We are not finite and self-inconsistent because our activity is always thwarted by external obstacles; we are thwarted by external obstacles because we are finite and inconsistent. In other words, what the subject engaged in a struggle perceives as the enemy, the external obstacle he has to overcome, is the materialization of the subject’s immanent inconsistency: the struggling subject needs the figure of the enemy to sustain the illusion of his own consistency, his very identity hinges on his opposing the enemy, so much so that his (eventual) victory amounts to his own defeat or disintegration. As Hegel likes to put it, in fighting the external enemy, one (unknowingly) fights one’s own essence. So, far from celebrating engaged struggle, Hegel’s point is rather that every embattled position, every taking of sides, has to rely on a necessary illusion (the illusion that, once the enemy is annihilated, I will achieve the full realization of my being). This brings us to what would have been a properly Hegelian notion of ideology: the misapprehension of the condition of possibility (of what is an inherent constituent of your position) as the condition of impossibility (as an obstacle which prevents your full realization)—the ideological subject is unable to grasp how his entire identity hinges on what he perceives as the disturbing obstacle. This notion of ideology is not just an abstract mental exercise: it fits perfectly with fascist anti-Semitism as the most elementary form of ideology—one is even tempted to say: as ideology as such, kat’ exochen . The anti-Semitic figure of the Jew, the foreign intruder who disturbs and corrupts the harmony of the social order, is ultimately a fetishistic objectivization, a stand-in, for the “inconsistency” of the social order itself, for the immanent antagonism (“class struggle”) which generates the dynamic of its instability. Hegel’s interest in the “conflict of the opposites” is thus that of the neutral dialectical observer who discerns the “Cunning of Reason” at work in struggle: a subject engages in struggle, is defeated (as a rule, in his very victory), and this defeat brings him to his truth . We can clearly measure here the distance that separates Hegel from Nietzsche: the innocence of exuberant heroism that Nietzsche wants to resuscitate, the passion of risk, of fully engaging in a struggle, of victory or defeat—these are all absent; the “truth” of the struggle emerges only in and through defeat.

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