Slavoj Zizek - Buddhism, happiness and sacrifice day 01
Lecture · John Hillman ·
2023 · 1:51:03 · 11,637 words
psychoanalysisideologyreligion-theologyfascism-populismcinema-art-cultureethicssubjectivityhegel-dialecticsliberalism-political-correctnessgeopolitics-war
Žižek begins with introductory remarks on his recent books and a story about Freud’s visit to the Škocjan Caves, interpreting the encounter with Karl Lueger as the unconscious discovering the 'fundamental lie.' He then analyzes a viral clip of the Dalai Lama to discuss cultural misinterpretation and the Lacanian 'Other,' before contrasting Buddhist and Freudian responses to horror. The excerpt culminates in a dense analysis of Heinrich Himmler’s Poznań speech, arguing that Nazi 'normalcy' and ethical duty mask a psychotic enjoyment of violence, drawing parallels to the Bhagavad Gita and modern drone warfare. Žižek analyzes the concept of the 'big Other' through the lens of the Holocaust, contrasting the 'ethical evil' of Antigone with the obfuscating evil of Himmler, and extending this to modern political courage and animal ethics. He critiques Derridean deconstruction for relying on a regulatory figure of the big Other, using an anecdote about Avital Ronell and animal rights. The lecture concludes with a Lacanian-Buddhist comparison, arguing that the death drive and the enjoyment of suffering (jouissance) contradict Buddhist happiness, and reinterpreting Lacan’s hysterical formula as a structure of political power. Žižek contrasts a Deleuzian reading of Buddhism with a Hegelian-Lacanian one, arguing that true freedom lies in the intellectual act of isolating parts (love, imagination) rather than merging into a harmonious whole. He analyzes anti-Semitism and Stalinist purges as ideological mechanisms that obscure immanent social antagonisms by projecting them onto external enemies. He critiques the idealization of Tibetan culture, emphasizing the need to confront internal contradictions, and discusses the retroactive construction of the past in psychoanalysis and politics, concluding with remarks on modern right-wing esotericism.
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 core of the unconscious is not spiritual truth but a foundational deception, illustrated by Freud’s vision of Lueger (Lüge/lies) in the cave.
as “logic of anti-Semitism”
The mechanism by which an enemy is invented or exposed to create false unity and cover up the society's own internal antagonisms.
The hidden enjoyment derived from the performance of duty or sacrifice, which Žižek questions whether it applies to Himmler's 'ethical' violence.
as “big other”
The symbolic order or authority figure (here, the German nation) for whom one performs acts, masking personal sadism with ethical duty.
as “normalcy is a form of psychosis”
Lacan’s claim that the 'normal' individual, who follows social rules while committing atrocities (like Himmler), exhibits a deeper structural breakdown than the 'pathological' subordinate.
as “disinterested action”
The Buddhist/Hindu doctrine of acting without attachment to the outcome or self, which Žižek notes was used by Himmler to justify the Holocaust.
The moment when ethics becomes political, requiring a decision not grounded in universal principles but in a particular application that risks the existing order.
as “regulatory idea”
An infinitely postponed ideal (like Justice or Democracy to come) that guides action despite its impossibility, which Žižek critiques as relying on a big Other.
as “ethical evil”
An evil act (like Antigone's) that opens up a new space for confronting social antagonisms, distinct from Himmler's evil which obfuscates them.
The basic component of libidinal life operating beyond the pleasure principle, involving self-sabotage and enjoyment in displeasure.
A Lacanian stance that some Buddhists equate with Nirvana, which Žižek claims is a misunderstanding because it ignores the disruptive nature of desire.
The realization in hysterical desire that the 'it' one wants is not an object but the Other itself, revealing the Other's lack.
Desire structured as 'I ask you to refuse what I offer you because that's not it,' which Žižek applies to political power and victimhood.
as “hysterical power”
A form of power that pretends to serve the subject but reveals its raw, arbitrary nature; Žižek argues pure hysterical power is impossible because power must act as pure power.
as “pure interrelatedness of phenomena”
A Buddhist concept Žižek associates with Deleuze, describing reality as interconnected without substantial existence, which he contrasts with his own Hegelian view.
The act of fixing entities as independent, exempt from the flow of relations; Žižek argues against this, aligning with his critique of fixed identities.
Defined not as universal compassion but as the exclusive, antagonistic choice 'I love you' while disregarding all else, illustrating the Hegelian procedure of tearing apart what belongs together.
as “anti-Semitic Zionism”
Žižek’s term for the predominant politics of the State of Israel, which he argues practices a form of anti-Semitism by projecting social tensions onto an external enemy (Jews) to obscure internal class antagonisms.
as “immanent antagonism”
The internal conflict or division within a subject or society, which emancipatory thought must address rather than projecting it onto an external enemy.
Enjoyment derived from displeasure or self-sabotage, contrasting with simple happiness.
as “void of jouissance”
Contrasted with Nirvana; while mysticism seeks access to divine jouissance, Žižek argues Buddhism’s Nirvana is stepping out of desire into a void that is NOT the void of jouissance.
as “retroactive construction of the past”
The psychoanalytic and historical principle that the present determines the meaning of the past; epochs construct their own pasts (e.g., Netanyahu’s claim about Jews being thrown out by Romans) to legitimize current actions.
as “transcendental imagination”
Kant’s concept elevated by Hegel as the greatest achievement, representing the ability to cut reality into pieces and recombine dimensions, which is the basis of freedom.
Žižek’s characterization of the contemporary Western right (Trumpism, Putin) as de facto anti-Christian, seeking to erase Judaism to establish a direct link between pagan religions and Christ.
as “the Other who cannot be reduced to someone like us”
The Lacanian 'neighbor' defined not by shared humanity but by an impenetrable, traumatic otherness.
Stories he reaches for 4
Antigone's decision to bury her brother cannot be grounded in universal rules (all deserve funerals) but is a particular, political act unsupported by the big Other.
“Her decision to risk everything for the proper funeral of her brother cannot be fully grounded in the universal immemorial rules she evokes.”
Žižek uses the psychoanalytic case of the Wolfman, who saw his parents copulating in his cradle. Freud showed this was a neutral memory; it only became traumatic retroactively. This illustrates that psychoanalysis focuses on how the present constructs the past, not just temporal development.
“Freud showed that this was just a neutral memory for him; only later did Wolfman elevate this into what mattered to him.”
Žižek discusses a Tibetan student’s explanation of sticking out one's tongue as a greeting. He reveals that historically, in feudal Tibet, this was a humiliating ritual for serfs meeting masters ('eat my tongue'), but now it is just a way of saying hello. He uses this to argue against idealizing Tibetan culture, pointing out the 'pornographic Dalai Lama' and the need to know a culture's inter-tensions, not just its idealized image.
“I know the expression 'eat my tongue.' But wasn't this meant as a metaphor? I think simply—I don't particularly research into this, but from my personal experience, it's just like a way of saying hello.”
Survivors of brutal rapes in Bosnia killed themselves after rejoining their community because no one listened, illustrating the absence of the big Other (symbolic registration).
“Many of the girls who survived brutal rapes killed themselves later... found that there is no one who is ready to listen to them.”
Works invoked 8
Less Than Nothing book
Cited by the audience as the source of a pithy comment comparing Buddhist and Hegelian questions.
Bhagavad Gita book
Himmler’s preferred book, carried in his pocket, used to justify the Holocaust through the doctrine of non-involvement and the idea that 'the self kills not.'
Being and Time book
Heidegger’s masterwork, cited to show its focus on individual 'Dasein' rather than the racial community emphasized in his later Nazi-era lectures.
Doctor House tv
Used as an example of the Lacanian view that happiness is a symptom to be abolished, closer to the death drive than Buddhist happiness.
The original, provocative title Žižek proposed for his book 'Freedom,' which Bloomsbury changed to 'A New Philosophy'; he defends his original title.
Haiku by Bashō other
Cited ('ancient pond, frog, plop') to illustrate the Zen Buddhist concept of interacting with reality/be-at-oneness.
Lacan and Atheism book
Co-authored by Lorenzo Chiesa and Adrian Johnston; cited for arguing that Western mystical readings of Buddhism are wrong and that Buddhism is non-mystical.
Outspoken book
A recent book by Žižek, whose title he did not know about until the event, highlighting his split personality or publisher's interference.
People invoked 35
Described as a 'faithful Derridean friend'; cited in an anecdote to illustrate the absurdity of projecting a big Other onto animal ethics.
Historian quoted describing Odilo Globočnik as the 'vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known.'
Carlo Rovelli positive
Cited as a physicist whose view (space is an effect of temporary interaction) is more attractive to Žižek than Einstein's timelessness.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Friend and collaborator; Žižek cites her text on the Iranian protest movement as a wonderful example of demanding the most radical trend.
Jacques Derrida negative
Critiqued for relying on a figure of the big Other (Justice to come) as a regulatory idea, which Žižek finds deeply anthropocentric.
Antigone positive
Used as an example of 'ethical evil' and political decision-making unsupported by the big Other.
Gideon Levy positive
An Israeli intellectual who uses the term 'anti-Semitic Zionism,' which Žižek is glad to see.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited alongside Hegel to support the view that disassembling reality (isolation) is a key procedure, contrasting with Buddhist 'peaceful smile'.
Tenzin Gyatso positive
Used as an example of the Lacanian 'Other'; his tongue-sticking gesture is analyzed to show how cultural misunderstanding reveals the 'impenetrable abyss' of the Other.
Gilles Deleuze positive
Žižek notes that Buddhist texts often sound Deleuzian (against fixity, pure interrelatedness), using him as a foil to introduce his Hegelian critique.
Mentioned alongside Trotsky as part of the 'Trotsky-Bukharin' plot used by Stalinists.
Sergei Pankejeff positive
Psychoanalytic case used to illustrate retroactive construction of the past (seeing parents copulate in cradle).
Donald Trump negative
Cited as an example of modern 'courage' defined as the right-wing hardliner's willingness to break legal rules.
Lorenzo Chiesa positive
Friend who co-authored a book with Adrian Johnston on Lacan and Atheism, pointing out that Western mystical readings of Buddhism are wrong.
Mentioned as an enemy figure in Stalinist purges, grouped with Bukharin as part of an external plot.
Adolf Hitler negative
Described as the 'Messiah' kept in ignorance by Himmler to preserve his grandiose vision.
Co-author with Lorenzo Chiesa on a book on Lacan and Atheism.
Quentin Tarantino positive
Žižek states he does not like all of Tarantino's films but considers him the 'ultimate Hegelian director' due to the liberating, contingent effect of his work.
Friend who reminded Žižek of the Freud/Lueger cave story.
Cited as an empiricist whose lines some Buddhists follow in criticizing intellectualism.
Heinrich Himmler positive
Analyzed in detail via his Poznań speech; Žižek uses Himmler’s 'normalcy' and 'decency' to illustrate Lacan’s claim that 'normalcy is a form of psychosis' and the ethical void of Nazi duty.
Benjamin Netanyahu positive
Cited in a podcast for his narrative that Jews were thrown out by Romans and lived in an empty land, which Žižek uses to illustrate retroactive political history.
Mentioned as a Nazi who grabbed artworks, contrasting with Himmler's 'ethical' horror to highlight the difference between mere criminality and ideological structure.
Martin Heidegger negative
Criticized for his Nazi-era lectures where he argues for the necessity of inventing an enemy to preserve 'Dasein,' which Žižek identifies as the elementary logic of anti-Semitism.
Matsuo Bashō positive
Cited for a haiku ('ancient pond, frog, plop') that illustrates the Zen Buddhist concept of 'be-at-oneness' with reality.
Richard Wolin negative
Critiqued for focusing on Heidegger’s spiritualized racial community while ignoring the individual 'Dasein' focus of Being and Time.
Viennese mayor and anti-Semitic populist, identified in Freud’s cave vision; his name 'Lueger' is punned as 'Lüge' (lie) to support the 'fundamental lie' concept.
Austrian Nazi and Žižek’s compatriot, described as the 'vilest individual' who originated the concept of extermination camps and industrialized murder.
Joseph Stalin positive
Used as an example of how Stalinist purges projected internal failures onto external enemies (Trotskyites) to maintain the illusion of a harmonious project.
Saladin positive
Cited by a Jewish historian for inviting Jews back to Jerusalem after liberating it from Crusaders, contrasting with modern Zionist narratives.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited alongside Lacan regarding the death drive.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Used to interpret the regression of Buddhism into ritual as a necessary flaw located at the beginning, and to contrast the Hegelian question ('How did we fall into it?') with the Buddhist one.
Immanuel Kant positive
Praised by Hegel (and Žižek) for transcendental imagination, which Žižek sees as the root of rational freedom.
Mentioned as proposing the hypothesis that the universe is at its most basic level timeless.
Described as pragmatic and agnostic, focusing on alleviating suffering, but whose teachings regressed into institutional hierarchy.
Transcript 41 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I hope you hear me. Everything is okay. So thanks very much and just a couple of introductory remarks. First, Maria, I hope this will be interesting enough, when you mentioned those caves close to the Italian border in the south of Slovenia, Škocjan Caves. As my friend Mladen Dolar reminded me, the story is much more interesting of those caves. Do you know that Freud mentions in some letter that he also visited, Freud himself, the cave? And when he was at the darkest bottom of the cave—it’s really chaotic, hellish-like—he saw a black figure, more of a shadow, approaching him. And when the figure came closer to him, you know who this was? You know who Karl Lueger was? The Viennese mayor at that time, the key influence on Hitler, he was the big anti-Semitic populist politician. This is, in a way, hell. And Freud plays on this: Lueger, *Lüge* means lie. And this is a deep Freudian message, in the deepest of our unconscious, you don’t discover—Jungians think this—you don’t discover some deepest truth about spirituality, whatever. No, you discover the fundamental lie. That’s in the unconscious. It’s a wonderful story. Another reaction, we should talk later. Now, my books, obviously I don’t know what’s happening because it’s for the first time that I heard about a book of mine called *Outspoken*. Now that’s very interesting. Am I already split personality or whatever? Another thing, that *Freedom* book, no? Obviously Bloomsbury has problems—I have otherwise with them very good relations—Bloomsbury have problems with titles. I like to be provocative there. You know what was my title? *Freedom: A Poison Without Cure*. And they changed it now, and I protested, into *A New Philosophy*. No, I meant exactly what I want there. Just two more up to the point remarks. First, please, at least for tomorrow, so that I don't have to repeat what I already published—I don't like doing this—please read, those of you who didn't. It was, it is mentioned, the coordinates are given in the on the Birkbeck webpage, the presentation of this mini-course of mine. Please read my text on—belated response to my critics—on Buddhism. Please read my text on Buddhism, my response to my critics. It will make things much easier. And second thing, not to disappoint you, today I will not talk a lot about Buddhism, but I will rather present the background situation, horrors mostly happening today, or at least in the 20th century, which confront us with this choice. And it’s a great choice. I think these are two ultimately ethical positions, if we cut the crap: Buddhism or authentic Freudian position. How to react to horrors which are going on today. Okay, let me properly begin. In a video that appeared on the web now ten days ago in April we see the interaction in the middle of a public ceremony between the Dalai Lama and a seven-years-old boy. The boy is seen asking the Dalai Lama for a hug, following which the leader, Dalai Lama, blessed him, asked him to kiss him, and stuck out his tongue saying, "Suck my tongue." And if I saw it correctly, this does happen then. Now, many in the West blamed the Dalai Lama for behaving inappropriately and even being a pedophile. The critics pointed out that although sticking out one's tongue is a traditional practice in Tibet, a sign of benevolence, demonstrating that one’s tongue is not dark, which indicates evil. The idea is that in the 9th century there was an evil Dalai Lama, and the myth was that his tongue was black. So this gesture means basically, "Look, I'm a good guy." But as critics pointed out, asking another person to suck your tongue has no place in the Tibetan tradition. But again, Tibetans answered that the correct Tibetan phrase is *the-le-sa*, which roughly translates as "eat my tongue." It is used by an older person like a benevolent grandfather to express his love for the child. It means something like, "I love you, I give you everything I can, but now I have given you everything, so the only thing left is for you to eat my tongue." The meaning of this common expression used to tease and teach children is completely lost in cultural interpretation and its English translation. Because although English is Dalai Lama's second language, he speaks in not so good broken English at public events, often making himself wrong translations, like in this case where "eat" became "suck." But again, the critics pointed out that *the-le-sa* is a metaphorical expression, not implying that the addressee will really do it, while in this case, the child really sucked Dalai Lama’s tongue. Plus, the fact that something is part of a tradition doesn’t preclude that it has an obscene or oppressive background. Take the extreme case: clitoridectomy is also part of a tradition, and the ancient Tibet was full of what we consider today extremely humiliating practices and strict hierarchy. But again, it is no less probable that the wide distribution of this embarrassing clip was orchestrated by the Chinese authorities to besmirch the figure of Dalai Lama, since he personalizes the Tibetan resistance to Chinese domination. So the one thing we can be sure of in this mess is that for a moment we got a glimpse of the Dalai Lama as our neighbor, in the strict Lacanian sense of the term. Not our fellow man, somebody like us, but an other who cannot be reduced to someone like us, whose otherness indicates an impenetrable abyss. To complicate things even further, sticking one’s tongue far out is also part of another ancient tradition in Tibet. Serfs or subordinate persons do this when they encounter a figure of high authority to show their self-humiliation. You should turn your eyes out and basically the message is, "Look, I'm an idiot, not worthy of you." Plus, in Europe, in most of Europe, to stick out your tongue mostly functions as a rude gesture to indicate mocking disgust or, with children, playful teasing. So we can imagine three persons—a paternal benevolent Tibetan, a subordinate Tibetan, an average European—meeting, each of them greeting the other two with the same gesture of sticking out his tongue and interpreting the others doing the same gesture according to his or her or its understanding. For the paternal Tibetan, it would mean that they all want to be benevolent towards others; for the subordinate Tibetan, it would mean that they are all respectfully submissive; and for the European, that they are all in the mode of playfully teasing each other. In this way, the further exchange among the three could go on smoothly, since this is how many of our communications already function. That's my point. You know, we may read it in different way, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes it works even better. But let's take an example not to get lost in these exotic examples. Let's take a case from our own culture which really surprised me. Years ago, when I was reading a text about how the Nazis tortured prisoners in the concentration camps, it affected me quite traumatically when I found that they used industrially made testicle crushers. Like, you know, to break nuts or whatever. Industrially made testicle crushers to cause unbearable pain. Now I found that this same product—because I wanted to check is this true or not—so I went to Google, idiot that I am, and put it "testicle crushers." And I found that this same product, exquisitely made, is one of the series of similar things one can buy on the web. As the advertisement says: "Pick your poison for pleasure from this ball torture group. Stainless steel ball crusher. Stainless ball clamp torture device. Brutal cock vice torture toy. Hardcore stainless ball torture." So if you lie in bed with your partner, melancholy and tired of ordinary sex—I quote again the advertisement now—"The time is right. Your slave's nuts are ripe for crushing. It is the moment you have been waiting for, to find the right tool to brutalize his balls. The stainless ball clamp torture device could be the ultimate testicle crusher, giving its wicked brutal features." Now, if we imagine a scene of two men playing a sexual game with ball crushers, we of course immediately stumble upon ambiguous situations, to say the least. Let's say I by mistake enter a room where two men are playing this game, and since in all probability one of them is moaning and crying because of the pain, I misread this situation as an actual torture and jump in to attack the active guy. If I ignore the situation and just walk by, I ignore the possibility that it was an actual torture. So should I approach the two guys and politely ask them, "Is what you are doing really consensual?" Well, it's an idiotic thing to do. But let's go a step further and imagine a man doing something similar to a woman, torturing her consensually. Many among us would automatically presume that their activity is not consensual, and if it is, that the woman internalized male oppression, identifying with the enemy. The confusion is here irreducible. Unfortunately, there are rare, but there are men and women and trans and so on, who authentically enjoy a degree of torture which is non-consensual. Plus, we should recall the obsessional ritual of enacting a punishment to signal the presence of a desire punished by the specific form of the inflicted pain. Let's say that in a culture where rape is punished by flogging, somebody asks his friend to flog him brutally. There is no deep masochism at work here. Being flogged simply signals my desire to rape a woman. The passage from the ball crusher used to torture prisoners in Nazi concentration camps to the ball crusher that you can buy for a little bit over US dollars to play sadomasochist erotic games will undoubtedly be celebrated as a sign of historical progress. The same progress which brings us classic works of art purified of the content that may hurt somebody. The question that bothers us today is: why does the permissive stance towards sexual pleasure entail impotence and frigidity? Why, when pleasure is enjoined by a superego figure, are we deprived of it? Why, in these conditions, the only way to enjoy is sometimes at least through pain? My point is only Buddhism and psychoanalysis can provide some sort of an answer to this question, although in two opposite ways. Why Buddhism and psychoanalysis? Because the two can give an answer so that they both shift—that would be my formula for today—shift from focusing on an external enemy to shift from that to immanent antagonism. What characterizes an authentic emancipatory thought and practice is not a vision of conflict-free harmonious future, but the properly dialectical notion of an antagonism which is totally incompatible with the rightist topic of the need of an enemy to assert our self-identity. Here is—I was even shocked to find it—Martin Heidegger's articulation of the need for an enemy from his course of the year of his deepest Nazi engagement. A quote: "An enemy is each and every person who poses an essential threat to the *Dasein* (existence) of the people and its individual members. The enemy does not have to be external, and the external enemy is not even always the most dangerous one. And it can seem as if there were no enemy. Then it is a fundamental requirement to find the enemy, to expose the enemy to the light, or even first to make the enemy, so that this standing against the enemy may happen and so that *Dasein* (existence) may not lose its edge. The challenge is to bring the enemy into the open, to harbor no illusions about the enemy, to keep oneself ready for attack, to cultivate and intensify a constant readiness, and to prepare the attack, looking far ahead with the goal of total annihilation." End of quote. The most ominous passage is here: "to expose the enemy to the light, or even first to make the enemy, so that this standing against the enemy may happen." In short, it doesn't even matter if the enemy is a real enemy. If there is no enemy, it has to be invented so that a people may not lose its edge and can prepare for the invented enemy's total annihilation. What we find here is the logic of anti-Semitism at its most elementary. What Heidegger ignores is the possibility that an enemy is invented to create the false unity of the people and thus cover up its (the people’s) own immanent antagonisms. However, just a side remark: one should be careful not to extend this need for an enemy to the entirety of Heidegger's thinking. The passage quoted above is from Heidegger’s course of when he was at the high point of his Nazi engagement. At this point, he put forward the notion of *Volk* (people) as a community that needs an enemy. And when he later withdrew from active politics, the notion of enemy changes. It is no longer another ethnic group to be annihilated but modern technology as such, and one should not fight it but go through it and gain distance towards it. So when Richard Wolin focuses on a spiritualized racial community in his critique of Heidegger, he ignores all too much that there is no place for such a community in Heidegger's masterwork *Being and Time* (*Sein und Zeit*), which is focused on an individual *Dasein* (existence) thrown into the abyss of a world incidentally. One should also note that the style of *Being and Time* is totally different from Heidegger's later poetic intimations. It is a systematic book subdivided into numbers, paragraphs, and so on. Now, why is this passage nonetheless from Heidegger dangerous? Because I think that what Heidegger is describing, we have a person who brought it to extreme. In his speech to SS leaders in Poznań on October Heinrich Himmler spoke quite openly about the mass killing of the Jews as, I quote, "a glorious page in our history and one that has never been written and never can be written." End of quote. He then goes on to characterize the ability to do this and to remain decent as the greatest virtue of the Nazis. Quote: "To have gone through the extermination of the Jews and at the same time to have remained decent, this is what made us hard." End of quote. Himmler here exactly opposes true principled virtue to ordinary human compassion for a singular human being. Another quote: "But then they all come along, these million good Germans, and every one of them has his decent Jew. Of course, it's quite clear that other Jews are pigs, but this one is a first-class Jew." End of quote. In short, German knows that Jews as such are pigs, but when they fail to apply this principle to a singular Jew that they know, they become traitors. And Himmler is well aware of what he is saying. He explicitly includes the killing of women and children into this series. Another quote from Himmler: "We faced the question: what should we do with the women and children? I decided here too to find a completely clear solution. I did not regard myself as justified in exterminating the men—that is to say, to kill them or have them killed—and to allow the avengers in the shape of children to grow up for our sons and grandchildren. The difficult decision had to be taken to have this people disappear from the earth." End of quote. But what makes all this so—sorry to use this term—fascinating is the high ethical language used by Himmler to justify the extermination of the Jews but also the brutal treatment of the Slavic people under German occupation. Another a little bit longer quote: "One principle must be absolute for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and friendly to members of our blood and to no one else. What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs is a matter of utter indifference to me. Whether the other races live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. Apart from that, it does not interest me. Whether or not Russian women collapse from exhaustion while digging a tank ditch interests me only insofar as the tank ditch is completed for Germans. We have the moral right, we have the duty to our people to do it, to kill these people who want to kill us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves with even one fur, with one mark, with one cigarette, with one watch, with anything." End of quote. So Himmler goes to the end here. Further in the speech he imagines the case of an SS officer on the Eastern Front confronting a Russian mother with a small child, both scared of him, trembling and crying. The soldier's first reaction is understandably compassion. Is it really his duty as a soldier to kill these two helpless human beings? Himmler's answer is an unconditional yes. His fidelity is only to the German people, which implies total indifference towards the suffering of the members of other races. Bearing in mind the suffering the German people are exposed to by the continuous bombing by the American and British planes, any compassion with the two poor Russians is nothing less than treason for Himmler, an act of ignoring the suffering of one's own people. Was then Himmler a sadist doing horrible things and gaining surplus enjoyment from his conviction that he is doing just an ethical duty, or doing it for the big other, the good of the German nation? I think this formula is too simple to be applied here. There is something much more horrifying in Himmler. From what one can see by way of reading his letters, he was a terribly normal person. He detested personally witnessing brutality. He was decent and kind to his friends. He was ready to punish SS members for their petty crimes. And as such, as a normal individual, he did in his office what he knew he is doing. It is here that Lacan's claim that normalcy is a form of psychosis acquires its weight. Here, not surprisingly, Himmler comes close—but I don't identify them—to the Buddhist and Hinduist idea that we suffer and do hurtful things if we are too directly involved in what we perceive as reality of objects. So we should follow the doctrine of non-involvement, of the disinterested action. Act as if it doesn't matter, as if you are not the agent but things, including your own acts, just happen in an impersonal way. Now, it is difficult to resist here the temptation to paraphrase this passage as the justification of the burning of the Jews in the gas chambers to their executor caught in a moment of doubt. "Since he who thinks is to be the killer and he who thinks is to be killed both know nothing"—a quote from *Bhagavad Gita*, the Hinduist sacred text—"since the self kills not and the self is not killed, therefore you ought not to grieve for any burnt Jews but, looking alike on pleasure and pain, on gain and loss, on victory and defeat, you do what you ordered to do." No wonder that *Bhagavad Gita* was Himmler's preferred book. It is reported that he was always carrying it in his pocket, in the pocket of his uniform. Does this not hold also for today's military operations, which are more and more done through drones and by just putting buttons? Now, a specification. The same thing cannot be said for people directly working under Himmler; they were openly pathological. If Himmler was at the top of the pyramid of the organizers of the Holocaust, second to him were not well-known names like Heydrich and Eichmann—not these, but a compatriot of mine. Remember this name: Odilo Globočnik. An Austrian Nazi whose father was a Slovene, as his surname indicates. Globočnik had a leading role in Operation Reinhard, the organized murder of around one and a half million Jews of mostly Polish origin in the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Bełżec extermination camps. Globočnik originated the concept of the extermination camps and industrialized murder. The historian Michael Elan described him as the vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known. It was this guy Globočnik, you know, who when they didn't have enough, enough bullets to kill the Jews, he came to the idea out of his practice: "Why don't we redirect exhaust fume back of a car, back into the cabin of a truck?" Then his idea was to do this industrially. It's his original idea. But what lurks behind this topic is the question of the big other. The conclusion that imposes itself is not that every ethical stance needs some figure of the big other to rely on but, on the contrary, that a truly radical ethical position emerges when the subject is deprived of the support in any figure of a big other, so that it has to make a decision in the abyss of its freedom. Such a decision stands for the moment when ethics gets political, for the moment of the political suspension of the ethical. The subject has to make a decision which cannot be fully grounded in any kind of higher neutral principles. It has to make a decision about how to apply these principles, a decision which always gives them a particular spin. I think this is the case with Antigone. Her decision to risk everything for the proper funeral of her brother cannot be fully grounded in the universal immemorial rules she evokes. Every human being, independently of his kind, deserves—or her or their—deserves a proper funeral. She picked out her brother, ignoring all others. And it is this restriction which makes her act political, not just her public declaring of what she is doing. In this decision, she, Antigone, was not supported by a big other. In some formal sense, Antigone can be said to appear as evil from the standpoint of the existing order, a threat to it. But her evil is ethical, although in a totally different sense than that of Himmler. It opens up a new space for confronting the antagonisms of the existing society, while the function of Himmler's evil is precisely to obfuscate these antagonisms. Now let me move to this more general problem. And with all the focus that I had till now on Holocaust, let me just point out again that I am well aware of the horror of what Israel is now doing on the West Bank. Of what this means. It's not just a legal question, what happens with the independence of the legal system and so on and so on. It's the entire logic of basically directly legitimizing state crimes which Israel is coming close to. What I mean by this, more and more—I already talked about this—we are getting close to a situation where the term "courage," the term "courage" acquires a new meaning. Courage is not simply courage to do good things, to sacrifice yourself for helping others and so on. Courage becomes more and more, from hardliner, from right-wing hardliners to politicians like Donald Trump, courage becomes the courage to—as in Himmler—to break your own legal rules when the situation demanded it. If you show too much sympathy and so on, you don't display true courage. Courage means oppress your elementary ethical sensitivity. But that's another story, I've written about this extensively. Now, back to the big other. A fact from the Bosnian War in the early 1990s makes the same point. Many of the girls who survived brutal rapes killed themselves later after they rejoined the community, their community, and found that there is no one who is ready to listen to them, to accept their testimony. In Lacan's terms, what is missing here is not only another human being, the attentive listener, but the big other itself, the space of the symbolic inscription or registration of my words. One should here critically note that even Jacques Derrida's deconstruction continues to rely on a figure of the big other. When Derrida writes that deconstruction is justice, an impossible justice but still justice, this determination implies that deconstruction doesn't just bring out the inconsistencies and contradictions of a text. The work of deconstruction is led by the impossible ideal of fully bringing out all inconsistencies which legitimize secret forms of domination and oppression. This goal is, of course, infinitely postponed, forever eluding. In the same sense that Derrida talks about democracy to come, justice is always to come. To claim that it is fully here would have been the worst case of what Derrida called metaphysics of presence. However, in spite of the impossibility that pertains to justice, we have to cling to it as a kind of regulatory idea. What do I mean by this? I remember years ago talking to a faithful Derridean friend of mine at a reception after a talk—I can name her, it was Avital Ronell—and while we were picking up pieces of fried chicken, she told me: "How will we justify doing this at the final Nuremberg trial for the crimes humans commit against animals?" The regulatory idea is here that an ethical debt is accumulating for all the horrors of the industrial breeding of animals. Just think what we are doing to millions of pigs which remain half blind and barely can walk; they are just bred to get fat enough as quickly as possible and be slaughtered for our consumption. I respectfully remained silent, but the idea of a gigantic trial of all of humanity—by whom?—struck me as strangely twisted. Do we really have to presuppose such a figure of the big other, a promise that at some final point all debts will be settled, although we know this moment will never come? Is such an idea not deeply anthropocentric, transposing onto the stupid indifference of nature a sense of justice totally absent in it? Cannot we act ethically with regard to animal suffering although without such a figure of the big other? Back to Himmler. Do we in all of humanity not treat animals more or less exactly in the same way Himmler demanded Germans to treat Russian women? Whether or not pigs collapse from exhaustion of being overfed and treated with hormonal chemicals, with no free movement in nature, this interests us only insofar as the quota of pork meat is completed for us humans. Now comes a more tricky question. And Hitler? From what we know, one must concede that although it is unthinkable that Hitler didn't know about the Holocaust, he was probably spared the gory, gory details. When Himmler says that Holocaust is "a glorious page... but which will never be written," he doesn't only mean that the extermination of the Jews should not be known to the general public. There are hints that he also meant Hitler himself, the Messiah leading the German nation to a new beginning. The true fidelity to the Messiah, the true courage, is that we do silently and secretly the necessary dirty work of clearing the ground so that the Messiah, Hitler, will be able to realize his grandiose vision. The great act of us close followers of the Messiah is to keep him in ignorance, to allow him to pursue his vision in blessed innocence. As a supreme self-sacrifice, Himmler takes upon him the evil, and this properly ethical evil makes him much worse than any form of pragmatic opportunism. Which means that fidelity to a principled decision is not enough for an act to qualify as truly ethical. What really matters is how this principle relates to social antagonisms. Does it cover them or does it render them visible? The moment we accept an irreducible antagonism, we accept the fact that the big other doesn't exist, that it is ridden with inconsistencies, lacks, and antagonisms. Now, finally, to conclude for today, to my topic: Buddhism. Where does Buddhism stand here? Buddha's teaching is pragmatic, focused on alleviating suffering and pain. In matters of religion, Buddha was agnostic, not interested in any higher spiritual reality. All that exists is the interconnected non-substantial flow of phenomena beneath which there is no deep substantial divine ground but just the void. But it is interesting to note how Buddhism, which originally dispensed with all institutional ritual and focused solely on the individual's enlightenment and the end of suffering, irrespective of all dogmatic institutional frames, ended up clinging to the most mechanical and firmly entrenched institutional hierarchic frame. And simultaneously in a world conceived as full of spiritual entities. In Theravada Buddhism, there is no omnipotent creator god of the sort found in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Gods exist as various types of spiritual being but with limited powers. The question, of course, is: how did Buddhism come to this point? It would have been an utterly non-Hegelian reading if we were to dismiss this movement from pure focus on suffering to institutional rituals as a simple regression. If there is a Hegelian axiom, it is that the flaw has to be located at the very beginning of the entire movement. What then is already wrong with the starting point, the Hinayana version of Buddhism? Its flaw is precisely that to which the Mahayana version reacts, its symmetrical reversal. In striving for my own enlightenment, I regress into egotism in my very attempt to erase the constraints of my self. Consequently, one should not make fun of the superstitious features of Tibetan Buddhism, the step towards spiritualization and so on, but to become aware of how this step does the work. It does deliver the goods. Is not relying on a prayer wheel or, more generally, on the efficiency of a ritual also a means to achieve mindlessness, to empty one's mind and repose in peace? So in a way Tibetan Buddhism *is* faithful to Buddha's pragmatic orientation: ignore theological niceties, just focus on how to help people. Sometimes following blind ritual is pragmatically the most efficient way to achieve the goal of inner peace. So where is the problem here? Buddhism accepts the common view that the purpose of life is happiness. To quote Dalai Lama: "The purpose of our lives is to be happy." Buddhism just defines this term differently. Here again a couple of statements by Dalai Lama: "Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions. When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. We don’t need more money, we don't need greater success or fame, we don't need the perfect body or even the perfect mate. Right now, at this very moment, we have a mind which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness. Human happiness and human satisfaction most ultimately come from within oneself." End of quotes. Following Freud, Lacan on the contrary asserts death drive as the basic component of our libidinal lives, which operate beyond the pleasure principle. What Lacan calls enjoyment (*jouissance*) emerges out of a self-sabotage of pleasure. It is an enjoyment in displeasure itself. A Lacanian view, I think, is much closer to *Doctor House*—I refer to the series—Doctor House who, TV series, in one of the episodes, when he tries to diagnose a patient and one of his collaborators mentions that the patient radiates happiness, Doctor House immediately adds "happiness" to the list of the patient's symptoms of his illness to be explained and abolished. The feeling of happiness is a dangerous symptom, not something we should strive for. And one should add here that the same goes for what is also considered the most spontaneous parental feeling: the immense love of one's small child. Small children are horror embodied: stupid, annoying, smelling bad, breaking our sleep. So again as Doctor House says at some point, the feeling of love for them is a clear case of what is called the Stockholm syndrome—a coping mechanism to a captive or abusive situation, when people develop positive feelings towards their captors or abusers over time. Again, this I think is the exact mechanism of how we cope with small children. Now, just to conclude. So what about the desperate Lacano-Buddhist attempt? There are some Buddhists which try—more on this tomorrow—to be at the same time Lacanian, to read what Buddhism calls Nirvana as basically the same stance as that signaled by Lacan's traversing the fantasy. We cannot simply dismiss this as a gross misunderstanding of Lacan because there is a grain of truth in it. Desire is metonymic. Every empirical positive object that we desire is a trap, in the sense that if we get it, our desire is not fully satisfied but disappointed. We experience a "*Ce n'est pas ça*"—"This is not that" what we really desire. So let's drop our attachment to particular objects and just persist surfing along them from one to another object. In other words, a true betrayal of our desire is precisely our full attachment to a particular object as the true object. If we renounce this, if we maintain a distance towards every object, we attain peace. We are faithful to our desire to the void in its heart which cannot be abolished by any object. But, I claim, this logic ultimately fails. For Lacan, desire in its purity, considered without an empirical object of desire, cannot be transformed into a peaceful integration into a non-substantial changing multiplicity of our reality, because desire is as such a gesture of breaking up the balance of reality. If we subtract particular objects we get the gesture of breaking up, of disturbing the balance as such. What any particular empirical object of desire obfuscates is not the balance of a void but this negative gesture. Any particular object particularizes this rupture as such, transforming it into a desire for something that positively exists. Just now to conclude a political variation on this. Recall Lacan's basic formula of hysterical desire: "I ask you what? To refuse what? What I offer you. Why? Because that's not it." This exactly, I think, should also be the reaction of the victim of racism or sexism to the endless process of the pseudo-liberal left offering them more and more concessions. "Let's rewrite classic texts to make them acceptable to today's sensibilities and so on. Let's purify our daily language so that 'they' becomes the pronoun for all those who don't want explicitly to be addressed as he or she. Let's destroy the monuments to all figures from the past who said or did something that is today considered problematic and so on." The answer of the oppressed should be: "Sorry, but that's not it. You are bombarding me with such offers just to retain your basic social position of superiority." So when Lacan proposes his formula of hysterical provocation—"I ask you to refuse what I offer you because that's not it"—we should go to the end here and enact the passage from giving or having to being. A hysteric does not just endlessly reject what the other offers him or her or them because that's not it what he, she, they really want; he, she, they finally realize that the "it"—that it is the other itself. The message is: "You are not it. You are not in a position to give me what I really need or want." But notice a specific reversal in Lacan's formula. It's not me, the victim, demanding something from a figure of the big other who is complaining about it. "I refuse what you are offering me because that's not it." That's not what Lacan says. Lacan says that it's the other itself who asks me to refuse its offer because that's not it. Do we not get here an extreme version of the offer meant to be rejected, a form of politeness in our daily lives? You know this example, I used it dozens of times. When I invite my poor friend to an expensive dinner, it is clear to both of us that I will pay the bill. However, at least in my country, it is expected that my friend will insist for a short time that he should pay the bill, and then as expected he concedes that I will pay. So, can Lacan's formula of hysteria—"I demand you to refuse what I offer you because it's not that"—can it not be read also as a formula of an authentic power structure, government? The message of such a power to the subject should not be, "We give you whatever you want or need," or even, or even, "We give you what you really need even if you are not aware of it." It is rather: "We give you what we can, but we know well this is not that." Imagine that in the midst of the COVID pandemic a government's message would have been: "We are doing all we can, we organize all the measures—vaccination, lockdowns—but this is not that." And the same holds for global warming and so on. Unfortunately, there is also a more cynical reading of this formula: "We give you all the rights and so on, but that's not it. Beneath all this there is the fact that our raw power, the fact of our raw power. We can do what we want. We don't really serve you." This gap, I think, is constitutive of power. Which means that a hysterical power is impossible. Power has to pretend or act as if it is actually pure power. I think I used my one hour. This is what I have for now. And tomorrow we go into Buddhism in detail because I think that precisely at this point, as many intelligent Buddhists are aware, precisely at this point Buddhism oscillates between total compassion—"I postpone my entry into Nirvana till all living beings, not only humans, will be [unintelligible] of their pain"—and this, under quotation marks, "egotist" self-withdrawal. "I enter Nirvana, that's it." Why and how this happens I will explain tomorrow, and I will also explain what interests me most, in what sense the lesson of psychoanalysis is here the Hegelian one. That of desire which is not return to peace but desire is a violent fragmentation, imbalance. Do not betray your desire precisely means be faithful to your crazy choice. It's time to stop. Thanks very much. Maria, take over. I’m here. I’m not going to take over; the audience will take over. But meanwhile, I just wanted to thank you very much. Obviously you left us wanting more. You also—some bits of it were very difficult to listen to. Nevertheless... Sorry to tell you this, but you know what was my point here? I was against this "safe space" logic. To prevent things like this happen in reality, we have to talk about them. And I am sincerely perplexed here. You know, I don't have easy answers, and maybe that's a solution. But I'm sorry. No, but then we'll all have more nightmares. But we also have lots of— But better nightmares than things like this happening to you in reality, you know? I agree. So no, it's open to the audience to ask any questions. I'm looking at the chat and there isn't at the moment. Alia, you can't see anything either, is there? Maybe I could ask something, unless—I haven't, Alia, is there anything there? I can't see anything in the chat. Not yet. Not yet. So everyone, do feel free to start writing questions about today's lecture or anything else you are burning to ask Žižek. Until we get some more questions, I wouldn't mind asking you, Slavoj, a bit more about—maybe it's coming tomorrow as you promised—but a bit more about Buddhism vis-à-vis Hegel rather than vis-à-vis Lacan and Freud. I mean, obviously the death drive that you started describing is the big distinction or the big divorce between Buddhism and psychoanalysis’ version of happiness. But I did—I do have—you're really good at sort of pithy little comments in your talks as well as in your books, and I don't remember where this particular one came from, and whenever in doubt I assume it came from *Less Than Nothing*. But anyway, at some point—you don't remember either where your own comments come from, so we'll say it was in *Less Than Nothing*—but you say something like: "The Buddhist question, the big Buddhist question, is 'How did we—how do we get out of illusion, the illusory ego? How do we get out of suffering?' Whereas the Hegelian question is 'How did we fall into it?'" And I wonder if you can say a bit more about that, how the Hegelian question might be more productive or stimulating for our predicament than the Buddhist question about how do we get out of suffering or how do we get out of illusion. How did—yeah, could you say a bit more about that? No, first I would, let's hope people will raise some, I hope, aggressive question. But I—the reason I wanted to make it clearer tomorrow, and I will, the reason I focused on this example—disgusting—of Himmler, is that you know, whenever I read, and I read them often, Buddhist texts, they always sound—sorry for using this term—Deleuzian to me. Deleuzian in the sense that against fixity—okay, I'll put it like this. For intelligent Buddhists, as you will hear tomorrow, Nirvana does not mean you withdraw yourself from full experience of reality and you are in some kind of a purely spiritual blessed state. You just accept what they call the pure interrelatedness of phenomena. Things do not have a substantial existence on their own; things are interconnected, so that what thing is, is only its relations to other things. And for Buddhists, they like, some of them, again, to refer to Deleuze here, because their point is that Nirvana in some sense doesn't mean, again, withdrawing from reality, but even fully immersing yourself into reality. You just don't substantialize reality, neither your ego nor objects, into a firm entity which is exempted from this eternal intermingling flow of appearances and so on and so on. So as many of them say, Buddhism is not an escape from reality; it is full immersion into the multiple, ultimately flexible flow of appearances. And they criticize, in a sometimes even very naive empiricist way along the lines of Bergson or some even empiricists, they criticize intellectualism. For them, the original evil is when we—when intellect—when we analyze thing intellectually, we isolate into parts what in reality belongs together. For Hegel, the way I read it, and for Lacan, let's not go into details now, this disassembling of reality—you are in a complex reality but you say, "No, exactly only this matters"—this is, for example, the phenomenon of love at its purest. For our tradition, love is not this peaceful Buddha smile, "I love all creatures." No, love is "I love you" and I basically don't care if all other things fall apart. And this is the procedure of understanding: you tear apart what belongs together. The elementary form of this is imagination, which is why imagination plays a key role in Freud (fantasies) but also already in German idealism, from Kant to Hegel. Hegel already pointed out that transcendental imagination is Kant's greatest conceptual achievement. So for Hegel, our rational categories are not a prison from which we should liberate ourselves into some kind of a free immersion into creative flux. For Hegel, this ability to cut into pieces what in reality is together, this ability to take a flight into different dimensions to recombine realities, this is the ultimate reference of our freedom. This is love, this is—where do we find this in cinema? I think he is the ultimate Hegelian, you will not believe me, director today, although I don't like all of his films: Quentin Tarantino. You
I hope you hear me. Everything is okay. So thanks very much and just a couple of introductory remarks. First, Maria, I hope this will be interesting enough, when you mentioned those caves close to the Italian border in the south of Slovenia, Škocjan Caves. As my friend Mladen Dolar reminded me, the story is much more interesting of those caves. Do you know that Freud mentions in some letter that he also visited, Freud himself, the cave? And when he was at the darkest bottom of the cave—it’s really chaotic, hellish-like—he saw a black figure, more of a shadow, approaching him. And when the figure came closer to him, you know who this was? You know who Karl Lueger was? The Viennese mayor at that time, the key influence on Hitler, he was the big anti-Semitic populist politician. This is, in a way, hell. And Freud plays on this: Lueger, *Lüge* means lie. And this is a deep Freudian message, in the deepest of our unconscious, you don’t discover—Jungians think this—you don’t discover some deepest truth about spirituality, whatever. No, you discover the fundamental lie. That’s in the unconscious. It’s a wonderful story. Another reaction, we should talk later. Now, my books, obviously I don’t know what’s happening because it’s for the first time that I heard about a book of mine called *Outspoken*. Now that’s very interesting. Am I already split personality or whatever? Another thing, that *Freedom* book, no? Obviously Bloomsbury has problems—I have otherwise with them very good relations—Bloomsbury have problems with titles. I like to be provocative there. You know what was my title? *Freedom: A Poison Without Cure*. And they changed it now, and I protested, into *A New Philosophy*. No, I meant exactly what I want there. Just two more up to the point remarks. First, please, at least for tomorrow, so that I don't have to repeat what I already published—I don't like doing this—please read, those of you who didn't. It was, it is mentioned, the coordinates are given in the on the Birkbeck webpage, the presentation of this mini-course of mine. Please read my text on—belated response to my critics—on Buddhism. Please read my text on Buddhism, my response to my critics. It will make things much easier. And second thing, not to disappoint you, today I will not talk a lot about Buddhism, but I will rather present the background situation, horrors mostly happening today, or at least in the 20th century, which confront us with this choice. And it’s a great choice. I think these are two ultimately ethical positions, if we cut the crap: Buddhism or authentic Freudian position. How to react to horrors which are going on today. Okay, let me properly begin. In a video that appeared on the web now ten days ago in April we see the interaction in the middle of a public ceremony between the Dalai Lama and a seven-years-old boy. The boy is seen asking the Dalai Lama for a hug, following which the leader, Dalai Lama, blessed him, asked him to kiss him, and stuck out his tongue saying, "Suck my tongue." And if I saw it correctly, this does happen then. Now, many in the West blamed the Dalai Lama for behaving inappropriately and even being a pedophile. The critics pointed out that although sticking out one's tongue is a traditional practice in Tibet, a sign of benevolence, demonstrating that one’s tongue is not dark, which indicates evil. The idea is that in the 9th century there was an evil Dalai Lama, and the myth was that his tongue was black. So this gesture means basically, "Look, I'm a good guy." But as critics pointed out, asking another person to suck your tongue has no place in the Tibetan tradition. But again, Tibetans answered that the correct Tibetan phrase is *the-le-sa*, which roughly translates as "eat my tongue." It is used by an older person like a benevolent grandfather to express his love for the child. It means something like, "I love you, I give you everything I can, but now I have given you everything, so the only thing left is for you to eat my tongue." The meaning of this common expression used to tease and teach children is completely lost in cultural interpretation and its English translation. Because although English is Dalai Lama's second language, he speaks in not so good broken English at public events, often making himself wrong translations, like in this case where "eat" became "suck." But again, the critics pointed out that *the-le-sa* is a metaphorical expression, not implying that the addressee will really do it, while in this case, the child really sucked Dalai Lama’s tongue. Plus, the fact that something is part of a tradition doesn’t preclude that it has an obscene or oppressive background. Take the extreme case: clitoridectomy is also part of a tradition, and the ancient Tibet was full of what we consider today extremely humiliating practices and strict hierarchy. But again, it is no less probable that the wide distribution of this embarrassing clip was orchestrated by the Chinese authorities to besmirch the figure of Dalai Lama, since he personalizes the Tibetan resistance to Chinese domination. So the one thing we can be sure of in this mess is that for a moment we got a glimpse of the Dalai Lama as our neighbor, in the strict Lacanian sense of the term. Not our fellow man, somebody like us, but an other who cannot be reduced to someone like us, whose otherness indicates an impenetrable abyss. To complicate things even further, sticking one’s tongue far out is also part of another ancient tradition in Tibet. Serfs or subordinate persons do this when they encounter a figure of high authority to show their self-humiliation. You should turn your eyes out and basically the message is, "Look, I'm an idiot, not worthy of you." Plus, in Europe, in most of Europe, to stick out your tongue mostly functions as a rude gesture to indicate mocking disgust or, with children, playful teasing. So we can imagine three persons—a paternal benevolent Tibetan, a subordinate Tibetan, an average European—meeting, each of them greeting the other two with the same gesture of sticking out his tongue and interpreting the others doing the same gesture according to his or her or its understanding. For the paternal Tibetan, it would mean that they all want to be benevolent towards others; for the subordinate Tibetan, it would mean that they are all respectfully submissive; and for the European, that they are all in the mode of playfully teasing each other. In this way, the further exchange among the three could go on smoothly, since this is how many of our communications already function. That's my point. You know, we may read it in different way, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes it works even better. But let's take an example not to get lost in these exotic examples. Let's take a case from our own culture which really surprised me. Years ago, when I was reading a text about how the Nazis tortured prisoners in the concentration camps, it affected me quite traumatically when I found that they used industrially made testicle crushers. Like, you know, to break nuts or whatever. Industrially made testicle crushers to cause unbearable pain. Now I found that this same product—because I wanted to check is this true or not—so I went to Google, idiot that I am, and put it "testicle crushers." And I found that this same product, exquisitely made, is one of the series of similar things one can buy on the web. As the advertisement says: "Pick your poison for pleasure from this ball torture group. Stainless steel ball crusher. Stainless ball clamp torture device. Brutal cock vice torture toy. Hardcore stainless ball torture." So if you lie in bed with your partner, melancholy and tired of ordinary sex—I quote again the advertisement now—"The time is right. Your slave's nuts are ripe for crushing. It is the moment you have been waiting for, to find the right tool to brutalize his balls. The stainless ball clamp torture device could be the ultimate testicle crusher, giving its wicked brutal features." Now, if we imagine a scene of two men playing a sexual game with ball crushers, we of course immediately stumble upon ambiguous situations, to say the least. Let's say I by mistake enter a room where two men are playing this game, and since in all probability one of them is moaning and crying because of the pain, I misread this situation as an actual torture and jump in to attack the active guy. If I ignore the situation and just walk by, I ignore the possibility that it was an actual torture. So should I approach the two guys and politely ask them, "Is what you are doing really consensual?" Well, it's an idiotic thing to do. But let's go a step further and imagine a man doing something similar to a woman, torturing her consensually. Many among us would automatically presume that their activity is not consensual, and if it is, that the woman internalized male oppression, identifying with the enemy. The confusion is here irreducible. Unfortunately, there are rare, but there are men and women and trans and so on, who authentically enjoy a degree of torture which is non-consensual. Plus, we should recall the obsessional ritual of enacting a punishment to signal the presence of a desire punished by the specific form of the inflicted pain. Let's say that in a culture where rape is punished by flogging, somebody asks his friend to flog him brutally. There is no deep masochism at work here. Being flogged simply signals my desire to rape a woman. The passage from the ball crusher used to torture prisoners in Nazi concentration camps to the ball crusher that you can buy for a little bit over US dollars to play sadomasochist erotic games will undoubtedly be celebrated as a sign of historical progress. The same progress which brings us classic works of art purified of the content that may hurt somebody. The question that bothers us today is: why does the permissive stance towards sexual pleasure entail impotence and frigidity? Why, when pleasure is enjoined by a superego figure, are we deprived of it? Why, in these conditions, the only way to enjoy is sometimes at least through pain? My point is only Buddhism and psychoanalysis can provide some sort of an answer to this question, although in two opposite ways. Why Buddhism and psychoanalysis? Because the two can give an answer so that they both shift—that would be my formula for today—shift from focusing on an external enemy to shift from that to immanent antagonism. What characterizes an authentic emancipatory thought and practice is not a vision of conflict-free harmonious future, but the properly dialectical notion of an antagonism which is totally incompatible with the rightist topic of the need of an enemy to assert our self-identity. Here is—I was even shocked to find it—Martin Heidegger's articulation of the need for an enemy from his course of the year of his deepest Nazi engagement. A quote: "An enemy is each and every person who poses an essential threat to the *Dasein* (existence) of the people and its individual members. The enemy does not have to be external, and the external enemy is not even always the most dangerous one. And it can seem as if there were no enemy. Then it is a fundamental requirement to find the enemy, to expose the enemy to the light, or even first to make the enemy, so that this standing against the enemy may happen and so that *Dasein* (existence) may not lose its edge. The challenge is to bring the enemy into the open, to harbor no illusions about the enemy, to keep oneself ready for attack, to cultivate and intensify a constant readiness, and to prepare the attack, looking far ahead with the goal of total annihilation." End of quote. The most ominous passage is here: "to expose the enemy to the light, or even first to make the enemy, so that this standing against the enemy may happen." In short, it doesn't even matter if the enemy is a real enemy. If there is no enemy, it has to be invented so that a people may not lose its edge and can prepare for the invented enemy's total annihilation. What we find here is the logic of anti-Semitism at its most elementary. What Heidegger ignores is the possibility that an enemy is invented to create the false unity of the people and thus cover up its (the people’s) own immanent antagonisms. However, just a side remark: one should be careful not to extend this need for an enemy to the entirety of Heidegger's thinking. The passage quoted above is from Heidegger’s course of when he was at the high point of his Nazi engagement. At this point, he put forward the notion of *Volk* (people) as a community that needs an enemy. And when he later withdrew from active politics, the notion of enemy changes. It is no longer another ethnic group to be annihilated but modern technology as such, and one should not fight it but go through it and gain distance towards it. So when Richard Wolin focuses on a spiritualized racial community in his critique of Heidegger, he ignores all too much that there is no place for such a community in Heidegger's masterwork *Being and Time* (*Sein und Zeit*), which is focused on an individual *Dasein* (existence) thrown into the abyss of a world incidentally. One should also note that the style of *Being and Time* is totally different from Heidegger's later poetic intimations. It is a systematic book subdivided into numbers, paragraphs, and so on. Now, why is this passage nonetheless from Heidegger dangerous? Because I think that what Heidegger is describing, we have a person who brought it to extreme. In his speech to SS leaders in Poznań on October Heinrich Himmler spoke quite openly about the mass killing of the Jews as, I quote, "a glorious page in our history and one that has never been written and never can be written." End of quote. He then goes on to characterize the ability to do this and to remain decent as the greatest virtue of the Nazis. Quote: "To have gone through the extermination of the Jews and at the same time to have remained decent, this is what made us hard." End of quote. Himmler here exactly opposes true principled virtue to ordinary human compassion for a singular human being. Another quote: "But then they all come along, these million good Germans, and every one of them has his decent Jew. Of course, it's quite clear that other Jews are pigs, but this one is a first-class Jew." End of quote. In short, German knows that Jews as such are pigs, but when they fail to apply this principle to a singular Jew that they know, they become traitors. And Himmler is well aware of what he is saying. He explicitly includes the killing of women and children into this series. Another quote from Himmler: "We faced the question: what should we do with the women and children? I decided here too to find a completely clear solution. I did not regard myself as justified in exterminating the men—that is to say, to kill them or have them killed—and to allow the avengers in the shape of children to grow up for our sons and grandchildren. The difficult decision had to be taken to have this people disappear from the earth." End of quote. But what makes all this so—sorry to use this term—fascinating is the high ethical language used by Himmler to justify the extermination of the Jews but also the brutal treatment of the Slavic people under German occupation. Another a little bit longer quote: "One principle must be absolute for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and friendly to members of our blood and to no one else. What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs is a matter of utter indifference to me. Whether the other races live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. Apart from that, it does not interest me. Whether or not Russian women collapse from exhaustion while digging a tank ditch interests me only insofar as the tank ditch is completed for Germans. We have the moral right, we have the duty to our people to do it, to kill these people who want to kill us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves with even one fur, with one mark, with one cigarette, with one watch, with anything." End of quote. So Himmler goes to the end here. Further in the speech he imagines the case of an SS officer on the Eastern Front confronting a Russian mother with a small child, both scared of him, trembling and crying. The soldier's first reaction is understandably compassion. Is it really his duty as a soldier to kill these two helpless human beings? Himmler's answer is an unconditional yes. His fidelity is only to the German people, which implies total indifference towards the suffering of the members of other races. Bearing in mind the suffering the German people are exposed to by the continuous bombing by the American and British planes, any compassion with the two poor Russians is nothing less than treason for Himmler, an act of ignoring the suffering of one's own people. Was then Himmler a sadist doing horrible things and gaining surplus enjoyment from his conviction that he is doing just an ethical duty, or doing it for the big other, the good of the German nation? I think this formula is too simple to be applied here. There is something much more horrifying in Himmler. From what one can see by way of reading his letters, he was a terribly normal person. He detested personally witnessing brutality. He was decent and kind to his friends. He was ready to punish SS members for their petty crimes. And as such, as a normal individual, he did in his office what he knew he is doing. It is here that Lacan's claim that normalcy is a form of psychosis acquires its weight. Here, not surprisingly, Himmler comes close—but I don't identify them—to the Buddhist and Hinduist idea that we suffer and do hurtful things if we are too directly involved in what we perceive as reality of objects. So we should follow the doctrine of non-involvement, of the disinterested action. Act as if it doesn't matter, as if you are not the agent but things, including your own acts, just happen in an impersonal way. Now, it is difficult to resist here the temptation to paraphrase this passage as the justification of the burning of the Jews in the gas chambers to their executor caught in a moment of doubt. "Since he who thinks is to be the killer and he who thinks is to be killed both know nothing"—a quote from *Bhagavad Gita*, the Hinduist sacred text—"since the self kills not and the self is not killed, therefore you ought not to grieve for any burnt Jews but, looking alike on pleasure and pain, on gain and loss, on victory and defeat, you do what you ordered to do." No wonder that *Bhagavad Gita* was Himmler's preferred book. It is reported that he was always carrying it in his pocket, in the pocket of his uniform. Does this not hold also for today's military operations, which are more and more done through drones and by just putting buttons? Now, a specification. The same thing cannot be said for people directly working under Himmler; they were openly pathological. If Himmler was at the top of the pyramid of the organizers of the Holocaust, second to him were not well-known names like Heydrich and Eichmann—not these, but a compatriot of mine. Remember this name: Odilo Globočnik. An Austrian Nazi whose father was a Slovene, as his surname indicates. Globočnik had a leading role in Operation Reinhard, the organized murder of around one and a half million Jews of mostly Polish origin in the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Bełżec extermination camps. Globočnik originated the concept of the extermination camps and industrialized murder. The historian Michael Elan described him as the vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known. It was this guy Globočnik, you know, who when they didn't have enough, enough bullets to kill the Jews, he came to the idea out of his practice: "Why don't we redirect exhaust fume back of a car, back into the cabin of a truck?" Then his idea was to do this industrially. It's his original idea. But what lurks behind this topic is the question of the big other. The conclusion that imposes itself is not that every ethical stance needs some figure of the big other to rely on but, on the contrary, that a truly radical ethical position emerges when the subject is deprived of the support in any figure of a big other, so that it has to make a decision in the abyss of its freedom. Such a decision stands for the moment when ethics gets political, for the moment of the political suspension of the ethical. The subject has to make a decision which cannot be fully grounded in any kind of higher neutral principles. It has to make a decision about how to apply these principles, a decision which always gives them a particular spin. I think this is the case with Antigone. Her decision to risk everything for the proper funeral of her brother cannot be fully grounded in the universal immemorial rules she evokes. Every human being, independently of his kind, deserves—or her or their—deserves a proper funeral. She picked out her brother, ignoring all others. And it is this restriction which makes her act political, not just her public declaring of what she is doing. In this decision, she, Antigone, was not supported by a big other. In some formal sense, Antigone can be said to appear as evil from the standpoint of the existing order, a threat to it. But her evil is ethical, although in a totally different sense than that of Himmler. It opens up a new space for confronting the antagonisms of the existing society, while the function of Himmler's evil is precisely to obfuscate these antagonisms. Now let me move to this more general problem. And with all the focus that I had till now on Holocaust, let me just point out again that I am well aware of the horror of what Israel is now doing on the West Bank. Of what this means. It's not just a legal question, what happens with the independence of the legal system and so on and so on. It's the entire logic of basically directly legitimizing state crimes which Israel is coming close to. What I mean by this, more and more—I already talked about this—we are getting close to a situation where the term "courage," the term "courage" acquires a new meaning. Courage is not simply courage to do good things, to sacrifice yourself for helping others and so on. Courage becomes more and more, from hardliner, from right-wing hardliners to politicians like Donald Trump, courage becomes the courage to—as in Himmler—to break your own legal rules when the situation demanded it. If you show too much sympathy and so on, you don't display true courage. Courage means oppress your elementary ethical sensitivity. But that's another story, I've written about this extensively. Now, back to the big other. A fact from the Bosnian War in the early 1990s makes the same point. Many of the girls who survived brutal rapes killed themselves later after they rejoined the community, their community, and found that there is no one who is ready to listen to them, to accept their testimony. In Lacan's terms, what is missing here is not only another human being, the attentive listener, but the big other itself, the space of the symbolic inscription or registration of my words. One should here critically note that even Jacques Derrida's deconstruction continues to rely on a figure of the big other. When Derrida writes that deconstruction is justice, an impossible justice but still justice, this determination implies that deconstruction doesn't just bring out the inconsistencies and contradictions of a text. The work of deconstruction is led by the impossible ideal of fully bringing out all inconsistencies which legitimize secret forms of domination and oppression. This goal is, of course, infinitely postponed, forever eluding. In the same sense that Derrida talks about democracy to come, justice is always to come. To claim that it is fully here would have been the worst case of what Derrida called metaphysics of presence. However, in spite of the impossibility that pertains to justice, we have to cling to it as a kind of regulatory idea. What do I mean by this? I remember years ago talking to a faithful Derridean friend of mine at a reception after a talk—I can name her, it was Avital Ronell—and while we were picking up pieces of fried chicken, she told me: "How will we justify doing this at the final Nuremberg trial for the crimes humans commit against animals?" The regulatory idea is here that an ethical debt is accumulating for all the horrors of the industrial breeding of animals. Just think what we are doing to millions of pigs which remain half blind and barely can walk; they are just bred to get fat enough as quickly as possible and be slaughtered for our consumption. I respectfully remained silent, but the idea of a gigantic trial of all of humanity—by whom?—struck me as strangely twisted. Do we really have to presuppose such a figure of the big other, a promise that at some final point all debts will be settled, although we know this moment will never come? Is such an idea not deeply anthropocentric, transposing onto the stupid indifference of nature a sense of justice totally absent in it? Cannot we act ethically with regard to animal suffering although without such a figure of the big other? Back to Himmler. Do we in all of humanity not treat animals more or less exactly in the same way Himmler demanded Germans to treat Russian women? Whether or not pigs collapse from exhaustion of being overfed and treated with hormonal chemicals, with no free movement in nature, this interests us only insofar as the quota of pork meat is completed for us humans. Now comes a more tricky question. And Hitler? From what we know, one must concede that although it is unthinkable that Hitler didn't know about the Holocaust, he was probably spared the gory, gory details. When Himmler says that Holocaust is "a glorious page... but which will never be written," he doesn't only mean that the extermination of the Jews should not be known to the general public. There are hints that he also meant Hitler himself, the Messiah leading the German nation to a new beginning. The true fidelity to the Messiah, the true courage, is that we do silently and secretly the necessary dirty work of clearing the ground so that the Messiah, Hitler, will be able to realize his grandiose vision. The great act of us close followers of the Messiah is to keep him in ignorance, to allow him to pursue his vision in blessed innocence. As a supreme self-sacrifice, Himmler takes upon him the evil, and this properly ethical evil makes him much worse than any form of pragmatic opportunism. Which means that fidelity to a principled decision is not enough for an act to qualify as truly ethical. What really matters is how this principle relates to social antagonisms. Does it cover them or does it render them visible? The moment we accept an irreducible antagonism, we accept the fact that the big other doesn't exist, that it is ridden with inconsistencies, lacks, and antagonisms. Now, finally, to conclude for today, to my topic: Buddhism. Where does Buddhism stand here? Buddha's teaching is pragmatic, focused on alleviating suffering and pain. In matters of religion, Buddha was agnostic, not interested in any higher spiritual reality. All that exists is the interconnected non-substantial flow of phenomena beneath which there is no deep substantial divine ground but just the void. But it is interesting to note how Buddhism, which originally dispensed with all institutional ritual and focused solely on the individual's enlightenment and the end of suffering, irrespective of all dogmatic institutional frames, ended up clinging to the most mechanical and firmly entrenched institutional hierarchic frame. And simultaneously in a world conceived as full of spiritual entities. In Theravada Buddhism, there is no omnipotent creator god of the sort found in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Gods exist as various types of spiritual being but with limited powers. The question, of course, is: how did Buddhism come to this point? It would have been an utterly non-Hegelian reading if we were to dismiss this movement from pure focus on suffering to institutional rituals as a simple regression. If there is a Hegelian axiom, it is that the flaw has to be located at the very beginning of the entire movement. What then is already wrong with the starting point, the Hinayana version of Buddhism? Its flaw is precisely that to which the Mahayana version reacts, its symmetrical reversal. In striving for my own enlightenment, I regress into egotism in my very attempt to erase the constraints of my self. Consequently, one should not make fun of the superstitious features of Tibetan Buddhism, the step towards spiritualization and so on, but to become aware of how this step does the work. It does deliver the goods. Is not relying on a prayer wheel or, more generally, on the efficiency of a ritual also a means to achieve mindlessness, to empty one's mind and repose in peace? So in a way Tibetan Buddhism *is* faithful to Buddha's pragmatic orientation: ignore theological niceties, just focus on how to help people. Sometimes following blind ritual is pragmatically the most efficient way to achieve the goal of inner peace. So where is the problem here? Buddhism accepts the common view that the purpose of life is happiness. To quote Dalai Lama: "The purpose of our lives is to be happy." Buddhism just defines this term differently. Here again a couple of statements by Dalai Lama: "Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions. When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. We don’t need more money, we don't need greater success or fame, we don't need the perfect body or even the perfect mate. Right now, at this very moment, we have a mind which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness. Human happiness and human satisfaction most ultimately come from within oneself." End of quotes. Following Freud, Lacan on the contrary asserts death drive as the basic component of our libidinal lives, which operate beyond the pleasure principle. What Lacan calls enjoyment (*jouissance*) emerges out of a self-sabotage of pleasure. It is an enjoyment in displeasure itself. A Lacanian view, I think, is much closer to *Doctor House*—I refer to the series—Doctor House who, TV series, in one of the episodes, when he tries to diagnose a patient and one of his collaborators mentions that the patient radiates happiness, Doctor House immediately adds "happiness" to the list of the patient's symptoms of his illness to be explained and abolished. The feeling of happiness is a dangerous symptom, not something we should strive for. And one should add here that the same goes for what is also considered the most spontaneous parental feeling: the immense love of one's small child. Small children are horror embodied: stupid, annoying, smelling bad, breaking our sleep. So again as Doctor House says at some point, the feeling of love for them is a clear case of what is called the Stockholm syndrome—a coping mechanism to a captive or abusive situation, when people develop positive feelings towards their captors or abusers over time. Again, this I think is the exact mechanism of how we cope with small children. Now, just to conclude. So what about the desperate Lacano-Buddhist attempt? There are some Buddhists which try—more on this tomorrow—to be at the same time Lacanian, to read what Buddhism calls Nirvana as basically the same stance as that signaled by Lacan's traversing the fantasy. We cannot simply dismiss this as a gross misunderstanding of Lacan because there is a grain of truth in it. Desire is metonymic. Every empirical positive object that we desire is a trap, in the sense that if we get it, our desire is not fully satisfied but disappointed. We experience a "*Ce n'est pas ça*"—"This is not that" what we really desire. So let's drop our attachment to particular objects and just persist surfing along them from one to another object. In other words, a true betrayal of our desire is precisely our full attachment to a particular object as the true object. If we renounce this, if we maintain a distance towards every object, we attain peace. We are faithful to our desire to the void in its heart which cannot be abolished by any object. But, I claim, this logic ultimately fails. For Lacan, desire in its purity, considered without an empirical object of desire, cannot be transformed into a peaceful integration into a non-substantial changing multiplicity of our reality, because desire is as such a gesture of breaking up the balance of reality. If we subtract particular objects we get the gesture of breaking up, of disturbing the balance as such. What any particular empirical object of desire obfuscates is not the balance of a void but this negative gesture. Any particular object particularizes this rupture as such, transforming it into a desire for something that positively exists. Just now to conclude a political variation on this. Recall Lacan's basic formula of hysterical desire: "I ask you what? To refuse what? What I offer you. Why? Because that's not it." This exactly, I think, should also be the reaction of the victim of racism or sexism to the endless process of the pseudo-liberal left offering them more and more concessions. "Let's rewrite classic texts to make them acceptable to today's sensibilities and so on. Let's purify our daily language so that 'they' becomes the pronoun for all those who don't want explicitly to be addressed as he or she. Let's destroy the monuments to all figures from the past who said or did something that is today considered problematic and so on." The answer of the oppressed should be: "Sorry, but that's not it. You are bombarding me with such offers just to retain your basic social position of superiority." So when Lacan proposes his formula of hysterical provocation—"I ask you to refuse what I offer you because that's not it"—we should go to the end here and enact the passage from giving or having to being. A hysteric does not just endlessly reject what the other offers him or her or them because that's not it what he, she, they really want; he, she, they finally realize that the "it"—that it is the other itself. The message is: "You are not it. You are not in a position to give me what I really need or want." But notice a specific reversal in Lacan's formula. It's not me, the victim, demanding something from a figure of the big other who is complaining about it. "I refuse what you are offering me because that's not it." That's not what Lacan says. Lacan says that it's the other itself who asks me to refuse its offer because that's not it. Do we not get here an extreme version of the offer meant to be rejected, a form of politeness in our daily lives? You know this example, I used it dozens of times. When I invite my poor friend to an expensive dinner, it is clear to both of us that I will pay the bill. However, at least in my country, it is expected that my friend will insist for a short time that he should pay the bill, and then as expected he concedes that I will pay. So, can Lacan's formula of hysteria—"I demand you to refuse what I offer you because it's not that"—can it not be read also as a formula of an authentic power structure, government? The message of such a power to the subject should not be, "We give you whatever you want or need," or even, or even, "We give you what you really need even if you are not aware of it." It is rather: "We give you what we can, but we know well this is not that." Imagine that in the midst of the COVID pandemic a government's message would have been: "We are doing all we can, we organize all the measures—vaccination, lockdowns—but this is not that." And the same holds for global warming and so on. Unfortunately, there is also a more cynical reading of this formula: "We give you all the rights and so on, but that's not it. Beneath all this there is the fact that our raw power, the fact of our raw power. We can do what we want. We don't really serve you." This gap, I think, is constitutive of power. Which means that a hysterical power is impossible. Power has to pretend or act as if it is actually pure power. I think I used my one hour. This is what I have for now. And tomorrow we go into Buddhism in detail because I think that precisely at this point, as many intelligent Buddhists are aware, precisely at this point Buddhism oscillates between total compassion—"I postpone my entry into Nirvana till all living beings, not only humans, will be [unintelligible] of their pain"—and this, under quotation marks, "egotist" self-withdrawal. "I enter Nirvana, that's it." Why and how this happens I will explain tomorrow, and I will also explain what interests me most, in what sense the lesson of psychoanalysis is here the Hegelian one. That of desire which is not return to peace but desire is a violent fragmentation, imbalance. Do not betray your desire precisely means be faithful to your crazy choice. It's time to stop. Thanks very much. Maria, take over. I’m here. I’m not going to take over; the audience will take over. But meanwhile, I just wanted to thank you very much. Obviously you left us wanting more. You also—some bits of it were very difficult to listen to. Nevertheless... Sorry to tell you this, but you know what was my point here? I was against this "safe space" logic. To prevent things like this happen in reality, we have to talk about them. And I am sincerely perplexed here. You know, I don't have easy answers, and maybe that's a solution. But I'm sorry. No, but then we'll all have more nightmares. But we also have lots of— But better nightmares than things like this happening to you in reality, you know? I agree. So no, it's open to the audience to ask any questions. I'm looking at the chat and there isn't at the moment. Alia, you can't see anything either, is there? Maybe I could ask something, unless—I haven't, Alia, is there anything there? I can't see anything in the chat. Not yet. Not yet. So everyone, do feel free to start writing questions about today's lecture or anything else you are burning to ask Žižek. Until we get some more questions, I wouldn't mind asking you, Slavoj, a bit more about—maybe it's coming tomorrow as you promised—but a bit more about Buddhism vis-à-vis Hegel rather than vis-à-vis Lacan and Freud. I mean, obviously the death drive that you started describing is the big distinction or the big divorce between Buddhism and psychoanalysis’ version of happiness. But I did—I do have—you're really good at sort of pithy little comments in your talks as well as in your books, and I don't remember where this particular one came from, and whenever in doubt I assume it came from *Less Than Nothing*. But anyway, at some point—you don't remember either where your own comments come from, so we'll say it was in *Less Than Nothing*—but you say something like: "The Buddhist question, the big Buddhist question, is 'How did we—how do we get out of illusion, the illusory ego? How do we get out of suffering?' Whereas the Hegelian question is 'How did we fall into it?'" And I wonder if you can say a bit more about that, how the Hegelian question might be more productive or stimulating for our predicament than the Buddhist question about how do we get out of suffering or how do we get out of illusion. How did—yeah, could you say a bit more about that? No, first I would, let's hope people will raise some, I hope, aggressive question. But I—the reason I wanted to make it clearer tomorrow, and I will, the reason I focused on this example—disgusting—of Himmler, is that you know, whenever I read, and I read them often, Buddhist texts, they always sound—sorry for using this term—Deleuzian to me. Deleuzian in the sense that against fixity—okay, I'll put it like this. For intelligent Buddhists, as you will hear tomorrow, Nirvana does not mean you withdraw yourself from full experience of reality and you are in some kind of a purely spiritual blessed state. You just accept what they call the pure interrelatedness of phenomena. Things do not have a substantial existence on their own; things are interconnected, so that what thing is, is only its relations to other things. And for Buddhists, they like, some of them, again, to refer to Deleuze here, because their point is that Nirvana in some sense doesn't mean, again, withdrawing from reality, but even fully immersing yourself into reality. You just don't substantialize reality, neither your ego nor objects, into a firm entity which is exempted from this eternal intermingling flow of appearances and so on and so on. So as many of them say, Buddhism is not an escape from reality; it is full immersion into the multiple, ultimately flexible flow of appearances. And they criticize, in a sometimes even very naive empiricist way along the lines of Bergson or some even empiricists, they criticize intellectualism. For them, the original evil is when we—when intellect—when we analyze thing intellectually, we isolate into parts what in reality belongs together. For Hegel, the way I read it, and for Lacan, let's not go into details now, this disassembling of reality—you are in a complex reality but you say, "No, exactly only this matters"—this is, for example, the phenomenon of love at its purest. For our tradition, love is not this peaceful Buddha smile, "I love all creatures." No, love is "I love you" and I basically don't care if all other things fall apart. And this is the procedure of understanding: you tear apart what belongs together. The elementary form of this is imagination, which is why imagination plays a key role in Freud (fantasies) but also already in German idealism, from Kant to Hegel. Hegel already pointed out that transcendental imagination is Kant's greatest conceptual achievement. So for Hegel, our rational categories are not a prison from which we should liberate ourselves into some kind of a free immersion into creative flux. For Hegel, this ability to cut into pieces what in reality is together, this ability to take a flight into different dimensions to recombine realities, this is the ultimate reference of our freedom. This is love, this is—where do we find this in cinema? I think he is the ultimate Hegelian, you will not believe me, director today, although I don't like all of his films: Quentin Tarantino. You
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know, when in his *Inglourious Basterds* and some other movies, he just changes well-known historical reality? Hitler is killed there and so on. And there
know, when in his *Inglourious Basterds* and some other movies, he just changes well-known historical reality? Hitler is killed there and so on. And there
Slavoj Žižek
is such a liberating effect in this. It makes you retroactively aware of how contingent is what effectively happened. I think that the great achievement of Hegelian dialectics is not to see a deeper necessity in what appears as a contingency, but to see the contingency of
is such a liberating effect in this. It makes you retroactively aware of how contingent is what effectively happened. I think that the great achievement of Hegelian dialectics is not to see a deeper necessity in what appears as a contingency, but to see the contingency of
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what appears to us as a necessity.
what appears to us as a necessity.
Slavoj Žižek
So again, this is for me the ultimate choice. Either you enter
So again, this is for me the ultimate choice. Either you enter
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Nirvana—and I mean this now in an authentic sense, not this spiritual "you are not here," no, you are fully here—either you do this, or you accept what Buddhists try to get rid of: this intellect, cutting the unity, mortifying even it, as the very resource of our freedom. Aha, okay. That's a beautiful answer. Have you written the stuff on Quentin Tarantino as a Hegelian? I mean, that's a beautiful—thank you, that's a brilliant example that you brought up. My wife Jela is now writing on him. Oh is she? All right, I’ll have to look for that. Yeah, yeah, because you know, I listened with her—she told me an interview with Tarantino. And it shows nicely—I forgot which interview—how he works, his mind. He talks about that movie which is not one of my favorite ones, a pseudo-western remake, how is it called, *A Seven I Don't Know What*, where a black guy is extremely brutal, humiliates whites and so on and so on. And he, again, or in *Inglourious Basterds*, where he presents even some Germans as funny and so on. You know, he—Tarantino is a master of breaking out of bad clichés, precisely the clichés of authenticity. Tarantino's ultimate message is that we need more creative faking. Just don't be authentic. That’s brilliant. Okay, I like that. I’ve got some more questions, maybe you can take a few of them. Yeah, we’ve had a few more. So, Maxim, I will come back to you. I’ll just take them in the order in which they’ve arrived, and they’re all very good questions. But you should be also a Stalinist and made a selection. Ah yeah, but I’m liking all of them so far,
Nirvana—and I mean this now in an authentic sense, not this spiritual "you are not here," no, you are fully here—either you do this, or you accept what Buddhists try to get rid of: this intellect, cutting the unity, mortifying even it, as the very resource of our freedom. Aha, okay. That's a beautiful answer. Have you written the stuff on Quentin Tarantino as a Hegelian? I mean, that's a beautiful—thank you, that's a brilliant example that you brought up. My wife Jela is now writing on him. Oh is she? All right, I’ll have to look for that. Yeah, yeah, because you know, I listened with her—she told me an interview with Tarantino. And it shows nicely—I forgot which interview—how he works, his mind. He talks about that movie which is not one of my favorite ones, a pseudo-western remake, how is it called, *A Seven I Don't Know What*, where a black guy is extremely brutal, humiliates whites and so on and so on. And he, again, or in *Inglourious Basterds*, where he presents even some Germans as funny and so on. You know, he—Tarantino is a master of breaking out of bad clichés, precisely the clichés of authenticity. Tarantino's ultimate message is that we need more creative faking. Just don't be authentic. That’s brilliant. Okay, I like that. I’ve got some more questions, maybe you can take a few of them. Yeah, we’ve had a few more. So, Maxim, I will come back to you. I’ll just take them in the order in which they’ve arrived, and they’re all very good questions. But you should be also a Stalinist and made a selection. Ah yeah, but I’m liking all of them so far,
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and some of them chime in with things I was going to ask. So let me start with John. Can you say more about the distinction between an ethical position that obfuscates
and some of them chime in with things I was going to ask. So let me start with John. Can you say more about the distinction between an ethical position that obfuscates
Slavoj Žižek
antagonism versus an ethical position that exposes antagonism? How does one identify the antagonism to be exposed? Can you say something about that, or shall I read a few more questions before—or do you want to respond to that? No, no, let’s go one by one because I’m getting old and senile and you know I can forget. So let me try to be brief here. It all depends what do you mean as antagonism. Let me give you the simplest possible example. It's boring, I always return to it, but precisely because I think, with all my unwavering support for West Bank Palestinians, that anti-Semitism is structurally the purest matrix of ideology. That's why my critique of Israel—state of Israel—and the predominant politics today is precisely that they practice some kind of anti-Semitic Zionism. I was so glad to notice that Gideon Levy and some critical intellectuals in Israel also began to use this term: anti-Semitic Zionism. So I will try to explain it precisely. What's the difference between the enemy and antagonism? Himmler, as I said, if you define ethics simply as being faithful to your principle, to your idea of the good, disregarding consequences for you, then I'm sorry, Himmler was an ethical person. Other Nazis were not; Göring was grabbing artworks... Himmler was a horror, the true horror. But why is anti-Semitism in itself a non-ethical position? Because to put it in the simplest possible terms, the question is not—I'm repeating myself what I said here many times already—the problem with anti-Semitism is not "is its image of the Jew true or not?" The moment you do this, you miss the point. We shouldn't debate, "But did the Jews really exploit...?" No, no, no. The true point is, to turn critically the Heidegger point: why did the Nazis need the Jew as an enemy? Why did they have to construct it? Isn't it clear? They say it openly. It's in order to obfuscate the basic class struggle antagonism and so on. Because they project social tension, a tension that is inscribed into the very social order, they project it onto an external cause: "No, we are in ourselves a harmonious organic community, the trouble comes from the outside." And at a different level—I've written enough about the difference between the two of them—isn't it quite similar with Stalinist purges? When there were problems, instead of admitting something is wrong with our project of Stalinist centralized fast industrial development and so on, no, they needed to account for their problems an external enemy, Trotskyites, Nazi agents, and so on. And they even used this wonderful logic where you unite all your enemies even if they come from opposite camps, you know, like Nazis like to talk about the Judeo-Bolshevik plot, Stalinists liked to talk about the Trotsky-Bukharin—like all opponents are basically one of the same, organized from outside and so on and so on. So I, this would be an example. An emancipatory thing is not to focus on the enemy, but to ask the question—even if there is an enemy, I'm not saying there are no enemies—but to ask the question, "What are our inner contradictions, tensions, social struggles that the enemy can exploit?" I had debates with many of my friends recently from Iran where, with this, it’s a wonderful, I think it’s a world-historical event, this Iranian resistance movement, incredible courage triggered by women, by protesting women. And again, the authorities are playing the game: "This is under foreign influence, foreign agent, Western multiculturalism, feminism." No, even if it is, it's really not Eurocentric because protesters, who not many of them even use sometimes Western language, human rights blah blah blah, they use simply the language which is at their disposal, but they use it to articulate their own antagonism problems and so on. And Alenka Zupančič—I don't know if it's already published, she gave this as a talk in Montreal recently, but it's published—wrote a wonderful text where she points out how the Iranian protest movement is precisely this: "That's not it, what you are offering us," you know, like when those in power say, "Okay, we will relax it a little bit" and so on, that it’s—that’s why in an authentic radical emancipatory movement you demand
antagonism versus an ethical position that exposes antagonism? How does one identify the antagonism to be exposed? Can you say something about that, or shall I read a few more questions before—or do you want to respond to that? No, no, let’s go one by one because I’m getting old and senile and you know I can forget. So let me try to be brief here. It all depends what do you mean as antagonism. Let me give you the simplest possible example. It's boring, I always return to it, but precisely because I think, with all my unwavering support for West Bank Palestinians, that anti-Semitism is structurally the purest matrix of ideology. That's why my critique of Israel—state of Israel—and the predominant politics today is precisely that they practice some kind of anti-Semitic Zionism. I was so glad to notice that Gideon Levy and some critical intellectuals in Israel also began to use this term: anti-Semitic Zionism. So I will try to explain it precisely. What's the difference between the enemy and antagonism? Himmler, as I said, if you define ethics simply as being faithful to your principle, to your idea of the good, disregarding consequences for you, then I'm sorry, Himmler was an ethical person. Other Nazis were not; Göring was grabbing artworks... Himmler was a horror, the true horror. But why is anti-Semitism in itself a non-ethical position? Because to put it in the simplest possible terms, the question is not—I'm repeating myself what I said here many times already—the problem with anti-Semitism is not "is its image of the Jew true or not?" The moment you do this, you miss the point. We shouldn't debate, "But did the Jews really exploit...?" No, no, no. The true point is, to turn critically the Heidegger point: why did the Nazis need the Jew as an enemy? Why did they have to construct it? Isn't it clear? They say it openly. It's in order to obfuscate the basic class struggle antagonism and so on. Because they project social tension, a tension that is inscribed into the very social order, they project it onto an external cause: "No, we are in ourselves a harmonious organic community, the trouble comes from the outside." And at a different level—I've written enough about the difference between the two of them—isn't it quite similar with Stalinist purges? When there were problems, instead of admitting something is wrong with our project of Stalinist centralized fast industrial development and so on, no, they needed to account for their problems an external enemy, Trotskyites, Nazi agents, and so on. And they even used this wonderful logic where you unite all your enemies even if they come from opposite camps, you know, like Nazis like to talk about the Judeo-Bolshevik plot, Stalinists liked to talk about the Trotsky-Bukharin—like all opponents are basically one of the same, organized from outside and so on and so on. So I, this would be an example. An emancipatory thing is not to focus on the enemy, but to ask the question—even if there is an enemy, I'm not saying there are no enemies—but to ask the question, "What are our inner contradictions, tensions, social struggles that the enemy can exploit?" I had debates with many of my friends recently from Iran where, with this, it’s a wonderful, I think it’s a world-historical event, this Iranian resistance movement, incredible courage triggered by women, by protesting women. And again, the authorities are playing the game: "This is under foreign influence, foreign agent, Western multiculturalism, feminism." No, even if it is, it's really not Eurocentric because protesters, who not many of them even use sometimes Western language, human rights blah blah blah, they use simply the language which is at their disposal, but they use it to articulate their own antagonism problems and so on. And Alenka Zupančič—I don't know if it's already published, she gave this as a talk in Montreal recently, but it's published—wrote a wonderful text where she points out how the Iranian protest movement is precisely this: "That's not it, what you are offering us," you know, like when those in power say, "Okay, we will relax it a little bit" and so on, that it’s—that’s why in an authentic radical emancipatory movement you demand
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something but the reaction is always: "That's not it." And I—but that’s another topic which will maybe create me friends but also enemies—that’s also what conditions my sympathy for Afropessimism,
something but the reaction is always: "That's not it." And I—but that’s another topic which will maybe create me friends but also enemies—that’s also what conditions my sympathy for Afropessimism,
Slavoj Žižek
this most radical trend. Because their idea is
this most radical trend. Because their idea is
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precisely,
precisely,
Slavoj Žižek
"White liberals—oh, do you want more? Shall we censor more white books, more of this?" "No, no, that’s not it. That’s not it. You are doing this so that the basic relations remain the same. You want to integrate us into your ideological-political frame, this is what is for you openness. But for us, this frame itself is already twisted wrong" and so on. Okay, not to lose time but you see my point. That would be my idea: always focus on an immanent antagonism. Okay. Next question from Jean. Dr. Ambedkar, the untouchable hero, emancipated millions of untouchables from centuries of oppression through a mass shift from Hinduism to Buddhism. This is an excellent achievement of Buddhism. Please comment. Oh no, but of course. I mean, if anything, I admire
"White liberals—oh, do you want more? Shall we censor more white books, more of this?" "No, no, that’s not it. That’s not it. You are doing this so that the basic relations remain the same. You want to integrate us into your ideological-political frame, this is what is for you openness. But for us, this frame itself is already twisted wrong" and so on. Okay, not to lose time but you see my point. That would be my idea: always focus on an immanent antagonism. Okay. Next question from Jean. Dr. Ambedkar, the untouchable hero, emancipated millions of untouchables from centuries of oppression through a mass shift from Hinduism to Buddhism. This is an excellent achievement of Buddhism. Please comment. Oh no, but of course. I mean, if anything, I admire
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Ambedkar. And this was again one example of how some radical Hinduists declare: if you criticize them from the position of Buddhist egalitarianism, they criticize you for introducing Western
Ambedkar. And this was again one example of how some radical Hinduists declare: if you criticize them from the position of Buddhist egalitarianism, they criticize you for introducing Western
Slavoj Žižek
concepts of egalitarianism into
concepts of egalitarianism into
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specific Indian culture and so on and so on. You see? So precisely that's why I like people like Ambedkar. As for Ambedkar and Buddhism, you know, I'm not abstractly against Buddhism. Buddhism is extremely serious, the most radical position. Buddhism is—Buddhism is in some sense radically egalitarian. You know that Buddha himself—this was the greatest taboo—at the end considered that women also should be fully included
specific Indian culture and so on and so on. You see? So precisely that's why I like people like Ambedkar. As for Ambedkar and Buddhism, you know, I'm not abstractly against Buddhism. Buddhism is extremely serious, the most radical position. Buddhism is—Buddhism is in some sense radically egalitarian. You know that Buddha himself—this was the greatest taboo—at the end considered that women also should be fully included
Slavoj Žižek
into their communities. He went far. But what intrigues me is how then very soon afterwards, a couple of centuries in Tibet for example, how this same Buddhism was transformed in order to justify the most radical social hierarchy that you can imagine. So I think that—and that's what I will try to do tomorrow—I think that Buddhism, that there is a tension in Buddhism—and I'm not saying only in Buddhism, obviously also in Marxism blah blah blah—but that there is an ambiguity in Buddhism in the sense that it can be read as radically emancipatory, but it can also be read as, "Let's change nothing, just acquire inner freedom and society remains the same, you will just suffer less." So you don't have to convince me of anything here. I think Buddhism is something absolutely incredible here, much more serious. It's—ah, another thing I maybe will mention tomorrow, my friend Lorenzo Chiesa, who now co-authored with Adrian Johnston a book on Lacan and Atheism, points out how this Western mystical reading of Buddhism is totally wrong. Buddhism is not a mysticism. Mysticism means access to divine *jouissance*. You identify with God and you as it were swim in God's *jouissance*. Buddhism is totally non-mystical. Nirvana is not divine *jouissance*. Nirvana is stepping out of desire into a void. And this void is not the void of *jouissance*. It's the most radical position. Sorry, let's go on. Brilliant. All right, we carry on tomorrow. Maxim Chang wanted to ask something using his microphone. Are you there, Maxim? Yeah. Hi. Hi everyone. And thank you, Žižek. I'm Tibetan and I'm studying specifically Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist art. Then you know more than me. Then you can— No, no, of course you know more. Like I— No, I don't know. Why do you say— No, I just— But I would like from you an honest—I'm not bluffing—an honest criticism, maybe even more tomorrow than today, like when, where I am wrong, to put it bluntly. I think it's great. I think it's great. I think your interpretation of how Buddhism is a active even social-cultural-philosophical engagement with the reality I think—that just reminds me of a haiku by Bashō, a Zen Buddhist. He talked about "There's an ancient pond, there's a frog, plop." So fundamentally it's about the be-at-oneness in Buddhism and how you could interact with the reality, like you also talked about interconnectedness and—okay, yeah. I'll just ask the question. Sorry, I'm a bit excited. Attack! Attack me! I want you to pull behind your back a knife out. I’ve been reading your books and stuff, it’s just crazy. Okay. Um, so my question is precisely: what is your research methodology and how can it be juxtaposed back into the historical-philosophical and cultural context? It’s quite general, but I kind of want to hear it. Thank you. My God, this is—I can—I never—now I will make a very honest admission. I never—I was always used simply to doing things; I never asked myself "how" what I'm doing. What attracts me—and this is what I learned from Hegel and from Freud and so on—I believe in the power, in the power of simple examples. You know, everyday examples, no? Like something small happens. And if you analyze it, it may appear in itself insignificant, but it offers a key to many, many things around. Like that's why that story—and I tried to be fair, I hope you noticed, Dalai Lama—that there, please, I hope others are also interested. Tell me, did I miss some point? I tried honestly to bring in all the aspects: against, for arguments. Please, did I mix something? I think it's great. From my point of view, it's great. There's definitely like a historical and cultural connotation in Tibetan society we have, but also there's definitely— Yeah, but sorry to interrupt you, but the problem is this one. Okay, you have all this—and I know that showing your tongue had this benevolent meaning like that I mentioned, a grandfather "eat my tongue, I give you everything." But that also it has—I read in a sympathetic book to Buddhism—that this was some ritual when Tibet was still feudal, that if a lower serf met a master, you had to step out of the path and like humiliate—all that. But I’m here a little bit more perverse type: I know the expression "eat my tongue." But wasn't this meant as a metaphor? I think simply—I don't particularly research into this, but from my personal experience, it's just like a way of saying hello. Yeah, yeah! But you're not really doing it. Sticking out your tongue and saying hello,
into their communities. He went far. But what intrigues me is how then very soon afterwards, a couple of centuries in Tibet for example, how this same Buddhism was transformed in order to justify the most radical social hierarchy that you can imagine. So I think that—and that's what I will try to do tomorrow—I think that Buddhism, that there is a tension in Buddhism—and I'm not saying only in Buddhism, obviously also in Marxism blah blah blah—but that there is an ambiguity in Buddhism in the sense that it can be read as radically emancipatory, but it can also be read as, "Let's change nothing, just acquire inner freedom and society remains the same, you will just suffer less." So you don't have to convince me of anything here. I think Buddhism is something absolutely incredible here, much more serious. It's—ah, another thing I maybe will mention tomorrow, my friend Lorenzo Chiesa, who now co-authored with Adrian Johnston a book on Lacan and Atheism, points out how this Western mystical reading of Buddhism is totally wrong. Buddhism is not a mysticism. Mysticism means access to divine *jouissance*. You identify with God and you as it were swim in God's *jouissance*. Buddhism is totally non-mystical. Nirvana is not divine *jouissance*. Nirvana is stepping out of desire into a void. And this void is not the void of *jouissance*. It's the most radical position. Sorry, let's go on. Brilliant. All right, we carry on tomorrow. Maxim Chang wanted to ask something using his microphone. Are you there, Maxim? Yeah. Hi. Hi everyone. And thank you, Žižek. I'm Tibetan and I'm studying specifically Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist art. Then you know more than me. Then you can— No, no, of course you know more. Like I— No, I don't know. Why do you say— No, I just— But I would like from you an honest—I'm not bluffing—an honest criticism, maybe even more tomorrow than today, like when, where I am wrong, to put it bluntly. I think it's great. I think it's great. I think your interpretation of how Buddhism is a active even social-cultural-philosophical engagement with the reality I think—that just reminds me of a haiku by Bashō, a Zen Buddhist. He talked about "There's an ancient pond, there's a frog, plop." So fundamentally it's about the be-at-oneness in Buddhism and how you could interact with the reality, like you also talked about interconnectedness and—okay, yeah. I'll just ask the question. Sorry, I'm a bit excited. Attack! Attack me! I want you to pull behind your back a knife out. I’ve been reading your books and stuff, it’s just crazy. Okay. Um, so my question is precisely: what is your research methodology and how can it be juxtaposed back into the historical-philosophical and cultural context? It’s quite general, but I kind of want to hear it. Thank you. My God, this is—I can—I never—now I will make a very honest admission. I never—I was always used simply to doing things; I never asked myself "how" what I'm doing. What attracts me—and this is what I learned from Hegel and from Freud and so on—I believe in the power, in the power of simple examples. You know, everyday examples, no? Like something small happens. And if you analyze it, it may appear in itself insignificant, but it offers a key to many, many things around. Like that's why that story—and I tried to be fair, I hope you noticed, Dalai Lama—that there, please, I hope others are also interested. Tell me, did I miss some point? I tried honestly to bring in all the aspects: against, for arguments. Please, did I mix something? I think it's great. From my point of view, it's great. There's definitely like a historical and cultural connotation in Tibetan society we have, but also there's definitely— Yeah, but sorry to interrupt you, but the problem is this one. Okay, you have all this—and I know that showing your tongue had this benevolent meaning like that I mentioned, a grandfather "eat my tongue, I give you everything." But that also it has—I read in a sympathetic book to Buddhism—that this was some ritual when Tibet was still feudal, that if a lower serf met a master, you had to step out of the path and like humiliate—all that. But I’m here a little bit more perverse type: I know the expression "eat my tongue." But wasn't this meant as a metaphor? I think simply—I don't particularly research into this, but from my personal experience, it's just like a way of saying hello. Yeah, yeah! But you're not really doing it. Sticking out your tongue and saying hello,
unknown
maybe it was writing on my autobiography: "Do you usually really do it?" Or just like hello? We do it, we do it just to show— No, no, no, you do this, but do you expect the other to suck your tongue? No, no, that's—so yeah,
maybe it was writing on my autobiography: "Do you usually really do it?" Or just like hello? We do it, we do it just to show— No, no, no, you do this, but do you expect the other to suck your tongue? No, no, that's—so yeah,
Slavoj Žižek
that's the—so yeah, that's the problem here. Yeah, that's a little bit problematic with this, of course. I know, but just to finish—just to finish, my friend—I try to be honest, you know why? Because I think that of course we should support Tibetan resistance. I know how Chinese try to infiltrate Tibet, that now I think in Lhasa there are already more Chinese than Tibetans now, all that stuff. But precisely, I think the worst thing you can do is to—to idealize wrongly Tibetans. You know, let's not elevate them into saints. Because the moment you do this, you get caught into—into position. Every nation has its up and down. For example, I mentioned that Dalai Lama, 9th century, who was supposed to be evil, black tongue. But didn't you also have another Dalai Lama—I read him with pleasure—from I don't know which century, who was almost a pornographic Dalai Lama? He fucked around and so on, you know? And this is for me wonderful openness of the culture. Yeah, he writes a lot of the pornographic poetry but to invoke, like what you said, this idea of mindfulness, this idea of—let's just say mindfulness. He is still taken seriously. Yeah, never. I mean, it's very—he is part of Tibetan tradition, they don't censor him in Tibetan tradition. Because you know, that's what I want to say. To know really a culture, I don't want to know just the idealized image. I like to know its inter-tensions: who hates whom, what are the oppositions and so on and so on, you know? It's more like a landscape. Ask—can I ask you another question? The last one, I'm sorry, I'm losing time. Is it true or not? I heard a rumor which is too beautiful to be true, but I'm interested in—you know when Dalai Lama in '59 or when, oscillated, should he leave Tibet to India or not? The rumor is that there was some sacred medium who took some drugs and then blah blah spoke with spirits and gave him the advice to leave. The idea is that now they discovered some documents that this sacred medium was on the payroll of CIA, who told him what to. I—this is not to humiliate Tibetans, but that's how reality works. I love this, you know? You know which was for me the greatest Chinese obscenity? You know that a couple of years ago Dalai Lama proposed that they dispense with tradition—we live in modern times—why shouldn't the new Dalai Lama be elected? And then I had to laugh: the Chinese official reaction was "Oh, Dalai Lama is violating the sacred Tibetan tradition!" Precisely, this is the brutality of politics, how Chinese all of a sudden can become, if it fits them, the protectors of the sacred tradition and so on and so on, you know. Sorry, let's change. Yes, thank you very much for joining, Maxim. Hopefully you'll be there tomorrow and Žižek can ask you more questions tomorrow because I think— No, Žižek was to ask you more stuff. But there's a few more questions waiting, quite a few more questions actually waiting, so let's carry on. Okay, Filippo Sieri—this is a nice question about the concept of time in Buddhism and psychoanalysis. "What do you think about the idea of time between Buddhism and psychoanalysis, where Buddhism and the new modern psychotherapies (mindfulness) are focused on the
that's the—so yeah, that's the problem here. Yeah, that's a little bit problematic with this, of course. I know, but just to finish—just to finish, my friend—I try to be honest, you know why? Because I think that of course we should support Tibetan resistance. I know how Chinese try to infiltrate Tibet, that now I think in Lhasa there are already more Chinese than Tibetans now, all that stuff. But precisely, I think the worst thing you can do is to—to idealize wrongly Tibetans. You know, let's not elevate them into saints. Because the moment you do this, you get caught into—into position. Every nation has its up and down. For example, I mentioned that Dalai Lama, 9th century, who was supposed to be evil, black tongue. But didn't you also have another Dalai Lama—I read him with pleasure—from I don't know which century, who was almost a pornographic Dalai Lama? He fucked around and so on, you know? And this is for me wonderful openness of the culture. Yeah, he writes a lot of the pornographic poetry but to invoke, like what you said, this idea of mindfulness, this idea of—let's just say mindfulness. He is still taken seriously. Yeah, never. I mean, it's very—he is part of Tibetan tradition, they don't censor him in Tibetan tradition. Because you know, that's what I want to say. To know really a culture, I don't want to know just the idealized image. I like to know its inter-tensions: who hates whom, what are the oppositions and so on and so on, you know? It's more like a landscape. Ask—can I ask you another question? The last one, I'm sorry, I'm losing time. Is it true or not? I heard a rumor which is too beautiful to be true, but I'm interested in—you know when Dalai Lama in '59 or when, oscillated, should he leave Tibet to India or not? The rumor is that there was some sacred medium who took some drugs and then blah blah spoke with spirits and gave him the advice to leave. The idea is that now they discovered some documents that this sacred medium was on the payroll of CIA, who told him what to. I—this is not to humiliate Tibetans, but that's how reality works. I love this, you know? You know which was for me the greatest Chinese obscenity? You know that a couple of years ago Dalai Lama proposed that they dispense with tradition—we live in modern times—why shouldn't the new Dalai Lama be elected? And then I had to laugh: the Chinese official reaction was "Oh, Dalai Lama is violating the sacred Tibetan tradition!" Precisely, this is the brutality of politics, how Chinese all of a sudden can become, if it fits them, the protectors of the sacred tradition and so on and so on, you know. Sorry, let's change. Yes, thank you very much for joining, Maxim. Hopefully you'll be there tomorrow and Žižek can ask you more questions tomorrow because I think— No, Žižek was to ask you more stuff. But there's a few more questions waiting, quite a few more questions actually waiting, so let's carry on. Okay, Filippo Sieri—this is a nice question about the concept of time in Buddhism and psychoanalysis. "What do you think about the idea of time between Buddhism and psychoanalysis, where Buddhism and the new modern psychotherapies (mindfulness) are focused on the
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'right here, right now' (*die Gegenwärtigung*), while psychoanalysis
'right here, right now' (*die Gegenwärtigung*), while psychoanalysis
unknown
is focused on the past of the patient?" So do you want to say something about the concept of time? No, no, that's a mega-question, you know? And it reaches not only psychotherapy, philosophy. I'm not saying I understand quantum mechanics,
is focused on the past of the patient?" So do you want to say something about the concept of time? No, no, that's a mega-question, you know? And it reaches not only psychotherapy, philosophy. I'm not saying I understand quantum mechanics,
Slavoj Žižek
but you know that now we are at an extremely important moment with regard to quantum
but you know that now we are at an extremely important moment with regard to quantum
unknown
mechanics because now they are returning to big ontological questions. The Copenhagen orthodoxy was "Don't think, but calculate," as they would put it, no? Formulas work, don't ask what they mean ontologically, what is reality, what is not. Now this is returning, and there are two tendencies. As for Buddhism, I admit it, I don't really know enough about this topic. I just know that for example in quantum mechanics, you have on the one hand those who try to revitalize Einstein's idea—okay, I'll put it like this. The ultimate agreement is that if you want to reach some kind of ultimate reality, whatever this means, one of the two
mechanics because now they are returning to big ontological questions. The Copenhagen orthodoxy was "Don't think, but calculate," as they would put it, no? Formulas work, don't ask what they mean ontologically, what is reality, what is not. Now this is returning, and there are two tendencies. As for Buddhism, I admit it, I don't really know enough about this topic. I just know that for example in quantum mechanics, you have on the one hand those who try to revitalize Einstein's idea—okay, I'll put it like this. The ultimate agreement is that if you want to reach some kind of ultimate reality, whatever this means, one of the two
Slavoj Žižek
basic dimensions will have to be sacrificed: either time or space. They cannot be ontologically equal. Then we have—so we have some following Einstein, who at some point proposed the hypothesis that universe is at its most basic level timeless, and that time is only—emerges because of our limitation. Time means we cannot see everything at once. Time—there is time because we humans are limited spatially. On the opposite hand, there are people like Rovelli and others who—and this is for me much more attractive—who think that space is an effect of temporary interaction. So at this level for me, to answer directly the question, no,
basic dimensions will have to be sacrificed: either time or space. They cannot be ontologically equal. Then we have—so we have some following Einstein, who at some point proposed the hypothesis that universe is at its most basic level timeless, and that time is only—emerges because of our limitation. Time means we cannot see everything at once. Time—there is time because we humans are limited spatially. On the opposite hand, there are people like Rovelli and others who—and this is for me much more attractive—who think that space is an effect of temporary interaction. So at this level for me, to answer directly the question, no,
unknown
psychoanalysis, even when it talks about the past, is never really about the past. It is how the past
psychoanalysis, even when it talks about the past, is never really about the past. It is how the past
Slavoj Žižek
is present now. Psychoanalysis don't use psycho—like even those big traumas, you know, like the way people read, for example, Wolfman, whose origin was that when he was in a cradle, two years old or whenever, he by mistake saw his parents copulating in the doggy-style, and that’s a terror, no? No, but already Freud showed that this was just a neutral memory for him; only later did Wolfman elevate this into what mattered to him. Each epoch retroactively constructs its own past. Not invented, but past
is present now. Psychoanalysis don't use psycho—like even those big traumas, you know, like the way people read, for example, Wolfman, whose origin was that when he was in a cradle, two years old or whenever, he by mistake saw his parents copulating in the doggy-style, and that’s a terror, no? No, but already Freud showed that this was just a neutral memory for him; only later did Wolfman elevate this into what mattered to him. Each epoch retroactively constructs its own past. Not invented, but past
unknown
is past, I'm not a magician. What happened really happened. But past can acquire a different meaning in each epoch. So again,
is past, I'm not a magician. What happened really happened. But past can acquire a different meaning in each epoch. So again,
Slavoj Žižek
psychoanalysis here is absolutely focused on the present. And it's the typical move of psychoanalysis, not
psychoanalysis here is absolutely focused on the present. And it's the typical move of psychoanalysis, not
unknown
Jungian, "Look at the old
Jungian, "Look at the old
Slavoj Žižek
archetype." But we project into old archetypes something that contingently happens here, now in our time. And Lacan makes this clear also. That when—he says that the psychoanalytic notion of repetition and so on is not simply temporal development. Repetition means a moment of the past, how a moment from the past becomes a moment as the moment of the past becomes the moment of our present. Even at the level of big ideologies, we can see what is happening now. For example, the most ridiculous example—a political example, I was quite
archetype." But we project into old archetypes something that contingently happens here, now in our time. And Lacan makes this clear also. That when—he says that the psychoanalytic notion of repetition and so on is not simply temporal development. Repetition means a moment of the past, how a moment from the past becomes a moment as the moment of the past becomes the moment of our present. Even at the level of big ideologies, we can see what is happening now. For example, the most ridiculous example—a political example, I was quite
unknown
shocked—how for example what Israel is doing now. The problem of course is, how can West Bank be their
shocked—how for example what Israel is doing now. The problem of course is, how can West Bank be their
Slavoj Žižek
land when they were years ago thrown out? And not by the Arabs, but by the Romans, you know? The Romans threw them out. And historically Jews till end of 19th century had pretty good relations with Arabs. For example, I read a Jewish historian who pointed out that, you know, when Saladin liberated Jerusalem there from Crusaders. And that one of the first public edicts of Saladin was a call to Jews: "Now it's safe for you to return." And there are documents which even point out that some Jews were fighting with the Arabs against the Crusaders, Saladin's forces. So what I'm saying is that I read an interview with Netanyahu, a podcast, which is horrible. His story is this one: it's not Romans, it's the today's Arabs who threw the Jews out till 5th, 6th century, and then today’s Palestine was more or less an empty land. And then only after '70, when Jews began to return there, they developed industry, better farming,
land when they were years ago thrown out? And not by the Arabs, but by the Romans, you know? The Romans threw them out. And historically Jews till end of 19th century had pretty good relations with Arabs. For example, I read a Jewish historian who pointed out that, you know, when Saladin liberated Jerusalem there from Crusaders. And that one of the first public edicts of Saladin was a call to Jews: "Now it's safe for you to return." And there are documents which even point out that some Jews were fighting with the Arabs against the Crusaders, Saladin's forces. So what I'm saying is that I read an interview with Netanyahu, a podcast, which is horrible. His story is this one: it's not Romans, it's the today's Arabs who threw the Jews out till 5th, 6th century, and then today’s Palestine was more or less an empty land. And then only after '70, when Jews began to return there, they developed industry, better farming,
unknown
which—for which they needed Arab workers. So that Jews brought today's Palestinians back when they were returning to... I mean, this is a clear example of a crazy rewriting of history. Remember that a battle for the future is always a battle from the past. The first thing to do when you fight for a different future is to change the past. Not to change in the sense of invention, of
which—for which they needed Arab workers. So that Jews brought today's Palestinians back when they were returning to... I mean, this is a clear example of a crazy rewriting of history. Remember that a battle for the future is always a battle from the past. The first thing to do when you fight for a different future is to change the past. Not to change in the sense of invention, of
Slavoj Žižek
imagination and so on, but to throw a new light onto, onto the past. And it’s today this is extremely important. Okay. I notice we’ve only got five minutes left and at least five more questions, including a postscript by Filippo who asked the last question, saying that "we should also bear in mind that San—" Shall I read them, shall I put them all together or— Put them all together and then I’ll do whatever I can. Okay. All right, let's—the next one is about the similarities between Buddhism and nihilism. Do you want to talk a little bit about similarities between Buddhism and— No, I think nihilism in the sense in which we use the term today is a typical European phenomenon. And I don't—what we find in other civilizations is state of despair, existential despair. For example, some of my friends visited those countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, where people simply stopped talking about the future. Life is a despair, you just worry about how to survive. But this is not nihilism. Nihilism is... and Buddhism, don't confuse nihilism with celebration of the void of nothing or whatever. Buddhism is not in this sense nihilism. I think again, it’s something totally, totally different. No overlapping here. Okay, let's go on. The next one, actually Thomas is a very, very wide one that I think we might come back tomorrow, about—to say a bit more about desire and its relation to the self. Another one from Heath, Heath about Himmler and his interest in Eastern philosophy. "Is it possible," he asks, "whether the contemporary right—Aka, QAnon, Trumpism, Putin—might attempt to adopt esotericism in the same way that Nazis did?" There are attempts! For example, a friend from Brazil sent me a text, I kind of was able to read it with my half-knowledge of blah blah, which points out that, you know, when they had—when was it in the '70s, I think, there was a military dictatorship in Brazil, and they kept secret police doing the usual stuff: torturing, killing illegally people. And to come to terms with what they were doing, they invented their own pseudo-Orientalist mystical, I don't know how, Buddhist theory, how life is appearance, what matters is your inner experience and all that stuff. Isn't this crazy? Isn't this crazy, how they invented their own new age spiritual theory to be able to deal with what, with the horrors they were doing? So, but nonetheless, in the specific situation we are here now, I think the big—the in great majority the in the West the new right is Christian, although for me it's de facto totally anti-Christian. It's a kind of—I cannot develop it now—pagan rewriting of Christianity. It’s... this is why they are also anti-Semitic. Because the old dream of European right is to erase Judaism and to establish a direct link between previous pagan religions and them, Christ, you know? But that's again too complicated. Okay, I’ll drop back. Let's stop for today and tomorrow we go on. Okay, before I—a loving hello from India from Thomas who also points out that the so-called— Oh my god, I love this! Where he comes from?
imagination and so on, but to throw a new light onto, onto the past. And it’s today this is extremely important. Okay. I notice we’ve only got five minutes left and at least five more questions, including a postscript by Filippo who asked the last question, saying that "we should also bear in mind that San—" Shall I read them, shall I put them all together or— Put them all together and then I’ll do whatever I can. Okay. All right, let's—the next one is about the similarities between Buddhism and nihilism. Do you want to talk a little bit about similarities between Buddhism and— No, I think nihilism in the sense in which we use the term today is a typical European phenomenon. And I don't—what we find in other civilizations is state of despair, existential despair. For example, some of my friends visited those countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, where people simply stopped talking about the future. Life is a despair, you just worry about how to survive. But this is not nihilism. Nihilism is... and Buddhism, don't confuse nihilism with celebration of the void of nothing or whatever. Buddhism is not in this sense nihilism. I think again, it’s something totally, totally different. No overlapping here. Okay, let's go on. The next one, actually Thomas is a very, very wide one that I think we might come back tomorrow, about—to say a bit more about desire and its relation to the self. Another one from Heath, Heath about Himmler and his interest in Eastern philosophy. "Is it possible," he asks, "whether the contemporary right—Aka, QAnon, Trumpism, Putin—might attempt to adopt esotericism in the same way that Nazis did?" There are attempts! For example, a friend from Brazil sent me a text, I kind of was able to read it with my half-knowledge of blah blah, which points out that, you know, when they had—when was it in the '70s, I think, there was a military dictatorship in Brazil, and they kept secret police doing the usual stuff: torturing, killing illegally people. And to come to terms with what they were doing, they invented their own pseudo-Orientalist mystical, I don't know how, Buddhist theory, how life is appearance, what matters is your inner experience and all that stuff. Isn't this crazy? Isn't this crazy, how they invented their own new age spiritual theory to be able to deal with what, with the horrors they were doing? So, but nonetheless, in the specific situation we are here now, I think the big—the in great majority the in the West the new right is Christian, although for me it's de facto totally anti-Christian. It's a kind of—I cannot develop it now—pagan rewriting of Christianity. It’s... this is why they are also anti-Semitic. Because the old dream of European right is to erase Judaism and to establish a direct link between previous pagan religions and them, Christ, you know? But that's again too complicated. Okay, I’ll drop back. Let's stop for today and tomorrow we go on. Okay, before I—a loving hello from India from Thomas who also points out that the so-called— Oh my god, I love this! Where he comes from?
unknown
This is—this is—blah blah blah. This is Kerala, no, down there? This is the best part of England, the part associated
This is—this is—blah blah blah. This is Kerala, no, down there? This is the best part of England, the part associated
Slavoj Žižek
with— Yeah.
with— Yeah.
unknown
He also points out that the so-called non-dualist...
He also points out that the so-called non-dualist...
Slavoj Žižek
this is the most sympathetic for me part of India. Very nice. Okay, well there are a few questions that I’m going to try to remember tomorrow. I’ll take note of them and we can carry on tomorrow. Tomorrow I will try to be a little bit shorter, shorter so that we have more time for the debate. Okay, thank you from everybody. Thank you very much
this is the most sympathetic for me part of India. Very nice. Okay, well there are a few questions that I’m going to try to remember tomorrow. I’ll take note of them and we can carry on tomorrow. Tomorrow I will try to be a little bit shorter, shorter so that we have more time for the debate. Okay, thank you from everybody. Thank you very much
unknown
myself and I'm glad that the connection
myself and I'm glad that the connection
Slavoj Žižek
worked, no? So thank you very much and see you tomorrow. Bye-bye.
worked, no? So thank you very much and see you tomorrow. Bye-bye.
unknown
See you soon.
See you soon.
Slavoj Žižek
Bye. I’m going to take photos of the chat. Oh, maybe Alia—
Bye. I’m going to take photos of the chat. Oh, maybe Alia—