Žižek on Hegel versus Heidegger

HERE.

For the record, the last thing I think we need in present-day philosophy is even more Hegel. What we really need is more Aristotle (and Hegel’s Aristotle is about as un-Aristotelian as Deleuze’s Leibniz is un-Leibnizian).

For a long time, Plato was the most unjustly maltreated great philosopher in continental philosophy circles. But Plato has long since been rehabilitated. Aristotle and Husserl are now the two most undervalued classics in our part of the world. Both are presented as boring middle-agers who serve up retrograde ideas.

Now, what do Aristotle and Husserl have in common, for all their differences: the unity and identity of things, whether these be real primary substances (Aristotle) or intentional objects in the phenomenal sphere (Husserl).

But as long as it remains fashionable to take easy cheap shots at unity and identity with appeals to such concepts as “difference” and “multiplicity,” then you’ll know that we’re still running on the fumes of Generation Deleuze, which was fresh and liberating from around 1995-2007 but now threatens to become last night’s vinegary red wine.

That’s not to say that there isn’t still good, fresh work being done under Deleuze’s banner. I very much enjoy reading DeLanda, Dan Smith, and a number of others working in that vein. I’m just saying that it’s time to stop adopting all of Deleuze’s heroes and spitting on all of his villains. It’s time to move on.

In any such situation, one way to move on is to look at which figures are currently undervalued, and Aristotle and Husserl get my two votes for the two most disgracefully underrated classics of the present day. The point is not that no one is working on them. The point is that those who do work on them are generally depicted as old-fashioned and behind the times (and often this is the case, admittedly, but that’s not the fault of Aristotle or Husserl).

But back to the topic at hand… Žižek is so truly passionate about Hegel that it’s always worth hearing what he has to say on the topic.