Michalis Tegos

‘Negativity without use’: Death, Desire and Recognition in the work of G. Bataille and A. Kojève

George Bataille was one of the regular attendees in Alexandre Kojève’s seminar on Hegel between 1933 and 1939. Moreover, Bataille developed a lifelong friendship with the Russian philosopher, with whom he corresponded on several important topics and whose numerous unpublished drafts he possessed after his death. Their debates, found in the BNF archives and spread throughout their publications, spanned over topics such as history, religion, the mystical, death, silence, writing and the limits of philosophy. Initially Bataille accepts the Kojèvian starting point, of humanity and history as desire and discourse, action and negativity, a vision which culminates in the apocalyptic or eschatological end of history -as universal recognition and satisfaction- amounting to the end of humanity. However, progressively, Bataille comes to question the identification of negativity with human history or historical action. In a letter of 1937 to Kojève titled ‘Letter to X, in charge of a course on Hegel’, Bataille speaks of a ‘negativity without use’ or ‘out of work’; an excess of negativity and death which does not disappear after history has ended. Grappling with Kojève’s suffocating vision of the end of history, Bataille reveals himself as a profound thinker who attempts to make sense of the post-historical and post-human horizon and the return to animality, where there is neither desire, nor action and there is ‘nothing else to do’. In this eclipse of sense and historical action, the only endeavors available to humanity seem to be art, death, eroticism and play. Thus, for Bataille, the end of history not only does not amount to the end of humanity, as Kojève argued, but is an exclusively human condition, one in which humanity is brought resolutely to confront its own negative excess.

In The Fold Deleuze invites us to an astounding image of the event. To see not the point of creation but the duration of the Great Pyramid, of every moment, as event. The event is described as a vibration: Extensive and intensive; a wave, ripples, as sound-constituting the continuity of space-time, becoming. Events are flows, realization of pure potentialities, divergent infinite series of singularities; a chaosmos. These flows constitute indeed a river: all is river, flux, torrential. All is event, event everywhere, event all the time-eventum tantum, as Deleuze writes 20 years earlier in Logic of Sense. If, however, event is everything that happens, how are we to distinguish event from simple fact that happens in the 'world according to its laws of presentation'? Badiou's critique of the Deleuzian conceptions of time and event is twofold. On the one hand, it is a critique of the methodological apparatus used by Deleuze, his use of topology and geometry as pre-Cantorian, his conception of space, matter and body. On the other, it is a critique of the philosophy of difference, desire, affirmation and life. Thinking of the event and truth; the two are in 'an infinitesimal proximity and an infinite distance'. What results, we shall argue, is a fine dividing line, which Badiou projects throughout the history of philosophy, between vitalism and formalism, and is sharpened with regards to its ramifications for the concept of the subject. 'The actor belongs to the Aion'-the subject becomes flight to pure interiority; a Nietzschean amor fati, or worse, another instance of Hegel's beautiful, lost soul.

Hegel's philosophy presents a veritable ambiguity for the philosophy of time, cutting across the recent divide between presentism and eternalism, as well as escaping 'vulgar metaphysics' in the Heideggerian sense. Moreover, there is no consensus on time, its position, its importance and reach within the Hegelian system. Time is indeed dealt with and given its place, in the Philosophy of Nature. However, commentators seem divided, according either chronological or logical priority, presenting chronological completeness as a prerequisite for logical completeness, the other way around, or, at best, hinting to an uncanny isomorphism at work. This problem is further exacerbated when, in the opening chapters of the Science of Logic, where time is allegedly absent, the development of the concept, the realm of shadows, displays the logical procession of the temporal paradigm: Being, because of its immediacy, vanishes into nothing. Nothing, equally immediate and abstract, is the same as and vanishes into being. The two, vanishing into each other, is what Hegel calls becoming. This vanishing of the one into the other, this negation and preservation of the negated, is thought under the very concept of the moment; one may say, everything in Hegelian philosophy is a moment. In this paper we shall argue that Hegel's speculative use of the moment is targeted at dismantling the very dualism and opposition between time and the concept, that commentators seem so keen to divide themselves along. The moment is a self-defeating, contradictory and vanishing entity, whose positing is necessarily its downfall. Thus, even when Hegel is not referring explicitly to time, the very paradigm for logical necessity, the structure and nature of the moment itself, is temporal. The moment, perishing to its ground, is the very paradigm of process and is fundamental to Hegel' conception of negativity; an inexorable chronos devouring its children.

Behind the pretext of the end of grand narratives what is contested is the privileged relation between history and philosophy, between knowledge, theory and practice, the role of philosophy in society altogether. Post modernity, in other words, appears in the guise of a crisis of philosophy itself. The role of thought and historical knowledge may be considered as an heirloom of the previous two centuries, of the ‘age of revolutions’, of the grandiose conception of the Philosophy of History; of World History, of Spirit, which realizes with necessity, freedom; Reason in History. It is the unity of this historical narrative, the necessity with which it unfolds, and its purpose or end (telos) that have been discredited in the philosophy of the second half of the 20th century. It is from this very historical and philosophical debris that the concept of the event arises to a central category of contemporary thought. We shall argue that it is impossible to explain the rise of the issue to centrality and point of controversy without understanding the Hegelian roots of the question to which it attempts to be the answer. What Alain Badiou has called the ‘French moment’ of philosophy, from Sartre to Derrida and himself, was in many ways a reaction, positive or negative, to Hegel and, more specifically, to the Hegelian Philosophy of History.

According to the Eleatic Stranger's definition of being in the Sophist, designed to bridge the idealist and materialist accounts, being is capacity to act and suffer, dunamis poiein kai pathein. A survey of the use of dunamis in the Platonic corpus reveals its centrality, employed in discussions regarding both physical and mental phenomena. Its importance cannot be overstressed nor overlooked: In the Republic dunamis politikē, in the Phaedrus logou dunamis, as well as its influence on the whole history of Philosophy, beginning with Aristotle's dunamis and energeia. Plotinus pays special attention to dunamis too, a special kind of dunamis, movement of knowledge, the Intellect. Dunamis however is not new, nor peculiar to Platonism. Before Plato imported its use into the discourse of Philosophy, dunamis was already a key term in two of the sciences, valued greatly by Plato, flourishing at the time: Mathematics and Medicine. Whereas in the first case, power or root, discussed in the Meno and the Theaetetus, has received much attention, this paper is to focus on the  Hippocratic origins of the concept. That dunamis reveals the phusis of each thing, that we know each phusis from its dunamis, is what Plato, in introducing Hippocrates of Kos in the Phaedrus, describes as his agreement with correct reason (alēthēs logos). We shall then explore this ambiguous relation and rivalry between Philosophy and Medicine as it is expressed in Plato's Philosophy, in its most controversial figures such as the final myth of the Phaedrus and the Political Asclepius of the Republic.

In Thucydides' portray of the Athenian delegation in the Melian dialogue, might makes right, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Morality and sentiment is false reasoning, as is piety; the gods will not intervene for Melos, for it is the natural order of things that the strong dominate the weak. The significance of this incident in the ancient world is indisputable, as is shown by Thucydides, but it may also be seen in Euripides' Trojan Women, which reverberated throughout Greek society, largely seen as a critique of this very spirit. In the first book of Plato's Republic this doctrine; justice as the right of might-is examined thoroughly and refuted. In the Republic Thrasymachus presents the doctrine of might as justice. Justice is posited as an 'alien good', 'the other fellows'; good, beneficial for the stronger and the one who rules, harmful for the weak and ruled over. The concept of allotrion agathon is not much developed in the Republic; purposefully left vague, it may seem, to operate in different ways. It is proposed by Thrasymachus and Socrates adopts it to illustrate his point. It is later dropped, but as we proceed into the section on economy, the nature of regimes and their citizens, war, its echo is felt throughout. It silently forms the spine of the ensuing critique of democracy as plutocracy, as rule by the rich and powerful, rendering freedom and justice, equality, superfluous, allotrion-beneficial for the ones who are already in position of power. Plato thus advances his famous doctrine of the two cities. After raising the question of justice and war, between cities and within the city, he claims that every city is at least two cities, divided from within, between the rich and the poor. The two cities are hostile to each other, and this infects relations between cities as well, as the population often finds the opportunity to rise against the state every time the city is attacked by another city. Plato's solution is equally notorious: Every city, as described in the types of regimes, Timocratic, Oligarchic, Democratic and Tyrannic will face similar problems. Every city, that is, except the one which we are creating in theory-the ideal city, is destined to be consumed by the differences of wealth and property, unable to defend itself when needed from external foes. By elaborating on the concept of alien good (allotrion agathon) and the doctrine of the two cities that runs through the Republic and the Laws, we aim to show how Plato's critique of democracy, its relation to the economy and its connetion to war remains pertinent today, while unearthing some lines of thought useful to contemporary political economy and international relations.

This paper explores the relation of the Sophist to the Parmenides; in what ways the Sophist responds to the questions, aporias and demands raised in the Parmenides. It aims to show how the problems encountered in the first part and the categories used in the second part of the Parmenides relate to the solutions proposed in the Sophist. The Parmenides has been interpreted in various ways: as a logical exercise and as a theory about gods, even as an example of perfect symmetry in impossibility. It has been acclaimed as the best collection of antinomies ever produced, but also, as an impossible map; how the theory of forms should not be thought. Its purpose; a parody, or – training; pedagogic, exercise necessary for the proper way to truth. Not, however, to discard with forms, but, on the contrary, to affirm their necessity and refinement; if we are not to end up abandoning forms and, with them, the possibility of dialectics and Philosophy. Throughout the Parmenides, the Theaetetus and the Sophist we are led though a complex argumentative and dramatic strategy to the refutation of the Eleatic doctrine and the mature ontology of the Timaeus. We shall seek to show that the sections on dunamis, the megista gene and the community of forms that follow the gigantomachia about ousia in the Sophist, propose a way out of the aporias of participation and the 'greatest difficulty' of the Parmenides, a way to salvage the theory of forms, and with them, the possibility of knowledge, logos and Philosophy altogether.

Keywords: Greatest Difficulty, Dunamis, Parricide, Megista Gene

In the Sophist, Plato sets out to address some of the aporias generated from the discussions in the Parmenides and the Theaetetus. After confronting his predecessors in a myth resembling the Hesiodic Gigantomachia, regarding the nature and number of being, the one and the many, movement and rest, the Eleatic Stranger goes on to describe his vision of dialectics, or philosophy, which will pass through a refutation of the central thesis of Parmenides, a philosophical parricide of the founder of the Eleatic School. Both the Gods and the Giants, friends of the forms, idealists, which maintain the immobility of being and friends of the earth, materialists which believe in the flux of everything, must accept that Being must both move and stand still. Being is thus accepted provisionally by both to be defined as capacity, dynamis. The Stranger will draw a matrix of five supreme genera: Being, Movement, Rest, Identity and Difference; and proceed to demonstrate some of the possible relations between them. We shall argue that in searching for the Sophist, where Plato stumbles upon the ‘science of free men', we are exposed to parts of the method of the Philosopher. What ensues is the refinement, or rather, refutation of the theory of forms crudely conceived, as in the problems described in the Parmenides, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the first proof of the negative, of the existence of non-being and a total reconfiguration of Logos and Philosophy thereafter.

Keywords: Plato, Dialectics, Dynamis, Non-being, Logos

IAPS 6, Delphi, June 2018

Abstract
In the middle of the Platonic Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger narrates the story of a long-standing battle between two warring factions, reminiscent of the Hesiodic Theogony. This passage, disguised in myth, is one of Plato’s most direct confrontations with Pre-Socratic Philosophy after the Parmenides. In this version of the Gigantomachia, Gods and Giants are presented as philosophical camps battling through Logoi, arguments. The Gods represent the friends of forms, Idealists of Eleatic origin, and the Giants, friends of the earth, Materialists, supporters of Heraclitian ideas.
The Eleatic Stranger takes it upon himself to respond to them both, refuting and reconciliating refined versions of their respective theories, for the purpose of his argument, in what he calls the ‘children’s plea’. That is, not to have to choose between the two but keep both, as the child would respond when asked – proceed by reconciliating the two positions: being is both one and multiple, as much static as dynamic. The philosophical parricide, the attack on Parmenides, that occurs in the midst of this passage, is very revealing as to how Plato attempts the synthesis of Eleatic and Ionian ideas - Parmenides and Heraclitus - in the formation of his own thought.
This passage, I argue, just as a very similar one that runs parallel, regarding the conversation with the Fluxists in the Theaetetus, is instrumental to understanding the argument in the Sophist, the trajectory of Plato’s thought, but most importantly, the magnitude of the synthesis of Pre-Socratic and Socratic Philosophy that is attempted.

Metaphysics, elusive and ambiguous as a category in the history of ideas, is recruited by each respective philosophy as a polemical term against that which it is trying to overcome. Criticism of previous philosophy as metaphysical is usually presented as a critique of separation – of essence and phenomenon, of the thing from the idea, of the body from the mind, of the subject from the object. Whereas Metaphysics in the Aristotelian sense, of first philosophy, the very term, what is beyond physics, yet prior, the study, the science of being qua being, is born as a critique of the Platonic dialectic, in modern philosophy there is undoubtedly an inversion. One could say, where  metaphysics see identity, beings, isolated, static and unchanged, dialectics see only moments and relations, the movement of difference. In Adorno's later work, in Negative Dialectics and in the lectures that surround it, identity is posited as the unavowed core and the apex of metaphysical thought. Identity is the primal form of ideology, the mythological form of thought. Against Heidegger's ontology and the vision of metaphysics as the oblivion of being, Adorno identifies the themes that characterize modern metaphysics: The logic of identity is, paradoxically, the logic of separation; identity is itself a contradictory concept; it is, in fact, a movement, an assimilation of otherness, a tautological 'magic circle', that, in the end, confirms only itself. In this paper we  discuss some of Adorno's points of critique with regards to the Hegelian enterprise and argue that the critique Adorno raises against Hegel, as a thinker of identity, stumbles upon several difficulties. By referring briefly to the 'Doctrine of Essence' in the Science of Logic, we aim to indicate some lines of thought out of this problem.

Στην παρούσα εισήγηση ερευνούμε τη σχέση μερικών βασικών  εκπροσώπων της Γαλλικής σκέψης του 20ού αιώνα με τη φιλοσοφία της ιστορίας του Γκέοργκ Χέγκελ (Georg Hegel). Στην αρχή αυτού που αποκαλούμε σήμερα Γαλλική Στιγμή υπήρχε πολύ ισχυρή παρουσία του Χέγκελ, κυρίως μέσα από τις διδασκαλίες των Αλέξανδρου Κοζέβ  (Alexandre Kojève) και Ζαν Υππολίτ (Jean Hippolyte). Στη συνέχεια διακλαδώνεται και δίνει τη θέση της στα ύστερα σχήματα, υπαρξισμού και δομισμού, ανθρωπισμού και αντι-ανθρωπισμού αλλά και σε μια θεμελιώδη αντιπαράθεση με τις πλευρές του ίδιου του έργου. Το μεγαλειώδες όραμα του Χέγκελ, για την αναγκαία πρόοδο της αυτοσυνειδησίας της ελευθερίας στην ιστορία, κατέρρευσε. Η ιστορία, η αναγκαιότητα και η υποκειμενικότητα, αν επιβιώνουν του προηγούμενου αιώνα, μετασχηματίζονται κάτω από το καθεστώς της τυχαιότητας, της συνάντησης και του συμβάντος. Επιχείρημά μας είναι πως καθώς οι τάσεις που χαρακτηρίζουν τη Γαλλική Στιγμή βρίσκουν πάτημα στη χεγκελιανή φιλοσοφία, τοποθετώντας τη στη βάση της νεωτερικότητας, είναι αδύνατο να εξηγήσουμε την αντιπαράθεση γύρω από την έννοια του συμβάντος, που ακολουθεί στον απόηχο του Μάη του ’68, χωρίς να κατανοήσουμε το πρόβλημα της ιστορίας στο οποίο επιχειρεί να απαντήσει.

This paper explores the relation of the Sophist to the Parmenides: in what ways the Sophist responds to the questions, aporias and demands raised in the Parmenides. It aims to show how the problems encountered in the first part and the categories used in the second part of the Parmenides, relate to the solutions proposed in the Sophist. The Parmenides has been interpreted in various ways: as a logical exercise and as a theory about gods, even as an example of perfect symmetry in impossibility. It has been acclaimed as the best collection of antinomies ever produced, but also, as an impossible map sketching how the theory of forms should not be thought. Its purpose, a parody, or training, a pedagogic exercise necessary for the proper way to truth. Not, however, in order to discard forms, but, on the contrary, to affirm their necessity and to refine them, lest we end up abandoning forms and, with them, the possibility of dialectic and Philosophy. Throughout the Parmenides, the Theaetetus and the Sophist, we are led through a complex argumentative and dramatic strategy to the refutation of the Eleatic doctrine and the mature ontology of the Timaeus. We shall seek to show that the sections on dunamis, the megista gene and the community of forms that follow the Gigantomachia episode about ousia in the Sophist, propose a way out of the apor-ias of participation and the 'greatest difficulty' of the Parmenides, a way to salvage the theory of forms, and, with them, the possibility of knowledge, logos and Philosophy altogether.

According to a popular belief the more one knows, the less happy one becomes, or, differently, the moment we inquire into our happiness we cease to be happy. Nowadays happiness and truth seem radically severed or incompatible even. However, already in Sophocles' Ajax we encounter this distancing: "thinking is not the way to a sweet life" (Ἐν τῷ φρονεῖν γὰρ μηδὲν ἥδιστος βίος). Plato's and Aristotle's accounts of a moral life, virtue and eudaimonia speak of a unity of theory and practice, a very practical and habitual stance towards truth, life and death where the figure of Socrates represents an exemplification of the Delphic cannon: know thyself. The life of nous, a philosophical life, of measure, as Plato shows in the Philebus, is infinitely more sweet, pleasurable, rewarding and divine than any life of finite or sensible pleasure, or that of a poet. Whereas for Plato, truth belongs to the realm of the forms, true being; being in its truth is accessible through logos and reason, expressible and known in logoi. This is the crux of his polemic with the sophists: it is difficult to say whether truth can be properly told, or if it is expressible at all. In the Sophist Logos appears as an encounter of being and non-being and truth, as one very difficult relation to grasp. Yet, logos, like a compass, unfailingly points to man's capacity for a life of truth. For Aristotle on the other hand, truth becomes an affair of logos, of correspondence between being and logos. A true statement expresses being as being and non-being as non-being, whereas a false one being as non-being and non-being as being. Our mindset is indeed far away from the Socratic dictum; the un-examined life is not worth living. Using this ancient Greek philosophical context as my starting point, I will examine the contemporary relation between happiness and truth. Despite the rise of technological society, where science is at the helm, the category of truth is facing an unprecedented destitution; happiness and pleasure seems to be opposed to truth. We find ourselves entangled in the mixture of contemporary ideology, relativism and reign of a paralyzing uncertainty. Eudaimonia is deemed impossible and philosophy an infinite, in-achievable task, or worse, already achieved, accomplished. The very possibility of philosophy hinges not on a society's conception of happiness, but in its vision of truth which cuts deeply. In other words, it turns the era against itself, for a life of happiness and fulfillment can only be a life directed to truth. Thus, the question of the very possibility of philosophy becomes not whether happiness is possible, but whether truth is possible, truth which sets the course towards a life of happiness.

In the middle of the Platonic Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger narrates the story of a long-standing battle between two warring factions, reminiscent of the Hesiodic Theogony. This passage, disguised in myth, is one of Plato's most direct confrontations with Pre-Socratic philosophy after the Parmenides. In this version of the Gigantomachia, Gods and Giants are presented as philosophical camps battling through logoi, arguments. The Gods represent the friends of forms, idealists of Eleatic origin, and the Giants, friends of the earth, materialists, supporters of Heraclitian ideas. The Eleatic Stranger takes it upon himself to respond to them both, refuting and reconciliating refined versions of their respective theories, for the purpose of his argument, in what he calls the 'children's plea'. That is, not to have to choose between the two but keep both, as the child would respond when asked, proceed by reconciliating the two positions: being is both one and multiple, as much static as dynamic. The philosophical parricide, the attack on Parmenides, that occurs in the midst of this passage, is very revealing as to how Plato attempts the synthesis of Eleatic and Ionian ideas-Parmenides and Heraclitus-in the formation of his own thought. This passage, we shall argue, just as a very similar one that runs parallel, regarding the conversation with the fluxists in the Theaetetus, is instrumental to understanding the argument in the Sophist, the trajectory of Plato's thought, but most importantly the magnitude of the synthesis of Pre-Socratic and Socratic philosophy that is attempted.

In the majority of the bibliography on the Platonic work, the theory of remembrance is inextricably tied to the immortality of the soul. The soul obtains knowledge through recollecting previous states and lives, from a time even before we were human, that comes to us, as Plato writes in the Meno, like a dream. In the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, the Republic, the Timaeus and the Laws, the pre-existence and seniority of the soul is advocated, as is the existence of ideas before the soul, which renders the soul in an intermediary position, neither perishable, as the body, nor unborn and unperishable like the idea. Cognition is remembrance as the soul comes into contact with the unperishable essence of ideas, intermediates – not with the all-timely or eternal, but with that which is out of time, timeless eternity, the pure idea itself. Nevertheless, it has been argued that the arguments Plato advances for the immortality of the soul are not very effective, as is indicated by Simmias and Keves’ answers in the Phaedo, or the line of Timaeus that there is a limit to the degree to which human nature can partake in immortality. There are indications that, just as there is a double significance in the concept of death in the Phaedo, the ‘second sail’ describes, though the theory of ideas, a second, allegorical concept of immortality. The aim of the present paper is to attempt a different approach in the relation to the central tenets of Platonic philosophy, remembrance and participation. Anamnesis, remembrance does not consist in that the soul cognizes the eternal ideas because it is immortal and eternal, but, because it is in position to know the eternal ideas, to participate in them - to move and free itself, it partakes in immortality, which is the eternity of the ideas, the truth.
The philosopher desires, Socrates says in the Phaedo, before drinking the poison, the separation, unbinding, release from the bonds. Death is the release, the parting of the soul from the body. For Plato, the dialectic is the release of the prisoners form their bonds, the science of free men. Ascesis and study in the knowledge of eternal ideas, in the separation and liberation of the soul from the bonds of the sensible; philosophy is study and preparation for death.

ΚEY-WORDS: Soul, Forms, Nous, Immortality, Logos

Plato's ban of the poets from the Republic has been one of the most contestable and enigmatic decisions in the whole History of Philosophy. The fate of the ideal city depends on the question of the poem/poetry; the city ruled by opinion, the image and false idols. This paper aims to explore the fundamental dispositions of Ancient Greek philosophy regarding poem/poetry, drawing from Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle. It will outline Plato's critique of mimesis as the basic component of poetry, the philosophical status of mimesis in relation to knowledge, Plato's ban of the poets from the Republic, and Aristotle's rehabilitation of poetry in the Poetics. Plato's critique is two-fold: He condemns mimesis and repetition, but, on the other hand, he warns against the power of the poem/poetry in obstructing discursive thinking – dianoia and dialectic. He warns for the city of the soul. Finally, importing the insights of Hegel and Nietzsche regarding Tragedy, I will attempt to emphasize the importance of this question throughout the History of Philosophy.


KEYWORDS: Plato, Aristotle, Mimesis, Poetry, Tragedy

Written as part of a doctoral dissertation on Hegel under the supervision of Alain Badiou, submitted to the European Graduate School and defended in August 2012, in front of Alain Badiou, Wolfgang Schirmacher and Pierre Alferi.

Abstract:  We shall seek to unveil that instead of stumbling upon the indissoluble salt of truth of materialism, while pondering idealist abstractions, Hegel articulated the necessity of the unity of the two, their fusion in a theory of action, of an absolute idea - in a theory of the subject. The Infinite of Force, in Hegel's Science of Logic, describes the end of the opposition between interior and exterior - idea and matter - as an opposition.
Tracing from the origins of the dialectic in Ancient Greece, through German Idealism and Marxism, to contemporary French thought, the Infinite of Force offers a challenging re-appropriation of Plato, Hegel and Marx, enabling us to think of philosophy as the dialectical movement between theory and practice; the relation between the History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of History. In between Hegel and Badiou - divine, historical necessity and pure hazard - to conceive of Logic as the place of a cut, as an evental site.

Written as part of a doctoral dissertation on Hegel under the supervision of Alain Badiou, submitted to the European Graduate School and defended in August 2012, in front of Alain Badiou, Wolfgang Schirmacher and Pierre Alferi.

Abstract:  We shall seek to unveil that instead of stumbling upon the indissoluble salt of truth of materialism, while pondering idealist abstractions, Hegel articulated the necessity of the unity of the two, their fusion in a theory of action, of an absolute idea - in a theory of the subject. The Infinite of Force, in Hegel's Science of Logic, describes the end of the opposition between interior and exterior - idea and matter - as an opposition.
Tracing from the origins of the dialectic in Ancient Greece, through German Idealism and Marxism, to contemporary French thought, the Infinite of Force offers a challenging re-appropriation of Plato, Hegel and Marx, enabling us to think of philosophy as the dialectical movement between theory and practice; the relation between the History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of History. In between Hegel and Badiou - divine, historical necessity and pure hazard - to conceive of Logic as the place of a cut, as an evental site.