out into asunderness, and, on the other hand, the mind that is first beginning to become for it but does not yet comprehend its unity with the mind in nature. Absolute mind recognizes itself as positing being itself, as itself producing its Other, nature and finite mind, so that this Other loses all semblance of independence in face of mind, ceases altogether to be a limitation for mind."-Hegel, introduction to Philosophy of Spirit

[@mattiafabbri8944]

@@AntonioWolfphilosophy But why? I don't think that we have the same idea of the Absolute. In the Phenomenology the term "absolute" is always associated with an empty moment that has to be overcome. Absolute knowing is a moment of pure difference that requires you going back to the starting point. And again, in the Science of Logic, Hegel is clear: the true Absolute is finite, the true infinity is finite, the true God is finite. Being finite means having an end. God has an end precisely because the community of believers, which sustains its identity, has an end. I would not substantialize the concept of the Absolute, as the concept of God. That is the emancipatory power of the hegelian - scientific! as he repeatedly stresses - system. At least to me.

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

@@mattiafabbri8944 Your interpretation of when "Absolute" is used a qualifier goes against everything I've read. I'm going to need more than a quote to show how your meaning coheres with Hegel's general use of qualifying something absolute as self-reflexive self-abstraction (concretion). In the Logic Hegel says the exact opposite, and everywhere else as well. The Absolute *is not* finite, that the finite is a nothing before the Infinite, and that nothing finite is worth calling real. The finite is a moment of the Infinite, but the Infinite is not to be identified with the finite as if they share the same ontological weight. Your view of emancipation is strange, I'll say that much.

[@mattiafabbri8944]

@@AntonioWolfphilosophy on this interpretations a great Hegel's scholar Stephen Houlgate has influenced me a lot. I advise you his course on the Science of Logic that you can find on KZbin. At a certain moment, the moment of true infinity, he begins to say "Infinity is here! The Absolute is here! Love is here! Mutual recognition is here! There's no beyond of the infinite, as Kant thought for example". To me emancipation is firstly to realize and to confront the contraddictions of the real. Hegel takes the religion moment, shows its contraddictions and overcomes it into something else, i.e. artistic religion. Without that audacity maybe a Marx would not have born.

[@dimitrifarmakis5108]

Ngl, but Antonio's repeated reference to the chapter on sense certainty really baffled me bc it's about epistemological failure and not some innate capacity of the understanding. And comparing Zizek to Adorno's negative dialectics is just such a bad characterization... I felt really frustrated when he said that. Just read what Zizek writes in LTN.

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

Ngl, my references to SC had nothing to do with epistemology or a faculty. As for Zizek and Adorno, yes, I've been told, and no, I don't quite care if I am honest. I'm not claiming to be a Zizek or McGowan expert, and I haven't read them. I'm commenting superficially, and I will admit that.

[@dimitrifarmakis5108]

@@AntonioWolfphilosophy Ok fair, but it really did sound like you were talking about SC as a faculty and my point was that that section has everything to do with the epistemological limitations of immediate knowledge. I know you're not an expert on Zizek or McG, but why then say all these egregious things about them that aren't even true? Where does Z say that Absolute Knowing is knowing that knowledge is impossible? This is what Z says in LTN: "adopting the stance of "Absolute Knowing;' the subject does not ask if the content (some particular object of inquiry) meets some a priori standard (of truth, goodness, beauty); it lets the content measure itself, by its own immanent standards, and thus self-authorizes itself. ... Such a notion of Absolute Knowing is grounded already in Hegel's definition of Self-Consciousness, in the passage from Consciousness to Self-Consciousness (in the Phenomenology). Consciousness first experiences a failure to grasp the In-itself: the In-itself repeatedly eludes the subject, all content supposed to pertain to the In-itself reveals itself as having been put there by the subject itself, so that the subject becomes increasingly caught up in the web of its own phantasmagorias. The subject passes from the attitude of Consciousness to that of Self-Consciousness when it reflexively assumes this failure as a positive result, inverting the problem into its own solution: the subject's world is the result of its own "positing:""

[@AntonioWolfphilosophy]

@@dimitrifarmakis5108 The whole PhG is a critique of epistemic and ontological limitations as objects and modes of inquiry. Hegel doesn't treat them as faculties in the PhG, just frameworks of worldviews. I don't see what the Zizek quote has anything to do with what Hegel says. Absolute Knowing (AK) is quite simple, Zizek is projecting far more into it. AK is the knowing of knowing of the known, which reveals that the known is the objectified form of the knowing. What we know of anything is the reflecting mirror of how we know it. This has nothing to do with illusions, which this quote is projecting, and everything to do with the fact that "the world as such" is itself internally a distinction posited by, in, and for thought. thought as such, is never a standpoint in the PhG, and AK therefore is merely a negative standpoint for Hegel. We have deconstructed Natural Consciousness from the lowest to its highest attempts to understand the world, showing that no form of a given world alien to knowing makes any sense, but this does not thereby tell us what proper knowledge is, only that the strategy of Natural Consciousness will not work. We only have the immediacy of AK in the PhG, barely the beginning.

[@dimitrifarmakis5108]

@@AntonioWolfphilosophy But I really think how you described AK there is similar to what Zizek is saying in that quote. He is not talking about illusions, he is talking about a shift in measure. The only difference I see is that for you AK concerns "the world as such" whereas for Zizek, AK concerns the subject (which I admit has more to do with his reading of Lacan than Hegel, but I still think it works). The Lacanian equivalent of AK is subjective destitution. As for that part in the section on reason, on the highest and the lowest, I'm not sure if we are reading it the same way, but for me I read it as the contingency inherent to the phallic order--the highest is found in the lowest and vice versa: the phallus is the organ of insemination and the organ of urination, the mouth is the organ of speaking and the organ of eating etc. and this is inherent to the form itself. If we separate or isolate one from the other, we lose the organ itself. It makes me think of what he says in the Logic about acids and bases.

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

there is a difference between 'of knowing knowing knowing' and ' impossibility of transcending subjectivity'. Zizek would probably agree with the former as with undoubtable certainty, but it seems that he is more interested in stressing the latter. Perhaps for Zizek, the former is important in a certain sense, namely, as how the thought recognizes itself in moving... but, not in the comprehending totality of Absolute as in traditional metaphysics Therefore, it seems that both Zizek and Antonio can be correct in their respective takes on "absolute knowing"

[@g.boychev9355]

You can't say that religion and philosophy have the same content only in different form, because the distinction between form and content exists only in picture thinking, not in absolute knowing. Hence, because religion is still trapped within picture consciousness, it can only conceive of the absolute in the form of finite representation - God. Because this infinite still exists in finite representation, it's a bad infinite, a finite infinite, God as somehow infinite but somehow always beyond the world of finite things and thus somehow also limited, finite. The true infinity should not be conceived of as "God" anymore because that would merely amount to reinstating the contradiction in different words. To say that God is immanent in nature is not the same as to say that the Idea is immanent in nature, or else we're not doing philosophy, we're just doing theology with a different flavour. The entire point of Hegel can't just be to do just a better form of theology.

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

there is a difference between 'of knowing knowing knowing' and ' impossibility of transcending subjectivity'. Zizek would probably agree with the former as with undoubtable certainty, but it seems that he is more interested in stressing the latter. Perhaps for Zizek, the former is important in a certain sense, namely, as how the thought recognizes itself in moving... but, not in the comprehending totality of Absolute as in traditional metaphysics Therefore, it seems that both Zizek and Antonio can be correct in their respective takes on "absolute knowing"

[@C.R.C.]

No because absolute knowing is both objective and subjective.

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

@@C.R.C. BTW, knowing knowing knowing doesn't allow to step out of Subjectivity, because it is still relation of ideas, no new knowledge is gained except redefining notions

[@C.R.C.]

@@elenabalyberdina2393 Completely wrong. Idea is the union of subject and object.

[@elenabalyberdina2393]

@@C.R.C. It is just words. In actuality, you are circling withing symbolic structure, imagining yourself outside of it, when in fact there is no new unity is synthesized. Typical old metaphysical perspective as Antonio represents

[@C.R.C.]

@@elenabalyberdina2393 Typical continental stupidity. Reason stands above all symbolic structures and appropriates them for its own purposes. Your symbolic confusion is merely a manifestation of your personal ineptitude at thinking philosophically. Humble yourself next time when speaking about something you have (self-admittedly) not comprehended. Quite dogmatic, if you ask me, making claims about what you lack any understanding of, while absolutizing your own ignorance and projecting it onto others. Such is the case among relativists.