Hegel in A Wired Brain

Hegel in a Wired Brain from Slavoj Zizek is another journey into the seemingly already wired brain of Zizek, though with a different meaning.

After seeing several videos and one talk in person where he presented many of these ideas over the past year or two, it is great to finally have the book to read. And it does not disappoint. His brain seems to work faster than he can sometimes articulate so his talks can often require multiple repetitions to catch all he is saying. Once you have connected all the dots he connects, he usually makes more sense than not. I don't always agree but I always appreciate the challenges he presents to my ways of thinking.

I'm not going to go on for paragraphs paraphrasing the book for you, that really serves little purpose since it is in the arguments he makes and not strictly the quotable phrases where the book has its value. His use of Hegel is enlightening even in places where I don't quite read Hegel the same way, but at no point do I think he crossed that line from a different understanding to an intentional misunderstanding to serve his argument. 

Because Zizek touches on so many ideas and disciplines there are a multitude of ways into the text, and likely just as many takeaways. Certainly his references to singularity throughout and the concluding argument are the larger areas that everyone will takeaway. One area I was especially interested in was his discussion of internal and external communication. Whether having some type of direct connection between brains, between people, would actually bypass the limits of language. I tend to fall on the side that believes it won't make communication as clear as those who believe it will. Zizek highlights the strengths and drawbacks of positions while always making his own views readily apparent.

I highly recommend this for readers interested in where we are going with AI and direct connections whether through implants or some as yet unknown method. This will also be of interest to those with an interest in Hegel and philosophical thought in general. Both for the ideas presented and as an example of how to use a previous thinker's ideas to build upon. Zizek's writing is accessible and his explanations of how he is using Hegel, and others, does help to open the readership up to more readers. That said, some familiarity with Hegel at a minimum will enhance your understanding of the arguments. But for Zizek's big picture it isn't necessary to have a thorough understanding of Hegel. Much like those science books that have a lot of advanced math and theory but are presented in as jargon-free a manner as possible. Scientists get a lot from them but non-scientists can also make sense of the bigger arguments without fully grasping the nuances.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

Slavoj Zizek has been a very influential and interesting figure to me in regards to philosophy. Oftentimes, I am attracted to his way of thinking, yet vehemently disagreeing with some of his conclusions. On the other hand, you can’t help but love the guy. If there is one other philosopher who gives me the same mix of emotions, it’s Hegel. So what could be better than putting them both together? 

In 2020, we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Hegel. Zizek reflects on this with a question, “Is Hegel just a historical curiosity or does his thought still address us?” (p.1) He continues on by explaining the dominant ideas of previous years, whether that be Foucault, Derrida, or Marx. We come to his first remark about Hegel’s ideas shortly after. Zizek argues that Hegel’s “Absolute knowing” is not a claim of premonition or omnipotence but it “stands precisely for the realization of an unsurpassable limit.”(p.1)  He supports this by quoting Hegel directly from his work “Philosophy of Right.” 

In a subsection titled “A Hegelian approach” Zizek explains further where he’s coming from. He says “the triad that defines my philosophical stance is…Spinoza, Kant and Hegel.”(p.2) His reasoning is as follows. Spinoza is the pinnacle of “realist ontology”, Kant takes a “transcendental turn” and Hegel works with the phenomena without appealing to a pre-Kantian realism. In Zizek’s mind, all of these work together in one way or another. Zizek announces the premise of his book later on and his premise is a big one. He says that Hegel has provided us with the “ultimate stand for thinking” and what Hegel provided was an “outline of an inconsistent totality.”(p.11) Zizek, throughout this book, consistently applies the Hegelian approach to various philosophical topics. 

He gets into some serious topics, such as the “digital police state.” (p.29) Here Zizek reasons with us about what we consider to be social freedom. After his discussion of surveillance capitalism and Fichte’s response to Hegel in general, he goes further to explain what he means by the “wired brain”. There is a helpful graph that shows many arrows pointing to the chronological and functional order of what Zizek is talking about. (p.44-47)  If liberal democracy is replaced because of the aforementioned problems, what replaces it? This is a question that Zizek asks the reader. (p.49) In this chapter, Zizek talks about the benefits of Communism, along with what it is and isn’t. He sees communism as more than just a social vision or revolution but a complex and nuanced position. 

In chapter 4, Zizek gets into some theology. Given that he deems  Platonov’s version of Communism as Gnostic. (p.67) Here Zizek does get into some Gnostic ideas, such as humans becoming gods, though he doesn’t seem to mean that in the same sense that a Gnostic might have meant it in earlier times. Zizek makes a lot of connections to the Bible and Communism throughout this work as well, such as in chapter 5 when he uses the Fall as an analogy for the entire chapter.(p.90-95) Next, Zizek talks about the Unconscious and draws heavily from Freud’s conception of the Unconscious. He ties in this idea with various social issues and ties it together with this idea he has been bringing up throughout the book, Singularity.(p.107) He ends the book with a treatise on the digital apocalypse. 

Throughout this book, Zizek does a good job making the philosophy involved fairly comprehensible.  I still wouldn’t recommend this to someone who hasn’t read much philosophy. However, I found Zizek’s application of Hegel remarkably refreshing, yet I was not surprised, Zizek on Hegel has probably been my favorite thing besides Hegel on Hegel.