The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic: Translations, Introductions and Commentary on a Text by Zhang Shiying

The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic is the last in a trilogy of political-philosophical essays, preceded by Theory of Contradiction and On Ideology, written during the dark days at the end of the decade after May '68. With the late 1970's "triumphant restoration" in Europe, China and the United States, Badiou and his collaborators return to Hegel with a Chinese twist. By translating, annotating and providing commentary to a contemporaneous text by Chinese Hegelian Zhang Shi Ying, Badiou and his collaborators attempt to diagnose the status of the dialectic in their common political and philosophical horizon. Readers of Badiou's more recent work will find a crucial developmental step in his work in ontology and find echoes of his current project of a 'communist hypothesis'. This translation is accompanied by a recent interview that questions Badiou on the discrepancies between this text and his current thought, on the nature of dialectics, negativity, modality and his understanding of the historical, political and geographical distance that his text introduces into the present. Cover......Page 1 Open Access Statement......Page 0 Half Title Page......Page 2 Series Page......Page 3 Title Page......Page 4 CIP - Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 One Divides into Two? Dividing the Conditions......Page 12 Technical note......Page 28 The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic......Page 30 The 'Yenan' Collection......Page 32 Foreword......Page 36 Hegel in France......Page 40 Hegel in China......Page 46 The Rational Kernel of Hegel’s Philosophy......Page 50 I. The principle relative to movement and the independence of phenomena......Page 51 II. The fundamental principle of dialectics (Contradiction)......Page 56 III. The principle according to which there is a conversion of quantitative change into radical qualitative change [NOTE F, see below p. 64]......Page 59 IV. The principle according to which knowledge is a process that goes from the abstract to the concrete, from the simple to the complex......Page 61 V. The principle relative to the identity of thought and of being and the coincidence between the logical and the historical......Page 67 VI. The principle relative to the coincidence between logic and theory of knowledge......Page 71 Commentary to The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic......Page 78 I. The idealism of the passage from being to nothing......Page 80 II. Iteration, then, and not dialectics......Page 82 (b) On the interior and the exterior. Hegelian topology......Page 87 (c) One divides into two......Page 89 (d) On the sense of the word ‘critique’......Page 90 (e) On the category of negation......Page 91 (f) On the laws of dialectic......Page 93 (g) Quantity and Quality: place, excess, destruction......Page 95 (h) History of Philosophy, real history, Glucksmann, Heidegger......Page 97 (i) Class struggle on thought and being......Page 101 (J) On the term ‘active character’ [caractère agissant]......Page 103 (k) The philosophical concept of deviation......Page 104 (l) ‘In sticking close to the content’ [En collant de près au contenu]......Page 107 (m) A synthesis on the materialist dialectic......Page 109 An Interview with Alain Badiou......Page 114 Part I......Page 116 Part II......Page 123 Bibliography......Page 136 About the Authors......Page 138 Rear Cover......Page 140