Heinrich Heine, Heimkehr LVIII. There is also a subtext that this attire pertains to night use. In a famous section of the Preface to thePhilosophy of Right, Hegel describes evening as the proper time for the fulfillment of philosophy. “The owl of Minerva starts its flight at dusk [mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung].” So it is only appropriate to picture Hegel at the apical moment of philosophy, between dusk and turning in for sleep.
Heinrich Heine, The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine: A Modern English Version, trans. Hal Draper (Boston: Suhrkamp / Insel, 1982), 99. “Zu fragmentarisch ist Welt und Leben! / Ich will mich zum deutschen Professor begeben. / Der weiss das Leben zusammenzusetzen, / Und er macht ein verständlich System daraus; / Mit seinen Nachtmützen und Schlafrockfetzen / Stopft er die Lücken des Weltenbaus.”
Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,(Penguin Freud Library, vol. 2), 196.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, (Penguin Freud Library, vol. 4), 631.
Ibid., 630.
Ibid., 630–1.
Badiou starts off his Théorie du sujet by claiming that “at the heart of Hegelian dialectics one has to disentangle two processes, two concepts of movement, and not only a just insight into becoming which is corrupted/distorted by a subjective system of knowledge. Let’s say, e.g.: a) a dialectical matrix covered by the word alienation, the idea of a simple term which deploys itself by its becoming-other in order to come back to itself as a fulfilled concept; b) a dialectical matrix whose operator is the scission, the theme ‘there is no unity except a ruptured one’ [il n’y a d’unité que scindé]. Without the least return upon itself, without the connection between the final and the initial (inaugural).” Alain Badiou, Théorie du sujet(Paris: Seuil, 1982), 21–2. The good Hegel would be the Hegel of scission, i.e. of a non-symmetrical contradiction which cannot be sublated into a higher unity.
Modified from G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Terry Pinkard (2010), 20. “Die Ungleichheit, die im Bewußtsein zwischen dem Ich und der Substanz, die sein Gegenstand ist, stattfindet, ist ihr Unterschied, dasNegativeüberhaupt. Es kann als der Mangel beider angesehen werden, ist aber ihre Seele oder das Bewegende derselben; weswegen einige Alte das Leere als das Bewegende begriffen, indem sie das Bewegende zwar als dasNegative, aber dieses noch nicht als das Selbst erfaßten.”
G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic (TWA 5), 185–6.
G. W. F. Hegel, History of Philosophy (TWA 19), str. 311.
Ibid., 313.
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia UP, 1990), 311.
One can read here Deleuze with Badiou, who is aware of the Hegelian twist: “[Clinamen] pertains neither to the void nor to the atoms nor to the causal action of the one on the other. Neither is it a third component, a third principle. &leftbracket;…&rightbracket; Clinamen is the atom as the out-of-place &leftbracket;hors-lieu&rightbracket; of the void. Let’s say in a broader view, and far from the Greeks, that clinamen is the subject, or more precisely subjectivation.” Alain Badiou, Théorie du sujet, 77. “It is absolutely necessary that clinamen be abolished in its own turn. &leftbracket;…&rightbracket; Any particular explanation of any particular thing must not require clinamen, although the existence of a thing in general is unthinkable without it.” Ibid., 79. “The atom affected by deviation engenders the Whole without any rest or trace of this affection. Better still: the effect is the retroactive effacement of the cause &leftbracket;…&rightbracket; the deviation, being neither the atom nor the void nor the action of the void nor the system of atoms, is unintelligible.” Ibid., 80.
Sigmund Freud, “Negation,” in On Metapsychology, The Pelican Freud Library, vol. 11 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), 437.
Ibid., 437–8.
For this line of argument I am indebted to Alenka Zupančič. See also Jean-François Lyotard, Discours, Figure.
Sigmund Freud, “Negation,” 438–9.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 429–30. Cf. Sigmund Freud, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious(Penguin Freud Library, vol. 6), 233.