Hegel 250—Too Late?
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HEGEL 250—TOO LATE? Ljubljana 2020 HEGEL 250—TOO LATE? ANALECTA Publisher: Društvo za teoretsko psihoanalizo Publishing board: Miran Božovič, Mladen Dolar, Rado Riha, Alenka Zupančič (president), Slavoj Žižek Edited by Mladen Dolar Copyedited by Tanja Dominko and Eric Powell Cover Design by AOOA Layout by Klemen Ulčakar Printed by Ulčakar Grafika First Edition Circulation 200 Ljubljana 2020 This publication has been co-published in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Ljubljana. CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana 1Hegel G.W.F.(082) HEGEL 250 - too late? / [edited by Mladen Dolar]. - 1st ed. - Ljubljana : Društvo za teoretsko psihoanalizo : Goethe-Institut, 2020. - (Zbirka Analecta) (Problemi ; let. 58, 11-12) (Problemi International ; 2020, 4) ISBN 978-961-6376-94-5 (Društvo za teoretsko psihoanalizo) COBISS.SI-ID 61238531 Table of Contents Hegel Reborn: A Brief Introduction to HEGEL 250—TOO LATE? Árpád-Andreas Sölter. 5 Hegel’s Time! Ana Jovanović, Bara Kolenc, Urban Šrimpf, Goran Vranešević. 9 Nadia Bou Ali and Ray Brassier After Too Late: The Endgame of Analysis. 11 Mladen Dolar What’s the Time? On Being Too Early or Too Late in Hegel’s Philosophy. 31 Luca Illetteratti Nature’s Externality: Hegel’s Non-Naturalistic Naturalism. .51 Zdravko Kobe The Time of Philosophy: On Hegel’s Conception of Modern Philosophy . 73 Bara Kolenc Is It Too Late?. 91 Christian Krijnen “What, if Anything, Has Not Been Called Philosophizing?” On the Relevance of Hegel’s Conception of a Philosophical History of Philosophy. 119 Gregor Moder What Is To Be Done: On the Theatricality of Power. 143 Nadia Bou Ali and Ray Brassier Sebastian Rödl Thinking Nothing . 167 Frank Ruda The Purlieu Letter. Towards the Hegelian Theory of Conditioning. 179 Jure Simoniti Hegel and the Opaque Core of History. 201 Árpád-Andreas Sölter Against Leviathan: Hegel’s, Fichte’s and Schiller’s Critique of Modernity, Alienation, and the State . .231 Klaus Vieweg The Athenian Owl and the Gallic Rooster— Dusk or Dawn?. 261 Sven-Olov Wallenstein Adorno’s Beethoven: Undoing Hegel from Within . .275 Slavoj Žižek Hegel In the Future, Hegel On the Future . .293 Abstracts . .313 Notes on Contributors. .323 4 PROBLEMI INTERNATIONAL,After Too Late:ATEIZEM vol. The 4, Endgame2020; PROBLEMI, of Analysis vol. 58, no. 11-12, 2020 © Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis Hegel Reborn. A Brief Introduction to HEGEL 250 —TOO LATE? Modernity begins with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He is the defining philosopher of the transition to the modern world. Today, with the globalization of hyper digital capitalism, we are entering a new massive transition, so on the occasion of Hegel’s 250th birthday in 2020 serious attempts were made to rethink He- gel’s relevance and to reimagine modern society’s debt to Hegel for our contemporary age. Hegel’s immense international influence largely depends on the depth and richness of his thought. For him, history displays a rational process. It has a direction, which we can discern. It is heading towards a goal, which we can welcome. The meaning of history is to develop and to fulfill its purpose: the world-spirit realizing its final goal, the freedom and self-consciousness of humanity. The history of the world is a progression towards the consciousness of freedom. Hegel concluded that a fully rational organization of the world was about to unfold, creating a truly free community. As a consequence, reason and freedom would come to fruition. In our contemporary age, we wish we could share Hegel’s unshakeable optimism which causes some bemusement. In Ljubljana, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit meets French structuralism. It is here that the Society for Theoretical Psycho- analysis, whose main goal is to achieve a synthesis between La- canian psychoanalysis and the philosophy of German idealism, was founded in the early 1980s. Slovenia’s capital is, and since 5 Nadia Bou Ali and Ray Brassier Hegel Reborn. A Brief Introduction to HEGEL250 Roman times always has been, not only a magnificent, beautiful, and very picturesque city on the river Ljubljanica; it has also emerged as a real cultural power-house in music, the arts, and philosophy, as is evident from the sheer number of top-notch intellectual heavy-weights and their output in academic discourse and research. Nowhere else, I believe, can one find such a high density and impressive quantity of most exquisite, internation- ally highly respected and eminent scholars whose expertise is the philosophy of Hegel. In Western philosophy, Hegel often enjoys the reputation of being the most impenetrable. For many, he remains simply incom- prehensible and is frequently regarded as too difficult, a mountain too steep to climb. In order to make this great thinker more acces- sible, we proudly presented a multi-facetted exhibition on Hegel at the Ljubljana Town Hall together with our Slovenian partners. Visitors even had the unique opportunity to play snooker with (or against) the Weltgeist. And whatever some might find almost too complicated to understand in Hegel’s writings, his closest friends in Slovenia explained in several entertaining, sometimes even funny videos. Since then, thousands have visited the digital version of the show. As we know, the proof of the pudding is in the eating: it is possible to present Hegel in a playful way from which we all benefit immensely. As a result, we managed to share the treasure box of German idealism also with a younger audience and the wider public. Gewappnet mit der List der Vernunft and against all odds, against coronavirus-induced uncertainties in times of a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, international guests from Sweden, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany safely arrived and gath- ered in the summer of 2020, during a brief window of opportunity. These most prolific thinkers joined Hegel’s closest local Slovenian friends, famous experts and colleagues, such as Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupančič, Zdravko Kobe, and many others, for an exhibition and a great meeting of minds in a symposium 6 After Too Late: The Endgame of Analysis Hegel Reborn. A Brief Introduction to HEGEL250 dedicated to freedom, free thinking, and free reasoning in Hegel’s thought near the French Revolution Square. This place was wisely and very timely chosen to celebrate Hegel’s 250th birthday (and Beethoven’s and Hölderlin’s, too). The volume in front of you presents the bulk of the conference papers and some other con- tributions to mark this most remarkable anniversary.1 My sincerest gratitude to all our partners here in Slovenia and abroad for making this international conference and the exhibition possible: the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung, the City of Ljubljana, especially Mateja Demšič and Blaž Peršin, Indigo-Festival, the Internationale Hegel-Vereinigung—Aufhebung, the organizing committee (Bara Kolenc, Ana Jovanović, and Goran Vranešević), Miha Kelemina, and of course, last but not least, my colleague Urban Šrimpf. They truly deserve our deepest gratitude and admiration. Needless to say, my team and I, as the newly arrived director of the Goethe- Institut in Slovenia, felt thrilled, honored, and most fortunate indeed to be part of this first-class gathering.Der Weltgeist schien auf ihrer Seite zu sein. In other words, thank you very much, vielen herzlichen Dank, and hvala lepa! Dr. Árpád-Andreas Sölter Director of the Goethe-Institut in Ljubljana 1 The video of the conference is available at https://www.goethe.de/ins/ si/de/kul/sup/heg.html 7 Nadia Bou Ali and Ray Brassier 8 PROBLEMI INTERNATIONAL,After Too Late:ATEIZEM vol. The 4, Endgame2020; PROBLEMI, of Analysis vol. 58, no. 11-12, 2020 © Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis Hegel’s Time! This special issue of Problemi International arose from Hegel’s celebration year 2020, for the largest part from the conference Hegel’s 250th Anniversary: Too Late?, which took place in Ljub- ljana in September 2020. The conference was initiated and organ- ized by International Hegelian Association Aufhebung, Goethe- Institut in Ljubljana and The Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana. In the difficult circumstances of the global health crisis, ac- companied by outbursts of social unrest and local catastrophes such as the Beirut explosion, conducting an international confer- ence face-to-face, with all the participants physically present in one place, turned out to be a risky undertaking bordering on the impossible. However, despite all the uncertainties, special permits, reduced capacities, and obstacles never heard of before, a power- ful gathering and an intense exchange of critical thought finally happened in Ljubljana: live and in person! Because a group event such as a conference felt almost like a miracle in the middle of the pandemic, the celebration of Hegel’s anniversary somewhat imperceptibly blended with a celebration of the mere possibility to critically question the established procedures of truth physi- cally gathered in a public space. The 250th anniversary of Hegel’s birth marks the time of a beginning and the time of an end—not because it is an anniver- sary but because, with Hegel, we can think the relation between the beginning and the end, which is crucial especially in present times. Here, the question does not pertain to this or that end (of history, grand narratives, ideology, art, or philosophy) but 9 Nadia Bou Ali and Ray Brassier Hegel’s Time! rather to the radical end and our relationship to it, that is, our too-lateness. Today, as the world is ever more obviously and un- stoppably sliding towards its “ultimate end,” and as it seems that, in relation to the speed of our pandemic-ridden reality, thought is increasingly falling behind, the question arises: What now? Is it actually too late? The logic of expectation, which runs through apocalyptic scenarios, intrudes into this mechanism: we expect the end know- ing that we are already too late.