Borna Radnik has a Ph.D. from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, at Kingston University London, UK. He has published with Radical Philosophy, Continental Thought and Theory, and Crisis and Critique.
Ege Çoban: To begin, could you give us an overview of your intellectual development? How you came into philosophy in the first place?
Borna Radnik: The most obvious answer is to say that I encountered philosophy during my undergraduate studies at York University in Toronto. In my first year as an undergrad, I enrolled in an Introduction to Philosophy survey course, where students were introduced to various themes, ideas, and thinkers from “Western” (more accurately, European) philosophy.
During my teenage years, I became interested in Marxism and Communism. I read The Communist Manifesto and some of Marx’s other writings from his 1844 Manuscripts and was absolutely floored by it. In Grade 12, I decided to write an essay on Marxism. This essay wasn’t part of any homework assignment or class requirement, my parents encouraged me to pursue this line of curiosity, and I was lucky enough that my English teacher (the same woman who had introduced me to Frankenstein) agreed to read my essay if I wrote it. I can’t remember what my argument was, or what the essay itself was about in detail, but what I do remember is that my teacher was very impressed with my work. She encouraged me to keep asking questions and to keep reading as ferociously and widely as possible.
Like most young adults who attend University, I was trying to find myself. Once I started my university studies, I did not immediately embrace philosophy. At York, I was majoring in Theatre Studies with a strong desire of becoming a theatre director and a playwright. The Introduction to Philosophy course that I decided to take in my first year was instrumental to reorienting my intellectual focus towards philosophy because the Professor said something to me that had a strong impression. Having a firm grasp (or so I thought at the time) of Marxism, I was a very arrogant and self-assured first year student. I had in a way made Marxism into a sort of personal identity such that I had a reputation of being the outspoken Marxist in the classroom. So, after our final exams at the end of my first year, my philosophy Professor invited students to the pub on campus for a drink. After a few pints of beer, she turned to me and said “Borna, you’re smart but you need to keep an open mind. Be open to new ideas!” I smiled at her comment, but deep down I knew she was right. The next year I enrolled in a philosophy course on Marxism taught by Jim Vernon. Jim’s course on Marx was exciting, and his approach to teaching was humorous, inviting, and enthralling. He captivated my attention so much that in my third year I took his course on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and the rest is history.
Ege Çoban: You are well known for your work on the philosophy of Hegel. Could you tell us how your particular reading of him came about? Being from Canada, surely there was some influence from the exegeses of H.S. Harris or Jim Vernon.
Borna Radnik: Jim Vernon’s class on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit at York University in Toronto was essential for introducing me to Hegel’s philosophy. I had a vague idea who Hegel was from my encounter with Marx, but Jim’s course challenged me to wrestle with Hegel’s ideas on their own terrain. It’s funny you mention Canada and Hegel, because there is a special niche of Hegelian scholars in Ontario, affectionately referred to as the “Ontario Hegelians”: besides Vernon, the late John W. Burbidge was also a member. Other Canadian Hegelians that have influenced me are George di Giovanni, Rebecca Comay, H.S. Harris, and of course Burbidge himself—with whom I was lucky enough to correspond via e-mail back in 2017 on the concept of “double movement” in Hegel’s Logic. I was very sad to hear of Burbidge’s passing in 2023, he was a great scholar and, in many ways, paved the way for a whole generation of English-speakers coming to Hegel and German Idealism. I should also say that Harris’ contribution to the understanding of Hegel in the English-speaking world is indisputable. His two-volume commentary on Hegel’s Phenomenology, Hegel’s Ladder, remains a vital scholarly source.
Although, my interest in Hegel has never been of the purely scholarly kind. I have always been more interested in the creative and innovative readings and uses of Hegelian philosophy. And in this respect, my particular reading of Hegel isn’t so much unique to Canada. Yes, it’s true that Jim’s work and his teaching had a great influence on my own thinking, as did the work of the others I mentioned earlier. Jim’s more recent work on Hegel and Badiou, and his reiteration of the Hegel and Martin Luther King Jr connection has had a great impact on my own understanding of not only Hegel’s thought, but the potentials of Hegelian philosophy. But my reading of Hegel is, in some sense, a blend of Catherine Malabou’s work on Hegel and temporality, and Slavoj Žižek’s Lacanian-inspired interpretation of Hegelian ontology. My interest in Hegel’s idea of freedom and its relation to causal necessity ties back to Žižek’s use of Freud’s deferred action (Nachträglichkeit) as retroactivity, and Malabou’s self-reflexive temporalization of Hegel. The fundamental point underneath this is the relation between logic and time, or metaphysics and history: something that I could say more about, but I’ll spare your readers the headache!
Ege Çoban: As testified by the popularity of Frank Ruda and Rebecca Comay’s book the Dash, one of the most heated issues in Hegelian circles is the relation between the Phenomenology and the Greater Logic. What would be your position on this?
Borna Radnik: This relation is ambiguous in Hegel himself. And, as with all ambiguities in philosophy, this makes for fascinating debate and discussion. One, perhaps simplified, way of thinking about their relation is to say that while the Phenomenology deals with concrete phenomena, and the Logic with abstract and “pure” concepts of thought, they both express the immanent self-movement of the concept. In other words, for Hegel, both texts are different expressions of the same process.
Let’s complicate things. Hegel states, in his introductory remarks to his Science of Logic, that the Phenomenology of Spirit charts the spiritual development of the movement of the absolute idea. Since the Phenomenology follows the trajectory of consciousness, Hegel claims that consciousness is spirit “as concrete, self-aware knowledge…a knowledge bound to externality.” He insists that the Logic, understood as the absolute science of the concept, can properly begin “purely” or “absolutely” because the distinction between the subject and object has now been dissolved. The dissolution of the difference between the subject and object occurs at the end of the Phenomenology of Spirit, with the final chapter on absolute knowing. So, we can only access pure logic, as a “science”, according to Hegel, if the distinction between consciousness and its external object has been sublated and overcome. In this sense, the Phenomenology serves as a necessary preparatory stepping stone to philosophical science.
However, at the same time, in Hegel’s mature Encyclopedia system, he devotes a subsection of his anthropological treatment of mind in the Philosophy of Spirit to natural consciousness in its encounter with external phenomena. Hegel includes a partial section of the Phenomenology of Spirit within his Encyclopedia, and we have to remember that the Logic comprises the first part of his system. Therefore, the status of the Phenomenology in Hegel seems to occupy two different positions, as Heidegger pointed out in his 1930-31 lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Heidegger says that the Phenomenology occupies a “double position” in Hegel’s philosophy, namely-and let me quote Heidegger here—as “a foundational part of the system while being at the same time an affiliated component within the system.” This double position is contradictory. Must we decide on one or the other? Was Hegel not aware of this problem? My view is that even if Hegel himself wasn’t entirely aware of this supposed double position, it isn’t a genuine philosophical problem. Heidegger’s point about the “double position” of the Phenomenology of Spirit in relation to Hegel’s system is only a problem if we ignore the essential role that self-referentiality or self-reflexivity plays throughout Hegel’s philosophical thought. A component of the self-reflexivity of Hegel’s philosophy is the importance Hegel attributes to philosophy’s relation to historical time and temporality. In this respect, Hegel’s own philosophy, cannot be separated from historical context nor from temporal determinations. And so, if his own texts, if the Phenomenology of Spirit, for instance, serves as both a preliminary work to prepare us for the Science of Logic, and it functions as a part within his mature system, this double occupancy is accounted for by the self-reflexive nature of anyone who engages or encounters Hegel’s work in time. That is to say, in a self-referential way, before we can think through the abstract and pure conceptual movement of the absolute idea in the Logic, we must necessarily work through the concrete sensuous development of the Phenomenology to appreciate how our immediate disposition towards the subject-object relation, or to the representational (figurative) forms of thought, thwart and obscure our thinking and hinder the path to the absolute concept as the content of the Logic. So, in self-reflexive temporal terms: it is only after we have thought through and worked our way to the absolute knowing chapter of the Phenomenology, that we are ready to begin the Logic. And from the “standpoint” of Hegel’s Encyclopedia system, which is composed of three sections (logic, nature, and spirit), the Phenomenology occupies a place within this system after it has served its purpose as a preliminary text. The double position of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in relation to his mature system can be accounted for, then, through the temporal and historical self-reflexive dimension of his own thought.
Ege Çoban: You develop a cohesive account of the dialectics between necessity and contingency. Could you briefly explain to our readers the main focal points of your argument?
Borna Radnik: The caricature image of Hegel is that he’s a thinker of strict necessity, of absolute determination who dismisses all forms of contingency. This is of course not true. In the Logic, Hegel argues that necessity in all its different modes cannot be so easily separated from contingency. He argues for the necessity of continency, that what is at first considered contingent shows itself to be in fact necessary. Is this not evidence of Hegel as a hard determinist thinker? As someone who prioritizes necessity over and against the contingent? If fact, Hegel rejects such a conclusion because for him contingency is internal to the actuality of spiritual and natural world. His “necessity of contingency” thesis demonstrates the openness of his system since it includes various contingencies within it. For Hegel, that the contingent is necessary does not contradict its status as contingent but in point of fact preserves it. In my book, Freedom, in Context, I argue that there is also an inverse thesis at work in his understanding of the relation between necessity and contingency, namely that necessity is itself contingent. We find two theses in the dialectical relation between necessity and contingency in Hegel, and I show how the necessity of contingency and the contingency of necessity constitute the temporal-historical dimension of Hegel’s concept of actuality. Necessity in Hegel is contingent through the self-reflexive nature of his philosophical thought.
Let me borrow and use an example from Žižek here to capture my point. The totality of conditions and circumstances that cause us to fall in love with someone else are, at, first, entirely contingent. Let’s assume that I attend a friend’s dinner party one night meet someone new at this party, an encounter which is contingent through and through. Perhaps new person and I talk a lot during party and we realize we like each other and start dating, eventually falling in love. The circumstances and conditions needed for us to fall in love in the first place are contingent because their opposite could have occurred, namely we could have just as easily not fallen in love. If I decided to not attend the party, or if the other person did not talk to me, or did not attend, then the totality of conditions necessary for us to fall in love would not have been present. However, temporally after we have fallen in love, from the “standpoint” of the effect, the circumstances and conditions mentioned above (the dinner party, talking a lot, dating) are no longer contingent but have been retroactively sublated and transformed as necessary in relation to event of falling in love. This is Hegel’s contingency of necessity thesis which I claim cannot be separated from his necessity of contingency thesis, both of which form the temporal and historical dimension of Hegel’s concept of the actual.
Ege Çoban: The most suggestive parts of your reading for me was in regards to the concept of philosophy itself. You articulate philosophy’s relation to historical time and the eternal idea through the concept of being-with-oneself-in-one’s-other, a very incisive point, not least because it helps to clarify how the absolute idea is both in and outside history.
Borna Radnik: Yes, this aspect of Hegel’s philosophy does not get enough treatment nor discussion in the secondary literature in my view. While the majority of commentors and scholars working on Hegel readily acknowledge that history plays a decisive role in his thought, they often overlook or ignore the strange, and at times bewildering, relation between philosophy and history in Hegel’s thinking. Hegel is well known, and criticized, for his philosophy of history, for the cunning of reason and end of history. However, much less attention is paid to his history of philosophy. The absolute idea as the eternal and “unchanging” idea is both inside and outside history, for Hegel. We can comprehend the idea’s movement through world spirit’s absolute development in history, which is the subject of his lectures on the philosophy of world history. At the same time, from another perspective we can comprehend the manner in which the eternal absolute idea expresses itself in various philosophies throughout historical time, from the ancient Greeks up to German Idealism. My reading of Hegel attempts to capture this relation between these two modes of expression of the absolute idea through Hegel’s formulation of freedom as being-with-oneself-in-one’s-other, a formula that I argue is historical and temporal without being reducible to time or history.
Ege Çoban: Interest in German Idealism has been steadily increasing these last decades. With it came a myriad of works by people like Fredrick Beiser and Paul W. Franks re-telling the history of this period. In past articles like “Making Hegel post-Hegel?” you criticized some Beiser’s choices in “After Hegel” . What is your general opinion of works like this and which author or book would you say best accomplishes the task of re-telling the story of German Idealism?
Borna Radnik: Let me first say that scholars like Beiser and Franks are excellent and absolutely necessary to advancing our general understanding of intellectual history. We are all the better for their contributions and will always learn a lot from their work. At the same time, however, I think we must bear in mind that history is never neutral. What is history? Hegel thought that history was nothing but our relation to the past, as opposed to the past itself. That is to say, past events, actions, occurrences, or happenings all constitutes facts that are recorded and documented. The manner in which we think and reflect on these documented happenings is what Hegel understands by history. Since our approach to understanding historical happenings is always already determined by our context and environment, that is, by material conditions, economic, social, political, gendered, and ideological circumstances and biases, every re-telling of a historical period is influenced, either directly or indirectly, by these factors and conditions. So, although I very much respect and admire the sort of intellectual history that people like Franks and Beiser engage in, we must nevertheless ask ourselves why is this re-telling of history happening? Why now? To quote the late great Frederic Jameson, we must remember to always historicize, and in this respect every re-telling of history, even of German Idealist history, has its own context. With all that said, I still recommend the works of both Paul Franks and Frederick Beiser, so long as we remember to historicize their work of intellectual history. I would also highly recommend Jon Stewart’s award-winning and brilliant Hegel’s Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution (2021) as a book that dives deeply into the social and political aftermath of Hegel’s death in 1831 and the rise of the Young (or Left) Hegelians like Marx and Engels.
Ege Çoban: Finally, could you tell us about your on-going research? Obviously, your book “Freedom, In Context: Time, History, and Necessity in Hegel” is coming out. But we hear you are also working on a new project called the Dialectic of Nostalgia.
Borna Radnik: Yes, my first book Freedom, in Context, is now finished. I am working on the concept of nostalgia. I argue that there is a temporal and spatial dialectic at work in the concept and experience of nostalgia as a sentimental emotion and psychological phenomena. It is dialectical because, as I argue, nostalgia is inherently contradictory. Can our experience of nostalgia teach us anything about our understanding of history, time, memory, and sense of self? How does homesickness for a particular place structure our perception of time? How does nostalgia differ from, and relate to, experiences of melancholia and mourning? If nostalgia is the painful longing for a place, how does it relate to time and history? The feeling of nostalgia is arguably the predominant emotional and psychic experience of our time. The word “nostalgia” preforms its meaning. Nostalgia refers to the painful longing that results from the desire to return home. The etymology of the word is fascinating, it is a compound of two ancient Greek words: νόστος (nóstos) which meaning “homecoming”, and ἄλγος (álgos) which means “pain”. However, the word “nostalgia” itself did not existence in ancient Greece, it was coined in 1688 by Johann Hofer to describe a medical condition of debilitating homesickness felt by Swiss soldiers. In this sense, the concept of nostalgia is self-referential since it is a word composed of two ancient Greek words, but the term “nostalgia” has no home in ancient Greece. Taken in a self-reflexive way, nostalgia as a concept enacts its meaning by painfully longing to return to a home, however this home was never an actual home, and in this sense nostalgia as a word displaces itself. As a concept, there is a semantic shift in the cultural meaning of nostalgia from a yearning for a place to a longing for a specific period in the past occurred gradually, culminating in the twentieth century.
I aim to interrogate the concept of nostalgia from a philosophical perspective, with a focus on its temporal and spatial dimensions. I mainly draw on the work of Hegel and Freud here. By using Hegel’s concept of contradiction understood as a co-constitutive relation between two opposites, my objective is to argue that the concept of nostalgia is essentially temporal and spatial and that it is contradictory in two ways. The first is what I call temporal contradiction of nostalgia where our longing for a bygone era is in truth a reflection of our dissatisfaction with our present circumstances and affirms a desire for a different future. Within nostalgia we are only able to affirm our unhappiness with the present through a longing for an idealized past. The second contradiction is the displacement contradiction of nostalgia, wherein the temporal dimension of nostalgia necessarily involves a displacement of a particular place. Our experience of nostalgia as a feeling of homesickness and yearning for a place distorts and supplants the place in question and reveals a shift in emphasis from place to time. To examine nostalgia as a philosophical concept and how it relates to our understanding of time, history, and the self, I will first inquire into its history and etymology before turning to the experiences of nostalgia as a psychological and emotional phenomenon. This will provide the necessary context to analyze nostalgia’s connection to, and intertwinement with, time and place. I aim to show how the inseparability of the concepts of place and time characterizes the contradictory nature of nostalgia both as a concept and as an emotional and psychic experience. I then demonstrate how the contradiction inherent in our nostalgic experiences organizes and structures our identities, and further that nostalgia constitutes our orientation towards the future.
If Hegel’s thought provides the conceptual tools to explain the contradictory nature of nostalgia in relation to memory and history, then Freud allows us to appreciate how the non-linear psychical time of the unconscious, exemplified in his concept of deferred action (Nachträglichkeit), further blurs the distinction between the past and the present within nostalgic experiences. I use Freud’s understanding of melancholy, repression, the uncanny and deferred action to further explore nostalgia’s relation to personal identity and time and place. I interpret Freud’s concept of melancholia, which he defines as a libidinal feeling of loss for a love-object, in terms of the identity and difference relation Hegel associates with his concept of contradiction. With Freud, I show how the twofold forms of contradiction internal to nostalgia, namely temporal contradiction and displacement contradiction, are further developed through his psychoanalytic understanding of melancholia, memory, the uncanny, and repression. I show how a Hegelian reading of Freud’s understanding of nostalgia and deferred action demonstrates its intrinsic temporal contradiction. I focus on the contradictory function of time and place, rather than centering on the embodied and phenomenological aspects of nostalgia. I argue that Freud’s account of the uncanny, which signifies the return of the repressed while simultaneously conveying a feeling of not being at home, brings into the relief the contradictory temporal aspect of nostalgia in conjunction with its relation to a particular place. I show how the experience of nostalgia is both familiar and strange and thus functions as the Freudian return of the repressed in the form of the uncanny. The temporal and displaced forms of contradiction are amplified in Freud’s concept of the uncanny and deferred action because the recognition of that which is alien yet familiar in nostalgia demonstrates how the process of displacement is constitutive of the memory of a past that remains foreign yet intimate within the present. Freud’s understanding of the relation between familiarity and estrangement in the uncanny is best understood, I argue, through the interpretive lens of Hegel’s dialectical relation of contradictory opposites since the feeling not being at home in the uncanny experience of nostalgia unifies and identifies the estranged and familiar past while maintaining their difference in the present.
