"My God, I Talk Too Much" | Slavoj Žižek on Sex, Trump, and Freedom
Interview · Alex O'Connor ·
2023-09-10 · 1:47:08 · 13,732 words
with Alex O'Connor
ideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticssexuality-genderfascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnesscinema-art-culturedemocracyhistoryphilosophy-generalreligion-theologyrevolution-violenceecology-climategeopolitics-warsubjectivity
Žižek opens with a humorous anecdote about fake books to discuss the reality of ideology, then analyzes the Barbie/Oppenheimer phenomenon through Marx’s commodity fetishism and Jeremy Bentham’s theory of fictions. He engages in a dialogue with an interlocutor regarding sexuality, arguing that fantasy is constitutive of sexual reality and that love involves accepting the other's imperfections. He critiques Trump as a postmodern cynic, discusses the industrialization of sadomasochism as a symptom of contemporary permissiveness, and analyzes the paradox of cancel culture through Hegel’s distinction between doubt and despair. Žižek critiques contemporary trans ideology and woke culture by arguing they replace biological determinism with a new, rigid psychic determinism, ignoring the Freudian unconscious. He contrasts modern permissiveness with traditional authoritarianism, positing that the latter included 'regulatory transgressions' that guaranteed the subversive power of the former. He concludes by analyzing the paradox of freedom, arguing that people desire the appearance of freedom while secretly wanting authoritative guidance, and briefly touches on Stalinism and Dostoevsky to illustrate the complex relationship between authority, enjoyment, and the Big Other. Žižek offers a Hegelian reading of Christianity, arguing that the cross signifies the death of God and the emergence of an 'atheist society' (the Holy Spirit/Gemeinde) where Christ is present only through love between believers, rendering the waiting for his return a form of decadence. He then transitions to political theory, distinguishing between abstract and concrete freedom, and arguing that current global crises (ecological, geopolitical, social) require a 'moderately conservative communist' approach: maintaining liberal core values while risking a radical reinvention of the rules of freedom to avoid falling into authoritarian feudalism. He concludes by advocating for a 'moderate pessimist' stance, citing Horkheimer's 'pessimist in theory, optimist in action' and mocking crude optimism via The Life of Brian.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 25
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The traditional Marxist view that fantasy worlds are merely illusions or supplements to reality, which Žižek critiques.
Marx’s concept of an illusion written into the texture of reality itself, which mystifies real contradictions but is necessary for social life to function.
as “theory of fictions”
Jeremy Bentham’s idea that fictions structure our experience of reality, challenging the distinction between fiction and reality.
as “masturbate with a real person”
Žižek’s phrase for sex without love, where one uses the other’s body merely as a prop for one’s own fantasy, failing to encounter the other’s real bodily presence.
as “postmodern cynicism”
An attitude of ironic self-relativization and cynicism that became universalized in the postmodern era, allowing figures like Trump to act without serious commitment.
as “Zweifel vs. Verzweiflung”
Hegel’s distinction between simple doubt (remaining in a safe, ironic position) and putting oneself in doubt (losing the safe position, risking oneself).
Žižek’s term for industrial sadomasochistic devices, used to illustrate how extreme pain has become a necessary condition for enjoyment in a permissive society.
The gap between what is officially claimed (e.g., diversity) and how one acts in practice (e.g., exclusion), a key Lacanian/Zižekian distinction.
The process by which emancipatory movements turn their critical spirit inward, focusing on how the tradition itself is oppressive, leading to a self-destructive circle.
Žižek's term for the long, painful, symbolic process of becoming a gendered subject, arguing that all sexual identity is inherently 'trans' because it is never a smooth biological given.
The phenomenon where traditional authoritarian societies codify and permit certain transgressions (like obscene unwritten rules) to maintain the system, thereby neutralizing their subversive power, unlike modern permissiveness which regulates transgression to guarantee its existence.
Drawing on Judith Butler, Žižek notes that the repression of desire often reverts into the desire for the very measures of repression, explaining masochism and the sexual investment in regulation.
The enjoyment derived from the renunciation of enjoyment itself; Žižek uses it to explain how prohibitions and self-renunciation become sources of sexual satisfaction.
as “freedom a disease without cure”
The title of Žižek's upcoming book and his core thesis: freedom is a self-contradictory notion that causes anxiety, and people secretly desire the 'appearance of freedom' rather than actual freedom.
as “hermeneutic questioning”
A reflexive questioning of the presuppositions of our claims, which Žižek proposes as the role of philosophy today, moving beyond nihilism to understand the deadlock of freedom.
as “big other”
The symbolic order or the 'one for whom' appearances must be maintained, even if no empirical observer exists; Žižek uses it to explain Stalin's paranoia about maintaining the appearance of success for the Big Other.
as “atheist society”
Žižek's Hegelian interpretation of the Holy Spirit: the community of believers left to itself, relying on no divine messenger, representing the ultimate gift of Christ.
as “Gemeinde”
The Protestant notion of community, which Žižek uses to explain how Christ is present in the community of believers rather than through a future return.
Hegelian concept referring to pure, unrestricted will which, when detached from concrete conditions, leads to terror or self-destructive chaos.
The illusory but necessary unity of different groups (Christians, nouveau riches, communists) under a single slogan of 'freedom' during the fall of communism, which masked their differing concrete desires.
Žižek's self-designation: 'communist' in the sense that radical changes are necessary, but 'moderately conservative' in the sense of being careful about unintended long-term consequences and preserving core liberal values.
Žižek's pejorative label for the attitude in The Life of Brian that looks at the bright side of life even while crucified, which he rejects.
as “pessimist in theory, optimist in action”
A formulation from Max Horkheimer that Žižek endorses: confronting all catastrophic possibilities in theory while acting as if there is still a chance.
A term Žižek adopts from his interlocutor to describe the condition of relying on ourselves without the big Other, extended to cosmological/quantum uncertainty about reality itself.
Stories he reaches for 7
In Stalinist gulags, prisoners were forced to sign telegrams wishing Stalin a happy birthday. Žižek uses this to show that totalitarians claim to act 'for your own good,' characterizing themselves as servants of the people rather than mere leaders.
“on stalin's birthday, in all gulacs even, all prisoners were gathered and had to sign uh telegram wishing stalin all the best”
Uganda imposed the death penalty for homosexuality justified as an 'anti-colonial struggle' against Western values, illustrating how 'concrete freedom' can be hijacked by fundamentalist/authoritarian forces when existing rules fail.
“the west will not impose on us their values... those who defended homosexuality were discarded, dismissed as neocolonialists”
50 years ago, the German obsession was 'Waldsterben' (dying forests), predicting no forests by 2000; instead, there are more forests now, showing ecological predictions can be wrong.
“the big obsession in germany was waldsterben, the dying of forests... there are now more forests in europe then. thirty years ago.”
Sartre claimed that under German occupation, they were 'more free than ever' because there was no social order to rely on, forcing them to take the risk of stepping into the abyss and changing the rules.
“we were more free than ever. because precisely we didn't have any social order on which to rely everything was risky”
In the late 80s in Slovenia, different groups (Christian conservatives, nouveau riches, communists) all claimed to want 'freedom,' but had radically different concrete meanings for it; the abstract enthusiasm was necessary to unite them.
“each group had a very different idea of freedom... nonetheless, this enthusiasm, illusory as it was, was necessary.”
Žižek claims that in the unfinished next part of The Brothers Karamazov, the protagonist Alyosha would have become a terrorist against state authority, suggesting Dostoevsky's complex view on rebellion.
“alyosha karamazov becomes a terrorist. against the state authority.”
Žižek recounts his time in the Yugoslav army where, despite official homophobia, soldiers greeted each other with 'Smoke my brick' (a sexual innuendo). This illustrates how traditional authoritarian spaces included 'regulatory transgressions' that were permitted and thus stripped of subversive power.
“the way you greeted your friend in the morning was not hello, good morning, it was smoke my brick... i'll smoke your prick glad i will do it after”
Works invoked 9
Cited for Hegel's method of proving a stance (like asceticism) is wrong by analyzing its practical consequences.
The Idiot (novel) book
Cited via Rowan Williams to discuss the character Myshkin and the catastrophic social effects of purity.
Cited for its unfinished nature and the alleged plan for Alyosha to become a terrorist.
Oppenheimer film
Mentioned alongside Barbie as part of a cultural moment, though Žižek admits he hadn't seen it when writing his analysis.
Barbie film
Used to analyze the complex relationship between fantasy and reality, specifically how an 'asexized' fantasy world structures our sexual reality.
The Life of Brian film
Žižek mocks the ending's 'crude optimism' (singing 'Look at the Bright Side of Life' while crucified) as something he rejects.
Same as above, referred to by title.
An upcoming book by Žižek (Bloomsbury) arguing that freedom is a self-contradictory notion and a source of anxiety.
The Grand Inquisitor book
From The Brothers Karamazov; cited for the moment where Christ kisses the Inquisitor, representing Dostoevsky's complexity.
People invoked 22
A Guardian commentator whose report about a porn actor checking Pornhub inspired Žižek's anecdote about the necessity of fiction in sex.
The interlocutor in the talk, with whom Žižek has a friendly, bantering relationship.
Mentioned in the context of 'Bolsheviks' and the transition to Stalin, as a historical figure in the 20th century narrative.
Jacques Lacan positive
Referenced for the distinction between 'enunciated content' and 'practice,' which Žižek uses to critique cancel culture.
Žižek states they have 'good relations' and theoretically disagrees with her, but uses her concept of 'desire for repression' to explain masochism.
Donald Trump negative
Described as a 'ridiculous case of postmodern manipulating egotist' and the 'worst case' of postmodern cynicism, unable to seriously doubt his own stance.
Heinrich von Kleist positive
A Hegel-era writer whose article on how thoughts emerge from speaking without awareness Žižek likes.
Alexis Tsipras positive
Cited as part of the 'Greek Syriza movement' which Žižek was engaged with, representing a potential for progressive change.
Bernie Sanders positive
Described as the 'true moral majority' because he holds a direct, naive position of basic values, unlike postmodern relativizers.
Evo Morales positive
Cited as an example of an 'intelligent left' government in Bolivia that improved the standard of living without following the path of Venezuela/Nicaragua/Cuba, before being overthrown in a coup.
Michel Foucault negative
Used as an example of postmodern jargon that constantly relativizes statements (e.g., 'this is a glass of water... and so on'), which Žižek contrasts with Bernie Sanders' directness.
Giorgia Meloni negative
Cited as an example of the 'new rise of more radical right in Europe'.
Rowan Williams positive
Cited as the source of Žižek's reading of Dostoevsky's The Idiot regarding the destructive nature of social purity.
Jeremy Bentham positive
Žižek defends Bentham against continental philosophers, citing his 'theory of fictions' as a precursor to understanding how fictions structure reality.
Jordan Peterson positive
Žižek calls him his 'big partner in a dialogue' and agrees with Peterson's claim that 'sexuality was never free.'
Max Horkheimer positive
Cited for the formula 'pessimist in theory, optimist in action,' which Žižek endorses as his own final wisdom.
Mentioned in the context of Russian media presenting sacrifices as 'supreme enjoyment' and the big enjoyment of duty.
Joseph Stalin negative
Cited as the negative result of the Bolshevik explosion: an authoritarian state that lost the authentic energy of the revolution.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited as a 'great pessimist' who correctly identified that fantasy is always at work in sexuality, even in direct contact.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited for his distinction between 'Zweifel' (doubt) and 'Verzweiflung' (despair/putting oneself in doubt), and his method of analyzing the practical consequences of a stance.
Jean-Paul Sartre positive
Žižek quotes Sartre's 1945 observation that under German occupation, they were 'more free than ever' due to the lack of social order, using it to illustrate the necessity of stepping into the abyss.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky positive
Žižek admits he doesn't like Dostoevsky 'especially' but uses his works (The Grand Inquisitor, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov) to illustrate complex ideological and ethical points.
Transcript 150 turns
Slavoj Žižek
can i ask you a stupid thing?
can i ask you a stupid thing?
Alex O'Connor
what.
what.
Slavoj Žižek
what's the point, why do you have the world?
what's the point, why do you have the world?
Alex O'Connor
m.
m.
Slavoj Žižek
behind you.
behind you.
Alex O'Connor
i have the world map behind me because i'm quite uncreative when it comes to designing youtube backgrounds. i actually usually film with a bookcase behind me of my collection of books, including previous podcast guests, but i'm beginning to feel that there's something a little bit pretentious about filming sat in front of books all the time. i'm not sure.
i have the world map behind me because i'm quite uncreative when it comes to designing youtube backgrounds. i actually usually film with a bookcase behind me of my collection of books, including previous podcast guests, but i'm beginning to feel that there's something a little bit pretentious about filming sat in front of books all the time. i'm not sure.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Alex O'Connor
you know what i mean? because there are people who actually read the books and there are people who just sort of use books as a background. and i'm trying not.
you know what i mean? because there are people who actually read the books and there are people who just sort of use books as a background. and i'm trying not.
Slavoj Žižek
to give that impression i met people friends here in the united states and so on. my favorite case is not just you have you know that, even in slovenia here. you can buy just the the backs of the book you know so it looks that you have books and not only this, you can then choose the color, you know.
to give that impression i met people friends here in the united states and so on. my favorite case is not just you have you know that, even in slovenia here. you can buy just the the backs of the book you know so it looks that you have books and not only this, you can then choose the color, you know.
Alex O'Connor
yeah you the back.
yeah you the back.
Slavoj Žižek
that.
that.
Alex O'Connor
you'll have to let me know where i.
you'll have to let me know where i.
Slavoj Žižek
and say case, a couple of friends is that they have books, but then if you have these soft cover books, you break the backs a little bit so that it appears that you read them. and i even had a guy, a disgusting professor. knew him. he wasn't my friend. who? admitted to me that he asks his assistant students just to arbitrarily underline some sentences in some pages to give the impression that it's a crazy world. okay everything clear the reason i have the books behind me is not because of that it's simply because it's the only room where i can be alone but i like now i discovered as an ominous thing then there is behind behind my i don't know which left arm that ominous door with a window up it's an element of horror not just books okay sorry for losing time now we really have to begin
and say case, a couple of friends is that they have books, but then if you have these soft cover books, you break the backs a little bit so that it appears that you read them. and i even had a guy, a disgusting professor. knew him. he wasn't my friend. who? admitted to me that he asks his assistant students just to arbitrarily underline some sentences in some pages to give the impression that it's a crazy world. okay everything clear the reason i have the books behind me is not because of that it's simply because it's the only room where i can be alone but i like now i discovered as an ominous thing then there is behind behind my i don't know which left arm that ominous door with a window up it's an element of horror not just books okay sorry for losing time now we really have to begin
Alex O'Connor
not a problem. i wanted to actually begin by asking you something about the arts. i saw recently that you wrote a piece for the new statesman about the barbie film and it was called barbie can't handle the truth. i saw that film
not a problem. i wanted to actually begin by asking you something about the arts. i saw recently that you wrote a piece for the new statesman about the barbie film and it was called barbie can't handle the truth. i saw that film
Slavoj Žižek
let's tight.
let's tight.
Alex O'Connor
i i i
i i i
Slavoj Žižek
i thought as much.
i thought as much.
Alex O'Connor
i thought as much. it would be
i thought as much. it would be
Slavoj Žižek
did did you guess since you're not an idiot start interrupting you, did you guess another thing? while i wrote that, i haven't seen. neither! i haven't seen either either oppenheimer or... barbie.
did did you guess since you're not an idiot start interrupting you, did you guess another thing? while i wrote that, i haven't seen. neither! i haven't seen either either oppenheimer or... barbie.
Alex O'Connor
so what was it that prompted you to write an essay? i know that the essay only only sort of mentions barbie in one of the paragraphs and makes comparisons.
so what was it that prompted you to write an essay? i know that the essay only only sort of mentions barbie in one of the paragraphs and makes comparisons.
Slavoj Žižek
other film.
other film.
Alex O'Connor
of other films of late but how do you feel the confidence to write about a film that you haven't seen in such a way?
of other films of late but how do you feel the confidence to write about a film that you haven't seen in such a way?
Slavoj Žižek
i played it very safe, maybe even too safe. the points that i make are so... general but what interested me in barbie is... and again, it's way too general point to make, but i think it's important. people usually traditional marxists or other leftists. like to point out how. all these fantasy worlds lies the sexless earth. barbie world not our ordinary world are just something that are ideological distortion, reflection, ideal, imagined supplement to our actual world. what interests me? and this is one thing that i think it maybe still alive. and you may be now very critical toward mach of marxism. but this notion which is much more refined in marx, of commodity fetishism, which is what? which is not just an illusion which is the effect of real contradictions, it mystifies them, but it's an illusion which is written into the texture of our reality itself in the sense of you take this illusion away and our real life. no, reality, something remains, but our real social life disintegrates. that's what fascinates me. illusions which are not simply illusions which you can get rid of and then stare heroically into the eyes of actual life, you know. that aspect interests me and you know who? Who, who was the first one the first one to show me this path, you will not believe it. not sam. uh big idealist, but none other than jeremiah bentham, the great utilitarian. he proposed he should be re-read today, i think he was definitely not an idiot. benentham, because many continental so-called philosophers thought he was simply a utilitarian idiot and so no. in his theory of fictions, he makes this point hundreds of years ago very clearly that although in principle we should distinguish between fictions and reality. but f already structured what we experience as reality. so his whole work is again this simplistic notion that it's truly courageous to confront reality without fictions and so on and so on and so on. but what really interests me, why i risk that bluff? about those two movies this may be for our viewers more interesting it's that today i noticed that we have a whole series of movies. which deal with some kind of passage from living in an imagined world to so-called reality. yes. and. barbie is an... obvious. case here it's even. now, after seeing the movie. It's even now. seeing it after he wrote about it. oh so so you you have.
i played it very safe, maybe even too safe. the points that i make are so... general but what interested me in barbie is... and again, it's way too general point to make, but i think it's important. people usually traditional marxists or other leftists. like to point out how. all these fantasy worlds lies the sexless earth. barbie world not our ordinary world are just something that are ideological distortion, reflection, ideal, imagined supplement to our actual world. what interests me? and this is one thing that i think it maybe still alive. and you may be now very critical toward mach of marxism. but this notion which is much more refined in marx, of commodity fetishism, which is what? which is not just an illusion which is the effect of real contradictions, it mystifies them, but it's an illusion which is written into the texture of our reality itself in the sense of you take this illusion away and our real life. no, reality, something remains, but our real social life disintegrates. that's what fascinates me. illusions which are not simply illusions which you can get rid of and then stare heroically into the eyes of actual life, you know. that aspect interests me and you know who? Who, who was the first one the first one to show me this path, you will not believe it. not sam. uh big idealist, but none other than jeremiah bentham, the great utilitarian. he proposed he should be re-read today, i think he was definitely not an idiot. benentham, because many continental so-called philosophers thought he was simply a utilitarian idiot and so no. in his theory of fictions, he makes this point hundreds of years ago very clearly that although in principle we should distinguish between fictions and reality. but f already structured what we experience as reality. so his whole work is again this simplistic notion that it's truly courageous to confront reality without fictions and so on and so on and so on. but what really interests me, why i risk that bluff? about those two movies this may be for our viewers more interesting it's that today i noticed that we have a whole series of movies. which deal with some kind of passage from living in an imagined world to so-called reality. yes. and. barbie is an... obvious. case here it's even. now, after seeing the movie. It's even now. seeing it after he wrote about it. oh so so you you have.
Alex O'Connor
now seen bobby.
now seen bobby.
Slavoj Žižek
but... now a pirate copy at my home and so on. you know,... it's a pretty complex movie because it's not simply it's not simply, it's neither reality versus fiction and so on. it's a much more complex relationship between the two. boys, what i like is how although our lives are basically sexualized why we, then. have this imagined world of barbie barbie land as asexized. you know. and i i think that this is a crucial point which can be even accounted for in freudian terms. the role of fiction in reality, even sexual reality. maybe you know the story that i repeat so much i'm already tired of it. i read a couple of years ago now i already think. uh,. eve. wiseman, a commentator for guardian, reports in one of her comments of a special terrifying thing that happened to her. she was watching, and that's not an ironic remark, i like to read this there the most depressive. not hardcore pornography, but hardcore movies shot a step back, if i may put it like this, about how they shoot hardcore pornography.? it's the most depressive experience you can imagine. and okay. the camera is behind the hardcore. camera showing the entire scene and you have there an actor doing it to the lady on the bed and in the middle of doing it, he steps back and he says, sorry i'm losing erection let's stop can somebody pass me my iphone? so that i go quickly on pornhub to get excited again. now this is an absurd scene from the common sense because my god, we usually dream about doing it. and he has there a woman in front of him, naked, everything. no, you need fiction, you know. and i think this is... the deep lesson of psychoanalysis. it's not that everything is sexualized in this stupid sense whatever you are doing you are secretly doing about for or dreaming about sexuality. no, freud's question is, but what are you? dreaming, fantasizing when you are doing it, the sexual act. freud is here, i think, a great pessimist. his point is that even in sexuality, you are never alone without fantasies. it's not that i'm with my lover or lovers alone and we are fully immersed in it, we are just doing it. no. even in direct contact with another's body fantasy is always at work and i think this doesn't only hold for children. for so-called infantile sexuality where you don't know what happens in sexuality, you dream about it. no, it happens even in... and especially in real sex, freud's message again is here much more refined. it's not that, but when you become an adult, you no longer need this stupid infantile empirically wrong fantasies you are simply able to do it no the. a new versions of infantile. sexual dreams remain to the end. remain to the end. so, okay, i will not don't want to get lost in it. so here i thought maybe if we engage in a dialogue. because maybe i got a wrong impression from reading and listening to some of your stuff. i wonder, is this too much of you to what extent you consider yourself nonetheless? it's vulgar to say, but... british empiricists, where do you stand?
but... now a pirate copy at my home and so on. you know,... it's a pretty complex movie because it's not simply it's not simply, it's neither reality versus fiction and so on. it's a much more complex relationship between the two. boys, what i like is how although our lives are basically sexualized why we, then. have this imagined world of barbie barbie land as asexized. you know. and i i think that this is a crucial point which can be even accounted for in freudian terms. the role of fiction in reality, even sexual reality. maybe you know the story that i repeat so much i'm already tired of it. i read a couple of years ago now i already think. uh,. eve. wiseman, a commentator for guardian, reports in one of her comments of a special terrifying thing that happened to her. she was watching, and that's not an ironic remark, i like to read this there the most depressive. not hardcore pornography, but hardcore movies shot a step back, if i may put it like this, about how they shoot hardcore pornography.? it's the most depressive experience you can imagine. and okay. the camera is behind the hardcore. camera showing the entire scene and you have there an actor doing it to the lady on the bed and in the middle of doing it, he steps back and he says, sorry i'm losing erection let's stop can somebody pass me my iphone? so that i go quickly on pornhub to get excited again. now this is an absurd scene from the common sense because my god, we usually dream about doing it. and he has there a woman in front of him, naked, everything. no, you need fiction, you know. and i think this is... the deep lesson of psychoanalysis. it's not that everything is sexualized in this stupid sense whatever you are doing you are secretly doing about for or dreaming about sexuality. no, freud's question is, but what are you? dreaming, fantasizing when you are doing it, the sexual act. freud is here, i think, a great pessimist. his point is that even in sexuality, you are never alone without fantasies. it's not that i'm with my lover or lovers alone and we are fully immersed in it, we are just doing it. no. even in direct contact with another's body fantasy is always at work and i think this doesn't only hold for children. for so-called infantile sexuality where you don't know what happens in sexuality, you dream about it. no, it happens even in... and especially in real sex, freud's message again is here much more refined. it's not that, but when you become an adult, you no longer need this stupid infantile empirically wrong fantasies you are simply able to do it no the. a new versions of infantile. sexual dreams remain to the end. remain to the end. so, okay, i will not don't want to get lost in it. so here i thought maybe if we engage in a dialogue. because maybe i got a wrong impression from reading and listening to some of your stuff. i wonder, is this too much of you to what extent you consider yourself nonetheless? it's vulgar to say, but... british empiricists, where do you stand?
Alex O'Connor
yeah. um, i did want to ask perhaps before answering that question about this concept of
yeah. um, i did want to ask perhaps before answering that question about this concept of
Slavoj Žižek
yes, true i'm..
yes, true i'm..
Alex O'Connor
th th this this concept of uh fantasising never being uh or or always being present during the sexual experience i think some people would listen to that, particularly people with what others might describe as a more puritanical sexual ethic, and say that that just demonstrates that sex has gone utterly wrong in our sort of modern secular age. so i can imagine some of my christian listeners thinking to themselves, well, of course, people are struggling to have sex in... the kind of situation you describe like a hardcore pornography set, because this is not the kind of sex that god intended. and of course that when somebody has you know countless sexual partners and they treat it casually and they don't wait for marriage, then of course when they finally settle down with somebody they're still going to be thinking about other people. but if we were to sort of reject the missing element for a lot of people in modern sexual experience, which is love, into the experience, then perhaps that fant go away.
th th this this concept of uh fantasising never being uh or or always being present during the sexual experience i think some people would listen to that, particularly people with what others might describe as a more puritanical sexual ethic, and say that that just demonstrates that sex has gone utterly wrong in our sort of modern secular age. so i can imagine some of my christian listeners thinking to themselves, well, of course, people are struggling to have sex in... the kind of situation you describe like a hardcore pornography set, because this is not the kind of sex that god intended. and of course that when somebody has you know countless sexual partners and they treat it casually and they don't wait for marriage, then of course when they finally settle down with somebody they're still going to be thinking about other people. but if we were to sort of reject the missing element for a lot of people in modern sexual experience, which is love, into the experience, then perhaps that fant go away.
Slavoj Žižek
d ! simple point with. which, this may surprise you, i. partially from a certain perspective, agree. you mentioned love. and i'm now repeating my old stuff. i agreed that love changesangers things but precisely in the way you say you said your christian friends intend me. it. it's not that without love you have sex which is just real, brutal, raw bodily presence. no, my paradox would have been, and i'm interesting to hear from you if i'm going too far here. my point would have been that precisely in this. raw, brutal, just last, i don't care about love and so on. the other's body is not really here.
d ! simple point with. which, this may surprise you, i. partially from a certain perspective, agree. you mentioned love. and i'm now repeating my old stuff. i agreed that love changesangers things but precisely in the way you say you said your christian friends intend me. it. it's not that without love you have sex which is just real, brutal, raw bodily presence. no, my paradox would have been, and i'm interesting to hear from you if i'm going too far here. my point would have been that precisely in this. raw, brutal, just last, i don't care about love and so on. the other's body is not really here.
Alex O'Connor
yeah
yeah
Slavoj Žižek
the expression which i like to use is that without love, what are you doing is you masturbate with a real person. what do i mean by this? you have what is... in a vulgar terms, masturbation is you dream about something and you just sorry, i will not be too obscene, you do it to yourself. but i think in sex without love... you dream about something and what you do in reality is just you use the other as your masturbatory prop. eth an element there. show that... only in love and this is something very important that i will say now. i think this is why love, true love, does not idealize the other. love is something much more, sorry for this term, miraculous. in love you accept fully the other. with all his, her, it, i will not use theirs, you will not force me to do that imperfections, but as such these imperfections included. he, she, it is it. it's the thing itself in some sense. that's the almost, i would say theological miracle of love. that ridiculous person, and you don't have to erase that ridiculous aspect, is in some sense, under quotation marks, of course the absolute for you. now can i add two things here to provoke you? i want to throw you out of your this cool cosmic skeptic, complacent view and so on.
the expression which i like to use is that without love, what are you doing is you masturbate with a real person. what do i mean by this? you have what is... in a vulgar terms, masturbation is you dream about something and you just sorry, i will not be too obscene, you do it to yourself. but i think in sex without love... you dream about something and what you do in reality is just you use the other as your masturbatory prop. eth an element there. show that... only in love and this is something very important that i will say now. i think this is why love, true love, does not idealize the other. love is something much more, sorry for this term, miraculous. in love you accept fully the other. with all his, her, it, i will not use theirs, you will not force me to do that imperfections, but as such these imperfections included. he, she, it is it. it's the thing itself in some sense. that's the almost, i would say theological miracle of love. that ridiculous person, and you don't have to erase that ridiculous aspect, is in some sense, under quotation marks, of course the absolute for you. now can i add two things here to provoke you? i want to throw you out of your this cool cosmic skeptic, complacent view and so on.
Alex O'Connor
please.
please.
Slavoj Žižek
would you agree with this here? b ! so okay, i hope we vaguely agree here although it wasn't clear is this your christian friends or you that love is.
would you agree with this here? b ! so okay, i hope we vaguely agree here although it wasn't clear is this your christian friends or you that love is.
Alex O'Connor
sometimes they do speak through me, yes.
sometimes they do speak through me, yes.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Alex O'Connor
it seems.
it seems.
Slavoj Žižek
uh... yeah, that this basic paradox. to really feel the other. in it's there, he's her bodily presence. it must be love.
uh... yeah, that this basic paradox. to really feel the other. in it's there, he's her bodily presence. it must be love.
Alex O'Connor
yeah, it's something whatever the opposite, have you seen there was a roast of donald trump before he became president. there was a bunch of celebrities on stage and they were all making fun of him and seth mcfarlane, a comedian, got up and said that donald trump has such an ego that when he's banging a supermodel, he closes his eyes and pretends that he's masturbating, which i thought was one of the more clever quips of the evening. so whatever the opposite of that is. is what i'm talking about.
yeah, it's something whatever the opposite, have you seen there was a roast of donald trump before he became president. there was a bunch of celebrities on stage and they were all making fun of him and seth mcfarlane, a comedian, got up and said that donald trump has such an ego that when he's banging a supermodel, he closes his eyes and pretends that he's masturbating, which i thought was one of the more clever quips of the evening. so whatever the opposite of that is. is what i'm talking about.
Slavoj Žižek
ah, but another thing, i will not get lost. about this don't... do you know what also? fascinates me. a propos... trump, just a brief remark. you know, trump presents himself as, at least superficially, as some kind of a neoconservative christian and so on, blasting against this post-modern secular permissivity and so on, referring to classical moral values and so on. but isn't it that the way he acts. publicly, his performance. isn't he the worst case that you can imagine? a ridiculous case of postmodern manipulating egotist and so on and so on. i don't think you have to criticize him from outside. look at what he does.
ah, but another thing, i will not get lost. about this don't... do you know what also? fascinates me. a propos... trump, just a brief remark. you know, trump presents himself as, at least superficially, as some kind of a neoconservative christian and so on, blasting against this post-modern secular permissivity and so on, referring to classical moral values and so on. but isn't it that the way he acts. publicly, his performance. isn't he the worst case that you can imagine? a ridiculous case of postmodern manipulating egotist and so on and so on. i don't think you have to criticize him from outside. look at what he does.
Alex O'Connor
i've heard you say before that donald trump is a postmodernernist and i'd be interested to hear what it is that you actually mean by that. like post-modmodernism, it's a difficult thing to define, but perhaps you can give us some ideas here.
i've heard you say before that donald trump is a postmodernernist and i'd be interested to hear what it is that you actually mean by that. like post-modmodernism, it's a difficult thing to define, but perhaps you can give us some ideas here.
Slavoj Žižek
somebody who who first. the term postmodernism, we have to use it carefully because when this term was introduced, it meant something very precise. first, if i remember it correctly, it was introduced in architecture already the early 60s, i don't know when. it was the end to simplify to the utmost of this glass and concrete modern architecture. it was the return to what we in modernist times perceived as a baroque kits. and we have signs of this everywhere. for example, an unexpected example, in russia. for the last 20, 30 years. you know that there is a great return to... what even attracts me in a very perverted way. the stalinist wedding cake baroque. you know all those lomonosov university of house of culture, a gift of stalin to poland with all these baroque small statues, complicated structure and so on and so on. but this this is getting popular again but what i mean by post-modernism is precisely in general ideology the era where? irony and cynicism became universalized and you this is the attitude of... even if i say this, don't take it seriously is this ironic self-relativization and it's clear with trump. dead. only. in acting like uh. postmodern. cynic can he do what he does? for example, on the one hand support israel on the other hand, his allies in the new right are often openly anti-semitic and so on. i just mean, again, this stance off. even when you claim something, you include self-relativization, but not in your sound skeptical sense. i'm with you here. our basic attitude should be skeptical. i just want to introduce here a nice distinction proposed by hegel between what in german is called zweifel, simple, doubt, where you remain in your ironic self position, self-perception and safe position and just don't take things seriously and on the other hand, what hegel calls verzweiflung. putting yourself in doubt where you lose this safe position. no, trump is not able to seriously doubt his own stance. but what i wanted to say is that it's a nice irony. think about this classical position defended by neoconservatives. you care for basic moral or ethical, it's not the same, i know values. you don't like these postmodern paradoxes, you know. what i hate in certain post-mod is jargon is. this constant relativization. like if you ask, this is my old ironic example, if you ask foucauldian, i mean michel foucault. deconstruction is, i know it's more complex, but what is this? by this i mean the glass of water. the guy will never answer, this is a glass of water, but. if i. make the risk to essential i think and centralized think them. under this condition this may be designated as and so on and so on all that stuff. but think the opposite. if anybody fits today in the united states politics. the most clumsy clumsy in the sense of direct, naive. position of moral majority, like i believe in basic values, i speak for them, it's bernie sanders, i think. that's why sometimes i like to listen for him. he is the true moral. majority. but another thing i want to tell you about, sorry, this may is a small obscenity which may interest you and our viewers about against sexuality and so on. you know where, but not in the sense they... think this even christian conservatives may be right
somebody who who first. the term postmodernism, we have to use it carefully because when this term was introduced, it meant something very precise. first, if i remember it correctly, it was introduced in architecture already the early 60s, i don't know when. it was the end to simplify to the utmost of this glass and concrete modern architecture. it was the return to what we in modernist times perceived as a baroque kits. and we have signs of this everywhere. for example, an unexpected example, in russia. for the last 20, 30 years. you know that there is a great return to... what even attracts me in a very perverted way. the stalinist wedding cake baroque. you know all those lomonosov university of house of culture, a gift of stalin to poland with all these baroque small statues, complicated structure and so on and so on. but this this is getting popular again but what i mean by post-modernism is precisely in general ideology the era where? irony and cynicism became universalized and you this is the attitude of... even if i say this, don't take it seriously is this ironic self-relativization and it's clear with trump. dead. only. in acting like uh. postmodern. cynic can he do what he does? for example, on the one hand support israel on the other hand, his allies in the new right are often openly anti-semitic and so on. i just mean, again, this stance off. even when you claim something, you include self-relativization, but not in your sound skeptical sense. i'm with you here. our basic attitude should be skeptical. i just want to introduce here a nice distinction proposed by hegel between what in german is called zweifel, simple, doubt, where you remain in your ironic self position, self-perception and safe position and just don't take things seriously and on the other hand, what hegel calls verzweiflung. putting yourself in doubt where you lose this safe position. no, trump is not able to seriously doubt his own stance. but what i wanted to say is that it's a nice irony. think about this classical position defended by neoconservatives. you care for basic moral or ethical, it's not the same, i know values. you don't like these postmodern paradoxes, you know. what i hate in certain post-mod is jargon is. this constant relativization. like if you ask, this is my old ironic example, if you ask foucauldian, i mean michel foucault. deconstruction is, i know it's more complex, but what is this? by this i mean the glass of water. the guy will never answer, this is a glass of water, but. if i. make the risk to essential i think and centralized think them. under this condition this may be designated as and so on and so on all that stuff. but think the opposite. if anybody fits today in the united states politics. the most clumsy clumsy in the sense of direct, naive. position of moral majority, like i believe in basic values, i speak for them, it's bernie sanders, i think. that's why sometimes i like to listen for him. he is the true moral. majority. but another thing i want to tell you about, sorry, this may is a small obscenity which may interest you and our viewers about against sexuality and so on. you know where, but not in the sense they... think this even christian conservatives may be right
Alex O'Connor
yeah, is this what you promised to outrage me and disavow me of my cosmic skepticism? i wanted to make sure we went back to that.
yeah, is this what you promised to outrage me and disavow me of my cosmic skepticism? i wanted to make sure we went back to that.
Slavoj Žižek
you ruined my performance when in a good way admit that in advance you brought in this your your christian friends i hope that at the end because basically like you if i got it correctly i am an atheist, you know, no doubt here. but i want to something else. another touchy subject. okay, even two of them. maybe you heard this story, but it obsessed me lately. because i used it in some podcasts and so on. uh. this is for me the crisis. in some sense or the psychic imbalance of our time. er. uh. you know, i was... some months ago, i read somewhere that the nazis, when they tortured prisoners, mostly jews, in their concentration camps, they had it made and what struck me is that. it was industrially made for this purpose it's like to crack a nut machine testicle crashes. they were industrially made. okay, so i wanted to check this, not to be called again with claiming something wrong, whatever, no? so i checked it up. i put, and you can repeat the experience into google testicle crashes. and i was bombedbed. bye offers today you know that you get immediately 10 15 offers it's okay not too big but nonetheless a branch of industry of sexual instruments objects you get testicle crashes even very exclusive ones two balls connected and you can get, i found one for $15,000 sprinked with diamonds. so you can regulate how far you squeeze your balls and then you get special holes and you get needles to and so on and so on. so this gave me to think in a very naive way, where are we? where something that 70, 80 years ago was the ultimate horror is now an object that you can buy for pleasure. that is to say yeah. what happened with our permissiveness? that its result it's not we all spontaneously enjoy but it's on the contrary that ultimately the result of this permissiveness is that you need pain to enjoy that only in stronger and stronger pain you can enjoy now my basic position here is more crazy than it might appear. it's not oh this is just simply this is modern decadence and so on. it is that this dimension ich! and that's the left of freight, i think it's... immanent to sexuality itself. okay it comes out only in certain epochs and so on, you know. but that's my first point. i will not lose too much time elaborating. the second point. is that my god i will again sound as a kind of a conservative which i am definitely not but... that's my problem with cancel. culture. i support much of its goals. yeah, race oppression, oppression of women, blah, blah, blah, all that. but my problem is this one that i have to refer here again what i implicitly mentioned apro propos trump the gap between what you are saying in lakian terminology, the enunciated content of what you are claiming, and how you act. in your practice itself of doing it, of saying it. and this is for me the problem with cancel culture. i mean, even in the big media, you already find this insight. officially, they are for... diversity and inclusivity. but then more and more. the result of diversity and inclusivity is de, de facto! exclusion. people who act on behalf of diversity and inclusivity. exclude in their practice again and again practices, statements and so on which according to them are not open enough towards diversity and and inclusivity. so to use an old joke proverb, whatever you put it, you know that famous joke
you ruined my performance when in a good way admit that in advance you brought in this your your christian friends i hope that at the end because basically like you if i got it correctly i am an atheist, you know, no doubt here. but i want to something else. another touchy subject. okay, even two of them. maybe you heard this story, but it obsessed me lately. because i used it in some podcasts and so on. uh. this is for me the crisis. in some sense or the psychic imbalance of our time. er. uh. you know, i was... some months ago, i read somewhere that the nazis, when they tortured prisoners, mostly jews, in their concentration camps, they had it made and what struck me is that. it was industrially made for this purpose it's like to crack a nut machine testicle crashes. they were industrially made. okay, so i wanted to check this, not to be called again with claiming something wrong, whatever, no? so i checked it up. i put, and you can repeat the experience into google testicle crashes. and i was bombedbed. bye offers today you know that you get immediately 10 15 offers it's okay not too big but nonetheless a branch of industry of sexual instruments objects you get testicle crashes even very exclusive ones two balls connected and you can get, i found one for $15,000 sprinked with diamonds. so you can regulate how far you squeeze your balls and then you get special holes and you get needles to and so on and so on. so this gave me to think in a very naive way, where are we? where something that 70, 80 years ago was the ultimate horror is now an object that you can buy for pleasure. that is to say yeah. what happened with our permissiveness? that its result it's not we all spontaneously enjoy but it's on the contrary that ultimately the result of this permissiveness is that you need pain to enjoy that only in stronger and stronger pain you can enjoy now my basic position here is more crazy than it might appear. it's not oh this is just simply this is modern decadence and so on. it is that this dimension ich! and that's the left of freight, i think it's... immanent to sexuality itself. okay it comes out only in certain epochs and so on, you know. but that's my first point. i will not lose too much time elaborating. the second point. is that my god i will again sound as a kind of a conservative which i am definitely not but... that's my problem with cancel. culture. i support much of its goals. yeah, race oppression, oppression of women, blah, blah, blah, all that. but my problem is this one that i have to refer here again what i implicitly mentioned apro propos trump the gap between what you are saying in lakian terminology, the enunciated content of what you are claiming, and how you act. in your practice itself of doing it, of saying it. and this is for me the problem with cancel culture. i mean, even in the big media, you already find this insight. officially, they are for... diversity and inclusivity. but then more and more. the result of diversity and inclusivity is de, de facto! exclusion. people who act on behalf of diversity and inclusivity. exclude in their practice again and again practices, statements and so on which according to them are not open enough towards diversity and and inclusivity. so to use an old joke proverb, whatever you put it, you know that famous joke
Alex O'Connor
uh,.
uh,.
Slavoj Žižek
explorers arrive into a tribe and ask, are you still cannibals? the answer is no, we've just eaten the last one a couple of days ago. there are no longer cannibals here. this is for me! the paradox of cancel culture. on behalf of defending diversity and inclusivity, what you are de facto doing is you practice exclusion. all the time. it's truly difficult to be for diversity and inclusivity not just in how you justify what you are doing, but in the practice itself. that's why i think because this is standard hegel's procedure.gel is that's why i remain in some sense a hegelian. don't get don't get seduced by this crazy image of hegel, fanatical idealist. throughout, for example, in phenomenology of spirit, what does hegel effectively do? he takes what he calls a figure of consciousness of. a certain stance, for example, asceticism. and he proves that this stance is wrong, not by measuring with an abstract standard. but by just analyzing what does in practice mean to be ask and his answer is it means the exact opposite. you want to deny yourself but all the time what you are doing is critically analyze yourself you are totally fixed on yourself because you try to get rid of the last elements of egotism and so on and so on so to come back to this for me this is linked to what you said, a serious problem today. and that's the first way to approach our mess. how it is that in an era of in sexuality but also general social life. diversity, inclusivity, we are more and more engaged in a practice of in a practice of excluding the other. and to avoid a misunderstanding here, what fascinates me is that this is not just something that the. left is doing you know the. this woke left. i think it's gradually approaching what i cannot but designate a self-destruction of the western tradition, this crazy self-critical spirit. emancipation, equality, yes. but then they will, when you say emancipation, they will say, yes, but who is secretly privileged here? do you really mean emancipation? aren't other races excluded? aren't women excluded? don't you secretly impose your own standards? okay. nothing against this, but i think today this is brought to a self-destructive circle. where the focus is precisely off. show to the end how? the main source of oppression is the western emancipatory tradition itself. and it made me so glad to see, did you notice this? i had some kind of intellectual orgasm reading this that. now it's already a couple of weeks ago. in salt lake city. a group. of not even only mormons, christians also. demanded from a school board and then it was confirmed. that in elementary and mid schools the bible should be prohibited. that it's full of obscenities, dirty sex. politically unacceptable violence and so on and so on. so, uh... here is that we are. we are. caught in a... and especially the left in this cycle of permanent self-doubt and self. destruction and this frankly worries me. i talk too much please my god.
explorers arrive into a tribe and ask, are you still cannibals? the answer is no, we've just eaten the last one a couple of days ago. there are no longer cannibals here. this is for me! the paradox of cancel culture. on behalf of defending diversity and inclusivity, what you are de facto doing is you practice exclusion. all the time. it's truly difficult to be for diversity and inclusivity not just in how you justify what you are doing, but in the practice itself. that's why i think because this is standard hegel's procedure.gel is that's why i remain in some sense a hegelian. don't get don't get seduced by this crazy image of hegel, fanatical idealist. throughout, for example, in phenomenology of spirit, what does hegel effectively do? he takes what he calls a figure of consciousness of. a certain stance, for example, asceticism. and he proves that this stance is wrong, not by measuring with an abstract standard. but by just analyzing what does in practice mean to be ask and his answer is it means the exact opposite. you want to deny yourself but all the time what you are doing is critically analyze yourself you are totally fixed on yourself because you try to get rid of the last elements of egotism and so on and so on so to come back to this for me this is linked to what you said, a serious problem today. and that's the first way to approach our mess. how it is that in an era of in sexuality but also general social life. diversity, inclusivity, we are more and more engaged in a practice of in a practice of excluding the other. and to avoid a misunderstanding here, what fascinates me is that this is not just something that the. left is doing you know the. this woke left. i think it's gradually approaching what i cannot but designate a self-destruction of the western tradition, this crazy self-critical spirit. emancipation, equality, yes. but then they will, when you say emancipation, they will say, yes, but who is secretly privileged here? do you really mean emancipation? aren't other races excluded? aren't women excluded? don't you secretly impose your own standards? okay. nothing against this, but i think today this is brought to a self-destructive circle. where the focus is precisely off. show to the end how? the main source of oppression is the western emancipatory tradition itself. and it made me so glad to see, did you notice this? i had some kind of intellectual orgasm reading this that. now it's already a couple of weeks ago. in salt lake city. a group. of not even only mormons, christians also. demanded from a school board and then it was confirmed. that in elementary and mid schools the bible should be prohibited. that it's full of obscenities, dirty sex. politically unacceptable violence and so on and so on. so, uh... here is that we are. we are. caught in a... and especially the left in this cycle of permanent self-doubt and self. destruction and this frankly worries me. i talk too much please my god.
Alex O'Connor
no, i think i mean i mean that.
no, i think i mean i mean that.
Slavoj Žižek
i want want to go into it, where do you stand here?
i want want to go into it, where do you stand here?
Alex O'Connor
yeah, well i i there's a lot to unpack, so sort of rewinding a little. you were talking about the seeming modern propensity towards destructive sexual fetishes, you were talking about the testicle crushes. and i'm wondering if this is something that doesn't have an explanation in the sort of something to do with what modern society has done to our thinking, whether it's just always been the case that people have been sexually excited by what's subversive. and in fact, pulling together what you said afterwards, it would make sense to me that if people have always liked to do things that are a bit naughty and a bit subversive and that's what's excited them. and in a sort of puritanical society of the past, it wouldn't be too difficult to subvert the general sexual ethic. you basically do anything outside of heterosexual missionary sex and the excitement is going to be thrilling but in modern society with a slight relaxation of our sexual ethic, you might have to go to further extremes to find that thrill but i think that the sort of essence of the motivation is still the same. and not only this, but if the modern principle, if the main principle of modern western society has become about self-worth and empowerment and you are good enough and you are strong and no matter what your limitations are socially you can excel and you have intrinsic worth and perhaps the way today to subvert the the dogma of our time and do something a bit subversive and exciting is to reject that and essentially put yourself in a submissive self-harming position in the sexual experience. it would kind of make sense to me that's what's happening
yeah, well i i there's a lot to unpack, so sort of rewinding a little. you were talking about the seeming modern propensity towards destructive sexual fetishes, you were talking about the testicle crushes. and i'm wondering if this is something that doesn't have an explanation in the sort of something to do with what modern society has done to our thinking, whether it's just always been the case that people have been sexually excited by what's subversive. and in fact, pulling together what you said afterwards, it would make sense to me that if people have always liked to do things that are a bit naughty and a bit subversive and that's what's excited them. and in a sort of puritanical society of the past, it wouldn't be too difficult to subvert the general sexual ethic. you basically do anything outside of heterosexual missionary sex and the excitement is going to be thrilling but in modern society with a slight relaxation of our sexual ethic, you might have to go to further extremes to find that thrill but i think that the sort of essence of the motivation is still the same. and not only this, but if the modern principle, if the main principle of modern western society has become about self-worth and empowerment and you are good enough and you are strong and no matter what your limitations are socially you can excel and you have intrinsic worth and perhaps the way today to subvert the the dogma of our time and do something a bit subversive and exciting is to reject that and essentially put yourself in a submissive self-harming position in the sexual experience. it would kind of make sense to me that's what's happening
Slavoj Žižek
i sorry maybe i basically agree with you but i find some problems because if you do and engaged in a debate i did it, which means i encountered some people who advocate this. self-hurting practices and so on. if i ask them why are you doing it, is it simply? pleasure or whatever it's interesting that the main thing that they evoked is precisely self, my self feeling. the way i experience myself, my desired, my desires, which is the absolute and ult. limit the ultimate criterion you can prove whatever you want. but this is how i feel and this is untouchable. so what again, i will again go back to this distinction between what you are saying, sorry, what you are claiming, not you, you, but anybody, and the position from which he spe. okay, i may crush my testicles, torture myself, want to be mistreated. but still! in this, the defense is dead. that's how i feel. this is what brings me this is what brings me satisfaction and here i think. what is? prohibited today there is another problem with vogue and trans ideology again as for the trans rights and so on i'm all for it, not hypocritically. but did you notice how... most of the. trans people who attack cisgender and so on and whoever doubts them. i read, i'm not bluffing here, i read many texts on it. bite them. bye. extreme trans advocate. der ultimate argument is not some positive argument, but it's always i may biologically measure me a man or whatever, a woman, but i don't feel to be that. it's reference to some sense of identity and the crucial point is that as far as i know, you are prohibited to analyze this sense to of identity to explain it. and here i think psychoanalysis helps. because... in this debate, psychoanalysis is absolutely not on the side of biology. the paradox of psychoanalysis, i already hinted at it, is that yes, we have, of course, our sexuality has certain biological roots and so on, but even with so-called normal cis persons. the passage is not smooth. it's not that i am a man and then i'm lazy, too lazy to deconstruct myself through trans procedures and so on, so i simply accept that i'm a man. no. from being biologically a man in the brutal sense of my biological identity, penis, testicles and so on, to becoming a man. in the symbolic sense, it's, and that's the point of psychoanalysis, it's a long and painful process with many cuts, brutal changes, shifts and so on and so on. in this sense, all our sexual identity is. transance and this i think at least from what i've read, disappears in most of. trans self justification because if you try this analysis they claim you are you you want to crash my trans identity reducing it to a phenomenon of such unconscious mechanisms and so on i don't want to lose too much time here but you know what shocks me here did you notice it it's how many transideologists basically have no place for the freudian unconscious. it's simply... how i feel my felt self-identity.
i sorry maybe i basically agree with you but i find some problems because if you do and engaged in a debate i did it, which means i encountered some people who advocate this. self-hurting practices and so on. if i ask them why are you doing it, is it simply? pleasure or whatever it's interesting that the main thing that they evoked is precisely self, my self feeling. the way i experience myself, my desired, my desires, which is the absolute and ult. limit the ultimate criterion you can prove whatever you want. but this is how i feel and this is untouchable. so what again, i will again go back to this distinction between what you are saying, sorry, what you are claiming, not you, you, but anybody, and the position from which he spe. okay, i may crush my testicles, torture myself, want to be mistreated. but still! in this, the defense is dead. that's how i feel. this is what brings me this is what brings me satisfaction and here i think. what is? prohibited today there is another problem with vogue and trans ideology again as for the trans rights and so on i'm all for it, not hypocritically. but did you notice how... most of the. trans people who attack cisgender and so on and whoever doubts them. i read, i'm not bluffing here, i read many texts on it. bite them. bye. extreme trans advocate. der ultimate argument is not some positive argument, but it's always i may biologically measure me a man or whatever, a woman, but i don't feel to be that. it's reference to some sense of identity and the crucial point is that as far as i know, you are prohibited to analyze this sense to of identity to explain it. and here i think psychoanalysis helps. because... in this debate, psychoanalysis is absolutely not on the side of biology. the paradox of psychoanalysis, i already hinted at it, is that yes, we have, of course, our sexuality has certain biological roots and so on, but even with so-called normal cis persons. the passage is not smooth. it's not that i am a man and then i'm lazy, too lazy to deconstruct myself through trans procedures and so on, so i simply accept that i'm a man. no. from being biologically a man in the brutal sense of my biological identity, penis, testicles and so on, to becoming a man. in the symbolic sense, it's, and that's the point of psychoanalysis, it's a long and painful process with many cuts, brutal changes, shifts and so on and so on. in this sense, all our sexual identity is. transance and this i think at least from what i've read, disappears in most of. trans self justification because if you try this analysis they claim you are you you want to crash my trans identity reducing it to a phenomenon of such unconscious mechanisms and so on i don't want to lose too much time here but you know what shocks me here did you notice it it's how many transideologists basically have no place for the freudian unconscious. it's simply... how i feel my felt self-identity.
Alex O'Connor
by which you mean the consciously felt, the feeling that you have that you recognize. within yourself.
by which you mean the consciously felt, the feeling that you have that you recognize. within yourself.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, and then if you have doubts about your identity, they immediately project it onto social pressures, as if. biology and society. especially society tries to impose on us certain. sexual identity masculine, feminine and so on. and and and... then, uh... they rebel against it. the main reason is somehow i know immediately, not immediately, okay, we enter here all this puberty blockers problem. it's a long path, but at the end you have to discover what you really and and that's my paradox that trans people, many of them, whose point is against biological determinism. tend to replace it with another determinism. the idea is independently of what your body is, look deep into you, into your psyche, you will discover what you are. on the other hand, biological determinists, i think, make the same mistake. you know what always shocked me? they claim sexual identity is biologically determined or in whatever way. it cannot be an effect of social pressures, ideological choices, but then they are so afraid of trans education in schools. i would say if they believe in your. immediate biological identity, why be so afraid? about all that. but not to lose time, my basic message here is a pretty simple one, i claim. it's that. it's that. again, the basic paradox is how? and that would be maybe my modest, not even counter-argument, another aspect of what you pointed out. yes, we want to be subversive. but then,... you know. in this uh... uh woke universe of diversity, inclusivity, everything is permissible and so on and so on. not, okay, they wouldn't call it censorship, but regulation and prohibitions return with a vengeance. you know what is missing here? in traditional authority if it wasn't too totalitarian, and mostly they were not. you never have only the existing ethical political social value system. like, you mentioned it's... traditional society here i would supplement you. remember, you said that there it was easy to be subversive because the rules were so obvious and strict. for example, in extreme in extreme... oppressive. religious spirit, just having free sex is already a subversion. but today... but okay, first point. this was my big experience. my epiphany ideological when i was my god, half a century ago, serving the yugoslav army. i noticed how. yes. there were official. values, discipline and so on, all that bullshit. but then at the same time, there were so many obscene unwritten rules which were absolutely crucial for the reproduction of a military society. and sometimes if you didn't follow these unwritten rules, it was even worse than violating the explicit rules. i claim that most of traditional authoritarian societies included certain very codified forms of their own apparent subversion.
yeah, and then if you have doubts about your identity, they immediately project it onto social pressures, as if. biology and society. especially society tries to impose on us certain. sexual identity masculine, feminine and so on. and and and... then, uh... they rebel against it. the main reason is somehow i know immediately, not immediately, okay, we enter here all this puberty blockers problem. it's a long path, but at the end you have to discover what you really and and that's my paradox that trans people, many of them, whose point is against biological determinism. tend to replace it with another determinism. the idea is independently of what your body is, look deep into you, into your psyche, you will discover what you are. on the other hand, biological determinists, i think, make the same mistake. you know what always shocked me? they claim sexual identity is biologically determined or in whatever way. it cannot be an effect of social pressures, ideological choices, but then they are so afraid of trans education in schools. i would say if they believe in your. immediate biological identity, why be so afraid? about all that. but not to lose time, my basic message here is a pretty simple one, i claim. it's that. it's that. again, the basic paradox is how? and that would be maybe my modest, not even counter-argument, another aspect of what you pointed out. yes, we want to be subversive. but then,... you know. in this uh... uh woke universe of diversity, inclusivity, everything is permissible and so on and so on. not, okay, they wouldn't call it censorship, but regulation and prohibitions return with a vengeance. you know what is missing here? in traditional authority if it wasn't too totalitarian, and mostly they were not. you never have only the existing ethical political social value system. like, you mentioned it's... traditional society here i would supplement you. remember, you said that there it was easy to be subversive because the rules were so obvious and strict. for example, in extreme in extreme... oppressive. religious spirit, just having free sex is already a subversion. but today... but okay, first point. this was my big experience. my epiphany ideological when i was my god, half a century ago, serving the yugoslav army. i noticed how. yes. there were official. values, discipline and so on, all that bullshit. but then at the same time, there were so many obscene unwritten rules which were absolutely crucial for the reproduction of a military society. and sometimes if you didn't follow these unwritten rules, it was even worse than violating the explicit rules. i claim that most of traditional authoritarian societies included certain very codified forms of their own apparent subversion.
Alex O'Connor
i.
i.
Slavoj Žižek
call this m stupid inherentente. transgression. and again, this was, for example, i'm sorry, an old example of mine, but many people still don't know it. the general idea is that the army is homophobic. no masculine patrial.
call this m stupid inherentente. transgression. and again, this was, for example, i'm sorry, an old example of mine, but many people still don't know it. the general idea is that the army is homophobic. no masculine patrial.
Alex O'Connor
yeah, yeah i understand that.
yeah, yeah i understand that.
Slavoj Žižek
the in the army was totally the opposite one. yes, i agree. it was homophobic in a simple sense that if a soldier was discovered to be gay. he was sent home and... before the order came from. higher authorities you go home he was mishandled in a terrifying way there. every night he was beaten with belt, with others blah blah blah. but at the same time i never was in a community where the daily life was more penetrated by not in any sexual sense, simply permitted by homosexual inuendoos like in my unit i remember maybe you know the story the way you greeted your friend in the morning was not hello, good morning, it was smoke my brick. p in serbo-croat. i'll smoke your prick glad i will do it after and it wasn't even with a smile as an obscenity. and okay, i will not bore you with other stories. but so the good thing about traditional spaces, or the bad, because they cancelled subversive power much more is of transgressions, is that they included a certain regulatory transgressions but in this with this postmodern yeah. permissiveness, you get prohibitions, regulations. which are meant precisely to control.. to control transgressions, subversions, in order to guarantee that they are truly transgressions. you know. and this is where things get... more crazy and complex for me.
the in the army was totally the opposite one. yes, i agree. it was homophobic in a simple sense that if a soldier was discovered to be gay. he was sent home and... before the order came from. higher authorities you go home he was mishandled in a terrifying way there. every night he was beaten with belt, with others blah blah blah. but at the same time i never was in a community where the daily life was more penetrated by not in any sexual sense, simply permitted by homosexual inuendoos like in my unit i remember maybe you know the story the way you greeted your friend in the morning was not hello, good morning, it was smoke my brick. p in serbo-croat. i'll smoke your prick glad i will do it after and it wasn't even with a smile as an obscenity. and okay, i will not bore you with other stories. but so the good thing about traditional spaces, or the bad, because they cancelled subversive power much more is of transgressions, is that they included a certain regulatory transgressions but in this with this postmodern yeah. permissiveness, you get prohibitions, regulations. which are meant precisely to control.. to control transgressions, subversions, in order to guarantee that they are truly transgressions. you know. and this is where things get... more crazy and complex for me.
Alex O'Connor
uh say say that say that one more time that that that that last bit
uh say say that say that one more time that that that that last bit
Slavoj Žižek
deck deck. for example, today... basically, the slogan is everything is permitted in sex. you can do it with animals, group sex, torture yourself, and so on and so on. but the word is... are you truly as open and diverse as that? and then you can always found that you are. not. so we have in some sense... a terror a self-control on behalf of guaranteeing your sexual freedom or freedom diversity inclusivity itself.
deck deck. for example, today... basically, the slogan is everything is permitted in sex. you can do it with animals, group sex, torture yourself, and so on and so on. but the word is... are you truly as open and diverse as that? and then you can always found that you are. not. so we have in some sense... a terror a self-control on behalf of guaranteeing your sexual freedom or freedom diversity inclusivity itself.
Alex O'Connor
hmm.
hmm.
Slavoj Žižek
that's for me the basic paradox. and as a freundian, i'm tempted to say this doesn't work for a simple reason that this type of paradox is well known. in psychoanalysis. how? like, if you try to... regulate something. this regulation itself gets sexually invested. the example that i even took from one with whom theoretically i don't agree, but personally we have good relations, judith butler. her point is that. the repression of desire always reverts into the desire for repression. in the sense of when your desire is repressed. you then your enjoyment is transposed on top the very measures. but means means of which you try to control your desire. it's very simple. that's for me at least one of the simple explanations of masochism. you are gay, you're afraid. oof! but this is more in traditional society. today it no longer works like this. you are gay, you are afraid to. let yourself go. so when you experience a temptation, you squeeze yourself, whip yourself and so on and all of a sudden you start to enjoy. that. that's the lesson of psychoanalysis, i think, more actual than ever today. sexuality is one big mess and here. i am even tempted to say, don't misunderstood me, that my. big partner in a dialogue, jordan peterson, somebody told me that he said recently, sexuality was never free. yes, in some sense, some crazy sense, i tend to. agree with it. that this is always an element of sexuality. the genuine masochism in the sense of you are oppressed, beaten and you may begin to enjoy it. it's a horrible thing to admit. now the usual. liberal vogue strategy is to say, no, no, distrust means you internalize social oppression. i think this is a bullshit. explanation. the point is to explain. how! how how? y. transgression violation or not too much transgression as i will take the opposite example. sorry for i... for my...
that's for me the basic paradox. and as a freundian, i'm tempted to say this doesn't work for a simple reason that this type of paradox is well known. in psychoanalysis. how? like, if you try to... regulate something. this regulation itself gets sexually invested. the example that i even took from one with whom theoretically i don't agree, but personally we have good relations, judith butler. her point is that. the repression of desire always reverts into the desire for repression. in the sense of when your desire is repressed. you then your enjoyment is transposed on top the very measures. but means means of which you try to control your desire. it's very simple. that's for me at least one of the simple explanations of masochism. you are gay, you're afraid. oof! but this is more in traditional society. today it no longer works like this. you are gay, you are afraid to. let yourself go. so when you experience a temptation, you squeeze yourself, whip yourself and so on and all of a sudden you start to enjoy. that. that's the lesson of psychoanalysis, i think, more actual than ever today. sexuality is one big mess and here. i am even tempted to say, don't misunderstood me, that my. big partner in a dialogue, jordan peterson, somebody told me that he said recently, sexuality was never free. yes, in some sense, some crazy sense, i tend to. agree with it. that this is always an element of sexuality. the genuine masochism in the sense of you are oppressed, beaten and you may begin to enjoy it. it's a horrible thing to admit. now the usual. liberal vogue strategy is to say, no, no, distrust means you internalize social oppression. i think this is a bullshit. explanation. the point is to explain. how! how how? y. transgression violation or not too much transgression as i will take the opposite example. sorry for i... for my...
Alex O'Connor
uh.
uh.
Slavoj Žižek
confusion. uh. how? the very measures which appear to demand from you the ultimate oppression or self-renunciation can become a means of what laccon calls a surplus enjoyment. you enjoy the very renunciation to enjoyment and so on and so on. sexuality is one big mixture and that's, i think, also how you can explain how today militarization works. for example, in high school i learned for one semester, sorry, for one year russian, so i can very passively follow it. and i listen a lot to russian media. and it's important how the sacrifices putin is imposing on russians are again and again presented as supreme enjoyment, the big enjoyment of doing your duty, even of torturing the enemies and so on and so on. it's one big mess. so my view here, it may surprise you, is rather a pessimist one. this will be the topic of a book of mine which now should appear. days from now by bloomsbury freedom a disease without cure. that freedom is a very a self-contradictory notion. and here again. to provoke you would you agree or not my god i'm waiting for your reaction to are we aware that to be free? we have to obey many, many, many rules to be free in a concrete sense. i want to be free. what? to walk around in the street safely there which means i count on the fact that me and the others will obey certain basic rules which will allow me to be to feel safe and so on and at all even language. free, think freely yes, but you can think freely only in language which means you obey certain basic rules automatically. and can you imagine thinking freely but having to be reminded all the time of the rules you have to obey? it's a deadlock. so for me, it's not as simple with freedom. would you agree now with my ultimate provocation? people, say people want freedom. i claim it's a horrible thing to say for a leftist. this is why for many people i'm already a neo-fascist. do people, my god, really want? freedom in the social sense of deciding, really. no people, i claim, want the appearance of freedom, the ritual of free votes, but between the lines, they want to be given a hint, if not a hint. then, at least a clearly formulated choice of what they will. tsüss. the paradox of you don't want it to be too free. to be too free in the sense of questioning the very frame of your decisions brings great anxiety, panic, and so on and so on. so again, that's, i think, where philosophy can play a role today. not nihilism, not mess, but just this basic, i will use the term here very carefully, hermeneutic. hermeneutic in the sense of reflexive. questioning of i claim this, but what do i presup imply by saying this? ask an, okay, my final paradox here. love, if there is something that is free is... being in love. you cannot be forced to fall in love. but is it as simple as that? my claim is dead. you never consciously decide to fall in love. if you do this. it's not true love. all of a sudden. you love falling in love never comes in the present moment. all of a sudden you discover that you are already in love. and this can be a very harsh experience. love can ruin your life and so on. but it your fate, you cannot you cannot avoid it. that's the concrete reality of freedom, which is often experienced at its very opposite but please strike back i feel an idiot please
confusion. uh. how? the very measures which appear to demand from you the ultimate oppression or self-renunciation can become a means of what laccon calls a surplus enjoyment. you enjoy the very renunciation to enjoyment and so on and so on. sexuality is one big mixture and that's, i think, also how you can explain how today militarization works. for example, in high school i learned for one semester, sorry, for one year russian, so i can very passively follow it. and i listen a lot to russian media. and it's important how the sacrifices putin is imposing on russians are again and again presented as supreme enjoyment, the big enjoyment of doing your duty, even of torturing the enemies and so on and so on. it's one big mess. so my view here, it may surprise you, is rather a pessimist one. this will be the topic of a book of mine which now should appear. days from now by bloomsbury freedom a disease without cure. that freedom is a very a self-contradictory notion. and here again. to provoke you would you agree or not my god i'm waiting for your reaction to are we aware that to be free? we have to obey many, many, many rules to be free in a concrete sense. i want to be free. what? to walk around in the street safely there which means i count on the fact that me and the others will obey certain basic rules which will allow me to be to feel safe and so on and at all even language. free, think freely yes, but you can think freely only in language which means you obey certain basic rules automatically. and can you imagine thinking freely but having to be reminded all the time of the rules you have to obey? it's a deadlock. so for me, it's not as simple with freedom. would you agree now with my ultimate provocation? people, say people want freedom. i claim it's a horrible thing to say for a leftist. this is why for many people i'm already a neo-fascist. do people, my god, really want? freedom in the social sense of deciding, really. no people, i claim, want the appearance of freedom, the ritual of free votes, but between the lines, they want to be given a hint, if not a hint. then, at least a clearly formulated choice of what they will. tsüss. the paradox of you don't want it to be too free. to be too free in the sense of questioning the very frame of your decisions brings great anxiety, panic, and so on and so on. so again, that's, i think, where philosophy can play a role today. not nihilism, not mess, but just this basic, i will use the term here very carefully, hermeneutic. hermeneutic in the sense of reflexive. questioning of i claim this, but what do i presup imply by saying this? ask an, okay, my final paradox here. love, if there is something that is free is... being in love. you cannot be forced to fall in love. but is it as simple as that? my claim is dead. you never consciously decide to fall in love. if you do this. it's not true love. all of a sudden. you love falling in love never comes in the present moment. all of a sudden you discover that you are already in love. and this can be a very harsh experience. love can ruin your life and so on. but it your fate, you cannot you cannot avoid it. that's the concrete reality of freedom, which is often experienced at its very opposite but please strike back i feel an idiot please
Alex O'Connor
well, i think you can be accused of many things, but certainly not of being an idiot. i think this depends on your, well, i think that the problem arises due to what i see as a confused conception of freedom amongst many people, which is essentially...
well, i think you can be accused of many things, but certainly not of being an idiot. i think this depends on your, well, i think that the problem arises due to what i see as a confused conception of freedom amongst many people, which is essentially...
Slavoj Žižek
okay, but what is the simple true? i think this sorry is not interrupt you, point, then i. i think what you call confusion is part of the very notion of freedom. i don't think you can solve this problem by simply saying, okay, let's clarify things. this is freedom.
okay, but what is the simple true? i think this sorry is not interrupt you, point, then i. i think what you call confusion is part of the very notion of freedom. i don't think you can solve this problem by simply saying, okay, let's clarify things. this is freedom.
Alex O'Connor
well, you probably can't solve the problem, but you can get some clarity in that when you say, well, look, any kind of freedom requires some kind of restriction. that is, you think you freely fall in love. no, no, you're not in control. it just sort of happens. you think that you sort of freely think, but no, you're constrained by your language and you have to agree to certain linguistic rules. if the kind of freedom you're looking for is freedom from any of those kinds of constraints, then you've just conflated freedom with chaos, with randomness, with cognitive anarchy, with neurons just firing and just sort of absolutely no constraint. and so of course, i mean, one thing you can say here is, oh therefore, you know freedom is impossible or freedom is not what we really want. or you can say this should give us an indication that that thing that we intuitively think we're getting at when we talk about freedom is not that, is not this complete and utter you know, absolving ourselves of any any kind of restraint. and so freedom, i mean famously, i think one of the best descriptions of the sort of two concepts of liberty of isaiah berlin is the picture of the man driving down the road and he can either turn left, he's got a flight to catch, or he can turn right and he freely chooses ostensibly to to turn right even though it's going to make him late for his flight because he wants to go and buy some cigarettes. and that's because of an addiction to nicotine that he has. the question is asked, did he turn right freely? well, in the crude sense of did he do what he wanted to do? in other words, in the sort of political sense of freedom that pervades the modern western ethic, yes, he acted freely, but the criticism is that, well, the problem with that is that there's an internal constraint as much as there is an external one. and the truly free thing to do in that circumstance would actually have been to turn left. and so in an ironic sense, you know, had you blocked off the path to the tobacconist, had you forced him to turn left you would have him to be more free. now the great paradox of that is that by inflicting sort of more restriction, you're getting more freedom. and there are two problems with that. the first is that this is always the justification for authoritarianism and totalitarianism. i know you think you want this, but we know what you want better than you do, and we're going to force you to have it. and it's for your own sake. that's what makes totalitarianism often so attractive as well. it's a bit of a mystery why today, you know, in a conversation like this, we can sort of unanimously say totalitarian isism is bad, but we must not forget that this isn't an obvious truth, it's just a common one. and if you need a reminder of that, just look at the popularity of the totalitarian, the fascist, the authoritarian movements of the past and even today elsewhere in the world. there has to be some reason for that. and i think it's because it's always sold on this notion of i know what you want better than you do so that that's the the first problem but i mean the interesting implication is that and i do think that problem can be solved in principle that in other words that's a problem in practice the problem is that and i think it's basically the only criticism of this conception of liberty that you can be made more free by imposing more restrictions that works is that this can be exploited. but that's like a practical problem. in principle, we could still say that in that case, the free thing to do would have been to overcome your internal constraint somehow and do what your sort of real self would have done. and so when you're talking about, well, freedom always requires some form of constraint and the way that you paint that is as if the constraints you're describing limit our freedom. if we have this conception of freedom, of liberty, then when you say that, well, we need to restrain ourselves to a certain linguistic paradigm in order to think freely, that constraint on our thinking, that allegiance to a linguistic form is not a a a restriction that restricts freedom. it's a restriction that enables further freedom. if you have that conception of freedom and liberty, i think the problem almost goes away. people talk about this like when they become religious, for example, and they say, gosh, i found god and i just freed myself. i freed myself from my sin. i freed myself from my vices. isn't it strange that such a common experience of what people intuitively think freedom means, and we all know what they mean by that, has been achieved by sort of introducing this swath of new regulation and restriction on the way that you behave. and yet the overwhelming feeling that people have when they do that is freedom. in the modern sort of, i think among modern youth, especially online, is a lot of advice, free yourself from the constraints of modern society, stop watching pornography, start going to the gym, start eating healthily, this kind of thing. in other words, achieve freedom by introducing restriction. so i'm not sure if there is a paradox here at all, unless you have a conception of freedom that just means freedom from any kind of constraint. but as i say, i don't think that's a freedom worth wanting because it would just look like uncontrollable chaos.
well, you probably can't solve the problem, but you can get some clarity in that when you say, well, look, any kind of freedom requires some kind of restriction. that is, you think you freely fall in love. no, no, you're not in control. it just sort of happens. you think that you sort of freely think, but no, you're constrained by your language and you have to agree to certain linguistic rules. if the kind of freedom you're looking for is freedom from any of those kinds of constraints, then you've just conflated freedom with chaos, with randomness, with cognitive anarchy, with neurons just firing and just sort of absolutely no constraint. and so of course, i mean, one thing you can say here is, oh therefore, you know freedom is impossible or freedom is not what we really want. or you can say this should give us an indication that that thing that we intuitively think we're getting at when we talk about freedom is not that, is not this complete and utter you know, absolving ourselves of any any kind of restraint. and so freedom, i mean famously, i think one of the best descriptions of the sort of two concepts of liberty of isaiah berlin is the picture of the man driving down the road and he can either turn left, he's got a flight to catch, or he can turn right and he freely chooses ostensibly to to turn right even though it's going to make him late for his flight because he wants to go and buy some cigarettes. and that's because of an addiction to nicotine that he has. the question is asked, did he turn right freely? well, in the crude sense of did he do what he wanted to do? in other words, in the sort of political sense of freedom that pervades the modern western ethic, yes, he acted freely, but the criticism is that, well, the problem with that is that there's an internal constraint as much as there is an external one. and the truly free thing to do in that circumstance would actually have been to turn left. and so in an ironic sense, you know, had you blocked off the path to the tobacconist, had you forced him to turn left you would have him to be more free. now the great paradox of that is that by inflicting sort of more restriction, you're getting more freedom. and there are two problems with that. the first is that this is always the justification for authoritarianism and totalitarianism. i know you think you want this, but we know what you want better than you do, and we're going to force you to have it. and it's for your own sake. that's what makes totalitarianism often so attractive as well. it's a bit of a mystery why today, you know, in a conversation like this, we can sort of unanimously say totalitarian isism is bad, but we must not forget that this isn't an obvious truth, it's just a common one. and if you need a reminder of that, just look at the popularity of the totalitarian, the fascist, the authoritarian movements of the past and even today elsewhere in the world. there has to be some reason for that. and i think it's because it's always sold on this notion of i know what you want better than you do so that that's the the first problem but i mean the interesting implication is that and i do think that problem can be solved in principle that in other words that's a problem in practice the problem is that and i think it's basically the only criticism of this conception of liberty that you can be made more free by imposing more restrictions that works is that this can be exploited. but that's like a practical problem. in principle, we could still say that in that case, the free thing to do would have been to overcome your internal constraint somehow and do what your sort of real self would have done. and so when you're talking about, well, freedom always requires some form of constraint and the way that you paint that is as if the constraints you're describing limit our freedom. if we have this conception of freedom, of liberty, then when you say that, well, we need to restrain ourselves to a certain linguistic paradigm in order to think freely, that constraint on our thinking, that allegiance to a linguistic form is not a a a restriction that restricts freedom. it's a restriction that enables further freedom. if you have that conception of freedom and liberty, i think the problem almost goes away. people talk about this like when they become religious, for example, and they say, gosh, i found god and i just freed myself. i freed myself from my sin. i freed myself from my vices. isn't it strange that such a common experience of what people intuitively think freedom means, and we all know what they mean by that, has been achieved by sort of introducing this swath of new regulation and restriction on the way that you behave. and yet the overwhelming feeling that people have when they do that is freedom. in the modern sort of, i think among modern youth, especially online, is a lot of advice, free yourself from the constraints of modern society, stop watching pornography, start going to the gym, start eating healthily, this kind of thing. in other words, achieve freedom by introducing restriction. so i'm not sure if there is a paradox here at all, unless you have a conception of freedom that just means freedom from any kind of constraint. but as i say, i don't think that's a freedom worth wanting because it would just look like uncontrollable chaos.
Slavoj Žižek
i see your point and... maybe i was unclear, but i, at some level, i think profoundly agree with you. just a couple of tricky supplements of mine. first, when you said totalitarianism, they know it better and so on. but you know what? for me, here i'm maybe a tiny shade more pessimist than you. yes, i know this. the difference one of the very simple differences between totalitarianism and mere authoritarianism is that authoritarians simply want to assert their authority. sorry guys, we are blah blah. true totalitarians always add this, but we are doing it for you. we know better than you what you really. one. and this is my old story that i like to repeat. that's why, for example, you find in stalinism. we. boss, at the high point total. reasoning which you would never have found in earth. in fascism which is more. authoritarian. for example... do you know that on stalin's birthday, in all gulacs even, all prisoners were gathered and had to sign uh telegram wishing stalin all the best and so on and so on. which boss a madness, but they wanted to sustain this stalin is working for our own good, blah blah blah. which is why a stalinist leader never characterizes himself as a leader. it's the servant of the people. okay, but let's drop that eh.
i see your point and... maybe i was unclear, but i, at some level, i think profoundly agree with you. just a couple of tricky supplements of mine. first, when you said totalitarianism, they know it better and so on. but you know what? for me, here i'm maybe a tiny shade more pessimist than you. yes, i know this. the difference one of the very simple differences between totalitarianism and mere authoritarianism is that authoritarians simply want to assert their authority. sorry guys, we are blah blah. true totalitarians always add this, but we are doing it for you. we know better than you what you really. one. and this is my old story that i like to repeat. that's why, for example, you find in stalinism. we. boss, at the high point total. reasoning which you would never have found in earth. in fascism which is more. authoritarian. for example... do you know that on stalin's birthday, in all gulacs even, all prisoners were gathered and had to sign uh telegram wishing stalin all the best and so on and so on. which boss a madness, but they wanted to sustain this stalin is working for our own good, blah blah blah. which is why a stalinist leader never characterizes himself as a leader. it's the servant of the people. okay, but let's drop that eh.
Alex O'Connor
well it it's it's interesting what what you say there that um that that that this is something you wouldn't find anywhere else because surely i mean stalin himself must know receiving you know all of these telegrams from from people in the gulags he must know that these aren't legitimate, that these aren't proper like it seems such a strange obsession to have to get people to do this kind of thing when you know that it's false. i mean it's kind of like being like an obsessive boyfriend forcing your your wife to or your girlfriend to write you love letters. the moment that you start forcing them to do it, you know that there is legitimate, but i guess in the case of totalitarianism, i can't remember who said it. but i saw a tweet or something where somebody said that propaganda is controlling not what you think, but controlling what you think other people think. and maybe it's got something to do with that, that it's not so much that by getting everybody to sign a birthday card, you think that they're actually going to start to love you, but by watching everybody else sign that birthday card and be publicly affirming their love for the dictator, that it sort of keeps you in.
well it it's it's interesting what what you say there that um that that that this is something you wouldn't find anywhere else because surely i mean stalin himself must know receiving you know all of these telegrams from from people in the gulags he must know that these aren't legitimate, that these aren't proper like it seems such a strange obsession to have to get people to do this kind of thing when you know that it's false. i mean it's kind of like being like an obsessive boyfriend forcing your your wife to or your girlfriend to write you love letters. the moment that you start forcing them to do it, you know that there is legitimate, but i guess in the case of totalitarianism, i can't remember who said it. but i saw a tweet or something where somebody said that propaganda is controlling not what you think, but controlling what you think other people think. and maybe it's got something to do with that, that it's not so much that by getting everybody to sign a birthday card, you think that they're actually going to start to love you, but by watching everybody else sign that birthday card and be publicly affirming their love for the dictator, that it sort of keeps you in.
Slavoj Žižek
i a very crucial point here. i'm sorry we don't have time to go into it in detail because this agency of about whom this, i call it in la kenyan terms big other, not the others, but how the other. this is one of the meanings of what lacon calls le grand ore, the big otherer. and it's interesting how you raised the crucial point, how stalinism, which is usually perceived as, and it was at a certain level, the regime of utmost brutality. you know, like. incredible sacrifice millions and so on and so on. was also the regime of total panic effort to maintain the appearances.
i a very crucial point here. i'm sorry we don't have time to go into it in detail because this agency of about whom this, i call it in la kenyan terms big other, not the others, but how the other. this is one of the meanings of what lacon calls le grand ore, the big otherer. and it's interesting how you raised the crucial point, how stalinism, which is usually perceived as, and it was at a certain level, the regime of utmost brutality. you know, like. incredible sacrifice millions and so on and so on. was also the regime of total panic effort to maintain the appearances.
Alex O'Connor
yes
yes
Slavoj Žižek
for, for example, i mentioned this somewhere. you should ask a totally stupid question. why in these two big parades, not even1st of may, is the anniversary of october revolution, i don't know. which one when they had big parade? you know that the authorities were afraid that bahrain will ruin. the spect.
for, for example, i mentioned this somewhere. you should ask a totally stupid question. why in these two big parades, not even1st of may, is the anniversary of october revolution, i don't know. which one when they had big parade? you know that the authorities were afraid that bahrain will ruin. the spect.
Alex O'Connor
yeah
yeah
Slavoj Žižek
so they spread the clouds above moscow, sorry, the air to prevent formation of clouds and so on. because, but for whom? no, they were afraid that for some, let's call it with cadres, it would appear as a sign of... impotence, and it's crucial what you say it's what matters is the big other in the sense of the one for whom, even if it's none of us empirically, the appearances should be maintained. and i did a lot of study on this and my answer to this, your question, did stalin really believe? no, he didn't believe it himself. he didn't think that people really think. but, you know, i tried to reconstruct his reasoning. first, it's interesting to learn that stalinists among themselves, now some, archives were open, we see the minutes of their top meetings. they were not simply cynics in the sense of privately they say us through democracy, it's all a joke and so on. they knew it. but their reasoning was again some type of almost freudian split. their reasoning was, yes, we are doing horrible things, of course, we don't take seriously democracy, blah, blah. but at the deeper things, we are doing something terribly progressive. bringing our nation forward.
so they spread the clouds above moscow, sorry, the air to prevent formation of clouds and so on. because, but for whom? no, they were afraid that for some, let's call it with cadres, it would appear as a sign of... impotence, and it's crucial what you say it's what matters is the big other in the sense of the one for whom, even if it's none of us empirically, the appearances should be maintained. and i did a lot of study on this and my answer to this, your question, did stalin really believe? no, he didn't believe it himself. he didn't think that people really think. but, you know, i tried to reconstruct his reasoning. first, it's interesting to learn that stalinists among themselves, now some, archives were open, we see the minutes of their top meetings. they were not simply cynics in the sense of privately they say us through democracy, it's all a joke and so on. they knew it. but their reasoning was again some type of almost freudian split. their reasoning was, yes, we are doing horrible things, of course, we don't take seriously democracy, blah, blah. but at the deeper things, we are doing something terribly progressive. bringing our nation forward.
Alex O'Connor
and that's always it. that's always the justification. and in fact, i remember i saw, we were both at a festival in wales sometime last year. i was there and i saw you speak and one of the things that i remember you saying.
and that's always it. that's always the justification. and in fact, i remember i saw, we were both at a festival in wales sometime last year. i was there and i saw you speak and one of the things that i remember you saying.
Slavoj Žižek
how.
how.
Alex O'Connor
how the light gets in, festival, yes. and i remember seeing you as part of some panel and one of the things you said that sticks in my is the only thing i remember from that event and it stuck in my mind was when you said. that uh you sort of imagine stalinists rush. and you say somebody criticizes stalin and then another person says, hey man, you're not allowed to criticize stalin. and it's the second person, the person who says you're not allowed to critic stalin, that's the first one to be rounded up and shot rather than the one who actually levied the criticism, because the thing that holds it together is not so much the following of the rules per se, but the perception that everybody is following the rules, then that there's no other option but to do so.
how the light gets in, festival, yes. and i remember seeing you as part of some panel and one of the things you said that sticks in my is the only thing i remember from that event and it stuck in my mind was when you said. that uh you sort of imagine stalinists rush. and you say somebody criticizes stalin and then another person says, hey man, you're not allowed to criticize stalin. and it's the second person, the person who says you're not allowed to critic stalin, that's the first one to be rounded up and shot rather than the one who actually levied the criticism, because the thing that holds it together is not so much the following of the rules per se, but the perception that everybody is following the rules, then that there's no other option but to do so.
Slavoj Žižek
or even more paradoxically, what i like here is the like, it's a horrible thing, is the idea that prohibitions themselves are prohibited. in the sense that you are not allowed to state them publicly. but let's go on.
or even more paradoxically, what i like here is the like, it's a horrible thing, is the idea that prohibitions themselves are prohibited. in the sense that you are not allowed to state them publicly. but let's go on.
Alex O'Connor
well i just i just wanted to ask if you don't mind if you see uh a parallel here i mean you were talking earlier about freedom and this idea that people don't actually want freedom. they want something like a perception of freedom, but what they really want is security, what they really want is something else.
well i just i just wanted to ask if you don't mind if you see uh a parallel here i mean you were talking earlier about freedom and this idea that people don't actually want freedom. they want something like a perception of freedom, but what they really want is security, what they really want is something else.
Slavoj Žižek
the appearance of freedom nonetheless.
the appearance of freedom nonetheless.
Alex O'Connor
yes, this appears to me to be essentially the dostoevskian criticism of in the grand inquisitor passage of the brothers karamazov, possibly the most famous passage that dostoevsky ever wrote. the argument is essentially the sort of jesus and the inquisitor arguing and the inquisitor, well arguing. jesus doesn't say anything, but the inquisitor is saying, look, you got it wrong when the devil was tempting you and you sort of pushed him off and rejected him, you got it wrong because people don't want what you're offering. what they want is the administration of security. they want to be able to eat. they want to be able to have a sense of security. what they don't want is freedom. so what we do is we know full well that we're not living in accordance with your ethic. you know the grand the inquisition is not in accordance with the ethic of christ, but we slap a christian label on it because we recognize that even though that's what people think they want, it's not really. and it's like what you say there about the executives of stalinist russia in that this grand inquisitor character says, well, of course i know that this isn't christian. of course i know that this is harmful. of course i know that this is causing innocent people to be burned at the stake, more fundamentally, we're doing something important, which is making sure that people can eat, which is making sure that people feel a sense of security. and it feels like in that discussion in the center of the brothers karamazov, you place yourself on the side that is, i suppose, ultimately supposed to be rebuked by dostoevsky, that yes, the inquisitor is right there.
yes, this appears to me to be essentially the dostoevskian criticism of in the grand inquisitor passage of the brothers karamazov, possibly the most famous passage that dostoevsky ever wrote. the argument is essentially the sort of jesus and the inquisitor arguing and the inquisitor, well arguing. jesus doesn't say anything, but the inquisitor is saying, look, you got it wrong when the devil was tempting you and you sort of pushed him off and rejected him, you got it wrong because people don't want what you're offering. what they want is the administration of security. they want to be able to eat. they want to be able to have a sense of security. what they don't want is freedom. so what we do is we know full well that we're not living in accordance with your ethic. you know the grand the inquisition is not in accordance with the ethic of christ, but we slap a christian label on it because we recognize that even though that's what people think they want, it's not really. and it's like what you say there about the executives of stalinist russia in that this grand inquisitor character says, well, of course i know that this isn't christian. of course i know that this is harmful. of course i know that this is causing innocent people to be burned at the stake, more fundamentally, we're doing something important, which is making sure that people can eat, which is making sure that people feel a sense of security. and it feels like in that discussion in the center of the brothers karamazov, you place yourself on the side that is, i suppose, ultimately supposed to be rebuked by dostoevsky, that yes, the inquisitor is right there.
Slavoj Žižek
no, i would, i sorry, i would like to cond my position also on freedom and so on, because you know, the problem with dostoevsky is, for me, first, dostoevsky is, as we all know, although i don't like him especially, but nonetheless, more complex, like as many intelligent. reviewers noted. dostoevsky there doesn't simply condemn. the great inquisitor remember that at the end of that passage christ kisses him i think..
no, i would, i sorry, i would like to cond my position also on freedom and so on, because you know, the problem with dostoevsky is, for me, first, dostoevsky is, as we all know, although i don't like him especially, but nonetheless, more complex, like as many intelligent. reviewers noted. dostoevsky there doesn't simply condemn. the great inquisitor remember that at the end of that passage christ kisses him i think..
Alex O'Connor
that's right yeah.
that's right yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
so i think no, no, you should always avoid with the stky this simple idea, yeah. gang inquisitor, the horror and so on. it's simply the other side. you know who brought me this idea? did you read rowan williams's book on dostoeoevsky?
so i think no, no, you should always avoid with the stky this simple idea, yeah. gang inquisitor, the horror and so on. it's simply the other side. you know who brought me this idea? did you read rowan williams's book on dostoeoevsky?
Alex O'Connor
i haven't, no.
i haven't, no.
Slavoj Žižek
it's a... you should, because you know what he's reading of the idiot.
it's a... you should, because you know what he's reading of the idiot.
Alex O'Connor
hmm
hmm
Slavoj Žižek
it's that she is a terrible, ruinous, despicable character. he is in himself pure. but the way he socially acts is that he brings havoc destruction. to all people around him. nastasia filipovna is murdered, the other guy kills himself, blah, blah, blah. there are people who are... pure sincerely in themselves but the way they interact socially. brings out a catastrophe. but let's you know, if you look for a position that would have been much more closer to dostoevsky it's i think i may be wrong, it's some 50 pages or 30 after that. oh yeah, well.
it's that she is a terrible, ruinous, despicable character. he is in himself pure. but the way he socially acts is that he brings havoc destruction. to all people around him. nastasia filipovna is murdered, the other guy kills himself, blah, blah, blah. there are people who are... pure sincerely in themselves but the way they interact socially. brings out a catastrophe. but let's you know, if you look for a position that would have been much more closer to dostoevsky it's i think i may be wrong, it's some 50 pages or 30 after that. oh yeah, well.
Alex O'Connor
well, i wouldn't want to be misinterpreted as saying that dostoevsky's view is represented by the inquisitor. i think that dostoevsky's view is certainly represented by christ there, if not just because we know from his private letters that he was a...
well, i wouldn't want to be misinterpreted as saying that dostoevsky's view is represented by the inquisitor. i think that dostoevsky's view is certainly represented by christ there, if not just because we know from his private letters that he was a...
Slavoj Žižek
i think i think givesbs. he concedes a point to inquisitor. his point is dead, who is dead? oh, father zossima or who? priest who pronounces those famous lines later. we are all guilty, me, i am even more responsible for everything and so on and so on. that would have been the point. but what i want to say here is that no, i'm not as confused as i may appear.
i think i think givesbs. he concedes a point to inquisitor. his point is dead, who is dead? oh, father zossima or who? priest who pronounces those famous lines later. we are all guilty, me, i am even more responsible for everything and so on and so on. that would have been the point. but what i want to say here is that no, i'm not as confused as i may appear.
Alex O'Connor
sorry that's what you said was the thing 50 pages later that you thought was dostoevsky's own view is represented by father zossima there.
sorry that's what you said was the thing 50 pages later that you thought was dostoevsky's own view is represented by father zossima there.
Slavoj Žižek
. it comes if you look for a view that would have been much closer.
. it comes if you look for a view that would have been much closer.
Alex O'Connor
i have a feeling that there's a letter that dostoevsky wrote, and i always forget who he was writing to, but we know from his private correspondence that he once said, writing to a friend, if i were to discover that all of the facts lay outside of christ, then i would sooner throw myself in with christ and reject the facts than throw myself in with the facts and reject christ. and i have a feeling that something like this grand inquis story is, like you say, he concedes a point to the inquisitor. that's what he does so well, is that he writes a brilliant case for atheism. he seems to sort of understand the psychology of the atheist in the preceding chapter where know you've just got this sort of alexi is just rattling off this problem of evil. he seems to understand it and he concedes this point but he i think the response is saying that jesus says absolutely nothing in response and just gets up and kisses him, something like an emotional response that somehow seems to still rebuke the point without saying anything that is the rebuke, just this demonstration of love. that i think is why i say it seems to obviously represent dostoevsky's own position. considering what he wrote in that letter, it seems to me that you have, yes, a very plausible potentially intellectually impenetrable case against the christian message and yet it's overcome by something like a feeling and an intuition that love is more important than the intellect and i think that i mean i don't know that i can mean i certainly can't say i agree with that, but i think that that is
i have a feeling that there's a letter that dostoevsky wrote, and i always forget who he was writing to, but we know from his private correspondence that he once said, writing to a friend, if i were to discover that all of the facts lay outside of christ, then i would sooner throw myself in with christ and reject the facts than throw myself in with the facts and reject christ. and i have a feeling that something like this grand inquis story is, like you say, he concedes a point to the inquisitor. that's what he does so well, is that he writes a brilliant case for atheism. he seems to sort of understand the psychology of the atheist in the preceding chapter where know you've just got this sort of alexi is just rattling off this problem of evil. he seems to understand it and he concedes this point but he i think the response is saying that jesus says absolutely nothing in response and just gets up and kisses him, something like an emotional response that somehow seems to still rebuke the point without saying anything that is the rebuke, just this demonstration of love. that i think is why i say it seems to obviously represent dostoevsky's own position. considering what he wrote in that letter, it seems to me that you have, yes, a very plausible potentially intellectually impenetrable case against the christian message and yet it's overcome by something like a feeling and an intuition that love is more important than the intellect and i think that i mean i don't know that i can mean i certainly can't say i agree with that, but i think that that is
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Alex O'Connor
dostoevsky's position in that book.
dostoevsky's position in that book.
Slavoj Žižek
thank. close to that, but do you know this? it's very paradoxical fact that they found also some notes. in dostoevsky. to go on, brothers karamazov, brothers is not. the. finished novel. and you know what would have happened in next part. alyosha karamazov becomes a terrorist. against the state authority.
thank. close to that, but do you know this? it's very paradoxical fact that they found also some notes. in dostoevsky. to go on, brothers karamazov, brothers is not. the. finished novel. and you know what would have happened in next part. alyosha karamazov becomes a terrorist. against the state authority.
Alex O'Connor
hmm
hmm
Slavoj Žižek
so you know, the stooeevsky, it's incredible.
so you know, the stooeevsky, it's incredible.
Alex O'Connor
it's
it's
Slavoj Žižek
interesting lot.
interesting lot.
Alex O'Connor
of like the same thing in notes from the underground, a very short book of dostoevsky's, there was an entire chapter that we only know again from his letters was censored by the russian state and it was supposed to argue for the necessity of christianity in the face of everything that the underground man sort of expresses and goes through. there was supposed to be this section that argued for why christianity is necessary. in presenting christianity as kind of an answer, a solution, but it had to be taken out because it was censored by the russian state.
of like the same thing in notes from the underground, a very short book of dostoevsky's, there was an entire chapter that we only know again from his letters was censored by the russian state and it was supposed to argue for the necessity of christianity in the face of everything that the underground man sort of expresses and goes through. there was supposed to be this section that argued for why christianity is necessary. in presenting christianity as kind of an answer, a solution, but it had to be taken out because it was censored by the russian state.
Slavoj Žižek
okay, no, but my point here is that i have a, you know what my problem with dostoevsky, but we don't have time, of course, to go into it now. my first problem is... what to deal here with christianity and to cut things short as as simple as possible. i propose a hegelian reading here. we. that sounds. schgel put it. put it. directly. what dies on the cross is not a messenger from god. god of beyond himself dies on the cross. what follows the cross is holy spirit. holy spirit is a community of believers. it's basically an atheist society. the ultimate gift of christ to us is an atheist society left to itself. it's... to use your terms, if i got them correctly, it's a cosmic skepticism. we can only rely on ourselves. that's the harsh side. so i think all that bullshit of... will christ return, blah blah blah. i think this is already the beginning of decadence, already towards the end of gospel. themselves i think that the key point is you remember when christ is asked, but how we will know that? you returned and he said whenever there will be love between the two of us i will be there vec it! the key, and very many intelligent theologologists know this. it's a total misperception to think, oh, let's wait, christ will come. no. when we are in a community of believers, the best expression for it is for me this protestant notion of gemeinde, community. christ is already there. nothing more will come. we already have it. and it's in this sense, i also read that of freedom. but back to your crucial point, if i may conclude it so that i will not appear unnecessarily too much of an idiot, yes, of course, all those. points that that you make first one can say i agree with you. that uh. i call in hegelian terms what you describe as actual freedom as concrete freedom. and this for me makes also a very good argument for a certain, not excessive, modest, but nonetheless social democracy. you know, for me, social democracy is not let limit freedom. it is simply... i want to be free, free to develop my potentials, blah blah blah. but isn't it that to be actually free? for this word to mean something, many conditions have to be met. basic social security, free education, and so on and so on. so i'm not playing here the stalinist game. i know the dangers of it, of opposing abstract freedom and what they call actual freedom, no? no, no, i'm not talking about actual freedom. i'm talking sorry about... what stalin is called actually, i'm talking about this simple concrete freedom in the sense of the concrete conditions. of course, personal freedoms also. but also, i don't know, healthcare, social security, blah, blah, blah. weak. actualize or provide the space for your freedom. but uh... so i'm not in... but i would like to make here nonetheless a step further. there are moments of social crisis and so on where we don't get absolute freedom, i agree with you in this abstract sense of just i do what i want, pure madness and so on. i even accept the hegelian point that this abstract freedom is terror, self-destructive and so on and so on. but there are moments of social tensions and so on. well, this basic rules of concrete freedom. have to be changed. no longer work and that's my fear. so that's my fear of where we are. today can i just add before i return to this another point that i like you know i remember from my not even youth it was, my god, a little bit over 30 years ago. the last years under communism. how did the notion of freedom work there? against the communist dictatorship. but things were pretty soft in the second half of 80s, at least here in slovenia. we were all for freedom. but if you looked closely, each group had a very different idea of freedom. for christian conservatives, it was freedom for the church to turn slovenes into christian nation. for nouveau riches, they were already there, it was freedom for their free capitalist explosion. and so on and so on. but what i'm saying is that nonetheless, it's too cheap to say. death. this abstract enthusiasm for freedom was just a mask for these differences no it's precisely by way of forgetting the differences of acting ay yeah the last paradox here, even communists themselves joined the movement against themselves at the end and say, yes, we screw it up, we want that now freedom to propose you a real socialism, whatever. but nonetheless, this enthusiasm, illusory as it was, was necessary. but nonetheless, again, i will conclude. so again, no misunderstanding here. i'm not simply... for the big inquisitor. i'm absolutely not. what i'm saying is that there are moments of social tension and so on where... the very basic coordinates of freedom. have to be reinvented, these unwritten ground rules. and what i am afraid today, and i'm not saying it with some kind of a marxist pleasure, there will be chaos and so on. is that in view of all the crises that we are confronting today. you know, it ecological, social war and so on. i don't think. our present, big other, the substantial net of values and political institutions are strong enough to cope with them. i think that there will have to be a more radical choice. but don't misunderstand me here. i'm not an idiot who thinks, oh, perfect revolutionary situation. the main option here that is most forceful today is simply a new form of. return to almost feudal authority you know this new societies proposed by from putin to some other countries, you know, this general condemnation of the liberal west and so on and so on. it's horrible what's happening. so i think this is the task. today, i will put it in very naive terms. how to break out of the. details of the formal constraints that we have today, but without sacrificing here I'm pro-Western, i'm sorry, the core values of western. why not? liberalism, emancipatory movements and so on and so on. you know what really depresses me? i mean, almost. i would like to kill myself. did you follow what happened, i think, in uganda a couple of months ago? when homosexual gay yeah up to death penalty if you are caught in homosexual activity. but you know what was the justification? anti-colonial struggle. the west will not impose on us their values, blah, blah, blah. those who defended homosexuality were discarded, dismissed as neocolonialists and so on. so it's a we will really have to. invent new rules of. concrete freedom. and this is a moment of what hegel would have called abstract freedom, more open freedom, freedom which doesn't, it's not pure chaos, but freedom which doesn't simply rely on existing rules, but know takes the risk of stepping out into the abyss and change these rules. and that's why i quote in my new book a wonderful quote, otherwise I'm not a Sartrean. screw him, but sarter said something very interesting in 45 for an american journal. he said, yes, it was horrible. we didn't have any freedoms under german occupation. but in some sense, we were more free than ever. because precisely we didn't have any social order on which to rely everything was risky everything was put in question and so on and so on. and i think, would you agree or is this too much for you? i think that today our attitude in front of these all threats, immigrants, ecology, war and so on. we still think in the terms of how to make some small compromises but still retain our relatively comfortable way of life. we are not yet ready to make a step further now. i can well understand why, because, you know, those who today offer step further are russia, china or this new fundamentalist islamic countries and so on and so on but you see what i'm saying, the moment has come. that we we have to step not in pure chaos, but to make a step outside this. established rules on which we automatically rely as conditions of our freedom. so again, my when you ask me my notion of freedom, i think that yes. okay, great guy, inquisitor, concrete set of freedoms, but, you know. there are situations of tension and so on where you have to risk a step. further. otherwise the others will do it. for example, it horrifies me what is happening now in the united states. their image of big other, traditional democratic system is literally falling apart, threatened from two sides. on the one hand, the woke cancer culture madness, but more importantly, on the other hand, some right populists, desantis, trump and so on, they are already speaking and words are never simply words, the language of civil war, to be blunt. you know, that's the crisis i'm talking about and again i'm not a gleeful marxist chaos fine chance of a revolution no and that's why i to finish, maybe this will amuse you. when people ask me now how would you designate yourself? you know, which term i prefer? moderately conservative communist. communist meaning radical changes will have to happen, but moderately conservative. let's be very careful. let's learn to think about unintended long-term. concept that's why we need a hegel today. you know what i appreciated so much i've written about it about hegel. whenever there was something new. hegel's first worry was, he wasn't simply idealist in the stupid sense of whatever happened all the evils in the long term it will serve the common good. no, hegel's concern was exactly the opposite one. you have the best idea of how to change things. the result is even worse state than before. like hegel would have his model is, of course. french revolution. absolute freedom, haha, it ends up with terror. so i think hegel would have loved the 20th, loved in a terrible sense, the 20th century. you have the glorious period of second half of 19th century, at least in europe. gradual progress, you end up with first world war. that would have been a question to hegel. how could after this long or bolsheviks, you end up with something which was already authoritarian, but nonetheless an authentic energy of explosion, social explosion, dedication to a cause, you end up with comrade stalin and so on.
okay, no, but my point here is that i have a, you know what my problem with dostoevsky, but we don't have time, of course, to go into it now. my first problem is... what to deal here with christianity and to cut things short as as simple as possible. i propose a hegelian reading here. we. that sounds. schgel put it. put it. directly. what dies on the cross is not a messenger from god. god of beyond himself dies on the cross. what follows the cross is holy spirit. holy spirit is a community of believers. it's basically an atheist society. the ultimate gift of christ to us is an atheist society left to itself. it's... to use your terms, if i got them correctly, it's a cosmic skepticism. we can only rely on ourselves. that's the harsh side. so i think all that bullshit of... will christ return, blah blah blah. i think this is already the beginning of decadence, already towards the end of gospel. themselves i think that the key point is you remember when christ is asked, but how we will know that? you returned and he said whenever there will be love between the two of us i will be there vec it! the key, and very many intelligent theologologists know this. it's a total misperception to think, oh, let's wait, christ will come. no. when we are in a community of believers, the best expression for it is for me this protestant notion of gemeinde, community. christ is already there. nothing more will come. we already have it. and it's in this sense, i also read that of freedom. but back to your crucial point, if i may conclude it so that i will not appear unnecessarily too much of an idiot, yes, of course, all those. points that that you make first one can say i agree with you. that uh. i call in hegelian terms what you describe as actual freedom as concrete freedom. and this for me makes also a very good argument for a certain, not excessive, modest, but nonetheless social democracy. you know, for me, social democracy is not let limit freedom. it is simply... i want to be free, free to develop my potentials, blah blah blah. but isn't it that to be actually free? for this word to mean something, many conditions have to be met. basic social security, free education, and so on and so on. so i'm not playing here the stalinist game. i know the dangers of it, of opposing abstract freedom and what they call actual freedom, no? no, no, i'm not talking about actual freedom. i'm talking sorry about... what stalin is called actually, i'm talking about this simple concrete freedom in the sense of the concrete conditions. of course, personal freedoms also. but also, i don't know, healthcare, social security, blah, blah, blah. weak. actualize or provide the space for your freedom. but uh... so i'm not in... but i would like to make here nonetheless a step further. there are moments of social crisis and so on where we don't get absolute freedom, i agree with you in this abstract sense of just i do what i want, pure madness and so on. i even accept the hegelian point that this abstract freedom is terror, self-destructive and so on and so on. but there are moments of social tensions and so on. well, this basic rules of concrete freedom. have to be changed. no longer work and that's my fear. so that's my fear of where we are. today can i just add before i return to this another point that i like you know i remember from my not even youth it was, my god, a little bit over 30 years ago. the last years under communism. how did the notion of freedom work there? against the communist dictatorship. but things were pretty soft in the second half of 80s, at least here in slovenia. we were all for freedom. but if you looked closely, each group had a very different idea of freedom. for christian conservatives, it was freedom for the church to turn slovenes into christian nation. for nouveau riches, they were already there, it was freedom for their free capitalist explosion. and so on and so on. but what i'm saying is that nonetheless, it's too cheap to say. death. this abstract enthusiasm for freedom was just a mask for these differences no it's precisely by way of forgetting the differences of acting ay yeah the last paradox here, even communists themselves joined the movement against themselves at the end and say, yes, we screw it up, we want that now freedom to propose you a real socialism, whatever. but nonetheless, this enthusiasm, illusory as it was, was necessary. but nonetheless, again, i will conclude. so again, no misunderstanding here. i'm not simply... for the big inquisitor. i'm absolutely not. what i'm saying is that there are moments of social tension and so on where... the very basic coordinates of freedom. have to be reinvented, these unwritten ground rules. and what i am afraid today, and i'm not saying it with some kind of a marxist pleasure, there will be chaos and so on. is that in view of all the crises that we are confronting today. you know, it ecological, social war and so on. i don't think. our present, big other, the substantial net of values and political institutions are strong enough to cope with them. i think that there will have to be a more radical choice. but don't misunderstand me here. i'm not an idiot who thinks, oh, perfect revolutionary situation. the main option here that is most forceful today is simply a new form of. return to almost feudal authority you know this new societies proposed by from putin to some other countries, you know, this general condemnation of the liberal west and so on and so on. it's horrible what's happening. so i think this is the task. today, i will put it in very naive terms. how to break out of the. details of the formal constraints that we have today, but without sacrificing here I'm pro-Western, i'm sorry, the core values of western. why not? liberalism, emancipatory movements and so on and so on. you know what really depresses me? i mean, almost. i would like to kill myself. did you follow what happened, i think, in uganda a couple of months ago? when homosexual gay yeah up to death penalty if you are caught in homosexual activity. but you know what was the justification? anti-colonial struggle. the west will not impose on us their values, blah, blah, blah. those who defended homosexuality were discarded, dismissed as neocolonialists and so on. so it's a we will really have to. invent new rules of. concrete freedom. and this is a moment of what hegel would have called abstract freedom, more open freedom, freedom which doesn't, it's not pure chaos, but freedom which doesn't simply rely on existing rules, but know takes the risk of stepping out into the abyss and change these rules. and that's why i quote in my new book a wonderful quote, otherwise I'm not a Sartrean. screw him, but sarter said something very interesting in 45 for an american journal. he said, yes, it was horrible. we didn't have any freedoms under german occupation. but in some sense, we were more free than ever. because precisely we didn't have any social order on which to rely everything was risky everything was put in question and so on and so on. and i think, would you agree or is this too much for you? i think that today our attitude in front of these all threats, immigrants, ecology, war and so on. we still think in the terms of how to make some small compromises but still retain our relatively comfortable way of life. we are not yet ready to make a step further now. i can well understand why, because, you know, those who today offer step further are russia, china or this new fundamentalist islamic countries and so on and so on but you see what i'm saying, the moment has come. that we we have to step not in pure chaos, but to make a step outside this. established rules on which we automatically rely as conditions of our freedom. so again, my when you ask me my notion of freedom, i think that yes. okay, great guy, inquisitor, concrete set of freedoms, but, you know. there are situations of tension and so on where you have to risk a step. further. otherwise the others will do it. for example, it horrifies me what is happening now in the united states. their image of big other, traditional democratic system is literally falling apart, threatened from two sides. on the one hand, the woke cancer culture madness, but more importantly, on the other hand, some right populists, desantis, trump and so on, they are already speaking and words are never simply words, the language of civil war, to be blunt. you know, that's the crisis i'm talking about and again i'm not a gleeful marxist chaos fine chance of a revolution no and that's why i to finish, maybe this will amuse you. when people ask me now how would you designate yourself? you know, which term i prefer? moderately conservative communist. communist meaning radical changes will have to happen, but moderately conservative. let's be very careful. let's learn to think about unintended long-term. concept that's why we need a hegel today. you know what i appreciated so much i've written about it about hegel. whenever there was something new. hegel's first worry was, he wasn't simply idealist in the stupid sense of whatever happened all the evils in the long term it will serve the common good. no, hegel's concern was exactly the opposite one. you have the best idea of how to change things. the result is even worse state than before. like hegel would have his model is, of course. french revolution. absolute freedom, haha, it ends up with terror. so i think hegel would have loved the 20th, loved in a terrible sense, the 20th century. you have the glorious period of second half of 19th century, at least in europe. gradual progress, you end up with first world war. that would have been a question to hegel. how could after this long or bolsheviks, you end up with something which was already authoritarian, but nonetheless an authentic energy of explosion, social explosion, dedication to a cause, you end up with comrade stalin and so on.
Alex O'Connor
so...
so...
Slavoj Žižek
you see, we need hegelian spirit in the sense of whenever something immediately, whenever something new, a bright idea emerges. here i'm my girl, i am trying to be your cosmic skeptic. ask yourself ask yourself immediately how things can go wrong. would you agree with this?
you see, we need hegelian spirit in the sense of whenever something immediately, whenever something new, a bright idea emerges. here i'm my girl, i am trying to be your cosmic skeptic. ask yourself ask yourself immediately how things can go wrong. would you agree with this?
Alex O'Connor
that one should ask oneself how things can immediately go wrong
that one should ask oneself how things can immediately go wrong
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, because they usually do.
yeah, because they usually do.
Alex O'Connor
yeah, no, i do, and that's why i'm interested in asking you know final question. a moment ago you spoke about this emerging conflict between the radical wokists and the sort of radical right in the us and said that they're speaking the language of civil war. what's the end point for this? is there a solution? do you think that it could potentially actually burst out into conflict, into real conflict, or do you think there will be some kind of... political revolution, diplomatic solution.
yeah, no, i do, and that's why i'm interested in asking you know final question. a moment ago you spoke about this emerging conflict between the radical wokists and the sort of radical right in the us and said that they're speaking the language of civil war. what's the end point for this? is there a solution? do you think that it could potentially actually burst out into conflict, into real conflict, or do you think there will be some kind of... political revolution, diplomatic solution.
Slavoj Žižek
i i am not ready to simply say, no, it cannot. nonetheless, united states are a big state, you know. already things that we thought unimaginable are happening. meloni in italy and she's even doing pretty good, the new rise of more radical right in europe. you know what's my sad point? i'm not glad to say this. many of my friends are saying, yes, these are the two extremes. we need simply to return to good old social liberalism.
i i am not ready to simply say, no, it cannot. nonetheless, united states are a big state, you know. already things that we thought unimaginable are happening. meloni in italy and she's even doing pretty good, the new rise of more radical right in europe. you know what's my sad point? i'm not glad to say this. many of my friends are saying, yes, these are the two extremes. we need simply to return to good old social liberalism.
Alex O'Connor
that's my pessimism.
that's my pessimism.
Slavoj Žižek
no, its time has passed. i don't know what, it's a terrible position, but... the answer is not simply insist on old liberal. values. i'm here a little bit more of a pessimist. well, it's a very sad position. do you have any better option? okay, screw you, friendly. what would be your answer here? do you have one?
no, its time has passed. i don't know what, it's a terrible position, but... the answer is not simply insist on old liberal. values. i'm here a little bit more of a pessimist. well, it's a very sad position. do you have any better option? okay, screw you, friendly. what would be your answer here? do you have one?
Alex O'Connor
well no i mean i i i struggle to to make predictions in this way i just think that given that you were advocating a moment ago always think about the how things can go catastrophically wrong i suppose that can be quite a depressing pursuit if you're not also thinking about how you might respond to or resolve that worst case scenario.
well no i mean i i i struggle to to make predictions in this way i just think that given that you were advocating a moment ago always think about the how things can go catastrophically wrong i suppose that can be quite a depressing pursuit if you're not also thinking about how you might respond to or resolve that worst case scenario.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, but here i no, no, i here i'm simply a progressive. optimist, whenever something happens that i think has a certain potential, and even if i'm then proven wrong, for example, i was very much engaged in the greek syriza movement, you remember a couple of years ago. i admire very much to give you concrete examples. evo morales' government in bolivia, there was a coup against them. now they returned to power because they were an intelligent left. they didn't follow the path of venezuela, nicaragua, cuba. they didn't screw the economy, the standard of ordinary people. was really. became higher and so on and so on. i am all four. moderate, well thought experiment but at the same time get ready for new emergency stakes mm i mean...
yeah, but here i no, no, i here i'm simply a progressive. optimist, whenever something happens that i think has a certain potential, and even if i'm then proven wrong, for example, i was very much engaged in the greek syriza movement, you remember a couple of years ago. i admire very much to give you concrete examples. evo morales' government in bolivia, there was a coup against them. now they returned to power because they were an intelligent left. they didn't follow the path of venezuela, nicaragua, cuba. they didn't screw the economy, the standard of ordinary people. was really. became higher and so on and so on. i am all four. moderate, well thought experiment but at the same time get ready for new emergency stakes mm i mean...
Alex O'Connor
.
.
Slavoj Žižek
who knows what will happen? look with ecology. and i don't believe these simply doomsday scenarios, but things are obvious. you know, i read a good ecological point which says when we even talk about global warming we automatically assume that it will be a little bit warmer than now, but just a new stability. no, most models show that if it not even be a new stability, it will be for decades, if not longer, simply a new chaotic period. it will not even be winter, summer or whatever. you know, it will things are open now i also listen to. echo skeptics who point out how many catastrophic predictions didn't. realize themselves. you know, i remember when i was young, 50 years ago, more. the big obsession in germany was waldsterben, the dying of forests. and the general wisdom was around 2000 there will be no forests in europe. sorry, there are now more forests in europe then. thirty years ago. so
who knows what will happen? look with ecology. and i don't believe these simply doomsday scenarios, but things are obvious. you know, i read a good ecological point which says when we even talk about global warming we automatically assume that it will be a little bit warmer than now, but just a new stability. no, most models show that if it not even be a new stability, it will be for decades, if not longer, simply a new chaotic period. it will not even be winter, summer or whatever. you know, it will things are open now i also listen to. echo skeptics who point out how many catastrophic predictions didn't. realize themselves. you know, i remember when i was young, 50 years ago, more. the big obsession in germany was waldsterben, the dying of forests. and the general wisdom was around 2000 there will be no forests in europe. sorry, there are now more forests in europe then. thirty years ago. so
Alex O'Connor
yes thenuably that's partly a response to those fears and concerns. now people have made a more proactive effort to preserve the ecology of europe and a lot of companies involved in the cutting down of trees, for example, are now also involved in the process of planting them. and we can be pessimistic and say that's just for the sake of pr, but it might be the fact that were it not for those warnings that emerged, we would have been in a much more dire situation than we find ourselves in now.
yes thenuably that's partly a response to those fears and concerns. now people have made a more proactive effort to preserve the ecology of europe and a lot of companies involved in the cutting down of trees, for example, are now also involved in the process of planting them. and we can be pessimistic and say that's just for the sake of pr, but it might be the fact that were it not for those warnings that emerged, we would have been in a much more dire situation than we find ourselves in now.
Slavoj Žižek
no, no, no, i agree with it. i just almost worry not only about this, but look, what about... ukrainian war, it's not just a limited conflict there. it's obviously a moment of a big geopolitical restructuring where again, i am a pessimist. i think, yes, of course. western europe is still at a certain level neocolonialist, blah blah, blah. but on the other hand, what is emerging as an alternative is something even much worse. den it. that's the horrible thing. i. i am here in short term a modest pragmatic. let's do whatever we can. maybe let's begin with small things here, there. you know, maybe... wrong to in the old marxist way to await for a big solution or whatever. maybe we should simply try, as you say. eh. small ecological measures here and there and so on, something can come out of it. but never exclude that things can get even. what? i think that we will have to get used for a possibility of new emergency. states we got a taste of it with covid, with the epidemics who knows what will follow. no, no, no, i'm not this type of pessimist oh we are lost. no. ble! let's be ready for. everything sorry, please censor me, censor me, do whatever you.
no, no, no, i agree with it. i just almost worry not only about this, but look, what about... ukrainian war, it's not just a limited conflict there. it's obviously a moment of a big geopolitical restructuring where again, i am a pessimist. i think, yes, of course. western europe is still at a certain level neocolonialist, blah blah, blah. but on the other hand, what is emerging as an alternative is something even much worse. den it. that's the horrible thing. i. i am here in short term a modest pragmatic. let's do whatever we can. maybe let's begin with small things here, there. you know, maybe... wrong to in the old marxist way to await for a big solution or whatever. maybe we should simply try, as you say. eh. small ecological measures here and there and so on, something can come out of it. but never exclude that things can get even. what? i think that we will have to get used for a possibility of new emergency. states we got a taste of it with covid, with the epidemics who knows what will follow. no, no, no, i'm not this type of pessimist oh we are lost. no. ble! let's be ready for. everything sorry, please censor me, censor me, do whatever you.
Alex O'Connor
the only form of censorship that i'm going to engage in now is that of ending the episode because i am thankful for your time, we've been talking for quite a while and i suppose it's quite fitting to end on a note of subtle pessimism and looking towards the future. slavoek.
the only form of censorship that i'm going to engage in now is that of ending the episode because i am thankful for your time, we've been talking for quite a while and i suppose it's quite fitting to end on a note of subtle pessimism and looking towards the future. slavoek.
Slavoj Žižek
can, can i finish then with my version of it? maybe you heard it. isn't it, i will say something horrible, commonsensical, but i believe in it. isn't it better to be a moderate pessimist? pessimist because then you know from time to time as you pointed out small hopeful things happen so at least you can be a little bit happy optimist from time to time but if you are a general optimist you are sad all the time
can, can i finish then with my version of it? maybe you heard it. isn't it, i will say something horrible, commonsensical, but i believe in it. isn't it better to be a moderate pessimist? pessimist because then you know from time to time as you pointed out small hopeful things happen so at least you can be a little bit happy optimist from time to time but if you are a general optimist you are sad all the time
Alex O'Connor
yeah, constantly constantly disappointed. i also think that people... people get annoyed if i'm a bit crude in my pessimism, if people are talking about something and i point out a consideration that might not be the happiest, i point out not the happiest consideration that i could inject into that conversation and people iuse me of being crude with my pessimism, but people are crude with their optimism all of the time. if somebody is upset, if the situation is dire, somebody will say, well, know look on the bright side or a similar platitude, and they do so, you know, even if it's sometimes inappropriate, i find it an injustice that people can be so crude in their optimism, but
yeah, constantly constantly disappointed. i also think that people... people get annoyed if i'm a bit crude in my pessimism, if people are talking about something and i point out a consideration that might not be the happiest, i point out not the happiest consideration that i could inject into that conversation and people iuse me of being crude with my pessimism, but people are crude with their optimism all of the time. if somebody is upset, if the situation is dire, somebody will say, well, know look on the bright side or a similar platitude, and they do so, you know, even if it's sometimes inappropriate, i find it an injustice that people can be so crude in their optimism, but
Slavoj Žižek
nic. in pessimism. of course you saw the life of brian.
nic. in pessimism. of course you saw the life of brian.
Alex O'Connor
mm
mm
Slavoj Žižek
the movie mont pais.
the movie mont pais.
Alex O'Connor
i have seen it
i have seen it
Slavoj Žižek
you remember at the end how christ and all of them, no it's not christ brand, okay, sing on the cross that look at the bright side of life whatever. that's for me the crude optimism. i can imagine that.
you remember at the end how christ and all of them, no it's not christ brand, okay, sing on the cross that look at the bright side of life whatever. that's for me the crude optimism. i can imagine that.
Alex O'Connor
that picture is what the optimists will be doing as the forests burn and china invades.
that picture is what the optimists will be doing as the forests burn and china invades.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Alex O'Connor
nukes start firing, they'll sort of be, you know, looking at the sunset. arm in arm kicking their feet and singing always look on the bright side of life. and, you know, why not if that's the situation they find themselves in? i think in such a dire situation as that i might find myself becoming a bit of a you know self-indulgent and self-deceptive, purposefully speaking, optimist because what else is there to be in the face of the end of the world?
nukes start firing, they'll sort of be, you know, looking at the sunset. arm in arm kicking their feet and singing always look on the bright side of life. and, you know, why not if that's the situation they find themselves in? i think in such a dire situation as that i might find myself becoming a bit of a you know self-indulgent and self-deceptive, purposefully speaking, optimist because what else is there to be in the face of the end of the world?
Slavoj Žižek
yeah i prefer the formula that was proposed, was it by one of the early frankfurt school, horkheimer who pessimist in theory, optimist in action, you know.
yeah i prefer the formula that was proposed, was it by one of the early frankfurt school, horkheimer who pessimist in theory, optimist in action, you know.
Alex O'Connor
mm
mm
Slavoj Žižek
in theory, confront all the set possibilities. but as if there still is a chance. and as long as you act there is a chance.
in theory, confront all the set possibilities. but as if there still is a chance. and as long as you act there is a chance.
Alex O'Connor
maybe that's part of the problem. i think a modern political ethic that is. i guess optimistic in theory, but pessimistic in practice.
maybe that's part of the problem. i think a modern political ethic that is. i guess optimistic in theory, but pessimistic in practice.
Slavoj Žižek
might be aware. where things are going on. yeah.
might be aware. where things are going on. yeah.
Alex O'Connor
yeah
yeah
Slavoj Žižek
definitely. so i leave you this as the kaha final wisdom.
definitely. so i leave you this as the kaha final wisdom.
Alex O'Connor
it's a good one.
it's a good one.
Slavoj Žižek
thanks very much.
thanks very much.
Alex O'Connor
sl isavoak, thank you so much for taking the time. thanks for coming on the podcast.
sl isavoak, thank you so much for taking the time. thanks for coming on the podcast.
Slavoj Žižek
the gratitude is mine. i'm just afraid that there are so many other things. from veganism to i don't know what you mean by cosmic skepticism that we didn't have time to cover so yeah i'm not sure i.
the gratitude is mine. i'm just afraid that there are so many other things. from veganism to i don't know what you mean by cosmic skepticism that we didn't have time to cover so yeah i'm not sure i.
Alex O'Connor
i knew what i meant by that when i chose that name at 17 years old, but perhaps that's something you can psychoanalyze.
i knew what i meant by that when i chose that name at 17 years old, but perhaps that's something you can psychoanalyze.
Slavoj Žižek
that in a future episode. that's how we should think. that's how meaning, sorry, again, that's how meaning progresses, you know. that helmut kleist, one of the great of around the time of hegel writers, wrote a wonderful article on this how the deepest thoughts emerge like this. you just say something, you are not even aware what you mean. it's never so that you about think deeply about it and then something comes, you know, that's the proper way. two. act i like especially the term cosmic. because i think the lesson of quantum physics and so on that even cosmologically we should be. skeptics does the world exist in what form and so on and so on.
that in a future episode. that's how we should think. that's how meaning, sorry, again, that's how meaning progresses, you know. that helmut kleist, one of the great of around the time of hegel writers, wrote a wonderful article on this how the deepest thoughts emerge like this. you just say something, you are not even aware what you mean. it's never so that you about think deeply about it and then something comes, you know, that's the proper way. two. act i like especially the term cosmic. because i think the lesson of quantum physics and so on that even cosmologically we should be. skeptics does the world exist in what form and so on and so on.
Alex O'Connor
quite.
quite.
Slavoj Žižek
very.
very.
Alex O'Connor
well,, thank you for validating that choice that i made. it's nice to have a sort of retrospective justification for such a cringy gamertag sounding name for the first half of my youtube career..
well,, thank you for validating that choice that i made. it's nice to have a sort of retrospective justification for such a cringy gamertag sounding name for the first half of my youtube career..
Slavoj Žižek
you know what? i was just afraid, but you are not that. i was afraid that you will be some kind of a this new ageer, you know, this deeper unity, skepticism about reality, but there is another higher domain, whatever that bullshit, you know. you are definitely not that.
you know what? i was just afraid, but you are not that. i was afraid that you will be some kind of a this new ageer, you know, this deeper unity, skepticism about reality, but there is another higher domain, whatever that bullshit, you know. you are definitely not that.
Alex O'Connor
that's one of the reasons i'm in the process of rebranding. i dropped the cosmic skeptic name as my display name. now it's just my
that's one of the reasons i'm in the process of rebranding. i dropped the cosmic skeptic name as my display name. now it's just my
Slavoj Žižek
so what is now?
so what is now?
Alex O'Connor
now it's just my name, which is alex o'connor, although i still have the handle on twitter and's the at on.
now it's just my name, which is alex o'connor, although i still have the handle on twitter and's the at on.
Slavoj Žižek
you'll know what.
you'll know what.
Alex O'Connor
yeah. yeah.
yeah. yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
then you could keep that name for your good friends, you know like when you meet somebody and become really friendly you tell him listen, my official name is o'connor, but we are friends. you can just call me cosmic. i the intimate name.
then you could keep that name for your good friends, you know like when you meet somebody and become really friendly you tell him listen, my official name is o'connor, but we are friends. you can just call me cosmic. i the intimate name.
Alex O'Connor
i'll'll see if that catches on. thank you. thank you, slav.
i'll'll see if that catches on. thank you. thank you, slav.
Slavoj Žižek
bye-bye.
bye-bye.
Alex O'Connor
if you enjoyed that conversation, then thanks. i'm glad. you can watch more full episodes of the within reason podcast by clicking the link that just appeared on your screen. the podcast is also on platforms like spotify and apple podcasts. don't forget to subscribe. thank you for watching, and i'll see you in the next one.
if you enjoyed that conversation, then thanks. i'm glad. you can watch more full episodes of the within reason podcast by clicking the link that just appeared on your screen. the podcast is also on platforms like spotify and apple podcasts. don't forget to subscribe. thank you for watching, and i'll see you in the next one.