This seminar continues an exploration of dialectical thinking with a special focus on the difference between classical and modern presuppositions, the idea of the one in a tension/antagonism with itself, the idea of self-relating negativity, and difference as constitutive of identity.

This seminar continues to elaborate on the connections between the dialectical logic with the starting point that consciousness ≠ mind/psyche with an extension of Freud’s ideas about the mind/psyche as tripartite: consciousness-preconscious-unconscious.

This seminar connects dialectical and unconscious thinking to the political in the starting presupposition that the “dictatorship of the bourgeoise” ≠ democracy, opening the historical question of democracy in the Marxist antagonism between dictatorship of bourgeoisie and dictatorship of the proletariat, with an elaboration of contemporary leftist politics between socialist reforms of capitalism and the question of communist modes of production.