Interview with Slavoj Zizek
Interview · Philosophy Now ·
2017-07 · 1:01:36 · 9,728 words
philosophy-generalhegel-dialecticscapitalismcommunism-socialismideologypsychoanalysisecology-climatetechnology-ai-cyberspacesexuality-genderliberalism-political-correctnesshistoryrevolution-violencescience-physicseconomics
A long conversational interview in which Žižek, asked about his fame and the role of philosophy, argues that we must return to Hegel (read against the background of Freud) to think our post-revolutionary, post-teleological situation: capitalism is disintegrating without a successor, the left lacks a positive program, and the salient question is the status of appearance/reflexivity. He develops an ontological reading of quantum incompleteness and surplus enjoyment, treats capitalism as the first order where imbalance is a solution not a problem, and ends by recommending his purely philosophical books (Ereignis, Absolute Recoil) over his political ones, which he writes in bad conscience.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 28
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The art of the right violent abstraction: ignore most features, let one feature color the whole approach, to produce something new.
His book/concept: how to break out of the transcendental horizon without falling into naive realism, via Hegel.
Badiou's term he adopts: the 20th-century urge to really change things, which produced Gulag and Holocaust, the warning against pure activism.
His anti-teleology reversal of the Marxist light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel metaphor: the light is an oncoming train, history is open.
as “Left Fukuyamaists”
His ironic name for the majority left who still accept liberal democracy and capitalism as the only game in town, merely wanting more solidarity.
The ideal country today: fully integrated into the global market while ideologically ethnocentric, China, India, Putin, Trump's Saudi deal all play this.
as “commons”
Marx's commons: ecology, intellectual property, biogenetics, shared substance that should not be left to the market.
as “communism as the name of the problem”
Communism is not a solution but the name for the problem of the commons today; the solution still has to be invented.
Foucault's term for the discursive horizon; Žižek criticizes it as blocking naive ontological questions.
Big ontological questions (origin of universe, free will) must return in a non-naive way after the transcendental-linguistic turn.
His label for the 20th-century move that prohibited naive ontological questions and reduced philosophy to reflecting on the horizon of understanding.
Hegel's trick as read through Christianity: the gap/separation from God is transposed into God himself, so the obstacle is part of the thing.
Not used by name but operative: Christianity/Hegel transposes separation into God himself rather than reaching a unity above the gap.
as “negativity inscribed into the absolute”
Not a unity above the gap, but seeing how what you experience as separation is a negativity already inscribed into the absolute itself.
Hegel's negativity: reality is not flat but appears to itself because of a gap inscribed into the absolute itself.
The salient philosophical question of our time: not whether we can reach reality, but how reality can appear to itself, the miracle of negativity.
as “ontological incompleteness of reality”
Reality is not fully constituted out there; it is structured around a gap, the lesson he draws from quantum physics and reads into Hegel.
as “materialism”
For Žižek: thinking the incompleteness of reality without a creator; reality itself is structured around a gap, not merely unknown.
as “transcendentalism”
The Kantian move of restricting philosophy to the horizon of understanding/subjectivity; Žižek wants to break out of it without falling into naive realism.
His book on the empty spaces (spandrels) between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the critique of political economy.
as “transfunctional spandrel”
Every field needs an empty place, a spandrel, that can be put to transfunctional use; structure is constitutively incomplete.
Against Jung, Freud's unconscious is purely phenomenal, not a substantial depth, there is no iceberg-tip metaphor.
Feminine jouissance from Lacan's Encore, tied to the logical paradoxes of sexuation and to Kantian antinomies.
Lacan's Encore formulas of masculine/feminine sexuality; Žižek and Copjec map them onto Kant's mathematical/dynamic antinomies.
as “antinomies”
Kantian antinomies; Žižek follows Hegel in claiming they concern the thing itself, not just our knowledge, the world is in itself antinomic.
Marx's surplus value; Žižek reads it as parallel to surplus enjoyment, the secondary surplus is the very motive of the system.
The Lacanian surplus twist that converts pleasure into enjoyment; the added obstacle that retroactively conditions the whole.
as “capitalism as ontological phenomenon”
Capitalism is the first social order where imbalance is not a problem but a solution, an ontological, not merely economic, fact.
Stories he reaches for 9
His friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, in Fukushima two days after the tsunami, told him the Japanese government briefly panicked that radiation would force evacuating the entire Tokyo area, with nowhere for those people to go, showing the need for transnational cooperation.
“they thought that the radiation will be so strong that they have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area”
Malcolm X is Žižek's hero because the X marks having no ethnic substance to return to, and that deprivation is the chance for a new, more authentic universality.
“this X means we have no substance particular way of life to which we can return”
Hawking no longer needs his finger to move his wheelchair forward, he thinks it forward, illustrating how brains can be directly wired to a PC, changing the basic definition of what a human is.
“Stephen Hawking no longer needs his finger he thinks forward his wheelchair moves forward”
Against Marxist teleology: when leftists see light at the end of the tunnel, Žižek says it is the light of an oncoming train, history is open and dangerous.
“it's the light of another train coming against us”
At Occupy in New York and Frankfurt Žižek kept asking protesters the stupid question 'what do you want?', paraphrasing Freud's 'Was will das Weib', and nobody could answer.
“I insistent asking them a stupid question what do you want”
At the Berlin Sportpalast in early 1943 Goebbels promises only more total suffering, and the crowd cries yes, an illustration of enjoyment in pain and the surplus twist in pleasure.
“do you want a Krieg a war which will be so total that you cannot even imagine how much you will suffer and people cry yes”
Analyzing a typical heterosexual hardcore scene with a friend, Žižek concludes the viewer does not identify with the penetrating man but with himself as viewer, seeking confirmation that the woman enjoys, the structure of minimal reflexivity.
“you don't identify with the man you identify with yourself as a viewer”
The famous line from the Philosophy of Right: the owl of Minerva takes flight only at dusk, a social-historical order can only be grasped once its time is over, which also holds for Hegel's own Philosophy of Right.
“the owl of Minerva takes off in the evening”
Bayard's book seriously (not just ironically) shows that the best books on certain authors were written by people who hadn't read everything, a deep Hegelian point about dialectical violent abstraction.
“How to Talk About Books That You Haven't Read”
Works invoked 19
Hegel; Žižek suspects people don't really read it, but thinks that with the Phenomenology it may matter less than the Logic.
Less Than Nothing book
His crazy Bible-length book; sold well in English and was reprinted three times in Korea, giving him hope that the public is not to be underestimated.
Philosophy of Right book
Hegel; the owl of Minerva passage is read as painting a world whose time had passed, not a conservative program for society.
Lukács's Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein; one of the greatest books of the 20th century, though its self-transparent revolutionary subject is what Žižek rejects.
Science of Logic book
Hegel's Logic; Žižek has doubts whether people really read it.
Absolute Recoil book
At gunpoint he would call it his best book; its first part works on breaking out of the transcendental horizon without falling into naive realism.
One of his political books, written in bad conscience, somebody else should have been doing it.
Pierre Bayard; praised as serious French-style proof that the best commentaries are often by non-complete readers, a deep Hegelian point.
A Theory of Justice book
Rawls; the paradigmatic unread bestseller, Žižek knows New York Rawls scholars who privately admit they didn't read it, and he thinks it can be condensed to a few pages.
Spheres book
Sloterdijk; a famous book people don't really read.
Sloterdijk; comes to the same conclusion that the era of nation-states and self-sacrifice-for-country is over.
Making It Explicit book
Brandom; listed among the famous unread philosophical books.
Seminar Encore book
Lacan; source of the formulas of sexuation and feminine jouissance, which Žižek and Copjec map onto Kant's antinomies.
Symphony No. 14 artwork
Shostakovich; an openly pessimist symphony about death that could not be performed in his lifetime, used to argue for the tragic dimension even in progressive processes.
Theses on Feuerbach essay
Marx; Žižek proposes that the thesis for our time should be that philosophers have tried to change too much, maybe now is the time to step back and interpret.
The new book discussed; explores the empty spaces (spandrels) between philosophy, psychoanalysis and the critique of political economy.
Habermas; cited as a mega unread bestseller.
Ereignis book
His short philosophical book on the Heideggerian event, recommended as the entry point to his work; works through Plato-Descartes-Hegel as philosophers of an event.
Totaler Krieg speech other
Goebbels's 1943 Sportpalast speech; deployed as the terrifying illustration of surplus enjoyment in pain, promising only more suffering that the crowd cheers.
People invoked 37
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Friend, an intelligent theorist of catastrophes; told him the Fukushima/Tokyo evacuation panic story.
Robert Pippin positive
Friend with whom he agrees that the big thing in the history of philosophy is still the Kant-Hegel axis.
Making It Explicit listed among the famous unread philosophical books.
Pierre Bayard positive
Author of How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, used to argue the deep Hegelian point that the best commentaries are often by non-complete readers.
Vladimir Lenin negative
Cited as the naive materialist who thought reality is out there fully real and we just cannot get to know it.
Georg Lukács positive
Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein is one of the greatest books of the 20th century, though its self-transparent revolutionary subject is what Žižek rejects.
Jacques Lacan positive
Uses Lacan strictly as a means to reinterpret Hegel; deploys the Encore formulas of sexuation and surplus enjoyment.
John Rawls negative
A Theory of Justice as the paradigmatic great book people buy and cite without reading; Žižek claims it can be condensed to a few pages without loss.
Stephen Hawking negative
Cited for 'philosophy is dead' and for the brain-wired wheelchair; Žižek concedes Hawking is right that science took some former philosophical questions but denies philosophy disappears.
Stephen Jay Gould positive
Source of the 'spandrel' concept central to the new book; Gould's radical thesis that adaptation works through byproducts, including human language.
Gilles Deleuze positive
Not a Deleuzian, but follows Deleuze's claim that raising the right questions matters more than giving the right answers.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Target of his irony: the biggest irony is that the most efficient managers of global capitalism today are Communists; once told Fukuyama this and Fukuyama laughed.
Donald Trump negative
A boring idiot as a person; publishers push Žižek to write a bestseller on him. His Saudi deal exemplifies the partial-culture logic.
Wolfgang Streeck positive
The German sociologist-economist who said the pessimist thing: capitalism is just disintegrating, with no progressive force waiting to take over.
Alain Badiou positive
Friend; borrows his term 'passion of the real' to characterize the catastrophic 20th-century urge to really change things.
Despised, but like Zuckerberg he also talks about capitalism's approaching end.
His after-the-fact analysis of why the revolution went wrong is cited as typical of the best Marxist books.
Despised, but even he talks about capitalism's approaching end.
Werner Heisenberg negative
Held only an epistemological reading of his uncertainty principle, which Bohr criticized; Žižek sides with Bohr against him.
The Totaler Krieg speech is used as a terrifying example of surplus enjoyment, promising only more suffering that the crowd cheers.
Malcolm X positive
His hero; the X marks having no ethnic substance to return to, which is the chance for a new more authentic universality.
Michel Foucault negative
Cited as emblem of the transcendental-epistemic closure: a Foucauldian would answer an ontological question by analyzing the discursive field that lets it arise.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Friend, a right-winger but provocative; his Spheres and Was geschah im Jahrhundert? are cited favorably, and he agrees the era of nation-states is over.
Martin Heidegger positive
His short book Ereignis works through the Heideggerian dimensions of the event.
Joan Copjec positive
Good friend who originally had the idea mapping Lacan's formulas of sexuation onto Kant's mathematical/dynamic antinomies.
Named together with the new materialists as trying to return to big ontological questions, which Žižek endorses in principle.
Niels Bohr positive
Bohr against Heisenberg: uncertainty is in the thing itself, particles do not simultaneously have velocity and position, Žižek's ally for an ontological reading.
Theory of Communicative Action listed among the mega unread bestsellers.
Dmitri Shostakovich positive
His 14th Symphony, openly pessimist about death, is used to argue for introducing the tragic, non-transparent dimension even into progressive communist processes.
Plato positive
One of the three greatest philosophers (with Descartes and Hegel) because each defines the whole posterity as a history of criticism of them.
Mentions that Chomsky wrote something about him that hurt him a little, but moves on.
Karl Marx negative
Still a Marxist in a limited sense, but holds that Marx following Feuerbach is a philosophical regression with regard to Hegel and that Marx's dream of communism was not radical enough.
René Descartes positive
One of the three greatest; the cogito is not thinking substance but a pure self-relating event of thinking.
Sigmund Freud positive
Freud is not a simple positive naturalist; the Freudian philosophical stance fits Kantian/German-idealism and the unconscious is purely phenomenal, not substantial.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
The central figure of the talk; Žižek claims we have not moved beyond Hegel and uses him to read quantum physics, Christianity, surplus enjoyment and capitalism.
Immanuel Kant positive
Central to the sexuation/antinomy project; Žižek reads Kantian antinomies as concerning the thing itself, following Hegel's critique that Kant was 'too tender towards things'.
Jean-Paul Sartre positive
Borrows Sartre's 'mauvaise foi' (bad conscience) to describe how he writes his political books.
What it argues
Fame as a mechanism to avoid engaging seriously with his workHegel's materialism and the owl of Minerva as a post-revolutionary stanceThe left's lack of a positive global alternativeCapitalism disintegrating without a successor forceThe commons as the problem whose name is communismPolitical correctness presupposes a permanently-victimized subjectAppearance and reflexivity as the salient philosophical questionOntological incompleteness of reality (quantum + Hegel)Surplus enjoyment: the obstacle as the retroactive condition of harmonyPure philosophical work versus political writing done in bad conscience
Dialectical moves 12
“the true miracle of negativity is how come reality is not just flat reality — how can reality appear to itself”
Hegel's problem is the opposite of Kant's: appearance is the miracle, not an obstacle to reaching reality.
“the problem itself is its own solution — the gap/separation is inscribed into the absolute itself”
Christianity/Hegel: do not seek unity above the gap; transpose the separation into God himself.
“an obstacle far from blocking the thing conditions it and keeps you moving”
Surplus enjoyment: the very surplus that disturbs harmony is its retroactive condition.
“capitalism is the first order where imbalance is not a problem, it is a solution”
What Marxists counted on as capitalism's crisis is its constitutive motor.
“communism is not a solution but the name of the problem today”
Reverses the usual Marxist hope: communism names the unresolved problem of the commons, not an answer.
“the light at the end of the tunnel is the light of another train coming against us”
Inverts the Marxist teleology metaphor: the promised light is an oncoming threat, history is open.
“the true step beyond racism is not to change the language but to use the same language in a different ironic non-racist way”
Against PC: the genuine sublation keeps the form and changes the subjective relation to it.
“Kant was too tender towards things — antinomies are in the thing itself, not only in our knowledge”
Hegel's critique of Kant: the contradiction is ontological, not merely epistemological.
“you don't identify with the man, you identify with yourself as a viewer”
Pornography reverses the assumed objectification: the woman is the subject, the man is the instrument, the viewer seeks confirmation of her enjoyment.
“the return is not to roots but to a new, even more authentic universality born of deprivation”
Malcolm X's X: having no ethnic substance to return to is the chance for a higher universality.
“we with quantum physics caught God with his pants down — reality is incomplete without a creator”
Materialist reversal: ontological incompleteness needs no God, just a reality structured around a gap.
“behind the vulgar jokes I am a very traditional philosopher — I even use Lacan as a means to reinterpret Hegel”
Reverses the reception: the clown surface masks a traditional Kant-Hegel philosophical project.
Claims 25
asserts
His fame functions mainly to keep people at a distance and stop them engaging seriously with what he is doing.fame/reception
asserts
Hegel is in a subtle way more materialist than Marx.Hegel vs Marx materialism
reframes
Hegel's Philosophy of Right paints a world whose time had already passed, not a program for how society should look.Hegel's alleged conservatism
asserts
Our situation is more Hegelian (post-revolutionary, keeping a failed legacy alive) than Marxist (teleological, expecting proletarian revolution).historical situation Hegel/Marx
asserts
The contemporary left protests without a positive program — Occupy Wall Street could not answer the question 'what do you want?'contemporary left
asserts
Capitalism is approaching its limit and disintegrating, but without a more progressive force waiting to take over.capitalism's crisis
asserts
The ideal country today is fully integrated into the global market while ideologically ethnocentric — Trump, China, Modi, Putin all play this game.global market + nationalism
asserts
We must fight global capitalism on its own terms with a new universal global vision, not retreat into local indigenous traditions.anti-capitalism strategy
asserts
British colonization reinforced rather than abolished the traditional Indian caste system — capitalism keeps local cultures, it does not homogenize them.capitalism and local culture
reframes
Robotization causing unemployment should be welcomed as the best news, not feared; the irrational fear exposes our irrational society.automation and labor
reframes
Political correctness misfires because the true step beyond racism is to use the same language in a different ironic non-racist way, not to change the language.PC and racism
asserts
Political correctness silently presupposes a subject that is always already a potential victim — we are all threatened.PC's implicit anthropology
rejects
Philosophy is not dead; positive natural science cannot do the entire job, and there is still work for philosophy to do.Hawking's 'philosophy is dead'
asserts
We must return to big ontological questions in a non-naive, non-naive-realist way, breaking out of the transcendental reflexive closure.philosophy's task
reframes
Hegel's problem is the opposite of Kant's: not can we reach reality, but how must reality be structured so that subjective appearance can emerge from it.appearance and thing-in-itself
asserts
Quantum measurement partially constitutes reality — uncertainty is in the thing itself, not merely epistemological (Bohr against Heisenberg).quantum and materialism
reframes
In hardcore pornography the viewer identifies with himself as viewer seeking confirmation that the woman enjoys, not with the penetrating man.pornography and the structure of appearance
asserts
The surplus obstacle is the retroactive condition of harmony — take away the surplus and you lose the perfection too.surplus enjoyment
asserts
Capitalism is the first and only social order in history where imbalance is not a problem but a solution.capitalism as ontological phenomenon
asserts
All revolutions, including proletarian ones, are non-transparent and produce results their actors do not dominate — we never know what we are doing.revolution and the act
asserts
Philosophically, Marx (following Feuerbach) is a regression with regard to Hegel.Marx vs Hegel philosophically
asserts
Only by reading psychoanalysis through German idealism can we grasp what the psychoanalytic revolution amounts to, and only re-reading German idealism through Freud keeps that tradition alive.Freud and German idealism
asserts
Theory is needed today more than ever because practice is blind without it; the history of the left is one of catastrophic failures analyzed only after the fact.theory and practice
asserts
His political books are written in bad conscience — his heart is really only in the more purely philosophical books.his own political vs philosophical work
asserts
The best books on certain authors are written by people who did not read all of it; knowing too much just confuses you.reading and dialectical abstraction
Quotes 18
“my so-called fame is basically just a way to keep me at a distance not to engage seriously with what I'm doing”Slavoj Žižek · fame as distance
“the art of dialectics is the right violent abstraction”Slavoj Žižek · dialectical method
“it's the light of another train coming against us”Slavoj Žižek · anti-teleology
“communism is for me not a solution but the name of the problem today”Slavoj Žižek · communism reframed
“the true step beyond racism is not to change the language... but to use the same language but in a different ironic non-racist way”Slavoj Žižek · PC critique
“an obstacle far from blocking the thing conditions it and keeps you moving”Slavoj Žižek · surplus enjoyment / obstacle as condition
“it's the first social order and the only in the history of humanity where imbalance is not a problem it's a solution”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism as ontological
“we never know what we are doing the act is by definition displaced”Slavoj Žižek · opacity of the act
“the problem itself is its own solution”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel/Christianity
“the true miracle that's the miracle of negativity is how come that reality is not just flat reality how can reality appear to itself”Slavoj Žižek · status of appearance
“we with quantum physics we as it were caught God with his pants down”Slavoj Žižek · quantum incompleteness
“Kant was too tender towards things”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel's critique of Kant on antinomies
“you don't identify with the man you identify with yourself as a viewer”Slavoj Žižek · pornography and reflexivity
“my heart really is only in this more purely philosophical books”Slavoj Žižek · self-assessment
“I cheat I copy myself all the time”Slavoj Žižek · his productivity
“don't call me professor if you don't want me to kill you”Slavoj Žižek · distrust of titles
“I'm absolutely opposed to this bullshit of relying on local indigenous traditions to fight global capitalism”Slavoj Žižek · anti-localism
“practice is blind without theory we need theory today more than ever”Slavoj Žižek · theory and practice
Transcript 86 turns
Slavoj Žižek
No we didn't oh yes no no there's no no no no I don't worry but I'm an obsessive neurotic we're not like that at all no no I mean I'm an obsessive neurotic so I worry about others do you have an alarm clock or what see this is typical of me I worry about other people now I will all the time think I spoke too long so I will ruin your child will be there alone you will not pick him up it's
No we didn't oh yes no no there's no no no no I don't worry but I'm an obsessive neurotic we're not like that at all no no I mean I'm an obsessive neurotic so I worry about others do you have an alarm clock or what see this is typical of me I worry about other people now I will all the time think I spoke too long so I will ruin your child will be there alone you will not pick him up it's
unknown
fine it will be yes
fine it will be yes
Slavoj Žižek
ah you will be the sorry for the expression the nasty
ah you will be the sorry for the expression the nasty
unknown
bitch exactly the problem I carry some
bitch exactly the problem I carry some
Slavoj Žižek
gentle hints like that okay
gentle hints like that okay
unknown
right okay so Professor Žižek
right okay so Professor Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
don't call me professor if you don't want me to kill you oh right okay so Slavoj Žižek whatever don't call me I really I feel so uneasy when somebody calls me professor why is that but you are a professor why is that a problem I have deep problems distrust with any official titles and so on but I'm not proud of it it makes life difficult you know I automatically when somebody called me with a professor whatever I I take it automatically as an irony oh no no but it isn't but
don't call me professor if you don't want me to kill you oh right okay so Slavoj Žižek whatever don't call me I really I feel so uneasy when somebody calls me professor why is that but you are a professor why is that a problem I have deep problems distrust with any official titles and so on but I'm not proud of it it makes life difficult you know I automatically when somebody called me with a professor whatever I I take it automatically as an irony oh no no but it isn't but
unknown
you've earned it that's the thing it's
you've earned it that's the thing it's
Slavoj Žižek
not like an inherited title it's not like you're a lord or something look at what Chomsky wrote about me and so on and said I was a little bit hurt but okay sorry I talk too much no no you're doing very well but
not like an inherited title it's not like you're a lord or something look at what Chomsky wrote about me and so on and said I was a little bit hurt but okay sorry I talk too much no no you're doing very well but
unknown
you know the thing the most obvious fact about you is that you are not just a philosopher but you're a famous philosopher and that's kind of a rare thing right so I'm going to ask you about the philosopher thing in a bit but but I'd like to find out about about what does it mean to you that that you're famous you know is is fame
you know the thing the most obvious fact about you is that you are not just a philosopher but you're a famous philosopher and that's kind of a rare thing right so I'm going to ask you about the philosopher thing in a bit but but I'd like to find out about about what does it mean to you that that you're famous you know is is fame
Slavoj Žižek
somehow important first this fame is very relative I have as you know maybe better than me many enemies people who think that I'm just a clown people who think that beneath my amusing nature there is some evil proto-fascist or Stalinist whatever dimension and so on so I think my so-called fame is basically just a way to keep me at a distance not to engage seriously with what I'm doing I seriously think this because you know this fame in conversation as far as I can guess functions like this oh he's an interesting guy don't take him too seriously but go to one of his talks you will be amused and so on you know so I'm very proud what I'm really proud of is that it's not limited to this for example you know my crazy book the length of the Bible almost Less Than Nothing yes yes you know that it's sold very well over in English in Korea it was reprinted three times wow I don't know but it gives me hope that nonetheless don't underestimate the public the publishers themselves now they are putting pressure on me why don't you write a nice bestseller on Donald Trump why should I he's not interesting at all as a person he's a boring idiot and so on but but
somehow important first this fame is very relative I have as you know maybe better than me many enemies people who think that I'm just a clown people who think that beneath my amusing nature there is some evil proto-fascist or Stalinist whatever dimension and so on so I think my so-called fame is basically just a way to keep me at a distance not to engage seriously with what I'm doing I seriously think this because you know this fame in conversation as far as I can guess functions like this oh he's an interesting guy don't take him too seriously but go to one of his talks you will be amused and so on you know so I'm very proud what I'm really proud of is that it's not limited to this for example you know my crazy book the length of the Bible almost Less Than Nothing yes yes you know that it's sold very well over in English in Korea it was reprinted three times wow I don't know but it gives me hope that nonetheless don't underestimate the public the publishers themselves now they are putting pressure on me why don't you write a nice bestseller on Donald Trump why should I he's not interesting at all as a person he's a boring idiot and so on but but
unknown
are you worried about your books becoming so sort of coffee table books you know people buy them but they don't actually read them
are you worried about your books becoming so sort of coffee table books you know people buy them but they don't actually read them
Slavoj Žižek
oh I am with with but there is a big philosophical tradition now you started another topic that interests me you know that they are I wouldn't say coffee table book but I would characterize them as big bestsellers classics people buy them nobody really reads them and I will give you a list John Rawls A Theory of Justice I know in New York people who wrote a book on Rawls and privately they admitted to me they didn't read the book and I think they're right because unfortunately Rawls the way he writes you really can condense it into like pages and you don't lose a lot Habermas Theory of Communicative Action oh yeah yeah it's mega let's go on he's my friend although a right-winger but he's provocative I like him Peter Sloterdijk his Spheres do you think people really read them and ah Robert Brandom Making It Explicit all these are famous books reprinted all the time people people don't read them and I have some suspicions that it's up to a point similar even with Hegel Phenomenology maybe but with Logic you know I have doubts if people really read it but in a way I don't think it matters here is my I claim Hegelian view did you read a wonderful book by a French author now it's translated Pierre Bayard B-A-Y-A-R-D it's called How to Talk About Books That You Haven't Read and the beauty is that in the best French style it's not just irony he takes it seriously and proves precisely apropos of Joyce and some others that the best books on certain authors because he went to check it up with authors I mean who wrote about this writer are written by guys who didn't read all of it he goes through Shakespeare people who don't sometimes and that's a deep dialectical Hegelian view Hegel is not a holist in the sense you have to know all aspects no the art of dialectics is the right violent abstraction you say ignore all that focus on one feature and then let this one feature color your entire approach this is the only way to produce something really new so I claim that's the paradox of philosophy you don't have to read it all if you know too much you just get confused
oh I am with with but there is a big philosophical tradition now you started another topic that interests me you know that they are I wouldn't say coffee table book but I would characterize them as big bestsellers classics people buy them nobody really reads them and I will give you a list John Rawls A Theory of Justice I know in New York people who wrote a book on Rawls and privately they admitted to me they didn't read the book and I think they're right because unfortunately Rawls the way he writes you really can condense it into like pages and you don't lose a lot Habermas Theory of Communicative Action oh yeah yeah it's mega let's go on he's my friend although a right-winger but he's provocative I like him Peter Sloterdijk his Spheres do you think people really read them and ah Robert Brandom Making It Explicit all these are famous books reprinted all the time people people don't read them and I have some suspicions that it's up to a point similar even with Hegel Phenomenology maybe but with Logic you know I have doubts if people really read it but in a way I don't think it matters here is my I claim Hegelian view did you read a wonderful book by a French author now it's translated Pierre Bayard B-A-Y-A-R-D it's called How to Talk About Books That You Haven't Read and the beauty is that in the best French style it's not just irony he takes it seriously and proves precisely apropos of Joyce and some others that the best books on certain authors because he went to check it up with authors I mean who wrote about this writer are written by guys who didn't read all of it he goes through Shakespeare people who don't sometimes and that's a deep dialectical Hegelian view Hegel is not a holist in the sense you have to know all aspects no the art of dialectics is the right violent abstraction you say ignore all that focus on one feature and then let this one feature color your entire approach this is the only way to produce something really new so I claim that's the paradox of philosophy you don't have to read it all if you know too much you just get confused
unknown
but but so so what about you know sort of people buying your books and perhaps not reading them do you nonetheless sort of see this as a good sign in the sense that people are kind of interested in philosophy and if we get to philosophy
but but so so what about you know sort of people buying your books and perhaps not reading them do you nonetheless sort of see this as a good sign in the sense that people are kind of interested in philosophy and if we get to philosophy
Slavoj Žižek
yes because I nonetheless my secret hope is that there is a certain strata of people who are looking for just jokes so I got some not exactly hate mail but after this series of my latest more philosophical books like Absolute Recoil which if you ask me at a gun point I think that's my sorry to say this I even find it too arrogant myself my best book Absolute Recoil but I got hate mail like where are the jokes not enough jokes and so on but you know what's the secret here I will tell you some people who accused me that behind my vulgar jokes appearances that I'm a very traditional even philosopher in some sense they are right and I'm returning to that don't you see that behind all my jokes and so on even the reason I even use Lacan is strictly as a means to reinterpret Hegel I'm very old-fashioned here my friend we don't think the same but we have good relations Robert Pippin once we talked and came to the same conclusion still it's a very traditional conclusion that still the big thing in history of philosophy is Kant-Hegel all these questions was the move from Kant to Fichte legitimate what happened with Hegel is he a I I I can see that that's really interesting especially for someone who's also interested in the history of philosophy of course you know at Philosophy Now we're interested in what philosophy can do in our time so what do you think philosophy can or should do in our time and is Hegel particularly significant what is it that you want more than anything absolutely I even to provoke to provoke
yes because I nonetheless my secret hope is that there is a certain strata of people who are looking for just jokes so I got some not exactly hate mail but after this series of my latest more philosophical books like Absolute Recoil which if you ask me at a gun point I think that's my sorry to say this I even find it too arrogant myself my best book Absolute Recoil but I got hate mail like where are the jokes not enough jokes and so on but you know what's the secret here I will tell you some people who accused me that behind my vulgar jokes appearances that I'm a very traditional even philosopher in some sense they are right and I'm returning to that don't you see that behind all my jokes and so on even the reason I even use Lacan is strictly as a means to reinterpret Hegel I'm very old-fashioned here my friend we don't think the same but we have good relations Robert Pippin once we talked and came to the same conclusion still it's a very traditional conclusion that still the big thing in history of philosophy is Kant-Hegel all these questions was the move from Kant to Fichte legitimate what happened with Hegel is he a I I I can see that that's really interesting especially for someone who's also interested in the history of philosophy of course you know at Philosophy Now we're interested in what philosophy can do in our time so what do you think philosophy can or should do in our time and is Hegel particularly significant what is it that you want more than anything absolutely I even to provoke to provoke
unknown
my Marxist friends you know I although I consider myself some kind of a Marxist I like to say that the Thesis on Feuerbach for our time should be philosophers and others have tried to change too much things in the 20th century 20th century they tried to do it what my friend Alain Badiou calls passion of the real let's really change thing the result were to put it mildly Gulag Holocaust not exactly the best no so maybe the time today is to not try to change but step back and precisely to
my Marxist friends you know I although I consider myself some kind of a Marxist I like to say that the Thesis on Feuerbach for our time should be philosophers and others have tried to change too much things in the 20th century 20th century they tried to do it what my friend Alain Badiou calls passion of the real let's really change thing the result were to put it mildly Gulag Holocaust not exactly the best no so maybe the time today is to not try to change but step back and precisely to
Slavoj Žižek
interpret to think because even
interpret to think because even
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at this level would you agree
at this level would you agree
Slavoj Žižek
with it I think what we need today is a materialist reversal of Marx back to Hegel Hegel is in a subtle way much more materialist you know which Hegel I like when Hegel when he says you know the one of the most famous passages from his Philosophy of Right the owl of Minerva takes off in the evening yes yes but you know that this simple sentence belies the usual claim Hegel was a conservative who in his Philosophy of Right painted a almost proto-fascist how do you call it Stände estates as picture of society so
with it I think what we need today is a materialist reversal of Marx back to Hegel Hegel is in a subtle way much more materialist you know which Hegel I like when Hegel when he says you know the one of the most famous passages from his Philosophy of Right the owl of Minerva takes off in the evening yes yes but you know that this simple sentence belies the usual claim Hegel was a conservative who in his Philosophy of Right painted a almost proto-fascist how do you call it Stände estates as picture of society so
unknown
what do you think it means I think it means something different when Hegel
what do you think it means I think it means something different when Hegel
Slavoj Žižek
says a certain social order historical order can only be grasped when its time is over that's the point no but do you think really Hegel was such an idiot that he didn't know that the same must hold for his Philosophy of Right the message he doesn't bring in his Philosophy of Right a system of how our society should look he paints a certain world whose time has passed and he knew it but where I think Hegel is actual so that I don't lose my thread is here our situation is much more Hegel's than Marx's Marx still believed in some kind of minimal teleology you know like like we are at the crucial point there is a chance if not necessity of proletarian revolution universal redemption while Hegel perceived his situation as a post-revolutionary one the big event happened French Revolution in some sense it went wrong but Hegel is here truly progressive the whole problem of his thought is not to say French Revolution was a bullshit let's return to tradition but how to repeat it how to keep in spite of some catastrophic outcomes the legacy alive and I think our situation is the same 20th century attempts at radical emancipation the communism we got there they failed the problem is how to yeah how to keep that legacy alive we have to abandon all that Marxist simple metaphorics we are riding the train of history and there is you know I always use these metaphors ironically Marxists liked to say even if times are dark we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and you know with which metaphor I always yes it is but it's the light of another train coming against us you know so that's our situation and as Hegel knew it it's open we cannot make any plans Hegel this is very Hegelian but the light could be anything I mean it doesn't have to be another train it could really be the light at the end of the tunnel couldn't it yes but that's why the beginning is to get rid of
says a certain social order historical order can only be grasped when its time is over that's the point no but do you think really Hegel was such an idiot that he didn't know that the same must hold for his Philosophy of Right the message he doesn't bring in his Philosophy of Right a system of how our society should look he paints a certain world whose time has passed and he knew it but where I think Hegel is actual so that I don't lose my thread is here our situation is much more Hegel's than Marx's Marx still believed in some kind of minimal teleology you know like like we are at the crucial point there is a chance if not necessity of proletarian revolution universal redemption while Hegel perceived his situation as a post-revolutionary one the big event happened French Revolution in some sense it went wrong but Hegel is here truly progressive the whole problem of his thought is not to say French Revolution was a bullshit let's return to tradition but how to repeat it how to keep in spite of some catastrophic outcomes the legacy alive and I think our situation is the same 20th century attempts at radical emancipation the communism we got there they failed the problem is how to yeah how to keep that legacy alive we have to abandon all that Marxist simple metaphorics we are riding the train of history and there is you know I always use these metaphors ironically Marxists liked to say even if times are dark we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and you know with which metaphor I always yes it is but it's the light of another train coming against us you know so that's our situation and as Hegel knew it it's open we cannot make any plans Hegel this is very Hegelian but the light could be anything I mean it doesn't have to be another train it could really be the light at the end of the tunnel couldn't it yes but that's why the beginning is to get rid of
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false hopes even the left today is mostly we have the majority
false hopes even the left today is mostly we have the majority
Slavoj Žižek
which I ironically call them this is still after Fukuyama Left Fukuyamaists they are most they basically accept liberal democracy and some type of capitalism are the only game in town so let's just get it better more solidarity healthcare gay marriages whatever
which I ironically call them this is still after Fukuyama Left Fukuyamaists they are most they basically accept liberal democracy and some type of capitalism are the only game in town so let's just get it better more solidarity healthcare gay marriages whatever
unknown
you want the big question is then we have some some the biggest irony this is my answer to Fukuyama once I met him I told him this he laughed
you want the big question is then we have some some the biggest irony this is my answer to Fukuyama once I met him I told him this he laughed
Slavoj Žižek
is that okay let's say you are right capitalism won but isn't the irony that today now in the most efficient managers of global capitalism are Communists who are still in power you know so I think that we have finally to accept that 20th century is over the way we did it in 20th century either social democratic welfare state hardline real socialism or even more that's my what I hate this type any dreams which are coming alive now on some kind of non-representative direct democracy yes I mean isn't there also also isn't there a problem of of labels so when when you say capitalism it's actually you know sort of driven forward by Communists who are still somehow in power but but you know there's a problem of labels right what do we mean exactly by capitalism which takes many many forms and of course Communists who play capitalism aren't really Communists although they you know might have called themselves that so we've got a problem with those labels okay in
is that okay let's say you are right capitalism won but isn't the irony that today now in the most efficient managers of global capitalism are Communists who are still in power you know so I think that we have finally to accept that 20th century is over the way we did it in 20th century either social democratic welfare state hardline real socialism or even more that's my what I hate this type any dreams which are coming alive now on some kind of non-representative direct democracy yes I mean isn't there also also isn't there a problem of of labels so when when you say capitalism it's actually you know sort of driven forward by Communists who are still somehow in power but but you know there's a problem of labels right what do we mean exactly by capitalism which takes many many forms and of course Communists who play capitalism aren't really Communists although they you know might have called themselves that so we've got a problem with those labels okay in
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what
what
Slavoj Žižek
sense I'm still a Communist just in a very limited sense first isn't there aren't we today witnessing a great irony the left whatever remains of the left obviously is not able to offer an actual feasible global alternative like whenever the left is protests I remember when there was Occupy Wall Street I was with them in New York in Frankfurt and I insistent asking them a stupid question what do you want I told them Freud asked the wrong question Was will das Weib I claim what do you want what do you want and they they nobody gave me the answer and I think that precisely because they don't know what they want the left takes escape into moralism the excesses of political correctness and so on and so on so my problem is this one on the one hand we have all these protests which don't have a clear idea on the other hand don't we get clear signs all around that capitalism at least the way we know it is approaching an end look at maybe we can only hope yeah look at economy sorry look at ecology it's obvious that although capitalism can do something through taxes regulation it's not enough when there is a big catastrophe you need larger actions look at here I agree with Fukuyama look at the dark potentials of biogenetics our brains can already be and that's the philosophical problem even our brains can already be directly wired connected with a PC it gives us magical power you can already do it do you know that Stephen Hawking no longer needs his finger he thinks forward his wheelchair moves forward sure sure sure but at the same time it goes the other way I think for example this is a thing the possibility of directly wiring our brain which will change the very basic definition of what a human being is my god so so we're back with labels even with the label of human being with labor you know what's the
sense I'm still a Communist just in a very limited sense first isn't there aren't we today witnessing a great irony the left whatever remains of the left obviously is not able to offer an actual feasible global alternative like whenever the left is protests I remember when there was Occupy Wall Street I was with them in New York in Frankfurt and I insistent asking them a stupid question what do you want I told them Freud asked the wrong question Was will das Weib I claim what do you want what do you want and they they nobody gave me the answer and I think that precisely because they don't know what they want the left takes escape into moralism the excesses of political correctness and so on and so on so my problem is this one on the one hand we have all these protests which don't have a clear idea on the other hand don't we get clear signs all around that capitalism at least the way we know it is approaching an end look at maybe we can only hope yeah look at economy sorry look at ecology it's obvious that although capitalism can do something through taxes regulation it's not enough when there is a big catastrophe you need larger actions look at here I agree with Fukuyama look at the dark potentials of biogenetics our brains can already be and that's the philosophical problem even our brains can already be directly wired connected with a PC it gives us magical power you can already do it do you know that Stephen Hawking no longer needs his finger he thinks forward his wheelchair moves forward sure sure sure but at the same time it goes the other way I think for example this is a thing the possibility of directly wiring our brain which will change the very basic definition of what a human being is my god so so we're back with labels even with the label of human being with labor you know what's the
unknown
problem with the labor but also and no but also I was going to ask you you mentioned political correctness
problem with the labor but also and no but also I was going to ask you you mentioned political correctness
Slavoj Žižek
which is a thing very interesting issue so so do you think no sorry just to finish that and then we oh
which is a thing very interesting issue so so do you think no sorry just to finish that and then we oh
unknown
yeah all right all I want to say is that and I'm sorry I know I speak too much all I want to say is that we have a serious or financial capital all this fictitious capital it doesn't help if European banks for example are throwing hundreds of billions of freshly printed money into economy most of it it gets lost in fictitious capital speculations
yeah all right all I want to say is that and I'm sorry I know I speak too much all I want to say is that we have a serious or financial capital all this fictitious capital it doesn't help if European banks for example are throwing hundreds of billions of freshly printed money into economy most of it it gets lost in fictitious capital speculations
Slavoj Žižek
then we have the problem of refugees and so on we have all these problems intellectual property if you ask me capitalism is falling apart here even people like I despise them like Mark Zuckerberg Elon Musk even they talk about it but but you know who said the right pessimist thing you must know him it's your fellow I mean the German sociologist-economist who is now modest bestseller Wolfgang Streeck with two E's he said that something totally unexpected for Marxists happened capitalism is clearly approaching its limit but for Marxists this always meant that there is another more progressive force waiting to take over today capitalism is just disintegrating you know getting into trouble we see that it we have to improvise more and more and already we have the first very sad consequence as I always warn a new figure of global country the ideal country today is a country which is fully integrated into global market but at the same time ideologically it's ethnocentric focused on its culture even Trump is doing this that's why Trump gets well with all dictators his basic deal with Saudi Arabia is we are part of the same market you buy our arms we buy your oil whatever oil it doesn't matter what you do to women there it's your problem this logic of partial cultures China is playing this game India Modi is playing this game Putin is playing this game and so on so we are approaching a new world where global market will coexist with a lack of universally accepted emancipatory rules this is very sad but to go back to go back to your question why communism because I think that all the problems that I enumerated are the problems of commons exactly wait for for one second can I can I note on the tech because I think the cameras sort of keep bobbing I'm so sorry oh sorry sorry sorry about that that's very kind thank you sorry yeah what I want to say is the problems this is these are my beautiful dreams I said something too much against Western union and then they will jump down this special unit and arrest us all you will also be arrested I hope sorry sorry let's go on all the problems that I enumerated I claim are ultimately the problems of what Marx called commons some shared substance which shouldn't be privatized left to the market like ecology is the problem of our natural substance to what extent we can manipulate it and so on intellectual property it's the problem of our intellectual substance biogenetics problem of our substance and so on and so on in this sense as I put it once ironically communism is for me not a solution but the name of the problem today and we will have to find a solution at that level of how to deal with commons with our commons outside market relations my god even my friend who is otherwise despised as almost neo-fascist Peter Sloterdijk ah yes in a chapter of his I don't know he writes even faster than me although it's unthinkable I think it's Was geschah im Jahrhundert? what happened in 20th century his book he also comes to the same
then we have the problem of refugees and so on we have all these problems intellectual property if you ask me capitalism is falling apart here even people like I despise them like Mark Zuckerberg Elon Musk even they talk about it but but you know who said the right pessimist thing you must know him it's your fellow I mean the German sociologist-economist who is now modest bestseller Wolfgang Streeck with two E's he said that something totally unexpected for Marxists happened capitalism is clearly approaching its limit but for Marxists this always meant that there is another more progressive force waiting to take over today capitalism is just disintegrating you know getting into trouble we see that it we have to improvise more and more and already we have the first very sad consequence as I always warn a new figure of global country the ideal country today is a country which is fully integrated into global market but at the same time ideologically it's ethnocentric focused on its culture even Trump is doing this that's why Trump gets well with all dictators his basic deal with Saudi Arabia is we are part of the same market you buy our arms we buy your oil whatever oil it doesn't matter what you do to women there it's your problem this logic of partial cultures China is playing this game India Modi is playing this game Putin is playing this game and so on so we are approaching a new world where global market will coexist with a lack of universally accepted emancipatory rules this is very sad but to go back to go back to your question why communism because I think that all the problems that I enumerated are the problems of commons exactly wait for for one second can I can I note on the tech because I think the cameras sort of keep bobbing I'm so sorry oh sorry sorry sorry about that that's very kind thank you sorry yeah what I want to say is the problems this is these are my beautiful dreams I said something too much against Western union and then they will jump down this special unit and arrest us all you will also be arrested I hope sorry sorry let's go on all the problems that I enumerated I claim are ultimately the problems of what Marx called commons some shared substance which shouldn't be privatized left to the market like ecology is the problem of our natural substance to what extent we can manipulate it and so on intellectual property it's the problem of our intellectual substance biogenetics problem of our substance and so on and so on in this sense as I put it once ironically communism is for me not a solution but the name of the problem today and we will have to find a solution at that level of how to deal with commons with our commons outside market relations my god even my friend who is otherwise despised as almost neo-fascist Peter Sloterdijk ah yes in a chapter of his I don't know he writes even faster than me although it's unthinkable I think it's Was geschah im Jahrhundert? what happened in 20th century his book he also comes to the same
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conclusion
conclusion
Slavoj Žižek
the era of nation states where the highest ethical value is are you ready to sacrifice yourself for your country is over we need to we need to make a step further for example just imagine this a friend of mine Jean-Pierre Dupuy D-U-P-U-Y maybe you should interview him he is very intelligent theorist of catastrophes he told me that he was in Fukushima two days as part of some European delegation two days after that big tsunami and then radiation he told me that you know for a couple of hours Japanese government was in total panic they thought that the radiation will be so strong that they have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area yes where would these people go the problem in the old days it would be invasion these people invade another country today you can't do it we need larger transnational forms of cooperation the only way to deal with economy the only way to deal with biogenetics if just singular states regulate it then Chinese they are doing it already like crazy I mean rich American you have clinics in suburbs of Shanghai where rich Western parents go and they manipulate before even it's born the genes of your all I'm saying is that I first as a good Marxist still I'm absolutely not simply against capitalism I think capitalism let's face it it's the most dynamic system in the history of humanity it brought incredible progress and so on that's why what does this mean that and this brings me a lot of trouble I'm absolutely opposed to this bullshit of relying on local indigenous traditions to fight global capitalism no we have to fight it on its own terms with new universal global vision capitalism that's what my friends don't get it it began it's very instructive to study British colonization of India it wasn't you should all become like us it was no you should keep your culture you know that under the influence of the British colonizers the traditional caste system in 19th century was even reinforced brought to new life so I claim that and this is why another paradoxical conclusion who is my hero Malcolm X he saw it Malcolm X you know what X stands for we were uprooted but he saw it clearly that this X means we have no substance particular way of life to which we can return but he saw something ingenious his point was so our African-American I never like this term because it's it means like Caribbean blacks can say what are we and so on but okay the return is not roots oh let's look for it's to use this fact that we are deprived of our ethnic substance as a chance of new even more authentic universality than that of my so again my point is we have to go through capitalism okay then no no escape back into but at the same time we have to move over not because I'm a utopian and want more but it's clear that capitalism itself is approaching a crisis in the simple sense that the problems it encounters today from ecology and so on I am here a pessimist in the sense that capitalism will not be over to resolve them in its own terms which is why we get these paradoxes now I didn't forget it I return to your question labor listen I find it so irrational that people are afraid of robotization because it will cause unemployment this should be the best news that we ever heard nobody says perfect we will have to work less let's go no the automatic assumption is it's a catastrophe we all we all used to think that you know in the 1970s we had all these science fiction stories where all the machines would eventually do all the work and we'd have a lot of time to stroll around and have fun you what in principle it can be done we live now in irrational society where we are afraid of unemployment but those who work work more and more intensely I want to come back to to something else because you know you've taken us on a really really interesting journey here beginning from a madness journey don't I recall you Alice in that crazy crazy rabbit in Alice in Wonderland I've happily followed you so we've we've started off with Hegel and sort of we started at a sort of highly theoretical level where we talked about you know sort of philosophy in that sense and you've you've you've pointed us to real life problems sort of really you know very very down to earth real problems and for me the question still remains of you know so what is the philosopher meant to do do you look at yourself mainly as a theorist theorist absolutely theorist but you've also
the era of nation states where the highest ethical value is are you ready to sacrifice yourself for your country is over we need to we need to make a step further for example just imagine this a friend of mine Jean-Pierre Dupuy D-U-P-U-Y maybe you should interview him he is very intelligent theorist of catastrophes he told me that he was in Fukushima two days as part of some European delegation two days after that big tsunami and then radiation he told me that you know for a couple of hours Japanese government was in total panic they thought that the radiation will be so strong that they have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area yes where would these people go the problem in the old days it would be invasion these people invade another country today you can't do it we need larger transnational forms of cooperation the only way to deal with economy the only way to deal with biogenetics if just singular states regulate it then Chinese they are doing it already like crazy I mean rich American you have clinics in suburbs of Shanghai where rich Western parents go and they manipulate before even it's born the genes of your all I'm saying is that I first as a good Marxist still I'm absolutely not simply against capitalism I think capitalism let's face it it's the most dynamic system in the history of humanity it brought incredible progress and so on that's why what does this mean that and this brings me a lot of trouble I'm absolutely opposed to this bullshit of relying on local indigenous traditions to fight global capitalism no we have to fight it on its own terms with new universal global vision capitalism that's what my friends don't get it it began it's very instructive to study British colonization of India it wasn't you should all become like us it was no you should keep your culture you know that under the influence of the British colonizers the traditional caste system in 19th century was even reinforced brought to new life so I claim that and this is why another paradoxical conclusion who is my hero Malcolm X he saw it Malcolm X you know what X stands for we were uprooted but he saw it clearly that this X means we have no substance particular way of life to which we can return but he saw something ingenious his point was so our African-American I never like this term because it's it means like Caribbean blacks can say what are we and so on but okay the return is not roots oh let's look for it's to use this fact that we are deprived of our ethnic substance as a chance of new even more authentic universality than that of my so again my point is we have to go through capitalism okay then no no escape back into but at the same time we have to move over not because I'm a utopian and want more but it's clear that capitalism itself is approaching a crisis in the simple sense that the problems it encounters today from ecology and so on I am here a pessimist in the sense that capitalism will not be over to resolve them in its own terms which is why we get these paradoxes now I didn't forget it I return to your question labor listen I find it so irrational that people are afraid of robotization because it will cause unemployment this should be the best news that we ever heard nobody says perfect we will have to work less let's go no the automatic assumption is it's a catastrophe we all we all used to think that you know in the 1970s we had all these science fiction stories where all the machines would eventually do all the work and we'd have a lot of time to stroll around and have fun you what in principle it can be done we live now in irrational society where we are afraid of unemployment but those who work work more and more intensely I want to come back to to something else because you know you've taken us on a really really interesting journey here beginning from a madness journey don't I recall you Alice in that crazy crazy rabbit in Alice in Wonderland I've happily followed you so we've we've started off with Hegel and sort of we started at a sort of highly theoretical level where we talked about you know sort of philosophy in that sense and you've you've you've pointed us to real life problems sort of really you know very very down to earth real problems and for me the question still remains of you know so what is the philosopher meant to do do you look at yourself mainly as a theorist theorist absolutely theorist but you've also
unknown
talked
talked
Slavoj Žižek
about your activism is there a connection between theory and practice and what can you do as a theorist what can you really do you need theory to see where the activism fails especially the left theory isn't the whole history of the left even in the last century one big history of catastrophic failures which is why as I put it somewhere ironically the best Marxist books were usually analysis after the effect of why revolution had to go had to go wrong Trotsky's analysis and so on and isn't it sad that all we get are excellent analysis of why we lost sorry of why we lost so I would say why philosophy first because I don't trust practice practice is blind without theory we need theory today more than ever and by theory I don't mean this type of direct activist theory no why do we need theory but but will practice really follow out of theory does that really does that really happen do you think I mean do you think as a theorist this is what what you should achieve
about your activism is there a connection between theory and practice and what can you do as a theorist what can you really do you need theory to see where the activism fails especially the left theory isn't the whole history of the left even in the last century one big history of catastrophic failures which is why as I put it somewhere ironically the best Marxist books were usually analysis after the effect of why revolution had to go had to go wrong Trotsky's analysis and so on and isn't it sad that all we get are excellent analysis of why we lost sorry of why we lost so I would say why philosophy first because I don't trust practice practice is blind without theory we need theory today more than ever and by theory I don't mean this type of direct activist theory no why do we need theory but but will practice really follow out of theory does that really does that really happen do you think I mean do you think as a theorist this is what what you should achieve
unknown
I don't okay I will be very modest here I will be very modest here it's doubtful
I don't okay I will be very modest here I will be very modest here it's doubtful
Slavoj Žižek
if we philosophers I doubt it will provide a new platform political program but I follow here Gilles Deleuze otherwise I'm not a Deleuzian who said somewhere that even more important
if we philosophers I doubt it will provide a new platform political program but I follow here Gilles Deleuze otherwise I'm not a Deleuzian who said somewhere that even more important
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than to give the right answers is to give raise the right questions and here philosophy can be of some use we are
than to give the right answers is to give raise the right questions and here philosophy can be of some use we are
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dealing with
dealing with
Slavoj Žižek
serious problems today but what if we should analyze the extent to which the very way we formulate these problems doesn't resolve them but reproduces the
serious problems today but what if we should analyze the extent to which the very way we formulate these problems doesn't resolve them but reproduces the
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problem and coming back to your question that's why for example I have doubts about political correctness of course I agree with its goals no humiliation against power relations but you know what makes me so sad and here at least a little bit of philosophy enters think about the figure of human being that is silently presupposed by political correctness it's obsession with harassment and victimization we are always threatened I look into your I don't want to choose the lady eyes for two seconds too long visual rape I was already so this the vision
problem and coming back to your question that's why for example I have doubts about political correctness of course I agree with its goals no humiliation against power relations but you know what makes me so sad and here at least a little bit of philosophy enters think about the figure of human being that is silently presupposed by political correctness it's obsession with harassment and victimization we are always threatened I look into your I don't want to choose the lady eyes for two seconds too long visual rape I was already so this the vision
Slavoj Žižek
is very
is very
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sad beneath
sad beneath
Slavoj Žižek
it the vision is the one of we are all potential victims I don't think that's true why oh my god you should visit an American campus there and see it how you know what I already experienced there once I gave a speech and a lady stood up and said I'm half-black and I am I am a single mother I have AIDS and you are wrong it was so tragic that she didn't even have to go into details no but that's the news isn't it I mean I think on the whole political correctness just tells us that we should you know that we should adjust our language to you know the the the reality of our prejudices that we have on ahead yeah but the way the way it does it misfires because for me the true step beyond racism is not to change the language we would have to go now more into philosophy but even to use the same language but in a different ironic non-racist way look for example my
it the vision is the one of we are all potential victims I don't think that's true why oh my god you should visit an American campus there and see it how you know what I already experienced there once I gave a speech and a lady stood up and said I'm half-black and I am I am a single mother I have AIDS and you are wrong it was so tragic that she didn't even have to go into details no but that's the news isn't it I mean I think on the whole political correctness just tells us that we should you know that we should adjust our language to you know the the the reality of our prejudices that we have on ahead yeah but the way the way it does it misfires because for me the true step beyond racism is not to change the language we would have to go now more into philosophy but even to use the same language but in a different ironic non-racist way look for example my
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black friends in the United States
black friends in the United States
Slavoj Žižek
they all provoke me and tell me call me nigger you know what this means of course I shouldn't call them nigger it's an empty offer but what they want to signal me in this way it's not I'm a masochist I want to be humiliated but simply we have a real contact I doubt if you can have a real contact with a real person without at least it doesn't work always but as a rule a small exchange of obscenities or something like that but sorry what I want to say back to my basic point is that all these problems that we have even with political correctness how language functions are we free or not with digitalization with with brain scientists these are basically philosophical problems and ordinary people will have to deal with them abortion is maybe the first case of this are we aware that to answer the question I'm for it don't misunderstand but to answer the question should there be abortion or not you have implicitly at least to answer some philosophical question old values you cannot simply say let's look at Christianity or whatever yes yes because precisely because we are in this confused state where we cannot simply rely on old norms like again something like direct link of our brains with a computer changes our entire pedagogy what does it mean to learn something when you just click the button and you know that so what I'm saying is that questions usually reserved for philosophy will become everyday questions and the next thing that happens but it's the other way around anyway isn't it I mean everyday questions actually are philosophical questions because a lot of people [unintelligible] are philosophical yeah but the problem is this one the problem with some brain scientists as others they think that philosophy is over like Stephen Hawking put it in one of his last books that philosophy is
they all provoke me and tell me call me nigger you know what this means of course I shouldn't call them nigger it's an empty offer but what they want to signal me in this way it's not I'm a masochist I want to be humiliated but simply we have a real contact I doubt if you can have a real contact with a real person without at least it doesn't work always but as a rule a small exchange of obscenities or something like that but sorry what I want to say back to my basic point is that all these problems that we have even with political correctness how language functions are we free or not with digitalization with with brain scientists these are basically philosophical problems and ordinary people will have to deal with them abortion is maybe the first case of this are we aware that to answer the question I'm for it don't misunderstand but to answer the question should there be abortion or not you have implicitly at least to answer some philosophical question old values you cannot simply say let's look at Christianity or whatever yes yes because precisely because we are in this confused state where we cannot simply rely on old norms like again something like direct link of our brains with a computer changes our entire pedagogy what does it mean to learn something when you just click the button and you know that so what I'm saying is that questions usually reserved for philosophy will become everyday questions and the next thing that happens but it's the other way around anyway isn't it I mean everyday questions actually are philosophical questions because a lot of people [unintelligible] are philosophical yeah but the problem is this one the problem with some brain scientists as others they think that philosophy is over like Stephen Hawking put it in one of his last books that philosophy is
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dead in some ironic sense he is not even ironic he is right
dead in some ironic sense he is not even ironic he is right
Slavoj Žižek
and now we come from actual questions to my philosophical concerns the big tragedy for me was this I call it transcendental linguistic turn where all these let's call them this way naive direct ontological questions were prohibited were considered naive so that all you were allowed to do is to reflect on the horizon of understanding or as Michel Foucault would have put it on the épistémè for example if you were to ask Michel Foucault or a Foucauldian do I have an immortal soul his answer would have been something like we should analyze within which discursive field it's we can even raise this question right all you could do is just to point out the the horizon discursive horizon within which this is happening and so this big naive ontological questions what's the origin of our universe and so on were neglected that's why I think that natural sciences entered and the philosophical game and Hawking is right where he said what till one-200 years ago were considered philosophical questions does the world has a beginning or not do we have free will and so on these are today perceived as scientific questions here I remain a traditional European philosopher I don't think philosophy disappears I don't think positive natural science can do the entire job there is still a work for philosophy to do it but at the same time we have to break out of this transcendental reflexive questioning and we have to and that's the big problem we have to what people like Quentin Meillassoux and all these new materialists are doing we have to return to big ontological questions but in a non-naive not naive naive realist way you cannot and that's my problem that's why I
and now we come from actual questions to my philosophical concerns the big tragedy for me was this I call it transcendental linguistic turn where all these let's call them this way naive direct ontological questions were prohibited were considered naive so that all you were allowed to do is to reflect on the horizon of understanding or as Michel Foucault would have put it on the épistémè for example if you were to ask Michel Foucault or a Foucauldian do I have an immortal soul his answer would have been something like we should analyze within which discursive field it's we can even raise this question right all you could do is just to point out the the horizon discursive horizon within which this is happening and so this big naive ontological questions what's the origin of our universe and so on were neglected that's why I think that natural sciences entered and the philosophical game and Hawking is right where he said what till one-200 years ago were considered philosophical questions does the world has a beginning or not do we have free will and so on these are today perceived as scientific questions here I remain a traditional European philosopher I don't think philosophy disappears I don't think positive natural science can do the entire job there is still a work for philosophy to do it but at the same time we have to break out of this transcendental reflexive questioning and we have to and that's the big problem we have to what people like Quentin Meillassoux and all these new materialists are doing we have to return to big ontological questions but in a non-naive not naive naive realist way you cannot and that's my problem that's why I
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look
look
Slavoj Žižek
into Hegel how to move
into Hegel how to move
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beyond
beyond
Slavoj Žižek
the alternative between Kantian transcendentalism things in itself are out there we don't care about them all we can do is our horizon of understanding and naive realism we humans are part of a universe universe we are just one of the element no I think that I work so hard about this specific problems the whole first part pages of my Absolute Recoil works of this again how to break out of the transcendental horizon without falling into naive realism and again I think Hegel is the way or even at this level I see the great legacy of Christianity Hegel's trick is that the problem itself is its own solution and in what sense Christianity what's the Christian solution I'm an atheist incidentally but where I see a certain legacy in Christianity let's say you as a believer feel abandoned by God right what's the Christian solution it's not oh if you work hard fast yourself you will rejoin God no it's a much more radical one is at that point when you feel abandoned you identify with Christ that you know Eli Eli lama sabachthani Father why have you forsaken me so you transpose your division your separation from God into God himself God on the cross is separated from himself it means that the very distance the very gap is part of the thing itself and this is the formula that Hegel repeats again and again it's not to reach some unity above the gap it's to see how what you experience as separation is a negativity inscribed into the absolute itself okay I do very fast now oh it yes yes and but also you can see that also again following Hegel clearly you know the different philosophical questions that that come to the fore at different times that's that's very clear and you've you've given us a good idea of what kind of approach we might take okay now you are silently already sharpening your knife behind your strike strike but go to but directly no no no you've you've shown us what kind of approach we might take I was just wondering you know whether there's a sort of single philosophical question that you think is the salient question of our time maybe I will go into this maybe it may sound strange but I would say the status of appearance because the you know another way to wrap it up in one formula what's the greatness of Hegel is that the usual even for Kant problem is always are we limited to our constrained to our world of appearance can we move beyond to reach reality itself the way things really are yes and Hegel he says it somewhere Hegel's problem is the opposite one the true miracle that's the miracle of negativity is how come that reality is not just flat reality how can reality appear to itself because appearance means a terrible gap things are not directly what they are they appear to themselves and now yes if you dare to use it I here I'm absolute Hegelian that this minimum of reflexivity appearance is absolutely universal for me now I'm jumping very fast the lesson of quantum physics is that appearances matter how you measure it how things appear determine what things are and now you can use it or not but I is that a is that a translation problem basically no no although there are translations you know in what sense if one wants to be more seriously philosopher one has to be very precise here Phänomenon is not the same as Erscheinung oh no no I didn't mean in terms of language I meant in terms of spheres you know when when you're sort of talking about when you talk about the quantum level you know that there's a there's a gap and there's a fundamental misunderstanding I know and I'm totally
the alternative between Kantian transcendentalism things in itself are out there we don't care about them all we can do is our horizon of understanding and naive realism we humans are part of a universe universe we are just one of the element no I think that I work so hard about this specific problems the whole first part pages of my Absolute Recoil works of this again how to break out of the transcendental horizon without falling into naive realism and again I think Hegel is the way or even at this level I see the great legacy of Christianity Hegel's trick is that the problem itself is its own solution and in what sense Christianity what's the Christian solution I'm an atheist incidentally but where I see a certain legacy in Christianity let's say you as a believer feel abandoned by God right what's the Christian solution it's not oh if you work hard fast yourself you will rejoin God no it's a much more radical one is at that point when you feel abandoned you identify with Christ that you know Eli Eli lama sabachthani Father why have you forsaken me so you transpose your division your separation from God into God himself God on the cross is separated from himself it means that the very distance the very gap is part of the thing itself and this is the formula that Hegel repeats again and again it's not to reach some unity above the gap it's to see how what you experience as separation is a negativity inscribed into the absolute itself okay I do very fast now oh it yes yes and but also you can see that also again following Hegel clearly you know the different philosophical questions that that come to the fore at different times that's that's very clear and you've you've given us a good idea of what kind of approach we might take okay now you are silently already sharpening your knife behind your strike strike but go to but directly no no no you've you've shown us what kind of approach we might take I was just wondering you know whether there's a sort of single philosophical question that you think is the salient question of our time maybe I will go into this maybe it may sound strange but I would say the status of appearance because the you know another way to wrap it up in one formula what's the greatness of Hegel is that the usual even for Kant problem is always are we limited to our constrained to our world of appearance can we move beyond to reach reality itself the way things really are yes and Hegel he says it somewhere Hegel's problem is the opposite one the true miracle that's the miracle of negativity is how come that reality is not just flat reality how can reality appear to itself because appearance means a terrible gap things are not directly what they are they appear to themselves and now yes if you dare to use it I here I'm absolute Hegelian that this minimum of reflexivity appearance is absolutely universal for me now I'm jumping very fast the lesson of quantum physics is that appearances matter how you measure it how things appear determine what things are and now you can use it or not but I is that a is that a translation problem basically no no although there are translations you know in what sense if one wants to be more seriously philosopher one has to be very precise here Phänomenon is not the same as Erscheinung oh no no I didn't mean in terms of language I meant in terms of spheres you know when when you're sort of talking about when you talk about the quantum level you know that there's a there's a gap and there's a fundamental misunderstanding I know and I'm totally
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opposed
opposed
Slavoj Žižek
to those simplists who claim who want to somehow ground the possibility of human freedom directly into uncertainty indeterminacy of reality oh yes well yeah no but I wasn't talking about this all I was talk what really attracts me and it's a very abstract idea philosophically in quantum physics is A this idea of and I vary it a lot of times in my books this idea of ontological incompleteness of reality it's not as Lenin and naive materialists thought reality is out there fully real we just cannot get to know it no what if reality in itself is in a way structured around the gap not fully real do
to those simplists who claim who want to somehow ground the possibility of human freedom directly into uncertainty indeterminacy of reality oh yes well yeah no but I wasn't talking about this all I was talk what really attracts me and it's a very abstract idea philosophically in quantum physics is A this idea of and I vary it a lot of times in my books this idea of ontological incompleteness of reality it's not as Lenin and naive materialists thought reality is out there fully real we just cannot get to know it no what if reality in itself is in a way structured around the gap not fully real do
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you know the story I love it for your readers maybe you know it which is my favorite story here I found it in some popular introduction to philosophy alright the guy tries to read quantum physics interrupt me if you know it based on video games you know
you know the story I love it for your readers maybe you know it which is my favorite story here I found it in some popular introduction to philosophy alright the guy tries to read quantum physics interrupt me if you know it based on video games you know
Slavoj Žižek
in video games when you are immersed into a game reality there is not fully constituted for example you have a forest in the background
in video games when you are immersed into a game reality there is not fully constituted for example you have a forest in the background
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if it's not part of the game that you can go into that forest then all the trees are not programmed in detail or even most of the houses you just see the
if it's not part of the game that you can go into that forest then all the trees are not programmed in detail or even most of the houses you just see the
Slavoj Žižek
outside of the house if it's not part of the game that you enter the house then we very well know that these houses are within the computer program without okay and the idea of this guy I love it is that some why did the TV program sorry the game programmer not construct full reality because he would just lose time it's meaningless why to to to program the inside of a house when it's not part of the game that you enter it okay the idea isn't it wonderfully simple one is that God did the same when he created universe he stopped at subatomic level because he thought we humans are too stupid to progress so far oh they will not be able to move beyond atoms so why should I bother to program velocity and position of and the idea is a very nice cynical one is that God underestimated us we with quantum physics we as it were caught God with his pants down you know ah you were too lazy but now comes the true definition of materialism for me we can think this incompleteness without God you don't need a creator just reality is incomplete that's one mega result then there are many others so you see I'm very careful here I don't try to teach quantum physicists what I just try to I just
outside of the house if it's not part of the game that you enter the house then we very well know that these houses are within the computer program without okay and the idea of this guy I love it is that some why did the TV program sorry the game programmer not construct full reality because he would just lose time it's meaningless why to to to program the inside of a house when it's not part of the game that you enter it okay the idea isn't it wonderfully simple one is that God did the same when he created universe he stopped at subatomic level because he thought we humans are too stupid to progress so far oh they will not be able to move beyond atoms so why should I bother to program velocity and position of and the idea is a very nice cynical one is that God underestimated us we with quantum physics we as it were caught God with his pants down you know ah you were too lazy but now comes the true definition of materialism for me we can think this incompleteness without God you don't need a creator just reality is incomplete that's one mega result then there are many others so you see I'm very careful here I don't try to teach quantum physicists what I just try to I just
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try
try
Slavoj Žižek
to to provide a materialist even philosophical reading and I think it's important and again it all focuses on the status of appearances so again as Hegel says the true problem is how appearances emerge or as he
to to provide a materialist even philosophical reading and I think it's important and again it all focuses on the status of appearances so again as Hegel says the true problem is how appearances emerge or as he
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put it Hegel
put it Hegel
Slavoj Žižek
and other German idealists the problem is not are we caught into our subjectivity can we reach the the problem is how must reality be structured in itself so that something like subjectivity subjective appearance can emerge out of it you know must there be some reflexivity incompleteness negativity already out there and Hegel explicitly raises this question that's my now comes the provocation as they would put in United States trigger warning you get it now right recently a friend of mine showed me some and I really mean it I'm not denying that when I was young I didn't watch hardcore pornography but a friend of mine has shown me some typical hardcore heterosexual scenes and we analyzed them and came to the point how much more complex things are let's say this is traditional hardcore pornography addressed at a man it's not true that woman is reduced to an object no woman is the only subject typical scene is this one woman is being penetrated man is reduced to pure instrument we find dozens of movies he found where you don't even see man's face he doesn't matter so the typical scene is this one why because you're taking the perspective of the man that's why no I don't think so I will tell you which perspective you are taking man is you see in front man's penis penetrating the woman legs spread wide and then in the background between her thighs you always see her face staring into the camera or at least showing her face so I claim you don't identify with the man you identify with yourself as a viewer what you are looking for is not your pleasure but the confirmation that woman enjoys so this is not greater for women I claim women are in this way even more humiliated I'm not a fan what I'm saying is that even here when you think oh my god it's just sex whatever the structure is that of minimal reflexivity it doesn't if you were to show just from a close-up sex organs penetrating each other it would have been vulgar boring it has to be the woman stares back and it's very humiliating for her she has to do ah I will not go into it all the sounds and so on yes but what I'm saying is that how you see how even in the most immediate sexual pleasure the structure is more complicated one and isn't the same lesson for quantum physics that measurement is not a measurement of some reality which is out there measurement in a way constitute partially reality but how how to read this in but measurement doesn't constitute reality measurement constitutes the way that that we look at reality right I mean measurement is a human ah it's a little bit more radical here it was a conflict between your guy your guy I mean ironically Heisenberg and Niels Bohr Heisenberg thought that his uncertainty principle is only epistemological we cannot measure at the same time velocity and position of a particle Bohr criticized him Bohr claim no this uncertainty is in the thing itself particles do not have at the same time so the problem is that measuring the appearance the effect in a way affects reality itself and again the problem is how to read this in a non-idealist way you know to avoid all that bullshit that but some maybe you're right maybe it has to do with the structure of reality but maybe also it has to do with the expectations we have of reality wouldn't you say okay but again the the the point I agree with you but I would nonetheless add here the Hegelian point the big pro don't put reality there and us here how how is reality structured so that our expectations of reality can influence it but okay not lose let's not lose time here you see which problems are bothering me here absolutely yes and that's that's why basically I'm an old-fashioned I'm even tempted to say old-fashioned philosopher I think we didn't yet really move beyond Hegel what happened after Hegel was different variations of transcendentalism even the most creative Marxism they're
and other German idealists the problem is not are we caught into our subjectivity can we reach the the problem is how must reality be structured in itself so that something like subjectivity subjective appearance can emerge out of it you know must there be some reflexivity incompleteness negativity already out there and Hegel explicitly raises this question that's my now comes the provocation as they would put in United States trigger warning you get it now right recently a friend of mine showed me some and I really mean it I'm not denying that when I was young I didn't watch hardcore pornography but a friend of mine has shown me some typical hardcore heterosexual scenes and we analyzed them and came to the point how much more complex things are let's say this is traditional hardcore pornography addressed at a man it's not true that woman is reduced to an object no woman is the only subject typical scene is this one woman is being penetrated man is reduced to pure instrument we find dozens of movies he found where you don't even see man's face he doesn't matter so the typical scene is this one why because you're taking the perspective of the man that's why no I don't think so I will tell you which perspective you are taking man is you see in front man's penis penetrating the woman legs spread wide and then in the background between her thighs you always see her face staring into the camera or at least showing her face so I claim you don't identify with the man you identify with yourself as a viewer what you are looking for is not your pleasure but the confirmation that woman enjoys so this is not greater for women I claim women are in this way even more humiliated I'm not a fan what I'm saying is that even here when you think oh my god it's just sex whatever the structure is that of minimal reflexivity it doesn't if you were to show just from a close-up sex organs penetrating each other it would have been vulgar boring it has to be the woman stares back and it's very humiliating for her she has to do ah I will not go into it all the sounds and so on yes but what I'm saying is that how you see how even in the most immediate sexual pleasure the structure is more complicated one and isn't the same lesson for quantum physics that measurement is not a measurement of some reality which is out there measurement in a way constitute partially reality but how how to read this in but measurement doesn't constitute reality measurement constitutes the way that that we look at reality right I mean measurement is a human ah it's a little bit more radical here it was a conflict between your guy your guy I mean ironically Heisenberg and Niels Bohr Heisenberg thought that his uncertainty principle is only epistemological we cannot measure at the same time velocity and position of a particle Bohr criticized him Bohr claim no this uncertainty is in the thing itself particles do not have at the same time so the problem is that measuring the appearance the effect in a way affects reality itself and again the problem is how to read this in a non-idealist way you know to avoid all that bullshit that but some maybe you're right maybe it has to do with the structure of reality but maybe also it has to do with the expectations we have of reality wouldn't you say okay but again the the the point I agree with you but I would nonetheless add here the Hegelian point the big pro don't put reality there and us here how how is reality structured so that our expectations of reality can influence it but okay not lose let's not lose time here you see which problems are bothering me here absolutely yes and that's that's why basically I'm an old-fashioned I'm even tempted to say old-fashioned philosopher I think we didn't yet really move beyond Hegel what happened after Hegel was different variations of transcendentalism even the most creative Marxism they're
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for me praxis transcendentalism
for me praxis transcendentalism
Slavoj Žižek
human collective praxis is the ultimate transcendental horizon of how we perceive either there are transcendentalist or they're vulgar naive materialists okay thank you very I would like to just move on so we can just talk just very briefly at least about you your new books you've got a new book out again I have no idea how you do this but ah I cheat I copy myself all the time many of the political books no no no it's not like
human collective praxis is the ultimate transcendental horizon of how we perceive either there are transcendentalist or they're vulgar naive materialists okay thank you very I would like to just move on so we can just talk just very briefly at least about you your new books you've got a new book out again I have no idea how you do this but ah I cheat I copy myself all the time many of the political books no no no it's not like
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people
people
Slavoj Žižek
think do you write pages per day no no no my output is quite human out to put it ironic terms somebody like Sloterdijk writes three-four times more than me you know don't worry here okay um so now god your new book is is called and I haven't read it yet because I haven't been able to see a copy but if you want to today I can send both to both of you the final proof yes so can I but you no no no and I promise you something so so look you will see that I have and I promise you if we ever meet again I will never ask you did you already have the time to read it I hate authors who do this you know here you have my book but then you get them oh did you maybe already have a chance to read it sorry go on we've both read it as well so so the book is called Incontinence of the Void: Economico-Philosophical Spandrels now okay so so I've just had this short summary that that I looked at and that that said that you explore and quote the empty spaces between philosophy psychoanalysis and the critique of political economy now okay to talk about spandrels it's a term from Stephen Jay Gould and so on you know yeah yeah I'm I'm familiar with the term so it comes from architecture but then finds use in in evolutionary biology um but yes so to talk about spandrels really means that of course you have to assume the integrity of those disciplines so when you've you know if you're trying to find spaces then you have to assume the arches don't you ah here I would doubt it why why can't you say that I would have claimed in a Hegelian way sorry can I be of any help no I you see things always makes me makes me nervous yeah I I my solution would have been that what if every field in order to exist needs a spandrel needs an empty place which can be transfunctional isn't the thesis of Gould for example that you don't have fully constituted organisms and then by
think do you write pages per day no no no my output is quite human out to put it ironic terms somebody like Sloterdijk writes three-four times more than me you know don't worry here okay um so now god your new book is is called and I haven't read it yet because I haven't been able to see a copy but if you want to today I can send both to both of you the final proof yes so can I but you no no no and I promise you something so so look you will see that I have and I promise you if we ever meet again I will never ask you did you already have the time to read it I hate authors who do this you know here you have my book but then you get them oh did you maybe already have a chance to read it sorry go on we've both read it as well so so the book is called Incontinence of the Void: Economico-Philosophical Spandrels now okay so so I've just had this short summary that that I looked at and that that said that you explore and quote the empty spaces between philosophy psychoanalysis and the critique of political economy now okay to talk about spandrels it's a term from Stephen Jay Gould and so on you know yeah yeah I'm I'm familiar with the term so it comes from architecture but then finds use in in evolutionary biology um but yes so to talk about spandrels really means that of course you have to assume the integrity of those disciplines so when you've you know if you're trying to find spaces then you have to assume the arches don't you ah here I would doubt it why why can't you say that I would have claimed in a Hegelian way sorry can I be of any help no I you see things always makes me makes me nervous yeah I I my solution would have been that what if every field in order to exist needs a spandrel needs an empty place which can be transfunctional isn't the thesis of Gould for example that you don't have fully constituted organisms and then by
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chance spandrels and so on the whole evolution according to Gould is based on spandrels
chance spandrels and so on the whole evolution according to Gould is based on spandrels
Slavoj Žižek
you have empty spaces you have organs of no use which just remain like appendix yes but but they are byproducts of of things that that have been you know have been driven towards yeah but my but his idea and he is really radical here is that this imbalance in the sense that a product never never fully fits its function there is an element of byproduct he goes to the end and the beauty of Gould is that he interprets accounts for human language in this way it's an it's a byproduct yeah that's but a byproduct of things that that are actually driven by by adaptive value so there are other things that have adaptive adaptive value so you have to assume the existence of those in order to have spandrels as byproducts no yeah but for him adaptation
you have empty spaces you have organs of no use which just remain like appendix yes but but they are byproducts of of things that that have been you know have been driven towards yeah but my but his idea and he is really radical here is that this imbalance in the sense that a product never never fully fits its function there is an element of byproduct he goes to the end and the beauty of Gould is that he interprets accounts for human language in this way it's an it's a byproduct yeah that's but a byproduct of things that that are actually driven by by adaptive value so there are other things that have adaptive adaptive value so you have to assume the existence of those in order to have spandrels as byproducts no yeah but for him adaptation
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works through spandrels works through spandrels that would be my view as spandrels as byproducts yeah but the paradox is that thing itself
works through spandrels works through spandrels that would be my view as spandrels as byproducts yeah but the paradox is that thing itself
Slavoj Žižek
the thing itself cannot ever not even conceptually fully function you need byproducts you need all the time byproducts our entire human progress but even in animal kingdom greatness of Darwin for Gould is is based in byproducts so going back to my book what I would have said is that is that in the
the thing itself cannot ever not even conceptually fully function you need byproducts you need all the time byproducts our entire human progress but even in animal kingdom greatness of Darwin for Gould is is based in byproducts so going back to my book what I would have said is that is that in the
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same way I think that from the very beginning that okay I put it like this I am going
same way I think that from the very beginning that okay I put it like this I am going
Slavoj Žižek
through the whole
through the whole
unknown
thing
thing
Slavoj Žižek
some something happens with modern philosophy by modern philosophy I'm old-fashioned here I mean post-Kantian Kant and post-Kantian thought which has privilege link with other fields with for example psychoanalysis I claim that Freud was not simply a positive scientist and so on there
some something happens with modern philosophy by modern philosophy I'm old-fashioned here I mean post-Kantian Kant and post-Kantian thought which has privilege link with other fields with for example psychoanalysis I claim that Freud was not simply a positive scientist and so on there
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is this maybe the fundamental thesis of my work the philosophy or the philosophical stance implied by Freud it's not some simple naturalism in the sense of sexuality is important and so on it's a vision of man which fits Kantian philosophy or German idealism so for me my ultimate task would be to to read again German idealism against the background of what psychoanalysis brought us because
is this maybe the fundamental thesis of my work the philosophy or the philosophical stance implied by Freud it's not some simple naturalism in the sense of sexuality is important and so on it's a vision of man which fits Kantian philosophy or German idealism so for me my ultimate task would be to to read again German idealism against the background of what psychoanalysis brought us because
Slavoj Žižek
psychoanalysis is a a much more delicate thing it's not
psychoanalysis is a a much more delicate thing it's not
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this substantialism of the unconscious you know all these stupid metaphors our conscious ego is just like the tip of the iceberg all the depth there no unconscious is purely
this substantialism of the unconscious you know all these stupid metaphors our conscious ego is just like the tip of the iceberg all the depth there no unconscious is purely
Slavoj Žižek
phenomenal for Freud for Jung has a substance notion of the unconscious no so again in one line my program is that only by reading psychoanalysis through German idealism can we arrive at what psychoanalytic revolution really amounts to and vice versa only re-read through Freud can we keep alive the tradition of German idealism and I think here it's a line I'm saying this here as a kind of a leftist Marxist more important than Marx himself I think philosophically Marx following Feuerbach and all those is a regression with regard to Hegel but when you ask me that my point is this one I now I can give you an only a very
phenomenal for Freud for Jung has a substance notion of the unconscious no so again in one line my program is that only by reading psychoanalysis through German idealism can we arrive at what psychoanalytic revolution really amounts to and vice versa only re-read through Freud can we keep alive the tradition of German idealism and I think here it's a line I'm saying this here as a kind of a leftist Marxist more important than Marx himself I think philosophically Marx following Feuerbach and all those is a regression with regard to Hegel but when you ask me that my point is this one I now I can give you an only a very
unknown
condensed
condensed
Slavoj Žižek
version the idea came to me and to my good friend Joan Copjec that the structure you know Lacan in his seminar seminar Encore on feminine jouissance and some others develops his famous or infamous formulas of sexuation he wants to account for the masculine versus feminine sexuality through some logical paradoxes
version the idea came to me and to my good friend Joan Copjec that the structure you know Lacan in his seminar seminar Encore on feminine jouissance and some others develops his famous or infamous formulas of sexuation he wants to account for the masculine versus feminine sexuality through some logical paradoxes
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universality with
universality with
Slavoj Žižek
exception and so on and Joan Copjec originally came to this idea that what Lacan is describing there and he wasn't aware of it I checked with his people who knew Lacan are the very structures of Kantian antinomies dynamic antinomies are what Lacan calls feminine mathematical antinomies are what Lacan calls masculine so of course I'm not talking about biological sexuality I'm talking about why our universe even the most abstract conceptual universe is sexed because of certain paradoxes of symbolization and so on and so on my second point to the this Kantian structure of antinomies as the ultimate horizon we cannot move beyond them Kant's mistake was that as Hegel put it in his well-known critique of Kant that Kant was too tender towards things for him antinomies were limited to our knowledge antinomies were things themselves cannot be antinomic Hegel's point is yes they can so what I try to do is through this approach by taking Kantian antinomies seriously in the sense of they concern the thing itself to read the implicit Kantian and Hegelian then ontology in accordance to what I improvised that unfinished universe and so on it means that the world in itself is antinomic not fully constituted and so on that's there we have the connection with Freud sexuality sexual difference and ontology I'm moving very fast you may not be convinced I'm just giving you the outline yes that's my next step is an old-fashioned Marxist but it's reading Hegel belief that nonetheless capitalism is something exceptional the logic of and here we come back to your spandrels and so on the logic of surplus value that we find at capitalism where the thing cannot exist without its surplus what appears as a secondary surplus is the very motive what triggers it and so on I in the second part of the book I go into detail in detail of this parallel between what Lacan calls surplus enjoyment the additional twist in enjoyment which changes simple pleasure in what we usually call in more emphatic term enjoyment and I give I hope some of them will be amusing numerous examples for example for me what fascinates me is I give you a horrible political example of enjoyment in pain you know my god you must know it Goebbels' Totaler Krieg speech he does something ingenious in a terrifying way Goebbels there in Palast in early '43 all he promises to German people is more suffering he says do you want a Krieg a war which will be so total that you cannot even imagine how much you will suffer and people cry yes so these paradoxes of pleasure in pain or what I claim is that for a certain type I know jumping just to give an idea to examples for a certain type of sexuality maybe it's Protestant sexuality if you don't feel guilty you you don't really enjoy it you have to add guilt to enjoyment to pleasure to really enjoy it and I think all these twists of how an obstacle far from blocking the thing conditions it and keeps you moving for example I'm sorry this will appear sexist by but I love the example a friend of mine told me this story maybe you even know it how he told me that he had an affair with an elder lady who had a beautiful body but she the lady told him that her last lover who saw her naked told her that except for one or two kilos too much she has a perfect body and my friend made the right reaction he told her just don't lose that one or two kilos because the paradox is that you have to have one or two kilos too much in this way you create the illusion that without those two kilos too much your body is perfect but if you effectively take away one or two kilos you lose also the perfection you know and this basic imbalance the surplus which bothers bothers harmony is the very retroactive condition of harmony Marx traced it but he wasn't radical enough Marx's dream of communism was that we can get capitalist dynamics always more expansion without the obstacle without this paradox okay it's more complex lineage but what I want to say is that for me capitalism is in this sense an ontological phenomenon it's the first social order and the only in the history of humanity where imbalance is not a problem it's a solution this is why always Marxists had a problem with capitalism they always count on crisis but then the more capitalism is in crisis the strong stronger it emerges out of it you know so I deal with these ontological consequences of capitalism and then I do something very pessimist at the end I claim that in the classical Marxist view when you get that proletarian revolutions revolutions will not be contained in this bourgeois deadlock you want something freedom the result is catastrophe and so on no that we have to accept that all revolutions even proletarian ones are are caught in a process that they don't dominate like you want some like October Revolution okay we can play this game that it was meant in a great way but nonetheless it was a big attempt at liberation in end the controlled revolution sorry yeah there are no controlled revolutions we have to we have to accept it's a very Hegelian view because you know Marx is here literally more idealist Marx thought and you have this nicely done in early Lukács still one of the greatest books of 20th century Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein Marx thought that proletarian revolution will be a self-transparent act at that point of history working class the subject will know what it is doing and doing it no as you put it nicely it's not controlled it's not self-transparent you have the same historical dialectic and so on so and then I approach at the end of the book this questions that I really like wonderful questions of mortality in communism and although I don't like like I fight not only against transparency of revolutions but against these visions that somehow in communism private life will be better if there will be communism I claim no who knows maybe it will be worse and so on and you know whom I take as an example I like to jump from one to other example okay Shostakovich the 14th Symphony it's really a symphony about death dying and it's so openly brazenly pessimist etc no wonder he wasn't able to perform it while he was still alive and so on so again without betraying Marxism I think we should introduce this let's call it historical tragic in all social processes also the progressive ones they are non-transparent the result is another one and so on which means that fundamentally we never know what we are doing the act is by definition displaced you get something else and so on and so on that's actually a nice a nice note on which to end this particular segment I was just going to ask you one last question so there may well be a lot of readers or or people who actually see this video and they say ah Žižek turns out to be a really interesting guy so what what should they read you know what's a recommend one of your many books or maybe even a book about you do they have the time the will please read philosophical stuff for example I think I wrote a short philosophical book on Ereignis event it was translated also in German which precisely tries to go through all the dimension the Heideggerian event Ereignis the ultimate catastrophe Ereignis end of the world the Ereignis of the Fall then all the three greatest philosophers they are for me Plato Descartes Hegel why because each of them define the whole posterity as Michel Foucault put it somewhere isn't the whole history of philosophy a history of criticism of Plato the whole how and after Descartes they all want to get rid of Descartes 19th century they all want to get rid of Hegel how to and I think they are all philosophers of an event Cartesian cogito is not as they thought wrongly thinking substance it's a pure self-relating event of thinking the same of Hegel so I would say read Ereignis event if you have more energy a little bit more read Absoluter Gegenstoß the Absolute Recoil please go also to these philosophical books this is where my real work is all that philosophical stuff like the one I just published The Courage of Hopelessness and so on listen I'm doing them with some kind of what Sartre called mauvaise foi bad conscience you know it's as if somebody else should be what do I know about society about politics I'm an amateur I always have this feeling that somebody else should have been doing it not me
exception and so on and Joan Copjec originally came to this idea that what Lacan is describing there and he wasn't aware of it I checked with his people who knew Lacan are the very structures of Kantian antinomies dynamic antinomies are what Lacan calls feminine mathematical antinomies are what Lacan calls masculine so of course I'm not talking about biological sexuality I'm talking about why our universe even the most abstract conceptual universe is sexed because of certain paradoxes of symbolization and so on and so on my second point to the this Kantian structure of antinomies as the ultimate horizon we cannot move beyond them Kant's mistake was that as Hegel put it in his well-known critique of Kant that Kant was too tender towards things for him antinomies were limited to our knowledge antinomies were things themselves cannot be antinomic Hegel's point is yes they can so what I try to do is through this approach by taking Kantian antinomies seriously in the sense of they concern the thing itself to read the implicit Kantian and Hegelian then ontology in accordance to what I improvised that unfinished universe and so on it means that the world in itself is antinomic not fully constituted and so on that's there we have the connection with Freud sexuality sexual difference and ontology I'm moving very fast you may not be convinced I'm just giving you the outline yes that's my next step is an old-fashioned Marxist but it's reading Hegel belief that nonetheless capitalism is something exceptional the logic of and here we come back to your spandrels and so on the logic of surplus value that we find at capitalism where the thing cannot exist without its surplus what appears as a secondary surplus is the very motive what triggers it and so on I in the second part of the book I go into detail in detail of this parallel between what Lacan calls surplus enjoyment the additional twist in enjoyment which changes simple pleasure in what we usually call in more emphatic term enjoyment and I give I hope some of them will be amusing numerous examples for example for me what fascinates me is I give you a horrible political example of enjoyment in pain you know my god you must know it Goebbels' Totaler Krieg speech he does something ingenious in a terrifying way Goebbels there in Palast in early '43 all he promises to German people is more suffering he says do you want a Krieg a war which will be so total that you cannot even imagine how much you will suffer and people cry yes so these paradoxes of pleasure in pain or what I claim is that for a certain type I know jumping just to give an idea to examples for a certain type of sexuality maybe it's Protestant sexuality if you don't feel guilty you you don't really enjoy it you have to add guilt to enjoyment to pleasure to really enjoy it and I think all these twists of how an obstacle far from blocking the thing conditions it and keeps you moving for example I'm sorry this will appear sexist by but I love the example a friend of mine told me this story maybe you even know it how he told me that he had an affair with an elder lady who had a beautiful body but she the lady told him that her last lover who saw her naked told her that except for one or two kilos too much she has a perfect body and my friend made the right reaction he told her just don't lose that one or two kilos because the paradox is that you have to have one or two kilos too much in this way you create the illusion that without those two kilos too much your body is perfect but if you effectively take away one or two kilos you lose also the perfection you know and this basic imbalance the surplus which bothers bothers harmony is the very retroactive condition of harmony Marx traced it but he wasn't radical enough Marx's dream of communism was that we can get capitalist dynamics always more expansion without the obstacle without this paradox okay it's more complex lineage but what I want to say is that for me capitalism is in this sense an ontological phenomenon it's the first social order and the only in the history of humanity where imbalance is not a problem it's a solution this is why always Marxists had a problem with capitalism they always count on crisis but then the more capitalism is in crisis the strong stronger it emerges out of it you know so I deal with these ontological consequences of capitalism and then I do something very pessimist at the end I claim that in the classical Marxist view when you get that proletarian revolutions revolutions will not be contained in this bourgeois deadlock you want something freedom the result is catastrophe and so on no that we have to accept that all revolutions even proletarian ones are are caught in a process that they don't dominate like you want some like October Revolution okay we can play this game that it was meant in a great way but nonetheless it was a big attempt at liberation in end the controlled revolution sorry yeah there are no controlled revolutions we have to we have to accept it's a very Hegelian view because you know Marx is here literally more idealist Marx thought and you have this nicely done in early Lukács still one of the greatest books of 20th century Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein Marx thought that proletarian revolution will be a self-transparent act at that point of history working class the subject will know what it is doing and doing it no as you put it nicely it's not controlled it's not self-transparent you have the same historical dialectic and so on so and then I approach at the end of the book this questions that I really like wonderful questions of mortality in communism and although I don't like like I fight not only against transparency of revolutions but against these visions that somehow in communism private life will be better if there will be communism I claim no who knows maybe it will be worse and so on and you know whom I take as an example I like to jump from one to other example okay Shostakovich the 14th Symphony it's really a symphony about death dying and it's so openly brazenly pessimist etc no wonder he wasn't able to perform it while he was still alive and so on so again without betraying Marxism I think we should introduce this let's call it historical tragic in all social processes also the progressive ones they are non-transparent the result is another one and so on which means that fundamentally we never know what we are doing the act is by definition displaced you get something else and so on and so on that's actually a nice a nice note on which to end this particular segment I was just going to ask you one last question so there may well be a lot of readers or or people who actually see this video and they say ah Žižek turns out to be a really interesting guy so what what should they read you know what's a recommend one of your many books or maybe even a book about you do they have the time the will please read philosophical stuff for example I think I wrote a short philosophical book on Ereignis event it was translated also in German which precisely tries to go through all the dimension the Heideggerian event Ereignis the ultimate catastrophe Ereignis end of the world the Ereignis of the Fall then all the three greatest philosophers they are for me Plato Descartes Hegel why because each of them define the whole posterity as Michel Foucault put it somewhere isn't the whole history of philosophy a history of criticism of Plato the whole how and after Descartes they all want to get rid of Descartes 19th century they all want to get rid of Hegel how to and I think they are all philosophers of an event Cartesian cogito is not as they thought wrongly thinking substance it's a pure self-relating event of thinking the same of Hegel so I would say read Ereignis event if you have more energy a little bit more read Absoluter Gegenstoß the Absolute Recoil please go also to these philosophical books this is where my real work is all that philosophical stuff like the one I just published The Courage of Hopelessness and so on listen I'm doing them with some kind of what Sartre called mauvaise foi bad conscience you know it's as if somebody else should be what do I know about society about politics I'm an amateur I always have this feeling that somebody else should have been doing it not me
unknown
and
and
Slavoj Žižek
that I'm just filling in for somebody else I feel bad with my with my political books my heart really is only in this more purely philosophical books thank you very much that's that's that's fantastic but now
that I'm just filling in for somebody else I feel bad with my with my political books my heart really is only in this more purely philosophical books thank you very much that's that's that's fantastic but now
unknown
you
you
Slavoj Žižek
should be a good journalist and I will okay interviewer you know how I define it every idiot and I hope you the two of you are not one can reproduce what I said a true journalist can do this you don't cheat you use only what I said but you combine it with other questions and montage it so that you make me say a totally different thing but I cannot complain you would say look sorry you said this there's a challenge thank you very much thank you thank you this is the challenge challenge
should be a good journalist and I will okay interviewer you know how I define it every idiot and I hope you the two of you are not one can reproduce what I said a true journalist can do this you don't cheat you use only what I said but you combine it with other questions and montage it so that you make me say a totally different thing but I cannot complain you would say look sorry you said this there's a challenge thank you very much thank you thank you this is the challenge challenge