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New Discourses

Hegel, Wokeness, and the Dialectical Faith of Leftism

New Discourses

New Discourses

Education

4.82.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2021

⏱️ 229 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 37 Is Critical Race Theory Marxist, as many insist, or is it not? What is the relationship between Marxism, neo-Marxism (Critical Theory), and Wokeness? All three criticize one another, and yet all three have a great deal obviously in common. Is there some common underlying thread between these clearly similar yet obviously different worldviews? The answer is yes, and by tracing back to one of the most influential speculative idealist philosophers of the early 19th century, namely George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, we can gain a great deal of insight into how these decidedly leftist movements—the Marxist Old Left, the neo-Marxist New Left, and the intersectional Woke Left—share at least one deeper philosophical architecture in common. From Hegel, the Left since his time has, wittingly and not, adopted several of the pillars of Hegelian philosophy, these including his statism, historicism, and, much more importantly, his dialectical approach and metaphysical worldview. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay takes a long, deep dive into the ways that Hegel's philosophy is at the root of the entire "Dialectical Left" since, naming the dialectic the "operating system" of all activist Leftism since the early 1800s. In this episode, Lindsay takes considerable time explaining Hegel's view of dialectical thought and then reveals in many examples, reaching up to the present day, how consistently the dialectic appears as the functional underpinning of Leftism ever since, at the latest, the 1830s. He makes the case that Leftism since Hegel thinks dialectically, moves dialectically, and applies dialectical thought not just to its targets but to everything, including itself and even its own dialectic. He then switches gears and explains how the dialectic is central to Hegel's underlying Hermetic (or alchemical) worldview and explains his mystical metaphysics so that this long arc of Leftist activism can be understood as evolving denominations within a single religious faith. With this theoretical groundwork laid, he then tackles how Hegel's historicism and statism arise as key features of his philosophy, with both of these characterizing activist Leftism up to the present day. Join him for his longest and most in-depth discussion yet, taking on how Hegel is a key progenitor of communism, liberationism, and ultimately Wokeness, how this philosophy must be understood so that it can be countered, and why it should be thought of in the same way that Hegel thought of it: as a religion in its own right, with its own notion of deity, metaphysical commitments, soteriology, and eschatology. Support New Discourses: paypal.me/newdiscourses newdiscourses.locals.com/support patreon.com/newdiscourses subscribestar.com/newdiscourses youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg/join Website: newdiscourses.com Follow: facebook.com/newdiscourses twitter.com/NewDiscourses instagram.com/newdiscourses https://newdiscourses.locals.com pinterest.com/newdiscourses linkedin.com/company/newdiscourses minds.com/newdiscourses reddit.com/r/NewDiscourses Podcast: @newdiscourses podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-…es/id1499880546 bit.ly/NDGooglePodcasts open.spotify.com/show/0HfzDaXI5L4LnJQStFWgZp stitcher.com/podcast/new-discourses © 2021 New Discourses. All rights reserved.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everyone, this is James Lindsay, you're listening to the new Discourses podcast.

0:24.5

And finally, after months of anticipation, after many times on Twitter of this blowing up,

0:30.1

I want to talk to you about Hegel.

0:33.4

I've been promising to talk about the Hegelian idea for a while, I've been tweeting about

0:39.1

it.

0:40.1

Something peculiar happens every time you tweet about Hegel and you get too close.

0:43.3

For example, if you point out that wokeism is a Hegelian religion, especially if you

0:49.5

point out that wokeism is a hermetic religion based in the dialectical philosophy of Hegel.

0:57.7

Something weird happens, people go berserk.

1:00.3

You end up, or I end up, at least getting bombed by people in kind of disproportionate

1:05.6

fashion and something very inorganic begins to happen in many of these cases.

1:10.0

Of course, there's a usual making fun of me, but lots of very obviously leftist accounts

1:14.7

kind of lose their mind, pop up on my radar.

1:17.3

And what will happen is stuff that's just not quite real, something that's hyper real

1:21.7

in a sense.

1:22.7

And that'll be that somebody will throw a dunk and somebody with maybe just a few dozen

1:29.6

followers will reply to something, maybe in dunk fashion, and they reply to it from

1:37.9

an account that's not very big will somehow get hundreds of likes sometimes in a very small

1:42.7

amount of time.

1:43.7

It's not organic behavior.

1:44.7

It's something weird going on with Hegel, and this has driven me to want to understand

1:51.2

more of Hegel.

...

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