3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful, Mind-Bending, Challenging, July 30, 2010
This review is from: Mythology, Madness, and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism (Hardcover)
Let me announce a name we will surely be hearing a lot of in the years to come: Markus Gabriel.
Gabriel's essay is the leadoff in this brilliant co-authored attempt to present the insights of German Idealism to the whole world of those involved in Western philosophy today--both analytic and continental. And this book goes a long way in bridging the gap between the latter two entities. For instance, there is Gabriel's highly suggestive attempt "to combine Schelling and Wittgenstein" (71).
Schelling sees all reasonable discourse as ultimately grounded in mythology, "mythology" meaning some sort of belief system that cannot be rationally verified. Gabriel connects this notion of mythology to Wittgenstein's concept of a 'world-picture,' and convincingly argues for the necessity of some such grounding activity that precedes rational discourse. The brilliance of Gabriel's approach lies in the way he draws forth the insights of German Idealism to answer the concerns of analytic philosophy (two unlikely bedfellows!). Also included here is a very insightful discussion of Meillassoux's
After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, which is appreciative of the work but ultimately argues against it (instead of the 'necessity of contingency,' Gabriel argues for the 'contingency of necessity'). This essay is very challenging, and will certainly have your brain aching, but it is a sweet pleasure, and the insights it brings forth are well worth the effort.
Zizek has two essays here. The first, on Hegel and habit, contains one of Zizek's best reversals, in which he shows (through Hegel and Malabou) how habit is necessary for the exercise of freedom. The best illustration he gives here is language: it is necessary for us to learn the grammatical rules of a language to the point of habit in order for us to be able to express ourselves freely. The second essay is more remarkable in that it gives a stirring defense of Fichte--not easy to do, in my opinion (certainly not many have done it). Fichte is usually read as a crazy absolute idealist in which a self-positing absolute I gives birth to the world and history, etc. Zizek provides a convincing rejection of such a reading. He shows that Fichte's absolute I is not some metaphysically real entity, but something the self itself posits because it is aware of its own contradictions within itself. Thus, the absolute I is an ideal the self creates out of its awareness of its own inconsistency: it is an ideal the self longs for. "Fichte," then, "was the first philosopher to focus on the uncanny contingency in the very heart of subjectivity" (142). An excellent recovery of a thinker who is very difficult to recover.
Zizek's essays are brilliant, but he certainly does not work very hard to present his insights to analytic philosophers as Gabriel does--I suspect his reference to Fichte's laughter at Verstand philosophers is probably an echo of his own. However, anyone who thinks Zizek is just some hack who grew so popular because he is so perverse would do well to dive into these two difficult and thought-provoking essays.
A very rewarding book, and let me end by reiterating--Markus Gabriel, this is someone to pay attention to.
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