How philosophy got lost | Slavoj Žižek interview | IAI
Interview · The Institute of Art and Ideas ·
2023-05-04 · 0:35:57 · 4,563 words
with Announcer
hegel-dialecticsphilosophy-generalsexuality-genderpsychoanalysisideologyscience-physicscapitalism
Žižek argues for a Hegelian reading of history as a process of necessary failure and retroactive meaning-making, contrasting it with both Marxist determinism and contemporary neoliberal 'neo-feudalism.' He critiques the division between analytic and continental philosophy, advocating for a return to metaphysical questions through quantum physics and psychoanalysis. The talk concludes with a defense of passionate, unconditional love against the modern 'polyamorous' commodification of relationships, using the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to illustrate the necessity of confronting the partner's real imperfections.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 8
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Schelling's metaphor for the innermost core of the subject, associated with darkness and chaos, from which light/subjectivity emerges.
Hegel's dictature that philosophy grasps the conceptual structure of an epoch only after it has matured, making it reactionary in timing but essential for understanding.
as “materialist reversal of Marx into Hegel”
Žižek's proposal to reinterpret Marx through Hegel, emphasizing that Marx was too idealist and that Hegel's pessimism about historical failure is more accurate for understanding capitalism.
as “transcendental historicism”
Žižek's label for the continental philosophy trend (exemplified by Foucault) that dismisses big metaphysical questions as irrelevant to specific epistemes.
as “retroactive interpretation”
The process by which the present interprets the past teleologically, giving meaning to contingent events (like falling in love) after they occur.
as “ontologically open”
The idea that reality at its fundamental level (quantum/void) is not fully constituted and contains a primordial gap or disturbance.
as “freedom is free decision determination”
Žižek's formula distinguishing true freedom (a radical decision that retroactively determines the subject) from mere contingency (randomness).
as “true love is death”
Lacan's idea that true love does not idealize the partner but accepts their fundamental lack/imperfection, effectively 'killing' the ideal.
Stories he reaches for 2
Engels predicted WWI in 1880, including the death toll (9-10 million) and the trigger for WWII by a defeated Germany, showing Marx/Engels had concrete foresight despite being dismissed as mere theorists.
“Engels in some letter saw the signs... he says there will be around 10 million dead people.”
A romantic anecdote where sleeping on a banana peel is a pure contingency, but the lady helping you up retroactively becomes the 'love of your life,' illustrating how contingency is experienced as destiny.
“you sleep on a banana peel a lady helps you to get up maybe you discover it's the love of your life.”
Works invoked 4
Kant's late text containing hints about the symbol of the inner core of the subject being night/darkness.
Hegel's last text, appearing reactionary but foreseeing a future controlled by 'rich rebels' and rootless nouveau riche.
Orpheus and Eurydice mythology
Used to illustrate the nature of true love: Orpheus looks back because he prefers the ideal to the real, disappointing partner.
Hegel's early work noting that times when philosophy is needed are times of trouble.
People invoked 18
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Žižek states he 'doesn't believe in his negative dialectics' but praises Adorno's note on the antinomy between individualism and organicist society.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited for the idea that 'true love is death' because it does not idealize the partner but accepts their imperfections.
Cited for his book's introduction, which exemplifies the analytic philosophy attitude of reducing metaphysics to brain science.
Roger Penrose positive
A quantum physicist who tries to locate the opening for human freedom at the quantum level, though Žižek finds his approach less direct than others.
Yuval Noah Harari positive
Žižek disagrees with Harari on many points but sincerely agrees with his view that freedom is never a conclusive state but eternal doubt.
Alain Badiou positive
A French friend who pointed out the radicality of the verb 'to fall' in 'falling in love' in various languages.
Friedrich Engels positive
Praised for his incredible foresight in predicting WWI and WWII in an 1880 letter.
Marco Rovelli positive
An Italian quantum physicist whose popular books suggest space and time are quantified and that space has priority.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Agrees with Varoufakis that current capitalism is no longer 'old liberal capitalism' but something new and disorienting (neo-feudalism).
Michel Foucault negative
Used as the prime example of 'transcendental historicism,' which dismisses big metaphysical questions as irrelevant to specific epistemes.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling positive
Cited for the concept of 'night of the world' and the symbol of darkness as the core of the subject.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Cited for the paradox of belief/love: you only see the arguments if you already believe/love; it is retroactive.
Meister Eckhart positive
A modern European mystic (in the old-fashioned sense) whose ideas align with the notion of a deeper tension in the void.
Jakob Böhme positive
Cited as a mystic who understood that God created the world to avoid his own madness.
Karl Marx negative
Žižek argues Marx was 'way too idealist for Hegel' and that his predictions, while accurate, missed the Hegelian lesson of necessary failure.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the psychoanalytic view that the subject is not spontaneous free will but a set of unconscious decisions.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek considers himself a 'Hegelian' and argues for a 'materialist reversal' of Marx into Hegel, valuing Hegel's pessimism about historical failure.
Klaus Theweleit positive
Provided a wonderful interpretation of Orpheus looking back as a fear of the real, disappointing partner.
Transcript 28 turns
Slavoj Žižek
a lady helps you to get up, maybe you discover it's the love of your life. so although you know well it was a pure contingency, but the way you experience it, all your life, if you are a romantic like i am, you are waiting for that moment. we have to live with this contradiction.
a lady helps you to get up, maybe you discover it's the love of your life. so although you know well it was a pure contingency, but the way you experience it, all your life, if you are a romantic like i am, you are waiting for that moment. we have to live with this contradiction.
Interviewer
so philosophy is like falling in love.
so philosophy is like falling in love.
Slavoj Žižek
absolutely.
absolutely.
Interviewer
asalam alijik, welcome to how the light gets in.
asalam alijik, welcome to how the light gets in.
Slavoj Žižek
thanks very much, although immediately as a hegelian, i must correct you. you know, something happens with kant already and then schelling, hegel till that. point of german idealism. uh. light was associated with subjectivity. subject is a light, darkness is outside in chaotic nature. but already there are some hints in kant, his basic late text on religion within the limits of reason alone, schelling, of course, and hegel. the symbol of the inner symbol, metaphor for the innermost core of the subject is night, darkness, the night of the world. schelling says this wonderfully in some of his early texts that it's this night, if you look somebody in the eye, you see objects but cut into pieces just floating around and everything emerges out of this. so i would say, how does the light get in in a bad way? light obfuscates this of the subject where both hegel and schelling refer to jacob, jacob böhme and other mystics.
thanks very much, although immediately as a hegelian, i must correct you. you know, something happens with kant already and then schelling, hegel till that. point of german idealism. uh. light was associated with subjectivity. subject is a light, darkness is outside in chaotic nature. but already there are some hints in kant, his basic late text on religion within the limits of reason alone, schelling, of course, and hegel. the symbol of the inner symbol, metaphor for the innermost core of the subject is night, darkness, the night of the world. schelling says this wonderfully in some of his early texts that it's this night, if you look somebody in the eye, you see objects but cut into pieces just floating around and everything emerges out of this. so i would say, how does the light get in in a bad way? light obfuscates this of the subject where both hegel and schelling refer to jacob, jacob böhme and other mystics.
Interviewer
but speaking of darkness, you have a famous hegel quote that you'd like to use lately, which is that the owl of minerva flies at dusk, at the end of something, at an end of the period.
but speaking of darkness, you have a famous hegel quote that you'd like to use lately, which is that the owl of minerva flies at dusk, at the end of something, at an end of the period.
Slavoj Žižek
but hegel has also this other...
but hegel has also this other...
Interviewer
quote where he says that philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought. and i was wondering, how do you reconcile those two questions?
quote where he says that philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought. and i was wondering, how do you reconcile those two questions?
Slavoj Žižek
they are seem. i think he even says, i think, both things in the same paragraph. what he means is that we live in a certain epoch. but all we can do in our thinking is to grasp. the. conceptual structure at its purest of this epoch and for this... . philosophy always comes too late. heger is fanatically against any plans for the future and so on. and for this reason i'm a total partisan of another materialist reversal of marx into hegel. hegel was at this level very modest. he openly admitted we can make some guesses and so on, but marx was way too idealist for hegel. marx knew that generally, at least if you have the right subjective position, the exploited workers, we can somehow get he was not a full determinist marx, but the, let's call it objective tendency of history, like if we don't screw it up, something maybe better, socialism, communism awaits us. what hegel would have said, and that's why we need hegel. where hegel is at his best is he takes the beginning of a great epoch where there are all the promises about big achievement and shows how more or less necessarily it turns wrong. his big example was of course french revolution. freedom, terror. but i think hegel would have felt like fish in its own water in later time. look the second half of 19th century. not in the colonies, it's another story, but in europe, it was a big era of progress. even in russia they abolished serfdom. in germany, bismarck introduced... first elements of global health care, retirement plans, suffragette and so on. so the idea was things go on, then you get the great war, the first world war, which was, i think, the event in some sense, much worse than second world war. second world war was just an after effect. and sorry that i talk too much, but you know who he is. here i must admit it, although he was not such a great theoretician. in you know who one of the few who predicted even the second world war in 1880 already. engels in some letter saw the signs. he says the way it goes now, germany will want a stronger place in dividing colonially the world. so there will be a world war and he was just lucky i think with an incredible foresight engels says this will end up maybe with revolution at least in some country like russia. and then he says there will be around 10 million dead people. the official number today is 9 million,800. and then in an ingenious addition, he says that if germany loses, maybe a decade or two later, germany will trigger another war. so that's the paradox of marx and hegel. they were not idiots in concrete predictions. they were often very accurate. but back to hegel. why 20th century would be ideal ground for hegel? look what happened. october revolution, great promise. ah ah, sorry, comrade stalin is there, raising up. then we have fukuyama, the end of history, we are there. ha ha, sorry, we know where we are today. this is the hegel we need today. it doesn't mean we should do nothing. but hegel's lesson is history repeats itself, not in the sense of repeating the same, but things go wrong necessarily and only in the second attempt, maybe you can get it right. so hegel's whole idea was not to turn against french revolution because of the terror, but how to do it again. at a higher level, whatever. so don't you think we terribly need this hegelian pessimism today? like hegel. we, all the theorists of global capitalism, global liberal market, they are describing a form which is already disappearing, if you ask me. here i agree with my friend who doesn't agree with me on many other things, yanis varoufakis, who said, what is happening now, he is not moralistically complaining, but the is with figures like bill gates or elon musk and so on, this is no longer old liberal capitalism. there are many theories like neo-feudalism, corporate authoritarianism, but something new is emerging and we are disoriented. we don't really know what is happening. you know the last text hegel wrote. was his some notes on the english reform bill. he appears reactionary there. he warns against expanding the universalizing the right to vote. but hidden in these and some pearls, he foresees a future in which, because the old states, hierarchic society will disappear, the rebel? will be controlled and manipulated by what he calls rich rebel. the rootless nouveau rich and it will be even worse in this sense. and he was right. if nothing else today it's happening. this is happening.
they are seem. i think he even says, i think, both things in the same paragraph. what he means is that we live in a certain epoch. but all we can do in our thinking is to grasp. the. conceptual structure at its purest of this epoch and for this... . philosophy always comes too late. heger is fanatically against any plans for the future and so on. and for this reason i'm a total partisan of another materialist reversal of marx into hegel. hegel was at this level very modest. he openly admitted we can make some guesses and so on, but marx was way too idealist for hegel. marx knew that generally, at least if you have the right subjective position, the exploited workers, we can somehow get he was not a full determinist marx, but the, let's call it objective tendency of history, like if we don't screw it up, something maybe better, socialism, communism awaits us. what hegel would have said, and that's why we need hegel. where hegel is at his best is he takes the beginning of a great epoch where there are all the promises about big achievement and shows how more or less necessarily it turns wrong. his big example was of course french revolution. freedom, terror. but i think hegel would have felt like fish in its own water in later time. look the second half of 19th century. not in the colonies, it's another story, but in europe, it was a big era of progress. even in russia they abolished serfdom. in germany, bismarck introduced... first elements of global health care, retirement plans, suffragette and so on. so the idea was things go on, then you get the great war, the first world war, which was, i think, the event in some sense, much worse than second world war. second world war was just an after effect. and sorry that i talk too much, but you know who he is. here i must admit it, although he was not such a great theoretician. in you know who one of the few who predicted even the second world war in 1880 already. engels in some letter saw the signs. he says the way it goes now, germany will want a stronger place in dividing colonially the world. so there will be a world war and he was just lucky i think with an incredible foresight engels says this will end up maybe with revolution at least in some country like russia. and then he says there will be around 10 million dead people. the official number today is 9 million,800. and then in an ingenious addition, he says that if germany loses, maybe a decade or two later, germany will trigger another war. so that's the paradox of marx and hegel. they were not idiots in concrete predictions. they were often very accurate. but back to hegel. why 20th century would be ideal ground for hegel? look what happened. october revolution, great promise. ah ah, sorry, comrade stalin is there, raising up. then we have fukuyama, the end of history, we are there. ha ha, sorry, we know where we are today. this is the hegel we need today. it doesn't mean we should do nothing. but hegel's lesson is history repeats itself, not in the sense of repeating the same, but things go wrong necessarily and only in the second attempt, maybe you can get it right. so hegel's whole idea was not to turn against french revolution because of the terror, but how to do it again. at a higher level, whatever. so don't you think we terribly need this hegelian pessimism today? like hegel. we, all the theorists of global capitalism, global liberal market, they are describing a form which is already disappearing, if you ask me. here i agree with my friend who doesn't agree with me on many other things, yanis varoufakis, who said, what is happening now, he is not moralistically complaining, but the is with figures like bill gates or elon musk and so on, this is no longer old liberal capitalism. there are many theories like neo-feudalism, corporate authoritarianism, but something new is emerging and we are disoriented. we don't really know what is happening. you know the last text hegel wrote. was his some notes on the english reform bill. he appears reactionary there. he warns against expanding the universalizing the right to vote. but hidden in these and some pearls, he foresees a future in which, because the old states, hierarchic society will disappear, the rebel? will be controlled and manipulated by what he calls rich rebel. the rootless nouveau rich and it will be even worse in this sense. and he was right. if nothing else today it's happening. this is happening.
Interviewer
what is philosophy making sense of today, given what the mainstream philosophical movement is, for the most part, analytic philosophy in the english-speaking world, what is it capturing? is it capturing an aspect of our times?
what is philosophy making sense of today, given what the mainstream philosophical movement is, for the most part, analytic philosophy in the english-speaking world, what is it capturing? is it capturing an aspect of our times?
Slavoj Žižek
you know what's my point here? that i nonetheless have some hopes that a new era is slowly beginning also in philosophy. till twenty years ago, i would say, it's approximate, we had a clear division. between analytic philosophy, which also included got mixed with brain sciences and so on. so i know in some american big universities you had this paradox that if you dissect the brain of of a rat it's philosophy. if you study hegel it's literature they were saying so we had this attitude best expressed in the introduction to the last book by stephen hawking. although he simplified it very much, but at some point he was right. the result of this, what we called discourse analysis, predominance in continental orientation, is that many basic let's call them naively big metaphysical. questions. does the universe have an origin or end? do we have free will? you look in sciences for the answer. does the universe have an origin? that's what quantum physics cosmology is. do we have free will? that's what cognitive scientists are trying to do. on the other hand, the continental orientation. got more and more lost into what i call transcendental historicism. that you many others were doing the same thing, but the clear case is for me here somebody like michel foucault. if you were to ask him, for example, what i will be asked in a debate now, is there objective morality? his answer would have been, all we can say is that. to raise such a question is possible only within a certain episteme, a certain horizon of meaning. such a question wouldn't even have meaning in medieval times, where in some sense morality was objective, inscribed into... so for him, german have this beautiful word unhintergehbar, which means you cannot go behind. the ultimate horizon is what foucault calls episteme the horizon of knowledge through which we observe reality and interact with it. and there are of course great examples like with modern science. it's not just i believe in science that it's more true. is that this difference emerged between reality out there and meanings we project into it. so it's not just that science is more truthful, the meaning of what is nature, of what is truth changed. and so... the result unfortunately is that the so-called deconstructionism or this historic hermeneutics, all in it, all you can do is... describe, analyze the horizon of meaning within which we move and let's call them naively the big questions are simply dismissed as irrelevant. i she trend lately. to move beyond this at different levels and with many of them i am even caught in polemics for example this object-oriented ontology and so on and so on. but i think the general direction is the right one and my second point. here is that i find hope. isn't it that still now, by now i mean 30, 40 years, the latest advances in digital manipulations, brain sciences and so on. till now, with all the new problems like nuclear explosions, somehow basically the old morality. still! fe you could rely to it. but with what is happening now, for example, that's why pandemic interested me. we you know that the big debate, masks yes or no, social distancing, this was at some level a properly philosophical debate. if we obey all the injunctions of doctors, healthcare institutions, are we still free or not, do we still retain our human dignity? so here is my optimism. as bad as things look. we will need philosophy more than ever. because again, in our everyday problems, it began with abortion. it's basically almost a philosophical problem, you know. is it already a living being? do we have the right or not? so these are not good news because as hegel knew it already in early system der sittlichkeit, system of customs, mores. times when philosophy is needed are difficult times, are times of trouble. but i don't worry about us philosophers becoming useless because that's the last i i don't expect from philosophers solutions. the big problem today is rather that when we confront new phenomena, we formulate, we approach the problem in the old terms. i think the biggest role philosophy can do today is to correct or at least make us think of how we approach the problems. that's why as a philosopher, for example, i oppose deep ecology. because i think it's secretly still radically anthropocentric. you know, it's this idea that somehow rivers and forests have their rights. yes, but they don't know it. so we humans, even if they emphasize, we are just one of the species, but we are the only ones who have the universal view. this is, i think, and don't underestimate this, the big role of philosophy today to not to offer solutions, but to enable. us to ask the right questions. mystifications begin already at this level when we are aware of a problem but formulate it in the wrong way.
you know what's my point here? that i nonetheless have some hopes that a new era is slowly beginning also in philosophy. till twenty years ago, i would say, it's approximate, we had a clear division. between analytic philosophy, which also included got mixed with brain sciences and so on. so i know in some american big universities you had this paradox that if you dissect the brain of of a rat it's philosophy. if you study hegel it's literature they were saying so we had this attitude best expressed in the introduction to the last book by stephen hawking. although he simplified it very much, but at some point he was right. the result of this, what we called discourse analysis, predominance in continental orientation, is that many basic let's call them naively big metaphysical. questions. does the universe have an origin or end? do we have free will? you look in sciences for the answer. does the universe have an origin? that's what quantum physics cosmology is. do we have free will? that's what cognitive scientists are trying to do. on the other hand, the continental orientation. got more and more lost into what i call transcendental historicism. that you many others were doing the same thing, but the clear case is for me here somebody like michel foucault. if you were to ask him, for example, what i will be asked in a debate now, is there objective morality? his answer would have been, all we can say is that. to raise such a question is possible only within a certain episteme, a certain horizon of meaning. such a question wouldn't even have meaning in medieval times, where in some sense morality was objective, inscribed into... so for him, german have this beautiful word unhintergehbar, which means you cannot go behind. the ultimate horizon is what foucault calls episteme the horizon of knowledge through which we observe reality and interact with it. and there are of course great examples like with modern science. it's not just i believe in science that it's more true. is that this difference emerged between reality out there and meanings we project into it. so it's not just that science is more truthful, the meaning of what is nature, of what is truth changed. and so... the result unfortunately is that the so-called deconstructionism or this historic hermeneutics, all in it, all you can do is... describe, analyze the horizon of meaning within which we move and let's call them naively the big questions are simply dismissed as irrelevant. i she trend lately. to move beyond this at different levels and with many of them i am even caught in polemics for example this object-oriented ontology and so on and so on. but i think the general direction is the right one and my second point. here is that i find hope. isn't it that still now, by now i mean 30, 40 years, the latest advances in digital manipulations, brain sciences and so on. till now, with all the new problems like nuclear explosions, somehow basically the old morality. still! fe you could rely to it. but with what is happening now, for example, that's why pandemic interested me. we you know that the big debate, masks yes or no, social distancing, this was at some level a properly philosophical debate. if we obey all the injunctions of doctors, healthcare institutions, are we still free or not, do we still retain our human dignity? so here is my optimism. as bad as things look. we will need philosophy more than ever. because again, in our everyday problems, it began with abortion. it's basically almost a philosophical problem, you know. is it already a living being? do we have the right or not? so these are not good news because as hegel knew it already in early system der sittlichkeit, system of customs, mores. times when philosophy is needed are difficult times, are times of trouble. but i don't worry about us philosophers becoming useless because that's the last i i don't expect from philosophers solutions. the big problem today is rather that when we confront new phenomena, we formulate, we approach the problem in the old terms. i think the biggest role philosophy can do today is to correct or at least make us think of how we approach the problems. that's why as a philosopher, for example, i oppose deep ecology. because i think it's secretly still radically anthropocentric. you know, it's this idea that somehow rivers and forests have their rights. yes, but they don't know it. so we humans, even if they emphasize, we are just one of the species, but we are the only ones who have the universal view. this is, i think, and don't underestimate this, the big role of philosophy today to not to offer solutions, but to enable. us to ask the right questions. mystifications begin already at this level when we are aware of a problem but formulate it in the wrong way.
Interviewer
so one of the big frameworks that philosophy and science have been operating under for decades now is this kind of like some kind of form of individualism and some form of reductionism, the idea that the the relevant unit in any kind of explanation is the individual and if we want to understand it, we need to kind of see how its parts are working and so on.
so one of the big frameworks that philosophy and science have been operating under for decades now is this kind of like some kind of form of individualism and some form of reductionism, the idea that the the relevant unit in any kind of explanation is the individual and if we want to understand it, we need to kind of see how its parts are working and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
no, here i think i hate this quick. quick, too fast generalization from sciences, but okay, with all my limitations and so on. but isn't the big lesson if we draw, maybe it's this lesson, maybe it's too quick. generalization of quantum physics that precisely we should abandon, and i'm a materialist, i, but this old idea that the ultimate reality is empty space and some stupid particles just floating there. no, you have oscillations, you have ontological ambiguities, waves and so on. so i don't think that everything that is interaction of individual. entities find it much more productive what some quantum physicists tries to. tries to give form to the idea that waves, oscillations are somehow primordial and that particles are interactions of multiple waves. this i think, again, at all levels, even at social level, we can abandon because here adorno, i don't believe in his negative dialectics, but he makes a wonderful note somewhere where he says as you said today's approach to society moves between the two extremes. either individualism, the starting point are individuals and then complex structures emerge through their interaction, or he refers of course to emile durkheim, this organicist approach. society is the primordial fact and under certain conditions different types in each condition of individuals emerge. and then, you know what is adorno's solution to this? it's not the usual pseudo-hegelian dialectical synthesis of that, but he says... this very antinomy. between individualism and... social approach, organicist, is the deepest characteristic of our social reality itself. this is not just an antinomy. it in itself has its own moment of truth. and isn't this true today? on the one hand, we are always addressed like individuals, that's neoliberalism. ultimately you are responsible and so on. on the other hand, we talk about this big impersonal objective trends and so on and so on.
no, here i think i hate this quick. quick, too fast generalization from sciences, but okay, with all my limitations and so on. but isn't the big lesson if we draw, maybe it's this lesson, maybe it's too quick. generalization of quantum physics that precisely we should abandon, and i'm a materialist, i, but this old idea that the ultimate reality is empty space and some stupid particles just floating there. no, you have oscillations, you have ontological ambiguities, waves and so on. so i don't think that everything that is interaction of individual. entities find it much more productive what some quantum physicists tries to. tries to give form to the idea that waves, oscillations are somehow primordial and that particles are interactions of multiple waves. this i think, again, at all levels, even at social level, we can abandon because here adorno, i don't believe in his negative dialectics, but he makes a wonderful note somewhere where he says as you said today's approach to society moves between the two extremes. either individualism, the starting point are individuals and then complex structures emerge through their interaction, or he refers of course to emile durkheim, this organicist approach. society is the primordial fact and under certain conditions different types in each condition of individuals emerge. and then, you know what is adorno's solution to this? it's not the usual pseudo-hegelian dialectical synthesis of that, but he says... this very antinomy. between individualism and... social approach, organicist, is the deepest characteristic of our social reality itself. this is not just an antinomy. it in itself has its own moment of truth. and isn't this true today? on the one hand, we are always addressed like individuals, that's neoliberalism. ultimately you are responsible and so on. on the other hand, we talk about this big impersonal objective trends and so on and so on.
Interviewer
what about the subject? because again, there are sort of two main ideas floating around. one is this kind of extreme naturalistic way of thinking of the subject as just an evolutionary product of...
what about the subject? because again, there are sort of two main ideas floating around. one is this kind of extreme naturalistic way of thinking of the subject as just an evolutionary product of...
Slavoj Žižek
or or even, but if you go to the extreme, they even say subject, in the sense of subjective experience of your spontaneous activity, free will is, as they call it, user's illusion. and then you have different ways to move up. like some analysts allow for the idea that through this complexity, complex interaction of pre-subjective parts, something which maybe is not simply an illusion can emerge at the higher. level. so... sorry, finish your question
or or even, but if you go to the extreme, they even say subject, in the sense of subjective experience of your spontaneous activity, free will is, as they call it, user's illusion. and then you have different ways to move up. like some analysts allow for the idea that through this complexity, complex interaction of pre-subjective parts, something which maybe is not simply an illusion can emerge at the higher. level. so... sorry, finish your question
Interviewer
to ask you how do you see philosophy contributing to this and can science in some way contribute to answering the question what is the subject? or is that a pure philosophical question that we need to address?
to ask you how do you see philosophy contributing to this and can science in some way contribute to answering the question what is the subject? or is that a pure philosophical question that we need to address?
Slavoj Žižek
abs, it depends. depends on what do you understand as subject because usually subject is spontaneously conceived s. an agent with this spontaneity of action. i look around, i decide, i do what i want and so on and so on. but i think that in psychoanalytic sense, here freud has some to to say. subject is not primord this spontaneity of the free will, but it's a set of basic unconscious decisions. the paradox of love is the same as intelligent theologists knew as the paradox of believing in god. kierkegaard says somebody kierkegaard said that if somebody claims, i studied different religions and christianity convinced me best arguments, no, he said, that's the worst idea. you only see the arguments for christianity if you already believe. it's the same with love. i admire whatever, your legs, your smile, sorry for these sexisms, because i'm already in love. is on the one hand a free decision. if there is a free decision, it to freely fall in love. but it never happens in the present. it's all at some point you have already fallen in love it always has this retroactivity and here i would say. that a different type of subjective freedom emerges which escapes both this phenomenology of consciousness and scientific
abs, it depends. depends on what do you understand as subject because usually subject is spontaneously conceived s. an agent with this spontaneity of action. i look around, i decide, i do what i want and so on and so on. but i think that in psychoanalytic sense, here freud has some to to say. subject is not primord this spontaneity of the free will, but it's a set of basic unconscious decisions. the paradox of love is the same as intelligent theologists knew as the paradox of believing in god. kierkegaard says somebody kierkegaard said that if somebody claims, i studied different religions and christianity convinced me best arguments, no, he said, that's the worst idea. you only see the arguments for christianity if you already believe. it's the same with love. i admire whatever, your legs, your smile, sorry for these sexisms, because i'm already in love. is on the one hand a free decision. if there is a free decision, it to freely fall in love. but it never happens in the present. it's all at some point you have already fallen in love it always has this retroactivity and here i would say. that a different type of subjective freedom emerges which escapes both this phenomenology of consciousness and scientific
Interviewer
e. can i take it back to something you said at the beginning of this answer about sort of some limits of a naturalistic approach to the subject and you brought up love for that as an example. yesterday in your debate with harari you said, i'm a naturalist, not an idealist. what do you mean by that?
e. can i take it back to something you said at the beginning of this answer about sort of some limits of a naturalistic approach to the subject and you brought up love for that as an example. yesterday in your debate with harari you said, i'm a naturalist, not an idealist. what do you mean by that?
Slavoj Žižek
i simply meant it, this is a very complex question, and i consciously took the path of, as i tastelessly referred to it a couple of times, like i will not pull and he did not pull the knife out, you know. no, i am naturalist just in the sense that i don't think there is the higher force or whatever that everything there is in is in some broader sense nature. but for me, this doesn't mean that there is a zero level, like what i mentioned before, empty space and some stupid particles. the lesson of quantum physics for me is that we never really reach this zero level. that at zero level we don't have clear image of empty space and particles, what we get is some kind of wave oscillations and now they are making great. advances. i like the hypothesis with new quantum physicists. i'm too stupid to really see the scientific value. but for example, the italian guy, marco rovelli, i think, you should get him here.
i simply meant it, this is a very complex question, and i consciously took the path of, as i tastelessly referred to it a couple of times, like i will not pull and he did not pull the knife out, you know. no, i am naturalist just in the sense that i don't think there is the higher force or whatever that everything there is in is in some broader sense nature. but for me, this doesn't mean that there is a zero level, like what i mentioned before, empty space and some stupid particles. the lesson of quantum physics for me is that we never really reach this zero level. that at zero level we don't have clear image of empty space and particles, what we get is some kind of wave oscillations and now they are making great. advances. i like the hypothesis with new quantum physicists. i'm too stupid to really see the scientific value. but for example, the italian guy, marco rovelli, i think, you should get him here.
Interviewer
he he's been to the festival a few times.
he he's been to the festival a few times.
Slavoj Žižek
because because i read, i must admit it, just some of his popular books. his point is that space and time are themselves quantified. you cannot like in that famous paradox of infinite subdivision. no, there is a minimum quantum of space and time, and then in a very intelligent way. he tries to develop. the concept of matter. out of this primordial tension of time, space and space, and he goes even further, claiming that space has priority here. and now again, it's not up to me to what i like is dr that. the problem is not we know the basic level to what we have to reduce things and then it goes more and more complex. i think that at the ground level we get a big mess. not just because of the limit of our knowledge. that reality is in itself, i like to repeat this motif, ontologically open, not fully. constituted. and so at this level i try, it's high speculation. i don't know how it works. i try to. not the way roger penrose does. he is also one of those who try to somehow locate the. opening for human freedom already at this quantum level. but not in this no, roger penrose is more intelligent but some simplistic quantum guys simply say, oh, if there is contingency blah blah doesn't this open space for freedom, no, because never forget freedom is not contingency. freedom is free decision determination. if you just, okay, it's not contingent really, but if you leave your decision like you a threw a coin in the air which side, this is not freedom. you don't decide freely. it's just contingency and i am heavily working on that because my, okay. i will give you now a direct formula which will probably mean nothing, but that's the, i hate these words, metaphysical core of my work now. i take buddhism very seriously. but the ultimate buddhist wisdom is nirvana void. and i had wonderful debates in china, in japan with buddhists, and we ended up in a deadlock because from my standpoint, maybe i'm wrong, i appeared an idiot to them, but from my standpoint, they avoided the key question, which is the hegelian question, not can we really break out of this wheel of desire into the primordial peace void, nirvana? back how did this primordial peace get disturbed? how did appearances? appear, emerge. and this is what also hegel says. the problem is not this old kantian one, what is behind appearances. the problem is precisely how can from something flat, stupid, just reality out there appearances emerge. and to grant this, i am going to the end and i claim but they told me that some tibetan buddhists have an idea that it's not just nirvana and then false appearances, that there is a deeper tension in the void in nirvana itself. it's somehow in an infinite self-contradiction. so it's a beautiful theory which finds way in, i love them, with modern european mystique by modern, i mean in the old-fashioned sense, meister eckhart and then jakob böhme. who said that? isn't this a beautiful answer? you know why god created the world? to avoid his own madness. it was kind of a work therapy, you know. so i'm looking for me, the ultimate answer is not provided by buddhism, this eternal peace or whatever. but some kind of a radical, almost pre-ontological gap disturbance, that's what comes really first. and i try to elaborate this and then my idea is that in human subjectivity, this primordial rift. gap somehow. re-emerged. but it's very speculative.
because because i read, i must admit it, just some of his popular books. his point is that space and time are themselves quantified. you cannot like in that famous paradox of infinite subdivision. no, there is a minimum quantum of space and time, and then in a very intelligent way. he tries to develop. the concept of matter. out of this primordial tension of time, space and space, and he goes even further, claiming that space has priority here. and now again, it's not up to me to what i like is dr that. the problem is not we know the basic level to what we have to reduce things and then it goes more and more complex. i think that at the ground level we get a big mess. not just because of the limit of our knowledge. that reality is in itself, i like to repeat this motif, ontologically open, not fully. constituted. and so at this level i try, it's high speculation. i don't know how it works. i try to. not the way roger penrose does. he is also one of those who try to somehow locate the. opening for human freedom already at this quantum level. but not in this no, roger penrose is more intelligent but some simplistic quantum guys simply say, oh, if there is contingency blah blah doesn't this open space for freedom, no, because never forget freedom is not contingency. freedom is free decision determination. if you just, okay, it's not contingent really, but if you leave your decision like you a threw a coin in the air which side, this is not freedom. you don't decide freely. it's just contingency and i am heavily working on that because my, okay. i will give you now a direct formula which will probably mean nothing, but that's the, i hate these words, metaphysical core of my work now. i take buddhism very seriously. but the ultimate buddhist wisdom is nirvana void. and i had wonderful debates in china, in japan with buddhists, and we ended up in a deadlock because from my standpoint, maybe i'm wrong, i appeared an idiot to them, but from my standpoint, they avoided the key question, which is the hegelian question, not can we really break out of this wheel of desire into the primordial peace void, nirvana? back how did this primordial peace get disturbed? how did appearances? appear, emerge. and this is what also hegel says. the problem is not this old kantian one, what is behind appearances. the problem is precisely how can from something flat, stupid, just reality out there appearances emerge. and to grant this, i am going to the end and i claim but they told me that some tibetan buddhists have an idea that it's not just nirvana and then false appearances, that there is a deeper tension in the void in nirvana itself. it's somehow in an infinite self-contradiction. so it's a beautiful theory which finds way in, i love them, with modern european mystique by modern, i mean in the old-fashioned sense, meister eckhart and then jakob böhme. who said that? isn't this a beautiful answer? you know why god created the world? to avoid his own madness. it was kind of a work therapy, you know. so i'm looking for me, the ultimate answer is not provided by buddhism, this eternal peace or whatever. but some kind of a radical, almost pre-ontological gap disturbance, that's what comes really first. and i try to elaborate this and then my idea is that in human subjectivity, this primordial rift. gap somehow. re-emerged. but it's very speculative.
Interviewer
so in some way, your naturalism as it were, it sees the primordial ontological state of reality finding its way all the way to the human subject.
so in some way, your naturalism as it were, it sees the primordial ontological state of reality finding its way all the way to the human subject.
Slavoj Žižek
yes, yes, yes. and i'm not saying that it can find its way only in human subjectivity. i am not in this sense anthropocentric as if, you know, the whole of the world was, this is kantian position to, that the world was really created, can this somewhere, reality was created so that we can fight our moral struggles in it.? some one sense can't be strike, only in what sense is that? we always read the past from our present. and from our human experience, we just should never forget that this was a total contingency like i believe as a good hegelian in total contingency like who knows? are we aware? i said this yesterday, people don't like to hear it, that we humans emerged out of double, triple catastrophes. can you imagine what must have happened on our earth millions of years ago for us to have deposits of coal and oil? can you even imagine these catastrophes? we now know today that the asteroid which kills dinosaurs. created the conditions for humanity. so the art for me is two. be totally open towards the future in the sense of things happen contingently. back nonetheless, not to forget that. every present moment, at least in our human universe retactively interprets the past in a teleological way. somehow, you know, it's like falling in love again, i'm sorry. you walk on a street, sorry for the tasteless example but not vulgar use you sleep on a banana peel a lady helps you to get up maybe you discover it's the love of your life. so although you know well it was a pure contingency, but the way you experience it all your life if you are a romantic like i am, you are waiting for that moment. we have to live with this contradiction. philosophy.
yes, yes, yes. and i'm not saying that it can find its way only in human subjectivity. i am not in this sense anthropocentric as if, you know, the whole of the world was, this is kantian position to, that the world was really created, can this somewhere, reality was created so that we can fight our moral struggles in it.? some one sense can't be strike, only in what sense is that? we always read the past from our present. and from our human experience, we just should never forget that this was a total contingency like i believe as a good hegelian in total contingency like who knows? are we aware? i said this yesterday, people don't like to hear it, that we humans emerged out of double, triple catastrophes. can you imagine what must have happened on our earth millions of years ago for us to have deposits of coal and oil? can you even imagine these catastrophes? we now know today that the asteroid which kills dinosaurs. created the conditions for humanity. so the art for me is two. be totally open towards the future in the sense of things happen contingently. back nonetheless, not to forget that. every present moment, at least in our human universe retactively interprets the past in a teleological way. somehow, you know, it's like falling in love again, i'm sorry. you walk on a street, sorry for the tasteless example but not vulgar use you sleep on a banana peel a lady helps you to get up maybe you discover it's the love of your life. so although you know well it was a pure contingency, but the way you experience it all your life if you are a romantic like i am, you are waiting for that moment. we have to live with this contradiction. philosophy.
Interviewer
is like falling in love.
is like falling in love.
Slavoj Žižek
absolutely, absolutely. i think philosophy is falling in love in the sense that it's you know what? harari, i would have many things to debate with him, but there i sincerely agreed with him where he said, freedom! is freedom is is never a conclusive state. now i am free. freedom is the very eternal doubt, am i free or not? and so on. and i think it's the same with love. the moment you don't doubt your love, the moment you think you know why you are in love, it's finished. so they both have this retroactivity. and what i find it so sad today. i hate it. my french friend alain badiou pointed this out. in english and in french and in some other languages, not in all, the verb, a very correct one, which uses to fall in love. and one should give to the verb fall all this radicality. you go all of a sudden, boom, you fall. what i hate so much, i don't believe it, i'm here all metaphysician with this idea, but i have different needs, maybe polyamory works you are good for this, you are good for that. no sorry this is not love. this is your different niche and so on. love is something else. it's much more non-conditional. and what i fear is that, you know, when i was young, there was a more conservative we erotic pedagogy to be. to have multiple partners was considered pathological. even psychoanalysts were usually, what are you, why are you running, if you are a man, sorry for the male chauvinist and heterosexual, why are you running from one woman to another? what are you escaping from, your mother or what? now in argentina, maybe the most psychoanalyzed country in the world when i was there, they told me, and i find this sad decadence, that it's the... opposite. if you jump from one woman to the other, for women also, if you change partners, it's considered normal. if you are faithful to your partner, they say, oh my god, this is pathological fixation. we have to analyze it and so on. i think beneath this is's not just liberation. no, it's a sad redefinition of love in the term of your needs. maybe you need more. this more of that and then maybe only different people can do it. this is not love. i don't make a compromise here. i want this passionate love but not you know where i am not romanticist. i... i understand orpheus and eurydice. you don't know it, but the german cultural critique, he is now old. 30 years ago, klaus theweleit. provided a wonderful interpretation of why does bringing her up from underworld, why does orpheus look back? it's not that because he was worried, eurydice made some sounds, he was worried. the idea is that while she was following him and he was prohibited to look at her back, when she was following him up by divine grace, he started to ask serious questions like, okay, see it's my ideal, but wait a minute, to live with this woman who will wash the dishes, all that stuff, what if i get disappointed? isn't it better to get rid of her and i retain her as an ideal, i write poems, but i can do what i want with other women so he looked back, bye-bye, i will celebrate you all my life, but i will be rid of you. that's not true love. true love is death. true love, lacan says this somewhere, doesn't idealize the partner. true love is not idealization. you expect all the small imperfections. and you love the person even more. because of this.
absolutely, absolutely. i think philosophy is falling in love in the sense that it's you know what? harari, i would have many things to debate with him, but there i sincerely agreed with him where he said, freedom! is freedom is is never a conclusive state. now i am free. freedom is the very eternal doubt, am i free or not? and so on. and i think it's the same with love. the moment you don't doubt your love, the moment you think you know why you are in love, it's finished. so they both have this retroactivity. and what i find it so sad today. i hate it. my french friend alain badiou pointed this out. in english and in french and in some other languages, not in all, the verb, a very correct one, which uses to fall in love. and one should give to the verb fall all this radicality. you go all of a sudden, boom, you fall. what i hate so much, i don't believe it, i'm here all metaphysician with this idea, but i have different needs, maybe polyamory works you are good for this, you are good for that. no sorry this is not love. this is your different niche and so on. love is something else. it's much more non-conditional. and what i fear is that, you know, when i was young, there was a more conservative we erotic pedagogy to be. to have multiple partners was considered pathological. even psychoanalysts were usually, what are you, why are you running, if you are a man, sorry for the male chauvinist and heterosexual, why are you running from one woman to another? what are you escaping from, your mother or what? now in argentina, maybe the most psychoanalyzed country in the world when i was there, they told me, and i find this sad decadence, that it's the... opposite. if you jump from one woman to the other, for women also, if you change partners, it's considered normal. if you are faithful to your partner, they say, oh my god, this is pathological fixation. we have to analyze it and so on. i think beneath this is's not just liberation. no, it's a sad redefinition of love in the term of your needs. maybe you need more. this more of that and then maybe only different people can do it. this is not love. i don't make a compromise here. i want this passionate love but not you know where i am not romanticist. i... i understand orpheus and eurydice. you don't know it, but the german cultural critique, he is now old. 30 years ago, klaus theweleit. provided a wonderful interpretation of why does bringing her up from underworld, why does orpheus look back? it's not that because he was worried, eurydice made some sounds, he was worried. the idea is that while she was following him and he was prohibited to look at her back, when she was following him up by divine grace, he started to ask serious questions like, okay, see it's my ideal, but wait a minute, to live with this woman who will wash the dishes, all that stuff, what if i get disappointed? isn't it better to get rid of her and i retain her as an ideal, i write poems, but i can do what i want with other women so he looked back, bye-bye, i will celebrate you all my life, but i will be rid of you. that's not true love. true love is death. true love, lacan says this somewhere, doesn't idealize the partner. true love is not idealization. you expect all the small imperfections. and you love the person even more. because of this.
Interviewer
sl zek.
sl zek.
Slavoj Žižek
thank you very much.
thank you very much.
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