The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan

Excellent Zizek. Brush up on your Hegel before diving in.

as advertised. no marks, creases, no sign of wear

Curious about Zizek, I had read the free samples of his recent books available on Amazon. I found the free samples interesting but not sufficiently interesting to make me buy his books.Then along came “Zizek…The Most Sublime Hysteric…Hegel with Lacan” as an offering through Amazon Vine. I had also been curious about Lacan because Lacan was unabashedly a Freudian. When I mention Freud in conversations with my friends they give me that “look” which implies that Freud is no longer considered seriously by people of intelligence, so I should really mend my ways, or at least be quiet on the subject. So, of course, I grabbed Zizek’s book.The book is much better than the samples of Zizek which you will find on Amazon. It is the English translation of his doctoral thesis from 1982. It sends my mind reeling in twenty or thirty different directions at the same time, which is precisely what I expect from a good piece of philosophical writing.If you have been considering reading Zizek but have put it off, I recommend this book as the place to begin satisfying your curiosity.

Another wonderful book by the most dangerous philosopher in the world. Much smaller than Less than Nothing this book requires less capital to purchase and much less strength to tote around. But it does require linguistic familiarity with the various subjects Zizek is wont to discourse about in order to pick his brain and follow the threads. Marvelous if you do.

Let's set the stage. George Wilhelm Frederich Hegel, 1770- 1831, was an important German philosopher who made original contributions to philosophy, in part as a reaction to Kant. Jacques Marie Emile Lacan, 1901 - 1981, was a French Freudian psychoanalyst who gave a long series of annual seminars that were important in Parisian cultural life.This is an English translation of Zizek's 1982 Ph.D. dissertation. It is an exploration of Hegelian dialectic and Lacanian psychoanalysis and how these inform each other. It is not easy reading, but it is interesting, intellectual, and surprisingly humorous at times.Zizek is a well known Marxist cultural critic and writer. I think this would be an intimidating book for anyone without a good background in philosophy and a reasonable acquaintance with Freudian theory. It is, I suspect, exactly the sort of book that a French intellectual would have to know.

This book is not for the uninitiated in philosophy. Even if you comprehend these pages, (and originally I majored in philosopy at Boston College) it's a bit chewy to work your way through. There's more humor and lightness to the comparitives towards the end, as though the author felt he had to impress the reader with severity and ponderous words early on - ironic the seeming insecurity.What's appealing to me is that Zizek set up a sort of hall of mirrors, to my mind, where one philosopher's worldview bounces off another, seems to ricochet through the crowd, and the mirrors are kept turning by Zizek to enlighten us to a truer reflection. It was rather fun for me, more so than humorous, per se.I wouldn't have purchased this for my daughter in her first class of philosophy at uni, but now she's anxious to come home to visit and perhaps have her turn with it.

Here's the deal, the book was really good, but I have a philosophy degree and I'm down with Zizek and have an interest in the topics being covered. That said, even with my philosophical background (I also have an English BA, MA, and working on PhD) some of the concepts I had to roll around mentally a bit before grasping. If you don't have a background in philosophy, if you don't have a *good* solid understanding of the basics this is going to be an uninteresting slog at best. This is not a book for the masses and I don't think a large majority of people have any interest in reading such work...this is a book geared towards a specific discourse community.

This book appealed to me because I've earned degrees in psychology, sociology and political science.As well I'm an elementary literacy teacher.I like deep, complicated thought on the nature of human social structures and how the individual behaves within them.As I read through this book in a piecemeal fashion, I found myself nodding and agreeing with much of what the author posits.I also found myself thinking how inaccessible this type writing is. It reminds me of when I was an eager student in college and wanted to share all the bursts of complicated connection I would see between theory and real life...it was exhausting conversation for my audience.My biggest disappointment with this book is it is merely fuel for the fire that the knowledge and language used to provide a framework for the observable human experience is so academic that possessing this way of thinking serves little use for most of humankind. In other words: elitist.It really isn't satisfying to wonder if one's love of vocation trumping one's love for a other human being is somehow obsessive or really just love. This may be intriguing to ponder but how does it help connect us to others?It leads people to saying things like "I know you better than you know yourself" which can only be true if all observable behavior slavishly follows known patterns without deviation due to human will.At any rate, I thought this book a very academic read that would have been much better consumed during a period of academic study rather than enlightening my every-day.

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Excellent book.

I do not know how a 'professional philosopher' would view this work, but for us, very heavy, very humble mortals, this is a great explanation of current thinking. This is not a book that could have been written by a Brit, it takes its subject seriously but refuses to kowtow to the expert's expertise.I did intend to read this book from cover to cover but, for me, it is too dense for that, I shall use it in two ways; firstly, to dip in and secondly, as a reference book - when I come across a casual reference to a tract, this book will educate me upon the meaning.I cannot understand why anyone would not own a copy of this work.

The sociologist Slavoj Žižek is a critic worth listening to and he is not afraid of truth however embarrassing this might be.Most of the jokes are about sex, religion or politics. Some of the jokes are ‘nicely vulgar’ and others are coarse, low or accompanied by a philosophical explanation of the humor.Some of the jokes we have heard before:The pope and Bill Clinton die at the same time. By mistake the pope goes to hell and Clinton to heaven. After a few days the mistake is discovered and the two meet when switching places.The pope says: I can’t wait to meet the holy virgin.Clinton. She’s not a virgin anymore.Religion frequently appears in the jokes. The young girl prays to Virgin Mary:O, thou who conceived without having sinned, let me sin without having to conceive.In other jokes Žižek explains the expression ‘politically correctness’ when for instance the word torture is replaced by enhanced interrogation technique, an expression that approaches something almost acceptable.Something like this may have happened with the vocabulary when the Western countries were looking for imaginary mass destruction weapons in the Iraq of Sadam Hussein, and the American invitation to the European countries to join the hunt is compared to the joke about the man who is accompanying a young woman to her home:She: Would you like to come up and have a cup of coffee?He: Thank you, but I don’t like coffee.She: That’s ok. I don’t have any.As usual Žižek refers to several philosophers: Hegel, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and we also hear about Freud, Monty Python andMarx Brothers:This man may look like an idiot and act like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you – he really is an idiot!The book is entertaining, sort of a Žižek special stand-up rhetoric, and as it is Žižek there is no joke without criticism of our society:The rich man to his servant: Throw out this destitute beggar – I’m so sensitive that I can’t stand seeing people suffer.…more appropriate than ever.

I'm in awe of Slavoj Zizek. I love his work, his approach, his delivery, his depth. But may be I should not have chosen this book for reviewing. Just as with reading Hegel or Lacan, this book stops me in my tracks on every page. I still haven't read much of it. The review is way overdue, and I read again: "According to orthodox dialectics, Understanding supposedly treats categories, conceptual determinate, as abstract moments, frozen and removed from the living totality, reduced to the specificity of their fixed identity. Reason, on the other hand, goes beyond the level of Understanding by deploying the living process of subjective (self-)mediation whose "dead" and rigid abstract moments, whose "objectifications", are the categories of Understanding." And again, I am thinking through this paragraph, trying to follow step by step without losing understanding, without skipping along the way. I like doing it this way, it is pleasing to be able to follow someone like this. It doesn't equate with agreeing, but when I agree, it is because of resonating with my own understanding, like a bit further on in the paragraph, when he writes: "Reason is not something "in addition" to Understanding,.... Reason is Understanding itself in the sense that nothing is missing from Understanding, in the sense that there is nothing beyond it."So my review? It is a book I will derive pleasure from for a long time. It is a demanding read, but that's where the pleasure comes from. I will put it aside and not look at it for ling periods of time and then come back and read some more, or some of it again. Just like Hegel.That's what a library is for: lots of books, you pull one out and have an encounter with the ideas within it. It enriches your life, that's what it does.