Rev Left Radio - Hegelian Dialectics: Contradiction, Marxism, & the Freudian Unconscious

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

Todd McGowan, professor and author of "Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution" as well as co-host of the philosophy podcast "Why Theory", joins Breht to talk about the many misunderstandings of Hegelian philosophy, the history of Left and Right Hegelianism, the role that contradiction plays in the dialectic, what a Freudian understanding of the mind lends to Hegel's philosophy, Marxism as a deviation from Hegelianism, and much, much more!  Find Todd's book here: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/emancipation-after-hegel/9780231192705 Check out Todd's podcast Why Theory here: https://soundcloud.com/whytheory Outro Music: "Don't Come Knocking" by Holy Locust Check them out here: https://holylocust.bandcamp.com/  ------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/ SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective: @Barbaradical Intro music by Captain Planet. --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host, Brett O'Shea, and today I am interviewing Todd McGowan on his recent book, Emancipation After Hegel, Achilles, Achilles, Revolution. We talk about Hegelian dialectics. Crucially, we talk about the role that contradiction plays in Hegelian dialectics. We talk about Freudian psychoanalysis, Marxism, etc. really fascinating, pretty philosophically intense conversation, which I know a segment of our listenership really appreciates and responds well to.

So I hope everybody really enjoys this and finds something in this discussion of value and of interest because I find this stuff absolutely fascinating. But before we jump into that, I also want to give a shout out to Alan. Alan is a patron on our Patreon, and it was actually Alan who introduced me to this book, Emancipation After Hegel, by Todd McGowan, and then sort of, you know, me to make this episode happen, gave me the contact info for Todd, et cetera. So I just wanted to give a shout out to Alan, who is the reason this conversation took place. So yeah, having said all of that, let's go ahead and get into this conversation with Todd McGowan on his most

recent book, Emancipation After Hague, Achieving a contradictory revolution. I'm Todd McGowan. I teach film and theory at the University of Vermont, and I just wrote a book on Hegel called Emancipation After Hegel, and I take a kind of psychoanalytic, German idealist approach to things. I've written a lot on film and a book on capitalism, so I'm interested in a left-wing approach to thinking things theoretically. So that's basically what I'm up to. Yeah, and you also have a podcast, Why Theory? Is that correct?

I do. That is correct. I really love that podcast. I really encourage, especially our more philosophically minded listeners to go check that out. Lots of Hegel, lots of Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis and a lot of leftist politics as well. So it's really great. But we have plenty to talk about just with this one book, Emancipation after Hegel achieving a contradictory revolution. I really loved reading this book. It was as a Marxist.

It was challenging, but it also taught me a new perspective on Hegel and a way to think about Hegel. and, you know, sort of challenges my Marxist position with regards to Hegel. So I hope this, you know, helps do that to our listeners as well. Well, I'm surprised you liked it and you didn't hate it. Well, yeah, certainly is bristled a few times. But you're way smarter than me on Hegel, so I just kind of sat back and listened and read the book. But let's go ahead and just dive into the first question, which is why did you decide to write Emancipation after Hegel and what were some of the goals you hope to achieve with it initially? So I had been working on this book probably for 15 years, I would say.

Like it's been kind of in the background of what I've been doing and I've written little chapters or little, you know, little parts of it for that long. And I guess I never saw a book on Hegel that did what I wanted it to do. So that's why I thought I would write. So I basically wrote it because I felt, you know, I think there have been a lot of really good books on, like Slavois-Jicke wrote a thousand-page book. on Hagel called Less Than Nothing. And that's pretty good book on Hegel. And there were other really good books on Hegel, but none that really, I thought, really defended him as a political

thinker. And I guess that was one of, and also took seriously his investment in contradiction and that as a structure. And I felt like that is something that I could do. And that, that's why I did it. So I really, it was kind of like I didn't find that elsewhere. So I felt like I had to do myself. Yeah, yeah. And that's certainly true. I think we'll get into some of the major misreadings of Hegel in a bit, but before we dive deeper into those questions, I just want to make sure our audience, you know, most of whom are not super well-versed in philosophy or Hegel necessarily, understand the basic concept of contradiction because we're going to be talking about it throughout this episode. So like, just like sort of 101, how would you define contradiction? And

maybe could you give us a couple examples of like basic everyday contradictions that we all live with so that listeners can have a general grasp of what the term means? Sure. So the law of contradiction or the principle of non-contradiction would say something like A cannot be B and not be at the same time. So a thing can't be it's what it is and then what it's not. But just that that seems hopelessly and needlessly complicated. So just a perfect simple example. Like I am myself, I'm the same person that I was when I was 16. Right. Like, Okay. In one sense, that is true. I'm the same person. But I'm also this different person because when I was 16, I was fundamentalist conservative. And now I'm not at all. So in what sense does it? And I think that's a contradiction that I live out. Now, I think a lot of people would say, wait a minute, you're confusing the terms. Like that's not, that's just difference. Like you're just different than who you were when you were 16. But of course, I think that gets away from the thing. thing because I still have to say there's something that is the same and there's something that's

different. And that thinking those two things together would be, I think that's what Hegel has in mind when he talks about contradiction as the identity of identity and difference. So it's like brings together this thing that's the same with this thing that's different and thinks those two things together. So that's, I think, the most tangible example. My political example, I use this in the book is of the way feminism, and I think this is a nice political contradiction, the way feminism in the 70s said, okay, patriarchal society is saying that we're on the one hand mothers and the other hand were sex objects, right? And then feminist theorists said, wait a minute, you're saying that different women are those two things, but our point is

women are both those things, mothers and sex objects, and that those two things actually, which are contradictory for the society are actually you have to think them together. So that was one example of the way I thought people could take up this idea of thinking about contradiction in a politically engaged way. Yeah, and for a more like Marxist baseline understanding of contradiction, would it be fair to say like a major contradiction of capitalism is, you know, from angles and Marxist idea of social production that a bunch of different people come together to produce an item, but that there's an individual sort of taking up of the value created by that social activity.

And so, you know, we talk about the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, et cetera. Right. Absolutely. I mean, Marx has a lot of them, right? So the most basic contradiction between the means of production of a society and the relations of production of society, which is basically what we're just we're talking about. Or the one I like to talk with students about is the way unemployment functions in contemporary capital study. like there's a certain level below which, if unemployment goes that low, that they'll just have to jack interest rates up because otherwise the economy will crash. And yet at the same time, people who are unemployed are thought of as lazy, et cetera. You know, so there's this utter contradiction that the unemployed are socially necessary for all of the prosperity of

capital society. And yet there have to be ostracized at the same time. So that seems like to me a pretty basic contradiction of contemporary capitalism. Absolutely, yeah. So, yeah, definitely well said, really quick before we move on, your concept of identity, just to make that super basic, is this idea of like, you know, to have an identity, to even be a self, it has to, you know, sort of be in relation to the other. There's no self in a vacuum. And so there's that contradiction between the self and other.

Is that a okay way of thinking about it? Yeah, that's a good way to think of it. So there's no way in which. which the self is at once thinks of it's separate from the other, but at the same time it's dependent on the other. Like, I wouldn't, if I didn't have the other selves seeing me as who I am or engaging with me, then I would never even have myself as a subjectivity. So my own identity is completely wrapped up in the other, and yet it's, and yet it's separate. So there's a sort of basic contradiction there, I think. Okay. Interesting. So moving on,

people just have that basic grasp of contradiction. We're going to be talking about it throughout. So it's well known, like almost to the point of cliche, that reading Hegel is very difficult. And throughout your work, you are constantly wrestling with and correcting what you seem to be, what you see as misinterpretations of Hegel from both his admirers as well as from his critics. And do you argue that no other philosopher in the Western tradition is as fundamentally misunderstood as Hegel? So you go on then to say that it's the problem of contradiction in Hegel's thought that is primarily responsible for such widespread confusion. People on both the left and the right don't seem

to really grapple and understand this problem of contradiction. So can you talk about how and why Hegel so misunderstood and then just talk about the role that contradiction plays in his philosophy? Yeah. So I think part of it is he's not a great writer. I sort of say that. And I think I'm very hyperbolic, so maybe he's not the most misunderstood. But it's hard to think of who maybe would be a competitor because I think most people that we have a pretty good basic understanding of their thought but so anyway so I feel like his the movement what he's because he's he's always tracing out the movement of a problem that exists so like in the phenomenology starts out with what he calls sense certainty that is that we can rely on what our immediate sense perception tells us

right and then he and then he's he traces that out and he says well okay but the very attempt to relied just on our immediate sense perception, he thinks, he thinks that he shows this, I think he does as well, ends up relying on certain universals. And so the point is that what we think of as the most immediate is actually mediated. So it seems like he's going from, he's taking a problem and he's moving from the problem to the solution. So that I think is why people get this idea that there's a progressive movement to his philosophy and a progressive movement toward a solution. And I think that's a, that's a key. So the very, I guess what I'm saying is the very structure of the philosophy leads to that conclusion. But what he does is at the end, when he

gets to the supposed solution at the end of sense certainty, he turns to what he calls perception, which actually just is a way of deepening the problem. And so, so if you look at the overall structure, you see that he's not really going from one, one solving one problem, moving on to a new one and then moving on to another solution. Instead, he's trying to find a deeper problem, a deeper way of what I call keeping contradiction alive or working, because there's something that's vital in that for him. Like contradiction is almost the vitality of life for Hagell, I think. So I want to talk about the progressive forward movement with his conception of contradiction. I totally agree that when you can think that you can solve contradictions,

there's this inherent progressive forward movement. But even from the move from less intractable contradictions to increasingly more intractable contradictions, is there still a progressive or forward movement just in that, even if we agree that, you know, this sort of ultimate resolution of contradiction overall is impossible? Yeah, that's an interesting way to think of it. I guess I guess you could call that progressive, but the point is that it's what you're progressing toward is the idea that ultimately there's no progress. So I think that ultimately,

I mean, I don't mean to put that in political terms. I don't mean it politically. I just mean progress. Like, ultimately, there's a, what we're progressing toward is a, is a recognition of a fundamental deadlock or barrier. So I think that's why I'm a little reluctant to use the idea, to use the term progressive. It also is suggestive of this whole way of reading Hegel, which I really take the task of moving from thesis to antithesis to synthesis and this idea that we're moving towards some kind of grand synthesis. And I feel like that's maybe the worst way of reading Higel, along with being the most widespread, especially by people who haven't read him, who just are having a general acquaintance with his thought. Right. So I do want to move on to that in a second. But before we move there, just very briefly, could you let people know just the basic sort of right and left to Galianism? that manifested after, after Hegel died.

And because you say in the book that both the right and the left Hegelianisms both sort of misunderstood Hegel in some fundamental way. Yeah, it's interesting because we're still in the left Hegelianism. So right Hegelianism basically more or less died out. Right Hegelianism took him as a fundamentally conservative thinker who was defending the state and Christian the church. And it basically died out after his death. There have been little revivals of it here and there, one of the United States, actually, England a little bit.

But leftagelianism bred Feuerbach and ultimately Marx and Engels. So it's been incredibly fecined. And it basically took from Hegel the idea of dialectics and the idea of contradiction as well and rejected the part of him, which was Christianity and investment in the state. So that's basically the split. So dialectics and method on the one side that's left, and then the right took Christianity in the state. And so every great Hegelian thinker of the 20th century was on the side of like Teodor Adorno, to extent that he's Hegelian, Georg Luch, Marcusa, they were all left to get some form of left Hegelians. Interesting. Okay.

So moving on from that, in the text, you argue, quote, contradiction is not mere opposition. It is not the assertion of a thesis and a contrary antithesis. Instead, contradiction occurs when a position follows its own logic and thereby finds itself at odds with itself. Every position ultimately undermines itself by exposing its own internal division. I really like that quote. But can you please expand on this idea that contradiction is not mere opposition? And then as you were talking about a little earlier, sort of explain why the popular formula of thesis, antithesis, synthesis is actually not at all an accurate representation of Hagel's. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. So, opposition, oppositions can be solved, right? Like you can choose one side or the other,

or you can bring them together in a synthesis. So I think the usual way of thinking about Hegel's philosophy actually is in terms of oppositions rather than contradictions. It's, I have one opposing thesis. I have another opposing antithesis. Both go awry. I, probably by going too far in each direction. And so I come to a synthesis that brings them together in some kind of perfect mean. And then I can move on and assert that as another thesis. So that, I think opposition fits into that scheme of thinking about his thought. But I also feel like that the idea of tracing out a position, and I think this is what he's doing. So say my position, just like I gave the example of what is true is what I immediately sense.

So Hegel's point is, I'm going to follow that. If I really think that, I'm going to follow out what that implies. And he does that. It's interesting because he does it to all these things that you would think wouldn't make a lot of sense. Like he talks about phrenology in the phenomenology, which measures the intelligence of someone by the shape of their skull. And he traces out what the implications of that would be and shows how it ultimately ends up relying on an argument that itself contradicts phrenology. So that's, I guess, the point that I was getting at is that at every point he's tracing the, rather than I'm going to pose another argument against this position and try to defeat it from the outside, his philosophical move is always to look, to take the position at its own, on its own terms, and work through it and then see what it becomes. And his, his wager is that it'll always undo itself, that every position he takes, if you really genuinely take it up fully, follow out its implications. It will undo itself. Like, I think a lot of my students come as relativists. They're, they're like completely, and I had an interesting moment in class. It was last spring where I said, are there any ultimate moral rules? And one student writes their hand, they said, racism is wrong. And I said, okay. And then they said, but, and they said, but morality is always subjective. And so it was interesting when, like, the contradiction of that, I said, Do you see how you can't really hold those two positions at the same time, right?

And so that was a moment where, but Higel would say, you don't even have to do that. You can even take the total relativist position because if you trace out its own logic, you would see that it's not relativist about relativism itself, right? Like it's not, it's never, no one says like, oh, we should take a relativist attitude toward relativism. Right, right. Because that wouldn't make any sense, right? So he's always thinking about how the very articulation of a position has to be involved in the position and then tracing out the logic that results from that. So there's not some external antithesis to a thesis. It's just the very momentum of any position inside of itself sort of deconstructs itself.

So like this whole idea of an antithesis and then a synthesis is just completely sort of incoherent. Is that fair to say? perfectly put, right? Yeah, like, it just, it just doesn't make, like, that's, there's no moment in which he ever does, introduces some external opposition or antithesis, right? So it's all just about the internal logic of every position that he analyzes or confronts. Do you know where this thesis, antithesis, synthesis thing came from? I do not, no, no, but it, it, it traces back well into the 19th century. And it, it's, what's funny is it is present in just minor points. where Fichta, so Johann Ficta

is the philosophy, he's sort of the bridge between Kant and Hegel. And Ficta does mention this thesis, antithesis, synthesis idea. So there is some maybe of grafting of fict onto Hegel, but one of my, this is probably not actually true, but one of my

fantasies is that, so Friedrich Schelling, who was Hegel's, they were friends in, at the seminary and tubing, And Holderlund was their other, they were three roommates. And I have a friend of mine says, I don't think they played a lot of video games together. It's probably the greatest set of roommates of all time. But Schelling became famous.

He was younger than Hegel and became famous before him. But then when Hegel wrote the phenomenology, Schelling took the preface of the phenomenology as an attack on him. And Hegel didn't mean it that way. And then it is an attack on Shelling's followers, but it ended up causing a breach between them. And Schelling lived longer than Hegel, and he taught Hegel's philosophy to Soren Kierkegaard and Engels. So it's possible that the misunderstanding of Hegel from the early on, and through powerful people, right? Kerrigard is a very famous critic of Hegel, and I think, and Engel's less critical, but still a powerful interpreter, I think that Schelling his influence was part of that,

but I don't know that he's the germ of it. I really don't know where that, who actually deserves the infamy of coming up with that first. That's incredibly interesting. I mean, even, you know, I went through a philosophy undergrad. I went to a little bit of philosophy graduate school and, yeah, never once did this idea that this is actually not in Hagle ever come up. No, it's amazing. No, Brett, it's amazing. Like, I listened to this. this guy, he's not very popular in America, but in France, Michel-Enfrey, I listened to it. And, like, he's the, he's the top, top, most famous, top philosopher in France, and he'll regularly say the shorthand for Hegel thesis, antithesis, like, if it's just common sense, like that,

and, like, anyone who's really read Hegel would say, like, wait a minute, that he never has ever, ever said that. So, you know, so I think it's so widespread. And I think any introduction to him, that's what you're getting yeah yeah absolutely okay so um in the chapter two you start talking about Freud and I really love this uh and I sort of think of it almost as like you know if we take seriously this idea that Hegel was an idealist and you know we take seriously this idea that Freud came up with a sort of structure of the mind and it makes sense that you know these two would feed off each other and I think in the book you say something like you know that the reason that or part of the reason hagel is so hard to understand is because you know Freud came after hagel and

And if Hegel had access to the sort of theoretical terrain that Freud laid down, he could have possibly been more clear. So can you just talk about that and maybe just talk about what Freud can offer with regards to coming to a better understanding of Hegel overall? Yeah, sure. I think the main concept is unconscious, right? Like, I feel like that's the – it's almost like Hegel is struggling to say, oh, these people – this argument is unconscious of what it really thinks. Right. So I feel like if he just had that concept, it would have been like it would have been, it would totally change things. The other thing I think that's important that Freud uncovers is the way in which we don't, we're not. And I think Hegel gets caught up in this terminologically that we're not pursuing the good. Like I think Hegel, he feels like he has to say that our, the ultimate end of our of our actions and our thoughts is the good. And for, and I think Freud pretty much. decimates that idea, that there is even a good that we could pursue and that we pursue it. So I think those two things really would allow Hegel to say things a lot more clearly.

I don't know that he would. And it's interesting because I think he likes his lack of clarity. And I also feel like it's, but what's interesting is that Freud did not know Hegel at all. It's likely that he didn't read him one bit at all. So it's, but as you say, given how widespread the misunderstanding was, it's probably, I think I say this in the book is probably for the better that he didn't read him because it would have been worse. Yeah, can you make explicit that sort of connection between Freudian's conception of the unconscious and what it adds to the Hagellian concept of contradiction?

Yeah, sure. So, in fact, unconscious basically is. So I have a conscious wish that I have. Like, I want to, I want to go to the movies tonight and have a nice time, right? But accompanying that conscious wish alongside it and driving it is an unconscious desire that Freud thinks actually works to undermine my conscious wish. So, while I want to go to the movies and have a nice time, my unconsciously, maybe I want to have a, create a little spat with my spouse and make it so that we can't go to the movies, right? So there's this double thing at work all the time with every wish that I have, according to Freud, that there's an unconscious desire attached to it that is not just silently accompanying it, but actually actively working to either undermine it or subvert it in some kind of way. So I think that's, you almost think, God, how did Freud not have a sophisticated understanding of Hegel to come up with that idea? So it's really, you know, because that's the Hegelian idea of contradiction is so perfectly embodied in that, in that idea that we're all the time our conscious and unconscious selves are acting at odds with each other. I think that's what the main thing that I take from, I take from Freud that then, that then I see that would help, maybe help us to figure out kind of what Hegel's talking about. And the other thing is I talk about this a little bit too in the book is that this idea of the symptom that Freud talks about. So we have. have a symptom, say my symptom is, I have TMJ, my jaw is constantly in pain, and it's a clearly

obsessive symptom from I grind my teeth at night. And that, so what Freud allows you to see is, okay, on the one hand, that symptom causes me great suffering, but there's a way in which I take satisfaction from that symptom as well, which is why I continue to repeat creating it. So that idea, it's kind of like the movie example, like the things, on the one hand, the symptom embodies suffering for me, but on the other hand, it embodies a kind of satisfaction for me. So I think that, I think that, showing how those two things can come together is clearer in Freud than it is in Hegel's philosophy by a long shot, I think. Yeah, it made me think of like the classic person that I think all of us know, especially like out of younger people, the sort of person that that constantly

says, like I hate drama. I'm so sick of the drama, but is constantly at the center of every sort of interpersonal dramatic event that happens in their personal friends circle. So it's clear that they want to express themselves as if they are anti-drama, but in every way that they actually behave, they're constantly engaging with it. And they have to get some satisfaction out of it. Is that an interesting way that's perfect. Yeah, that's exactly example. Like the dramatic is their symptom, right? Like that's a, that's a perfect example. Yeah. So I know on your podcast, you have a lot of fun talking about Freudian slips. And I just realized one very recently in the most recent Democratic debate actually. Joe Biden was talking about, I think it was the capital gains tax, and he had the

most, like, obnoxious Freudian slip. He said the entire sentence, he said, he's like, it's, I will eliminate the capital gains tax. And then he's, and then he stopped. He's like, I mean, I mean, I will double the capital gains tax. I saw that. I saw that. Nobody talked about it, but I'm like, wow, that's really revealing. I know. Someone should have said, but the problem is no one was psychoanalytic, but someone should have said, you know, I think we should trust what you say and not what you think that you mean afterward because it's clear where his, he knows where his bread's buttered, right? Exactly. He is the establishment candidate to defeat all establishment candidates, I think.

But, yeah, that was a great slip. Yeah, it was a funny slip. And I think it's, I mean, I love slips because they, it's one of these areas where everybody believes in psychoanalysis. You know, even people that think Freud is a cocaine user who we shouldn't trust and. was a pervert. They still think like, wow, I think if you slip and say, my favorite one, and thank God she doesn't ever listen to the podcast, my college girlfriend, I would constantly slip in color my high school girlfriend's name. She would get so mad at me. And I was like, no, no, it's not true. I'm over her, but of course I wasn't over her. And so it was really, it's so, and she was right

to think like, oh, it's his unconscious speaks. And I think that's, I think we all think, that like someone makes a slip to us and we're like okay uh that's that i've heard i've got a little insight into what they really think yeah and i think with biden it definitely was true i mean he even called you to see it even it functions in a nice way i think it was the debate before this where he called bernie sanders mr president yeah yeah that was a nice one but the other one i thought was when he called when he called i don't know if you caught this but he called Cory Booker, like President O'O. Corey, like he, and it was because, and I think racism is often expressed unconsciously through slips, right? Like, I think he thought, oh, that's a black man.

Like, in his mind, he's like, that's Obama, and he made the connection. So I think that was an interesting slip that, of course, no one made anything of it because. Yeah, they never do. Yeah, they never do. Yeah, that's so funny. Whenever, whenever I defend Freud, I always basically put forward that argument is like even Freud's biggest like detractors or especially people that take like a 101 psych class and then come out convinced Freud was wrong about everything that they still internalize so much of what Freud gave us not only the concept of the Freudian slip but everybody on some level talks about the unconscious and and has some sort of inner split in their own psychology that they refer to at times and that is you know taking on board some really fundamental Freudian concepts even by those who reject him

ostensibly right I to me like though like if you accept unconscious if you really accept unconscious and you accept some notion of desire as basically self-destructive, then everything else, like, you can take. Like, to me, I just, you know, like, I don't care about anything. Like, I often think of thinkers like that. Like, you know, like, if you, and I'm way too harsh on Marx. I think I know, I, I, I, I flogged myself for my sins about this book, by the way, just to let you know.

But, but I think, like, if you take from Marx, just the notion that capital is contradictory, right? and that there's a way in which the economic has a fundamental place in the in the structures of our life then I think you like the rest like like I feel like there I really feel that like if you take certain ideas from a thinker then if you're going to dismiss if you're going to say oh this thinker should be dismissed because they were wrong about that then but my point would be like they got the main thing right so you're just nitpicking. at things that are that are unessential, I think. Exactly. Exactly right. And you could pretty, you could do that with pretty much any thinker, like pick apart their like sort of fringe or less thought out aspects and deconstruct them. But yeah, if you're taking on board the fundamental principles of a thinker, it's really hard to then turn around and say this thinker was wrong. You've already admitted implicitly that they're not on some level. Right. Right. I agree totally.

Totally. So moving on, perhaps the major argument of your work revolves around the idea that that Hagle believe that contradictions overall cannot be eliminated or transcended, but rather that they are the sort of motor force behind all being, and that the dialectic moves from less intractable contradictions to more intractable ones, but never to a resolution of all contradiction, which, again, I think you say in the book is impossible and could only really occur after, like, the heat death of the cosmos, which I like, I like that line. But the so-called end goal of Hagellian dialectics is instead to be found in, like, the final

recognition that thought itself is contradictory. So does this, like, I just maybe talk about that idea a little bit. And then my question would be, does this idea apply to social contradictions and historical progress or to just the movement of thought in the mind? That's a great question. I mean, I think that if anything, I'd left that in part of in the spirit of Hegel, I left the political, I just sort of showed where he would lead politically without trying to paint it out. And part of that is in deference to him because he was very much a believer that, you know, he has this famous line where the, he says in this, in the preface philosophy of right, the owl of Minerva takes flight only with the falling of dusk, so that philosophy

doesn't have, he thinks, anything to teach to political movements, it just learns from them. So I kind of left that out, and maybe that, I don't know whether that was a good thing or not, but back to your question, I feel like the ending, I think it does just apply to thought. And I think, but I think thought has a lesson for political praxis that I think that political praxis can never be oriented around coming up with a, like, trying to uncover a harmony, trying to find some solution, but instead trying to find a way to reconcile itself to contradiction. And I think, you know, Hegel thought about this politically. So his, maybe the most infamous part of his political philosophy is that he left the

figure of the monarch in a parliamentary system. And it seems strange, like, why would you leave? I mean, he's not a need. I mean, there was a monarch in Prussia. And so a lot of people think it's just because he's conservative and he was trying to appeal to the monarch and didn't want to get in trouble. But I think actually his argument is the monarch really is this piece of pure irrationality within an otherwise rational structure. So my idea is that the monarch for Hegel embodies the contradiction. So it's a way to see, it's like as if the constitutional monarchy for Hegel is the reconciliation with contradiction because the point on top is where there's this contradiction that can't be resolved where

the stupidity, he even calls it like the stupidity of birth creates the figure of the monarch, whereas the rest of the society is structured, he thinks, in a logical, in a logical way. So I feel like that there is some way that you could, that the turn is to praxis, but I do think mostly the ideas in thought, that thought has to, rather than trying, and I think Hegel's main champions have seen him as a, or taken up this idea that we can create a philosophy of recognition out of Hegel, that the point is to what they call mutual recognition, to get to a state of mutual recognition. And I say, my point is, no, the end is actually the recognition of the inevitability of contradiction, which is like almost the opposite thing.

Okay. But I don't know. I maybe talk too long on that and said too many disparate things. But I feel like the main idea is that this is a reconciliation with contradiction in thought. And then the question of how that manifests itself politically, my point would be, I think Hegel leaves that up to political practice to decide. That is that we know we cannot transcend it, but how we, what kind of political form that is reconciling. the contradiction what that is? And I think that's open. And I think what does that best, I think is open even in a progressive way. Like we can keep trying different kinds of things. And we never know where they're going to go. So yeah, we're definitely, the next three questions are all about politics and Marxism. We're going to get into a lot of that. I do want to focus really quick on this concept of like contradiction being the motor force of all being. And I think on one of your podcasts, You even said, like, you know, your, your understanding of contradiction is ontological, not simply epistemological. Correct.

And I think of, and I was, you know, walking around thinking of what that would imply. And I was thinking of even applying contradiction to the level of, like, how stars are formed and die or how biological organisms evolve via natural selection. If you think about contradiction ontologically, I mean, doesn't contradiction exist on all those levels as well? I think it does. Yeah. I think it, I don't think it's, I think if you think of it in those ways, it's not a crazy idea. I mean, I think the only opposed way would be some kind of vitalist idea that there's just this life force that's constantly producing more and more. You know, like that's that that's that that it even governs the inanimate.

But I feel like this idea that contradiction is ontological, I mean, when you put it that way, and I think this too, it's, it seems almost commonsensical, right? Like, things are constantly both themselves and other things, which is why they're constantly undergoing evolutionary changes all the time. Yeah, absolutely. And there's, I mean, that sort of thinking, that sort of dialectical thinking, you can find that in, like, ancient Buddhist text. You can find that in ancient Greek philosophy. The idea of dialectic certainly is an alien, but the role that, you know, contradiction plays in the dialectic, I think, is what really, it would be fair to say that's what Hegel is trying to bring out. I think that's what Hagell, I think that's his great contribution, right? So, you're right that certainly Plato thinks dialectically, of course, and other Greek thinkers.

But so Kant is the inventor of dialectics in the modern sense, but for him it's only negative. Dialectic is a bad thing. The dialectic is what happens when reason over, tries to think about things beyond sense experience. So Hagle is really the first to introduce this idea of dialectic as a positive thing in the modern world. That's fair to say. Interesting. All right. Well, let's go ahead and move on to the political aspect of this discussion.

Because I think this is incredibly fascinating. You said earlier, and we'll get into this whole idea of Marx being a right-wing deviation. You did say, like, in your podcast, that you might have been a little hyperbolic by putting it that way. But in either way, it sort of brings forth debate and conversation just by using that sort of language. We'll get to that in a second. But infamously, Hegel believed that the modern state sort of played an essential role. for human freedom, or at least he's often thought of in those terms. Can you talk about how Hegel viewed the state and maybe what its implications are for, like, anarchists to reject the

state or even for Marxists to aim at its eventual withering away? Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think that anarchists should probably hate him, actually. Like, I don't think there's any, I don't think there's any, there's no middle ground for a compromise. Like, I think that because he really thinks that the state as a form, and I don't think it's necessary, it doesn't have to be the state, like it could be any larger organizational formal structure, but I think if you're an anarchist, you're against any of those things. And state is just a name for one of them. So I think that he thinks that that has a structural role for the emergence of subjectivity itself. So he doesn't think, like he's against, one of the things he really. attacks his social contract theory of the state or any natural law theory because he thinks there is no, there can be no social contract because there is no subject to contract with prior to the emergence of the state. So he really gives the state a grounding role in the

emergence of the subject. So that's, I mean, he just does. And it's, it's for formal reasons that the state gives a form through which subjectivity can emerge. So I think that his notion would be outside of that, I mean, his argument would be outside of that, how can you think about subjectivity without that structuring form there? Is it because it's sort of a collective apparatus? Absolutely. Absolutely. Like, it's a way, I mean, it's in a certain way, his esteem for the state is what makes him

a good philosopher for the left, right? Because he doesn't think that first we are isolated monads or individuals. And I mean, I think that's a, my sense is that's a fundamentally right wing conception of things that if you think we start first by being isolated beings and then collectivity is created by all these isolated things grouping together, then you've, I feel like you've already given away the game in the beginning to Anne Rand. Like you've already given away. So Hegel's point is there to know that isolated thing that emerges out of the collective, which is the state is the form that the collective takes. Of course, it could take a different form, but it has to take some form.

So that's the, that's his idea. That it is, the state is just the name for the form that the collective, the collective source of our subjectivity has. And in that way, when you're talking about social contract theory, you're talking like he's talking against like a Lockheon or a Hobbesian conception. Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and even Rousseau, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Because they posit, first there's a particular isolated individual that then contracts with other particular isolated individuals. And he goes like, wait a minute, those don't exist prior to the collective that gives them their significance and meaning. I mean, they might exist as living, breathing beings, but so what? They don't exist with the signification that you want to give them until there's the collective that gives that signification to them. So what would be the sort of reactionary right Hegelian taking up of this view of the state?

Well, they just think the state is, they think that the state should determine all, right? So they think the individual is nothing. Like that's the, that's the, so the, for the right Higelian, and this is why it didn't last very long, because it didn't, you can see that there's not really a space for it in our political system, right? Because our right-wingers are all, in some version, particularist libertarians, right? They have some of that in them. So there's really not a space for the, like, it's only like Sparta, where you can imagine, you know,

the individual's nothing, give yourself all to the state. It just doesn't work with modern capitalism. If you're a proponent of capitalism, which I think almost all of our contemporary right-wingers are, then that right-wing Higelianism, there's. There's no space. Hegel's clearly an anti-capitalist thinker, I believe. So even right-wing Hegelianism has to be anti-capitalist. And so then you're not going to get, you know, you're not going to get many adherents

if you're a right-winger who's anti-capitalist. I don't think. Fascinating. Fascinating. I see that. Okay. All right. So in the book, let's get to it. You argue that Marx and Marxism represent a, you know, quote-unquote, right-wing deviation from

Hegel precisely because Marx seems to believe that communism would signal, the resolution of contradiction, and you argue this is fundamentally conservative. I think this is true for many Marxists. They conceive of communism as this state of being that has fundamentally overcome contradiction, and you talk about how that is a conservative impulse. Can you talk about why that's conservative and then just sort of explain why you think Marx represents a quote-unquote right-wing deviation? Yeah, for the reason you just said, and I think that I, let me just say, my nice things about Marx. So this is a Marxist podcast. I think in terms of the analysis of economy, Hegel's basically a zero. He's basically a zero. So the debt to Marx for the analysis

of capitalist economy and its contradictions is immeasurable. So I just mean my intervention on this and the reason I said that is purely on the political question. And I do think, though, that like why is it conservative to preach or to argue for or to engage for the resolution of contradiction because that's a way of turning contradiction into opposition, which is, that's my argument, which is the fundamental right-wing way to think about things. Like I think right-wing thinking wants to see things in terms of opposition so that the other side can just be defeated, whereas I think a leftist point is, the leftist political stance has to be universalist. So it's never about defeating the other side. It's about, it's about

seeing how the other side can just fall away in when we like like Marxists even this notion I like this notion of that the victory of the proletariat would be the victory of all classes like that I that that notion I like because that seems to be a genuine leftist idea that there's no intrinsic there's no necessary opposition there's just universality and I feel like but I do think that the idea of eliminating contradiction altogether is tied to this idea of an opposition that can then be resolved because I think if you think in terms of contradiction there's no possible resolution. Right. And to the right wing, especially the sort of fascistic mind that, you know, there's no sort of dealing with the contradiction. There's like

this murderous impulse to just submerge the, you know, impure elements that form the contradiction. So like you talk about this in the book like Nazi Germany, it's very like its own particular, its own self-conception of, you know, sort of Germans, is it tied to this eliminationist attitude towards the Jews try to eliminate contradiction completely, and we can always see that in fascism. Is that fair to say? Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. That's the basic structure of fascism is to, I want to eliminate the thing that is causing me to experience this contradiction. Of course, the problem is that the more you eliminate it, the more it looms larger as a specter, right? That's why

there's never, you can never, Nazism, even if they wiped out every Jew would never have wiped out the Jews. In the Nazi mind, there would have been still more to get because that, I mean, that's that's Hegel's point, that the contradiction is necessary and, and the stuff of your existence. So you can't wipe it out. You can't wipe out this, that other that you're, is causing you that to feel the contradiction. Does it make sense to think of it in terms of like Freudian repression? Yeah, I think it's absolutely true. Like, the more I repressed something, the more, and Freud had this great argument to people that said, wait a minute, we don't want people undergoing psychoanalysis, all these repressed

desires are going to come up and people are going to be having sex with their close friends and we don't want all that. And Freud makes this great point where he says, you know, a repressed desire is stronger when it's refreshed than when it is actually not repressed. So the point is that's not a danger at all. Like once you're, you know, once you become aware of what your repressed desires are, they cease to be, have such a driving power over you. I mean, that was Freud's wager. And it's the wager of psychoanalysis, I think.

It's the repression that gives it its force. Absolutely. Absolutely. So just kind of going off this general idea, there certainly have been other thinkers in the Marxist tradition that have worked on contradiction after Marx, including Angles, Lenin, and Mao. do you think that subsequent thinkers in the Marxist tradition offer a way of reintegrating the impossibility of solving contradictions into the Marxist tradition? Could we turn communism

not into an end state, but rather as like a state of affairs where, you know, maybe the contradictions inherent in capitalism have been overcome, but then we're introduced with a new set of contradictions, or is just the aim of overcoming contradiction so central to Marxism that it can't be saved? No, no, no, no, I don't think so. Yeah, I think, I think it's absolutely true that there could be ways of bringing that into, like that notion of contradiction is fundamental into Marxism. And then I think that's, I don't see any problem with that at all. I mean, I think there are contemporary Marxists trying, trying, people who call themselves Marxists who are trying to do that, I think, today. So, to some extent. It's just impossible because we, we just

can't fathom what, what the contradictions in a communist society would look like, right? Right. That's just the impossibility of trying to see that. Right. Or, I mean, you know, Slavozegovych often says, look, the whole point is communist society is worse in someone. Like, you have to think, like, the contradiction will be even more, it'll be worse than in capitalism. So I think that's one way, and he calls himself a Marxist, so it's one way to kind of think how, but that to get out of this idea that communism or socialism would be a relief. like, okay, maybe, but maybe existential contradictions would, Frederick Jameson had this line that always annoyed me in the political unconscious. He said, you know, in the social estate, death won't be, individual death will cease to be a problem because it will, we'll know that

the collective lives on. And I always thought, wow, that seems like exactly opposite of what it is because, because when does death seem like not a big deal? It's when things are terrible. Like, when things are terrible, you're like, if I died, who years? It'd be better. But if things are great, that's when, like, I always think, I'm sitting at the movies and I'm just, movies is like my fantasy space. It's a great movie. Let's say I'm watching Fight Club. I'm eating my popcorn. I'm like, wow, if I die now, that would just suck. Yeah. But, but, you know, I'm, I've got the flu and I'm, and I'm like, okay, if I die now, it's, I'd feel it'd be, it'd be fine. So I think, I think that that, so I think James had exactly. wrong. Like the point is, like, maybe these existential contradictions of just life and death would be like a hundred times worse if we didn't have capitalism, if we had nice socialist egalitarian society. So I think that's the, I think that's the rub of it. And yeah, that goes back to the whole idea of contradictions being ontological. And yeah, this sort of hyper-optimistic

view that some Marxist or communists have, like even when we get to communism, even those existential contradictions would be resolved. I totally agree with you that that's absurd. When Zhizek talks about the contradictions being worse under communism, does he just mean more intractable? Yeah, I think he kind of means that. He means that, you know, he doesn't use his example of death, but he, his example is about any kind of status. Like once, if we lived in a communist society and there was any status at all, you'd think like, oh my God, it's just, it's not because of the injustice of capitalism. It's just me.

I'm just not good as I'm not like that other person has has achieved all that just because we all have the same chance. It was all equal and they're just better. I just, you know, so his point is envy would just skyrocket in a real communist egalitarian society. So that's one example. Because the differences between people wouldn't be artificially created on the market, but they would just be inherent to who human beings are.

Right. Right now, if I, if I, you know, if I'm, I, like, I'm living in a shitty place and I don't have a drive a crappy car. I can just say it's capitalism. It's the injustice. This person got, oh, they inherited all their money and blah,

blah, but once you don't have that, once there's no adherence, once there's egalitarianism, then all those excuses go out the window, right? So that's his argument anyway. Yeah,

but just like taking this whole idea about communism and the interactability of contradiction, I think that really helped me actually as a Marxist to read your text because it really showed me, this necessity to not think about communism in this hyper-optimistic, absurdly naive way as if it is this resolution of contradiction, but to think about it in more nuanced and complex ways, because what that ultimately does is it disallows you from saying this simplistic, fantastical idea that even death itself would cease to be a problem in communism. Of course, that can't be the case.

In communism, we can't see what those contradictions would be, but they would have to still exist if you take seriously this idea, which I do, that contradiction is so fundamental. mental to the very churning of the cosmos and of life itself. So I think Marxists could walk away from this, not being angry at you, but rather taking in what you said and integrating it into our Marxist tradition and making it better for it. Oh, that's very nice, Fred. I hope every Marxist reads it like that. I haven't got any death threat yet.

Yeah, well, I hope those never come for sure. Before we enter the conclusion area, which I want to ask you about, you know, what revolution could look like in this conception of Hegel and contradiction. I just want to talk briefly about the French Revolution because I was really sort of ignorant about just how fundamental the French Revolution was to Hegel and Hegelian thought. So can you just talk about Hegel's relationship to the French Rev and how it shaped his theory? Yeah, totally. It was so influential on him. I think I say this in the end and the conclusion that it was the he thought of his own philosophy as this attempt to put into philosophy the ideals of the French Revolution. So it was

immensely influential. And he even, there's a great book by this woman, Susan Buck Morse, called Hegel History and Hegel, Haiti and Universal History, which is about the way that he meticulously followed the Haitian Revolution and actually wrote the master slave dialectic part of the phenomenology of spirit in response to it. So it was his way of taking taking the sides of the revolting slaves. So his, I mean, the, and, you know, the other interesting little story is, so July 14th, 7094, in the height of the terror, he, shelling and Hululand go out and, and, okay, this is, this probably didn't happen, so I shouldn't tell it.

It was what it did happen. Supposedly plant a freedom tree and sing La Marseillaise as they're going around it. So again, I say like, even if it didn't happen, it probably should have, because he really, it had that kind of weight for him, like the idea of the French Revolution. And I don't think he ever, like even with, even though he denounced the terror and he has an interpretation of why the terror happened in the phenomenology, but even with that, he never backed away from what he thought of the apocal break that the French Revolution introduced precisely because it brought the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity into the, you know, down from

philosophy to the people and tried to realize those ideals and for him that was there was just nothing like that it's interesting that too that the american revolution is just a it's a zero for him there's just nothing like there's no investment in it and i think it's because my sense is it's because of slavery you know because even though the american revolution has the same there's there's there's a lot of there's good words right there's like giving liberty or give me death There's a lot of catchy things, but there's no, there's slaves. And so, and, and the Jacobins freed the slaves. Napoleon tries to re-institute slavery when there's, he proclaims an empire.

But the revolution itself was anti-slavery. So that's, I think that's the key, that there's, you know, that there's this idea that freedom is, can be really, freedom inequality can be actually realized for him. Yeah, fascinating. I definitely noticed you mentioned in the book, the French Revolution and the Haitian one, and you didn't mention the American one. So I was going to ask about that. But, yeah, in the context of slavery, it makes complete sense why Hago would not give that the importance that he gave the other. Yeah. No, I think it's, I think we're absolutely right. You know, I think a lot of people, you know, Hannah Wrent is the only one who prefers the American.

And I am not the only one. I'm sure there are other Americans that do, but the major thinker. And, but I think we're totally right to refer the French and the Haitian because for just that reason that, you know, like, like, Even Jefferson, when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, he's a slaveholder, obviously, so there's a problem there. But his first version is denounces the slave trade. That's part of the, and he brought it back for editing for the group of the committee writing it. And they're like, no, no, no, get that out of there. Right. So they're like, so even in its very founding documents, and the Constitution's fascinating, because the slave is never mentioned. And there's these three little passages that like the Fugitive Slave Act is in there, but there's no mention of the word slave.

So it's really a nice example of the repression of slavery happening again, both in the Declaration and the Constitution. But in the French, there's not, there's the opposite of that. There's the freeing of slaves. So I think it's pretty, it's pretty clear which one is the most philosophically and politically important one. Absolutely. Fascinating. All right. So for one of my concluding questions, just what ultimate lessons can those of us who are like truly genuinely like dedicated to anti-capitalism and to revolutionary organizing? What can we take from this work of yours and from Hegel more broadly? In other words, like what does a revolution look like if we take this work of yours seriously? I don't, I don't, I don't, I think that I think the only thing is just what you said earlier. Like, I think that it's almost like an idea that whatever,

political practice I'm engaged in, it's not going to solve any existential or ontological problem for me. I think that's the key. And then I think it has to, it has to see the way, I think this would be Hegel's, and this is going to be very abstract. I'm terrible about thinking concretely in political terms. It has to see the way in which our freedom and our equality both depend upon our interaction with contradiction. And I think that's to me that Hegel's greatest insight, that those values which are essential to any leftist program are tied fundamental. They emerge out of contradiction and the recognition of it. And I think that's, so I guess, staying in touch with contradiction rather than trying to solve it in some way is, you know, and I think that one of the ways might just be paying attention when, like if Bernie had just said like, oh, it's interesting that you slipped and said that, I wonder why you slipped, you know?

Like, that might have been an interesting point for him to mention. And I think that would have been paying attention. I know that's a Freudian thing, but it's a, it's still a contradiction and paying attention to the contradictions that are the way. And I love this idea of taking the others person's point and playing it out to where it goes. That's why I love about Anne Rand, by the way, that I think she really does that for the pro-capitalist position. Like, she just shows what it really is. And then, so it's, for one thing, it cannot be Christian. It just cannot be.

So you cannot be those two things at the same time. And if you claim you are, you're just not. So I think there, so again, I'm sorry that that's more of a negative kind of like ways to critique the other side. But after all this babbling, I would say these two things, just that equality and freedom must be rooted in contradiction. So whatever that and however you formulate that, however that has to be the rounding thing. Yeah, fascinating. And the way that I would kind of think about it and put it into words exactly what you're saying is, And I think you even mentioned this, maybe in slightly different words in the book, but instead of this reactionary attempt to banish contradiction, which is impossible, the revolutionary move should be figuring out ways to sustain it and move from less intractable contradictions to more intractable contradictions without this fantasy that you're going to be able to overcome contradiction overall.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely right. If all that we did was get rid of that fantasy, I think that's a good, that's a good starting point. Awesome. Well, Todd, it was an absolute pleasure to read your book, to talk with you, to discover your podcast. Thank you so much for coming on before I let you go. Can you maybe offer a recommendation or two for those who want to learn more about Hegel

and then let listeners know where they can find you, your podcast, and your books? Sure, sure. So about Hegel, I think my favorite book to tell people to start with with Hegel is the encyclopedic logic. The first 110, 20 pages is pretty readable for Hegel. So that's the book, if you're interested. I think that's the one to start with. And I have a little summary of it.

If you send me an email, I'll send it to you and some other information. But I also, I mean, the phenomenology is a great place to start. I think Slavois-Jewijk's books on Hegel, for they know not what they do, sublimogatory ideology are pretty good. And he gives a lot of examples from film. and television and popular culture, so that makes it accessible. So the podcast is called Y Theory, and it's on Apple Podcasts, and I'm never good at advertising. SoundCloud, I think, also.

And yeah, and then my email is tod.m.orgon at UVM.edu, and I'd be happy to, you know, respond. I always respond, because I, you know, what else do I have to do? Well, yeah, I definitely encourage listeners to check out this book and definitely go listen to your podcast, Why Theory. I would love to have more conversations with you. There's so much about Freud we could talk about, so many different conversations we could have. So let's definitely keep in touch and hopefully we can work together. Oh, Brett, it would be phenomenal. Yeah, I would love it. I so enjoy talking to you. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Okay, take care. Oh, that long man came knocking. He was out my front door. I said, lawman,

what you're knocking on my front door for. He said, you've been bad. I'm here to take you away. asking mercy from the gods which you pray so try to put shackles around my wrist but shackles round these kids don't ever fit so seven times tried and seven times fell oh just something about this boy that cannot be jailed so as he turned to walk away

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