A better way of putting what I was getting at in my notes is featured in this (other) note:
-There is no thinking that would not already be thinking the death of the thing. One-sided thinking is a thinking that only respects the life of the object. It fails to see that the death of the thing is as important for and constitutive of its life as life itself. Overcoming life by the recuperation of death into life is the fundamental action of a thinking that raises the thing to the level of the Concept. As such, it must think the death of the thing, and think it as (as we already said), already present in the life of the thing. (For death and life, one can substitute being and nothingness: we're using Hegel's earlier Schellingian vocabulary that one finds in his essay on "Love," for example, because that gets at what he later calls "negativity" in a more concrete metaphorical manner.) The thinking of the death of the thing as already present in the life of the thing is, in a sense, killing it, killing the one-sided conception of life, pure life, that one attributes to it. Thought in the opposite way, one-sided thinking is attributing life to the object. A thinking that refuses the Concept and therefore produces phenomenality, appearance (as separated from essence), would be a thinking that attributed (only) life to the thing.
3 comments:
I encountered your blog using google's blog search. As a high school student who's just scratching the surface of continental philosophy, it has been really useful.
I've read a good chunk of Zizek, but if I were to try to read Hegel and Heidegger, where, in your opinion, should I start?
Thanks
Geez, what a question! For Heidegger, I'll copy on this blog a great 3 page reflection he has in his book The Phenomenology of Religious Life which is a great intro, so read that sometime (the rest of the book isn't as helpful for getting into Heidegger), but besides that a good place to start is "What is Metaphysics?" and "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," as well as just the very first few pages of the Intro to Being and Time--all of which can be found in the great cheap book Basic Writings edited by David Farrell Krell. There's a lot you can't understand at first, but my suggestion, as with Hegel, is just to skim widely so you get the feel for the thinking going on and the main issues he's raising. Only after you get that will something like Being and Time make sense.
As for Hegel, the Introduction (NOT the preface) to the Phenomenology of Spirit is a good place to start, probably after reading his early writing on "Love," which gives you a flavor of what he's working through (you can find the latter in The Hegel Reader). I also recommend reading (just) Kant's Introduction to his Critique of Pure Reason, which will give you a sense of what Hegel is reacting to.
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