Hegel im verdrahteten Gehirn

The provocative text on the relevance of Hegel. Hegel is outdated. But precisely for this reason – as the point made by master thinker Slavoj Žižek – we can better understand the present through his lens. Instead of investigating what aspects of Hegel's thought are still relevant today, Žižek turns the question around: What does our present look like when we view it through Hegel? And it turns out: We understand it much better, precisely because Hegel could not imagine it in any way. Žižek's subject is the "wired brain": What will happen when the human mind can actually connect with a machine? What impact will this have on our subjectivity? Will we still be able to speak of the unconscious? How can we then think about mind and matter? And what will happen to freedom? Drawing on thinkers like Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Jacques Lacan, Ray Kurzweil, or Yuval Noah Harari, and using numerous Hollywood films as examples, Žižek discusses the implications of a technological vision. A topic that was inconceivable for Hegel – and thus perfectly suited to demonstrate his relevance. Consequently, Žižek reflects on it in a Hegelian manner, proving that "philosophy is its time grasped in thought.".