>> INTERVIEWER: Thank you very much for joining
our programme, professor Dolar. And thank
you for inviting us to your home to have a
talk about the Phenomenology of Spirit and
to enlighten us more on the book, maybe in
more general terms. We have been reading with
our listeners the preface of the book, as
we have told you, and we would like to start
out by simply asking maybe the most general
question: What is this book and what is its
significance in the history of philosophy?
>> DOLAR: Well, you start out by the question
which is impossible to answer, I mean, somehow.
"What is this book?" […]. I suppose you
gave some background information to your listeners
or whatever in the previous … The book was
written in 1806, published in 1807, and turned
into this mythological book of the history
of philosophy. And the point of it being written
is actually the first thing to point out to
its significance because it was written in
a very dramatic historic juncture. And, well,
there is this anecdote of Hegel when he was
writing the last page of the book, there was
the battle of Jena where Napoleon famously
has beaten the Prussian army and the day after
having completed the Phenomenology, he opened
his window and saw this Napoleon on the white
horse riding through the town of Jena. And
there is this mythical, iconic moment of European
history when you have one of the biggest philosophers
in the entire tradition, Hegel, completing
his frist great book, the most mythical book
in the canon probably, and on the next day
sort of confronting Napoleon in this historic
moment. The meaning of this historic moment
was the meaning of the continuation or completion
or something of The French Revolution, of
the break that The French Revolution presented.
And Hegel at a time saw Napoleon as competing
the Prussians, imposing certain ideas of the
continuation of The French Revolution throughout
Europe. Beating the Prussians as the most
conservative state, aristocracy, represented
of the old order around.
So there is an emblematic moment of the end
of an era and the beginning of another era.
And this was in the air. Hegel was maybe the
one who could articulate this in the best
way, but the sense of the spectacular historic
moment to which this belongs belonged to the
general reception at the time. And the whole
of German Idealism starting with Kant in his
famous writing about The French Revolution
and then Fichte in his famous, when he was
young, two books in support of the French
Revolution. And then Hegel who saw in The
French Revolution – he used this sentence
in the Philosophy of history, "The sky has
descended unto earth" – so he saw this as
an absolutely momentus moment. At from this
momentus historical moment there follows the
idea and the task, the agenda, of this book.
This is the book which has in its blueprint,
in its very inception, the idea that this
is the book which could only be written now
at this historic moment. […] Usually philosophy
is something that aims at universality or
something which is eternity, something which
is elevated above history. But Hegel's aim
is that this philosophy, this particular kind
of philosophy, the aim that he has set for
himself, could only be done at this particular
historic junction. And this has nothing to
do with the historical relativism as it were.
He wants to maintain two things: It is only
at this particular historic junction and being
completely immersed at this historic moment
that one can reach for the Absolute. The Absolute
and the history don't stand opposed as this
was generally seen in the whole history of
philosophy: "You either go for the Absolute
and speak about eternal truth or somehow about
the contingency of relativity of historic
times, their changeability etc." For Hegel,
the two things go hand in hand. It's only
from the contingent historic moment that one
can reach for the Absolute Knowledge.
>> INTERVIEWER: It also sounds a bit like,
I mean, what people sometimes say about Hegel
and his grand system that it's sort of the
finalization of the development of history
and spirit. And what you are saying sounds
like you could even say that it's an opening
instead, or a beginning.
It’s the two things at the same time. It's
absolutely the two things at the same time.
It's an end, and Hegel very famously proclaimed
the end of philosophy, the end of history,
of art. Somehow, he was the man who proclaimed
the end. And it's easy to proclaim the end,
but the difficult thing is, I mean, it really
works and he did proclaim, and there was indeed,
the end of an era. But also this end of an
era and this is why also in his system all
the traditional things and concepts of philosophy
have somehow come together or can congregate
or can find a place or whatever. So he's a
sort of compendium of everything that went
before, but at the same time, and this is
my reading of Absolute Knowledge, I mean,
this is a notion which was most controversial
in Hegel because it was seen as a closure,
if you come to Absolute Knowledge there's
a closure, but I think that at the very same
time, at the very point of closure, there
is an opening. And this is what is Hegel's
agenda of Absolute Knowledge. I mean, Absolute
Knowledge is the permanent agenda of closure
and opening. Of your belonging to a particular
historic moment and seeing that you can do
philosophy only if you grasp this particular
historic moment – and thus reach for the
Absolute. This is the Absolute Knowledge.
>> INTERVIEWER: So Absolute Knowledge being
the final chapter in this magnificent book
is of course, I mean, it really ends on a
grand note the Golgotha and the Absolute Spirit
sitting on the throne of everything, I mean,
it's as grand as one could possibly imagine
one ending a book on philosophy. But what
you are saying is that this is not just some
kind of finalizing the victorious European
spirit sitting on top of everything or dictating
the movements of the world, or whatever that
might mean, but rather something that is two
things at the same time.
>> DOLAR: No, I think that the place to start
… I mean, this is the most ambitious book
that was ever written. It's a book to finish
all books. I mean, who has ever written a
book which would not only be developing a
certain system, but which would actually present
all possible attitudes to truth, all possible
experiences of knowledge and truth – everything
from the most naïve to the most complex ones
– as a path that one has to undergo in order
to … as a sort of training path of philosophy
and undergo not simply as seeing that some
theories are false and bad and the other theories
are the correct ones. But actually, Hegel's
[contention?], this is one of the difficult
things in this book, is that without missing
the mark with your theory, you will never
get there, you will never get to the mark.
It's only missing the mark which actually
creates the mark as such. You can only get,
you can hit the mark, you can get to the point
if you take upon yourself 
the courage to also fail. The history of failures
is equally the history of the progress of
knowledge and truth. So it necessarily goes
through a series of failures in order to arrive
where it should arrive. (And now I'm coming
to the most important point.)
There's a sentence in the Introduction, not
in the Preface, but in the Introduction, which
somehow sums this up, and which is a very
simple sentence saying, basically, "The path
to truth is truth itself" [§78?]. So, this
is a very strange structure and this speaks
about the structure of absolute knowledge.
Because what does it say about absolute knowledge?
It doesn't say, "You need a long path in order
to arrive at absolute knowledge, and then
you'll be there." What it says is the opposite:
"The path to truth is everything." When you
arrive to the absolute knowledge, you only
realise that everything happened on the path.
You don't arrive to a certain position where
you would be on top of everything. It's only
the path which actually made this position.
And the whole thing is on the path.
And somehow the gesture of absolute knowledge
is the gesture of retroactivity. That the
consciousness has some sort illusion that
it will reach this final goal which will be
the absolute whatever and what you reach in
the end is an indication, a vector, which
points backwards and which actually just says
"Well, all these failures [that you did] during
the way – this is the path to truth. This
is all there is to it. There is no truth outside
of this. Only this is absolute knowledge."
So in this sense you can have the rhetoric
of Golgathar and phrenology and whatever,
but in some sense it is an absolutely empty
point. You don't learn anything new in the
absolute knowledge. You only learn that everything
happened on the way. Using the point, okay
in English it is … in Slovene it's the same
… point and full-stop – like Punkt. You
can see the absolute knowledge as a sort of
full-stop. It's just a point. It's just an
indication that this is the ending of something,
but which actually only refers you back to
the sentence because it's only the point you
get, one single point without any dimensions,
that you get at the end.
>> INTERVIEWER: So if we then go to the beginning,
one of the passages that we have been discussing
earlier on is from the very beginning when
Hegel states, from the very first sentence,
that what an author usually does when he is
endeavouring to write a book, he would explain
the purpose of the book and how to proceed
and maybe some of the central concepts. But
the problem is that when you start out a sort
of a philosophical endeavour of this kind
that you have been describing, that you cannot
state the concepts clearly, analytically so
to say, beforehand because it is only in sort
of the effort of the concept that it will
unfold itself. So it seems that we have a
full-stop at the end and we have a particular
kind of beginning that is almost impossible,
it seems, because where do you have your concepts
from in the first place?
>> DOLAR: There is a paradox in Hegel's beginning
and what the Preface says in the very first
sentence on the very first page, it says,
"There can be no Preface to philosophy" [§1].
So the Preface is written against the very
idea of the being a preface to philosophy.
And he repeats the same thing in the Introduction
precisely in opposition to Kant who thought
that first you have to consider the conditions
of the possibility of knowledge before getting
to cognition. And there we have the same thing.
Kant gets stuck with the idea of an introduction,
of a preface; he can never get there because
the very question that he asks is a question
which makes it impossible for him to get there.
So there can be no preface, there can be no
introduction. And why the hell is then Hegel
doing this? He is doing this against his [bad?]
proclamation. If what he was saying was true,
this text wouldn't exist at all. And it doesn't
go only for the Preface to the Phenomenology,
the Introduction, it goes for the Phenomenology
as such in a way. Because what is phenomenology?
It is the science of the experience of consciousness;
this was the first title of the [thing?],
which means that the consciousness, any consciousness,
the non-philosophical consciousness, should
take the path of the phenomenology to experience
all possible ways or possible attitudes towards
the absolute in order to get to - where? In
order to get to the point where the system
can start. In order to get to the page one.
And so, the whole phenomenology is an introduction.
It is not just the Preface. I mean, why write
a book which is an introduction to something
that will happen later? And then if you look
at the system: okay, logic is only the initial
part of a long process of Aufhebung which
will then go to the philosophy of nature and
the philosophy of spirit. So the system itself
is an introduction. You are being introduced
all the time to this final point. But then
you get to this final point and what you learn
is, hell, there is no final point, everything
you learned was on the way.
And also, you have, as it were, the co-belonging
of two gestures: And one is the gesture of
anticipation and the other one is the gesture
of retroaction. And the gesture of anticipation
announces, "There will be something later,
some truth will come. We are now still standing
outside." And then the gesture of retroaction
says, "Well, there is no truth to be learned;
everything you are standing outside was your
way of being inside the truth." So you are
never inside, you are never outside. This
may be the simplest way to formulate this.
You cannot simply start inside the philosophy
by making a truth, a claim, which will be
absolutely true; you need an externality to
arrive there. And this is one of the things
that Hegel is arguing for in the Preface and
in the Introduction: he says that dogmatism
in the ways of thinking consists in the idea
that you can grasp the truth with a proposition;
that you can have a proposition, a fundamental
principle, and this will be the truth [§40].
And then he argues on: he says, "The fundamental
principle, any fundamental principle, is false
for the reason of it being a fundamental principle"
[§24]. I mean, any fundamental principle
is false because what imports [is important]
is: how do we get there and what follows from
there? I mean, you can never have a proposition
which will be a true proposition like, whatever,
"A = A" which was Fichte's proposal, or, whatever,
"I = I", as a fundamental principle for which
everything else would unfold. This is a completely
non-Hegelian way of looking at things.
>> INTERVIEWER: There is this strange thing
about language which continues to haunt, continues
to get back at you right at the moment where
you think you've grasped something or you
know something, you have some kind of anchor
point. And then language, the tool which you
use to articulate or point out or say, whatever
it is you are saying, "This is really true
and I'm sure and certain of it". It tends
to trick you. And this is much of what Hegel
is actually pointing out, that whatever you
are trying to figure out or point out or indicating
as stable ground then something happens around
the back of your saying this which, in a sense,
both makes you miss the mark, as you said
earlier, and at the same time perhaps get
that step further. Is this some of the point
that he is …?
>> DOLAR: Yes, well, there is something … there
is an argument in the Preface which could
be summed up by the sentence, "The deconstruction
of the propositional form by the propositional
form itself." So there is something that was
generally assumed that belongs to the propositional
form, the very … the minimal … the Aristotelian
kind of "S = B" propositional form. So something
was assumed about this propositional form
which actually was wrong. But in order to
see that it was wrong, the only thing one
needs to do is to take this propositional
form seriously. And this analysis of the propositional
form actually hangs together very closely
with the dictum that the substance is subject.
Because, okay, I said before that Hegel […] sins
against his own principles by writing a preface
at all. And then he sins against his own principles
by saying, "There can be no single proposition
which could spell out the truth of any philosophy."
But then he makes the completely impossible
thing, he says, "Everything hinges on understanding
that substance is subject" [§17]. Everything
I want to say hinges on understanding this
one single principle. And it's kind of strange
that he does this. And one can see this as
a sort of meta-principle and what does this
mean, how does this hang together with the
question of the very form of the proposition,
the very form of "S = B". You can see that
he gets … he combines two things. He combines
the notion of substance which is the master
concept, the key concept, of philosophy. And
the notion of substance combines in itself
5-6 different things:
[1.] And one thing is that substance […] is
temporal: the substance is what endures change.
This is the temporal aspect of it.
[2.] The other aspect is spatial because substance
is a spatial metaphor; substare means to stand
under. So it's a sort of underlying thing
which stands under, spatially, under a surface.
In order to get to substance, you have to
do away with the surface and get to the core,
as it were.
[3.]Then you have the question of necessity
and contingency: Substance is what is necessary
as opposed to the flow of contingencies.
[4.] Then you have the opposition between
essence and appearance. Substance is what
is essential against the deception of appearances.
So you have a certain judgement about our
capacities of cognition there because appearance
is depending on sensual … are deceptive.
You have to get to the Gedankending which
is the thing of thought which is the substance.
[5.] Substance is what is universal as opposed
to particularity and singularity.
[6.] And finally, substance is what is one
as opposed to multiplicity because the very
notion of the substance depends on the notion
of spelling out a single principle underlying
the multiplicity of phenomenal appearances
or whatever.
So you have these six points which actually
spell out a certain minimal six ways of looking
at the same project of philosophy, of traditional
philosophy, when summing up the metaphysics,
as it were. And what Hegel will say is that
what we have to do is what this sentence tries
to do: it is to undo this notion of substantiality;
to undo, on all six points, undo the notion
of substantiality as this core concept, core
mechanism, core logic of the […] deployment
of 
the philosophical concept. And one can do
this by seeing on the one hand the propositional
form, which undoes this – this is one, this
is the linguistic part of the argument. […] The
natural way of placing the substance in a
proposition would be to place it on the place
of the subject to which various predicates
are ascribed.
Now, what Hegel says is, the moment you do
this, the substance is an empty noise […]. 
Everything that is contained in the subject
can only be spelled out by the series of predicates.
You have to start with a certain notion, and
this notion, whatever, you start with "God",
and he says, "God is an empty noise" [§23].
God, being put in the beginning of a proposition,
is an empty noise. It's only through it being
spelled out in the predicates that it gets
its content. So it's a purely formal thing.
And you can see that the way that the subject
bashes into its predicates and is only spelled
out in the predicates. It bashes into its
other, it's mediated by its other; it's the
only way that we have an access to the substance.
So, I think that one of the keywords of the
Preface is das Sich-anders-werden, Sich-anders-werden
[§18], which actually, in the English translation,
is translated rather well by self-othering.
So you presuppose [that] the subject is a
certain self. That it is posed, it is placed
in the position of the subject of a proposition.
But what happens in the proposition itself
is the self-othering; it has to become its
other in order to be itself. And this is the
basic idea in all his accounts.
In Hegel, everything that seems eternal has
to pass into time and this is why you have
this radical equation, "Die Zeit ist der Begriff
selbst" [§801], that the concept is the same
as time precisely because everything has to
be entrusted to the passage of time. And everything
that is underneath has to come to the surface.
And there's another important sentence in
the Preface, that "the strength of the spirit
is only as strong as it entrusts itself to
the surface." So something that remains hidden
and underneath is just not real, it has no
truth. It's only by it coming to the surface
that it gains its content. And on the question
of necessity, he uses the form of becoming
accidental of the essence. It's only […] if
the essence entrusts itself to accidentality,
to the process of contingency, that it can
be an essence at all; otherwise it's absolutely
an empty point. The substance was an empty
point unless it took upon itself the risk
of becoming its other. And on the last point,
the principle of the substance being one,
think what the [sentence?] substance is subject
means is "one splits into two". It means that
you have no one single principle unless it
splits to two. I mean, to use this Maoist
slogan, "One splits into two"; I think this
follows clearly from Hegel's description of
why he maintains substance being a subject.
>> INTERVIEWER: So if you would want to make
sort of a metaphysical statement of the minimal
structure of being or the universe, or how
you would formulate it, of substance, it would
be that the division or the split itself is
in a way the closest we come to a fundamental
principle.
>> DOLAR: Oh yes, definitely. There is no
fundamental principle, there is no fundamental
one from which anything would follow. I think
this would take more time, but one can take
passages in this Preface where I think Hegel
puts it absolutely brilliantly. […] He refers
to the ancient atomism as the principle of
one, as the one who invented in a way the
decomposition of all possibly entities into
atoms which can be counted for one, which
is sort of the imposition of countability,
of unit, upon the multiple faces of universe.
And what Hegel says there is that the moment
they invented the one as the indivisible particle,
they also had to invent to void which separates
the particles. And we actually have to look
at the basic unity, not as either the one
or the void, but as the split into the one
and the void. So what is indivisible is division
itself. I think this is the bottom line of
Hegel's argument about substance is subject.
And there is always this idea in Hegel that
in the beginning you have some spiritual identity
or whatever which is then alienated from itself,
it splits, and then, in the end, it is recuperated,
the split is recuperated, it again adds up
to this self-identity. But the thing is, there
is no initial entity which would pursue the
split itself. You always have a sort of retroactive
illusion that you have an in-itself which
was a pure in-itself, but which actually only
became in-itself by it becoming its other,
by being split. So, the very notion of spirit,
which is supposed to be lost and found again,
is produced only through the split – it
doesn't pre-exist the split; it's only by
being split and alienated that it becomes
spirit at all. So it makes no sense to recuperate
something which wasn't there in the beginning.
And, I think, one way again to propose a kind
of formula is that in Hegel you lose the initial
in-itself or the initial unity or the initial
thesis or whatever. But, I think, what sums
up Hegel's procedure is that what was lost
was never possessed. You lose something, but
you never possessed it. The retroactive illusion
is that you possess something and then you
lost it; you got split and alienated or whatever.
This is absolutely the retroactive illusion;
you didn't have it in the first place. I mean,
you can only reconstruct the supposition that
you had this plenitude of being, this access
to truth, this access to absolute in the beginning,
and then […] the origin had to be split,
lost, there is a fall, you know, this sort
of Christian idea of the fall; in the beginning
there was some sort of plenitude and then
there is a fall. I think the whole Hegelian
argument is against this idea; the origin
is absolutely empty; there is nothing in the
origin, there is no origin. I mean, everything
is created on the way. So this empty origin,
once it gets split, you only have the idea
that you had some sort of original plenitude.
There is no original plenitude; this is absolutely
not the metaphysics of origin. This is one
of Derrida's formulas, the metaphysics of
origin, and then the supplement which then
screws up the origin etc. So Hegel is absolutely
not that, I mean, he always says that origin
is the emptiest point there is. There is no
plenitude in the origin. Everything is gained
only through the negativity, through the labour
of negativity – on the way. You produce
this entity which is supposed to be owned
in the beginning. So what is lost was never
possessed, I think this is a good formula.
