A New German Idealism : Hegel, Žižek, and Dialectical Materialism / Adrian Johnston.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnston, Adrian, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich.

Žižek, Slavoj.

Dialectical materialism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (376 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In 2012, philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek published what arguably is his magnum opus, the one-thousand-page tome Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. A sizable sequel appeared in 2014, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. In these two books, Žižek returns to the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel in order to forge a new materialism for the twenty-first century. Žižek's reinvention of Hegelian dialectics explores perennial and contemporary concerns: humanity's relations with nature, the place of human freedom, the limits of rationality, the roles of spirituality and religion, and the prospects for radical sociopolitical change.In A New German Idealism, Adrian Johnston offers a first-of-its-kind sustained critical response to Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil. Johnston, a leading authority on and interlocutor of Žižek, assesses the recent return to Hegel against the backdrop of Kantian and post-Kantian German idealism. He also presents alternate reconstructions of Hegel's positions that differ in important respects from Žižek's version of dialectical materialism. In particular, Johnston criticizes Žižek's deviations from the secular naturalism and Enlightenment optimism of his chosen sources of inspiration: not only Hegel, but Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud too. In response, Johnston develops what he calls transcendental materialism, an antireductive and leftist materialism capable of preserving and advancing the core legacies of the Hegelian, Marxian, and Freudian traditions central to Žižek.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface Drawing Lines-Žižek's Speculative Dialectics

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Sublating Absolute Idealism-Žižekian Materialist Reversals

ONE. "Freedom or System? Yes, Please!": Spinozisms of Freedom and the Post-Kantian Aftermath Then and Now

TWO. Where to Start?: Deflating Hegel's Deflators

THREE. Contingency, Pure Contingency-Without Any Further Determination: Hegelian Modalities

FOUR. Materialism Sans Materialism: Žižekian Substance Deprived of Its Substance

FIVE. Bartleby by Nature: German Idealism, Biology, and Žižek's Compatibilism

Conclusion: Driven On-the (Meta)Dialectics of Drive and Desire

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Sep 2018)

ISBN:

9780231545242

023154524X

OCLC:

1037351551