Europe's role in the current planetary politics: Slavoj Žižek
Lecture · Berggruen Institute ·
2025-04-12 · 0:17:56 · 2,048 words
geopolitics-warideologycapitalismtechnology-ai-cyberspaceecology-climatecommunism-socialismhegel-dialecticsphilosophy-general
Žižek argues that history has lost its linear direction, entering a quantum-like state of 'superposition' where progressive enlightenment and right-wing 'soft fascism' coexist. He defines himself as a 'moderately conservative communist,' advocating for a strong state to manage ecological and viral crises, while using quantum mechanics and Hegelian retroactivity to explain how contingency becomes necessity. He further critiques AI by contrasting mechanical intelligence with human 'spirituality' (swearing, ritual), and defends Europe as the only site of radical self-criticism and hope.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 8
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “superpositions (in history)”
The current historical moment where contradictory forces (progressive enlightenment and anti-enlightenment right-wing defense) coexist without a single determining line, analogous to quantum superposition.
A political formation combining capitalist market dynamics with a strong state founded on ethnic-religious traditional ideology (e.g., China, India, Turkey, Russia), distinct from Nazi self-destruction.
Žižek's self-definition: 'Communist' because we need strong collaboration/state intervention for crises; 'conservative' because this requires preparing for emergency states and preserving traditional structures against right-wing capture.
as “Mother Nature is a dirty corrupted bitch”
A provocative redefinition of nature not as stable homeostasis but as a chaotic, catastrophic source of energy (oil/coal), rejecting deep ecology's view of nature as a caring mother.
as “retroactive necessity (collapse)”
A Hegelian-quantum concept where an event appears contingent until it happens, after which it is read retroactively as necessary; one must act as if the catastrophe is necessary to mobilize resistance against it.
as “swearing/cursing as ontological gap”
The function of swearing is not just aggression but an admission of the failure of language (Hegel's gap), registering the lack of the proper word and thus constituting a core aspect of humanity that AI lacks.
The hypothesis that AI may develop its own form of 'spirituality' or meaning-making at a level incomparable to human spirituality, moving beyond mere mechanical intelligence.
The thesis that despite its flaws, Europe is the only civilization capable of radical self-criticism and thus remains the necessary foundation for any post-capitalist or emancipatory future.
Stories he reaches for 1
Modern feminism begins with Descartes' cogito because it is sexless, unlike pre-modern organic balances (Yin/Yang); thus, European tradition contains the seeds of its own critique and emancipation.
“modern feminism begins with Descartes... because cogito doesn't have a sex.”
People invoked 20
Narendra Modi negative
Cited as an example of right-wing/anti-enlightenment leadership (India).
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Described as a 'good friend' and 'best theorist of catastrophes'; his idea of retroactive necessity is central to Žižek's argument.
Cited as an example of 'soft fascism' combining capitalist dynamics with Confucian tradition.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited as a source for the concept of swearing/cursering registering the gap in language.
Cited alongside Trump for using emergency powers during COVID.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Cited as the proponent of 'end of history' whose theory failed; Žižek notes he 'doesn't understand Hegel' but acknowledges his recent support for Bernie Sanders as honesty.
Judith Butler negative
Debated with her; Žižek argues against her dismissal of the European Cartesian tradition, claiming modern feminism begins with Descartes.
Cited for using emergency powers during COVID; viewed as a 'bad guy' but illustrative of state necessity.
Lorenzo Marsili positive
Friend and interlocutor; Žižek references his views on the 'enlightenment' tradition.
Cited in the context of Reagan's worries about the Soviet Union winning.
Wang Hui negative
Good friend, but Žižek disagrees with his view that China offers a true post-capitalist alternative.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan negative
Cited as an example of right-wing/anti-enlightenment leadership (Turkey).
Yanis Varoufakis negative
Friend, but Žižek disagrees with his view that 'Europe is kaput'.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Described as 'the greatest theologian'; cited alongside Lacan regarding the function of swearing.
Rosa Luxemburg positive
Cited for the slogan 'socialism or barbarism'; Žižek argues her mistake was not foreseeing that Stalinism could be both simultaneously.
Vladimir Putin negative
Cited as an example of 'soft fascism' and anti-Europe sentiment.
Hugo Chávez negative
Cited as an example of the failure of the Latin American left.
René Descartes positive
Cited as the origin of modern feminism due to the sexless nature of the cogito.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited for the concept of the 'gap' in language and the notion of retroactivity; Fukuyama is criticized for not understanding him.
Cited in the context of right-wing reactions to Solzhenitsyn and the Soviet Union.
Transcript 4 turns
unknown
Welcome to Ca' da Mosto here in Venice, where we're lucky to have Professor Slavoj Žižek joining us to deliver a lecture on the need for a quantum theory of history. What does he mean by this? Why is it necessary today? Let's find out.
Welcome to Ca' da Mosto here in Venice, where we're lucky to have Professor Slavoj Žižek joining us to deliver a lecture on the need for a quantum theory of history. What does he mean by this? Why is it necessary today? Let's find out.
Slavoj Žižek
Because we live in a very specific moment of history, I think. Till now, although it wasn't true, all the big ideologies, let's say liberalism with Fukuyama, end of history, Marxism, even if they were not perfectly determinist, they thought history has a direction. It may go wrong, we may destroy ourselves, but there is a direction, no? For example, Rosa Luxemburg, no, said the future will be socialism or barbarism. What was her mistake? Well, in Stalinism, we discovered it can be both at the same time, no? And but today, I think the situation fits perfectly the notion of superpositions in quantum physics. We live in a moment where we cannot draw one line, that's it. We are in a situation where on the one hand we have the remainders of this that we share, me and Lorenzo, progressive enlightenment, European dream. Then we have, it's something very different, this right-wing defense of Europe which is precisely anti-enlightenment. Then we have something that I sometimes call, but not because it's good, just to make it clear, soft fascism. Not this Nazi-like self-destructive, but this this is basically I think the elementary definition of fascism. You know only capitalist market dynamic works, but you are aware of social destruction that this causes. So you combine capitalist dynamic with a strong state founded in some ethnic-religious traditional ideology. It's China now. Xi Jinping recently said, we have to teach young people what? Er, not Mao, but er Confucian tradition. Modi in India, Erdoğan, er Putin in his own way. I think if you ask me what's the most probable outcome, it's this one. So er I don't believe in BRICS. BRICS de facto means, not really multicentric, but a couple of centers: Russia, China, Europe is not so strong, United States, which will each of them will try to create its own small empire. And so again, I think we no longer can draw a line where does this lead. We can, then there is ecological catastrophe, will it happen or not and so on and so on. And er this is why the key to all this is in a very ironic way. When people ask me but what are you, I define myself as a moderately conservative communist. Why? Communist because let's be serious. New crises will explode after COVID, other viral crises, maybe wars, who knows what will happen to our environment. And for me it's not even some big theory. It's kind of a primal evidence, self-obvious thing, that we will need more collaboration, stronger than market. Now people tell me you are utopian. I tell them no, look at COVID. I have quite good memories of COVID. Do you know what two big bad guys, both Trump and Boris Johnson, they had to do things which were allowed by constitution only in extreme war-like circumstances. That you can directly, bypassing the market, order some industries what to do. I think we have to prepare for this type of emergency state, because if we don't do it still as Lorenzo would have put it in the tradition of enlightenment, then the right-wingers will do it, you know. So again, the crucial thing is that there is I'm not saying everything is contingent, no, there is one narrative line, but it works like what they call in quantum mechanics collapse. Reality when after a thing happens, retroactively it appears as necessary. No, my beloved example from love: you walk on a street, sorry for the stupidity, you slip on a banana and there is a lady there who helps you to stand up. And then it may happen you discover it's the love of your life, you know. And then you automatically read all your life as leading to that point. So the key point is finish with this simple progressivism, becoming aware that we are now literally in a state of superpositions. The last attempt which was Fukuyama, end of history, failed. And Fukuyama, did you get him here? He's not he doesn't understand Hegel of of course, American-Chinese cannot or whatever, Japanese, but but he saw this clearly and now do you know that in the last elections he supported Bernie Sanders? He is honest enough here, you know. So again, I think it's not enough now I will try to answer very briefly your question in a more philosophical way. It's not enough to say, okay, natural sciences tell us what nature is, history is totally different. No, I think that if we want to take seriously the contingency, the openness of history, at some level, of course different from spiritualism, we have to locate it already in nature. We need a different notion of nature, because today even nature, natura, is no longer what it was. Traditionally our notion of nature was as stability, you know, like the usual anti-humanist dream of ecology: nature was okay, stable, homeostasis, reproducing itself, then we humans emerged and with in our hubris we destabilized it. I my answer is sorry, are you crazy? What is now our source of energy? Oil, coal. Can you even imagine what mega-ecological catastrophes had to happen on our earth so that we have all these reserves of energy? So my answer to insult deep ecologists is yes, there is Mother Nature, but Mother Nature is not a caring mother but a dirty corrupted bitch, no? Like to accept this openness, I think and I will try to develop in today's talk, in what a perfect way quantum mechanics proposes a kind of even I'm not afraid of this term er sorry ontological foundation of a different relationship to history. Jean-Pierre Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y, my good friend who shuttles between California and Paris, he is the best theorist of catastrophes that I know. And his idea is that er it's no longer good enough to be simply a realist-pragmatic. Let's look at it realistically, maybe ecological catastrophe will happen, maybe not and so on. No, he developed this wonderful dialectic where he says, once a catastrophe happens it appears retroactively necessary. But the way to counteract is, and he gives wonderful examples, is to accept it as necessary but nonetheless in a crazy way counteract it. And I will give you an example which is of course not ours politically. You know people often say Reagan and right-wingers when crazy in Solzhenitsyn years when they worried oh my god, did Soviet Union won? But precisely that conviction that we already lost mobilized people and at the end it was Soviet Union which lost. So my idea is there is destiny, but we can retroactively rewrite our destiny itself. That's how we should act. Take the catastrophe very seriously, and you know where we can also I'm a materialist, I'm a Christian atheist we can learn here from intelligent theologians who knew, you must always begin with we are lost, condemned, devil runs this world. And then you don't say okay, let's go to sleep and watch TV series, who cares, this mobilizes you, you know. I think that today if we go into cheap pseudo-optimism oh but it's not so bad, artificial intelligence will help us blah blah, it's even more dangerous. That's my big question. You know how I would begin? This makes us think what do we mean by artificial intellig er sorry, by humanity? Because if you er mean intelligence, fast mechanical operations, of course it will beat us. So whenever I am asked this question, I use two and er I have others, but two most obvious examples. The first one, I now found a book on everyday rituals. For example, I don't know, you know, when you walk on a floor with big squares, many people have this rule you shouldn't step again on the... can artificial intelligence develop this, which is meaningless, it just you feel a need to obey this? Second second thing which I take very seriously, I got this from Lacan and from Kierkegaard, the greatest theologian: swearing, cursing. Can artificial intelligence swear? But not, of course it can if you program it. But you know what is the function of swearing, cursing, dirty words? It's something much deeper, it's an admission that you lack the proper word. It's it it shows a way to register this gap, as Hegel put it nicely. We live in language, think but at the same time we are never at home in language, there is a gap, you always fail. So this swearing means oh my god, I cannot even put in words what. I find much more interesting the question of artificial intelligence at this level, because I think this is the core of our humanity. On the other hand, I'm not a naive conservative here. I, you know what's quite possible: why do we always compare artificial intelligence to humans and will it go will it reach us, will it go beyond us? What I find the most probable thing is that they will, it will, artificial intelligence, maybe develop its own, for the lack of better word I call it spirituality, but which will move at a totally different level, you cannot even compare it with human spirituality,
Because we live in a very specific moment of history, I think. Till now, although it wasn't true, all the big ideologies, let's say liberalism with Fukuyama, end of history, Marxism, even if they were not perfectly determinist, they thought history has a direction. It may go wrong, we may destroy ourselves, but there is a direction, no? For example, Rosa Luxemburg, no, said the future will be socialism or barbarism. What was her mistake? Well, in Stalinism, we discovered it can be both at the same time, no? And but today, I think the situation fits perfectly the notion of superpositions in quantum physics. We live in a moment where we cannot draw one line, that's it. We are in a situation where on the one hand we have the remainders of this that we share, me and Lorenzo, progressive enlightenment, European dream. Then we have, it's something very different, this right-wing defense of Europe which is precisely anti-enlightenment. Then we have something that I sometimes call, but not because it's good, just to make it clear, soft fascism. Not this Nazi-like self-destructive, but this this is basically I think the elementary definition of fascism. You know only capitalist market dynamic works, but you are aware of social destruction that this causes. So you combine capitalist dynamic with a strong state founded in some ethnic-religious traditional ideology. It's China now. Xi Jinping recently said, we have to teach young people what? Er, not Mao, but er Confucian tradition. Modi in India, Erdoğan, er Putin in his own way. I think if you ask me what's the most probable outcome, it's this one. So er I don't believe in BRICS. BRICS de facto means, not really multicentric, but a couple of centers: Russia, China, Europe is not so strong, United States, which will each of them will try to create its own small empire. And so again, I think we no longer can draw a line where does this lead. We can, then there is ecological catastrophe, will it happen or not and so on and so on. And er this is why the key to all this is in a very ironic way. When people ask me but what are you, I define myself as a moderately conservative communist. Why? Communist because let's be serious. New crises will explode after COVID, other viral crises, maybe wars, who knows what will happen to our environment. And for me it's not even some big theory. It's kind of a primal evidence, self-obvious thing, that we will need more collaboration, stronger than market. Now people tell me you are utopian. I tell them no, look at COVID. I have quite good memories of COVID. Do you know what two big bad guys, both Trump and Boris Johnson, they had to do things which were allowed by constitution only in extreme war-like circumstances. That you can directly, bypassing the market, order some industries what to do. I think we have to prepare for this type of emergency state, because if we don't do it still as Lorenzo would have put it in the tradition of enlightenment, then the right-wingers will do it, you know. So again, the crucial thing is that there is I'm not saying everything is contingent, no, there is one narrative line, but it works like what they call in quantum mechanics collapse. Reality when after a thing happens, retroactively it appears as necessary. No, my beloved example from love: you walk on a street, sorry for the stupidity, you slip on a banana and there is a lady there who helps you to stand up. And then it may happen you discover it's the love of your life, you know. And then you automatically read all your life as leading to that point. So the key point is finish with this simple progressivism, becoming aware that we are now literally in a state of superpositions. The last attempt which was Fukuyama, end of history, failed. And Fukuyama, did you get him here? He's not he doesn't understand Hegel of of course, American-Chinese cannot or whatever, Japanese, but but he saw this clearly and now do you know that in the last elections he supported Bernie Sanders? He is honest enough here, you know. So again, I think it's not enough now I will try to answer very briefly your question in a more philosophical way. It's not enough to say, okay, natural sciences tell us what nature is, history is totally different. No, I think that if we want to take seriously the contingency, the openness of history, at some level, of course different from spiritualism, we have to locate it already in nature. We need a different notion of nature, because today even nature, natura, is no longer what it was. Traditionally our notion of nature was as stability, you know, like the usual anti-humanist dream of ecology: nature was okay, stable, homeostasis, reproducing itself, then we humans emerged and with in our hubris we destabilized it. I my answer is sorry, are you crazy? What is now our source of energy? Oil, coal. Can you even imagine what mega-ecological catastrophes had to happen on our earth so that we have all these reserves of energy? So my answer to insult deep ecologists is yes, there is Mother Nature, but Mother Nature is not a caring mother but a dirty corrupted bitch, no? Like to accept this openness, I think and I will try to develop in today's talk, in what a perfect way quantum mechanics proposes a kind of even I'm not afraid of this term er sorry ontological foundation of a different relationship to history. Jean-Pierre Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y, my good friend who shuttles between California and Paris, he is the best theorist of catastrophes that I know. And his idea is that er it's no longer good enough to be simply a realist-pragmatic. Let's look at it realistically, maybe ecological catastrophe will happen, maybe not and so on. No, he developed this wonderful dialectic where he says, once a catastrophe happens it appears retroactively necessary. But the way to counteract is, and he gives wonderful examples, is to accept it as necessary but nonetheless in a crazy way counteract it. And I will give you an example which is of course not ours politically. You know people often say Reagan and right-wingers when crazy in Solzhenitsyn years when they worried oh my god, did Soviet Union won? But precisely that conviction that we already lost mobilized people and at the end it was Soviet Union which lost. So my idea is there is destiny, but we can retroactively rewrite our destiny itself. That's how we should act. Take the catastrophe very seriously, and you know where we can also I'm a materialist, I'm a Christian atheist we can learn here from intelligent theologians who knew, you must always begin with we are lost, condemned, devil runs this world. And then you don't say okay, let's go to sleep and watch TV series, who cares, this mobilizes you, you know. I think that today if we go into cheap pseudo-optimism oh but it's not so bad, artificial intelligence will help us blah blah, it's even more dangerous. That's my big question. You know how I would begin? This makes us think what do we mean by artificial intellig er sorry, by humanity? Because if you er mean intelligence, fast mechanical operations, of course it will beat us. So whenever I am asked this question, I use two and er I have others, but two most obvious examples. The first one, I now found a book on everyday rituals. For example, I don't know, you know, when you walk on a floor with big squares, many people have this rule you shouldn't step again on the... can artificial intelligence develop this, which is meaningless, it just you feel a need to obey this? Second second thing which I take very seriously, I got this from Lacan and from Kierkegaard, the greatest theologian: swearing, cursing. Can artificial intelligence swear? But not, of course it can if you program it. But you know what is the function of swearing, cursing, dirty words? It's something much deeper, it's an admission that you lack the proper word. It's it it shows a way to register this gap, as Hegel put it nicely. We live in language, think but at the same time we are never at home in language, there is a gap, you always fail. So this swearing means oh my god, I cannot even put in words what. I find much more interesting the question of artificial intelligence at this level, because I think this is the core of our humanity. On the other hand, I'm not a naive conservative here. I, you know what's quite possible: why do we always compare artificial intelligence to humans and will it go will it reach us, will it go beyond us? What I find the most probable thing is that they will, it will, artificial intelligence, maybe develop its own, for the lack of better word I call it spirituality, but which will move at a totally different level, you cannot even compare it with human spirituality,
unknown
you know. I here totally share the view,
you know. I here totally share the view,
Slavoj Žižek
I didn't learn about it today of my hopefully in the future good friend Lorenzo Marsili, and here I don't agree with people like, we are both friends with him, Yanis Varoufakis, who likes to repeat Europe is kaput, no? No no no, I think that the first symptom is that, what unites all around the world, left and right: they all hate United Europe. For example Latin Americans claim Eurocentrism the worst; in Africa you did the slavery blah blah first, here I learned from intelligent right-wingers: it's not true. You know that the Muslims got more slaves from Eastern Africa than Americans, Latin Americans from the West. So then Putin against Europe, everybody, China and so on. Why is this happening when everybody is telling us Europe is over, but at the same time Eurocentrism is presented as the as the as the ultimate enemy? No, I think today history took care of under quotation marks bad aspects of Eurocentrism. But what remains is er I are we aware, one argument, that even those who criticize European legacy, they do it strictly in the terms which were articulated by the European legacy? European enlightenment is the only civilizatory view which includes this will sound Stalinist but I don't mean it which includes self-criticism. In this sense I think look at the other models: Latin American left, okay, we know where Hugo Chávez and other finished. United States, European neoconservatives, it's a catastrophe. China, I respect them, but still, in contrast to another of my good friends who was here, Wang Hui, I don't think this Chinese attempt will propose a truly post-capitalist alternatives. It's more complex. India, god forbid, no thanks. So I think, yeah, let's do all this standard weeping your back European masochism, but after all that, sorry, Europe is still the only thing we have. For example I had er couple of years ago a debate with Judith Butler, and I er she was as is fashionable against European tradition, cogito, Cartesian, masculine and so on, but I told her but are you aware that modern feminism begins with Descartes? There many women already read Descartes and they said because cogito doesn't have a sex, it's not you... because pre-modern advocacy of women's rights is strictly this organic cosmic principle, Yin Yang, masculine, feminine, they must be brought in balance. No, this is not the world of modern feminism, it begins with Descartes. So I still absolutely shamelessly insist insist that we er no I wouldn't even say with all the necessary self-criticism, because authentic European legacy is already radically self-critical. So more than ever today we have to say Europe is our only hope.
I didn't learn about it today of my hopefully in the future good friend Lorenzo Marsili, and here I don't agree with people like, we are both friends with him, Yanis Varoufakis, who likes to repeat Europe is kaput, no? No no no, I think that the first symptom is that, what unites all around the world, left and right: they all hate United Europe. For example Latin Americans claim Eurocentrism the worst; in Africa you did the slavery blah blah first, here I learned from intelligent right-wingers: it's not true. You know that the Muslims got more slaves from Eastern Africa than Americans, Latin Americans from the West. So then Putin against Europe, everybody, China and so on. Why is this happening when everybody is telling us Europe is over, but at the same time Eurocentrism is presented as the as the as the ultimate enemy? No, I think today history took care of under quotation marks bad aspects of Eurocentrism. But what remains is er I are we aware, one argument, that even those who criticize European legacy, they do it strictly in the terms which were articulated by the European legacy? European enlightenment is the only civilizatory view which includes this will sound Stalinist but I don't mean it which includes self-criticism. In this sense I think look at the other models: Latin American left, okay, we know where Hugo Chávez and other finished. United States, European neoconservatives, it's a catastrophe. China, I respect them, but still, in contrast to another of my good friends who was here, Wang Hui, I don't think this Chinese attempt will propose a truly post-capitalist alternatives. It's more complex. India, god forbid, no thanks. So I think, yeah, let's do all this standard weeping your back European masochism, but after all that, sorry, Europe is still the only thing we have. For example I had er couple of years ago a debate with Judith Butler, and I er she was as is fashionable against European tradition, cogito, Cartesian, masculine and so on, but I told her but are you aware that modern feminism begins with Descartes? There many women already read Descartes and they said because cogito doesn't have a sex, it's not you... because pre-modern advocacy of women's rights is strictly this organic cosmic principle, Yin Yang, masculine, feminine, they must be brought in balance. No, this is not the world of modern feminism, it begins with Descartes. So I still absolutely shamelessly insist insist that we er no I wouldn't even say with all the necessary self-criticism, because authentic European legacy is already radically self-critical. So more than ever today we have to say Europe is our only hope.