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Sartre's resistance-or-lover dilemma: retreat to the countryside and read Hegel

anecdote · personal/autobiographical · retold in 3 talks
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Žižek proposes his solution to the Sartrean dilemma of choosing between the Resistance and your love object: tell the resistance you must stay with your parents, tell your parents you must fight, and do neither, go to a small cabin and read Hegel; he notes this is actually what Sartre did.

2006: 1 talk 2009: 1 talk 2021: 1 talk
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026

As told 3

“you say to the resistance I have to stay with my parents you say to your parents I have to fight for resistance and you do neither but go to a small cabin in the countryside and read Hegel.”
55:09 On Hegel with Russell Sbriglia2021-01-21 · 1:08:01
“withdrawing to a secluded place and study”
1:07:36 Rules, Race and Mel Gibson2006 · 1:09:13
“When you do this, you cannot say: okay, then after we win I will be able to explain to others, to myself, I had to do it. No, you irrevocably condemn yourself.”
1:14:13 Environment, Identity and Multiculturalism2009-06-19 · 1:14:47

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, 2 jobsuses
event ×1 revolutionary ethics of no-return ×1

Its cast and sources

populated by
Joseph de Maistre1Ra'anan Gissin1Ben Hecht1Abraham Foxman1Stella Sandford1Tim Blake Nelson1Josef Mengele1James Meredith1
alongside works
Existentialism is a Humanism2Justice, Not Vengeance1How to Read Beauvoir1The Caucasian Chalk Circle1Provincializing Europe1The Grey Zone1The Climate of History1Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego1

Every retelling 3

55:09 On Hegel with Russell Sbriglia2021-01-21 · 1:08:01
Žižek proposes his solution to the Sartrean dilemma of choosing between the Resistance and your love object: tell the resistance you must stay with your parents, tell your parents you must fight, and do neither, go to a small cabin and read Hegel; he notes this is actually what Sartre did., illustrating Badiou's event,conflict of obligations,Hegelian withdrawal
1:07:36 Rules, Race and Mel Gibson2006 · 1:09:13
Žižek recounts Sartre's dilemma of a young Frenchman torn between caring for his ill mother and joining the Resistance, then adds a cynical third option: tell each he is with the other and secretly go study, echoing the Lenin joke., illustrating the intellectual's duty,resistance to false urgency,existential choice
1:14:13 Environment, Identity and Multiculturalism2009-06-19 · 1:14:47
Žižek poses the choice between radical political commitment and one's family, arguing the truly heroic act is to sacrifice the family, thereby irrevocably condemning oneself with no return to normality., illustrating revolutionary ethics of no-return,sacrifice beyond justification