Is there a Post-Human God?
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2017-03-02 · 1:47:36 · 13,041 words
ideologycapitalismreligion-theologytechnology-ai-cyberspacecommunism-socialismecology-climatehegel-dialecticspsychoanalysisconsciousness-mindcinema-art-culturehistoryphilosophy-generaldemocracyfascism-populism
In a public lecture (UCLA, Westwood), Žižek moves from an analysis of cynical ideology and interpassivity, the social functioning of beliefs no one holds, through Sloterdijk's Anthropocene thesis, arguing that ecological survival implies a communist horizon visible in collaborative commons and Internet of Things. He examines the ambivalence of digital technology between emancipation and total control, tracing continuities with Soviet tech-gnosis. The lecture culminates in a close reading of the 2016 Danish noir film 'A Conspiracy of Faith' to articulate Christian atheism: an atheist faith without the Big Other, grounded in Kierkegaard's infinite resignation and negative theology, in which the death drive is the indestructible theological minimum. A Q&A covers capitalism's resistance to imagination, Greek crisis politics, and the structural rather than factual nature of anti-Semitism.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 29
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “materialist reversal of Marx in Hegel”
Žižek's signature provocation that Hegel was more materialist than Marx, meaning the Hegelian dialectic already contains a materialist account of negativity that Marx failed to think through completely.
as “cynical ideology”
The predominant ideological form today: nobody genuinely believes, yet ideology operates socially as if everyone did, sustained by projecting belief onto others.
as “beliefs which socially function even if no one believes in them”
Žižek's distillation of Sloterdijk and Pfaller: a belief can be fully operative as a social fact, shaping behavior and identity, without any individual subject actually holding it as their own conviction.
Pfaller's concept: others can passively enjoy or believe on your behalf, the TV laughs for you, others believe for you, so enjoyment and belief are outsourced to an external mechanism.
Badiou's term for the 20th-century drive to strip away appearances and arrive at the thing itself; Žižek defends Badiou's nuanced account, distinguishing it from the real of subtraction, against Sloterdijk's conflation of it with political extremism.
as “real of subtraction”
Badiou's proposed corrective to the passion of purification: instead of violent eradication of false appearances, a minimal subtraction that produces a new real without mass violence.
The geological-political epoch in which human productivity has made Earth a finite, vulnerable object rather than an inexhaustible reservoir, requiring a new collaborative mode of relating to the environment.
The Anthropocene image Žižek uses: humanity now lives on a closed, accountable planetary system for whose conditions it is responsible, precluding the logic of ignoring ecological collateral damage.
as “domestication of the wild animal culture”
Sloterdijk's thesis, endorsed by Žižek: just as states domesticated individuals, we now need to 'civilize civilizations themselves', establishing universal solidarity and cooperation overriding state sovereignty, to survive the Anthropocene.
as “collaborative commons”
Rifkin and Mason's concept of a new mode of production and exchange emerging within capitalism, individuals give products freely into circulation, bypassing private property, which Žižek reads as a sign of post-capitalism and the return of gift exchange at a higher level.
The network of devices that continuously registers human activity and flows data autonomously; Žižek stresses its radical ambiguity between emancipatory commons (no private property) and total digital surveillance and control.
as “zero marginal costs”
Rifkin's term for the condition in which more and more products can be reproduced with no additional costs, enabling the collaborative commons model and pointing toward post-capitalism.
Kurzweil's futurist vision of minds merging into a higher digital unity; Žižek argues it cheats by retaining personal selfhood even as it abolishes individual freedom, and was already anticipated in Soviet Gnosticism.
as “Soviet tech-gnosis”
Žižek's label for the Bolshevik 1920s ideology, subscribed to even by Trotsky, that technology would produce a new collective, disembodied man freed from irrational sexuality and emotion, prefiguring Silicon Valley transhumanism.
Harari's term for the self constituted by retrospective narratives we construct to impose coherence on experience; digital machines bypass this layer to access raw behavioral data and thereby know us better than our narrating self does.
as “subject supposed to know”
Lacan's figure presumed to possess total knowledge; Žižek extends it to the digital machine, which is trusted to know us better than we know ourselves and thus becomes the latest Big Other.
Žižek's identification of the data machine, knowing your behavior better than you know yourself, as the latest embodiment of both Lacanian constructs: a non-subjective chain of signifiers without a master, operating as a field of knowledge.
The emerging condition in which digital machines regulate life with increasing intelligence while consciousness and subjectivity remain a separate, irreducible register, producing a new privileged class who program the machines.
Russian formalist concept of estrangement, defamiliarizing the familiar, which Žižek here calls necessary for ecological survival: learning to see ourselves as one actant among others, adopting a 'zero ontological level' view.
as “Big Other”
Lacan's symbolic order, the impersonal field of norms and language; here invoked as the authority whose inexistence defines radical atheist ethics, and whose digital reincarnation is the data-collecting machine.
Kierkegaard's term for the first movement of radical faith: sacrificing everything temporal for nothing, with no guarantee of reward or meaning, the necessary step before authentic religious experience and the model for Žižek's Christian atheism.
The minimal negative experience, shared by Kierkegaard's infinite resignation and Rowan Williams' negative theology, that this reality cannot be all, that we don't fully belong here but there is no other place: the void that constitutes the religious dimension.
Freud's concept of the compulsion beyond the pleasure principle; Žižek identifies it here as Freud's name for the negative theological minimum, the indestructible excess that persists in the psyche after all positive content is stripped away.
Žižek's self-designation: an atheist position that requires a specifically Christian theological structure, the God who abandons his son, faith without the Big Other, community of love after God's death, as the only 'consequent atheism'.
as “freedom at its purest”
Žižek's paradoxical formulation derived from the Protestant predestination paradox: freedom is not consumer choice but the agonizing situation of knowing you are determined yet not knowing how, you must enact the predestined decision without any guide.
as “user illusion of free will”
Metzinger's formulation: free will is a necessary user illusion we cannot subjectively abandon even while knowing neuroscientifically that we are deterministic systems; Žižek uses this to argue the Kierkegaardian resigned subject is the only adequate stance for modern science.
as “negative theological minimum”
The irreducible residue of religious experience after all transcendence and God have been subtracted: the bare sense of out-of-jointness or incongruity, identified by Žižek with Freud's death drive, that persists even in secular modernity.
as “the 12th camel as one of the names of God”
From a pseudo-Arab legend via Dupuy and Luhmann: God functions like the 12th camel a wise man lends to make an inheritance fraction work then reclaims, a structural necessity whose addition makes reality cohere and whose removal dissolves the reality it appeared to supplement.
as “capitalism as natural system”
Žižek's provocative thesis via McGowan and Schuster: capitalism is not merely one historical system but the first to directly externalize the constitutive instability of Lacanian desire, which is why imagining its end is structurally difficult.
Stories he reaches for 7
Niels Bohr kept a horseshoe above his country-house door. When a friend asked if he believed in it, Bohr replied he was a scientist and didn't believe in it, but kept it because he was told it works even if you don't believe in it.
“of course I don't believe it, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it”
Lacan's point: even if all the husband's suspicions about his wife sleeping around are factually true, his jealousy is still pathological, because the question is not whether she really does it but why the husband is so fixated on it. Truth is not at the level of cognition.
“even if all the suspicions of the husband are true, his jealousy is still pathological”
In 1935 Politburo debate on whether communism will have money, Stalin dismisses both 'deviations' and offers the dialectical unity: there will be money and there will not be money. Pressed to explain, he says: 'Some people will have money, other people will not have money.'
“It's very simple. Some people will have money, other people will not have money.”
You return home exhausted, watch a sitcom, and the TV laughs for you literally; you end up relaxed as if you had laughed, even though you just stared like an idiot. This is interpassivity: enjoyment outsourced to an external mechanism.
“you return home in the evening tired as a dog, you turn on the TV, watch some stupid 'Cheers' or whatever show and the TV laughs for you, literally.”
Parents don't believe in Santa Claus (they buy the presents); children don't believe either (they pretend to believe not to disappoint parents and to get gifts). Nobody believes, yet Santa Claus functions socially as a fully operative belief.
“Nobody believes in it, but it functions socially, it functions, it is operative as a belief.”
Kindle tracks not only what books you buy but how much of them you read and which pages, the machine bypasses your self-narrative and registers the raw data of what you actually do, knowing you better than you know yourself.
“Kindle controls not only what books you buy but how much you read them, which pages you read and so on.”
When Varoufakis threatened Schäuble with Grexit during negotiations, Schäuble responded 'Fine, how much money do you need?', revealing that European bureaucracy actually wanted Grexit and had a plan for it. Varoufakis's radical strategy was to stay inside Europe and cause maximum disruption there.
“Fine, how much money do you need? We can give you billion”
Works invoked 22
Less Than Nothing book
Žižek's big Hegel book; mentioned as where he performs his 'materialist reversal of Marx in Hegel', the crazy reading that Hegel was more materialist than Marx.
Elysium film
Hollywood dystopia cited alongside Hunger Games as a realistic vision of a society bifurcated by access to technology.
The Hunger Games film
Hollywood dystopia; Žižek claims it paints a 'very realistic' vision of the future if we do not act, an exaggerated but accurate picture of where the decoupling of intelligence from consciousness is heading.
The Idiot (novel) book
Dostoevsky's novel; referenced through Rowan Williams' counter-intuitive reading: Prince Myshkin is not a saintly innocent but a catastrophic figure whose goodness brings death to all around him.
Žižek's book in print at time of talk; the title comes from Beckett's 'Ill Seen Ill Said'; described as 'pure metaphysics.'
Homo Deus book
Harari's book; 'I don't buy his conclusions, but he provides a nice description' of the narrating self, the Internet of Things, and the coming obsolescence of liberal democracy.
Shoah film
Lanzmann's documentary; 'I'm not one of the great fans' personally but deeply agrees with his stated decision to burn any hypothetical Nazi film reel of gas-chamber killings.
Žižek's upcoming book at time of talk (two months away); where readers will find the 'dirty stuff', LGBTQ, Trump, that he deliberately avoided in this lecture.
Disparities book
Žižek's own 'last philosophical book' at time of talk; contains a chapter titled 'Is God Inexistent, Stupid, Evil, or Virtual?' where he develops the notion of God as necessary illusion.
'Wonderful Danish Noir film from 2016' (Flaskepost fra P, dir. Hans Petter Moland); Žižek is slightly disappointed by the helicopter rescue ending but uses the film as the primary vehicle for his Christian atheism argument.
Sloterdijk's book; 'the achievement of that book is extraordinary', first deployed the idea of beliefs that function socially without anyone believing in them.
Cheers tv
Named as an example of a TV show you watch exhausted while the canned laughter laughs for you, the paradigm case of interpassivity.
Romeo and Juliet play
Shakespeare's play; Juliet's line is paraphrased, 'The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite', to describe the logic of collaborative commons where giving increases rather than diminishes.
Rowan Williams' unnamed book on Dostoevsky; 'you should read his book on Dostoevsky, it's so intelligent'; contains the counter-intuitive reading of Myshkin and the definition of negative theology as out-of-jointness.
La La Land film
Mentioned briefly in Q&A: Žižek dismisses as 'cheapest political correctness' the reproach that the film should have included more gay characters.
Sloterdijk's book, not yet translated into English at time of talk; 'pleasantly surprised' by it, used as the main frame for the Anthropocene and domestication-of-culture thesis.
Todd McGowan's book; credited with developing the thesis that capitalism in a sense is the natural system because it externalizes the Lacanian paradox of desire.
Century book
Badiou's book on the 20th century's passion of the real and real of subtraction; Žižek defends it against Sloterdijk's critique.
Diderot's short manuscript; Žižek quotes its conclusion that the most straightforward way is to behave as if God exists even without belief, then reads this as the exact opposite of Pascal's wager.
Ill Seen Ill Said book
Beckett's late prose text; the phrase 'incontinent void' in it gave Žižek the title for his book 'Incontinence of the Void.'
John McCumber's 'wonderful book' on Hegel; shares the project of redeeming Hegel for today.
T.S. Eliot's play; cited for the line 'The highest form of treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason', key to reading Mørck as the true Devil's son.
People invoked 53
Named as the director of 'A Conspiracy of Faith' (Flaskepost fra P, 2016); Žižek contacted him through friends who confirmed that Mørck being the true Devil's son was the intended underlying idea.
Paul Mason positive
Mentioned alongside Rifkin as someone who detected collaborative commons, though Žižek maintains critical distance.
Virginia Woolf positive
Her remark that human nature changed on a specific date is cited to frame Žižek's claim that today, with brain-wiring and digital technology, human nature really is changing.
Jane Bennett positive
'Theoretically my enemies' as a new materialist, but Žižek is fascinated by her description of actants at a polluted trash site and uses it to develop his asubjectivist ecological vision.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
'My good friend' who told Žižek the 12th camel anecdote, used to illustrate God as structural necessity rather than mere supplement.
Kenya positive
Old friend at the event who developed the insight that human rights are rights to violate the Ten Commandments, Žižek credits this as a 'wonderful flash of insight.'
Todd McGowan positive
Friend who developed in 'Capitalism and Desire' the line that capitalism in a sense is the natural system, directly externalizing the Lacanian paradox of desire.
Pascal's wager is cited as a foil for Diderot's position; Žižek notes that Pascal's wager is merely epistemological (our attitude toward God) whereas the atheist's commitment is ontological.
Named alongside Eisenstein as exemplars of Soviet avant-garde (futurist, constructivist) art that ordinary people hated before Stalin gave them Socialist Realism.
Aaron Schuster positive
Another friend pursuing a similar line to McGowan on capitalism and desire; cited approvingly.
Mentioned for calling imperialism the 'last late stage of capitalism', an instance of the permanent postponement of capitalism's final crisis.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Cited for the formulation 'in populism, the opium of the people are people themselves', which Žižek pairs with his own twist that today the opium of the people is opium itself.
Simone Weil positive
Quoted in the context of infinite resignation: her description of turning away from all temporal goods in comparison to an idea of the good one cannot define.
German finance minister who told Varoufakis 'Fine, how much money do you need?' when Greece threatened Grexit, revealed that European bureaucracy had a plan for and even wanted Grexit.
Jacques Lacan positive
Major theoretical resource throughout: Big Other, subject supposed to know, the constitutive instability of desire, the structure of jealousy. Žižek extends Lacanian concepts to the digital machine and to the atheist subject of negative theology.
His brain-controlled wheelchair is cited as an early example of the inside-outside collapse, the body's boundary dissolving as thought directly commands the machine.
Mentioned by a questioner as a source for the idea that capitalism is always already flowing beyond its limits; Žižek does not specifically engage with Deleuze's formulation.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Žižek briefly met him and told him 'maybe even you are right' that capitalism triumphed, but notes the best managers of capitalism are now ex-communists in China and Vietnam, complicating the end-of-history thesis.
Robert Pfaller positive
Good Austrian friend who developed interpassivity and the concept of beliefs functioning without believers; Žižek calls the concept extraordinary and recommends inviting him.
Patricia Churchland negative
Mentioned alongside Paul Churchland as holding an inadequate eliminativist position on free will and subjectivity.
Yuval Noah Harari positive
'Homo Deus' provides a useful description of Internet of Things and the narrating self, though Žižek does not buy Harari's conclusions.
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just positive
His metaphor of revolutionaries as ship captains in a storm entering uncharted territory, with no higher necessity to rely on, is cited by Žižek as a better revolutionary metaphor than the Marxist train of history.
Raymond Kurzweil negative
His Singularity writings described as 'bullshit'; accused of cheating, describing a collective mind while covertly retaining personal selfhood, and of merely repeating Soviet Gnosticism.
Nicolas Malebranche positive
'My favorite post-Cartesian philosopher'; his theory of Paradise as instrumental sexuality and the Fall as loss of divine distance from the body is used to illuminate Soviet Gnosticism and Silicon Valley tech-gnosis.
Alain Badiou positive
Žižek defends Badiou's passion of the real against Sloterdijk's critique, noting Badiou already distinguishes real of subtraction from purification; referenced approvingly throughout.
Alexis Tsipras negative
Žižek is against both Grexit and Tsipras's capitulation to European austerity demands; capitulation led to Greece being worse off with a larger national debt.
Mentioned as having subscribed to the Soviet Gnostic vision of technology producing a new collective, disembodied man, illustrating that tech-gnosis was not marginal but mainstream Bolshevik ideology.
Fredric Jameson positive
Quoted on capitalism being easier to imagine surviving than ending; but his eventual proposal of militarization is described as 'the ultimate paradox' and mocked as symptom of the crisis of imagination.
Bernie Sanders positive
'I like Bernie', Sanders was the only candidate who tried to capture the new dissatisfaction that Trump symptomized, by pushing the liberal consensus to the left.
Samuel Beckett positive
The title 'Incontinence of the Void' for Žižek's book in print comes from Beckett's 'Ill Seen Ill Said'; Žižek describes the book as pure metaphysics.
T. S. Eliot positive
His 'Murder in the Cathedral' formulation, 'the highest form of treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason', is Žižek's key to the Christian atheist reading of the Danish noir film.
Mark Fisher positive
A questioner cites Fisher on people preferring to imagine the apocalypse rather than the end of capitalism; Žižek wonders if Jameson plagiarized Fisher and credits the insight.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
'My good friend'; revealed to Žižek that Schäuble offered Greece money to do Grexit, showing European bureaucracy wanted Grexit. Žižek respects Varoufakis's strategy of staying in Europe to cause chaos, while opposing Tsipras's capitulation.
Denis Diderot positive
His 'Entretien d'un philosophe avec la Maréchale...' makes the point Žižek wants: act morally without regard to God's existence, the exact opposite of Pascal's wager, not a version of it.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Friend and conservative philosopher, sometimes called half-neo-fascist by others; Žižek corrects his misreading of Badiou but extensively uses his Anthropocene and domestication theses, finding his honesty admirable.
Rowan Williams positive
Ex-Archbishop of Canterbury; 'quite surprisingly, it's one of the miracles, is a very intelligent theoretician'; his book on Dostoevsky and his definition of negative theology as out-of-jointness are cited approvingly.
Jeremy Rifkin positive
Far from fully agreeing with him, but credits Rifkin for detecting collaborative commons and zero marginal costs as signs of post-capitalism.
Claude Lanzmann positive
Not one of Lanzmann's great fans, but deeply agrees with his stated decision to burn any Nazi film reel that recorded gas-chamber killings, some things must remain unseen for life to remain meaningful.
Niklas Luhmann positive
Also uses the 12th camel anecdote in his systems theory; cited alongside Dupuy as a source for the legend.
Cited for declaring 'American imperialism is the last rotting phase of the late phase', an instance of the left's eternal postponement of capitalism's final crisis.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited for the insight that a true capitalist is possessed by a perverted ethics: capital should turn around even if everyone drops dead, justifying Žižek's paradox that we need more egotism, not less, to resist capitalism.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Major resource for the infinite resignation and leap of faith that ground Christian atheism; Žižek takes the Kierkegaardian resigned subject as the only adequate subjective stance for modern science.
Thomas Metzinger positive
'My favorite cognitive scientist'; his claim that free will is a user's illusion one cannot subjectively assume is used by Žižek to argue that the Kierkegaardian resigned subject is the only adequate fit for modern science, though even Metzinger's Buddhist solution is 'too easy'.
Niels Bohr positive
Figures in a key anecdote about the horseshoe above his door: he kept it not because he believed in it but because he was told it works even without belief, Žižek's paradigm of cynical ideology.
Paul Churchland negative
His position, we can and should fully assume we have no free will, is existentially impossible according to Žižek; we can know it rationally but cannot subjectivize it.
Named alongside Malevich as a Soviet avant-garde figure; the popular rejection of avant-garde bullshit is what Stalin exploited to impose Socialist Realism.
Figures in multiple anecdotes: the 'dialectical unity' joke about money in communism; and the cultural revolution of the late 1920s as a return to normal human life ending Soviet Gnosticism.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek still considers himself a Marxist; cites Marx on capitalism's structural instability and the opium of the people formula; argues Hegel was more materialist than Marx as a productive corrective.
Sigmund Freud positive
The death drive is invoked as Freud's name for the negative theological minimum, the indestructible excess that persists after all positive content is removed.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central reference: his account of the ethical state and war, his dialectical structure. Žižek's thesis is that Hegel was more materialist than Marx and that redeeming Hegel for today is the core philosophical project.
Immanuel Kant positive
Referenced for the distinction between thinking and cognition (in Q&A) and the thing-in-itself as something we are prohibited to see; Žižek uses the Kantian distinction to argue that ethical self-sacrifice moves beyond mere cognition.
John McCumber positive
Good old friend, author of 'In the Company of Words' on Hegel; shares Žižek's dream of redeeming Hegel without shame.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky positive
Referenced through Rowan Williams' reading of 'The Idiot': Prince Myshkin is not a saintly figure but a catastrophic innocent whose goodness brings havoc and death to everyone around him.
What it argues
cynical ideology and interpassivity: beliefs that function without believersAnthropocene and the communist horizon of ecological survivalInternet of Things: emancipation vs. digital control as two sides of the sameSoviet tech-gnosis as prehistory of Silicon Valley transhumanismChristian atheism and the negative theological minimumKierkegaard's infinite resignation as ground of radical atheist faithcapitalism's resistance to imagination and the left's dilemma
Dialectical moves 12
“Far from being indifferent to appearances, Stalinist regimes were the most desperate of all in clinging to appearances.”
The seeming passion-of-the-real ruthlessness of Stalinism turns out to be the most obsessive management of semblance.
“A true capitalist has a perverted ethics — so to resist capitalism we may need MORE commonsense egotism, not ethical sacrifice.”
The standard critique of capitalism as selfish is inverted: capitalism's own inner logic is selfless devotion to capital, so ordinary egotism is the corrective.
“Hegel was more materialist than Marx.”
The standard materialist inversion of Hegel is itself reversed: the Hegelian dialectic already carries a more thoroughgoing materialism than Marxist orthodoxy.
“The digital machine that knows you better than you know yourself makes liberal democracy and self-governance obsolete.”
The Enlightenment subject who governs herself is rendered superfluous precisely by technology, the Big Other now knows us better than we know ourselves.
“Soviet tech-gnosis already had everything that Silicon Valley presents as its revolutionary new vision.”
The digital future's novelty is reversed: Bolshevik 1920s ideology already formulated digital immortality, collective mind, and the post-human in primitive form.
“The emancipatory Internet of Things and the totalizing surveillance Internet of Things are two sides of the same coin — you cannot have one without the other.”
The utopian and dystopian readings of digital commons are not alternatives but structurally inseparable.
“Christianity is the only consequent atheism.”
True atheism requires the Christian theological structure of God's self-abandonment; without it, atheism remains philosophically incomplete.
“Diderot's advice — act morally without God — is the exact opposite of Pascal's wager, not a version of it.”
Where Pascal bets on God's existence to secure reward, Diderot acts without any divine guarantee, expressing true confidence by having nothing to gain from morality.
“The true Devil's son is Mørck the atheist detective, not Johannes the serial killer who claims to serve the Devil.”
The real diabolical move is not sin but T.S. Eliot's inversion: doing the right deed for no divine reason, the believer without God is more dangerous than the self-proclaimed Devil's son.
“Predestination makes freedom more anxious, not less: knowing you are determined but not how produces the purest anxiety of freedom.”
The Protestant certainty that everything is decided does not relax freedom but maximizes its pressure, you must enact the predestined without knowing what it is.
“The more capitalism is in crisis, the better it functions.”
Capitalism is the only system based on permanent instability; its crises are not failures but its proper mode of reproduction.
“In populism, the opium of the people are people themselves; and today, the opium of the people is opium itself.”
Marx's formula is doubled: the ideological pacifier has collapsed into literal substance, and in populism the mass itself functions as its own narcotic.
Claims 22
asserts
Cynical ideology — where nobody genuinely believes but beliefs function socially — is the predominant ideological form today.ideology
rejects
Sloterdijk misreads Badiou: the passion of the real is always paired with a passion for semblance, and the real of subtraction is its proper corrective — not simply a harbinger of mass violence.Sloterdijk's critique of Badiou
asserts
Stalinist regimes, far from being indifferent to appearances, were the most desperate of all regimes in clinging to appearances.Stalinist ideology and appearance
asserts
Capitalist logic structurally ignores ecological collateral damage and cannot account for it even through total commodification of nature.capitalism and ecology
rejects
Total commodification — putting a price tag on air or unpaid housework — is not a viable solution to the ecological crisis.capitalist approach to ecology
asserts
A true capitalist has a perverted ethics — capital must circulate even if everyone dies — so fighting capitalism may require more commonsense egotism, not ethical purity.capitalist ethics
asserts
Sloterdijk's measures for survival — overcoming capitalist expansionism, universal solidarity, power to violate state sovereignty — imply a communist horizon whether he admits it or not.Sloterdijk's proposals and communism
asserts
Collaborative commons are signs of post-capitalism emerging within global capitalism, representing the return of gift exchange at a higher level.collaborative commons and post-capitalism
asserts
The emancipatory vision and the totalizing surveillance vision of Internet of Things are two sides of the same coin — you cannot have one without the other.Internet of Things
asserts
Soviet Bolshevik tech-gnosis already formulated in primitive form everything Silicon Valley presents as new — digital immortality, collective mind, Singularity.Soviet Gnosticism and Silicon Valley transhumanism
asserts
Stalin's cultural revolution and Socialist Realism were a reactionary return to normal human life against avant-garde futurist utopianism — and were popular for precisely that reason.Stalinist cultural revolution
asserts
Digital machines know us better than we know ourselves, bypassing our self-narratives; the liberal narrating self and democratic self-governance are therefore becoming obsolete.digital machine and liberal subjectivity
asserts
The digital machine is the latest embodiment of the Big Other — the subject supposed to know — operating as a non-subjective chain of signifiers without a master.digital technology and Lacanian Big Other
asserts
Hegel was more materialist than Marx, and a materialist reversal of Marx in Hegel is the philosophically correct direction.Hegel, Marx, and materialism
asserts
Christianity is the only consequent atheism: only a belief that survives the disappearance of God as Big Other is radical belief.Christianity and atheism
reframes
Diderot's advice — act morally without relying on God's existence — is the exact opposite of Pascal's wager, not a version of it.Diderot vs. Pascal on moral action and God
asserts
The detective Mørck, not the serial killer Johannes, is the true Devil's son: he acts with faith precisely as a non-believer, following T.S. Eliot's inversion of the Devil's temptation.Christian atheism as illustrated by 'A Conspiracy of Faith'
asserts
Kierkegaard's infinite resignation — sacrifice for nothing, no guarantee — is a prerequisite for authentic religious experience and the model for Christian atheism.infinite resignation and authentic faith
asserts
The death drive is what Freud calls the negative theological minimum: the indestructible excess that persists after all transcendence is stripped away.death drive as theological residue
asserts
Predestination makes freedom more anxious, not less: knowing you are determined but not how produces freedom at its purest.predestination, freedom, and Protestant ethics
asserts
Capitalism is difficult to transcend because it is the first system to directly externalize the constitutive instability of Lacanian desire, making it appear as the 'natural' system.capitalism and imagination of alternatives
reframes
Anti-Semitism must be combated not by refuting factual claims about Jews but by asking why the Nazi needs the figure of the Jew — debating at the factual level means selling one's soul to the devil.anti-Semitism and structural vs. factual critique
Quotes 12
“of course I don't believe it, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it”Slavoj Žižek · cynical ideology: belief that works without the believer
“Liberalism sanctifies the narrating self and allows it to vote in the polling stations, in the supermarket and in the marriage market.”Slavoj Žižek · liberal subjectivity and its coming obsolescence
“Google will be able to represent even your own political opinions better than yourself.”Slavoj Žižek · digital Big Other rendering liberal self-governance obsolete
“The highest form of treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason.”Slavoj Žižek · Devil's ultimate temptation is not sin but noble action without divine ground (T.S. Eliot)
“So my thesis is that only that Christianity is the only consequent atheism.”Slavoj Žižek · Christian atheism as the only philosophically complete atheism
“The only way to be truly moral is to act morally without regard to God's existence.”Slavoj Žižek · Diderot's inversion of Pascal: ethics without divine guarantee
“The contradiction which arrests our understanding of God is that a man is required to make the greatest possible sacrifice, to dedicate his whole life as a sacrifice, and wherefore, there is indeed no wherefore.”Slavoj Žižek · Kierkegaard's infinite resignation: sacrifice without reason or guarantee
“The religious dimension of these fictions lies in the insistent sense of incongruity, unmistakable even if no one within the fiction can say what we should be congruent with.”Slavoj Žižek · negative theological minimum as out-of-jointness without positive content (Rowan Williams)
“opium of the people is opium itself”Slavoj Žižek · collapse of ideology into literal substance in drug culture
“in populism, the opium of the people are people themselves”Slavoj Žižek · populism as self-narcotization of the masses (Adorno)
“it is this wonderful paradox of an illusion which if you erase it, you lose also the reality of which it is the illusion”Slavoj Žižek · the 12th camel: God as structural necessity not mere supplement
“We revolutionaries don't have any higher necessity to rely on. We are just captains leading a ship in the middle of a storm entering an unchartered territory.”Slavoj Žižek · revolutionary action without historical guarantee (Saint-Just)
Transcript 39 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I just hope I like to be here, I feel at home and like most of you, I still remember, no, like most of you don’t, I still remember years ago Westwood was much livelier. Maybe those times will return. And I’m especially grateful to Ken, and I see my other friends here. For example, you know how many ideas I also took from Ken? Ken had already, you developed this over years ago I think, this wonderful flash of an insight that what if what we call human rights are precisely the rights to violate the Ten Commandments. You know, like they are the—at least for you in the US—the right to have arms, which means the right to kill, you know, like "thou shalt not kill." Sexual freedom means you can [unintelligible] and so on. It’s a wonderful reading. I’m also glad to see here my good old friend John McCumber, who wrote years ago a wonderful book, "In the Company of Words," on Hegel. His dream, I hope, is the same as mine, the one of totally without any shame redeeming Hegel for today. I even ironically in that over pages book called "Less Than Nothing"—which certainly doesn't weight less than nothing—my idea is even to perform a materialist reversal of Marx in Hegel. The crazy reading is that Hegel was more materialist than Marx. So I do with all this, I'm just glad to be here. Not to lose time since I usually talk too much, I just—a word. I would like to begin with a warning so that I will not disappoint you. Neither the word "Trump"—I will just now mention things which brought me a lot of trouble lately—neither the word "Donald Trump," or the words, nor the word "LGBTQ+" or however you put it now will be pronounced here. I will not deal with that. I will do something, unfortunately you will be bored probably, I will precisely do an old-fashioned analysis of our present constellation—not in the United States, but general. Where are we with humanity? What does this mean with religion? And then I will try to conclude with an analysis of a good Danish thriller to illustrate what would have meant to me a kind of a Christian atheist position, which I think is a religious position. I’m an atheist, but I define myself, it will be clear why, as a Christian atheist. What this, how this would have worked. So without further ado, let's, let's go on. Let me begin paradoxically by a conservative philosopher whom some people even dismissed as a half-neo-fascist, but who is a friend of mine and I think he is interesting. I'm of course talking about Peter Sloterdijk, the famous author of, already in the late eighties, of the "Critique of Cynical Reason." I think still the achievement of that book is extraordinary because he first deployed this basic idea that, which at a different level was then deployed by my good Austrian friend—you should, I think, invite him here, he is extraordinary—Robert Pfaller. This idea of beliefs which socially function even if no one believes in them. It's a wonderful idea developed also under the guise of his Pfaller's new term "interpassivity," how others can believe for you. How we, today's predominant ideology is cynical. We are realist, we don't care, I mean, we don't believe. But we in, we usually project our beliefs onto others. Nobody believes, but a belief functions socially, it functions, it is operative as a belief. Like a classic stupid simplified example: Christmas, Santa Claus. If you ask parents, "do you believe in Santa Claus?" the answer would have been of course, "I'm not crazy, I buy the presents, of course not." Yeah, but it's a problem because then you ask children, "do you believe in Santa Claus?" They say, "of course not, I just pretend to not to disappoint my parents to get the presents," and so on. You see my point? Nobody believes in it, but it functions socially, it functions, it is operative as a belief. And I think that not only religious beliefs function like that. Even our amusement. For example, and that's Pfaller’s, Robert Pfaller's idea: take what is for me the greatest contribution of American culture in the 20th century to world civilization—you must know my joke—it's canned laughter on TV. He says, are you aware what a paradoxical thing canned laughter is? You return home in the evening tired as a dog, you put—you turn on the TV, you watch some stupid "Cheers" or whatever show and the TV laughs for you, literally. It's wrong when people claim that this is some kind of Pavlovian manipulation to trigger your laughter. No, I spoken with specialists, they are aware it doesn't function like this. It doesn't function with me and I was told this is the norm. You look at it just like an idiot, tired. At the end you feel relaxed as if you have laughed. And you see phenomena like this interest me tremendously. If I may repeat a joke which I used in some ten of my books but it's the best rendering of this paradox. I’m sorry some of you know it. My favorite theoretical anecdote about Niels Bohr—you know, Copenhagen and so on—who, I'm sorry if you know the story, once he had a small country house out of Copenhagen in the countryside and once he was visited there by a friend who saw above the entrance to the door of that country house a horseshoe. I don't know how you are here, but in Europe this is a superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And the friend asked him, "but why do you have that? This is superstition. Aren't you a scientist? Do you believe in it?" Niels Bohr answered, "I'm not stupid, I'm a scientist, of course I don't believe in it." Then the friend persisted, "but why do you have it there?" Ah, Niels Bohr was a reader of Kierkegaard. His answer was, "of course I don't believe it, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it." That's ideology today. You know, nobody believes it, we are all cynics and so on, but we act as if we believe. So at this level again Sloterdijk followed this path. And I was pleasantly surprised by his last book—or is it still the last, I'm not sure—"What Happened in the 20th Century," which is interestingly enough a direct dialogue with Alain Badiou. Okay, Sloterdijk is some kind of neo, half-neo-conservative, critical of Badiou. But I was surprised, if you are not deceived by appearances, how far does Sloterdijk go. So finally let me go into it. In his book—it's not yet translated incidentally, unfortunately into English, I hope it will be, it's a short book—after rejecting the 20th century what Badiou calls *la passion du réel*, passion of the real. Because for Sloterdijk this passion of the real—you know, get rid of appearances, arrive at the real—for Sloterdijk this is harbinger of political extremism which leads to the extermination of enemies and so on, and so on. Well, Sloterdijk I think is wrong here. First, if you read Badiou’s book "Century," you see Badiou is well aware that passion of the real is always accompanied by a passion for semblance. This is why Badiou develops in a very nice way how the 20th century passion of the real which effectively ended up in different totalitarian regimes, Gulag and so on, instead of this real of purification—let's get rid of false semblances and so on—has to be replaced by the real of subtraction. It's a totally different logic. And also Badiou is fully aware, that's clear in Badiou, Sloterdijk misses it, how precisely the regimes which may appear to be passion of the real at its clearest, like radical Stalinist regimes—you kill millions, you don't care about appearances—no, they do care about appearances. I don't think there ever was a regime which was so desperately clinging to appearances as if there ever was a regime more like Stalinist regime. Maybe Mao’s Cultural Revolution. They are so sensitive to every breaking rupture of appearance and so on. That's the paradox. But okay, let me go on. So Sloterdijk claims that in the 21st century something new is happening which compels us to break with this procedure of passion of the real—let's arrive at the thing itself, getting rid of all appearances and so on. And what he, Sloterdijk, sees happening is best encapsulated by the title of the first two essays in this book "What Happened in the 20th Century": "The Anthropocene" and a wonderful subtitle, "From the Domestication of Man to the Civilizing of Culture." Anthropocene, as we all know, designates a new epoch in the life of our planet in which we humans cannot any longer rely on the Earth as a reservoir ready to absorb the consequences of our productive activity. We cannot any longer afford to ignore the side effects, collateral damage, of our productivity. These effects cannot any longer be reduced to the background of the figure of humanity. We have to accept that we live on a, as they call it, spaceship Earth, responsible and accountable for its conditions. Earth is no longer the impenetrable background or horizon of our productive activity. It emerges as another finite object which we can inadvertently destroy or transform it to make it unlivable. This means that at the very moment when we become powerful enough to affect the most basic conditions of our lives, we have to accept that we are just another animal species on a small planet. A new way to relate to our environments is thus necessary once we realize this. No longer a heroic worker expressing his, her creative potentials and drawing from the inexhaustible resources from his or her environment, but a much more modest agent collaborating with his, her environment, permanently negotiating a tolerable level of safety and stability. And is the very model of ignoring the collateral damage not capitalism? What matters in capitalist reproduction is the self-enhancing circulation focused on profit. And the collateral damage done to the environments not included into costs of production is in principle ignored. Even the attempts to take it into account through taxation and so on, or by way of directly putting a price tag on every natural resource one uses including air, cannot but misfire. Because you know there is a wonderful, but it's crazy, I think unworkable, capitalist attempt to deal with ecological crisis. The idea is, it’s a crazy one, of total commodification. Like somehow we should calculate for example our entire air supply, air on our Earth, how much is it work, is it worth? Let's say I don't know how many trillions, and then somehow divide it and add to the price. There is even an attempt in this way, some feminists were for it when I was young, to solve the problem of exploiting women by putting a price tag of unpaid housework of women. Now this sounds nice, there is a certain justice in it, but I don't think it works. It's simply what it seems to be, a total commodification. So in order to establish this new—ah, another thing I want to add here is that for this reason I don't think that the right way to criticize capitalism is to accuse it of being egotist, short-sighted and so on. Walter Benjamin was right. A true capitalist is possessed by a certain perverted ethics. Capital should turn around even if we all drop dead and so on. Maybe what we need to be good ecologists is precisely a little bit more of commonplace egotism. Like you know, don't be just obsessed with reproduction of capital, think about how our lives will turn out and so on, and so on. So in order to establish this new mode of relating to our environment, Sloterdijk claims a radical political and economic change is necessary. What Sloterdijk calls the domestication of the wild animal culture. His thesis is the following one, very simple one but I think convincing: till now each culture disciplined, educated its own members and guaranteed civil peace among them in the guise of state power. But the relationship between different cultures and states was permanently under the shadow of potential war, with each state of peace nothing more than a temporary armistice. As Hegel conceptualized it, the entire ethics of a state culminates in the highest act of heroism, the readiness to sacrifice one's life for one's nation-state, which means that the wild barbarian relations between states serve as the foundation of the ethical life within a state. Hegel again develops this nicely, how for him in our ordinary lives we just care about ordinary daily business, profit, happy family life and so on, and we forget about our basic universal ethical vocation. That's why for Hegel, to simplify it somehow, war is necessary to remind you that you are not just a utilitarian egotist whose activity is here to bring pleasure, satisfaction, whatever, you have a universal ethical duty. I simplify Hegel, of course it's more complicated. But so in today's, is today's North Korea with its ruthless pursuit of nuclear weapons and rockets to hit with them distant targets, not the ultimate example of this logic of unconditional nation-state sovereignty? However, the moment we fully accept the fact that we live on a spaceship Earth, the task that urgently imposes itself is that of civilizing civilizations themselves, of imposing some kind of universal solidarity and cooperation among all human communities, a task rendered all the more difficult by the ongoing rise of sectarian, religious and ethnic heroic violence and readiness to sacrifice oneself and the world maybe for one's specific cause. So it's a very simple vision. But let us make a step back and reflect upon what Sloterdijk is advocating. The measures that he proposes as necessary for the survival of humanity—the overcoming of capitalist expansionism, wide international cooperation and solidarity that should also be able to transform themselves into an executive power ready to violate state sovereignty and so on, and so on—are they not all measures destined to protect our natural and cultural commons? If they do not point towards communism, if they are not, if they don't imply a communist horizon, then the term "communism" has no meaning at all. Once I asked about this Sloterdijk and then he squeezed out, you know. He said, "I just wouldn't call it communism but communalism or whatever" and so on. No, but what I like—you see this is how honest conservatives think—he, although he is terrified at communist crimes, he is well aware that the unbridled logic of capitalist reproduction and of state sovereignty, that is to say all this logic of ethical sacrifice for one's country as the highest act, has to be abandoned, left behind. So again, although Sloterdijk critically rejects the 20th century extremism and passion of the real, the shift he advocates is extremely radical. Much more radical than the standard communist vision of a new society which continues to rely on the capitalist unconstrained expansion. No wonder Sloterdijk remains vague about how to enact this immense transformation. A closer approach would necessarily bring him to the old topic of communist reorganization of society. So to resolve this deadlock—because again when it comes to positive measures I ask him, Peter Sloterdijk, "but how would you do this?" He remains vague, "we don't know" and so on—we should follow the good old Marxist path and shift the focus from politics, in the sense of how should—how can we be active politically, what to do—to the signs of post-capitalism that are discernible within global capitalism itself. Especially the rise of what people like Jeremy Rifkin, Paul Mason and others—and I'm far from fully agreeing with them—but nonetheless they did detect what they call "collaborative commons." A new mode of production and exchange which leaves behind private property and market exchange. One could thus conceive collaborative commons as the return at a higher level of the gift exchange ancient societies. In collaborative commons individuals are giving their products free into circulation. This emancipatory dimension of collaborative commons should of course be located into the context of the rise of so-called Internet of Things, combined with another result of today's development of productive forces: the explosive rise of what Rifkin calls zero marginal costs. More and more products, not only informations, can be reproduced for no additional costs. What lurks behind Internet of Things is of course a properly metaphysical vision of the emergence of the so-called Singularity. Our individual lives will be totally embedded in a divine-like digital other which will control and regulate them. This extrapolation confronts us clearly with the utter ambiguity of the Internet of Things. Two mutually exclusive readings of Internet of Things impose themselves: Internet of Things as the domain of radical emancipation, a unique chance of combining freedom and collaboration where, to paraphrase Juliet's definition of love from Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet": "The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite," versus Internet of Things as complete submersion into the divine digital other where I'm deprived of my freedom of agency. How should we relate these two aspects? It's what I find so fascinating. Now in Germany they are publishing the manuscripts, thousands of them, of what we cannot, from hindsight we can call Soviet Bolshevik "tech-gnosis." It's so interesting to see how all that Ray Kurzweil bullshit and so on, you find it in Bolshevism in the 1920s. You know, the predominant ideology, not just some marginal crazy guys, but among hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, even Trotsky subscribed to this vision, was that with new developments of technology the era of individual human beings who regulate their lives through emotions, fears and so on is over; that literally the ultimate task of communism is to construct a new man which will be immediately part of a collective and at the same time not immersed into his, her bodily existence. For example, they used this image of sexuality. It's an incredible movement, I mean, we totally forgot about it. And the idea is the following one: that now that the working class has power, capitalism is over—in Soviet Union the state power is in the hand of workers, blah blah—the last fortress of the reaction is sexuality. Why? They claim because in sexuality you have this dependence on, dependence of, on feelings at its purest. You know, like sorry to be vulgar from my male chauvinist position, you see a beautiful naked woman, you are like, you know, you are directly affected. Their idea is, I mean, maybe they—at my age it gets problematic and so on—what they claim, these Soviet Gnostics, is that in communism even the most intimate sexual impulses, arousals and so on, should function like, how do you call those apparatuses, those screens on a machine, you know, like for example when you control a heating machine. The point is not, or a machine which functions. You don't have to feel if it is hot or enough. You look at the temperature display. And the idea is that in developed communism our bodies will function in the same way. That even if you will feel something, you will not be immediately affected by it. It would be like "am I hungry? Let's look at the screen. Do I need sex? Let's look at the screen." And this is, it's the theological background of this is extraordinary. It is a theological background of French post-Jansenism, Cartesian thought. For example, my favorite post-Cartesian philosopher, Nicolas Malebranche, had this, developed this idea. For him, there was sex, they screwed like crazy, Adam and Eve in paradise, but his point is they did it just as another instrumental activity. Getting an erection was like raising the hand. Making love was like working on the field, you know. It was simple instrumental activity, you were not directly identified by it. And he, Malebranche, I found this beautiful, even identified in this weird terms the Fall. The Fall was when Adam thought, lost this distance, when he thought he is directly affected by objects. And in a nice anti-feminist twist, for Malebranche, the object which seduced Adam into this empiricist mistake—"I am immediately affected by object"—was of course the body of naked Eve, you know. Then it's a wonderful crazy theory of Malebranche that God punished us for this. How? God saw how we humans wanted to abandon this divine distance, we are not our bodies, and he said, "Now I will punish you by since you want to control your body as a machine from a distance, so I will give you—" to him he meant of course, God was a male chauvinist here, man—"I will make it so that part of your body will be uncontrollable in its movements: erection. You will not control it. It will happen when you don't want it, when you want it desperately it will not happen" and so on. And you know you find this theory already in Saint Augustine. It's a theory that the uncontrollability of erection is the divine punishment for the sin. And I mean it's absolutely crucial to know this line of thought. Like in Silicon Valley they should return to their communist roots, hopefully. How in a much more primitive way technologically but nonetheless how this dream of digital immortality and so on, in a primitive way everything was already there formulated in Soviet Gnosticism. And you know what's the saddest thing in it? That Stalin put an end to it. The Stalinist cultural revolution in the late twenties was precisely with all its horrors a return to, let's call it normal human life. This is why Stalin imposed Socialist Realism, a move which was very popular at that point. The idea was what? People hated all that futurist, constructivist, avant-garde bullshit—you know, Malevich, Eisenstein. They wanted normal warm stories, sentimental and so on. Stalin gave all this to them. Now we are returning to it. What I want to say is again, I want to focus on this ambiguity of the Internet of Things, which is the final prospect of this total digitalization of our lives. What is happening with Internet of Things is what? Things can also refer to a wide variety of devices such as heart monitoring implants, biochip transponders on farm animals, electric clams in coastal waters, automobiles with built-in sensors, DNA analysis devices for environmental monitoring and so on. These devices collect useful data with the help of various technologies and then autonomously flow the data between to other devices. So human individuals—that's also crucial part of Internet of Things—how human individuals are also things whose states and activities are continuously registered, transmitted without their knowledge. You know who developed this in a very naive way but you learn things from that book? It's a best-selling book now: Yuval Harari, "Homo Deus." Again, I don't buy his conclusions, but he provides a nice description of this process. How—I refer here to Harari's book—our self is composed of narratives which retroactively try to impose some consistency on the pandemonium of our experiences, obliterating experiences and memories which disturb these narratives. That's our everyday experience. We don't remember everything. We are censored by ideological mechanisms—not in any mysterious totalitarian way, but simply we try to make sense of our experiences and we try to organize them automatically into narratives. So ideology does not reside primarily in stories invented by those in power to deceive others. It resides in stories invented by subjects to comfortably deceive themselves. But the pandemonium persists. And now comes the wonderful confusion of—sorry—description by Harari of the consequences of Internet of Things. Imagine a near future already now, society where all our acts are monitored by machines. It's easy to imagine. You go to the toilet, you don't even have to think about it, your urine is analyzed. Soon we will have chips implanted controlling our health. Amazon.com and Kindle—you know what is controlled there, I was so surprised to learn even. You know that Kindle controls not only what books you buy but how much you read them, which pages you read and so on, and so on. So the machine monitoring you—what you shop, what you read, what you watch on TV—in a way knows you better than yourselves. It knows the raw data bypassing the narratives that you construct about yourselves. The machine registers the discords and can maybe even enable you to deal with them in a much more rational way than your conscious self. Say, when I have to decide to marry or not, the machine will register all the shifting attitudes that haunt me, the past pains and disappointments that I preferred to swipe after the carpet. And do you know that they already made, I spoke with some of friends of mine from Israel who did wide research, they did something very vicious. They got the permission from a couple of couples who were planned to be married to be monitored for some time. And then they compared the decision of the couple to get married or not, they compared this their conscious decision to the conclusion of the computer. The conclusion of the computer was much more accurate. Like if they did marry, the computer predicted this marriage will not last and vice versa and so on. Why not—it was also demonstrated by experiment—why not extend this prospect to political decisions? While myself can be easily seduced by a populist demagoguery, the machine will take note of all your past frustrations, it will register the inconsistency between your fleeting passions and your other opinions. For example, you know in the thrill of the moment before elections you make a crazy decision. It's proven, and it's not even a reactionary conclusion, that for example, I'll put it like this, instead of you stupid Americans being allowed to vote freely and then you get what you get: a crazy guy married to a Slovene girl—Melania is Slovene and you know that in Slovenia we exploit it, we already have Melania cake, Melania wine and so on, we are doing big business of it—a friend of mine did a wonderful experiment and demonstrated that if a computer were to be allowed, not just some machinery collecting all the data, to follow your life, all your past decisions, sympathies and so on, and rationally conclude what are your actual interests and advise you how to vote—Trump would have never been elected, you know. Okay, I violated my promise that I didn't mention the word "Trump" and so on, but what can we do. So again, why should machines not vote on our behalf? Now you will say this is a crazy dream. No, but computer scientists here are much more rational. They are not claiming machines are perfect. They are just modestly claiming that on average they are much better than your conscious decision. But you know they are not totalitarian in the sense of imposing on you, they don't define for you what is good for you. They accept your own version of what you want: happy life, whatever. And they just measure "do you in your decision live up to your values?" And they tell you better than you yourself know what to follow. It's the same with medicine. Although we need doctors, but it's clear that even if machines can make a mistake, on average if you allow a machine to diagnose you, it will do on average, I repeat it, a better job than an average doctor. So of course the conclusions of this if you go to the end are sad. Decisions made by human individuals are much weaker, less rational than the decision if you allow them to be made, the decisions made by machines. So as I quote from this Yuval Harari: "Liberalism sanctifies the narrating self and allows it to vote in the polling stations, in the supermarket and in the marriage market. For centuries this made good sense because though the narrating self believes in all kinds of fictions and fantasies, no alternative system knew me better. Yet once we have a system that really knows me better than I know myself, it will be foolhardy to leave authority in the hands of the narrating self. Liberal habits such as democratic elections will become obsolete because Google will be able to represent even your own political opinions better than yourself." End of quote. Now one can make a realist case for this option. It is not what the computer which registers my activity, it's not that computer is omnipotent and infallible. It's just that on average its decisions work substantially better than the decisions of our mind. So the digital machine is maybe the latest embodiment of the Big Other, the subject supposed to know, which operates as a field of knowledge, a chain of signifiers without a master signifier, a non-subjective machine. And the problem is then: what will happen in this growing digitalization? Will there, there are two options. Will there be what Kurzweil calls Singularity, in the sense that our minds will combine together into a higher unity or whatever, which will nonetheless control this process, or will we be, how should I put it, dominated by the machines? I think that, I think that the true problem here is that I think there is no simple answer to this question, namely again the question is this one: who will control it? Will we be nonetheless our collective mind, masters of this process, or will be as individuals just reduced to cogs in a machine and so on, and so on. I believe here in Stalin’s answer, I mean of course one of the best jokes that I know from Stalinism, you know. It's a wonderful joke, I'm sorry if you know it, I used it once already in my books. Where the joke goes like this: in '35 in Politburo Soviet Union they had the debate: will there be money in communism or not? Right-wing deviationists claimed there will be money of course, money is natural, how can you exchange objects without money? Left-wing revisionists claimed, left-wingers claimed no, money is capitalist tool of exploitation, there will not be money. Then Comrade Stalin enters the debate and says: "These are both deviations. Right-wing deviation, left-wing deviation. The truth is the dialectical unity of both. There will be money and there will not be money." Now nobody understands Stalin. Ask him, "Comrade Stalin, can you explain how can this be?" And now comes the genius. Stalin says: "It's very simple. Some people will have money, other people will not have money," you know. And that should be answer: will we control it or not? Well, some will control it, others will not control it. I think that I more and more believe that one version of our future is, something is happening today. Futurologists call it the decoupling of intelligence from consciousness. So more and more digital mechanisms, computers will regulate our lives. But I think for a long period at least there will be a privileged class which will have a privileged access programming these computers and so on, and so on. And so the reason I'm a communist, I'm claiming: listen, I'm just following Hollywood, I mean, I basically claim that all these dystopias of you know, like "Hunger Games," "Elysium" and so on, they paint a very realistic, okay it's exaggerated but a very realistic vision of what is awaiting us. So there are many other things to say here philosophically. If you had the misfortune to read all those books on Singularity by Ray Kurzweil, you know what's the problem with him, a serious one. He cheats. He describes this Singularity: we are all one mind. But the way he writes, he still writes as if we will somehow retain our free self, we will be reasoning, talking, having emotions and so on, and so on. That's the usual mistake of, let's call them, optimistic futurologists. They paint a bright future but they forget to mention the price, that literally personal freedom disappears in this Singularity and so on. The other techn—negative dystopian vision: "we will be just cogs in the machine and so on," is I think also wrong because to put it in Lacanian terms, it is too theological, in the sense that it trusts too much into the coherence, consistency of the machine. I don't fear computers because they will see everything and so on. I think computers can go crazy, they are always inconsistent and so on, and so on. And that's why subjectivity will persist. But let me go on so that I don't lose time. Now I want to make a surprising jump from this vision of Internet of Things—and you saw I hope, I don't have time to go into it in detail, this ambiguity of the vision. How on the one hand if you read Rifkin and Paul Mason, it's almost as if, "oh my God, communism is almost here." You know, Internet of Things, no longer private property and so on. But I think this merry communist vision of Internet of Things with no private property and the pessimist vision of "we are all controlled" are two sides of the same. You cannot have one without the other. Here I would like to do something now, to move to a more philosophical topic that may surprise you. I think that there is another way to approach Internet of Things. They are maybe theoretically my enemies, but you know, I'm a Leninist, I always say "let's learn from our enemies," you know. Like although I'm opponent of what is called new materialism, but I was nonetheless fascinated by Jane Bennett's famous description of how actants interact at a polluted trash site. How not only humans but also the rotting trash, worms, insects, abandoned machines, chemical poisons and so on each play their never purely passive role. This idea that we shouldn't oppose just human actants and passive trash, but this idea of, how should I put it in precise terms, of stepping out of course not fully but at a certain level out of our human skin as it were and observe analyze social processes at this more zero ontological level where we are just one among the actants. This is I think the best approach which somehow brings us close to how things function in the so-called Internet of Things. And I think that the ethical implication of such a stance is that we should recognize our entanglement within larger assemblages. We should become more sensitive to the demands of other objects, and we should reformulate self-interest, all this is clear. But now I bring and I don't mean this is any way as an obscenity or critique of it, but the truly subversive act would have been—I’m sorry for the tastelessness but that's my point—for example to give a Jane Bennett description of Auschwitz. Not just humans but human trash, gas ovens and so on, how this functions as an assemblage and so on. There is something inhuman in it. Maybe in order for our survival we need to look at things like this. Not that we sacrifice humans but to see us as one among the agents and then how all of it functions. Because this is what is in a way impossible, prohibited. What do I mean by this? I was always fascinated by this idea that the real, what Immanuel Kant calls thing-in-itself, is not so much some mystery out there that we can—it’s something that simply we are prohibited to see in order to retain our common identity, meaning of life and so on, and so on. Here, although I'm not one of the great fans of Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah," I deeply agree with what he wrote at some point. He said: "Let's say that we would discover by some miracle reels, movie, cinema reels, of some Nazi officer who shot in detail the process of in gas chambers or the *Muselmänner*, the living dead and so on, all the horrors." He says "I would have burned those reels immediately." You know, it's simply that our reality, life we live cannot sustain that. There are things that we—and imagine, okay this is your American trauma, but imagine something similar like, imagine—and my paranoia is that maybe Homeland Security has them, they just don't want to release them—September 11th. There must have been some guys there who were recording what happened when the Twin Towers were collapsing and so on. You know there is a certain domain that has to remain unseen for us to, for our lives to remain meaningful. And my point is that maybe to survive we have to break out of this fantasmatic horizon of our lives and we have to learn to look at ourselves as it were from outside, as one among objects. There is nothing mysterious in it. It's not the same as looking at thing from a divine perspective and so on, and so on. It's still the way we humans see ourselves as among the objects. But we have to perform what Russian formalists called *ostrannenie*, estrangement, you know, this radical asubjectivist view which is possible and not only possible but necessary. And now I came to basic point. I don't believe in this Homo Deus hypothesis. If this universe will emerge, I think that it's not that we enter a post-human era where we will be like gods, you know, those who will be in. I claim that God will be the first victim of it, whatever we mean by God. But now comes the paradox. Although I'm a materialist, I'm Christian or religious materialist. I think that there is a certain religious experience—and don't be afraid I'm not a New Age bullshitter. It's not that in some sense you feel the unity of all and so on, you know. But that there is at an elementary level a religious experience which will have to survive even in this universe. What kind of? Now if you allow me, I’m now checking myself—ooh, I'm not doing too bad. It should go, yeah. I still have just a quarter—now comes the cinematic example. I want to, this is now a very dark part but it's central, please be patient for another minutes. I'm referring to a wonderful Danish Noir film from 2016—now I can be arrested for saying this but you can download a very good copy on Pirate Bay or whatever—it’s called "A Conspiracy of Faith" (*Flaskepost fra P*), "Message in a Bottle." It's directed by Hans Petter Moland. Towards the end of the film—I will not yet, wait a second just that and then you will press the button, yeah—there is a conversation, a remarkable dialogue between Carl Mørck, burnt out, terminally depressed detective, and a guy called Johannes, a handsome blonde serial killer of children, who is as interested in destroying their parents' faith as in snatching their offering. The final confrontation takes place in a lone sea cottage where Johannes, the bad guy, holds in chain as prisoners Mørck, the inspector, and two children kidnapped, a young boy and his sister, a girl. And we have there totally devastated the detective, desperate. The murderer Johannes presents himself as one of Devil's sons whose task is to destroy faith. And he tells Mørck, "And now I'll take your faith away." Now let's go through this three minutes and then I will just conclude, please. And I will maybe to put it in Badiou's terms subtract myself from the image so that you can see. Let's hope it will work. I pray this is always the moment of anxiety. Will it work? I hope so. Yeah. [Audio from "A Conspiracy of Faith" movie clip plays for several minutes] Unfortunately the movie made a little bit of a compromise here. The heli—no, what I mean is the helicopter sound that you heard is the police coming and they even discover then that the, the boy is not really dead, they save him and so on. I'm more brutal here, I mean I was deeply disappointed by this, no. But again, let me provide you and with this I will end the reading of this. We should of course dismiss as ridiculous Johannes' idea of acting as the Devil's son, an idea which is meaningful only within the standard theological universe. If we follow T.S. Eliot's insight that Devil's ultimate temptation is the reference to good itself, as he put it, Eliot, in his "Murder in the Cathedral": "The highest form of treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason." Then it is Mørck himself, I think that's the irony, who is the true Devil's son. You know, like he acts with faith precisely as non-believer. And I'm not yet sure but through some friends in Denmark I got a contact with the director of this film, and like just through my friends I did not directly ask him, "is this the underlying idea? That forget about this stupid pseudo-beautiful blonde Nazi guy, Mørck is really Devil's son?" He said, "Yes, this was the idea." So Devil's ultimate trump card—also in the sense of [unintelligible]—is not give way to your lust for power, enjoy life, abandon the chimera of higher ethical values, but: do all the noble deeds your heart tells you to do, live the highest ethical life, and be aware that there is no need for the reference to God in all this. It is your own inner nature which is your guide here. You are following the law of your heart. Is this stance not personified in Mørck's atheist readiness to sacrifice himself for God? I think it's not as simple as that. That would have been simple humanism, no, we don't need God even if we don't believe—no, I think Mørck's position is much more radical. In what sense? First, the lesson of his position, the detective Mørck, is that only a belief which survives a disappearance of God as the Big Other, ultimate authority, is belief at its most radical. It's a wager much more crazy than Pascal's. You know Pascal's wager: "If you don't believe, act as if you believe and belief will come," remains epistemological, concerning only our attitude towards God. We have to assume that God exists, our wager doesn't concern God himself. While for radical atheism, the wager is ontological. The atheist subject engages itself in a political, artistic and so on project, believes in it without relying on any guarantee. So my thesis is that only that Christianity is the only consequent atheism. In what sense? Let me refer here to, I think this point I'm trying to make was best made by the French materialist so-called—he wasn't really a materialist—Denis Diderot in a short manuscript called "Entretien d'un philosophe avec la Maréchale de a certain lady. He wrote, he concludes: "After all, the most straightforward way is to behave as if the old guy, God, exists even if one doesn't believe it." Now my comment: this
I just hope I like to be here, I feel at home and like most of you, I still remember, no, like most of you don’t, I still remember years ago Westwood was much livelier. Maybe those times will return. And I’m especially grateful to Ken, and I see my other friends here. For example, you know how many ideas I also took from Ken? Ken had already, you developed this over years ago I think, this wonderful flash of an insight that what if what we call human rights are precisely the rights to violate the Ten Commandments. You know, like they are the—at least for you in the US—the right to have arms, which means the right to kill, you know, like "thou shalt not kill." Sexual freedom means you can [unintelligible] and so on. It’s a wonderful reading. I’m also glad to see here my good old friend John McCumber, who wrote years ago a wonderful book, "In the Company of Words," on Hegel. His dream, I hope, is the same as mine, the one of totally without any shame redeeming Hegel for today. I even ironically in that over pages book called "Less Than Nothing"—which certainly doesn't weight less than nothing—my idea is even to perform a materialist reversal of Marx in Hegel. The crazy reading is that Hegel was more materialist than Marx. So I do with all this, I'm just glad to be here. Not to lose time since I usually talk too much, I just—a word. I would like to begin with a warning so that I will not disappoint you. Neither the word "Trump"—I will just now mention things which brought me a lot of trouble lately—neither the word "Donald Trump," or the words, nor the word "LGBTQ+" or however you put it now will be pronounced here. I will not deal with that. I will do something, unfortunately you will be bored probably, I will precisely do an old-fashioned analysis of our present constellation—not in the United States, but general. Where are we with humanity? What does this mean with religion? And then I will try to conclude with an analysis of a good Danish thriller to illustrate what would have meant to me a kind of a Christian atheist position, which I think is a religious position. I’m an atheist, but I define myself, it will be clear why, as a Christian atheist. What this, how this would have worked. So without further ado, let's, let's go on. Let me begin paradoxically by a conservative philosopher whom some people even dismissed as a half-neo-fascist, but who is a friend of mine and I think he is interesting. I'm of course talking about Peter Sloterdijk, the famous author of, already in the late eighties, of the "Critique of Cynical Reason." I think still the achievement of that book is extraordinary because he first deployed this basic idea that, which at a different level was then deployed by my good Austrian friend—you should, I think, invite him here, he is extraordinary—Robert Pfaller. This idea of beliefs which socially function even if no one believes in them. It's a wonderful idea developed also under the guise of his Pfaller's new term "interpassivity," how others can believe for you. How we, today's predominant ideology is cynical. We are realist, we don't care, I mean, we don't believe. But we in, we usually project our beliefs onto others. Nobody believes, but a belief functions socially, it functions, it is operative as a belief. Like a classic stupid simplified example: Christmas, Santa Claus. If you ask parents, "do you believe in Santa Claus?" the answer would have been of course, "I'm not crazy, I buy the presents, of course not." Yeah, but it's a problem because then you ask children, "do you believe in Santa Claus?" They say, "of course not, I just pretend to not to disappoint my parents to get the presents," and so on. You see my point? Nobody believes in it, but it functions socially, it functions, it is operative as a belief. And I think that not only religious beliefs function like that. Even our amusement. For example, and that's Pfaller’s, Robert Pfaller's idea: take what is for me the greatest contribution of American culture in the 20th century to world civilization—you must know my joke—it's canned laughter on TV. He says, are you aware what a paradoxical thing canned laughter is? You return home in the evening tired as a dog, you put—you turn on the TV, you watch some stupid "Cheers" or whatever show and the TV laughs for you, literally. It's wrong when people claim that this is some kind of Pavlovian manipulation to trigger your laughter. No, I spoken with specialists, they are aware it doesn't function like this. It doesn't function with me and I was told this is the norm. You look at it just like an idiot, tired. At the end you feel relaxed as if you have laughed. And you see phenomena like this interest me tremendously. If I may repeat a joke which I used in some ten of my books but it's the best rendering of this paradox. I’m sorry some of you know it. My favorite theoretical anecdote about Niels Bohr—you know, Copenhagen and so on—who, I'm sorry if you know the story, once he had a small country house out of Copenhagen in the countryside and once he was visited there by a friend who saw above the entrance to the door of that country house a horseshoe. I don't know how you are here, but in Europe this is a superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And the friend asked him, "but why do you have that? This is superstition. Aren't you a scientist? Do you believe in it?" Niels Bohr answered, "I'm not stupid, I'm a scientist, of course I don't believe in it." Then the friend persisted, "but why do you have it there?" Ah, Niels Bohr was a reader of Kierkegaard. His answer was, "of course I don't believe it, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it." That's ideology today. You know, nobody believes it, we are all cynics and so on, but we act as if we believe. So at this level again Sloterdijk followed this path. And I was pleasantly surprised by his last book—or is it still the last, I'm not sure—"What Happened in the 20th Century," which is interestingly enough a direct dialogue with Alain Badiou. Okay, Sloterdijk is some kind of neo, half-neo-conservative, critical of Badiou. But I was surprised, if you are not deceived by appearances, how far does Sloterdijk go. So finally let me go into it. In his book—it's not yet translated incidentally, unfortunately into English, I hope it will be, it's a short book—after rejecting the 20th century what Badiou calls *la passion du réel*, passion of the real. Because for Sloterdijk this passion of the real—you know, get rid of appearances, arrive at the real—for Sloterdijk this is harbinger of political extremism which leads to the extermination of enemies and so on, and so on. Well, Sloterdijk I think is wrong here. First, if you read Badiou’s book "Century," you see Badiou is well aware that passion of the real is always accompanied by a passion for semblance. This is why Badiou develops in a very nice way how the 20th century passion of the real which effectively ended up in different totalitarian regimes, Gulag and so on, instead of this real of purification—let's get rid of false semblances and so on—has to be replaced by the real of subtraction. It's a totally different logic. And also Badiou is fully aware, that's clear in Badiou, Sloterdijk misses it, how precisely the regimes which may appear to be passion of the real at its clearest, like radical Stalinist regimes—you kill millions, you don't care about appearances—no, they do care about appearances. I don't think there ever was a regime which was so desperately clinging to appearances as if there ever was a regime more like Stalinist regime. Maybe Mao’s Cultural Revolution. They are so sensitive to every breaking rupture of appearance and so on. That's the paradox. But okay, let me go on. So Sloterdijk claims that in the 21st century something new is happening which compels us to break with this procedure of passion of the real—let's arrive at the thing itself, getting rid of all appearances and so on. And what he, Sloterdijk, sees happening is best encapsulated by the title of the first two essays in this book "What Happened in the 20th Century": "The Anthropocene" and a wonderful subtitle, "From the Domestication of Man to the Civilizing of Culture." Anthropocene, as we all know, designates a new epoch in the life of our planet in which we humans cannot any longer rely on the Earth as a reservoir ready to absorb the consequences of our productive activity. We cannot any longer afford to ignore the side effects, collateral damage, of our productivity. These effects cannot any longer be reduced to the background of the figure of humanity. We have to accept that we live on a, as they call it, spaceship Earth, responsible and accountable for its conditions. Earth is no longer the impenetrable background or horizon of our productive activity. It emerges as another finite object which we can inadvertently destroy or transform it to make it unlivable. This means that at the very moment when we become powerful enough to affect the most basic conditions of our lives, we have to accept that we are just another animal species on a small planet. A new way to relate to our environments is thus necessary once we realize this. No longer a heroic worker expressing his, her creative potentials and drawing from the inexhaustible resources from his or her environment, but a much more modest agent collaborating with his, her environment, permanently negotiating a tolerable level of safety and stability. And is the very model of ignoring the collateral damage not capitalism? What matters in capitalist reproduction is the self-enhancing circulation focused on profit. And the collateral damage done to the environments not included into costs of production is in principle ignored. Even the attempts to take it into account through taxation and so on, or by way of directly putting a price tag on every natural resource one uses including air, cannot but misfire. Because you know there is a wonderful, but it's crazy, I think unworkable, capitalist attempt to deal with ecological crisis. The idea is, it’s a crazy one, of total commodification. Like somehow we should calculate for example our entire air supply, air on our Earth, how much is it work, is it worth? Let's say I don't know how many trillions, and then somehow divide it and add to the price. There is even an attempt in this way, some feminists were for it when I was young, to solve the problem of exploiting women by putting a price tag of unpaid housework of women. Now this sounds nice, there is a certain justice in it, but I don't think it works. It's simply what it seems to be, a total commodification. So in order to establish this new—ah, another thing I want to add here is that for this reason I don't think that the right way to criticize capitalism is to accuse it of being egotist, short-sighted and so on. Walter Benjamin was right. A true capitalist is possessed by a certain perverted ethics. Capital should turn around even if we all drop dead and so on. Maybe what we need to be good ecologists is precisely a little bit more of commonplace egotism. Like you know, don't be just obsessed with reproduction of capital, think about how our lives will turn out and so on, and so on. So in order to establish this new mode of relating to our environment, Sloterdijk claims a radical political and economic change is necessary. What Sloterdijk calls the domestication of the wild animal culture. His thesis is the following one, very simple one but I think convincing: till now each culture disciplined, educated its own members and guaranteed civil peace among them in the guise of state power. But the relationship between different cultures and states was permanently under the shadow of potential war, with each state of peace nothing more than a temporary armistice. As Hegel conceptualized it, the entire ethics of a state culminates in the highest act of heroism, the readiness to sacrifice one's life for one's nation-state, which means that the wild barbarian relations between states serve as the foundation of the ethical life within a state. Hegel again develops this nicely, how for him in our ordinary lives we just care about ordinary daily business, profit, happy family life and so on, and we forget about our basic universal ethical vocation. That's why for Hegel, to simplify it somehow, war is necessary to remind you that you are not just a utilitarian egotist whose activity is here to bring pleasure, satisfaction, whatever, you have a universal ethical duty. I simplify Hegel, of course it's more complicated. But so in today's, is today's North Korea with its ruthless pursuit of nuclear weapons and rockets to hit with them distant targets, not the ultimate example of this logic of unconditional nation-state sovereignty? However, the moment we fully accept the fact that we live on a spaceship Earth, the task that urgently imposes itself is that of civilizing civilizations themselves, of imposing some kind of universal solidarity and cooperation among all human communities, a task rendered all the more difficult by the ongoing rise of sectarian, religious and ethnic heroic violence and readiness to sacrifice oneself and the world maybe for one's specific cause. So it's a very simple vision. But let us make a step back and reflect upon what Sloterdijk is advocating. The measures that he proposes as necessary for the survival of humanity—the overcoming of capitalist expansionism, wide international cooperation and solidarity that should also be able to transform themselves into an executive power ready to violate state sovereignty and so on, and so on—are they not all measures destined to protect our natural and cultural commons? If they do not point towards communism, if they are not, if they don't imply a communist horizon, then the term "communism" has no meaning at all. Once I asked about this Sloterdijk and then he squeezed out, you know. He said, "I just wouldn't call it communism but communalism or whatever" and so on. No, but what I like—you see this is how honest conservatives think—he, although he is terrified at communist crimes, he is well aware that the unbridled logic of capitalist reproduction and of state sovereignty, that is to say all this logic of ethical sacrifice for one's country as the highest act, has to be abandoned, left behind. So again, although Sloterdijk critically rejects the 20th century extremism and passion of the real, the shift he advocates is extremely radical. Much more radical than the standard communist vision of a new society which continues to rely on the capitalist unconstrained expansion. No wonder Sloterdijk remains vague about how to enact this immense transformation. A closer approach would necessarily bring him to the old topic of communist reorganization of society. So to resolve this deadlock—because again when it comes to positive measures I ask him, Peter Sloterdijk, "but how would you do this?" He remains vague, "we don't know" and so on—we should follow the good old Marxist path and shift the focus from politics, in the sense of how should—how can we be active politically, what to do—to the signs of post-capitalism that are discernible within global capitalism itself. Especially the rise of what people like Jeremy Rifkin, Paul Mason and others—and I'm far from fully agreeing with them—but nonetheless they did detect what they call "collaborative commons." A new mode of production and exchange which leaves behind private property and market exchange. One could thus conceive collaborative commons as the return at a higher level of the gift exchange ancient societies. In collaborative commons individuals are giving their products free into circulation. This emancipatory dimension of collaborative commons should of course be located into the context of the rise of so-called Internet of Things, combined with another result of today's development of productive forces: the explosive rise of what Rifkin calls zero marginal costs. More and more products, not only informations, can be reproduced for no additional costs. What lurks behind Internet of Things is of course a properly metaphysical vision of the emergence of the so-called Singularity. Our individual lives will be totally embedded in a divine-like digital other which will control and regulate them. This extrapolation confronts us clearly with the utter ambiguity of the Internet of Things. Two mutually exclusive readings of Internet of Things impose themselves: Internet of Things as the domain of radical emancipation, a unique chance of combining freedom and collaboration where, to paraphrase Juliet's definition of love from Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet": "The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite," versus Internet of Things as complete submersion into the divine digital other where I'm deprived of my freedom of agency. How should we relate these two aspects? It's what I find so fascinating. Now in Germany they are publishing the manuscripts, thousands of them, of what we cannot, from hindsight we can call Soviet Bolshevik "tech-gnosis." It's so interesting to see how all that Ray Kurzweil bullshit and so on, you find it in Bolshevism in the 1920s. You know, the predominant ideology, not just some marginal crazy guys, but among hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, even Trotsky subscribed to this vision, was that with new developments of technology the era of individual human beings who regulate their lives through emotions, fears and so on is over; that literally the ultimate task of communism is to construct a new man which will be immediately part of a collective and at the same time not immersed into his, her bodily existence. For example, they used this image of sexuality. It's an incredible movement, I mean, we totally forgot about it. And the idea is the following one: that now that the working class has power, capitalism is over—in Soviet Union the state power is in the hand of workers, blah blah—the last fortress of the reaction is sexuality. Why? They claim because in sexuality you have this dependence on, dependence of, on feelings at its purest. You know, like sorry to be vulgar from my male chauvinist position, you see a beautiful naked woman, you are like, you know, you are directly affected. Their idea is, I mean, maybe they—at my age it gets problematic and so on—what they claim, these Soviet Gnostics, is that in communism even the most intimate sexual impulses, arousals and so on, should function like, how do you call those apparatuses, those screens on a machine, you know, like for example when you control a heating machine. The point is not, or a machine which functions. You don't have to feel if it is hot or enough. You look at the temperature display. And the idea is that in developed communism our bodies will function in the same way. That even if you will feel something, you will not be immediately affected by it. It would be like "am I hungry? Let's look at the screen. Do I need sex? Let's look at the screen." And this is, it's the theological background of this is extraordinary. It is a theological background of French post-Jansenism, Cartesian thought. For example, my favorite post-Cartesian philosopher, Nicolas Malebranche, had this, developed this idea. For him, there was sex, they screwed like crazy, Adam and Eve in paradise, but his point is they did it just as another instrumental activity. Getting an erection was like raising the hand. Making love was like working on the field, you know. It was simple instrumental activity, you were not directly identified by it. And he, Malebranche, I found this beautiful, even identified in this weird terms the Fall. The Fall was when Adam thought, lost this distance, when he thought he is directly affected by objects. And in a nice anti-feminist twist, for Malebranche, the object which seduced Adam into this empiricist mistake—"I am immediately affected by object"—was of course the body of naked Eve, you know. Then it's a wonderful crazy theory of Malebranche that God punished us for this. How? God saw how we humans wanted to abandon this divine distance, we are not our bodies, and he said, "Now I will punish you by since you want to control your body as a machine from a distance, so I will give you—" to him he meant of course, God was a male chauvinist here, man—"I will make it so that part of your body will be uncontrollable in its movements: erection. You will not control it. It will happen when you don't want it, when you want it desperately it will not happen" and so on. And you know you find this theory already in Saint Augustine. It's a theory that the uncontrollability of erection is the divine punishment for the sin. And I mean it's absolutely crucial to know this line of thought. Like in Silicon Valley they should return to their communist roots, hopefully. How in a much more primitive way technologically but nonetheless how this dream of digital immortality and so on, in a primitive way everything was already there formulated in Soviet Gnosticism. And you know what's the saddest thing in it? That Stalin put an end to it. The Stalinist cultural revolution in the late twenties was precisely with all its horrors a return to, let's call it normal human life. This is why Stalin imposed Socialist Realism, a move which was very popular at that point. The idea was what? People hated all that futurist, constructivist, avant-garde bullshit—you know, Malevich, Eisenstein. They wanted normal warm stories, sentimental and so on. Stalin gave all this to them. Now we are returning to it. What I want to say is again, I want to focus on this ambiguity of the Internet of Things, which is the final prospect of this total digitalization of our lives. What is happening with Internet of Things is what? Things can also refer to a wide variety of devices such as heart monitoring implants, biochip transponders on farm animals, electric clams in coastal waters, automobiles with built-in sensors, DNA analysis devices for environmental monitoring and so on. These devices collect useful data with the help of various technologies and then autonomously flow the data between to other devices. So human individuals—that's also crucial part of Internet of Things—how human individuals are also things whose states and activities are continuously registered, transmitted without their knowledge. You know who developed this in a very naive way but you learn things from that book? It's a best-selling book now: Yuval Harari, "Homo Deus." Again, I don't buy his conclusions, but he provides a nice description of this process. How—I refer here to Harari's book—our self is composed of narratives which retroactively try to impose some consistency on the pandemonium of our experiences, obliterating experiences and memories which disturb these narratives. That's our everyday experience. We don't remember everything. We are censored by ideological mechanisms—not in any mysterious totalitarian way, but simply we try to make sense of our experiences and we try to organize them automatically into narratives. So ideology does not reside primarily in stories invented by those in power to deceive others. It resides in stories invented by subjects to comfortably deceive themselves. But the pandemonium persists. And now comes the wonderful confusion of—sorry—description by Harari of the consequences of Internet of Things. Imagine a near future already now, society where all our acts are monitored by machines. It's easy to imagine. You go to the toilet, you don't even have to think about it, your urine is analyzed. Soon we will have chips implanted controlling our health. Amazon.com and Kindle—you know what is controlled there, I was so surprised to learn even. You know that Kindle controls not only what books you buy but how much you read them, which pages you read and so on, and so on. So the machine monitoring you—what you shop, what you read, what you watch on TV—in a way knows you better than yourselves. It knows the raw data bypassing the narratives that you construct about yourselves. The machine registers the discords and can maybe even enable you to deal with them in a much more rational way than your conscious self. Say, when I have to decide to marry or not, the machine will register all the shifting attitudes that haunt me, the past pains and disappointments that I preferred to swipe after the carpet. And do you know that they already made, I spoke with some of friends of mine from Israel who did wide research, they did something very vicious. They got the permission from a couple of couples who were planned to be married to be monitored for some time. And then they compared the decision of the couple to get married or not, they compared this their conscious decision to the conclusion of the computer. The conclusion of the computer was much more accurate. Like if they did marry, the computer predicted this marriage will not last and vice versa and so on. Why not—it was also demonstrated by experiment—why not extend this prospect to political decisions? While myself can be easily seduced by a populist demagoguery, the machine will take note of all your past frustrations, it will register the inconsistency between your fleeting passions and your other opinions. For example, you know in the thrill of the moment before elections you make a crazy decision. It's proven, and it's not even a reactionary conclusion, that for example, I'll put it like this, instead of you stupid Americans being allowed to vote freely and then you get what you get: a crazy guy married to a Slovene girl—Melania is Slovene and you know that in Slovenia we exploit it, we already have Melania cake, Melania wine and so on, we are doing big business of it—a friend of mine did a wonderful experiment and demonstrated that if a computer were to be allowed, not just some machinery collecting all the data, to follow your life, all your past decisions, sympathies and so on, and rationally conclude what are your actual interests and advise you how to vote—Trump would have never been elected, you know. Okay, I violated my promise that I didn't mention the word "Trump" and so on, but what can we do. So again, why should machines not vote on our behalf? Now you will say this is a crazy dream. No, but computer scientists here are much more rational. They are not claiming machines are perfect. They are just modestly claiming that on average they are much better than your conscious decision. But you know they are not totalitarian in the sense of imposing on you, they don't define for you what is good for you. They accept your own version of what you want: happy life, whatever. And they just measure "do you in your decision live up to your values?" And they tell you better than you yourself know what to follow. It's the same with medicine. Although we need doctors, but it's clear that even if machines can make a mistake, on average if you allow a machine to diagnose you, it will do on average, I repeat it, a better job than an average doctor. So of course the conclusions of this if you go to the end are sad. Decisions made by human individuals are much weaker, less rational than the decision if you allow them to be made, the decisions made by machines. So as I quote from this Yuval Harari: "Liberalism sanctifies the narrating self and allows it to vote in the polling stations, in the supermarket and in the marriage market. For centuries this made good sense because though the narrating self believes in all kinds of fictions and fantasies, no alternative system knew me better. Yet once we have a system that really knows me better than I know myself, it will be foolhardy to leave authority in the hands of the narrating self. Liberal habits such as democratic elections will become obsolete because Google will be able to represent even your own political opinions better than yourself." End of quote. Now one can make a realist case for this option. It is not what the computer which registers my activity, it's not that computer is omnipotent and infallible. It's just that on average its decisions work substantially better than the decisions of our mind. So the digital machine is maybe the latest embodiment of the Big Other, the subject supposed to know, which operates as a field of knowledge, a chain of signifiers without a master signifier, a non-subjective machine. And the problem is then: what will happen in this growing digitalization? Will there, there are two options. Will there be what Kurzweil calls Singularity, in the sense that our minds will combine together into a higher unity or whatever, which will nonetheless control this process, or will we be, how should I put it, dominated by the machines? I think that, I think that the true problem here is that I think there is no simple answer to this question, namely again the question is this one: who will control it? Will we be nonetheless our collective mind, masters of this process, or will be as individuals just reduced to cogs in a machine and so on, and so on. I believe here in Stalin’s answer, I mean of course one of the best jokes that I know from Stalinism, you know. It's a wonderful joke, I'm sorry if you know it, I used it once already in my books. Where the joke goes like this: in '35 in Politburo Soviet Union they had the debate: will there be money in communism or not? Right-wing deviationists claimed there will be money of course, money is natural, how can you exchange objects without money? Left-wing revisionists claimed, left-wingers claimed no, money is capitalist tool of exploitation, there will not be money. Then Comrade Stalin enters the debate and says: "These are both deviations. Right-wing deviation, left-wing deviation. The truth is the dialectical unity of both. There will be money and there will not be money." Now nobody understands Stalin. Ask him, "Comrade Stalin, can you explain how can this be?" And now comes the genius. Stalin says: "It's very simple. Some people will have money, other people will not have money," you know. And that should be answer: will we control it or not? Well, some will control it, others will not control it. I think that I more and more believe that one version of our future is, something is happening today. Futurologists call it the decoupling of intelligence from consciousness. So more and more digital mechanisms, computers will regulate our lives. But I think for a long period at least there will be a privileged class which will have a privileged access programming these computers and so on, and so on. And so the reason I'm a communist, I'm claiming: listen, I'm just following Hollywood, I mean, I basically claim that all these dystopias of you know, like "Hunger Games," "Elysium" and so on, they paint a very realistic, okay it's exaggerated but a very realistic vision of what is awaiting us. So there are many other things to say here philosophically. If you had the misfortune to read all those books on Singularity by Ray Kurzweil, you know what's the problem with him, a serious one. He cheats. He describes this Singularity: we are all one mind. But the way he writes, he still writes as if we will somehow retain our free self, we will be reasoning, talking, having emotions and so on, and so on. That's the usual mistake of, let's call them, optimistic futurologists. They paint a bright future but they forget to mention the price, that literally personal freedom disappears in this Singularity and so on. The other techn—negative dystopian vision: "we will be just cogs in the machine and so on," is I think also wrong because to put it in Lacanian terms, it is too theological, in the sense that it trusts too much into the coherence, consistency of the machine. I don't fear computers because they will see everything and so on. I think computers can go crazy, they are always inconsistent and so on, and so on. And that's why subjectivity will persist. But let me go on so that I don't lose time. Now I want to make a surprising jump from this vision of Internet of Things—and you saw I hope, I don't have time to go into it in detail, this ambiguity of the vision. How on the one hand if you read Rifkin and Paul Mason, it's almost as if, "oh my God, communism is almost here." You know, Internet of Things, no longer private property and so on. But I think this merry communist vision of Internet of Things with no private property and the pessimist vision of "we are all controlled" are two sides of the same. You cannot have one without the other. Here I would like to do something now, to move to a more philosophical topic that may surprise you. I think that there is another way to approach Internet of Things. They are maybe theoretically my enemies, but you know, I'm a Leninist, I always say "let's learn from our enemies," you know. Like although I'm opponent of what is called new materialism, but I was nonetheless fascinated by Jane Bennett's famous description of how actants interact at a polluted trash site. How not only humans but also the rotting trash, worms, insects, abandoned machines, chemical poisons and so on each play their never purely passive role. This idea that we shouldn't oppose just human actants and passive trash, but this idea of, how should I put it in precise terms, of stepping out of course not fully but at a certain level out of our human skin as it were and observe analyze social processes at this more zero ontological level where we are just one among the actants. This is I think the best approach which somehow brings us close to how things function in the so-called Internet of Things. And I think that the ethical implication of such a stance is that we should recognize our entanglement within larger assemblages. We should become more sensitive to the demands of other objects, and we should reformulate self-interest, all this is clear. But now I bring and I don't mean this is any way as an obscenity or critique of it, but the truly subversive act would have been—I’m sorry for the tastelessness but that's my point—for example to give a Jane Bennett description of Auschwitz. Not just humans but human trash, gas ovens and so on, how this functions as an assemblage and so on. There is something inhuman in it. Maybe in order for our survival we need to look at things like this. Not that we sacrifice humans but to see us as one among the agents and then how all of it functions. Because this is what is in a way impossible, prohibited. What do I mean by this? I was always fascinated by this idea that the real, what Immanuel Kant calls thing-in-itself, is not so much some mystery out there that we can—it’s something that simply we are prohibited to see in order to retain our common identity, meaning of life and so on, and so on. Here, although I'm not one of the great fans of Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah," I deeply agree with what he wrote at some point. He said: "Let's say that we would discover by some miracle reels, movie, cinema reels, of some Nazi officer who shot in detail the process of in gas chambers or the *Muselmänner*, the living dead and so on, all the horrors." He says "I would have burned those reels immediately." You know, it's simply that our reality, life we live cannot sustain that. There are things that we—and imagine, okay this is your American trauma, but imagine something similar like, imagine—and my paranoia is that maybe Homeland Security has them, they just don't want to release them—September 11th. There must have been some guys there who were recording what happened when the Twin Towers were collapsing and so on. You know there is a certain domain that has to remain unseen for us to, for our lives to remain meaningful. And my point is that maybe to survive we have to break out of this fantasmatic horizon of our lives and we have to learn to look at ourselves as it were from outside, as one among objects. There is nothing mysterious in it. It's not the same as looking at thing from a divine perspective and so on, and so on. It's still the way we humans see ourselves as among the objects. But we have to perform what Russian formalists called *ostrannenie*, estrangement, you know, this radical asubjectivist view which is possible and not only possible but necessary. And now I came to basic point. I don't believe in this Homo Deus hypothesis. If this universe will emerge, I think that it's not that we enter a post-human era where we will be like gods, you know, those who will be in. I claim that God will be the first victim of it, whatever we mean by God. But now comes the paradox. Although I'm a materialist, I'm Christian or religious materialist. I think that there is a certain religious experience—and don't be afraid I'm not a New Age bullshitter. It's not that in some sense you feel the unity of all and so on, you know. But that there is at an elementary level a religious experience which will have to survive even in this universe. What kind of? Now if you allow me, I’m now checking myself—ooh, I'm not doing too bad. It should go, yeah. I still have just a quarter—now comes the cinematic example. I want to, this is now a very dark part but it's central, please be patient for another minutes. I'm referring to a wonderful Danish Noir film from 2016—now I can be arrested for saying this but you can download a very good copy on Pirate Bay or whatever—it’s called "A Conspiracy of Faith" (*Flaskepost fra P*), "Message in a Bottle." It's directed by Hans Petter Moland. Towards the end of the film—I will not yet, wait a second just that and then you will press the button, yeah—there is a conversation, a remarkable dialogue between Carl Mørck, burnt out, terminally depressed detective, and a guy called Johannes, a handsome blonde serial killer of children, who is as interested in destroying their parents' faith as in snatching their offering. The final confrontation takes place in a lone sea cottage where Johannes, the bad guy, holds in chain as prisoners Mørck, the inspector, and two children kidnapped, a young boy and his sister, a girl. And we have there totally devastated the detective, desperate. The murderer Johannes presents himself as one of Devil's sons whose task is to destroy faith. And he tells Mørck, "And now I'll take your faith away." Now let's go through this three minutes and then I will just conclude, please. And I will maybe to put it in Badiou's terms subtract myself from the image so that you can see. Let's hope it will work. I pray this is always the moment of anxiety. Will it work? I hope so. Yeah. [Audio from "A Conspiracy of Faith" movie clip plays for several minutes] Unfortunately the movie made a little bit of a compromise here. The heli—no, what I mean is the helicopter sound that you heard is the police coming and they even discover then that the, the boy is not really dead, they save him and so on. I'm more brutal here, I mean I was deeply disappointed by this, no. But again, let me provide you and with this I will end the reading of this. We should of course dismiss as ridiculous Johannes' idea of acting as the Devil's son, an idea which is meaningful only within the standard theological universe. If we follow T.S. Eliot's insight that Devil's ultimate temptation is the reference to good itself, as he put it, Eliot, in his "Murder in the Cathedral": "The highest form of treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason." Then it is Mørck himself, I think that's the irony, who is the true Devil's son. You know, like he acts with faith precisely as non-believer. And I'm not yet sure but through some friends in Denmark I got a contact with the director of this film, and like just through my friends I did not directly ask him, "is this the underlying idea? That forget about this stupid pseudo-beautiful blonde Nazi guy, Mørck is really Devil's son?" He said, "Yes, this was the idea." So Devil's ultimate trump card—also in the sense of [unintelligible]—is not give way to your lust for power, enjoy life, abandon the chimera of higher ethical values, but: do all the noble deeds your heart tells you to do, live the highest ethical life, and be aware that there is no need for the reference to God in all this. It is your own inner nature which is your guide here. You are following the law of your heart. Is this stance not personified in Mørck's atheist readiness to sacrifice himself for God? I think it's not as simple as that. That would have been simple humanism, no, we don't need God even if we don't believe—no, I think Mørck's position is much more radical. In what sense? First, the lesson of his position, the detective Mørck, is that only a belief which survives a disappearance of God as the Big Other, ultimate authority, is belief at its most radical. It's a wager much more crazy than Pascal's. You know Pascal's wager: "If you don't believe, act as if you believe and belief will come," remains epistemological, concerning only our attitude towards God. We have to assume that God exists, our wager doesn't concern God himself. While for radical atheism, the wager is ontological. The atheist subject engages itself in a political, artistic and so on project, believes in it without relying on any guarantee. So my thesis is that only that Christianity is the only consequent atheism. In what sense? Let me refer here to, I think this point I'm trying to make was best made by the French materialist so-called—he wasn't really a materialist—Denis Diderot in a short manuscript called "Entretien d'un philosophe avec la Maréchale de a certain lady. He wrote, he concludes: "After all, the most straightforward way is to behave as if the old guy, God, exists even if one doesn't believe it." Now my comment: this
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may appear to amount
may appear to amount
Slavoj Žižek
to the same as Pascal's wager propos our ethical acting. Even if you don't believe in God, act as if you believe. However, Diderot’s point is exactly the opposite one. The only way to be truly moral is to act morally without regard to God's existence. In other words, Diderot directly turns around Pascal's wager into the advice to put your bets on the existence of God. Another quote: "In a word, it is that the majority of those who deny a remunerating and revenging God have all to lose and nothing to gain." End of quote. So in his denial of vengeful God, the atheist either loses everything—I mean, if he is wrong and then there is a vengeful God, haha, he will be punished, no—there is no God so nothing, or he gains nothing in the best case. If there is no God then who cares? It is this attitude, I think, which expresses a true confidence in one's belief and makes one do good deeds without regard to divine reward or punishment. It's again as if the old guy doesn't exist. This old guy is God the Father, which recalls Lacan's formula *Le Père ou le Pire*, "Father or Worse." In true ethics one acts from the position of the inexistence of the Big Other. Again, here we should bear in mind that this movie is a Danish movie, and of course Kierkegaard is always in the background. The detective Mørck—no it’s clear in the film already—this is officially declared in the film, suffers a terminal depression. And I claim this terminal depression is precisely the form of what Kierkegaard called infinite resignation, the crucial step towards the authentic religious experience. For Kierkegaard, the renunciation, the sacrificial renunciation, cannot be part of an exchange with God. We sacrifice all, the totality of our life, for nothing. Quote from Kierkegaard, listen: "The contradiction which arrests our understanding of God is that a man is required to make the greatest possible sacrifice,
to the same as Pascal's wager propos our ethical acting. Even if you don't believe in God, act as if you believe. However, Diderot’s point is exactly the opposite one. The only way to be truly moral is to act morally without regard to God's existence. In other words, Diderot directly turns around Pascal's wager into the advice to put your bets on the existence of God. Another quote: "In a word, it is that the majority of those who deny a remunerating and revenging God have all to lose and nothing to gain." End of quote. So in his denial of vengeful God, the atheist either loses everything—I mean, if he is wrong and then there is a vengeful God, haha, he will be punished, no—there is no God so nothing, or he gains nothing in the best case. If there is no God then who cares? It is this attitude, I think, which expresses a true confidence in one's belief and makes one do good deeds without regard to divine reward or punishment. It's again as if the old guy doesn't exist. This old guy is God the Father, which recalls Lacan's formula *Le Père ou le Pire*, "Father or Worse." In true ethics one acts from the position of the inexistence of the Big Other. Again, here we should bear in mind that this movie is a Danish movie, and of course Kierkegaard is always in the background. The detective Mørck—no it’s clear in the film already—this is officially declared in the film, suffers a terminal depression. And I claim this terminal depression is precisely the form of what Kierkegaard called infinite resignation, the crucial step towards the authentic religious experience. For Kierkegaard, the renunciation, the sacrificial renunciation, cannot be part of an exchange with God. We sacrifice all, the totality of our life, for nothing. Quote from Kierkegaard, listen: "The contradiction which arrests our understanding of God is that a man is required to make the greatest possible sacrifice,
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to dedicate his whole life as a sacrifice,
to dedicate his whole life as a sacrifice,
Slavoj Žižek
and wherefore, there is indeed no wherefore." End of quote. What this means is that there is no guarantee that our sacrifice will be rewarded, that it will be, that it will institute meaning to our lives.
and wherefore, there is indeed no wherefore." End of quote. What this means is that there is no guarantee that our sacrifice will be rewarded, that it will be, that it will institute meaning to our lives.
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One has to make a leap of faith which in the eyes
One has to make a leap of faith which in the eyes
Slavoj Žižek
of an external observer cannot but appear as an act
of an external observer cannot but appear as an act
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of madness. Another quote from Kierkegaard: "At first glance, the understanding ascertains that this is madness. The understanding asks, 'What's in it for me?' The answer is 'Nothing.'" End of quote. When in the movement of infinite resignation, I turn away from all temporal goods, then, I quote here Simone Weil, "My reason for turning away from them is that I judge them to be false by comparison with the idea of the good. And what is this good? I have no
of madness. Another quote from Kierkegaard: "At first glance, the understanding ascertains that this is madness. The understanding asks, 'What's in it for me?' The answer is 'Nothing.'" End of quote. When in the movement of infinite resignation, I turn away from all temporal goods, then, I quote here Simone Weil, "My reason for turning away from them is that I judge them to be false by comparison with the idea of the good. And what is this good? I have no
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idea." End of quote. At this razor's edge where atheism and theology
idea." End of quote. At this razor's edge where atheism and theology
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overlap, we get a unique form of negative theology. And this form of negative theology was wonderfully defined by Rowan Williams, you know, the ex-Archbishop of Canterbury who quite surprisingly—it's one of the miracles—is a very intelligent theoretician also, who wrote about the work of four British—when he tries to develop in his book on Dostoevsky, Rowan Williams, what is a religious experience at its minimum. He refers to four British Catholic novelists: O'Connor, Percy, Spark and Ellis. And here is the passage: "All four create a world in which the secular majority account of what is going on is severely relativized. But there is no simple alternative that anyone can step into by a single decision or even a series of
overlap, we get a unique form of negative theology. And this form of negative theology was wonderfully defined by Rowan Williams, you know, the ex-Archbishop of Canterbury who quite surprisingly—it's one of the miracles—is a very intelligent theoretician also, who wrote about the work of four British—when he tries to develop in his book on Dostoevsky, Rowan Williams, what is a religious experience at its minimum. He refers to four British Catholic novelists: O'Connor, Percy, Spark and Ellis. And here is the passage: "All four create a world in which the secular majority account of what is going on is severely relativized. But there is no simple alternative that anyone can step into by a single decision or even a series of
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decisions.
decisions.
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The religious dimension of these fictions lies in the insistent sense of incongruity, unmistakable even
The religious dimension of these fictions lies in the insistent sense of incongruity, unmistakable even
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if no one within the fiction can say what we should be congruent with." End of quote. So you see it's a very simple operation but I think deeply true. What's the point of Rowan Williams here? And incidentally you should read his book on Dostoevsky, it's so intelligent.
if no one within the fiction can say what we should be congruent with." End of quote. So you see it's a very simple operation but I think deeply true. What's the point of Rowan Williams here? And incidentally you should read his book on Dostoevsky, it's so intelligent.
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For example, he put it into words what was my old feeling that there is something terribly wrong with Dostoevsky's
For example, he put it into words what was my old feeling that there is something terribly wrong with Dostoevsky's
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"The Idiot," Prince Myshkin. He gives a wonderful counter-intuitive reading. You know, usually people read "The Idiot" as a saintly figure, this
"The Idiot," Prince Myshkin. He gives a wonderful counter-intuitive reading. You know, usually people read "The Idiot" as a saintly figure, this
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innocent goodness. For Rowan Williams, he is nightmare itself. As he develops, Myshkin is saintly innocent guy, but you must have encountered them, I have in real life: there are people who are in themselves
innocent goodness. For Rowan Williams, he is nightmare itself. As he develops, Myshkin is saintly innocent guy, but you must have encountered them, I have in real life: there are people who are in themselves
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saintly good, innocent, but in every society they move, their innocence brings havoc, catastrophe. People around them kill themselves and so on, and this is precisely what happens in "The Idiot." All, in
saintly good, innocent, but in every society they move, their innocence brings havoc, catastrophe. People around them kill themselves and so on, and this is precisely what happens in "The Idiot." All, in
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Nastasya Filippovna, the other, all people die
Nastasya Filippovna, the other, all people die
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around and so on. So let me go on. Rowan Williams speaks here about a kind of negative theology which is the
around and so on. So let me go on. Rowan Williams speaks here about a kind of negative theology which is the
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opposite of the usual negative theology, which is "Oh, God is beyond, it is, it is not, it's good, it's bad, it's beyond our categories." No, Williams' idea is that at its most basic, God is just this negativity, incongruity. This
opposite of the usual negative theology, which is "Oh, God is beyond, it is, it is not, it's good, it's bad, it's beyond our categories." No, Williams' idea is that at its most basic, God is just this negativity, incongruity. This
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reality cannot be all, we don't fully belong into it, but there is no other place. First we get this void, this out-of-jointness, if we call it like this. And this we
reality cannot be all, we don't fully belong into it, but there is no other place. First we get this void, this out-of-jointness, if we call it like this. And this we
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experience in a shattering metaphysical experience. This out-of-jointness in this precisely when we assume what Kierkegaard calls radical resignation. We resign, but not on behalf of some higher value and so on, and so on. And if religion doesn't forget about this, then it is really no longer the opium
experience in a shattering metaphysical experience. This out-of-jointness in this precisely when we assume what Kierkegaard calls radical resignation. We resign, but not on behalf of some higher value and so on, and so on. And if religion doesn't forget about this, then it is really no longer the opium
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of the people. Because I claim that you know this unfortunate formula of Marx "religion as the opium of the people," I have two problems with it. First, two both tautological variations. I love it. First as many people already remarked, today in our drug-infested culture, more and more the
of the people. Because I claim that you know this unfortunate formula of Marx "religion as the opium of the people," I have two problems with it. First, two both tautological variations. I love it. First as many people already remarked, today in our drug-infested culture, more and more the
Slavoj Žižek
opium of the people is opium itself, you know like. And the second one, the Donald Trump version—sorry I mentioned him three times, it, three times. No, I wanted to say I mentioned it three times, I don't consider the term "he" for him—as Adorno said somewhere wonderfully, in populism, the opium of the people are people themselves. People themselves can also be the opium. So again, I claim that this, if you take everything away, no transcendence and so on, this negative theological minimum, this out-of-jointness—and we have different names for it, Freud called this death drive and so on—this minimum remains. That's why I take this film in a naive metaphysical statements that you've heard very literally. The evil guy Johannes was right. It's precisely because he, Mørck the detective, is totally resigned, doesn't believe in anything, that he can do a pure ethical act, that he believes more than anyone else. What he does, acting automatically, ethically, but out of this total resignation, this is religious ethics at its purest. And in our desperate times where effectively you know all conservative calls "let's return to ancient values" and so on and so on are ridiculous, don't work, we need this type of religion. What Mørck is doing. It's literally an atheist religion, but again, not in this shitty sense, "Oh, although I don't believe in personal God, I have this mystical experience of some higher—" No, no, no, you must have total, total resignation. Here I'm totally opposed to those even many of my materialist friends who claim, "Of course I am against a personal God, I'm even against church as an institution, but I have sometimes this deeper feeling" and so on. And I usually explode back. I say, "No, what interests me in religion—it was already the case with Freud and Catholic Church—is forget about God, I like church as a dogmatic institution," you know. Because again, I'm sorry I don't have time to go on, but I think this is how ethically we can even resolve the dilemma of what if science proves that we do not have free will. My, I would like to apply to this the paradox of Protestantism, you know predestination. Isn't the paradox of predestination that capitalism, the most dynamic system in the history of humanity, pushing to act all the time, relies on predestination? Everything is predestined. Wouldn't be more natural to say that Catholicism should be more appropriate? Catholic—the idea that your salvation depends on your good deeds. Then I have to work hard to deserve it. No. Why does Protestantism push us to be active all the time when you know that everything is already decided? Why should we not say "everything is already decided, so fuck off, I will drink beer, masturbate and watch movies," you know. No, ah, the idea is of course what's the catch? Everything is decided, but you don't know what this decision is. So for me the pure—the purest situation of freedom is not this primitive choice, like I go to a bakery, they have marzipan cake, strawberry cake, chocolate cake, which should I—no, the purest anxiety of freedom would be something like this: I know I'm in a position to make a tough decision, do this or that. I know it's already predestined, but I don't know what it is. And this terrible pressure, you know, will I guess what is already predestined? It doesn't help me to say whatever—no, it’s a terrible anxiety. That's freedom at its purest. Existentially. So even if at the level of objective facts you can say "it's predestined, whatever," but subjectively knowing that it's predestined makes your decision where you have to enact what is predestined but you don't know, even more an aspect of anxiety. So I claim that, that's my not even optimist vision that this minimum of atheist religious experience will have to be mobilized if we want to find our way in what is forthcoming. It's effectively I think today, you know that famous quote from Virginia Woolf, on the 10th of October of or what, human nature changed—or I got a wrong date. I think today human nature is really changing. Because you know what's human nature at its most elementary? This distance inside-outside. Like reality is out there, I think inside. But what's happening now are crazy things, like more and more it's possible to wire our brain so that you think about something and it happens. Like recently I learned that even Stephen Hawking no longer needs his stupid finger. His brain is already wired and he—they can already do this at an elementary level. Stephen Hawking just has to think forward and his wheelchair moves forward. I think the consequences of this will be tremendous and all old ethical norms fail at this level. And again, that's why I think that the worst thing to do is to simply rely on "Oh, it's determinism, we are not free, so let's take it easy." No. Precisely when we know that we are determined but not know how, why, we will be confronted by freedom at its purest. That's why I sincerely believe that the more our universe will get computerized, technicized and so on, the more we will need a religious experience, but not in this bullshitting way, you know, "the technological universe is empty, so we need something to fill it in." That's what Catholics are doing, no, the Popes and so on seriously. Like "technology itself is not enough, you need a deeper vision" and so on and so on. No, no, I talking about religious reference in a much more radical this almost to say like this atheist way. And I have some allies, I liked it, it was crazy. You remember was it reported also in your media what Pope said a month ago? That an open atheist is much better than a hypocritical Christian and so on and so on. Totally new alliances have to be constructed here. What I don't agree with and this is where although in some way what they are saying is true, all these today's, let's call them official ideological materialists talking and so on. I'm not saying they are too radical. I'm simply saying they are not radical enough in the sense that the most intelligent critique of them that I read is that although they claim, you know, free will is illusion, materialism and so on, but they enter deeply into what one can call a pragmatic contradiction. But they still act, reason as if they are free beings and so on. They cheat in this standard technological Gnostic way. And this is a big problem, properly Lacanian problem: what kind of subject fits modern science? To put it very simply, if you accept consequences of science to the end—okay the obvious answer would have been the position of somebody like Paul and Patricia Churchland, you know. We have to accept we have no free will and so on. I claim this position doesn't work because it's existentially impossible. Impossible in the sense that I agree here with my favorite cognitive scientist—I quote him in my old books—Thomas Metzinger, who claims that you cannot subjectively assume as your truth the fact that you are just a neuronal mechanism and so on. You can know this rationally, but you cannot subjectivize it. Okay, Metzinger is a Buddhist and he tries to prove, it’s an interesting attempt, that at the level of most radical Buddhist meditation, when you reach the level of what they call thoughts without a thinker, that you can do it. Then the standard predominant position is the position of dualism, like most cognitivists claim "Okay, we just have to accept this as our necessary limitation. We can develop it scientifically that we are just neuronal automata but we will never be able to subjectively assume it. We, as they claim, our free will and so on is a user's illusion. We have to have it." Then we have as already mentioned the Churchland theory, which is we can assume it, we become more open, tolerant, you know. No, I think that even the Buddhist way, although it's the most intelligent Metzinger’s, it's too easy. That there is a subject which fits this radical technological objectivization and it’s precisely this Kierkegaardian resignation subject of radical resignation, subject of in my sense negative theology. I'm sorry if I was too confused at the end, but this is my line of thought, and if some of you to make a little bit of propaganda are interested in it, I developed the first draft of this, but it's totally new stuff that I presented here, I begin going onto this path in my last book, last philosophical book, "Disparities," where there is a long chapter with a consciously vicious title, "Is God Inexistent, Stupid, Evil, or Virtual?" or whatever, no, and I try to develop there this notion of God, personal God, as a necessary illusion, but not in this bad sense of for stupid people and so on. If I may conclude with this to make it a little bit easier, I tell there maybe you know it, I'm sorry, it was told to me by my good friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a certain pseudo-ancient anecdote—it’s not clear where is the origin. Niklas Luhmann uses it, Dupuy uses it—okay, one of the subtitles in my book is entitled "The 12th Camel as One of the Names of the God," you know. And I—this is what fascinates—it’s a pseudo-I think, it didn't really happen there, it was invented in Europe, I'm not sure, maybe it is from there. The legend, Arab one, goes like this: there was an old merchant who was dying and he left his legacy to his sons where camels. And he made his will. He says to his sons, older son, middle, the younger son, that they have to divide his legacy so that the older son gets half of it, the next son gets I think one third and then one fourth or whatever of it. But there was a problem, you know, like what is half of Because the father insisted the division must work exactly, otherwise you get nothing. Okay, the sons ask a wise old guy who said "no problem, I will solve it." He says, "I will give you a present, another camel." And then they tell him, "but why should you lose a camel?" He tells them, "don't worry, you will not—I will get it back, let's now we have camels, you know, and let's divide it. Half of is six. The elder guy gets six camels. One third of is—no, sorry, it should be one-12, one—yes, one—no the other guy gets one fourth, one fourth is three, and the last guy gets—gets one sixth or whatever of which is two. So six, three, two. We divided it precisely the way father ordered. Count it: six and three and two is what? He said "now I take my camel back." And it worked. And the idea of Dupuy is that this is God. You know, you have to—it’s the 12th camel. To make the operation, to make it function, you have to count it in. It's in this way, but not in this derogatory way we need an illusion to survive. It's more a structural necessity. In the sense it's not simply we can think without him. If you—it’s this wonderful paradox of an illusion which if you erase it, you lose also the reality of which it is the illusion. Okay, I spoke too much, I'm sorry if you were disappointed, but don't be. To make another propaganda, in two months a new book of mine, "Courage of Hopelessness," will be out, where you will get all the dirty stuff, LGBT, Trump, and you will be able to lynch me again and so on. I just wanted to do a little bit more not really difficult philosophy but like thanks very much, I appreciate your patience. [Applause] You know why I love Ken? He asked me now with care, "can we do it, are you too tired, minutes?" and I love this, I love being too long because then I can hypocritically I can say, "Oh, I would love to engage in a long debate with you but unfortunately we don't have time" and so on. So let's play democracy. [Q&A portion] We have minutes. Raise your hands high so I can see them. We have one right—Okay, Mike’s locally pathed. You made the good decision. You began on the left. Please. Mark Fisher writes that people would rather imagine an apocalyptic event rather than an end to capitalism. It’s so nice, sorry to interrupt you immediately, I will give you a word, that you mention here Mark Fisher because I also—was Fredric Jameson plagiarizing him? Because I know this as a quote from Fredric Jameson. Okay, sorry, go on. Yes, that people would rather imagine an end of the world than an end to capitalism and that in that sense that they miss the Big Other, as Lacan put it. And that seems to be a way of blocking our way to transcendence. What do you think of the implications of capitalism always being—how Deleuze put it, and— No, you know why I, I'm not saying that I like capitalism, but more and more I'm convinced, I will shock you with this, that you know my friend who is—is he here, Todd McGowan? He developed in his book "Capitalism and Desire," and a similar line of thought is now pursued by another of my friends, Aaron Schuster, that there is some truth, of course not the literal one, in the idea that, and this is linked with your question, that capitalism is in a way the natural system. It's not just one among the systems. It's a system which, you know in what sense? For Lacan, desire, human desire is characterized by this constitutive instability, no supreme good, constant hysterization, you never get it. And as it was clear for Marx already, in this sense capitalism is not just one among the systems. It's a system which directly brings out the paradox of human desire which was here all the time but the previous ideology tried to contain it. The idea of supreme good is "no, we are not in this permanent hysterization, there is a stable ultimate value, God whatever." And so that's why it's really so difficult now to step out of capitalism at its most fundamental. Capitalism is, and it was always clear with Marx, that's why it is so powerful. It is the point of truth where you know it's that something which was covered up in all previous history comes out here. Which is why also as Marx makes it clear, capitalism is the first system based on instability. It's permanently unstable. And this brings us to all these paradoxes. The more capitalism is in crisis, the better it functions. That's why Marxists, and I still consider myself one, get into all these problems like, you know already for Lenin, imperialism was last late stage of capitalism. Then what was fascism? Mao Zedong says American imperialism is the last rotting phase of the late phase. Now we have an, you know like this idea of late capitalism, it get more late and more late, and the more it is late the better it is doing. Now it finally triumph. This is for me a mega-tragedy, that today I spoke once briefly with Fukuyama and I told him, he laughed, I told him, "Maybe even you are right, capitalism triumph, but what about the fact that today the best managers of capitalism seem to be ex-communists where they are still in power?" In China, in Vietnam, they are doing well as managers of capitalism. So what I'm saying is that it's not just the power of ideology, we cannot imagine the end. It is really so difficult to imagine how to move beyond. In a way this is the true problem of the left for me. And that's why I did that crazy—sorry, I will break, you can lynch me—Trump, Trump, I will mention it again. That's why I don't like this idea of just mocking Trump and focusing on Trump. Trump is for me a symptom, not in any deep sense but in Trump it exploded what didn't function in predominant liberal ideology. All this dissatisfaction. That's why I like Bernie because Bernie Sanders was the only one who did try to capture this new dissatisfaction. And what I'm saying is that the only way to really get rid of Donald Trump is to change this liberal consensus to push it to the left. I mean our task is now terrible of the new left. We have to save what is worth saving in liberalism. So what I'm saying is that there is a real crisis of imagination. How to imagine the end of capitalism? How will it work? Isn't it the madness that I see today which makes me really sad is that this total reversal of roles? Like in Europe, you know which is the only government which did some pro-working class measures that even the most radical European social democrats wouldn't propose to do? Is the disgustingly conservative nationalist government in Poland. You know what they did now? And it's the same in France, Le Pen promises much—so we are living crazy times where only this racist anti-immigrant right is ready to risk some measures which are usually associated with the left. Like in Poland they lowered the age of retirement, more health care, cheaper, better scholarships for students. On the other hand, this was I think a genius of modern European bureaucracy, if you want to do the most brutal austerity politics, you need a radical leftist so-called power to do it. This is the Greek tragedy, you know. And that's why incidentally concerning Greece, I'm against both. That is to say I think that I don't agree with those Grexit people who thought we should have gone out. No, that would have been a total catastrophe: hunger in Greece and so on. They wanted, European bureaucracy, they wanted Grexit and they had already a plan what to do. Varoufakis, my good friend, was explaining to me. You know, this is a central—some leftists behave as if, "Oh, Greek government capitulated to Europe, we should have risked Grexit." Yeah, but you know what would have meant? You know what Varoufakis told me and it's now confirmed through some other politicians that I met? When Varoufakis spoke with Schäuble, the German finance minister, and told him as a threat, "Oh, if you put this pressure on us we do Grexit," Schäuble told him, "Fine, how much money do you need? We can give you billion," and so on. Because the—what was subversive was, although I doubt how—of course I'm also against Tsipras' capitulation. But what Varoufakis desperately tried was to remain within Europe and cause a chaos, havoc there. To force Europe and maybe there was a chance in that one. But if you just capitulate what Tsipras did, or if you just go out, it is catastrophe. Because as everyone predicted, many people predicted, Greece is now even worse where it was a couple of years ago, no. Now it's the same shitty situation, it’s just that the national debt is instead of I don't know it's approaching billion or whatever. No, sorry, but I'm just saying that it's not just that because of ideology we don't see it. You know, the best proof how difficult it is to imagine alternative to capitalism is Fredric Jameson himself. He ended up proposing, you know in that text that shocked everyone, militarization: that the army should take over. This is the ultimate paradox. I just see the real problem behind it. Now, not you, you are probably a leftist like me, but some liberal would tell me, "Why even bother? Why don't we remain what I ironically like to call
opium of the people is opium itself, you know like. And the second one, the Donald Trump version—sorry I mentioned him three times, it, three times. No, I wanted to say I mentioned it three times, I don't consider the term "he" for him—as Adorno said somewhere wonderfully, in populism, the opium of the people are people themselves. People themselves can also be the opium. So again, I claim that this, if you take everything away, no transcendence and so on, this negative theological minimum, this out-of-jointness—and we have different names for it, Freud called this death drive and so on—this minimum remains. That's why I take this film in a naive metaphysical statements that you've heard very literally. The evil guy Johannes was right. It's precisely because he, Mørck the detective, is totally resigned, doesn't believe in anything, that he can do a pure ethical act, that he believes more than anyone else. What he does, acting automatically, ethically, but out of this total resignation, this is religious ethics at its purest. And in our desperate times where effectively you know all conservative calls "let's return to ancient values" and so on and so on are ridiculous, don't work, we need this type of religion. What Mørck is doing. It's literally an atheist religion, but again, not in this shitty sense, "Oh, although I don't believe in personal God, I have this mystical experience of some higher—" No, no, no, you must have total, total resignation. Here I'm totally opposed to those even many of my materialist friends who claim, "Of course I am against a personal God, I'm even against church as an institution, but I have sometimes this deeper feeling" and so on. And I usually explode back. I say, "No, what interests me in religion—it was already the case with Freud and Catholic Church—is forget about God, I like church as a dogmatic institution," you know. Because again, I'm sorry I don't have time to go on, but I think this is how ethically we can even resolve the dilemma of what if science proves that we do not have free will. My, I would like to apply to this the paradox of Protestantism, you know predestination. Isn't the paradox of predestination that capitalism, the most dynamic system in the history of humanity, pushing to act all the time, relies on predestination? Everything is predestined. Wouldn't be more natural to say that Catholicism should be more appropriate? Catholic—the idea that your salvation depends on your good deeds. Then I have to work hard to deserve it. No. Why does Protestantism push us to be active all the time when you know that everything is already decided? Why should we not say "everything is already decided, so fuck off, I will drink beer, masturbate and watch movies," you know. No, ah, the idea is of course what's the catch? Everything is decided, but you don't know what this decision is. So for me the pure—the purest situation of freedom is not this primitive choice, like I go to a bakery, they have marzipan cake, strawberry cake, chocolate cake, which should I—no, the purest anxiety of freedom would be something like this: I know I'm in a position to make a tough decision, do this or that. I know it's already predestined, but I don't know what it is. And this terrible pressure, you know, will I guess what is already predestined? It doesn't help me to say whatever—no, it’s a terrible anxiety. That's freedom at its purest. Existentially. So even if at the level of objective facts you can say "it's predestined, whatever," but subjectively knowing that it's predestined makes your decision where you have to enact what is predestined but you don't know, even more an aspect of anxiety. So I claim that, that's my not even optimist vision that this minimum of atheist religious experience will have to be mobilized if we want to find our way in what is forthcoming. It's effectively I think today, you know that famous quote from Virginia Woolf, on the 10th of October of or what, human nature changed—or I got a wrong date. I think today human nature is really changing. Because you know what's human nature at its most elementary? This distance inside-outside. Like reality is out there, I think inside. But what's happening now are crazy things, like more and more it's possible to wire our brain so that you think about something and it happens. Like recently I learned that even Stephen Hawking no longer needs his stupid finger. His brain is already wired and he—they can already do this at an elementary level. Stephen Hawking just has to think forward and his wheelchair moves forward. I think the consequences of this will be tremendous and all old ethical norms fail at this level. And again, that's why I think that the worst thing to do is to simply rely on "Oh, it's determinism, we are not free, so let's take it easy." No. Precisely when we know that we are determined but not know how, why, we will be confronted by freedom at its purest. That's why I sincerely believe that the more our universe will get computerized, technicized and so on, the more we will need a religious experience, but not in this bullshitting way, you know, "the technological universe is empty, so we need something to fill it in." That's what Catholics are doing, no, the Popes and so on seriously. Like "technology itself is not enough, you need a deeper vision" and so on and so on. No, no, I talking about religious reference in a much more radical this almost to say like this atheist way. And I have some allies, I liked it, it was crazy. You remember was it reported also in your media what Pope said a month ago? That an open atheist is much better than a hypocritical Christian and so on and so on. Totally new alliances have to be constructed here. What I don't agree with and this is where although in some way what they are saying is true, all these today's, let's call them official ideological materialists talking and so on. I'm not saying they are too radical. I'm simply saying they are not radical enough in the sense that the most intelligent critique of them that I read is that although they claim, you know, free will is illusion, materialism and so on, but they enter deeply into what one can call a pragmatic contradiction. But they still act, reason as if they are free beings and so on. They cheat in this standard technological Gnostic way. And this is a big problem, properly Lacanian problem: what kind of subject fits modern science? To put it very simply, if you accept consequences of science to the end—okay the obvious answer would have been the position of somebody like Paul and Patricia Churchland, you know. We have to accept we have no free will and so on. I claim this position doesn't work because it's existentially impossible. Impossible in the sense that I agree here with my favorite cognitive scientist—I quote him in my old books—Thomas Metzinger, who claims that you cannot subjectively assume as your truth the fact that you are just a neuronal mechanism and so on. You can know this rationally, but you cannot subjectivize it. Okay, Metzinger is a Buddhist and he tries to prove, it’s an interesting attempt, that at the level of most radical Buddhist meditation, when you reach the level of what they call thoughts without a thinker, that you can do it. Then the standard predominant position is the position of dualism, like most cognitivists claim "Okay, we just have to accept this as our necessary limitation. We can develop it scientifically that we are just neuronal automata but we will never be able to subjectively assume it. We, as they claim, our free will and so on is a user's illusion. We have to have it." Then we have as already mentioned the Churchland theory, which is we can assume it, we become more open, tolerant, you know. No, I think that even the Buddhist way, although it's the most intelligent Metzinger’s, it's too easy. That there is a subject which fits this radical technological objectivization and it’s precisely this Kierkegaardian resignation subject of radical resignation, subject of in my sense negative theology. I'm sorry if I was too confused at the end, but this is my line of thought, and if some of you to make a little bit of propaganda are interested in it, I developed the first draft of this, but it's totally new stuff that I presented here, I begin going onto this path in my last book, last philosophical book, "Disparities," where there is a long chapter with a consciously vicious title, "Is God Inexistent, Stupid, Evil, or Virtual?" or whatever, no, and I try to develop there this notion of God, personal God, as a necessary illusion, but not in this bad sense of for stupid people and so on. If I may conclude with this to make it a little bit easier, I tell there maybe you know it, I'm sorry, it was told to me by my good friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a certain pseudo-ancient anecdote—it’s not clear where is the origin. Niklas Luhmann uses it, Dupuy uses it—okay, one of the subtitles in my book is entitled "The 12th Camel as One of the Names of the God," you know. And I—this is what fascinates—it’s a pseudo-I think, it didn't really happen there, it was invented in Europe, I'm not sure, maybe it is from there. The legend, Arab one, goes like this: there was an old merchant who was dying and he left his legacy to his sons where camels. And he made his will. He says to his sons, older son, middle, the younger son, that they have to divide his legacy so that the older son gets half of it, the next son gets I think one third and then one fourth or whatever of it. But there was a problem, you know, like what is half of Because the father insisted the division must work exactly, otherwise you get nothing. Okay, the sons ask a wise old guy who said "no problem, I will solve it." He says, "I will give you a present, another camel." And then they tell him, "but why should you lose a camel?" He tells them, "don't worry, you will not—I will get it back, let's now we have camels, you know, and let's divide it. Half of is six. The elder guy gets six camels. One third of is—no, sorry, it should be one-12, one—yes, one—no the other guy gets one fourth, one fourth is three, and the last guy gets—gets one sixth or whatever of which is two. So six, three, two. We divided it precisely the way father ordered. Count it: six and three and two is what? He said "now I take my camel back." And it worked. And the idea of Dupuy is that this is God. You know, you have to—it’s the 12th camel. To make the operation, to make it function, you have to count it in. It's in this way, but not in this derogatory way we need an illusion to survive. It's more a structural necessity. In the sense it's not simply we can think without him. If you—it’s this wonderful paradox of an illusion which if you erase it, you lose also the reality of which it is the illusion. Okay, I spoke too much, I'm sorry if you were disappointed, but don't be. To make another propaganda, in two months a new book of mine, "Courage of Hopelessness," will be out, where you will get all the dirty stuff, LGBT, Trump, and you will be able to lynch me again and so on. I just wanted to do a little bit more not really difficult philosophy but like thanks very much, I appreciate your patience. [Applause] You know why I love Ken? He asked me now with care, "can we do it, are you too tired, minutes?" and I love this, I love being too long because then I can hypocritically I can say, "Oh, I would love to engage in a long debate with you but unfortunately we don't have time" and so on. So let's play democracy. [Q&A portion] We have minutes. Raise your hands high so I can see them. We have one right—Okay, Mike’s locally pathed. You made the good decision. You began on the left. Please. Mark Fisher writes that people would rather imagine an apocalyptic event rather than an end to capitalism. It’s so nice, sorry to interrupt you immediately, I will give you a word, that you mention here Mark Fisher because I also—was Fredric Jameson plagiarizing him? Because I know this as a quote from Fredric Jameson. Okay, sorry, go on. Yes, that people would rather imagine an end of the world than an end to capitalism and that in that sense that they miss the Big Other, as Lacan put it. And that seems to be a way of blocking our way to transcendence. What do you think of the implications of capitalism always being—how Deleuze put it, and— No, you know why I, I'm not saying that I like capitalism, but more and more I'm convinced, I will shock you with this, that you know my friend who is—is he here, Todd McGowan? He developed in his book "Capitalism and Desire," and a similar line of thought is now pursued by another of my friends, Aaron Schuster, that there is some truth, of course not the literal one, in the idea that, and this is linked with your question, that capitalism is in a way the natural system. It's not just one among the systems. It's a system which, you know in what sense? For Lacan, desire, human desire is characterized by this constitutive instability, no supreme good, constant hysterization, you never get it. And as it was clear for Marx already, in this sense capitalism is not just one among the systems. It's a system which directly brings out the paradox of human desire which was here all the time but the previous ideology tried to contain it. The idea of supreme good is "no, we are not in this permanent hysterization, there is a stable ultimate value, God whatever." And so that's why it's really so difficult now to step out of capitalism at its most fundamental. Capitalism is, and it was always clear with Marx, that's why it is so powerful. It is the point of truth where you know it's that something which was covered up in all previous history comes out here. Which is why also as Marx makes it clear, capitalism is the first system based on instability. It's permanently unstable. And this brings us to all these paradoxes. The more capitalism is in crisis, the better it functions. That's why Marxists, and I still consider myself one, get into all these problems like, you know already for Lenin, imperialism was last late stage of capitalism. Then what was fascism? Mao Zedong says American imperialism is the last rotting phase of the late phase. Now we have an, you know like this idea of late capitalism, it get more late and more late, and the more it is late the better it is doing. Now it finally triumph. This is for me a mega-tragedy, that today I spoke once briefly with Fukuyama and I told him, he laughed, I told him, "Maybe even you are right, capitalism triumph, but what about the fact that today the best managers of capitalism seem to be ex-communists where they are still in power?" In China, in Vietnam, they are doing well as managers of capitalism. So what I'm saying is that it's not just the power of ideology, we cannot imagine the end. It is really so difficult to imagine how to move beyond. In a way this is the true problem of the left for me. And that's why I did that crazy—sorry, I will break, you can lynch me—Trump, Trump, I will mention it again. That's why I don't like this idea of just mocking Trump and focusing on Trump. Trump is for me a symptom, not in any deep sense but in Trump it exploded what didn't function in predominant liberal ideology. All this dissatisfaction. That's why I like Bernie because Bernie Sanders was the only one who did try to capture this new dissatisfaction. And what I'm saying is that the only way to really get rid of Donald Trump is to change this liberal consensus to push it to the left. I mean our task is now terrible of the new left. We have to save what is worth saving in liberalism. So what I'm saying is that there is a real crisis of imagination. How to imagine the end of capitalism? How will it work? Isn't it the madness that I see today which makes me really sad is that this total reversal of roles? Like in Europe, you know which is the only government which did some pro-working class measures that even the most radical European social democrats wouldn't propose to do? Is the disgustingly conservative nationalist government in Poland. You know what they did now? And it's the same in France, Le Pen promises much—so we are living crazy times where only this racist anti-immigrant right is ready to risk some measures which are usually associated with the left. Like in Poland they lowered the age of retirement, more health care, cheaper, better scholarships for students. On the other hand, this was I think a genius of modern European bureaucracy, if you want to do the most brutal austerity politics, you need a radical leftist so-called power to do it. This is the Greek tragedy, you know. And that's why incidentally concerning Greece, I'm against both. That is to say I think that I don't agree with those Grexit people who thought we should have gone out. No, that would have been a total catastrophe: hunger in Greece and so on. They wanted, European bureaucracy, they wanted Grexit and they had already a plan what to do. Varoufakis, my good friend, was explaining to me. You know, this is a central—some leftists behave as if, "Oh, Greek government capitulated to Europe, we should have risked Grexit." Yeah, but you know what would have meant? You know what Varoufakis told me and it's now confirmed through some other politicians that I met? When Varoufakis spoke with Schäuble, the German finance minister, and told him as a threat, "Oh, if you put this pressure on us we do Grexit," Schäuble told him, "Fine, how much money do you need? We can give you billion," and so on. Because the—what was subversive was, although I doubt how—of course I'm also against Tsipras' capitulation. But what Varoufakis desperately tried was to remain within Europe and cause a chaos, havoc there. To force Europe and maybe there was a chance in that one. But if you just capitulate what Tsipras did, or if you just go out, it is catastrophe. Because as everyone predicted, many people predicted, Greece is now even worse where it was a couple of years ago, no. Now it's the same shitty situation, it’s just that the national debt is instead of I don't know it's approaching billion or whatever. No, sorry, but I'm just saying that it's not just that because of ideology we don't see it. You know, the best proof how difficult it is to imagine alternative to capitalism is Fredric Jameson himself. He ended up proposing, you know in that text that shocked everyone, militarization: that the army should take over. This is the ultimate paradox. I just see the real problem behind it. Now, not you, you are probably a leftist like me, but some liberal would tell me, "Why even bother? Why don't we remain what I ironically like to call
unknown
leftist
leftist
unknown
Fukuyamaists, you know? We accept the Fukuyama liberal democracy, capitalism, we just push it a
Fukuyamaists, you know? We accept the Fukuyama liberal democracy, capitalism, we just push it a
Slavoj Žižek
little bit to the left." Ah, here I'm a pessimist. I think it will not work at the level of ecology, refugees, biogenetics, financial capital, intellectual property. It will not work. Even Sloterdijk is here right. And
little bit to the left." Ah, here I'm a pessimist. I think it will not work at the level of ecology, refugees, biogenetics, financial capital, intellectual property. It will not work. Even Sloterdijk is here right. And
unknown
that's the tragedy today. We will have to invent something. Which is why incidentally, I think that we should drop that unfortunate pseudo-orthodox Marxist metaphor of, you know, train of history, we know where history goes. Recently I was rereading some text of French Jacobin
that's the tragedy today. We will have to invent something. Which is why incidentally, I think that we should drop that unfortunate pseudo-orthodox Marxist metaphor of, you know, train of history, we know where history goes. Recently I was rereading some text of French Jacobin
Slavoj Žižek
revolutionaries and Saint-Just says something wonderful. Saint-Just says: "We revolutionaries don't have any higher necessity to rely on. We are just captains leading a ship in the middle of a storm entering an unchartered territory." It's a much better metaphor. There is no guarantee, no higher necessity and so on. But at the same time I claim if we don't do, if we just resign and say let it go on, well then Hollywood will win, our society will be like Hunger Games and Elysium. It's already getting there. I know I didn't answer your question but it's in my nature. We have time for—can we take a selfie? Sorry? After can we take a selfie? On one condition: that you don't show it to me. Because I think I'm such a disgusting person with all my nervous tics that I cannot stand any image of me. Yeah. We have time for one more question. Ah, now you go to safe water center, opportunist, opportunist. Okay, sorry. Okay we can make two to be honest and I will cut short my answers. Okay so two brief questions, you can answer them together. No, the questions can be long, my answers will be brief. You know I try, I will be a wise guy, this is a joke. What if I give you these pseudo-deep Zen answers: clap with one hand, listen to silence and so on. That bullshit always works. Please. Is it a woman who has a question? Oh, this is the cheapest political correctness, you know. It's like that stupid reproach to "La La Land," you know: "There are many gays in LA, why is not—why are not there some gays in the—" Sorry, yeah. My question is about the condition of the new subjectivity that you're talking about, because I think that very moment is going to move beyond the cognitive condition, right, because it moved beyond thinking. Because first you said that the pure idea of freedom is that anxiety of choosing, "okay this one or that one," in the condition that we know it's predestined, right. But let's say that subject is that in the movie, that guy that he says "kill me instead of the other person." I think in order to make that choice you have to move beyond the very condition of thinking because thinking and logic tell you "choose yourself over the kid." If you are in a normal condition and not in a certain condition, you don't— Why? Why do you think this? Please explain. Because I'm here with Alain Badiou, I don't want to drop thinking. The reason is that because thinking and logic tell you "choose yourself over the kid," unless you have a very specific notion of thinking that moves beyond the Kantian notion of thinking, right. Unless you are redefining the definition of thinking itself. Because thinking is cognition, right? Unless you're saying that thinking is not— We philosophers like to complicate things here, you know. For Kant already, thinking is not the same as cognition. Cognition is cognition of phenomenal reality and so on. Thinking precisely moves beyond it. And Kant's point is not simply that—Kant's point is precisely that the pure condition—sorry. So still we are moving beyond cognition, but still is at the level of thinking. Yeah, but I—okay, I would just not accept that this is beyond thinking. You know thinking is a very mysterious thing. Like this is why I here remain some kind of a humanist, not naive humanist, and claim that, you know like, what can computers do? They can do many things. They can imitate cognitive aspects and so on, and so on. I doubt that they can think, at least now in the strict sense. Because thinking is for me something much more intricate. I think that first, and it's already clear with Kant, the origin of thinking is always a failure. The ultimate act of thinking is that you try to account for your failure. Where does thinking for Kant emerge? Why for Kant, for example, thinking is not cognition? Because cognition means I try to get knowledge of objects and so on. When you think you see that there are phenomena that cognition cannot cover everything and so on, and so on. So okay, then we clarified it. If we change words, we—but you know what bothers me when you said out of thinking? Because what I want to avoid at any price is any of this mystical experience bullshit, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's my fear, you know. Yeah, but I think that in some sense even truth is beyond cognition and I don't mean again any Gnostic truth or whatever. Try to briefly explain it, the example that I always use—but I'm also for Palestinians, for everyone—of that's my standard example: anti-Semitism in Germany. Let's say I engage in a debate with a hardline Nazi about the Jews. The moment I debate about it in terms of cognition of Jews—like we try to convince each other that what I claim about Jews is wrong—I've sold my soul to the devil. Why? Because for example, my not friend evil guy says "Jews are evil because they are seducing German girls." Well what can I answer? "I hope they did and I hope the other way around it work." Of course they said "Jews are exploiting Germans." Well up to a point this was in a vulgar sense true. Not all Jews—this is often neglected—there were also poor Jews in Germany, but many Jews were
revolutionaries and Saint-Just says something wonderful. Saint-Just says: "We revolutionaries don't have any higher necessity to rely on. We are just captains leading a ship in the middle of a storm entering an unchartered territory." It's a much better metaphor. There is no guarantee, no higher necessity and so on. But at the same time I claim if we don't do, if we just resign and say let it go on, well then Hollywood will win, our society will be like Hunger Games and Elysium. It's already getting there. I know I didn't answer your question but it's in my nature. We have time for—can we take a selfie? Sorry? After can we take a selfie? On one condition: that you don't show it to me. Because I think I'm such a disgusting person with all my nervous tics that I cannot stand any image of me. Yeah. We have time for one more question. Ah, now you go to safe water center, opportunist, opportunist. Okay, sorry. Okay we can make two to be honest and I will cut short my answers. Okay so two brief questions, you can answer them together. No, the questions can be long, my answers will be brief. You know I try, I will be a wise guy, this is a joke. What if I give you these pseudo-deep Zen answers: clap with one hand, listen to silence and so on. That bullshit always works. Please. Is it a woman who has a question? Oh, this is the cheapest political correctness, you know. It's like that stupid reproach to "La La Land," you know: "There are many gays in LA, why is not—why are not there some gays in the—" Sorry, yeah. My question is about the condition of the new subjectivity that you're talking about, because I think that very moment is going to move beyond the cognitive condition, right, because it moved beyond thinking. Because first you said that the pure idea of freedom is that anxiety of choosing, "okay this one or that one," in the condition that we know it's predestined, right. But let's say that subject is that in the movie, that guy that he says "kill me instead of the other person." I think in order to make that choice you have to move beyond the very condition of thinking because thinking and logic tell you "choose yourself over the kid." If you are in a normal condition and not in a certain condition, you don't— Why? Why do you think this? Please explain. Because I'm here with Alain Badiou, I don't want to drop thinking. The reason is that because thinking and logic tell you "choose yourself over the kid," unless you have a very specific notion of thinking that moves beyond the Kantian notion of thinking, right. Unless you are redefining the definition of thinking itself. Because thinking is cognition, right? Unless you're saying that thinking is not— We philosophers like to complicate things here, you know. For Kant already, thinking is not the same as cognition. Cognition is cognition of phenomenal reality and so on. Thinking precisely moves beyond it. And Kant's point is not simply that—Kant's point is precisely that the pure condition—sorry. So still we are moving beyond cognition, but still is at the level of thinking. Yeah, but I—okay, I would just not accept that this is beyond thinking. You know thinking is a very mysterious thing. Like this is why I here remain some kind of a humanist, not naive humanist, and claim that, you know like, what can computers do? They can do many things. They can imitate cognitive aspects and so on, and so on. I doubt that they can think, at least now in the strict sense. Because thinking is for me something much more intricate. I think that first, and it's already clear with Kant, the origin of thinking is always a failure. The ultimate act of thinking is that you try to account for your failure. Where does thinking for Kant emerge? Why for Kant, for example, thinking is not cognition? Because cognition means I try to get knowledge of objects and so on. When you think you see that there are phenomena that cognition cannot cover everything and so on, and so on. So okay, then we clarified it. If we change words, we—but you know what bothers me when you said out of thinking? Because what I want to avoid at any price is any of this mystical experience bullshit, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's my fear, you know. Yeah, but I think that in some sense even truth is beyond cognition and I don't mean again any Gnostic truth or whatever. Try to briefly explain it, the example that I always use—but I'm also for Palestinians, for everyone—of that's my standard example: anti-Semitism in Germany. Let's say I engage in a debate with a hardline Nazi about the Jews. The moment I debate about it in terms of cognition of Jews—like we try to convince each other that what I claim about Jews is wrong—I've sold my soul to the devil. Why? Because for example, my not friend evil guy says "Jews are evil because they are seducing German girls." Well what can I answer? "I hope they did and I hope the other way around it work." Of course they said "Jews are exploiting Germans." Well up to a point this was in a vulgar sense true. Not all Jews—this is often neglected—there were also poor Jews in Germany, but many Jews were
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rich. They said there were too
rich. They said there were too
Slavoj Žižek
many lawyers and journalists, Jews controlled the press. Well at the level of facts in a moderate way this was
many lawyers and journalists, Jews controlled the press. Well at the level of facts in a moderate way this was
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true.
true.
Slavoj Žižek
It's true that percent of lawyers in—but you know what we have to see? That anti-Semitism we should not combat it by reality in the sense "it's not true what you are telling about the Jews." Because if you are truly anti-Semitic, you know what you do? You tell yourself "that's why the Jews are so
It's true that percent of lawyers in—but you know what we have to see? That anti-Semitism we should not combat it by reality in the sense "it's not true what you are telling about the Jews." Because if you are truly anti-Semitic, you know what you do? You tell yourself "that's why the Jews are so
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dangerous. They appear to be kind and so on to cover up." You know what I mean? Like you always find the way. The true question to be raised is not "are Jews really like that?" but "why does a Nazi need the figure of the Jew to engage in his project?" I'm just developing
dangerous. They appear to be kind and so on to cover up." You know what I mean? Like you always find the way. The true question to be raised is not "are Jews really like that?" but "why does a Nazi need the figure of the Jew to engage in his project?" I'm just developing
Slavoj Žižek
a variation of you must know it of
a variation of you must know it of
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this classic point of Lacan. He puts it in a wonderfully naive
this classic point of Lacan. He puts it in a wonderfully naive
Slavoj Žižek
way—I’m sorry again for male chauvinist bias. Lacan put it like this: he says
way—I’m sorry again for male chauvinist bias. Lacan put it like this: he says
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"let's say a husband is pathological jealous of his wife, that she is sleeping around
"let's say a husband is pathological jealous of his wife, that she is sleeping around
Slavoj Žižek
with other men." Lacan's beautiful point is even if all the suspicions of the husband are true, his jealousy is still pathological. Because you know the point is not "does she really sleep around?" The point is why the husband is so fixated on it. And this is not cognition, this is truth. You turn back, you enter another dimension. But sorry, I'm losing too much time. Let's do—now you got— [Applause] Thank you very much for your patience and I was a little bit afraid that there will not be enough jokes and so on and I'm very glad that you—so next time when I come here, why don't we move even higher and do some pure thinking. Because you know I also have another book in print now, it’s an obscene title: "Incontinence of the Void." Ah, it's Beckett, you know, in his "Ill Seen Ill Said." There is a dying old lady and he mentions the term "incontinent void" and so on. It's pure metaphysics that book. That’s what I love. Thanks, thanks very much. [Applause]
with other men." Lacan's beautiful point is even if all the suspicions of the husband are true, his jealousy is still pathological. Because you know the point is not "does she really sleep around?" The point is why the husband is so fixated on it. And this is not cognition, this is truth. You turn back, you enter another dimension. But sorry, I'm losing too much time. Let's do—now you got— [Applause] Thank you very much for your patience and I was a little bit afraid that there will not be enough jokes and so on and I'm very glad that you—so next time when I come here, why don't we move even higher and do some pure thinking. Because you know I also have another book in print now, it’s an obscene title: "Incontinence of the Void." Ah, it's Beckett, you know, in his "Ill Seen Ill Said." There is a dying old lady and he mentions the term "incontinent void" and so on. It's pure metaphysics that book. That’s what I love. Thanks, thanks very much. [Applause]