Taheri A. Hegelian-Lacanian Variations on Late Modernity: Spectre of Madness

Routledge, 2021. -— xii, 180 p. — ISBN 978-0-367-52308-4, 978-0-367-52307-7, 978-1-003-05739-0.The current rise in new religions and the growing popularity of New Ageism is concomitant with an increasingly anti- philosophical sentiment marking our contemporary situation. More specifically, it is philosophical and psychoanalytic reason that has lost standing, faced with the triumph of postsecular “spirituality”. Combatting this trend, this treatise develops a theoretical apparatus based on Hegelian speculative reason and Lacanian psychoanalysis.
With the aid of this theoretical apparatus, the book argues how certain conceptual pairs appear opposed through an operation of misrecognition christened, following Hegel, as “diremption”. The failure to reckon with identities-in-difference relegates the subject to more vicious contradictions that define central aspects of our contemporary predicament. The repeated thesis of the treatise is that the deadlocks marking our contemporary situation require renewed engagement with dialectical thinking beyond the impasses of common understanding. Only by embarking on this philosophical- psychoanalytic “path of despair” (Hegel) will we stand a chance of achieving “joyful wisdom” (Nietzsche).
Developing a unique dialectical theory based on readings of Hegel, Lacan and Žižek, in order to address various philosophical and psychoanalytic questions, this book will be of great interest to anyone interested in German idealism and/or psychoanalytic theory.Introduction: The paradox of self-reflection
The diremptive remains
The triumph of dialectical “lower” terms
Speculative topology
Vicious dialectical reversals
Faith and reason
The paradoxes of love
The paradox of identity
Subject and collective
Ausstossung and Verwerfung
Symbolic murder and suicide
Generational difference: parent and child
Power difference: analysand and analyst
Sexual difference: man and woman
The paradox of a boundary without a limit
Good and evil
Truth and lies
Thrownness and autonomy
Life and death
The force and frailty of the law
Madness and sanity
The diremptions of fantasy
The untimely- contemporary
Religion and atheismTrue PDF