zizek (1)

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According to Slavoj Zizek, the contemporary philosopher, we are seeing a dying of philosophy so severe, but it can be somewhat rehabilitated by the best of the philosophy of 19th century Hegelianism, he argues.

The brilliant Zizek does look at fear and terror in history and at times makes sense of its nature and role. He says that Hegel would be a philosopher for our times with a useful pessimism but not nihilism and we could see Hegel's predictions as heuristic for us today as in how Hegel critiqued the 'good' that then becomes 'bad' and that is seemingly an inevitability--yet, there can be still a renewal (new synthesis) to something better as well. The French Revolution, for e.g., shows this dialectic dynamic worked and simply it was a political/philosophical movement of consciousness that sought freedom and produced so much terror. And an interesting theorizing can also be found in Hegel, says Zizek, where 'the rebel' fighting for justice is in the future (and now) mixed and pathological, with the "rich rebel" (e.g., corporatist elites who wish to control the world) controls the justice rebel. This is a huge problem. My own thinking has for several decades called this the "normal rebel" (closet rebel) that moves to totalism under another roof of its own pursuit of freedom from totalitarianism. A more complex theorizing of the rebel that intrigues me. 

I quite like his reconstructing Hegel as still of worthy offering, a similar position taken by my fav integral philosopher Ken Wilber. For more on Zizek's views see the recent interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06KiOj6gjbs

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