From Hegel to Lacan or from Ego to Agora

Abstract

We comment on the last chapter of Henrich (2003, ch. 21) where the author offers a ‘key’ to Hegel’s Logic focusing on the problem of the passage from self-reference to determination (meaning) in the beginning of the Logic. We argue that what he offers as a ‘key’ is actually a reduction of Hegel to the logic of understanding from the point of view of an autonomous Ego; consequently, he excludes dialectics. Contrarily, we present Hegel’s own solution, eliciting the remark where he shows that the proposition “Being and Nothing are the same” negates itself insofar as it is uttered and reflected on the Other’s understanding (Hegel 1929:102). We conjecture that this remark offers a privileged point from which to consider the connection Hegel-Lacan, provided we recognize the Absolute in Hegel as the big Other in Lacan. We suggest that the dialectical identity of identity and difference is actually an operation in the Agora and that the Hegel-Marx-Lacan theory can be properly denominated dialectical materialism. We also offer an answer to Žižek’s (2013) question of how a “neutral medium of designation” can emerge within a “life-world practice” (7) or out of a “universe of matter (905).