>The present book is thus neither The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hegel, nor is it yet another university textbook on Hegel (which would be for morons, of course); it is something like The Imbecile’s Guide to Hegel—Hegel for those whose IQ is somewhere close to their bodily temperature (in Celsius), as the insult goes. But only something like it: the problem with “imbeciles” is that none of us, as ordinary speakers, knows what the “im” negates: we know what “imbecile” means, but we don’t know what “becile” is—we simply suspect that it must somehow be the opposite of “imbecile.”2 But what if, here too, persists the mysterious tendency for antonyms (such as heimlich and unheimlich—about which Freud wrote a famous short text) to mean the same thing? What if “becile” is the same as “imbecile,” only with an additional twist? In our daily use, “becile” does not stand on its own, it functions as a negation of “imbecile,” so that, insofar as “imbecile” already is a negation of a kind, “becile” must be a negation of negation—but, and this is crucial, this double negation does not bring us back to some primordial positivity. If an “imbecile” is one who lacks a substantial basis in the big Other, a “becile” redoubles the lack, transposing it into the Other itself. The becile is a not-imbecile, aware that if he is an imbecile, God himself also has to be one.
>>25280691I wheezed laughing
*sniffles*
>>25280691>one of my 3 best books I can't be bothered to keep in print
It’s mid.
It is less than 2000 pages.
"its not x, its y" if it was a person
>>25280691I enjoyed the quote but I get filtered by Zizek because I haven’t read Lacan because I suspect it’s a lot of gassy nonsense just like Hegel that can only repay the trouble of reading if you deconstruct and radically reinterpret it, as Zizek does Hegel. I am becile.
>>25281702Communists like Z don't deconstruct (which is just dialectics in a way) and radically reinterpret Hegel. Marx was originally a left Hegelian and many saw his work as a continuation of Hegel's just as Hegel's was of a Kant's in spite of Hegel's criticism of Kant. Lenin said it is impossible to understand Capital without reading and understanding Hegel's Logic. Still, Hegel does not repay the trouble unless you follow a Marxist study of him, if by repay the trouble that it is of significance in our everyday life and becomes a lens to deeply understand human events on the news
>>25280691why don't philosophers use math notation for their arguments, would save on paper and stop confusion
>>25281716I used to think this too because I had heard it from reputable people. At best you could say there is genuine dialectic bottled up within Hegel but to let it out is a rupture. Hegel’s philosophy is actually quite domesticated. The historical dialectic does stop and all questions are answered - infinitely, thoughbeit. Yes Marx loved the logic; he schematizes it in Capital. But I get sonewhat annoyed when people misrepresent Hegel as a proto-Marxist, this is false in any way you choose to take it. Hegel was a liberal and his liberalism is not an accident.
>>25281729No one ever said Hegel was a communist anymore than Aristotle was, whose work is also massively influential on Marx.
>>25281736I didn’t say you said he was a communist, I said you thought he was a proto-Marxist. My point is simply that to get from Hegel to Marx requires a real break, actually a greater break than from Kant to Hegel, and I think you get more out of Hegel by reading him as what he was, a liberal, and seeing how and why this fails, than reading him in terms of Marx. No need to be defensive. It’s just the line you gave us is a commonplace online and I don’t think it’s quite true.
>>25281744Marxists do read Hegel as he was, Marx wrote criticisms of Hegel. Hegel is not the Bible to mean something anew with each sect. Marxism fixes some of the serious problems in Hegel which mostly stem from Hegel's politics, especially after Bonaparte's defeat
>>25281744 (me)Another thing you said, which is a commonplace online, is that studying Hegel’s logic will give you a method you can apply in daily life. This is a misrepresentation because Hegel thought daily life was finite; the logic behind reality is dialectical, but the reality itself is in the realm of the either/or. He says this in a number of places; to take a ‘given’ reality and then apply categories from the Logic to it, like Marx did, is called schematism. It’s frustrating how this false, mythological Hegel has arisen on the internet. Zizek is part of the problem with his ‘bad Hegel’ and ‘good Hegel’. There’s one Hegel and he’s a massive fag; understanding this one Hegel can help you understand our present situation. Mystifying what Hegel thought is a form of propaganda.
>>25281763I said a Marxist study of Hegel can allow you to better understand everyday life and world events.
>>25280691Wow, that was epic. Thank you Zizek Very cool. A whole ass circlejerk to say h-haha dumb monkey Hegel or something idk. Epic. I am literally on the floor crying from how funny that was.
>>25281802>gets filtered by a flippant introduction
who the fuck has time to read this? i barely have the energy to read chapter 1 section of the logic. tell me more about these 'rails'
>>25282184>tell me more about these 'rails'meet me behind the gas station and bring a crisp benjamin
>>25282184You have to take his work line by line to fully appreciate it
