God in Pain
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2012-04-24 · 1:16:53 · 11,504 words
religion-theologyideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsphilosophy-generalliberalism-political-correctnesstechnology-ai-cyberspacecommunism-socialismfascism-populismconsciousness-mindethics
Žižek is in conversation with Jack Miles at ALOUD (Central Library, Los Angeles) discussing his book 'God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse.' The talk ranges across the radical atheist core of Christianity (the death of God as the abdication of transcendence, Holy Spirit as egalitarian collective), the Book of Job as the first great work of ideology critique, the nature of belief as a distributed and non-first-person phenomenon, and the political tactic of over-identification. Secondary threads include Ayn Rand's accidental Marxism, biogenetic manipulation of the brain-computer interface, and the defense of free intellectual inquiry against the reduction of universities to expert machines.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 18
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
A God who creates humanity (and lets them sin) primarily so he can be admired and thanked for saving them, exemplified by Malebranche, reducing the divine to a narcissistic PR exercise.
as “Holy Spirit as egalitarian collective”
After the death of Christ, what replaces God-the-Father is not transcendence restored but the Holy Spirit understood as a love-bound egalitarian community immanent to human relations.
The unmasking of hidden meaning or justification in ideological discourse; Žižek here identifies the Book of Job as the first work in this tradition, preceding Marx and Freud.
as “authentic atheism”
A radical atheism that entails genuinely experiencing the absence of any transcendent guarantee, distinct from Dawkins-style scientific atheism, which for Žižek still harbors covert theological structures.
as “regulated hedonism”
Contemporary consumer culture that enjoins pleasure but only in a controlled, health-approved form (light beer, healthy sex), making smokers the last genuine hedonist rebels.
as “objectified belief”
Belief that functions socially without being held in first-person: it operates through the Other (children, TV laugh track, prayer wheels) so that no single subject actually believes yet the belief fully functions.
Arthur Koestler's formula: individual decency can be mobilized as collective self-sacrificial violence when channeled through a group identity or transcendent cause.
The substitution of 'the people' for God as a legitimating transcendent authority that licenses anything done in its name, parallel to religious fundamentalism's license structure.
as “resentment / envy”
The perverse inversion of self-interest where destroying the rival's advantage matters more than one's own gain; illustrated by the Slovenian farmer joke and the parable of the workers in the vineyard.
Subverting an ideology not by opposing it but by taking its explicit premises to their most extreme or embarrassing conclusions, thereby exposing what the ideology must keep in shadow to function.
Implied in discussion of money economy: money's formal freedom is a real but abstract mediation that at least prohibits direct domination, and abandoning it (as in Stalinist command economy) reintroduces brutal personal domination.
as “apocalypse as unveiling”
The original Greek meaning of apocalypse as revelation/unveiling rather than end of the world; Žižek uses this to reframe contemporary crises as moments when things appear as what they truly are.
as “death of God (on the cross)”
For Žižek (following Hegel), what dies on the cross is not a divine messenger but God-as-transcendent-guarantee himself, the very figure of a power secretly pulling the strings from beyond.
Lacan's formula for genuine atheism: not 'God is dead' but 'God is unconscious,' meaning the structural function of belief persists beneath explicit disavowal.
as “canned laughter”
The TV laugh track as a paradigm for outsourced, objectified emotion: the machine laughs for you and you feel relieved, demonstrating that affects can function socially without first-person experience.
as “believe to believe”
Kierkegaard's formulation that we never straightforwardly believe; we only believe that we believe, cited by Žižek as the authentic (not fundamentalist) mode of Christian faith.
Christ's cry of dereliction ('Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani') means that only in Christianity does God himself momentarily become an atheist, undergoing radical doubt from within.
The desperate acting-out by a suicide bomber who is not certain of paradise but destroys the doubt through the act itself, belief enacted in order to be produced rather than expressed.
Stories he reaches for 11
Niels Bohr had a horseshoe above his door. Asked why, as a scientist, he replied: I don't believe in it, but I'm told it works even if you don't believe in it. The canonical illustration of symbolic/unconscious belief functioning despite disavowal.
“of course I don't believe in this, but I have it because I was told that horseshoe above the entrance to the house, it works even if you don't believe in it”
Scientists at NYU wired a rat's neurons to a computer, decoded elementary movement commands, and could remotely direct the rat like a toy. Žižek's key worry: humans subjected to this would not experience external control, they would still feel they are freely moving.
“Their hypothesis is that I would still think that I'm just freely roaming around, you know, without even knowing.”
Job's friends each offer theological justification for his suffering; Job simply insists there is no deeper meaning. God then comes and endorses every word Job said, dismissing all theological justification, making Job the first ideological unmasking.
“Forget about Marx, Freud, let's begin with the Book of Job. Why? We know what a tremendous thing happens there.”
Parents say they don't believe in Santa but pretend for the children; children say they don't believe but pretend for the parents. No one believes, yet the belief fully functions, illustrating objectified, nobody's belief.
“You have a belief which is nobody's belief. No one believes in the first person but it fully functions as a social belief.”
At Napoleon's coronation, after Napoleon crowned himself, the Pope allegedly told him: 'You want to ruin the church. You will fail, we Catholics have been trying to do this for years and haven't succeeded.'
“I know what you want to do, you want to ruin the church. Let me tell you, you will fail because we, Catholic institution, are trying to do this for years, we didn't succeed”
Žižek proposes a better ending for Benigni's film: the father, just before being shot, discovers the son always knew the camp was real and pretended to believe the father's story to protect him. This mutual protection without witness is the truly Christian gesture.
“The father were to discover at the very end when he is to be shot that the son knew this all the time. Just he pretended to believe his father to protect him. This would be the proper Christian reversal.”
In a Talmudic story, two rabbis debate; the losing rabbi invokes God as final authority. The winning rabbi shouts at God that his creation job is done and he should leave them to debate the consequences. God laughs and says 'My children have defeated me.'
“You did your job, creation, you didn't do it too well, your job is done... leave us serious people here to debate the consequences now. And God says: oh my God my pupils have beaten me.”
Rather than reading God's 'Where were you when I created all this?' as divine arrogance emphasizing the gap with humans, Chesterton reads it as God expressing perplexity at his own messy creation, an implicit admission that the universe is one big mess.
“God expresses his perplexity at his own creation... it's kind that in a refined way God expresses his perplexity at his own creation.”
A top Chinese Academy of Sciences official showed Žižek a biogenetics research program whose stated goal was explicitly to 'regulate the physical and psychic well-being of the Chinese people', presented as evidence of the state ambitions accompanying new bio-tech.
“the goal of our research is to regulate the physical and psychic well-being of the Chinese people.”
Nicolas Malebranche argued that God threw humanity into sin specifically so he could save some of us and be thanked, making God a narcissist who stages suffering as a PR spectacle.
“God threw us all into sin so that he could save some of us, to show gratitude. So we have here clearly what we call a perverse God.”
A fairy offers a Slovenian farmer a cow but warns his neighbor will get two. The farmer replies: don't give me one, kill mine, and also kill the neighbor's two. Illustrates the logic of resentment where the rival's loss matters more than one's own gain.
“no rather take a cow of mine, kill her, eat but take also then two from the neighbor”
Works invoked 10
Less Than Nothing book
Called 'my life work if I can use this bombastic term'; referenced as containing the Talmudic death-penalty story.
Žižek explicitly says he doesn't like it ('I don't like it') because it is 'not strong enough'; he proposes an alternative ending to make it a 'proper Christian reversal.'
Annie Hall film
Referenced for the scene where Marshall McLuhan himself appears to settle a debate, used as a comic analogue for the Talmudic story of the rabbi invoking God in a debate.
Atlas Shrugged book
Žižek cannot read it despite admiring Rand ('with all my admiration... it's too much'); John Galt's final 100-page speech is compared to a communist party apparatchik speech, yet authentic moments are acknowledged.
Finnegans Wake book
Briefly mentioned in an audience question about McLuhan; Žižek's implicit verdict is negative by association with Joyce's narcissism.
Paul Veyne's book; called 'wonderful'; used to complicate the modern concept of belief and show ancient practice was neither literal nor merely metaphorical.
God: A Biography book
Jack Miles's Pulitzer-winning book; the interlocutor draws a line from its opening (God creating humanity as a mirror) to the evening's themes.
Žižek's own book, co-authored with Boris Gunjevic, the subject of the evening's discussion; he refers to its arguments throughout.
Lucien Goldmann's study of Pascal and Jansenism; cited as a model reading of how over-identification subverts ruling ideology by exposing its implicit cards.
Fredy Perlman's book raised by an audience member; Žižek does not directly engage with it.
People invoked 31
Origen (Origenes) positive
Considered more radical and intelligent than Augustine; erroneously identified as the author of 'Credo quia absurdum' (quickly corrected to Tertullian) but praised for genuine theological radicalism.
Tertullian positive
Correctly identified as the author of 'Credo quia absurdum' after an initial misattribution; praised as a more interesting figure than Origen in radical early Christianity.
Virginia Woolf positive
Her claim that 'human nature changed' is cited approvingly in the context of brain-computer interface disruptions to selfhood.
Radovan Karadžić negative
Cited as evidence that 'no ethnic cleansing without poetry', the Bosnian Serb leader was a poet, illustrating how mytho-poetic language enables atrocity.
Her Atlas Shrugged is 'too much' and unreadable in the final 100 pages; yet she has 'authentic moments', her logic of stepping back from the system and her implicit point about money economy versus domination are credited.
Jacques Lacan positive
Referred to as 'my psychoanalytic master figure'; his formula 'God is unconscious' is deployed as the true formula of atheism; his reversal of Dostoyevsky on God and permission is endorsed.
His claim that religion makes good people do bad things is cited with reluctant partial agreement ('unfortunately there is an element of truth in it'), but Žižek does not endorse the broader New Atheist position.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Called 'my beloved Chesterton' twice; his readings of Job (God perplexed by creation) and of Christ's atheist moment are central to Žižek's theological argument.
An audience question raises McLuhan; Žižek says he doesn't relate deeply to him and moves quickly past.
Heinrich von Kleist positive
Called 'one of my big writers'; cited as an example of over-identification with German militarism that ends up subverting it.
Paul Claudel positive
Called a 'good conservative theologian'; his insight that Christianity's deepest lesson is not 'we can trust God' but 'God has to trust us' is a key move in Žižek's argument.
Raymond Kurzweil negative
Cited as representing the naive optimist pole on brain-computer interfaces (happy virtual entities); Žižek rejects both this and the conservative-luddite reaction.
Nicolas Malebranche negative
His claim that God threw humanity into sin to stage a spectacle of salvation is called 'the most obscene answer' and illustrates the concept of a perverse God.
Samuel Beckett positive
Called 'my hero'; his minimalist asceticism is contrasted favorably to Joyce's maximalist narcissism.
Bertolt Brecht positive
Cited as an example of over-identification with communism that subverts it from within.
Richard Dawkins negative
His atheism is called 'bullshit'; he has no understanding of how belief actually works and mistakes a narrow empirical claim for a philosophical insight into religion.
Jack Miles positive
Interlocutor and co-author of the book's companion volume; Žižek engages his questions generously and finds 'positive vibrations' with his framing of God's self-encounter in the crucifixion.
Christopher Hitchens negative
Lumped with Dawkins as a critic of religion who operates with a ridiculously inadequate notion of belief; Žižek also rejects his anti-clerical joy at the Church's decline.
Lucien Goldmann positive
Cited for his Marxist reading of Pascal and Jansenism (Le Dieu caché) as a paradigm of over-identification subverting ruling ideology.
Appears in the anecdote about self-coronation and the Pope's wry remark about trying to ruin the Church.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
His formula 'we never believe, we just believe to believe' is cited as the most radical formulation of authentic (non-fundamentalist) faith.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau positive
His distinction between authentic self-love (egotism that rationally includes others) and perverted self-love (resentment / amour propre) is cited approvingly.
Žižek says Finnegans Wake shows Joyce wanting to be 'too bright for his own good', a 'disgusting narcissism' of encyclopedic ambition, contrasted unfavorably to Beckett.
Paul Veyne positive
His book 'Did the Ancient Greeks Believe in Their Gods?' is cited as a wonderful work showing that ancient belief was neither literal nor merely metaphorical.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Called 'a great disappointment'; his conservative-Catholic reaction to biogenetics (don't manipulate human nature) is dismissed as inadequate Enlightenment thinking that capitulates to tradition.
Arthur Koestler positive
His formula 'the altruism of the individual was the egoism of the group' is endorsed as a key insight into how individual decency becomes collective violence.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for the point that money economy provides formal freedom (even if abstract) that command economies abandon, reintroducing direct domination; cited alongside Rand on this Marxist insight.
Paul the Apostle positive
Defended against the standard critique of Paul as corrupting Jesus; called 'the Leninist' who organized the movement; without Paul, Jesus would have been a minor local preacher.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited for the claim that 'what dies on the cross is God of beyond himself'; the Talmudic death-penalty story is called 'my Hegelianism in practice'.
Friedrich Nietzsche positive
Cited for his observation that unconscious belief structures persist after official atheism; used to support Lacan's formula.
His formula 'if there is no God everything is permitted' is cited only to be reversed via Lacan.
What it argues
the radical atheist core of ChristianityHoly Spirit as egalitarian community outside hierarchythe death of God as abdication of transcendent guaranteebelief as distributed and objectified social phenomenonthe Book of Job as inaugural critique of ideologyover-identification as a tactic to subvert ideology from withinbiogenetics and brain-computer interface as crisis of subjectivity
Dialectical moves 9
“If there is God — but in a non-authentic fundamentalist way — then everything is permitted to you.”
Žižek reverses Dostoyevsky's maxim ('without God all is permitted') via Lacan: it is precisely the fundamentalist invocation of God that licenses unlimited transgression.
“What dies on the cross is not a messenger of God but God himself — God of beyond himself, the transcendent power who secretly pulls the strings.”
The crucifixion is not a sacrifice sent from above but the self-abolition of transcendence itself, opening the space of immanent collective freedom.
“Only through the Christian experience can you reach authentic atheism — you have to go through Christianity.”
Genuine atheism is not the simple rejection of God but the traversal of the Christian experience of divine abandonment; bypassing Christianity leaves covert theological structures intact.
“God is not dead — God is unconscious.”
Lacan's formula replaces the Nietzschean announcement with a psychoanalytic one: the death of God at the level of conscious belief leaves the structural function of belief untouched in the unconscious.
“I am an optimist for the very same reason that I am a pessimist.”
Žižek refuses both naive optimism and defeatist pessimism: the same apocalyptic confrontation with truth that reveals how bad things are is also the precondition for genuine change.
“The truly Christian gesture is precisely to abandon objectified belief — the father discovering the son knew the truth all along.”
In Žižek's rewrite of 'Life is Beautiful,' authentic Christianity means dropping the protective fiction and facing the abyss directly, without the substitute believer.
“God doesn't need us to trust God — God has to trust us.”
Following Paul Claudel, Žižek inverts the standard devotional formula: after the crucifixion it is God who is dependent on human initiative, not the reverse.
“We never believe — we just believe to believe.”
Kierkegaard's formula reframed: authentic faith is always reflexive and uncertain; anyone who thinks they really, simply believe is already one step from fundamentalism.
“Modern fundamentalism is not a flight from too much freedom but a reaction to a world felt as too oppressive and regulated.”
The standard liberal reading of fundamentalism (fear of freedom) is only partly true; the opposite is equally true, ethnic militancy opens a false space of transgressive freedom.
Claims 18
asserts
What dies on the cross is not a divine messenger but God-as-transcendent-guarantor himself — the very idea of a hidden power pulling the strings from beyond.the meaning of the crucifixion
asserts
The Holy Spirit, not the Father restored, is what follows Christ's death — and it is nothing but an egalitarian community bound by love, immanent and without hierarchy.Holy Spirit / Christian community
asserts
The Book of Job is the first great work of critique of ideology, because Job insists his suffering has no deeper meaning and God ultimately endorses his refusal of ideological consolation.Book of Job / ideology critique
asserts
To reach genuine atheism — radical absence of any transcendent guarantee — one must pass through the Christian experience rather than bypassing it.atheism and Christianity
asserts
We do not live in an era of hedonism but of strictly regulated, controlled hedonism — genuine hedonists today are only drug-users and smokers.contemporary culture / hedonism
asserts
Belief is not a first-person mental state; it can be fully outsourced to others (children, laugh tracks, prayer wheels) and still function as a social reality.the nature of belief
rejects
Dawkins-and-Hitchens-style scientific atheism fails because it has no adequate theory of how belief actually functions and smuggles in covert theological structures.New Atheism (Dawkins, Hitchens, Weinberg)
asserts
Fundamentalism is not a flight from freedom but can paradoxically offer a false freedom — the ethnic nationalist is attracted because modernity feels too regulated, and belonging to a cause opens up a space of permitted transgression.religious / ethnic fundamentalism
asserts
If God is invoked in a non-authentic fundamentalist way — as a mandate for the believer — then everything is permitted; Lacan's reversal of Dostoyevsky is correct.the Dostoyevsky/Lacan reversal on God and permission
asserts
Over-identification — taking an ideology's premises to their extreme — is more effective at subverting it than direct opposition, because ideology must keep its true implications in shadow to function.over-identification as political tactic
asserts
The big Christian news is that an egalitarian community outside social hierarchy is possible in this life — unlike paganism or Buddhism where equality is only achieved in death or Nirvana.Christianity versus pagan religion
rejects
Gnosticism was from the beginning elitist and has no emancipatory potential — Gnostics are Christians who missed the joke of Christianity.Gnosticism
asserts
St. Paul is not the corruption of authentic Christianity but its Lenin: the organizer who makes the movement possible.St. Paul / early Christianity
rejects
Habermas's conservative-Catholic reaction to biogenetics (don't manipulate human nature or we'll lose dignity) is an inadequate response; we must instead confront these possibilities directly.Habermas on biogenetics
reframes
Ayn Rand's pro-capitalism is so extreme that she accidentally refutes — or at least embarrasses — the system she defends, and she also makes a point convergent with Marx about money economy versus direct domination.Ayn Rand / capitalism
asserts
Free public spaces of non-expert thought — like this library conversation — must be defended against the university's reduction to producing technical experts.universities / free intellectual inquiry
asserts
No ethnic cleansing without poetry — it is precisely mythic, community-founding sacred or poetic language that desensitizes ordinary people enough to commit atrocities.religion, poetry, and ethnic violence
asserts
The way we formulate a problem is often the problem — universities should question the questions themselves, not merely supply expert answers.intellectual reflexivity / universities
Quotes 18
“I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you're in.”Slavoj Žižek · philosophy's critical vocation
“What dies on the cross for me? Not a messenger of God... what dies on the cross is God of beyond himself. It's precisely God as that transcendent power which somehow secretly pulls the strings.”Slavoj Žižek · crucifixion as abdication of transcendence
“God can't do anything without us. God has to trust us.”Slavoj Žižek · divine dependence on human initiative
“Only in Christianity — and for him this is crucial — God himself becomes for a moment an atheist.”Slavoj Žižek · Christianity's radical self-undermining of God
“Not just that I try to give some atheist reading of Christianity how God is really man, that's bullshit, but that only through the Christian experience can you reach the abyss of what I call atheism.”Slavoj Žižek · authentic atheism requires passing through Christianity
“We don't live in an era of hedonism. We live in an era of strictly controlled regulated hedonism.”Slavoj Žižek · superego hedonism / regulated enjoyment
“You have a belief which is nobody's belief. No one believes in the first person but it fully functions as a social belief.”Slavoj Žižek · objectified belief
“If there is God — but in a non-authentic fundamentalist way where you pretend to be an instrument of God — then everything is permitted to you.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's reversal of Dostoyevsky
“No ethnic cleansing without poetry. Or something like poetry.”Slavoj Žižek · mythic language as precondition for atrocity
“I am optimist for the very same reason that I am a pessimist.”Slavoj Žižek · dialectical optimism / apocalypse as unveiling
“The true formula of atheism is not 'God is dead' but 'God is unconscious.'”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's formula for genuine atheism
“We never believe, we just believe to believe.”Slavoj Žižek · reflexive and uncertain structure of all belief
“The guy who believes and really thinks he believes, it's one step from fundamentalism. This is not authentic Christianity.”Slavoj Žižek · fundamentalism as naive literal belief
“Gnostics are Christians who miss the joke of Christianity.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of Gnosticism
“St. Paul is the Leninist in the sense of organizing the movement.”Slavoj Žižek · St. Paul as communist organizer
“The problem is that today we are facing problems but more often than not the way we formulate a problem is the problem — mystifies the problem.”Slavoj Žižek · reflexivity of intellectual inquiry
“There are only two types of people: complete idiots and partial idiots.”Slavoj Žižek · democratic epistemic humility / anti-elitism
“Every ideology to be operative shouldn't go to the end — it has to leave its true implications a little bit in shadow.”Slavoj Žižek · ideological incompleteness as condition of functioning
Transcript 67 turns
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Thank you. Good evening. Good evening and welcome to ALOUD at Central Library. I'm Louise Steinman, the program director for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. And tonight, philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek, author of God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse, subjects the three major faith-based religions to a respectful but ruthless critical examination in conversation with God's own biographer, Jack Miles. So we think it's a great match-up. We're sorry that Boris Gunjevic was unable to join us tonight, but as planned, but I can assure you it's going to be a very lively evening nonetheless. Philosopher, provocateur, and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek is internationally recognized for his work on psychoanalysis. He grew up in the former Yugoslavia, well located, as he's noted, to see what was going on and well-inoculated to resist any illusions about the East or the West. He teaches at the European Graduate School and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris, Columbia, and Princeton, among other institutions. He's the founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and has now written more than books and had his work translated into languages. His book topics range from Christianity to the films of David Lynch. And his work, as I'm sure you know, cuts across disciplines. His recurring themes are ideology, belief, revolution, and love. He's a master of counter-intuitive thinking and a keen observer, indeed a connoisseur, of the paradoxes that underpin our perception of reality. Inquiring minds around the world are invigorated and expanded by Slavoj Žižek's ability to connect the minutiae of popular culture to the big abstract problems of existence. And as he has said, I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you're in. Our interlocutor tonight is Jack Miles, who was game for an ALOUD rematch with Slavoj Žižek. Jack is senior fellow for religious affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy, and he's distinguished professor of English and religious studies at UC Irvine. He's been a MacArthur Fellow, won the Pulitzer in for God: A Biography, which has been translated into languages. And he's currently general editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of World Religions. Jack is an inspiring and generous member of LA's intellectual community and the world of ideas. And I can tell you, if the conversation in the green room is any indication, you're in for a great evening. Please welcome Slavoj Žižek and Jack Miles. Good evening everybody, and welcome. It's a pleasure to be with you again. This evening we're going to be talking about Slavoj Žižek's new book, God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse. Let me begin with the subtitle. What is an inversion of apocalypse? Apocalypse is a proclamation that the world is about to end. So an inversion of
Thank you. Good evening. Good evening and welcome to ALOUD at Central Library. I'm Louise Steinman, the program director for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. And tonight, philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek, author of God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse, subjects the three major faith-based religions to a respectful but ruthless critical examination in conversation with God's own biographer, Jack Miles. So we think it's a great match-up. We're sorry that Boris Gunjevic was unable to join us tonight, but as planned, but I can assure you it's going to be a very lively evening nonetheless. Philosopher, provocateur, and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek is internationally recognized for his work on psychoanalysis. He grew up in the former Yugoslavia, well located, as he's noted, to see what was going on and well-inoculated to resist any illusions about the East or the West. He teaches at the European Graduate School and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris, Columbia, and Princeton, among other institutions. He's the founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and has now written more than books and had his work translated into languages. His book topics range from Christianity to the films of David Lynch. And his work, as I'm sure you know, cuts across disciplines. His recurring themes are ideology, belief, revolution, and love. He's a master of counter-intuitive thinking and a keen observer, indeed a connoisseur, of the paradoxes that underpin our perception of reality. Inquiring minds around the world are invigorated and expanded by Slavoj Žižek's ability to connect the minutiae of popular culture to the big abstract problems of existence. And as he has said, I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you're in. Our interlocutor tonight is Jack Miles, who was game for an ALOUD rematch with Slavoj Žižek. Jack is senior fellow for religious affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy, and he's distinguished professor of English and religious studies at UC Irvine. He's been a MacArthur Fellow, won the Pulitzer in for God: A Biography, which has been translated into languages. And he's currently general editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of World Religions. Jack is an inspiring and generous member of LA's intellectual community and the world of ideas. And I can tell you, if the conversation in the green room is any indication, you're in for a great evening. Please welcome Slavoj Žižek and Jack Miles. Good evening everybody, and welcome. It's a pleasure to be with you again. This evening we're going to be talking about Slavoj Žižek's new book, God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse. Let me begin with the subtitle. What is an inversion of apocalypse? Apocalypse is a proclamation that the world is about to end. So an inversion of
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apocalypse must be then in some sense a proclamation that the world is about to begin. And if it is God invulnerable, God immutable, omnipotent, eternal, who is most associated with the world ending, then perhaps there is a connection between God in pain and the world about to begin. That's a topic that we will find our way around to during the course of the evening. I thought that I might begin drawing a kind of line from the very beginning of my book God: A Biography to the subject matter of this book. That book begins of course with the beginning of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, where God creates the world rather as a host might prepare a home for entertaining a distinguished guest. And who is that distinguished guest? The distinguished guest is the human species. It is the first couple, the man and the woman. And what is God's motive for creating humankind? It is because he wants an image of himself. He decides to create this pair in his own image and likeness. And why does anyone want an image? Why do you look in the mirror? You look in the mirror because you want to see yourself. You have your portrait drawn because you want to look at it. So in
apocalypse must be then in some sense a proclamation that the world is about to begin. And if it is God invulnerable, God immutable, omnipotent, eternal, who is most associated with the world ending, then perhaps there is a connection between God in pain and the world about to begin. That's a topic that we will find our way around to during the course of the evening. I thought that I might begin drawing a kind of line from the very beginning of my book God: A Biography to the subject matter of this book. That book begins of course with the beginning of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, where God creates the world rather as a host might prepare a home for entertaining a distinguished guest. And who is that distinguished guest? The distinguished guest is the human species. It is the first couple, the man and the woman. And what is God's motive for creating humankind? It is because he wants an image of himself. He decides to create this pair in his own image and likeness. And why does anyone want an image? Why do you look in the mirror? You look in the mirror because you want to see yourself. You have your portrait drawn because you want to look at it. So in
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what way, Slavoj—his mind is spinning, it's racing here, I can kind of feel the vibrations—in what way is God in pain the fulfillment of God's wish? Is Jesus Christ on the cross the fulfillment of God's wish to see himself? That's a good question and from what I, I don't know a lot, know of, you know this much more, history of theology, this was a great topic of debates, not only this but even the most elementary questions. Like whenever I'm in debate, sometimes in Europe I am with especially Catholic bishops and so on, I noticed how often it is easy to embarrass them by asking the most elementary questions. Like once I asked them why did God have to die on the cross? And they looked at me as if I'm asking a prohibited question. And it's true because you know like the moment you go into this exchange of commodities topic, like to pay the price for our sins, you are lost. It doesn't work. First, to pay the price for our sins to whom? You must know this better than me, the only consequent answer would be that there should be another guy, like the devil, and this was I think one of the early heresies, no? That God says to the devil: I love humanity so much that I give you my son if you—The ransom is paid to Satan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so that. Then some people claim it is so that, it is because justice must be done. Aye, we are in paganism here, which means as if there is even above God—this is typical I think pre-Christian idea—that God is not
what way, Slavoj—his mind is spinning, it's racing here, I can kind of feel the vibrations—in what way is God in pain the fulfillment of God's wish? Is Jesus Christ on the cross the fulfillment of God's wish to see himself? That's a good question and from what I, I don't know a lot, know of, you know this much more, history of theology, this was a great topic of debates, not only this but even the most elementary questions. Like whenever I'm in debate, sometimes in Europe I am with especially Catholic bishops and so on, I noticed how often it is easy to embarrass them by asking the most elementary questions. Like once I asked them why did God have to die on the cross? And they looked at me as if I'm asking a prohibited question. And it's true because you know like the moment you go into this exchange of commodities topic, like to pay the price for our sins, you are lost. It doesn't work. First, to pay the price for our sins to whom? You must know this better than me, the only consequent answer would be that there should be another guy, like the devil, and this was I think one of the early heresies, no? That God says to the devil: I love humanity so much that I give you my son if you—The ransom is paid to Satan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so that. Then some people claim it is so that, it is because justice must be done. Aye, we are in paganism here, which means as if there is even above God—this is typical I think pre-Christian idea—that God is not
Slavoj Žižek
really the top, there is some kind of a cosmic destiny, justice, to which even God has to be subordinated. Then the worst answer for me is because if God were just to pardon us without this spectacle of death on the cross, then we wouldn't be grateful to God. But wait a minute, God becomes here a disgusting narcissist who really wants to be loved and you know, it's like PR of God. Let's do a nice spectacle so that—and so the most obscene answer here for me is that of Nicolas Malebranche who says that God created humanity—he goes even further from this mirror image—he says God wanted to be admired. He even goes as far as to say that without Jesus Christ's sacrifice, we wouldn't all be lost, but we would all be redeemed automatically. Malebranche says directly: God threw us all into sin so that he could save some of us, to show gratitude. So we have here clearly what we call a perverse God. So you know what I mean? What I mean by this—I'm not just I hope losing our precious time—what I want to say is this is not an argument against Christianity but quite of the contrary. It makes my point, which I think at least at some level resonates if I may also use like you this terminology from our youth, hippie era, we have a positive vibrations here with what you said, that there is something that is a little bit impenetrable even today. Something tremendous happens in the very focus of Christian experience, which is then covered up with the usual dogma and so on and so on. Which is why I love, maybe you know the anecdote, historical one, when Napoleon was crowned emperor by the Pope. You know what happened, that's the legend. Pope approached him with the crown, Napoleon took the crown and put it himself on his head. And then, that's the story, Pope told Napoleon something wonderful. He told him: I know what you want to do, you want to ruin the church. Let me tell you, you will fail because we, Catholic institution, are trying to do this, to ruin Christianity for years, we didn't succeed, so you will not. So what I am saying is not to provoke Christians but to bring us to the central experience which I claim is today more precious than ever. I like to focus on these problematic points, like for example, another question which I used to embarrass my Catholic friends, which is I just asked them in all innocence, how exactly do you read—you can imagine me as an old-fashioned communist how I like that—those statements from the Gospel, you know, "I don't bring peace and love, I bring sword and fire, if you don't hate your parents," blah blah blah, "you are not my follower." How do you read this? Because then I notice that there is a whole system of detraumatizing this statement. You know like no, God doesn't—like one Catholic theologian told me, yeah you shouldn't read it too literally, it just means that God—you know they gave me a kind of a shitty Jedi version from Star Wars, this you know the Obi-Wan Kenobi stuff: don't get too attached to earthly objects, like you can love your neighbors but you should love me more, which is for me a ridiculous obscenity, as if God is a jealous guy who said: love your wife okay but remember I'm here I want to be loved a little bit more. The best answer was given to me by a Polish bishop who when I asked him this question, what do those lines mean, told me—it was very funny—told me: My God, I wasn't prepared for this question. Why did you? And I told him: like F, sorry to use the word again, F three points U, you had time years to prepare for this question! It's not that I brought something new now, it's in the Bible. But again, I am not saying this to provoke. I think this brings us to the challenge. And my very simple solution to this challenge is that when in the Bible it is said if you don't hate your father mother, it's not father mother as persons, it's father mother stands there for entire power edifice, social hierarchy. That's for me one of the big news of Christianity: an egalitarian community outside of social hierarchy is possible. That's for me the big news. In other, maybe I'm here too pro-Western, but nonetheless, in other so-called pagan religions, in order to achieve this point of let's call it absolute equality, it's only in death or in Nirvana where all structures dissolve. But this idea that you can have a collective—and this is for me what Holy Spirit is—an egalitarian collective outside hierarchical structure, this for me for example is a tremendous tremendous news and so on and so on. Something unheard of. And when you mentioned God in pain, my reading—so now I'll finally answer your question—apocalypse the end of the world and so on, for me the key was always the Book of Job. Which I think, if you permit me to say this, it will sound a provocation but I mean it extremely seriously in an engaged way, is the first great work of critique of ideology. If I were to do, you know like the best of critique of ideology, forget about Marx, Freud, let's begin with the Book of Job. Why? Are you aware what a tremendous thing happens there? We know okay let's that's let's forget about that stuff, I think it doesn't matter, you know that comical part at the beginning how they have a nice evening lunch together God and devil and they debate that. But what happened then is that okay things go terribly wrong for Job. And then ideology enters. The three or four theological friends come, remember, and each of them tries to convince Job that there is a deeper meaning to his suffering. The point is not that he's guilty or not. The point is that you know the first one says: even if you think you did nothing wrong, God is just so you must have done something wrong without knowing it. The other guy says God is just testing you blah blah blah. And I think the greatness of Job is that he doesn't say I'm innocent, he just insists: no, all these catastrophes that fell on me have no meaning. And then comes the first occurs the first miracle. God comes, you remember, and says every word that you Job said is true. He totally dismisses any justification theological. And then comes the crucial point, where I follow my beloved Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Then nonetheless Job asks God: okay but let's—I put it in popular term—but let's cut the crap nonetheless, why did all this happen to me? Then for me, I wonder how you would react to it, I'm here on Chesterton's side, is the big enigma. That answer by God, you know, "where were you when I was creating this, that, monsters," is usually read as an extreme arrogance of God, emphasizing the infinite gap that separates us from God's total perspective, like: who are you a tiny piece of shit even knowing that. Chesterton does something which is for me so shockingly simple but profound. He turns around the perspective and his God's answer is for Chesterton that is the following one: you think you are in trouble, but look at the entire universe that I created, it's all one big mess, everything goes wrong and so on. That it's kind that in a refined way like God expresses his perplexity at his own creation. I think that this is maybe an incredible ethical revolution because this is already the first step out of this traditional pagan view where justice means you should be at your own place, do your particular duty and so on and so on. You know this withdrawal which then I think culminates in the death of Christ. What dies on the cross for me? Not a messenger of God. It's not that God is up there, he sends his son, okay sorry guys you screwed it up now maybe in thousand years another messiah. As Hegel says, what dies on the cross is God of beyond himself. It's precisely God as that transcendent power which somehow secretly pulls the strings. This is I think the secret of Christianity, that precisely God no longer can be conceived as, you know: we are in shit, we don't know what's going on, but we can be assured that there is nonetheless an old guy up there who secretly pulls the strings and so on and so on. This God abdicates. I think that something tremendous happens in Christianity because remember after the death of Christ we don't get back to the Father. What we get is Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the egalitarian community bound by love. You know what Christ says when he is asked how will we recognize if you are here? When there is love between the two of you, I am there. It's just the immanence of an emancipatory collective. This was the deepest insight of even good conservative theologians like Paul Claudel, definitely not a communist no? Said something very profound, he said the deepest lesson of Christianity is not: we can trust God, but: God can't do anything without us. God has to trust us. So for me again this is a tremendously important message of freedom. Again as my beloved Chesterton said, it's not—Chesterton said in all other religions you have atheists, people who don't believe in God. But Chesterton's reading of those famous "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? Father, why have you forsaken me?" is that only in Christianity—and for him this is crucial—God himself becomes for a moment an atheist. And this is so tremendously important for me. Are we I think far from this fashionable idea that the Christian era, you know all that Aquarius bullshit is over and we are entering a new era. Yes we are, but I don't like this new era, it's neo-paganism and so on. I claim that today precisely we should stick to this tremendous explosive impact we are still not ready to confront of what Christianity is truly telling us. Which is why I like to say paradoxically that to be an atheist—but don't be afraid, not in the Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens sense, but this authentic atheism in the sense of experiencing the radical absence of any transcendent guarantee—and in this sense for me Stalinist communists or some Darwinists are not atheists, you know they always have some higher figure of necessity and so on—you have to go through Christianity. My formula is: not just that I try to give some atheist reading of Christianity how God is really man, that's bullshit, but that only through the Christian experience can you reach the abyss of what I call atheism for me, which is something again much more radical than all the bullshit of Richard Dawkins and so on. My problem with them is that of course in some stupid sense it's true what they are saying, we are probably the result of evolution and so on and so on. But but it simply absolutely doesn't work as there is absolutely no insight for me in Dawkins and so on of how a religion effectively works. It's a whole dimension is missing there, they are even I claim mostly totally wrong about the status of belief. Belief is for me something very mysterious. Like: do we really believe? How do we believe? I claim that in contrast to those conservative critics who claim we are entering an era of disbelief, a godless world, hedonist and so on and so on, I disagree totally. First we don't live in an era of hedonism. We live in an era of strictly controlled regulated hedonism. You know like what do I mean by this? On my flight from Europe here I read in Hemispheres, the journal of United Airlines, one of the most depressing articles that I've read. It was an article celebrating sex, why sex is good. But it described it in these pragmatic terms, they say a good orgasm helps hard-working, blood circulation it's good, kissing fortifies your lips and so on, whatever good I don't know. It's an you know this is how: yes sex but healthy sex, yes drink but beer without alcohol, whatever whatever. The only true hedonists today are those who take drugs and especially for some strange reason those who smoke. And which is why, to avoid a misunderstanding, I don't smoke. And I agree we should screw the companies. But nonetheless there is something deeply symptomatic in how we in this obsession with the danger of smoking. Like I had a wonderful experience in Chicago half a year ago. In front of a hotel I was waiting for a friend to pick me up and there was a distinguished old black gentleman there smoking. And he told me, of course with a little bit of irony, but nonetheless there was a bitter truth in it. He told me that he is from the South and when he was very young he still remembers racism, I mean how he was oppressed as black, and then he said: but it's not as bad as now being oppressed for smoking, you know? Because just think about in Hollywood, who is smoking today? Mostly terrorists who are afraid to blow themselves up and so on and so on. This is the truth of our hedonism. As to believe, it's not true we believe more than ever, we just invented something absolutely breathtaking. That beliefs in order to function to operate don't have to be first person beliefs, you can literally believe through others. You know you know the formula of parents, like we are atheists but not to disappoint our children we pretend to believe, you know the Santa Claus story, you know. You ask a parent: do you believe in Santa Claus? They say are you stupid of course not, I buy the presents, but I pretend it for my children. Then you ask the children: do you believe? They say: no we pretend it not to disappoint our parents and to get the—like what's my point here? You have a belief which is nobody's belief. No one believes in the first person but it fully functions as a social belief. Here, and now I will stop, I will not go the full Fidel Castro way of talking for seven hours, here you did a mega contribution. By you I mean United States, especially you here, Hollywood. Your greatest contribution to 20th-century world culture I would claim is, sorry my old joke, canned laughter, you know. Are you aware what a strange phenomenon this is? You return in the evening home, you open up a stupid show like Friends, Cheers, and you are too tired to laugh, you just look. And the TV set laughs for you. It works, at least with me. Afterwards I feel relieved as if I was laughing. So much about primitive people. We claim, because we have traditional examples of this like you know the Buddhist prayer wheels. You write prayer, you put it there, you turn around the wheel and you can think about pornography whatever, in reality you are praying. We are the same. This is canned laughter. And I claim that beliefs function in a strictly homologous way. What we need is not a believe in first person. We need to believe that there is someone who believes. Even if that someone is purely hypothetical. So for me the truly Christian gesture—now I'm approaching the end—is precisely to to abandon this objectified belief. Like let me give you, now I conclude, an example of what I mean. And I hope you will agree that it would make the movie much better. Probably we all know Roberto Benigni’s film—I don't like it—La Vita Bella (Life is Beautiful). You know the story, father son are taken to Auschwitz, father in order to save the trauma the son, to protect him for the trauma, tells him a bullshit story that this is not really prison, it's just a big competition site where if you we can leave whenever we want but if you remain to the end there will be a big prize and so on and so on. You know what would have been a way—I wonder if you agree—to make it a much better desperate film? That the father were to discover at the very end when he is to be shot that the son knew this all the time. Just he pretended to believe his father to protect him. This would be the proper Christian reversal as it were. And the movie again, this is why I don't like it, it's not strong enough about it. Maybe it's time for me to stop. Please. That was very good for a warm up. In other words, but where is the beef? Will you have to deliver something when you will stop bullshitting? I got the message, okay. No you did actually get round to answering the question that I that I began with. But I'm I'm going to digress for for just a moment with a reminiscence. When I first moved to to California in I was attending a dinner party and a woman I didn't know—had never met before—came up to me toward the end of the party and she said: I trust you. You're a trustworthy person. And she went on to say that she and her husband had decided to to leave Southern California, they didn't like it that there were so many Mexicans here. And they were going to go to Tasmania and begin a new life in Tasmania. South of Australia, there, yeah. Right. But they weren't sure that that Tasmania would work out for them. So they wanted someone to to occupy their house, which was a beautiful house overlooking the Pacific, for a full year rent free. Would I be willing to do this? So I said I was willing to do this. And then I discovered how where they got their money. He was a laugh engineer. You mean for this canned laughter and so? Yes. He traveled all over the country with with very sophisticated recording equipment and he would record the laughter of of little girls on a picnic, he would record the laughter of men in a sex club, he would he would record polite laughter in church or at a graduation. Every age, he also had ethnic divisions you know, laughter in a in a black restaurant, you know everything everything was a little bit different. And he gave me some demonstrations, he had it all carefully worked out and then it would go from titters you know to to chuckles to guffaws to you know how it starts sometimes one person gives a little laugh and then it spreads and then he had he also had ways of having the laughter rise and then die down and then it start up again you know. It was a—it was very seriously engineered. And his office looked like an airplane cockpit you know, it was full of all those controls. Can you connect this—this would really intrigue me—to the two previous facts: that they disliked Mexicans and that they trusted you. Do you see a link here? I mean. I mean I would like, I mean this is my theoretical obsession, you know, I always like to make a system like how—Oh I have I mean I have been, my—I have been taken in the course of my lifetime for Russian, for Polish, for Armenian, once an Arab guy came up to me in Jerusalem and and said to me: I saw your friend I knew immediately he was an American, I saw you I knew right away you were an Armenian. But I've never been taken for Mexican. So that was at least one strike in my favor that I was not one of them. Otherwise I think it was—it was probably that touch of the clergyman that I still carry with me from my ten years as a Jesuit seminarian. Ah yeah yeah, although this is lucky for you because I found this—I don't celebrate this, it's very sad but you know after all these pedophilia scandals in Europe, no? Not all clergymen but Catholic priests are precisely the guys you shouldn't trust. That's the idea no? An Irish friend told me that Irish mothers are now telling: you know when you send your kid in the evening to the store, don't talk to foreigners especially if they are priests, you know. And I'm not making fun of this, I mean it's a very very sad event I think because here I'm a very traditional moralist. My God, we need maybe more than ever serious authentic moral authorities and I'm not here playing a Christopher Hitchens jumping with joy when church is losing its its authority and so on, no? I'm just saying that—I hope maybe we agree here—maybe if you allow me let's pretend to be democratic even if we are not that—I can also ask you a question: for me church is today at the big—not church, authentic religious feeling—at a big crossroads. On the one hand, yes it can be an incredible mobile of authentic liberation but I'm not here playing simply the humanist card of that we can use it as a prop. It's an absolutely authentic experience, subjective experience and so on. At the same time it can be as
really the top, there is some kind of a cosmic destiny, justice, to which even God has to be subordinated. Then the worst answer for me is because if God were just to pardon us without this spectacle of death on the cross, then we wouldn't be grateful to God. But wait a minute, God becomes here a disgusting narcissist who really wants to be loved and you know, it's like PR of God. Let's do a nice spectacle so that—and so the most obscene answer here for me is that of Nicolas Malebranche who says that God created humanity—he goes even further from this mirror image—he says God wanted to be admired. He even goes as far as to say that without Jesus Christ's sacrifice, we wouldn't all be lost, but we would all be redeemed automatically. Malebranche says directly: God threw us all into sin so that he could save some of us, to show gratitude. So we have here clearly what we call a perverse God. So you know what I mean? What I mean by this—I'm not just I hope losing our precious time—what I want to say is this is not an argument against Christianity but quite of the contrary. It makes my point, which I think at least at some level resonates if I may also use like you this terminology from our youth, hippie era, we have a positive vibrations here with what you said, that there is something that is a little bit impenetrable even today. Something tremendous happens in the very focus of Christian experience, which is then covered up with the usual dogma and so on and so on. Which is why I love, maybe you know the anecdote, historical one, when Napoleon was crowned emperor by the Pope. You know what happened, that's the legend. Pope approached him with the crown, Napoleon took the crown and put it himself on his head. And then, that's the story, Pope told Napoleon something wonderful. He told him: I know what you want to do, you want to ruin the church. Let me tell you, you will fail because we, Catholic institution, are trying to do this, to ruin Christianity for years, we didn't succeed, so you will not. So what I am saying is not to provoke Christians but to bring us to the central experience which I claim is today more precious than ever. I like to focus on these problematic points, like for example, another question which I used to embarrass my Catholic friends, which is I just asked them in all innocence, how exactly do you read—you can imagine me as an old-fashioned communist how I like that—those statements from the Gospel, you know, "I don't bring peace and love, I bring sword and fire, if you don't hate your parents," blah blah blah, "you are not my follower." How do you read this? Because then I notice that there is a whole system of detraumatizing this statement. You know like no, God doesn't—like one Catholic theologian told me, yeah you shouldn't read it too literally, it just means that God—you know they gave me a kind of a shitty Jedi version from Star Wars, this you know the Obi-Wan Kenobi stuff: don't get too attached to earthly objects, like you can love your neighbors but you should love me more, which is for me a ridiculous obscenity, as if God is a jealous guy who said: love your wife okay but remember I'm here I want to be loved a little bit more. The best answer was given to me by a Polish bishop who when I asked him this question, what do those lines mean, told me—it was very funny—told me: My God, I wasn't prepared for this question. Why did you? And I told him: like F, sorry to use the word again, F three points U, you had time years to prepare for this question! It's not that I brought something new now, it's in the Bible. But again, I am not saying this to provoke. I think this brings us to the challenge. And my very simple solution to this challenge is that when in the Bible it is said if you don't hate your father mother, it's not father mother as persons, it's father mother stands there for entire power edifice, social hierarchy. That's for me one of the big news of Christianity: an egalitarian community outside of social hierarchy is possible. That's for me the big news. In other, maybe I'm here too pro-Western, but nonetheless, in other so-called pagan religions, in order to achieve this point of let's call it absolute equality, it's only in death or in Nirvana where all structures dissolve. But this idea that you can have a collective—and this is for me what Holy Spirit is—an egalitarian collective outside hierarchical structure, this for me for example is a tremendous tremendous news and so on and so on. Something unheard of. And when you mentioned God in pain, my reading—so now I'll finally answer your question—apocalypse the end of the world and so on, for me the key was always the Book of Job. Which I think, if you permit me to say this, it will sound a provocation but I mean it extremely seriously in an engaged way, is the first great work of critique of ideology. If I were to do, you know like the best of critique of ideology, forget about Marx, Freud, let's begin with the Book of Job. Why? Are you aware what a tremendous thing happens there? We know okay let's that's let's forget about that stuff, I think it doesn't matter, you know that comical part at the beginning how they have a nice evening lunch together God and devil and they debate that. But what happened then is that okay things go terribly wrong for Job. And then ideology enters. The three or four theological friends come, remember, and each of them tries to convince Job that there is a deeper meaning to his suffering. The point is not that he's guilty or not. The point is that you know the first one says: even if you think you did nothing wrong, God is just so you must have done something wrong without knowing it. The other guy says God is just testing you blah blah blah. And I think the greatness of Job is that he doesn't say I'm innocent, he just insists: no, all these catastrophes that fell on me have no meaning. And then comes the first occurs the first miracle. God comes, you remember, and says every word that you Job said is true. He totally dismisses any justification theological. And then comes the crucial point, where I follow my beloved Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Then nonetheless Job asks God: okay but let's—I put it in popular term—but let's cut the crap nonetheless, why did all this happen to me? Then for me, I wonder how you would react to it, I'm here on Chesterton's side, is the big enigma. That answer by God, you know, "where were you when I was creating this, that, monsters," is usually read as an extreme arrogance of God, emphasizing the infinite gap that separates us from God's total perspective, like: who are you a tiny piece of shit even knowing that. Chesterton does something which is for me so shockingly simple but profound. He turns around the perspective and his God's answer is for Chesterton that is the following one: you think you are in trouble, but look at the entire universe that I created, it's all one big mess, everything goes wrong and so on. That it's kind that in a refined way like God expresses his perplexity at his own creation. I think that this is maybe an incredible ethical revolution because this is already the first step out of this traditional pagan view where justice means you should be at your own place, do your particular duty and so on and so on. You know this withdrawal which then I think culminates in the death of Christ. What dies on the cross for me? Not a messenger of God. It's not that God is up there, he sends his son, okay sorry guys you screwed it up now maybe in thousand years another messiah. As Hegel says, what dies on the cross is God of beyond himself. It's precisely God as that transcendent power which somehow secretly pulls the strings. This is I think the secret of Christianity, that precisely God no longer can be conceived as, you know: we are in shit, we don't know what's going on, but we can be assured that there is nonetheless an old guy up there who secretly pulls the strings and so on and so on. This God abdicates. I think that something tremendous happens in Christianity because remember after the death of Christ we don't get back to the Father. What we get is Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the egalitarian community bound by love. You know what Christ says when he is asked how will we recognize if you are here? When there is love between the two of you, I am there. It's just the immanence of an emancipatory collective. This was the deepest insight of even good conservative theologians like Paul Claudel, definitely not a communist no? Said something very profound, he said the deepest lesson of Christianity is not: we can trust God, but: God can't do anything without us. God has to trust us. So for me again this is a tremendously important message of freedom. Again as my beloved Chesterton said, it's not—Chesterton said in all other religions you have atheists, people who don't believe in God. But Chesterton's reading of those famous "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? Father, why have you forsaken me?" is that only in Christianity—and for him this is crucial—God himself becomes for a moment an atheist. And this is so tremendously important for me. Are we I think far from this fashionable idea that the Christian era, you know all that Aquarius bullshit is over and we are entering a new era. Yes we are, but I don't like this new era, it's neo-paganism and so on. I claim that today precisely we should stick to this tremendous explosive impact we are still not ready to confront of what Christianity is truly telling us. Which is why I like to say paradoxically that to be an atheist—but don't be afraid, not in the Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens sense, but this authentic atheism in the sense of experiencing the radical absence of any transcendent guarantee—and in this sense for me Stalinist communists or some Darwinists are not atheists, you know they always have some higher figure of necessity and so on—you have to go through Christianity. My formula is: not just that I try to give some atheist reading of Christianity how God is really man, that's bullshit, but that only through the Christian experience can you reach the abyss of what I call atheism for me, which is something again much more radical than all the bullshit of Richard Dawkins and so on. My problem with them is that of course in some stupid sense it's true what they are saying, we are probably the result of evolution and so on and so on. But but it simply absolutely doesn't work as there is absolutely no insight for me in Dawkins and so on of how a religion effectively works. It's a whole dimension is missing there, they are even I claim mostly totally wrong about the status of belief. Belief is for me something very mysterious. Like: do we really believe? How do we believe? I claim that in contrast to those conservative critics who claim we are entering an era of disbelief, a godless world, hedonist and so on and so on, I disagree totally. First we don't live in an era of hedonism. We live in an era of strictly controlled regulated hedonism. You know like what do I mean by this? On my flight from Europe here I read in Hemispheres, the journal of United Airlines, one of the most depressing articles that I've read. It was an article celebrating sex, why sex is good. But it described it in these pragmatic terms, they say a good orgasm helps hard-working, blood circulation it's good, kissing fortifies your lips and so on, whatever good I don't know. It's an you know this is how: yes sex but healthy sex, yes drink but beer without alcohol, whatever whatever. The only true hedonists today are those who take drugs and especially for some strange reason those who smoke. And which is why, to avoid a misunderstanding, I don't smoke. And I agree we should screw the companies. But nonetheless there is something deeply symptomatic in how we in this obsession with the danger of smoking. Like I had a wonderful experience in Chicago half a year ago. In front of a hotel I was waiting for a friend to pick me up and there was a distinguished old black gentleman there smoking. And he told me, of course with a little bit of irony, but nonetheless there was a bitter truth in it. He told me that he is from the South and when he was very young he still remembers racism, I mean how he was oppressed as black, and then he said: but it's not as bad as now being oppressed for smoking, you know? Because just think about in Hollywood, who is smoking today? Mostly terrorists who are afraid to blow themselves up and so on and so on. This is the truth of our hedonism. As to believe, it's not true we believe more than ever, we just invented something absolutely breathtaking. That beliefs in order to function to operate don't have to be first person beliefs, you can literally believe through others. You know you know the formula of parents, like we are atheists but not to disappoint our children we pretend to believe, you know the Santa Claus story, you know. You ask a parent: do you believe in Santa Claus? They say are you stupid of course not, I buy the presents, but I pretend it for my children. Then you ask the children: do you believe? They say: no we pretend it not to disappoint our parents and to get the—like what's my point here? You have a belief which is nobody's belief. No one believes in the first person but it fully functions as a social belief. Here, and now I will stop, I will not go the full Fidel Castro way of talking for seven hours, here you did a mega contribution. By you I mean United States, especially you here, Hollywood. Your greatest contribution to 20th-century world culture I would claim is, sorry my old joke, canned laughter, you know. Are you aware what a strange phenomenon this is? You return in the evening home, you open up a stupid show like Friends, Cheers, and you are too tired to laugh, you just look. And the TV set laughs for you. It works, at least with me. Afterwards I feel relieved as if I was laughing. So much about primitive people. We claim, because we have traditional examples of this like you know the Buddhist prayer wheels. You write prayer, you put it there, you turn around the wheel and you can think about pornography whatever, in reality you are praying. We are the same. This is canned laughter. And I claim that beliefs function in a strictly homologous way. What we need is not a believe in first person. We need to believe that there is someone who believes. Even if that someone is purely hypothetical. So for me the truly Christian gesture—now I'm approaching the end—is precisely to to abandon this objectified belief. Like let me give you, now I conclude, an example of what I mean. And I hope you will agree that it would make the movie much better. Probably we all know Roberto Benigni’s film—I don't like it—La Vita Bella (Life is Beautiful). You know the story, father son are taken to Auschwitz, father in order to save the trauma the son, to protect him for the trauma, tells him a bullshit story that this is not really prison, it's just a big competition site where if you we can leave whenever we want but if you remain to the end there will be a big prize and so on and so on. You know what would have been a way—I wonder if you agree—to make it a much better desperate film? That the father were to discover at the very end when he is to be shot that the son knew this all the time. Just he pretended to believe his father to protect him. This would be the proper Christian reversal as it were. And the movie again, this is why I don't like it, it's not strong enough about it. Maybe it's time for me to stop. Please. That was very good for a warm up. In other words, but where is the beef? Will you have to deliver something when you will stop bullshitting? I got the message, okay. No you did actually get round to answering the question that I that I began with. But I'm I'm going to digress for for just a moment with a reminiscence. When I first moved to to California in I was attending a dinner party and a woman I didn't know—had never met before—came up to me toward the end of the party and she said: I trust you. You're a trustworthy person. And she went on to say that she and her husband had decided to to leave Southern California, they didn't like it that there were so many Mexicans here. And they were going to go to Tasmania and begin a new life in Tasmania. South of Australia, there, yeah. Right. But they weren't sure that that Tasmania would work out for them. So they wanted someone to to occupy their house, which was a beautiful house overlooking the Pacific, for a full year rent free. Would I be willing to do this? So I said I was willing to do this. And then I discovered how where they got their money. He was a laugh engineer. You mean for this canned laughter and so? Yes. He traveled all over the country with with very sophisticated recording equipment and he would record the laughter of of little girls on a picnic, he would record the laughter of men in a sex club, he would he would record polite laughter in church or at a graduation. Every age, he also had ethnic divisions you know, laughter in a in a black restaurant, you know everything everything was a little bit different. And he gave me some demonstrations, he had it all carefully worked out and then it would go from titters you know to to chuckles to guffaws to you know how it starts sometimes one person gives a little laugh and then it spreads and then he had he also had ways of having the laughter rise and then die down and then it start up again you know. It was a—it was very seriously engineered. And his office looked like an airplane cockpit you know, it was full of all those controls. Can you connect this—this would really intrigue me—to the two previous facts: that they disliked Mexicans and that they trusted you. Do you see a link here? I mean. I mean I would like, I mean this is my theoretical obsession, you know, I always like to make a system like how—Oh I have I mean I have been, my—I have been taken in the course of my lifetime for Russian, for Polish, for Armenian, once an Arab guy came up to me in Jerusalem and and said to me: I saw your friend I knew immediately he was an American, I saw you I knew right away you were an Armenian. But I've never been taken for Mexican. So that was at least one strike in my favor that I was not one of them. Otherwise I think it was—it was probably that touch of the clergyman that I still carry with me from my ten years as a Jesuit seminarian. Ah yeah yeah, although this is lucky for you because I found this—I don't celebrate this, it's very sad but you know after all these pedophilia scandals in Europe, no? Not all clergymen but Catholic priests are precisely the guys you shouldn't trust. That's the idea no? An Irish friend told me that Irish mothers are now telling: you know when you send your kid in the evening to the store, don't talk to foreigners especially if they are priests, you know. And I'm not making fun of this, I mean it's a very very sad event I think because here I'm a very traditional moralist. My God, we need maybe more than ever serious authentic moral authorities and I'm not here playing a Christopher Hitchens jumping with joy when church is losing its its authority and so on, no? I'm just saying that—I hope maybe we agree here—maybe if you allow me let's pretend to be democratic even if we are not that—I can also ask you a question: for me church is today at the big—not church, authentic religious feeling—at a big crossroads. On the one hand, yes it can be an incredible mobile of authentic liberation but I'm not here playing simply the humanist card of that we can use it as a prop. It's an absolutely authentic experience, subjective experience and so on. At the same time it can be as
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we can see terribly misused. I violently agree with again this Richard Dawkins brand but you know one of the partisans of this aggressive atheism, I think it was Steven Weinberg, said something which unfortunately it makes me sad has just an element no more of truth you know when he said that without religion good people would be doing good things, bad people bad things. But you need something like religion to make good people do bad things. Unfortunately there is an element of truth in it. In what sense? Listen I will be very simplistic here: we all are I hope so just
we can see terribly misused. I violently agree with again this Richard Dawkins brand but you know one of the partisans of this aggressive atheism, I think it was Steven Weinberg, said something which unfortunately it makes me sad has just an element no more of truth you know when he said that without religion good people would be doing good things, bad people bad things. But you need something like religion to make good people do bad things. Unfortunately there is an element of truth in it. In what sense? Listen I will be very simplistic here: we all are I hope so just
Slavoj Žižek
at least most of us relatively
at least most of us relatively
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decent people. Like sorry to be personal if somebody were to tell me now: here you have a knife pick out this guy's eyes and out, I would find—sorry to tell you—some problems with it no. I'm relieved. Yes so we do need some strong mytho-poetic structure, religion, nationalist myth, as it were to serve as a screen and to convince us that the horrors we are doing can be transubstantiated into a higher deeper meaning whatever. Which is why I think it's enough for philosophy to be blamed, you know we philosophers are blamed for everything, Plato the first totalitarian whatever, why not start also with poetry. It's not an accident that the leader of Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadžić, was a poet. I claim to give you to provoke you the formula: no ethnic cleansing without poetry. Or something like poetry. No no no I love authentic poets. What I'm saying is that you must be as it were desensitized in some sense to be able to do horrors like rapes, ethnic cleansing and so on. And I claim that it's it's precisely this kind of ethnic founding mythic community founding poetry or sacred texts, religions, which can also do the job. And for example it's not only we in the primitive Balkans, you remember some it was over ten years ago Rwanda massacre. I asked friends: yes there is now there a great poet who for years was laying the foundations for the slaughter that happened and so on. So this is for me the mega mega dilemma today. I mean how to how to find the way here
decent people. Like sorry to be personal if somebody were to tell me now: here you have a knife pick out this guy's eyes and out, I would find—sorry to tell you—some problems with it no. I'm relieved. Yes so we do need some strong mytho-poetic structure, religion, nationalist myth, as it were to serve as a screen and to convince us that the horrors we are doing can be transubstantiated into a higher deeper meaning whatever. Which is why I think it's enough for philosophy to be blamed, you know we philosophers are blamed for everything, Plato the first totalitarian whatever, why not start also with poetry. It's not an accident that the leader of Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadžić, was a poet. I claim to give you to provoke you the formula: no ethnic cleansing without poetry. Or something like poetry. No no no I love authentic poets. What I'm saying is that you must be as it were desensitized in some sense to be able to do horrors like rapes, ethnic cleansing and so on. And I claim that it's it's precisely this kind of ethnic founding mythic community founding poetry or sacred texts, religions, which can also do the job. And for example it's not only we in the primitive Balkans, you remember some it was over ten years ago Rwanda massacre. I asked friends: yes there is now there a great poet who for years was laying the foundations for the slaughter that happened and so on. So this is for me the mega mega dilemma today. I mean how to how to find the way here
Slavoj Žižek
because you know like for me the message of Christianity is precisely the opposite of this need for transcendence. You know like what's the usual explanation of fundamentalisms today? That people are afraid of freedom they they this opening so
because you know like for me the message of Christianity is precisely the opposite of this need for transcendence. You know like what's the usual explanation of fundamentalisms today? That people are afraid of freedom they they this opening so
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they lack firm values so they take refuge in old structures. No as I've written as I'm writing for years, I think this is only part of the truth. There is also the opposite truth which is which was I was taught it when I visited Belgrade incognito in early 90s and met some people who were probably ethnic cleansers. And you know they gave me almost the lesson of a lifetime. They told me, you know, for me they told me: modern world is not world with too much a world with too much freedom, but it's too oppressive. Like you have
they lack firm values so they take refuge in old structures. No as I've written as I'm writing for years, I think this is only part of the truth. There is also the opposite truth which is which was I was taught it when I visited Belgrade incognito in early 90s and met some people who were probably ethnic cleansers. And you know they gave me almost the lesson of a lifetime. They told me, you know, for me they told me: modern world is not world with too much a world with too much freedom, but it's too oppressive. Like you have
Slavoj Žižek
to follow rules all the way down. You know like he told me frankly: I cannot speak dirty it's politically incorrect, I cannot even beat my wife and so on and so on. They experienced modern reality as too regulated and for them becoming ethnic fundamentalist opened up a space for a kind of a false non-authentic freedom. Sorry, yes, so like you know I'm doing work on behalf of my nation everything is permitted. Okay let's rape let's kill whatever you want. Which is why I think Jacques Lacan, my psychoanalytic master figure, was right when he turned around the Dostoyevsky's famous: if there is no God then everything is permitted. No, if there is God—but in a non-authentic fundamentalist way where you pretend to be an instrument of God—then everything is permitted to you. So again things are here much more complex. Arthur Koestler said that the altruism of the individual was the egoism of the group and *Vox Populi, Vox Dei*, if God is substituted by by the people, then you can do anything in the name of the people. And that that ethnicity that you just related can operate even where you have a multi-ethnic state. You can you can do things in the name of democracy that you would never permit yourself as a decent individual. That's what you were talking about. Yeah but also what I find interesting here is nonetheless that with people it gets a little bit more complex but I agree with you, namely in what sense? You know people are never just people. One should always take a closer look as who pretends to speak for the people. There lies the catch. You know in authentic—No but the individuals you also have have the fact that those who who claim to speak for the people, if they are poets, if they have that eloquence, then they can mobilize that capacity that we do have as human beings and it's a marvelous capacity, but *corruptio optimi pessima*, you know, the the it is the worst of our capacities when when misused. And that is our capacity to give, our capacity to immolate, to be self-sacrificial. Yeah. To go to transcend our our narrow our personal needs. This is this is human greatness at its best, but at its worst it it makes the individual a tool of of the worst demagogues. Even a self self-exploiting tool because for example this is what always—At first yes I deeply agree with you, which is why I even agree here—it's a little bit too simple but it has an element of truth—the famous distinction by Jean-Jacques Rousseau between the proper good egotism and a perverted self-love. He says that authentic egotism is in itself not bad because you care really for your own good but then you rationally discover that you can only be happy when others also have. He locates the problem into what later was called resentment, envy. This fatal moment when you focus on what you perceive as the obstacle to your welfare so that destroying the obstacle means to you more than your own good. You know like we in Slovenia, my nation, we are supposed to be, and I tend to agree, the nation of resentment. Which is why we have numerous stories like for example a fairy or an magician appears to a farmer and says: listen, I will give you a cow but I warn you I will give two cows to your neighbor. Slovenian farmer says: no rather take a cow of mine, kill her, eat but take also then two from the neighbor and so on and so on. You know like the other guy loses is more important than you—That's just like one of the parables of Jesus, of the workers in the vineyard. Yeah he he he promises a worker given amount in the morning, worker agrees to that, he should be happy it's a good wage. But then the day is one half gone and he hires a couple other workers and he gives them the same wage. And then the end the day is almost over and he hires yet further workers and he gives them the same wage and the first worker is furious. I've worked all day and this is all you're giving me! But that's the wage he agreed to. So it wasn't that his wage was inadequate, it's only that he he resented the fact that someone else was doing better than him. This is a wonderful point because can I ask you another question? You know much more about the Bible. This is what I really admire in Gospels at the level of the texture of the text, style. My general experience is that you know there is a difficult point theological and then Christ says: okay I will tell you a parable, a story. But that story instead of clarifying things just messes things up even more. It's as if Christ is playing there a wonderful provocative game you know, you know that. You don't his parables precisely are not simple explanations. That's right. And this I cannot but fully admire. You know they are so problematic like the one parable that some people read it as simply some Baptist in the American South I think love it as some kind of a promoting capitalist spirit. Isn't it that like a king goes somewhere and gives to his servants amount of money and then the two who invested and multiplied it gets—Yes right—are praised and the the one who who just buried it for safekeeping and brings it back out when he comes home is is blamed. Yeah I prefer personally the reading provided by some minority which claims that we shouldn't accept that the master who does this is a good guy. They point out that the master goes away to grab some power so that the idea is that although it appears
to follow rules all the way down. You know like he told me frankly: I cannot speak dirty it's politically incorrect, I cannot even beat my wife and so on and so on. They experienced modern reality as too regulated and for them becoming ethnic fundamentalist opened up a space for a kind of a false non-authentic freedom. Sorry, yes, so like you know I'm doing work on behalf of my nation everything is permitted. Okay let's rape let's kill whatever you want. Which is why I think Jacques Lacan, my psychoanalytic master figure, was right when he turned around the Dostoyevsky's famous: if there is no God then everything is permitted. No, if there is God—but in a non-authentic fundamentalist way where you pretend to be an instrument of God—then everything is permitted to you. So again things are here much more complex. Arthur Koestler said that the altruism of the individual was the egoism of the group and *Vox Populi, Vox Dei*, if God is substituted by by the people, then you can do anything in the name of the people. And that that ethnicity that you just related can operate even where you have a multi-ethnic state. You can you can do things in the name of democracy that you would never permit yourself as a decent individual. That's what you were talking about. Yeah but also what I find interesting here is nonetheless that with people it gets a little bit more complex but I agree with you, namely in what sense? You know people are never just people. One should always take a closer look as who pretends to speak for the people. There lies the catch. You know in authentic—No but the individuals you also have have the fact that those who who claim to speak for the people, if they are poets, if they have that eloquence, then they can mobilize that capacity that we do have as human beings and it's a marvelous capacity, but *corruptio optimi pessima*, you know, the the it is the worst of our capacities when when misused. And that is our capacity to give, our capacity to immolate, to be self-sacrificial. Yeah. To go to transcend our our narrow our personal needs. This is this is human greatness at its best, but at its worst it it makes the individual a tool of of the worst demagogues. Even a self self-exploiting tool because for example this is what always—At first yes I deeply agree with you, which is why I even agree here—it's a little bit too simple but it has an element of truth—the famous distinction by Jean-Jacques Rousseau between the proper good egotism and a perverted self-love. He says that authentic egotism is in itself not bad because you care really for your own good but then you rationally discover that you can only be happy when others also have. He locates the problem into what later was called resentment, envy. This fatal moment when you focus on what you perceive as the obstacle to your welfare so that destroying the obstacle means to you more than your own good. You know like we in Slovenia, my nation, we are supposed to be, and I tend to agree, the nation of resentment. Which is why we have numerous stories like for example a fairy or an magician appears to a farmer and says: listen, I will give you a cow but I warn you I will give two cows to your neighbor. Slovenian farmer says: no rather take a cow of mine, kill her, eat but take also then two from the neighbor and so on and so on. You know like the other guy loses is more important than you—That's just like one of the parables of Jesus, of the workers in the vineyard. Yeah he he he promises a worker given amount in the morning, worker agrees to that, he should be happy it's a good wage. But then the day is one half gone and he hires a couple other workers and he gives them the same wage. And then the end the day is almost over and he hires yet further workers and he gives them the same wage and the first worker is furious. I've worked all day and this is all you're giving me! But that's the wage he agreed to. So it wasn't that his wage was inadequate, it's only that he he resented the fact that someone else was doing better than him. This is a wonderful point because can I ask you another question? You know much more about the Bible. This is what I really admire in Gospels at the level of the texture of the text, style. My general experience is that you know there is a difficult point theological and then Christ says: okay I will tell you a parable, a story. But that story instead of clarifying things just messes things up even more. It's as if Christ is playing there a wonderful provocative game you know, you know that. You don't his parables precisely are not simple explanations. That's right. And this I cannot but fully admire. You know they are so problematic like the one parable that some people read it as simply some Baptist in the American South I think love it as some kind of a promoting capitalist spirit. Isn't it that like a king goes somewhere and gives to his servants amount of money and then the two who invested and multiplied it gets—Yes right—are praised and the the one who who just buried it for safekeeping and brings it back out when he comes home is is blamed. Yeah I prefer personally the reading provided by some minority which claims that we shouldn't accept that the master who does this is a good guy. They point out that the master goes away to grab some power so that the idea is that although it appears
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to celebrate the two the two guys who did invest and so on, that you should read this story in a much more refined way that the truly modest guy is the good one. You know I think in many many of the parables the the mechanism is that rather than disagree with the challenger, Jesus hyper-agrees which is which is just what you often do. Yeah yeah okay I'm not comparing them with the guy you mentioned but yeah I see your point. But you you will reply to a challenger by saying you're right and you have no idea how very right you are! And then
to celebrate the two the two guys who did invest and so on, that you should read this story in a much more refined way that the truly modest guy is the good one. You know I think in many many of the parables the the mechanism is that rather than disagree with the challenger, Jesus hyper-agrees which is which is just what you often do. Yeah yeah okay I'm not comparing them with the guy you mentioned but yeah I see your point. But you you will reply to a challenger by saying you're right and you have no idea how very right you are! And then
Slavoj Žižek
you then you go on to you know to deliver a version of of the position which is a paradox. Let me tell you now something which may surprise you. I deeply agree with it, I even developed it with the category of over-identification. My idea is that every ideology to be operative shouldn't go to the end, it has to leave its true implications a little bit in shadow. So often a much more
you then you go on to you know to deliver a version of of the position which is a paradox. Let me tell you now something which may surprise you. I deeply agree with it, I even developed it with the category of over-identification. My idea is that every ideology to be operative shouldn't go to the end, it has to leave its true implications a little bit in shadow. So often a much more
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effective way to undermine an ideology is to over-agree with it. And I can give you here the series of wonderful historical examples. For example this is why I admire Pascal, Jansenists and so on. They were too much theological. This is at least the reading of that classical Marxist who is deeply sympathetic to Pascal, Lucien Goldmann (*Le Dieu caché*, Hidden God), how they simply opened up showed the the implicit cards of the ruling ideology too much. Then I think the same goes
effective way to undermine an ideology is to over-agree with it. And I can give you here the series of wonderful historical examples. For example this is why I admire Pascal, Jansenists and so on. They were too much theological. This is at least the reading of that classical Marxist who is deeply sympathetic to Pascal, Lucien Goldmann (*Le Dieu caché*, Hidden God), how they simply opened up showed the the implicit cards of the ruling ideology too much. Then I think the same goes
Slavoj Žižek
for one of my big writers Heinrich von Kleist for German militarism. Even up to a point Brecht for communism. And especially now this will shock you: Ayn Rand. She is so crazy in her pro-capitalism that she is already for the majority an embarrassment. So how are you going to to agree and over-agree with Ayn Rand? Sorry? How are you going to agree and over-agree with Ayn Rand? Because she says things which are so crazy that that at a certain level in a twisted way she almost—she refutes herself? Sorry she refutes herself? Not so much refuted she has an an authentic point. For example you know recently no I cannot read with all my admiration for her *Atlas Shrugged* is too much you know like because you know the last hundred pages that speech of John Galt to the people, my God listen I know this from communism, it's even worse than it's basically a party apparatchik big speech. Yes right. But there is one moment there which is deeply true. When John Galt criticizes the girl whom he seduces at the end Dagny whatever and he says: you are the enemy not the no-doers because you worry too much, you try to save the system by saying okay railways don't work I will do it I will try to make it function and so on and so on. Don't do this! Step back, allow don't worry other people's worries. And I think this is a pretty deep lesson even political lesson. Then another point where I agree with her, it's even a strictly Marxist point. This is a serious problem you know when you have at the end of *Atlas Shrugged* this celebration of money. Yeah but in a way she is right,
for one of my big writers Heinrich von Kleist for German militarism. Even up to a point Brecht for communism. And especially now this will shock you: Ayn Rand. She is so crazy in her pro-capitalism that she is already for the majority an embarrassment. So how are you going to to agree and over-agree with Ayn Rand? Sorry? How are you going to agree and over-agree with Ayn Rand? Because she says things which are so crazy that that at a certain level in a twisted way she almost—she refutes herself? Sorry she refutes herself? Not so much refuted she has an an authentic point. For example you know recently no I cannot read with all my admiration for her *Atlas Shrugged* is too much you know like because you know the last hundred pages that speech of John Galt to the people, my God listen I know this from communism, it's even worse than it's basically a party apparatchik big speech. Yes right. But there is one moment there which is deeply true. When John Galt criticizes the girl whom he seduces at the end Dagny whatever and he says: you are the enemy not the no-doers because you worry too much, you try to save the system by saying okay railways don't work I will do it I will try to make it function and so on and so on. Don't do this! Step back, allow don't worry other people's worries. And I think this is a pretty deep lesson even political lesson. Then another point where I agree with her, it's even a strictly Marxist point. This is a serious problem you know when you have at the end of *Atlas Shrugged* this celebration of money. Yeah but in a way she is right,
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this was the problem of the 20th century. Namely as it was clear to Marx, even if it's only a formal freedom and you have to sell yourself blah blah, nonetheless money economy at least gives this formal freedom. I sell you something, we both have to be in some sense formally free to agree. And her point is: if you want to step in economy out of money, the big problem is how not to fall back into direct relations of domination and servitude. Isn't one big lesson of communism, it wanted 20th-century Stalinist communism,
this was the problem of the 20th century. Namely as it was clear to Marx, even if it's only a formal freedom and you have to sell yourself blah blah, nonetheless money economy at least gives this formal freedom. I sell you something, we both have to be in some sense formally free to agree. And her point is: if you want to step in economy out of money, the big problem is how not to fall back into direct relations of domination and servitude. Isn't one big lesson of communism, it wanted 20th-century Stalinist communism,
Slavoj Žižek
it wanted to overcome the money market economy, the price was direct brutal relations of domination and so on and so on. No there are authentic moments in her, I don't have any problem admitting it. You know you're talking about that scene and and about saving an ideology by departing from the ideology or deserting it or mitigating its effects or something of that sort. Prompts me to turn to a a paragraph in your book, I'm going to read it. I hope it's me not the other guy so that I will—it is your part this because I covered—it is your part. No no no I was just looking for the way out if you. "There is a Jewish story about a Talmud specialist opposed to the death penalty who, embarrassed by the fact that the penalty is ordained by God himself, proposed a wonderfully practical solution. One should not directly overturn the divine
it wanted to overcome the money market economy, the price was direct brutal relations of domination and so on and so on. No there are authentic moments in her, I don't have any problem admitting it. You know you're talking about that scene and and about saving an ideology by departing from the ideology or deserting it or mitigating its effects or something of that sort. Prompts me to turn to a a paragraph in your book, I'm going to read it. I hope it's me not the other guy so that I will—it is your part this because I covered—it is your part. No no no I was just looking for the way out if you. "There is a Jewish story about a Talmud specialist opposed to the death penalty who, embarrassed by the fact that the penalty is ordained by God himself, proposed a wonderfully practical solution. One should not directly overturn the divine
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injunction, which would be blasphemous, but one should treat it as God's slip of tongue, his moment of madness, and invent a complex network of sub-regulations and
injunction, which would be blasphemous, but one should treat it as God's slip of tongue, his moment of madness, and invent a complex network of sub-regulations and
Slavoj Žižek
conditions which, while leaving the possibility of the death penalty intact, would ensure that this possibility would never be realized." Yes that's my Hegelianism in practice, yes. No, don't say no death penalty because then you get caught into universality an exception, you know, no death penalty but when we have a really mean guy let's shoot him. I prefer much more the: aye yes of course I'm for death penalty, just my God here it doesn't work, there it doesn't work, and
conditions which, while leaving the possibility of the death penalty intact, would ensure that this possibility would never be realized." Yes that's my Hegelianism in practice, yes. No, don't say no death penalty because then you get caught into universality an exception, you know, no death penalty but when we have a really mean guy let's shoot him. I prefer much more the: aye yes of course I'm for death penalty, just my God here it doesn't work, there it doesn't work, and
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you should use all your work to prove that in general I'm for it but in reality we never arrive at that at that moment. And
you should use all your work to prove that in general I'm for it but in reality we never arrive at that at that moment. And
Slavoj Žižek
I think that even I think maybe in
I think that even I think maybe in
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this book or in my other, the big fat one *Less Than Nothing*, which is my life work if I can use this bombastic term, I
this book or in my other, the big fat one *Less Than Nothing*, which is my life work if I can use this bombastic term, I
Slavoj Žižek
mention another story which is my absolute favorite one and I learned from my Jewish friends that there are even two versions of it. This is for me Judaism at its best. It's such a crazy story that first I thought it's a practical joke, you know that people invented this to seduce me because they knew I would like it. You know there are two versions in Talmud of a this anecdote of two rabbis debating and the one who is losing said, referring to *Annie Hall*, you know the beginning where Marshall McLuhan comes no? Let's call God himself! And and and the God comes no. But before he can start arguing, I'm now rephrasing it in a little bit of problematic way but I think if you cut the bullshit this is what happens. The other priest who was winning the argument shouts at God: listen old guy, you did your job, creation, you didn't do it too well, your job is done, fuck off and leave us serious people here to debate the consequences now. And the beauty is that God then says: oh my God my pupils have beaten me and runs away. My children have defeated me. Yeah yeah. It's a wonderful story I think and this is something absolutely unique for me. From here
mention another story which is my absolute favorite one and I learned from my Jewish friends that there are even two versions of it. This is for me Judaism at its best. It's such a crazy story that first I thought it's a practical joke, you know that people invented this to seduce me because they knew I would like it. You know there are two versions in Talmud of a this anecdote of two rabbis debating and the one who is losing said, referring to *Annie Hall*, you know the beginning where Marshall McLuhan comes no? Let's call God himself! And and and the God comes no. But before he can start arguing, I'm now rephrasing it in a little bit of problematic way but I think if you cut the bullshit this is what happens. The other priest who was winning the argument shouts at God: listen old guy, you did your job, creation, you didn't do it too well, your job is done, fuck off and leave us serious people here to debate the consequences now. And the beauty is that God then says: oh my God my pupils have beaten me and runs away. My children have defeated me. Yeah yeah. It's a wonderful story I think and this is something absolutely unique for me. From here
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then in Christianity you go even a step further and so on and so
then in Christianity you go even a step further and so on and so
Slavoj Žižek
on. You know what's the problem here please? Allow me just to tell this to avoid a misunderstanding. I'm sorry if I give you the impression that I'm now just competing with telling jokes or whatever. This story has a tremendous existential impact, you know. It's easy to treat it as a funny story but it's very harsh to really take it as an existential truth. Well it's like you know you I began by asking that question about God wanting to see himself because as you as you then proceed to speak of the of the crucifixion, you say that it is at that moment when Jesus cries "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" that God has the experience of being someone who struggles to believe in God. Uh and at that point he sees himself and from that point on he can no longer be God in the way he used to be. So a change has taken place in him, uh a transforming change. This Jewish story has a comparable function in in that up until that point, God was he who whose word would finally settle any dispute between two Jews. past that point, God is no longer such a God. They are going to have to settle it among themselves. So the the same the same passage is negotiated in each of these religions in a different but functionally uh a parallel way. I think we've we've reached the point where we can start taking some questions and comments from the audience. So that now we have five minutes for democracy, we pretend that we are yeah. I've saved actually a little more. Sorry? Oh my God, don't give the people too much! Twenty minutes of democracy, they will take it to—please, I'm sorry, please. One right here in the black shirt. Oh we've got the microphone over there. Okay we'll follow the microphone. Ah you see you made a mistake! I told you in advance I want to live in a Truman world where all the questions are organized in advance you know and now you made a short mistake and you didn't follow the scenario, you should have
on. You know what's the problem here please? Allow me just to tell this to avoid a misunderstanding. I'm sorry if I give you the impression that I'm now just competing with telling jokes or whatever. This story has a tremendous existential impact, you know. It's easy to treat it as a funny story but it's very harsh to really take it as an existential truth. Well it's like you know you I began by asking that question about God wanting to see himself because as you as you then proceed to speak of the of the crucifixion, you say that it is at that moment when Jesus cries "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" that God has the experience of being someone who struggles to believe in God. Uh and at that point he sees himself and from that point on he can no longer be God in the way he used to be. So a change has taken place in him, uh a transforming change. This Jewish story has a comparable function in in that up until that point, God was he who whose word would finally settle any dispute between two Jews. past that point, God is no longer such a God. They are going to have to settle it among themselves. So the the same the same passage is negotiated in each of these religions in a different but functionally uh a parallel way. I think we've we've reached the point where we can start taking some questions and comments from the audience. So that now we have five minutes for democracy, we pretend that we are yeah. I've saved actually a little more. Sorry? Oh my God, don't give the people too much! Twenty minutes of democracy, they will take it to—please, I'm sorry, please. One right here in the black shirt. Oh we've got the microphone over there. Okay we'll follow the microphone. Ah you see you made a mistake! I told you in advance I want to live in a Truman world where all the questions are organized in advance you know and now you made a short mistake and you didn't follow the scenario, you should have
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began there. Please I'm sorry. Luis Buñuel said "Thank God I'm an atheist" and he probably asked this question to Marshall McLuhan: Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Marshall said "I'm an apocalypt," sort of like what you're saying, "we're fucked." So McLuhan converted to
began there. Please I'm sorry. Luis Buñuel said "Thank God I'm an atheist" and he probably asked this question to Marshall McLuhan: Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Marshall said "I'm an apocalypt," sort of like what you're saying, "we're fucked." So McLuhan converted to
Slavoj Žižek
Catholic—Catholicism as a performance art piece and broke the *Finnegans Wake* code. How and why did McLuhan merge technological
Catholic—Catholicism as a performance art piece and broke the *Finnegans Wake* code. How and why did McLuhan merge technological
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determinism with
determinism with
Slavoj Žižek
Menippean satire to come up with
Menippean satire to come up with
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this same attitude you have: "we're fucked"? Is it me or him? You. Aye you want to stay—this is not love of a neighbor, you were brutal egotist now, this is not love for a neighbor. No seriously. First, I don't want to bluff too much. I must admit it that I never, okay
this same attitude you have: "we're fucked"? Is it me or him? You. Aye you want to stay—this is not love of a neighbor, you were brutal egotist now, this is not love for a neighbor. No seriously. First, I don't want to bluff too much. I must admit it that I never, okay
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when I was young he was reading McLuhan, but I don't relate too deeply to him. I even have unfortunately some problems with when you mentioned *Finnegans Wake*, Joyce. I think he was, I think in United States here conservatives like to say this about radical intellectuals, that
when I was young he was reading McLuhan, but I don't relate too deeply to him. I even have unfortunately some problems with when you mentioned *Finnegans Wake*, Joyce. I think he was, I think in United States here conservatives like to say this about radical intellectuals, that
Slavoj Žižek
Joyce often wants to be too bright for his own good you know like. My hero is Beckett. Beckett who you know what this mega you know like he wants too much *Finnegans Wake*, all languages everything, and it's I suspect this disgusting narcissism you know like you know what he said: I wrote this to give literary scientists years of work and so on. I love Beckett's this radical move into minimalist asceticism and so on. So but on the other hand, yes, for me my answer to this is that I am optimist for the very same reason that I am a pessimist. Let's not forget, you must know this much better than me, that apocalypse originally doesn't mean the end of the world, it's just confronting the truth when things appear what they are. It means an unveiling, a revelation. Unveiling, yeah. So I so what I am saying to give you a very brief formula is that today not just in the standard very restrained pseudo-Marxist way of economic crisis limits of capitalism, we are approaching such a point. The old world in which we lived, not only at in economy, but even at ethical topic—it's nice that you mentioned this technological McLuhan determinism—because for me I'm
Joyce often wants to be too bright for his own good you know like. My hero is Beckett. Beckett who you know what this mega you know like he wants too much *Finnegans Wake*, all languages everything, and it's I suspect this disgusting narcissism you know like you know what he said: I wrote this to give literary scientists years of work and so on. I love Beckett's this radical move into minimalist asceticism and so on. So but on the other hand, yes, for me my answer to this is that I am optimist for the very same reason that I am a pessimist. Let's not forget, you must know this much better than me, that apocalypse originally doesn't mean the end of the world, it's just confronting the truth when things appear what they are. It means an unveiling, a revelation. Unveiling, yeah. So I so what I am saying to give you a very brief formula is that today not just in the standard very restrained pseudo-Marxist way of economic crisis limits of capitalism, we are approaching such a point. The old world in which we lived, not only at in economy, but even at ethical topic—it's nice that you mentioned this technological McLuhan determinism—because for me I'm
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fascinated by are we
fascinated by are we
Slavoj Žižek
aware what is happening today? For example I'm fascinated by this ideas which are already becoming more and more reality of the possibility of directly linking our brain to a computer which then can perform movement so that we acquire an almost divine ability of directly moving objects with our thought. You know at an elementary level this is already done. Like I read it was reported it's ridiculous, this was done in your American way: a totally crippled guy, he was training his brain and then his girlfriend come and he was able to touch her with his metallic hand moving moving it just. But what I'm saying is that are we aware of the consequences of this? It's really as Virginia Woolf said at some point human nature changed, no? Like are we aware that the very basis of our sense of personality and freedom is this minimal distinction: I am here, reality is out there. And okay it may sound great, oh my God with my mind I can move objects, we don't even need the proverbial Stephen
aware what is happening today? For example I'm fascinated by this ideas which are already becoming more and more reality of the possibility of directly linking our brain to a computer which then can perform movement so that we acquire an almost divine ability of directly moving objects with our thought. You know at an elementary level this is already done. Like I read it was reported it's ridiculous, this was done in your American way: a totally crippled guy, he was training his brain and then his girlfriend come and he was able to touch her with his metallic hand moving moving it just. But what I'm saying is that are we aware of the consequences of this? It's really as Virginia Woolf said at some point human nature changed, no? Like are we aware that the very basis of our sense of personality and freedom is this minimal distinction: I am here, reality is out there. And okay it may sound great, oh my God with my mind I can move objects, we don't even need the proverbial Stephen
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Hawking's finger. No it's direct. But you know what goes out goes in. That is to say it's not only out they can control—and what will this do to to human freedom and so on? And I claim old answers no longer function here. Like for me, I wonder if you would share this with me, this was the great disappointment in practically European official state philosopher Jürgen Habermas of Frankfurt School. No wonder that a couple of years ago he co-published a book with Ratzinger, with the present Pope. Because he, Habermas, who likes to present himself as the great figure of Enlightenment bringing modernity project of enlightenment to the end, his reaction to all these prospects of biogenetically manipulating our brain blah blah is basically the
Hawking's finger. No it's direct. But you know what goes out goes in. That is to say it's not only out they can control—and what will this do to to human freedom and so on? And I claim old answers no longer function here. Like for me, I wonder if you would share this with me, this was the great disappointment in practically European official state philosopher Jürgen Habermas of Frankfurt School. No wonder that a couple of years ago he co-published a book with Ratzinger, with the present Pope. Because he, Habermas, who likes to present himself as the great figure of Enlightenment bringing modernity project of enlightenment to the end, his reaction to all these prospects of biogenetically manipulating our brain blah blah is basically the
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conservative Catholic one: it's dangerous to do it, if you follow if we follow that path we may lose our dignity freedom, so let's not do it. This is the old conservative Catholic wisdom, you know some things are better be left unknown if you. I
conservative Catholic one: it's dangerous to do it, if you follow if we follow that path we may lose our dignity freedom, so let's not do it. This is the old conservative Catholic wisdom, you know some things are better be left unknown if you. I
Slavoj Žižek
think this doesn't work. I think that it's
think this doesn't work. I think that it's
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crucial to confront all this. My God, what is happening here? What
crucial to confront all this. My God, what is happening here? What
Slavoj Žižek
will happen with our being human if effectively what we experience as our spontaneous psychic properties will become manipulable? For
will happen with our being human if effectively what we experience as our spontaneous psychic properties will become manipulable? For
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example
example
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at NYU they did something I checked it up there because first I read the TV I saw a TV report which
at NYU they did something I checked it up there because first I read the TV I saw a TV report which
Slavoj Žižek
I found it pretty terrifying. They succeeded in somehow wiring connecting to a computer a simple rat. In such a way that they decoded the most elementary neuronal orders for movement like straight so on and they were
I found it pretty terrifying. They succeeded in somehow wiring connecting to a computer a simple rat. In such a way that they decoded the most elementary neuronal orders for movement like straight so on and they were
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able to connect again her neurons to the computer so that literally if you connect the rat to a—it really became like this remote-controlled toy—you were able to direct how the the mouse became a real mouse. Yeah yeah yeah. So then I met the guys and asked them a simple question, I discovered from the very beginning this for them problem and their answer terrified me. Of course screw the mouse, the problem is can you do it with human. Yes right no. And especially something—they were not idiots these guys, this
able to connect again her neurons to the computer so that literally if you connect the rat to a—it really became like this remote-controlled toy—you were able to direct how the the mouse became a real mouse. Yeah yeah yeah. So then I met the guys and asked them a simple question, I discovered from the very beginning this for them problem and their answer terrified me. Of course screw the mouse, the problem is can you do it with human. Yes right no. And especially something—they were not idiots these guys, this
Slavoj Žižek
what bothered them—namely, how will you as a human being experience this? Let's say you did do this to me: I walk here around without me knowing when, you connect me and and you can control how I move. And their answer was a pretty pessimistic one. Their hypothesis—they didn't want to tell me how much is it confirmed—is that I will not experience this as oh my God some foreign power took over me is controlling me, which would have been good at least I would be aware. Their hypothesis is that I would still think that I'm just freely roaming around, you know, without even knowing. So again I'm not a mega pessimist here, I I want to discard both extremes. I'm not like Ray Kurzweil or who the guy who thinks we will all be happy virtual entities and so on. But I'm not also some kind of technological conservative who thinks the end of humanity we are becoming robots. We just have to confront problems, something tremendous is happening. And and states around the world are already doing it like crazy. Like sorry if I repeat often this: when I visited China I met by chance a top guy, immediately I will finish sorry, from from from their Chinese Academy of Sciences biogenetics and he showed me the
what bothered them—namely, how will you as a human being experience this? Let's say you did do this to me: I walk here around without me knowing when, you connect me and and you can control how I move. And their answer was a pretty pessimistic one. Their hypothesis—they didn't want to tell me how much is it confirmed—is that I will not experience this as oh my God some foreign power took over me is controlling me, which would have been good at least I would be aware. Their hypothesis is that I would still think that I'm just freely roaming around, you know, without even knowing. So again I'm not a mega pessimist here, I I want to discard both extremes. I'm not like Ray Kurzweil or who the guy who thinks we will all be happy virtual entities and so on. But I'm not also some kind of technological conservative who thinks the end of humanity we are becoming robots. We just have to confront problems, something tremendous is happening. And and states around the world are already doing it like crazy. Like sorry if I repeat often this: when I visited China I met by chance a top guy, immediately I will finish sorry, from from from their Chinese Academy of Sciences biogenetics and he showed me the
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program of Chinese biogenetics
program of Chinese biogenetics
Slavoj Žižek
genetics where it explicitly says: the goal of our research is to regulate the physical and psychic well-being of the Chinese people. Ha ha, it's serious you know. Let's take the next question please. I'm sorry I'm sorry. You know you are not enough, you should dress in black leather and be a domina to me, that's the only thing that works. Sorry. Um so I'm going to preface my question by saying that I'm actually Catholic and I'm actually a Jesuit volunteer right now and Jesuit volunteer? Yes. All right. Um and so—and I studied theology in my undergrad and so with a specialization in global ecclesiology and you had mentioned that bishops in particular were kind of your best debating partners. Yeah. And um but your example was a European bishop and I was wondering if you had debated any bishops from developing countries like the African bishops or Latin American bishops and if so Latin American yes African unfortunately no. Sorry. And if so like how is that different or how would you expect it to be different in because they're a lot less doctrinal focused I guess I guess you could say. I don't think that, you know, unfortunately from my—maybe you can correct me here—but from my limited knowledge, I I still when you said doctrinal and so on and so on, I don't think this is something bad. Like I don't like to play some naive but authentic belief against doctrinal approach and so on. I I distrust this kind of I distrust this kind of—There's a chapter in the book on the Romance of Orthodoxy. Yeah yeah so what I would say is that uh I—What what is really emerging as I know that Catholic Church is getting strong now in some African countries, I also know that if Catholic Church were to be minimally democratic reflecting its composition of people then the Pope should have been a black or Latino American guy long ago. But maybe this will amuse you but it's a serious point. It's incredible this predominance of Europe even more Italian mafia. You know whom I'm now trying to rehabilitate? I'm not kidding: Borgias. I thought they were simply bad guys. Ah then I read a good history and discovered, okay they were not angels, but they were by far not as bad as their reputation. The problem was that they were Spanish, they were intruders. You know they were not experienced as part of the Italian inner circle. So it's totally forgotten that Borgias, the same horrible Borgias, did many tremendous thing like precisely when Alexander was the Pope, Jews were also thrown out of Spain. You know that Alexander opened up the gates of Rome to all of them especially to poor Jews? Not just the rich Jews bringing money. Do you know that they were the first to expand public education and so on and so on? So so like the true I in Latin America it's a different story. Like one of my favorite documents, now that they are slowly opening the archives, you know that already in the early 60s I read somewhere reprinted a CIA archive which said concerning Latin America: forget Marxist left-wing liberation theology Church is our real enemy in Latin America and so on no. In Africa frankly I'm not so sure that this new growing Catholic church there has this potential. Maybe I don't know enough about it, you know these are very complex matters. What happens in with a religion when it is moved planted into another culture. I'm not here a cheap historicist. Let's take another question in the back. I'm sorry I didn't—you didn't get the answer but that's life. I answered you the way God answers Job, which is basically God's answer to Job is: basically yes I agree with you this is a big problem why all this mess. That's Chesterton's reading. Sorry. You got the Latin half but not the African half. That's it. Ah you are trying—you are a social democratic opportunist I noticed, you are trying to balance left and right. That's my job. This is a question for both of you. Um throughout this conversation you've been sort of approaching the liberation core of Christianity. Um I recently read Fredy Perlman's *Against His-story, Against Leviathan*. He talks about the axial religions and their and their deep opposition to the hierarchical societies in which they appeared. I was wondering if you could discuss why is it that you're willing to why you feel some it seems like you feel some comfort with the theology and you feel like it's okay to to continue to to expand this theology uh instead of stripping it all away and going back to the liberation possibility. That's that's sort of the sense that I'm getting and um if you guys could discuss uh your thoughts on the liberation and returning to the early church. Sorry, what's what's the last the last words? Liberation and return—liberation in with regards to the early church, Manicheans, um Gnostics, um the Dao which is similar similar time. Okay. First I must say I'm absolutely, this may disappoint you, but I'm absolutely against Gnosticism. I think Gnosticism was for from the very beginning an elitist view, I never believed in emancipatory potentials of Gnosticism. On page you write Gnostics are Christians
genetics where it explicitly says: the goal of our research is to regulate the physical and psychic well-being of the Chinese people. Ha ha, it's serious you know. Let's take the next question please. I'm sorry I'm sorry. You know you are not enough, you should dress in black leather and be a domina to me, that's the only thing that works. Sorry. Um so I'm going to preface my question by saying that I'm actually Catholic and I'm actually a Jesuit volunteer right now and Jesuit volunteer? Yes. All right. Um and so—and I studied theology in my undergrad and so with a specialization in global ecclesiology and you had mentioned that bishops in particular were kind of your best debating partners. Yeah. And um but your example was a European bishop and I was wondering if you had debated any bishops from developing countries like the African bishops or Latin American bishops and if so Latin American yes African unfortunately no. Sorry. And if so like how is that different or how would you expect it to be different in because they're a lot less doctrinal focused I guess I guess you could say. I don't think that, you know, unfortunately from my—maybe you can correct me here—but from my limited knowledge, I I still when you said doctrinal and so on and so on, I don't think this is something bad. Like I don't like to play some naive but authentic belief against doctrinal approach and so on. I I distrust this kind of I distrust this kind of—There's a chapter in the book on the Romance of Orthodoxy. Yeah yeah so what I would say is that uh I—What what is really emerging as I know that Catholic Church is getting strong now in some African countries, I also know that if Catholic Church were to be minimally democratic reflecting its composition of people then the Pope should have been a black or Latino American guy long ago. But maybe this will amuse you but it's a serious point. It's incredible this predominance of Europe even more Italian mafia. You know whom I'm now trying to rehabilitate? I'm not kidding: Borgias. I thought they were simply bad guys. Ah then I read a good history and discovered, okay they were not angels, but they were by far not as bad as their reputation. The problem was that they were Spanish, they were intruders. You know they were not experienced as part of the Italian inner circle. So it's totally forgotten that Borgias, the same horrible Borgias, did many tremendous thing like precisely when Alexander was the Pope, Jews were also thrown out of Spain. You know that Alexander opened up the gates of Rome to all of them especially to poor Jews? Not just the rich Jews bringing money. Do you know that they were the first to expand public education and so on and so on? So so like the true I in Latin America it's a different story. Like one of my favorite documents, now that they are slowly opening the archives, you know that already in the early 60s I read somewhere reprinted a CIA archive which said concerning Latin America: forget Marxist left-wing liberation theology Church is our real enemy in Latin America and so on no. In Africa frankly I'm not so sure that this new growing Catholic church there has this potential. Maybe I don't know enough about it, you know these are very complex matters. What happens in with a religion when it is moved planted into another culture. I'm not here a cheap historicist. Let's take another question in the back. I'm sorry I didn't—you didn't get the answer but that's life. I answered you the way God answers Job, which is basically God's answer to Job is: basically yes I agree with you this is a big problem why all this mess. That's Chesterton's reading. Sorry. You got the Latin half but not the African half. That's it. Ah you are trying—you are a social democratic opportunist I noticed, you are trying to balance left and right. That's my job. This is a question for both of you. Um throughout this conversation you've been sort of approaching the liberation core of Christianity. Um I recently read Fredy Perlman's *Against His-story, Against Leviathan*. He talks about the axial religions and their and their deep opposition to the hierarchical societies in which they appeared. I was wondering if you could discuss why is it that you're willing to why you feel some it seems like you feel some comfort with the theology and you feel like it's okay to to continue to to expand this theology uh instead of stripping it all away and going back to the liberation possibility. That's that's sort of the sense that I'm getting and um if you guys could discuss uh your thoughts on the liberation and returning to the early church. Sorry, what's what's the last the last words? Liberation and return—liberation in with regards to the early church, Manicheans, um Gnostics, um the Dao which is similar similar time. Okay. First I must say I'm absolutely, this may disappoint you, but I'm absolutely against Gnosticism. I think Gnosticism was for from the very beginning an elitist view, I never believed in emancipatory potentials of Gnosticism. On page you write Gnostics are Christians
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who miss the joke of Christianity. There I try to be too wise for my own good. But no seriously, what I will tell you is that what I—and I wonder to what extent you are ready to follow me here—what I you answer you ask deep fundamental question. First just a minor point: what I reject is this idea of playing the good pre-institutional very early Christianity, like: Jesus is good, the origin of evil is St. Paul. No St. Paul is definitely a good guy for me. St. Paul is the Leninist
who miss the joke of Christianity. There I try to be too wise for my own good. But no seriously, what I will tell you is that what I—and I wonder to what extent you are ready to follow me here—what I you answer you ask deep fundamental question. First just a minor point: what I reject is this idea of playing the good pre-institutional very early Christianity, like: Jesus is good, the origin of evil is St. Paul. No St. Paul is definitely a good guy for me. St. Paul is the Leninist
Slavoj Žižek
in the sense of organizing the movement and
in the sense of organizing the movement and
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I even am tempted to say without St. Paul, Jesus Christ would have been a rather not too interesting local
I even am tempted to say without St. Paul, Jesus Christ would have been a rather not too interesting local
Slavoj Žižek
preacher and so on and so on. The true problem for me begins later. For example for me a truly great guy much more radical than as far as I know, I don't know a lot, but something I do know about early Christian theology than St. Augustine is Origenes. The one who he said something much more intelligent. You know he is usually known as the
preacher and so on and so on. The true problem for me begins later. For example for me a truly great guy much more radical than as far as I know, I don't know a lot, but something I do know about early Christian theology than St. Augustine is Origenes. The one who he said something much more intelligent. You know he is usually known as the
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crazy
crazy
Slavoj Žižek
fanatic *Credo quia absurdum*. That's Tertullian. Sorry? That's Tertullian. Sorry, sorry I made a mistake, Tertullian yes. He was a much more interesting guy. Much more radical. Now the big question is this one—and I appreciate your question—like: if I even say I am an atheist, why even bother to use the language of theology, why not do it directly in atheist terms? I claim as I already said, I cannot this would have been another Fidel Castro explosion of two hours why, but you remember I said this: I claim that to really think the death of God is not a matter of simple atheism. Atheism the way we know it, Stalinism and so on, still has a theological dimension, some transcendent structure guaranteeing it blah blah. And for me again this subversive core of Christianity is much more radical in an atheist sense. Why? Because let me give you a very brief formula. The here I refer to Jacques Lacan who said the true formula of atheism is not "God is dead" but "God is unconscious." That is to say, it's easy for us not to believe. It's much more difficult as I mentioned about apropos canned laughter to get rid of the, let's call it naively, unconscious structure of beliefs which function quite well—Nietzsche saw this very clearly—even after we officially become atheists and so on and so on. This is for me the problem: how to go to the end in atheism. And I claim: no way outside no way to do it outside Christianity. You know what I mean by this? Like the example I gave you from *La Vita Bella* and so on. Usually as a rule when we are atheists, it's always that we still either need another naive agency or count of it. If you will pardon me, I will repeat a joke which I repeated at least one hundred times.
fanatic *Credo quia absurdum*. That's Tertullian. Sorry? That's Tertullian. Sorry, sorry I made a mistake, Tertullian yes. He was a much more interesting guy. Much more radical. Now the big question is this one—and I appreciate your question—like: if I even say I am an atheist, why even bother to use the language of theology, why not do it directly in atheist terms? I claim as I already said, I cannot this would have been another Fidel Castro explosion of two hours why, but you remember I said this: I claim that to really think the death of God is not a matter of simple atheism. Atheism the way we know it, Stalinism and so on, still has a theological dimension, some transcendent structure guaranteeing it blah blah. And for me again this subversive core of Christianity is much more radical in an atheist sense. Why? Because let me give you a very brief formula. The here I refer to Jacques Lacan who said the true formula of atheism is not "God is dead" but "God is unconscious." That is to say, it's easy for us not to believe. It's much more difficult as I mentioned about apropos canned laughter to get rid of the, let's call it naively, unconscious structure of beliefs which function quite well—Nietzsche saw this very clearly—even after we officially become atheists and so on and so on. This is for me the problem: how to go to the end in atheism. And I claim: no way outside no way to do it outside Christianity. You know what I mean by this? Like the example I gave you from *La Vita Bella* and so on. Usually as a rule when we are atheists, it's always that we still either need another naive agency or count of it. If you will pardon me, I will repeat a joke which I repeated at least one hundred times.
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I'll
I'll
Slavoj Žižek
do it again that's my fate to tell
do it again that's my fate to tell
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old jokes. You know—don't please be mad at me—you know that anecdote that I use again and again about Niels Bohr, Copenhagen guy, who you know had a horseshoe above the entrance to his house and was asked by friends, you know, horseshoe above the house in Europe superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. So he was asked why do you have it by a friend if you are a scientist? He said: of course I don't believe in this, but I have it because I was told that horseshoe above the entrance to the house, it works even if you don't believe in it no? This is how belief works
old jokes. You know—don't please be mad at me—you know that anecdote that I use again and again about Niels Bohr, Copenhagen guy, who you know had a horseshoe above the entrance to his house and was asked by friends, you know, horseshoe above the house in Europe superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. So he was asked why do you have it by a friend if you are a scientist? He said: of course I don't believe in this, but I have it because I was told that horseshoe above the entrance to the house, it works even if you don't believe in it no? This is how belief works
Slavoj Žižek
you know! A belief works without
you know! A belief works without
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and it's difficult to to go here to the end. The key element in that
and it's difficult to to go here to the end. The key element in that
Slavoj Žižek
is "I was told," so so it is—there is a mutuality, there is the creation of a of a sustaining group. Yeah and the—and that group brings a new reality into existence. Do we have time for one more question? One more question over here. Hi I just had a question. So um so essentially what are you suggesting that uh that um uh where God is concerned that perhaps we live our life dependent upon a fate, knowing that the fate going back to the Greeks is just simply the end. That's it. First sorry could you be more precise because it seems to me crucial question. That we are um the examples that you gave um I just is it that we never actually really arrive at a belief? Is it that we are always in the process of naming what we believe but yet that is inauthentic? That we always we we—Yes, and again I'm I'm think that the most radical theological tradition knew it. To quote to you Kierkegaard, you know he said: we never believe, we just believe to believe. But for an authentic even Christian I claim this is not a problem. For me the guy who believes and really thinks he believes, it's one step from fundamentalism. This is not authentic Christianity. That's the message of that "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" Even God went through that phase, even Christ wasn't sure. You know? So again but again the problem here is you know we don't have time to go into it: what does it mean to believe? Like isn't it there are good reasons to think that what we usually today consider belief, this full first person literal "I really believe," that this is a relatively modern phenomenon? This is a form of knowledge and not really belief. Yeah. For example I can maybe you know it, you know a wonderful book by Paul Veyne, the French historian, wonderful title: "Did the ancient Greeks believe in their gods?" His answer is: of course in some sense no. They were not stupid. They didn't think if you climb the Mount of Olympus you will see there I don't know Zeus screwing Aphrodite or whatever. They knew it's just a mountain. But nonetheless we shouldn't use modern terms I claim: oh for them Zeus was just a metaphor for cosmic powers. No. Socrates Socrates who was the man who most undermined the traditional beliefs on his deathbed offered a instructions to sacrifice a cock to Asclepius. So the practice remained. Christianity is a very practice-oriented, future-oriented and not factual. Can I just finish I promise to be brief by giving you a very paradoxical example. When I was in Israel, I went to Ramallah and I spoke with some people close to the actual so-called terrorists from Israeli side, some psychologists in IDF dealing with them and Palestinians and they all told me the same story which is very interesting. That they try to understand the mind of a so-called terrorist just before blowing up. They told me no it's not that he is sure "Oh the virgins are up there
is "I was told," so so it is—there is a mutuality, there is the creation of a of a sustaining group. Yeah and the—and that group brings a new reality into existence. Do we have time for one more question? One more question over here. Hi I just had a question. So um so essentially what are you suggesting that uh that um uh where God is concerned that perhaps we live our life dependent upon a fate, knowing that the fate going back to the Greeks is just simply the end. That's it. First sorry could you be more precise because it seems to me crucial question. That we are um the examples that you gave um I just is it that we never actually really arrive at a belief? Is it that we are always in the process of naming what we believe but yet that is inauthentic? That we always we we—Yes, and again I'm I'm think that the most radical theological tradition knew it. To quote to you Kierkegaard, you know he said: we never believe, we just believe to believe. But for an authentic even Christian I claim this is not a problem. For me the guy who believes and really thinks he believes, it's one step from fundamentalism. This is not authentic Christianity. That's the message of that "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" Even God went through that phase, even Christ wasn't sure. You know? So again but again the problem here is you know we don't have time to go into it: what does it mean to believe? Like isn't it there are good reasons to think that what we usually today consider belief, this full first person literal "I really believe," that this is a relatively modern phenomenon? This is a form of knowledge and not really belief. Yeah. For example I can maybe you know it, you know a wonderful book by Paul Veyne, the French historian, wonderful title: "Did the ancient Greeks believe in their gods?" His answer is: of course in some sense no. They were not stupid. They didn't think if you climb the Mount of Olympus you will see there I don't know Zeus screwing Aphrodite or whatever. They knew it's just a mountain. But nonetheless we shouldn't use modern terms I claim: oh for them Zeus was just a metaphor for cosmic powers. No. Socrates Socrates who was the man who most undermined the traditional beliefs on his deathbed offered a instructions to sacrifice a cock to Asclepius. So the practice remained. Christianity is a very practice-oriented, future-oriented and not factual. Can I just finish I promise to be brief by giving you a very paradoxical example. When I was in Israel, I went to Ramallah and I spoke with some people close to the actual so-called terrorists from Israeli side, some psychologists in IDF dealing with them and Palestinians and they all told me the same story which is very interesting. That they try to understand the mind of a so-called terrorist just before blowing up. They told me no it's not that he is sure "Oh the virgins are up there
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let me just do it." That it's more a kind of a *passage l'acte* (acting out) to allow them to crush their
let me just do it." That it's more a kind of a *passage l'acte* (acting out) to allow them to crush their
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doubt. It is they are not sure and it's a desperate act of: if I blow myself up, I will maybe prove with my act what I'm not ready to believe. It's a much more complex phenomenon. Believe is a very difficult
doubt. It is they are not sure and it's a desperate act of: if I blow myself up, I will maybe prove with my act what I'm not ready to believe. It's a much more complex phenomenon. Believe is a very difficult
Slavoj Žižek
thing and both fundamentalist and Christopher Hitchens' type of critics of religion
thing and both fundamentalist and Christopher Hitchens' type of critics of religion
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I think
I think
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operate with a ridiculously inadequate notion of belief. Well we've we've certainly begun this evening complicating the notion
operate with a ridiculously inadequate notion of belief. Well we've we've certainly begun this evening complicating the notion
Slavoj Žižek
for our own benefit. I want to thank you all for your attention. I also uh I want to urge those of you and I know that many of you are already members of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles to consider joining and to consider making your contributions to the foundation as generous as you can. These conversations uh by so many interesting visitors have become an ornament uh and and an ongoing classroom for all of us. Can I just add something supporting you? First let me tell you that I'm grateful for you to be here and this is the most you will get from me: you are not a complete idiot. No no no we are all idiots. There are only two types of people: complete idiots and partial idiots. Yeah. And precisely such people like the two of us not complete idiots know something. Today there is this general tendency to turn higher education into factories producing
for our own benefit. I want to thank you all for your attention. I also uh I want to urge those of you and I know that many of you are already members of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles to consider joining and to consider making your contributions to the foundation as generous as you can. These conversations uh by so many interesting visitors have become an ornament uh and and an ongoing classroom for all of us. Can I just add something supporting you? First let me tell you that I'm grateful for you to be here and this is the most you will get from me: you are not a complete idiot. No no no we are all idiots. There are only two types of people: complete idiots and partial idiots. Yeah. And precisely such people like the two of us not complete idiots know something. Today there is this general tendency to turn higher education into factories producing
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experts. Which is why it's absolutely crucial to fight and don't be here false Marxist, you are not
experts. Which is why it's absolutely crucial to fight and don't be here false Marxist, you are not
Slavoj Žižek
supporting bourgeois excess when you fight for free places like conversations here where you open up to collateral damage freely thinking, it's not expert thinking you know. This is so precious to keep places like this functioning. When our universities again are turning into machines. Like I was in France I was shocked in a debate where some high political person told, referring to that suburb Paris suburbs burning cars incidents: look he said this is what we need from universities, cars are burning in Paris suburbs, we need psychologists to tell us how control the crowd, we need
supporting bourgeois excess when you fight for free places like conversations here where you open up to collateral damage freely thinking, it's not expert thinking you know. This is so precious to keep places like this functioning. When our universities again are turning into machines. Like I was in France I was shocked in a debate where some high political person told, referring to that suburb Paris suburbs burning cars incidents: look he said this is what we need from universities, cars are burning in Paris suburbs, we need psychologists to tell us how control the crowd, we need
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urbanists to allow us to plan the suburbs better. No sorry this is not intellectual stuff, this is experts. We need different questions, we need questions especially to question the questions themselves. You know the problem is that today we are facing problems but more often they are not than not the way we formulate a
urbanists to allow us to plan the suburbs better. No sorry this is not intellectual stuff, this is experts. We need different questions, we need questions especially to question the questions themselves. You know the problem is that today we are facing problems but more often they are not than not the way we formulate a
Slavoj Žižek
problem is the problem, mystifies is the problem mystifies the problem. And you will not learn this reflexive ability at unfortunately at least what universities are becoming. Every free space of thinking is precious. So I seriously support your proposal. Thank you all for coming. Thank you Slavoj. Congratulations on a fine book. Thanks very much. I hope I was not too crazy. No but I really I really agree what with what he said.
problem is the problem, mystifies is the problem mystifies the problem. And you will not learn this reflexive ability at unfortunately at least what universities are becoming. Every free space of thinking is precious. So I seriously support your proposal. Thank you all for coming. Thank you Slavoj. Congratulations on a fine book. Thanks very much. I hope I was not too crazy. No but I really I really agree what with what he said.