Conception of the Thing-in-itself in the Theory of Dialectical Materialism

Abstract

The theory of dialectical materialism as the official philosophy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union present a vision of dynamic material processes forming the laws of development of the higher strata of being. In his interrelated reading of the traditions of German idealism, historical materialism and Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, Slavoj Žižek presents a vision of dematerialized matter as a way of trying to explain the genesis of subjectivity. This paper serves can be seen as an introductory text to this project as a presentation of how the concept of the Thing-in-itself is to be grasped within such an endeavor. The early materialist notion of den qua the paradoxical notion of something within the domain of nothing is taken by Žižek to be a way of conceiving the gap between Being and the One as the only true reality. In this way, a fresh presentation of the difference between idealism and materialism is given as an incentive to an insight to a different kind of objectivity.

Keywords

• slavoj žižek
• structuralism
• psychoanalysis
• dialectical materialism
• stalinism
• ideology
• subjectivity
• objet petit a
• ding-an-sich
• den