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The article treats some underlying motifs of Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Hegel, according to which Hegelian dialectic and the Lacanian “logic of the signifier” are homologous. After a brief conceptual-historical contextualisation of Žižek’s Hegel against the backdrop of early twentieth century Hegelianism (Lukács, Kojéve), the article attends to some programmatic remarks in The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Žižek’s first English-language book. There, he for the first time presents a Hegel of constitutive antagonism, contrary to prevalent readings of Hegel as a thinker of final resolution. Žižek nevertheless provides his most systematic account of Hegel, including the 2012 tome Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, in the Sublime Object’s sequel, for they know not what they do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor (1991). The majority of the article therefore deals with the initial chapter of for they know not, where we encounter the foundations of Žižek’s specifically Lacanian Hegel. The latter holds accountable theoretical currents such as negative dialectic and deconstruction for insufficiently rigorous readings of key Hegelian categories, not least that of identity. Instead of entailing a conceptual imperialism that swallows difference within itself, Hegelian identity is by Žižek read against the background of Lacan’s account of structuralist differentiality. What comes to the fore here is the question of the self-identical One, whose qualitative manifestation in The Science of Logic’s “Doctrine of Being” Žižek casts in terms of the Lacanian trait unaire (unary trait), that is, the nascent form of the signifier.

This article delineates the core duties of a teacher as articulated within Nel Noddings' ethics of care, a relational philosophy that fundamentally reconceptualizes education. Moving beyond conventional models of instruction, Noddings positions the teacher as a "carer" whose primary ethical obligation is to foster authentic, reciprocal relationships that support holistic student development. The teacher's responsibilities encompass authentically modeling care through daily actions; engaging in open, exploratory dialogue; creating opportunities for students to practice caring; confirming students' best moral motives and potential; responsively attending to expressed and inferred needs; cultivating an overarching classroom climate of care; prioritizing caring relations over systems of control and standardization; and practicing engrossment and motivational displacement. These interconnected duties collectively reorient pedagogy from a focus on authority and curricular delivery to one centered on ethical encounter, responsiveness, and the nurturing of students' capacity to care. The argument demonstrates that in Noddings' framework, the caring relation is both the essential means and a paramount end of education, wherein academic learning and moral development are inextricably linked within a context of trust and mutual respect. The teacher's ultimate aim is to educate individuals capable of sustaining caring relationships throughout their personal, civic, and intellectual lives.

Although rarely recognised, Hegelian philosophy also encompasses a rich geographical knowledge, which has great value for scholars working across multiple scales of socio-spatial interaction. The article offers an analysis of the geographical sensibilities of Hegel that are immanent in the main body of his philosophical system, particularly in the Phenomenology of Spirit, where it is possible to find a very original elaboration on the metabolism of reason, the articulation between the particular and the universal, and the function of otherness in socio-spatial interaction. The main argument here is the contrast between the more explicit references to nature and space, on the one hand, and the deeper and more immanent theorisation of world relations, on the other, which constitutes Hegel’s major geographical contribution. The discussion revolves around the key question of the totality of relations and how space encapsulates the unfinished struggles for change and for self-consciousness. The complex evolution of self-consciousness, via the experience of otherness and the insistence of moral duties, not only takes place in time and space but is also an expression of socially produced and perennially disputed spaces. Hegelian dialectic is ultimately an anticipated rendering of the contemporary understanding of socially produced and contested spaces. Geography, as interpretation and critique of lived realities, can be an important translation of philosophy into life, but because space is always lived space, geography becomes the actualisation of philosophy and also its complication.

This chapter makes a case for elementary-school children having the ability to discuss difficult, abstract philosophical issues. The question of whether judgments of artistic merit are objective or simply an expression of one’s preferences is used as an example of an issue in the philosophy of art that young children can discuss. To make the abstract discussion easier to enter into, a children’s picture book functions as the vehicle to raise it. In this case, Peter Catalanato’s book, Emily’s Art, raises the question about the objectivity of judgments of artistic merit. In the book, a judge clearly makes a mistake when she rejects Emily’s painting because it is a painting of a dog and she hates dogs. We ask the children what the difference is between saying one painting is better than another and saying that you like one flavor of ice cream better than another. Without introducing the names of either great philosophers or labels for philosophical problems, we are able to get young children to engage in deep philosophical discussions and even propose innovative solutions to the problems they discuss.