Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic

Catherine Malabou, Antonio Negri, John D. Caputo, Bruno Bosteels, Mark C. Taylor, and Slavoj Zizek join seven others—including William Desmond, Katrin Pahl, Adrian Johnston, Edith Wyschogrod, and Thomas A. Lewis—to apply Hegel's thought to twenty-first-century philosophy, politics, and religion. Doing away with claims that the evolution of thought and history is at an end, these thinkers safeguard Hegel's innovations against irrelevance and, importantly, reset the distinction of secular and sacred.

These original contributions focus on Hegelian analysis and the transformative value of the philosopher's thought in relation to our current "turn to religion." Malabou develops Hegel's motif of confession in relation to forgiveness; Negri writes of Hegel's philosophy of right; Caputo reaffirms the radical theology made possible by Hegel; and Bosteels critiques fashionable readings of the philosopher and argues against the reducibility of his dialectic. Taylor reclaims Hegel's absolute as a process of infinite restlessness, and Zizek revisits the religious implications of Hegel's concept of letting go. Mirroring the philosopher's own trajectory, these essays progress dialectically through politics, theology, art, literature, philosophy, and science, traversing cutting-edge theoretical discourse and illuminating the ways in which Hegel inhabits them.

About the Author

Slavoj Zizek is a professor at the Institute for Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and at the European Graduate School, Switzerland. His many books include Democracy in What State?, Living in the End Times, and Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology.

Clayton Crockett is associate professor and director of religious studies at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of Radical Political Theology: Religion and Politics After Liberalism and Interstices of the Sublime: Theology and Psychoanalytic Theory.

Creston Davis is assistant professor of religion and philosophy at Rollins College. He is a coauthor (with John Milbank and Slavoj Zizek) of Paul's New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology; a coeditor (with John Milbank and Slavoj Zizek) of Theology and the Political: The New Debate; and the editor of Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank's The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?