2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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A BSOLUTE( S ) SPIELEN
Z ˇ izˇek’s stress on Hegel’s positive consideration of “antagonism” is a significant pointer to
the game-side of the Hegelian process. In other words, stressing the tragic aspect of Hegel’s
dialectics and reducing the concept of Spiel to its serious, game-like component are one and
the same theoretical move. The problem of any interpretation of this kind is how to account
for the closure of the circle of Absolute knowing which will bring philosophy to a close.
The very concept of Absolute knowing, in fact, is quite ill at ease with any pantragicist in-
terpreter who must climb on glass in order to accommodate it, witness this passage by
Z ˇ izˇek: ”The ‘One’ of Hegel’s monism is thus not the One of an Identity encompassing all
differences, but rather a paradoxical “one” of radical negativity which forever blocks the
fulfilment of any positive identity. 9 Z ˇ izˇek, in other words, equates the closure with the emp-
ty void of the most radical negativity: the “positive” side of Spielen consists in the retro-
spective realization of the impossibility of any positivity, on the impossibility of any full
reflection and sublation. The absolute reflection is nothing but the the impossibility of the
total reflection: “Reflection, to be sure, ultimately always fails” but this is” what is, in He-
gel, the very fundamental feature of “absolute” reflection.”(ib. 86) It is indeed difficult to
see how the closure of the Hegelian circle of circles, and therefore the completion of phi-
losophy, can be reached by declaring that the closure itself can never be achieved. However
interesting this reading may be, there seems to be very little Hegel in it, and not just becuase
the philosophical text is stretched so far as to convert closure into its negation. More im-
portantly, it seems to betray the very spirit of the Hegelian project insofar as it foregoes,
and it is forced to forego, all the positive connotations of Spiel in favour of its negative char-
acters.
The dual of the pantragicist is represented by the “panlogist” who stresses the in-itself,
that is the playful, self-concluded and self-contained aspect of absolute knowing and reduc-
es it to a metaphysical pantheist monism of I=I. “This view interprets Hegel as an abstract
metaphysician and absolute knowledge is about a large supersensible entity.” 10 Although
8. Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989) 6. But see Le plus sublime des
hysteriques (Paris: Point hors ligne, 1988) for a different and more nuanced position.
9. Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, For They Know Not What They Do (London: Verso, 1991) 69.