Heydrich playing Beethoven string quartets

As told 13

“I found this to be some kind of let me call it ontological scandal, you know, like how is this possible?”
25:45 On the Desert of Post-Ideology2012-10-02 · 1:59:31

“Do you know that in the evenings he often gathered with his SS officer friends and they were playing what is maybe one of the most beautiful cases of Western classical music: late Beethoven's string quartets.”
45:16 Welcome to the Desert of Post-Ideology2012-08-23 · 1:00:34

“every evening he gathered with three fellow SS friends and you know what they played Beethoven's string quartets”
1:04:52 Home and Radical Evil1994-02-23 · 1:20:37

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

contents · one story, 3 jobsuses

inner authenticity is a lie ×2 fundamental lie ×2 banality of evil ×2

Its cast and sources

populated by

Reinhard Heydrich13 Aldous Huxley6 Jonathan Littell4 D. T. Suzuki7 Père Joseph (François Leclerc du Tremblay)3 Brian Victoria4 Hilary Neroni2 Samuel Maoz2

alongside works

Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones)4 Zen at War5 Grey Eminence4 Risk Society2 Tarrying with the Negative3 Ephesians (Paul)2 Kung Fu Panda3 Waltz with Bashir2

Told together with

24% Daisetz Suzuki's Knife 6 shared talks 21% Father Joseph / Père Joseph, Gray Eminence 4 shared talks 15% Kung Fu Panda 3 shared talks 14% Žižek escaping student Q&A via fake dean summons 2 shared talks 14% learning to enjoy alcohol and cigarettes 2 shared talks 14% Charity ad for the price of a cappuccino 2 shared talks 14% Golda Meir: I believe in Jewish people 2 shared talks 14% Rehabilitating Darth Vader and the Emperor 2 shared talks 13% Fight Club: Ed Norton beats himself before his boss 2 shared talks 13% Sound of Music censored in communist Yugoslavia 2 shared talks 13% Toms Shoes 1-for-1 formula 2 shared talks 13% Chinese scientists: Three Gorges Dam caused earthquake 2 shared talks

Every retelling 13

25:45 On the Desert of Post-Ideology2012-10-02 · 1:59:31

Reinhard Heydrich, organizer of the Wannsee Conference, played violin and held private string quartet evenings with his SS friends playing late Beethoven, an 'ontological scandal' showing that authentic aesthetic appreciation and absolute evil can coexist., illustrating authentic inner experience and atrocity,ontological scandal,gap between inner life and ethics

45:16 Welcome to the Desert of Post-Ideology2012-08-23 · 1:00:34

Reinhard Heydrich, organizer of the Holocaust, would gather with SS officers in the evenings to play Beethoven's late string quartets, Žižek insists they were probably genuinely moved by the music, demonstrating the gap between aesthetic cultivation and moral monstrosity., illustrating the gap between enlightenment and ethics,aesthetic experience and political violence

1:04:52 Home and Radical Evil1994-02-23 · 1:20:37

Heydrich, the 'Butcher of Czechoslovakia,' spent each evening with three SS friends playing Beethoven string quartets, the quintessential example of totalitarian evil coexisting with private cultural refinement, illustrating the 'totalitarian version' of the public horror / tender private backside split., illustrating home as evil,splitting of public/private,coincidence of opposites

9:14 Slavoj Zizek - Mit Hegel die Krise denken; Interview 20092009 · 55:37

Reinhard Heydrich, architect of the Holocaust, played Beethoven string quartets with friends almost every evening, invoking this humanising detail to explain his crimes is precisely what ideology does: evoke the rich human interior to obscure what was actually done., illustrating ideology,truth is in the mask

~0:00 Plea for Ethical Violence2004 · 57:41

Žižek invokes the image of Reinhard Heydrich (chief architect of the Holocaust) playing Beethoven in the evening to illustrate why justice must ignore 'inner truth' and 'face': the capacity to understand anyone from within is precisely what ethical law prohibits., illustrating faceless third,justice must be blind,inhuman as indefinite judgment

10:15 What happened in the first decade of the XXI Century2009-05 · 1:31:02

Reinhard Heydrich, organizer of the Holocaust, spent evenings playing late Beethoven string quartets with fellow SS officers in a genuine string quartet, not as a performance but as authentic high culture; the monstrosity coexists with aesthetic refinement., illustrating inner authenticity is a lie,high culture enabling atrocity,poetic-military complex