Slavoj Žižek, Jonathan Meese & Robert Eikmeyer: Hegel and Art
Debate · Majid Abed ·
2021-11-14 · 1:28:48 · 11,581 words
hegel-dialecticscinema-art-cultureideologyreligion-theologyrevolution-violencedemocracyliberalism-political-correctnessrace-antisemitismethicseveryday-lifehistoryphilosophy-general
A staged conversation at the Hegel-Haus (Stuttgart) launching the book 'Immer Ärger mit Hegel / The Trouble with Hegel', pairing Slavoj Žižek with artist Jonathan Meese and moderator Robert Eikmeyer on Hegel's thesis that art is 'a thing of the past'. Žižek defends a Hegelian reading where only representative realist art has ended (following Robert Pippin), arguing that abstract and monstrous modern art, Kafka, Shalamov, and even sitcoms like Seinfeld are the true heirs of Hegel's aesthetics. The talk broadens into a shared polemic against the contemporary 'dictatorship of taste', political correctness as 'Zwangskollektivierung', and the reduction of religion and art to safety/comfort, with Žižek complicating Meese's 'dictatorship of art' with reflections on Saint-Just, Joan of Arc, Kafka, and the need to think beyond current democratic form.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 16
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “Wahrheit (truth)”
For Hegel, art is about truth in an existential, not metaphysical-copy sense: it tells something about our global existential predicament, not about reproducing a theoretical idea.
Hegel's model of the rational state whose disintegration after Hegel ushered in Massengesellschaft and made realism a lie.
as “Humanus”
Hegel's name for the only remaining topic of post-reconciliation art: the everyday-life mess of love adventures, illness, professional failure, illustrated for Žižek by sitcoms like Seinfeld and Cheers.
Žižek's Hegelian thesis that modern art moves not from beauty to the traditional sublime but to the monstrosity, a monstrous caricature renders our predicament better than realist portrayal.
as “Vermittlung (mediation)”
Hegel's key figure: spiritual content is already mediated at the immediate level of material forms (lines, colours), and the modern 'curator' is a pathological new figure of mediation.
Via Robert Faller: the curator observes the artwork on our behalf so we can remain passive spectators of taste, 'we observe pictures interpassively through curators'.
Žižek brands the contemporary curator as the pathological mediator of the art world: the artist addresses the curator, not the public, and the public observes interpassively through the curator.
Žižek's formula for reading Hegel forward, going through him to modernity but staying with him rather than superseding him.
Žižek adopts Meese's term for forced collectivization: today's ideology presents the loss of individuality as your free choice of taste, unfreedom experienced as freedom.
Kant's ethical act, invoked to show how a student reducing it to 'not how I experience it' exemplifies taste displacing argument.
Žižek's twist: the freedom of taste celebrated today is not individual at all but intersubjectively mediated unfreedom, 'unfreedom is experienced at its opposite, as your stupid freedom to do trivial things'.
Žižek's aphoristic test: real freedom, especially freedom to say the truth, hurts; if it doesn't hurt it isn't the truth.
Žižek's paradox: today's religions are a fanatical defence against authentic religious experience, reducing it to psychotherapy and a safety-net of taste.
as “Hegel more materialist than Marx”
Žižek's reversal: Hegel, who refuses to speculate on the future, is more materialist than Marx, who still believed in historical progress toward communism.
Žižek reverses Adorno's 'no poetry after Auschwitz' into 'no realist prose after Auschwitz but poetry yes', realism cannot render the horrors, non-realist art can.
as “Nacht der Welt (night of the world)”
Hegel's image for the obscure intermediary moments of half-sleep where monstrous appearances arise and Žižek locates his best ideas.
Stories he reaches for 4
Napoleon took the crown from the Pope's hands and crowned himself; the Pope's comment was 'You want to destroy Christianity. Believe me you will not succeed. We the Church are trying to do it for years and we didn't succeed.'
“We the Church are trying to do it for years and we didn't succeed.”
Lukács did not see that to portray our spiritual situation Kafka as a non-realist hit it much more adequately than any realist portrayal of bureaucratic alienation.
“Kafka as a non-realist hit it much more adequately than any realist portrayal of today's bureaucratic alienation.”
When arrested at the fall of Jacobinism, Robespierre had a momentary breakdown, cried and shouted; Saint-Just remained absolutely perfect to the end, both nonetheless chose death over compromising their pure sense.
“Rather than to compromise their pure sense, they risked their life. I mean they were not idiots.”
When the Taliban bombed the Buddha statues in Bamyan, Žižek argued they were taking Buddhism more seriously than Western multiculturalists, they recognized a real conflict of truth where tolerant relativism sees many parallel truths.
“they are taking Buddhism much more seriously than us. They saw „We have a truth, this is an alternative truth and we have to destroy it."”
Works invoked 13
The Castle book
Žižek's re-reading: the Castle is the place of obscenity, Kafka is full of obscene pleasure, not merely the poet of bureaucratic alienation.
Kolyma Tales book
Shalamov's non-realist Gulag stories, named by Žižek as the true literary portrayal of the camps against Solzhenitsyn's realism.
Hegel's text where he modestly says of America and Russia that their spiritual potential is not yet deployed and the next century may be theirs, evidence for Žižek that Hegel was no speculative idiot about the future.
Cheers tv
Named alongside Seinfeld as a half-comic half-dramatic TV series exemplifying Hegel's Humanus.
Hegel's model of the rational state whose post-Hegelian disintegration ushered in mass society and made realism a lie.
Seinfeld tv
Named as a contemporary exemplar of Hegel's 'Humanus', the everyday-life mess without deeper spiritual struggle.
After the Beautiful book
Robert Pippin's book that Žižek recommends and uses to redeem Hegel: the end of art is the end of representative realist art, not all art.
Hegel's Aesthetics book
The source of the 'end of art' thesis and of the 'Humanus' passage on everyday life as the remaining art-topic; Žižek's central textual anchor.
Kandinsky's abstract paintings artwork
Abstract paintings that Žižek argues Hegel would have embraced, spirit already inscribed at the level of lines and colours.
Laibach's body of work artwork
The Slovene post-punk group's work as a premonition of the dark side of post-socialist passage to democracy.
Malevich's abstract paintings artwork
Named alongside Kandinsky as non-realist painting fitting Hegel's theory even better than realism.
Shown by a Japanese composer to his students, who boycotted it as 'blatant racism' for Olivier's blackface; deployed by Žižek as the test case for art that should be allowed to make us unsafe.
The book whose launch occasioned the conversation, the published Žižek-Eikmeyer dialogue on the 250th anniversary of Hegel's birth, with Meese drawings.
People invoked 33
Franz Kafka positive
Read against the standard 'poet of bureaucratic alienation' reading as full of obscene pleasure, the Castle is a place of obscenity; a non-realist who hits our spiritual situation.
Robert Pippin positive
American Hegelian, often polemical against Žižek personally, but his book 'After the Beautiful' is recommended and used to redeem Hegel's end-of-art thesis as the end of representative realism.
Kazimir Malevich positive
Named alongside Kandinsky as abstract/non-realist painting that fits Hegel's aesthetics.
Georg Lukács negative
Praised Solzhenitsyn's realism; Žižek counters that Lukács did not see that Kafka as a non-realist hit our spiritual situation far more adequately.
Theodor W. Adorno negative
His dictum 'no poetry after Auschwitz' is inverted by Žižek into 'no realist prose after Auschwitz but poetry yes'.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited for the thesis that a good leader is indifferent towards being betrayed.
Georges Danton negative
Guillotined by Robespierre; Žižek claims newly opened British archives prove Danton was paid and corrupted by the British.
Robert Pfaller positive
Named as 'my friend'; Žižek borrows his concept of interpassivity to describe how we observe pictures through curators.
Varlam Shalamov positive
Author of 'Kolyma Tales'; named by Žižek as the true literary portrayer of the Gulag, against the realist Solzhenitsyn.
Donald Trump negative
A symptom of what was already wrong in pre-Trumpian US democracy, not an external accident; the reason to seek a step beyond current democracy.
A film of his is recalled where actors step out of the screen and talk with the viewer, a model for authentic art entering reality.
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just positive
Žižek's chosen Jacobin, 'He is my guy', remained absolutely composed to the end and is the author of the navigator-without-compass image of the revolutionary.
Laibach positive
Slovene post-punk group whose whole work Žižek reads as a premonition against the naive happy passage from socialism to capitalist democracy.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn negative
Tried to realistically represent Gulag life; Žižek rejects this realist approach in favour of Shalamov.
Taliban positive
Paradoxically credited with taking Buddhism more seriously than multicultural tolerance, by recognizing a real conflict of truth in destroying the Bamyan Buddhas.
Maximilien Robespierre positive
Together with Saint-Just 'truly gigantic'; chose death over compromising his pure sense; not a proto-totalitarian since he allowed himself to be voted out of power.
Jonathan Meese positive
Co-conversant artist; Žižek takes up Meese's term 'Zwangskollektivierung' and agrees on the critique of taste, while stopping short of handing the world to artists.
Named as an exemplar of the great realist tradition whose mode can no longer portray horrors like Auschwitz.
Named among the realists who could still aim at a large realist portrait.
Subject of the crown-anecdote: took the crown from the Pope and crowned himself, intending to destroy Christianity.
Named among the realists who could still aim at a large realist portrait before realism became a lie.
Joschka Fischer negative
Mocked for the claim that Trump 'just fell from space and ruined everything', the anti-Hegelian, accidental reading of Trump.
Wassily Kandinsky positive
Abstract painter whose work Žižek argues Hegel would have embraced as fitting his theory even better than realism, spirit at the level of lines and colours.
Joan of Arc positive
A figure of truth, ruined not just by the British but by the coalition of French king and nobility with them, the betrayed prophet.
Named as a realist who could still attempt a large realist portrait before realism became a lie.
Meister Eckhart positive
Named as a top contender of Rhineland German mysticism, an authentic religious source to be recovered against today's religion of safety.
Jakob Böhme positive
Named alongside Meister Eckhart as a Rhineland/German mystic to be recovered for authentic religion.
Karl Marx negative
Critiqued as still believing in historical progress toward communism, which makes Hegel, who refused to speculate on the future, more materialist than him.
Socrates positive
Model for authentic religion as the discovery of an idea that derails daily life.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central reference of the talk; Žižek reads the 'end of art' as the end of realism, defends Hegel as more materialist than Marx, and ends with a toast to Hegel 'coming from the future'.
Immanuel Kant positive
The categorical imperative is invoked via a student who dismissed it as 'not how I experience an ethical act', an exhibit of taste displacing argument.
Named as an exemplar of the great realist tradition whose mode can no longer portray horrors like Auschwitz.
Named in passing as not belonging to the same realist category as Tolstoy.
What it argues
Hegel's 'end of art' as the end of representative realism, not all arttaste as the ideology of our erapolitical correctness and conspiracy thinking as Zwangskollektivierung (forced collectivization of taste)authentic religion vs religion as safety-net/psychotherapythe curator as the symptomatic evil mediator of contemporary artmodern art's passage from beauty to monstrositythe Jacobins (Saint-Just, Robespierre) as figures of truth, not proto-totalitariansEurope as the source of its own critique (anti-colonialism, Enlightenment)future as unknowable, unvotable, accessible only through risky artistic/prophetic signs
Dialectical moves 12
“unfreedom is experienced at its opposite, as your stupid freedom to do trivial things”
The very form of contemporary subjugation is the subjective experience of freedom, taste is how unfreedom feels today.
“Freedom hurts. If it doesn't hurt it's not the truth.”
True freedom is inverted into its felt opposite, pain is the diagnostic of authenticity, not comfort.
“what is out there on the screen should enter reality”
The inversion of fictional distance: authentic art is not reality aestheticized on screen but the screen's horror stepping into our reality.
“Hegel is for me in some sense more materialist than Marx”
The idealist Hegel is more materialist than the materialist Marx because Hegel refuses to speculate on a future guaranteed by History.
“the only topic of art remaining is Humanus, the everyday-life mess”
After reconciliation, the highest vocation of art inverts into the lowest: the trivial everyday is what survives as art's topic.
“modern art is the passage from beauty not to the sublime but to the monstrosity”
The successor of beauty is not the elevated sublime but its grotesque underside, monstrosity renders our predicament more truly.
“abstract art is much more spiritual than traditional art”
The inversion: turning toward material forms (lines, colours) is more spiritual than art that uses matter as a mere medium for transcendent content.
“no realist prose after Auschwitz but poetry yes”
Žižek inverts Adorno: it is realist prose, not poetry, that cannot survive Auschwitz, the non-realist is the only adequate form.
“all serious critiques of colonialism come from Europe”
The very critique of European colonialism is itself European, Europe is the condition of possibility of its own negation.
“Trump is a symptom of what was already wrong, non-functioning in democracy”
Inverting the liberal 'accident' reading: Trump is the truth of the prior normality, not its external ruination.
“today's religions are a fanatical fear of authentic religious experience”
Religion is not the opposite of secular unbelief but the very defence against the genuinely religious encounter it claims to serve.
“a good leader is indifferent towards being betrayed”
Via Lacan: true authority inverts the populist flirt, the leader who needs followers is already lost, the true one speaks truth without courting assent.
Claims 35
asserts
Hegel's 'end of art' thesis correctly targets only representative realist art, not all art — following Robert Pippin's redemption in 'After the Beautiful'.Hegel's end-of-art thesis
asserts
The horrors of the 20th century (Auschwitz, Gulag) resist realist interpretation; a big realist novel about Auschwitz in the style of Stendhal or Balzac would be a fake.realism vs atrocity
asserts
Varlam Shalamov's 'Kolyma Tales' is the true literary portrayal of the Gulag, not Solzhenitsyn's realism that Lukács praised.Gulag literature
asserts
Abstract painting (Kandinsky, Malevich) fits Hegel's aesthetics even better than realism because spirit is already inscribed at the immediate level of lines and colours.abstract art and Hegel
asserts
In post-Hegelian mass society realism becomes a lie; Kafka as a non-realist portrayed our spiritual situation far more adequately than any realist.realism in modernity
asserts
Endless half-comic half-dramatic TV series like Seinfeld and Cheers exemplify Hegel's 'Humanus' — the everyday-life mess as the remaining topic of art.Hegel's Humanus and sitcoms
asserts
Modern art is the passage from beauty not to the traditional sublime but to the monstrosity: a monstrous caricature renders our situation better than a realist portrayal.modern art and monstrosity
asserts
The curator is the symptomatic evil figure of today's art world, mediating between artist and public so that both reduce art to taste.the curator
asserts
We live in an era of taste, and taste creates ideology; Hegel would have been horrified by the tyranny of taste.taste as ideology
asserts
Political correctness is a form of Zwangskollektivierung: it addresses individuals as victims while in fact collectivizing their taste.political correctness
asserts
Great serious art is precisely there to traumatize you and make you feel unsafe, not to confirm a 'safe space' of taste.art and safety
asserts
Conspiracy theories' motto 'do your own research' masks an unfreedom that is presented as a higher form of freedom.conspiracy thinking
asserts
The freedom of taste is not individualized but extremely intersubjectively mediated — people at exhibitions calculate how not to offend others.freedom of taste
asserts
We need a new, brutal imposition of truth against the false liberty of taste; freedom that doesn't hurt is not the truth.truth and freedom
asserts
Authentic religion, as with Socrates, is the discovery of an idea that derails your daily life, like falling in love — today's religions reduce it to a psychotherapy of safety.authentic religion
asserts
The Taliban, in destroying the Bamyan Buddhas, took Buddhism more seriously than multicultural tolerance does.Taliban and Buddhism
asserts
Today's religions are a fanatical fear of authentic religious experience; the Church has been trying to destroy Christianity for years (per the Napoleon-Pope anecdote).religion and authenticity
asserts
We need to lose the safety distance of watching horrors on TV news from another part of the world; what is out there on the screen should enter reality.safety distance and reality
asserts
Hegel is not a naive progressivist: philosophy can only describe a life-form already in its decay, and the future does not belong to philosophy.Hegel and the future
asserts
Crises like COVID and global warming will affect fundamentally what it means to be human, possibly requiring new elementary rules of cohabitation.crisis and humanity
asserts
The Glasgow climate negotiations failed because they built a coalition of sects with no true shattering truth-event.Glasgow negotiations
asserts
We cannot vote about the future; the future comes and we need strong leaders who, per Lacan, are indifferent to being betrayed.leadership and the future
asserts
Hegel is in some sense more materialist than Marx, because Marx still believed in historical progress whereas Hegel refused to speculate about the future.Hegel vs Marx
asserts
The Jacobin terror is not the first step towards totalitarian terror; mostly the Jacobins were right, and they were voted out of power rather than staging a coup.Jacobin terror
asserts
Danton was literally paid and corrupted by the British — it is now proven from British archives.Danton
asserts
Robespierre and Saint-Just knew the tendency pointed towards a new Napoleon and chose to risk death rather than compromise their pure sense.Robespierre and Saint-Just
asserts
What we know about the future is only accessible through art — Kafka and Laibach already foresaw the dark dimension of post-socialist 'democratic' passage.art and knowledge of the future
reframes
Kafka is full of obscene pleasure, not merely the poet of bureaucratic alienation; the Castle is the place of obscenity.Kafka
asserts
The current opinion-based form of democracy is simply inoperative in confronting the big challenges we face.current democracy
reframes
To avoid a Chinese-style dictatorship we must look for a step beyond the democracy we have now; sticking to it will only invite figures like Trump.democracy and authoritarianism
rejects
Trump is a symptom of what was already wrong in pre-Trumpian US democracy, not an accident that 'fell from space' as Joschka Fischer claimed.the 'Trump fell from space' view
asserts
All serious critiques of colonialism come from Europe; without the European Enlightenment there would be no anti-colonialism.Europe and anti-colonialism
asserts
Europe should not humiliate itself in anti-Eurocentric self-flagellation but ask what it can still give the world.Europe and self-critique
reframes
Against Adorno's 'no poetry after Auschwitz', the correct formula is 'no realist prose after Auschwitz but poetry yes' — poetry can deal with it, realist prose cannot.Adorno's dictum
asserts
The best philosophical ideas come in the half-sleep moments before falling asleep or upon awakening, and the conscious mind is 'evil' and tries to sabotage them.thinking and half-sleep
Quotes 18
“In all these respects art considered in its highest vocation is and remains for us a thing of the past.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel's end-of-art thesis (quoted by Žižek)
“It's not an accident that we don't have and cannot have a big realist novel about Auschwitz.”Slavoj Žižek · realism's failure before atrocity
“I think it's Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales who is the true one.”Slavoj Žižek · Shalamov over Solzhenitsyn
“mit Hegel durch Hegel, through Hegel forward but with Hegel”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's Hegelian method
“a monstrous caricature renders much better our situation than a realist portrayal”Slavoj Žižek · modern art's passage to monstrosity
“we observe pictures interpassively through curators”Slavoj Žižek · interpassivity and the curator
“great art, serious art, not classical, any art, is precisely here to traumatize you, to making you feel unsafe.”Slavoj Žižek · art vs the safe space
“unfreedom is experienced at its opposite, as your stupid freedom to do trivial things”Slavoj Žižek · taste as false freedom
“Freedom hurts. Freedom if I think if you say freedom it means and especially freedom to say the truth it means it hurts. If it doesn't hurt it's not the truth.”Slavoj Žižek · freedom and truth hurt
“they are taking Buddhism much more seriously than us”Slavoj Žižek · the Taliban and serious religion
“We the Church are trying to do it for years and we didn't succeed.”Slavoj Žižek · religion as defence against religion
“what we need today is that we lose this distance of safety, that what is out there on the screen should enter reality”Slavoj Žižek · art must shatter the safety distance
“Hegel is for me in some sense more materialist than Marx”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel more materialist than Marx
“a good leader is indifferent towards being betrayed”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan on true leadership
“no realist prose after Auschwitz but poetry yes”Slavoj Žižek · inverting Adorno
“all serious critiques of colonialism come from Europe”Slavoj Žižek · Europe as source of its own critique
“Trump is a symptom of what was already wrong, non-functioning in democracy.”Slavoj Žižek · Trump as symptom not accident
“toast to Hegel who is in the past but although he is past he comes to us from the future still”Slavoj Žižek · the closing reversal
Transcript 63 turns
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Ein herzliches, wenn auch nur digitales Willkommen im Museum Hegel-Haus. Ich darf Sie heute ganz herzlich zu unserer Buchpräsentation
Ein herzliches, wenn auch nur digitales Willkommen im Museum Hegel-Haus. Ich darf Sie heute ganz herzlich zu unserer Buchpräsentation
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„Immer Ärger mit
„Immer Ärger mit
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Hegel“ und zur Ausstellungseröffnung des Künstlers
Hegel“ und zur Ausstellungseröffnung des Künstlers
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Jonathan Meese „Häuptling Erzhägel“, die Sie schon im Hintergrund sehen können, begrüßen.
Jonathan Meese „Häuptling Erzhägel“, die Sie schon im Hintergrund sehen können, begrüßen.
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Als im vergangenen Jahr das Museum Hegel-Haus
Als im vergangenen Jahr das Museum Hegel-Haus
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wiedereröffnet wurde, haben sich hier im Hegelkeller Dr. Robert Eikmeyer von der Hochschule in Pforzheim und Slavoj Žižek, auch damals leider nur digital zugeschaltet, hier im Keller unterhalten über Hegel, sein Werk und seine Bedeutung. Herrn Eikmeyer haben wir es zu verdanken, dass wir dieses Gespräch heute hier in Buchform präsentieren dürfen. Allein das wäre schon Grund zur Freude genug, aber Herrn Eikmeyer ist es auch gelungen, den Künstler Jonathan Meese zu einer künstlerischen Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel zu gewinnen. So können wir jetzt die Werke von Jonathan Meese einmal in diesem Buch bewundern und natürlich auch seine Arbeiten hier im Hegelkeller, wenn auch nur einen kleinen Auszug, denn erfreulicherweise war Meeses künstlerische Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel sehr produktiv. Im Keller heute hier bei mir darf ich ganz herzlich Herrn Robert Eikmeyer begrüßen, der im Anschluss ein Gespräch zwischen Jonathan Meese und Slavoj Žižek, die wir beide zugeschaltet haben, moderiert. Herzlich willkommen Ihnen beiden auf digitale Weise, und wir geben natürlich die Hoffnung nicht auf, Sie irgendwann auch wirklich live hier im Museum Hegel-Haus willkommen zu heißen. Bevor
wiedereröffnet wurde, haben sich hier im Hegelkeller Dr. Robert Eikmeyer von der Hochschule in Pforzheim und Slavoj Žižek, auch damals leider nur digital zugeschaltet, hier im Keller unterhalten über Hegel, sein Werk und seine Bedeutung. Herrn Eikmeyer haben wir es zu verdanken, dass wir dieses Gespräch heute hier in Buchform präsentieren dürfen. Allein das wäre schon Grund zur Freude genug, aber Herrn Eikmeyer ist es auch gelungen, den Künstler Jonathan Meese zu einer künstlerischen Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel zu gewinnen. So können wir jetzt die Werke von Jonathan Meese einmal in diesem Buch bewundern und natürlich auch seine Arbeiten hier im Hegelkeller, wenn auch nur einen kleinen Auszug, denn erfreulicherweise war Meeses künstlerische Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel sehr produktiv. Im Keller heute hier bei mir darf ich ganz herzlich Herrn Robert Eikmeyer begrüßen, der im Anschluss ein Gespräch zwischen Jonathan Meese und Slavoj Žižek, die wir beide zugeschaltet haben, moderiert. Herzlich willkommen Ihnen beiden auf digitale Weise, und wir geben natürlich die Hoffnung nicht auf, Sie irgendwann auch wirklich live hier im Museum Hegel-Haus willkommen zu heißen. Bevor
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ich jetzt an Herrn
ich jetzt an Herrn
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Eikmeyer das Wort übergebe, der Sie durch den Nachmittag führen wird, bedanke ich mich bei Ihnen, dass Sie unserer Veranstaltung digital folgen, wünsche Ihnen eine interessante nächste gute Stunde mit Herrn Eikmeyer, mit Slavoj Žižek, mit Jonathan Meese und natürlich mit Hegel.
Eikmeyer das Wort übergebe, der Sie durch den Nachmittag führen wird, bedanke ich mich bei Ihnen, dass Sie unserer Veranstaltung digital folgen, wünsche Ihnen eine interessante nächste gute Stunde mit Herrn Eikmeyer, mit Slavoj Žižek, mit Jonathan Meese und natürlich mit Hegel.
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Thank you very much. The conversation will be in English and thank you Christina Vollmer has already mentioned the occasion of today's conversation is the just published book The Trouble with Hegel, Immer Ärger mit Hegel, the German and English version of the conversation I had with Slavoj Žižek last year on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Hegel's birth. Jonathan Meese contributed a series of drawings for the book which are laid out in the original format around the body of the book in the quite wonderful design of Daily Dialogue. We will unpack the book later but first I'm happy to welcome Jonathan Meese. Hi Jonathan and Slavoj Žižek. It's amazing that this is working out today. I've been planning this meeting since let's say about That was the very first time you met briefly. Today it won't be so much about Hegel but more about the relationship between art and philosophy because Hegel's most famous dictum about art is as you know that it has come to an end or as Hegel writes, first in German, „In allen diesen Beziehungen ist und bleibt die Kunst nach der Seite ihrer höchsten Bestimmung für uns ein Vergangenes.“ In all these respects of art considered in its highest vocation is and remains for us a thing of the past. Of course art for Hegel has been replaced by philosophy. Jonathan, for you art is no past but comes from the future. So you wouldn't agree with Hegel, would you? Ja, hallo first of all. Do you see me or do you hear me or everything fine? Super. I have a little cold and I have a little fever, so why not? Fever is art and ja, no, art comes from the future and of course it will survive but certain times have certain perspectives towards art and I think that Hegel didn't live in the worst time for art. I think we live in the worst
Thank you very much. The conversation will be in English and thank you Christina Vollmer has already mentioned the occasion of today's conversation is the just published book The Trouble with Hegel, Immer Ärger mit Hegel, the German and English version of the conversation I had with Slavoj Žižek last year on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Hegel's birth. Jonathan Meese contributed a series of drawings for the book which are laid out in the original format around the body of the book in the quite wonderful design of Daily Dialogue. We will unpack the book later but first I'm happy to welcome Jonathan Meese. Hi Jonathan and Slavoj Žižek. It's amazing that this is working out today. I've been planning this meeting since let's say about That was the very first time you met briefly. Today it won't be so much about Hegel but more about the relationship between art and philosophy because Hegel's most famous dictum about art is as you know that it has come to an end or as Hegel writes, first in German, „In allen diesen Beziehungen ist und bleibt die Kunst nach der Seite ihrer höchsten Bestimmung für uns ein Vergangenes.“ In all these respects of art considered in its highest vocation is and remains for us a thing of the past. Of course art for Hegel has been replaced by philosophy. Jonathan, for you art is no past but comes from the future. So you wouldn't agree with Hegel, would you? Ja, hallo first of all. Do you see me or do you hear me or everything fine? Super. I have a little cold and I have a little fever, so why not? Fever is art and ja, no, art comes from the future and of course it will survive but certain times have certain perspectives towards art and I think that Hegel didn't live in the worst time for art. I think we live in the worst
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time at the moment, but that is also a chance to survive this horrible time. We are living in the kunstfeindliche Zeiten of all times and we have to start like a rocket to again challenge future because future is art, art is future. Art is no speculation, art is not politics, not religion. These times have come to an end, but they fight very fiercely to survive and we have to fight for art and we have to be patient and with a smile fight for it. And the biggest problem of nowadays is it's the government, we live in governments of taste. Taste is what creates ideology and ideology is against art. And we live in the most crazy times of taste where everybody wants to put their taste into power. This we never had before and this has to come to an end. And then art will conquer the world, then it will come to a Gesamtkunstwerk Deutschland. Coming back to Hegel, Hegel, you asked me to deal with Hegel, and of course when somebody tells me deal with Hegel or deal with Marquis de Sade or deal with the Moomins or deal with Stalin, I have to look whether I can use them for art. And Hegel I could use for art because you can paint him. He has a face. That's the exception to the people, politicians and people nowadays, they have no faces anymore and they don't even have masks. They are just their own ego, they are their own taste. And that I cannot paint and that I cannot draw. The last politician in Germany I could paint is Franz Josef Strauss.
time at the moment, but that is also a chance to survive this horrible time. We are living in the kunstfeindliche Zeiten of all times and we have to start like a rocket to again challenge future because future is art, art is future. Art is no speculation, art is not politics, not religion. These times have come to an end, but they fight very fiercely to survive and we have to fight for art and we have to be patient and with a smile fight for it. And the biggest problem of nowadays is it's the government, we live in governments of taste. Taste is what creates ideology and ideology is against art. And we live in the most crazy times of taste where everybody wants to put their taste into power. This we never had before and this has to come to an end. And then art will conquer the world, then it will come to a Gesamtkunstwerk Deutschland. Coming back to Hegel, Hegel, you asked me to deal with Hegel, and of course when somebody tells me deal with Hegel or deal with Marquis de Sade or deal with the Moomins or deal with Stalin, I have to look whether I can use them for art. And Hegel I could use for art because you can paint him. He has a face. That's the exception to the people, politicians and people nowadays, they have no faces anymore and they don't even have masks. They are just their own ego, they are their own taste. And that I cannot paint and that I cannot draw. The last politician in Germany I could paint is Franz Josef Strauss.
unknown
Perfect. Slavoj, you often refer to art in your books, especially film but also the opera and Duchamp's readymades for example when I think of your book Organs Without Bodies. You are let's say a radical Hegelian, but how do you see the relationship between art and philosophy? Are you perhaps even an artist-philosopher?
Perfect. Slavoj, you often refer to art in your books, especially film but also the opera and Duchamp's readymades for example when I think of your book Organs Without Bodies. You are let's say a radical Hegelian, but how do you see the relationship between art and philosophy? Are you perhaps even an artist-philosopher?
Slavoj Žižek
No, I try not to be. I wouldn't, I would be horrified at my art. But let me link to what was just said. Because first, it's not about Hegel this remark, but nonetheless I want to say that I deeply agree with this judgment that today we live in an era of taste. And I think we should return here forcefully to Hegel. For Hegel, art is not about taste, it's about, not in a metaphysical sense, but in a deeper existential sense, art is about Wahrheit. Art, not Wahrheit in a metaphysical sense, copying a theoretical idea or what, but it tells something about our global existential predicament. Now I will try to specify this. I will refer to a book that I advise all of you to read although the guy who wrote that book, the American Hegelian Robert Pippin, is often polemical against me. But he, in his book After the Beautiful, he tried to redeem Hegel. Not that art is really at its end, but his point is that representative realist art is at its end. And it's in literature, in painting, in music. And if I may improvise a little bit, you stop me when I talk too much. I would like to give you a simple example. Think about horrors of the 20th century, Gulag, Auschwitz, Holocaust, other horrors and so on. It's not an accident that we don't have and cannot have a big realist novel about Auschwitz. You know, this classic in the style of great realists Stendhal, Balzac, portrayal of life in Auschwitz and so on and so on. It would have been a fake. Something in the horrors of 20th century resists to this type of realist interpretation. And if I may go further, as a Hegelian analyzing for example Gulag. That's why I don't think Solzhenitsyn who tried to do this in some of his novels to realistically represent life in Gulag, that's why György Lukács praised Solzhenitsyn. No, I think it's Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales who is the true one. It's no longer this broad realism and so on. So again, what Pippin tries to demonstrate in his book is that what Hegel correctly got is the end of this classical realist representative art, art as a sign referring to a pre-existing reality and so on. His idea of the end of art hits only this type of art. Now, if I may briefly resume Pippin's argument. He points out nicely that if confronted by post-realist and then lately abstract painting, Hegel would have been probably enthusiastic about it because he would see for example, the most classical example, pictures by somebody like Kandinsky or Malevich, they are different I know, which are of course abstract or at least non-realist paintings. His insight would have been that this fits even better his own Hegel's theory because what Kandinsky and other abstract paintings saw, that when you paint something the idea, the spiritual content doesn't come only from the content of the painting. It is already inscribed spiritually mediated at the very level of immediate pre-representative elements. Drawings, lines, colors and so on. Spirit is already there. That's what, that's how it would have looked Hegel's theory of abstract art. So next step that Hegel would have raised would have been what happened with modernity, post-Hegelian modernity, not Descartes and so on, but modernity that Hegel feared in his last years. What happened after Hegel's model of rational state described in his Rechtsphilosophie disintegrated. A new era was dawning, what we call Massengesellschaft, crowd society and so on. And Hegel suspected and I think we see it clearly that again at this point realism becomes a lie. People like maybe Tolstoy, already not Dostoevsky, Dickens and so on, Zola tried could still aim at giving a large realist portrait, but it doesn't work. That's why a proponent of realism like Lukács he didn't see that to paint unsere geistige Situation, our spiritual situation, Kafka as a non-realist hit it much more adequately than any realist portrayal of today's bureaucratic alienation and so on and so on. That's the beautiful paradox that Hegel would notice. I will stop immediately just to add the opposite point which I like immensely in Hegel. You know that at the end of his aesthetics when Hegel raises the question of, but nonetheless how will art in this post-Versöhnung reconciliation modern world, how, what kind of art will survive? Hegel adds a couple of extraordinary lines where he says the only topic of art remaining is what Hegel calls Humanus and he specifies it. That is everyday life adventures which are not indications of symbols of some deeper spiritual conflict but just the mess, endless mess of everyday life. Love adventures, illness, professional failures, this everyday life. And I think that's my crazy totally crazy thesis that maybe that's how Hegel would have understood the big popularity of today's these endless TV series half comic half dramatic like Seinfeld, Cheers and so on. This is what Hegel means. Ordinary lives, there is no struggle about a higher inner truth there. It's just the portrayal of people. I get ill, I am unfortunately in love, I have a conflict with my friend. Sometimes things end luckily the other time not, but it's this would be for Hegel very clearly one dimension and the opposite dimension would have been, this was the limit of Hegel's aesthetics because of his roots in his time. The limit would have been the monstrous, the monstrosity. How it is the end of the traditional beauty. Modern art is the passage from the beauty not to the traditional sublime but to the monstrosity. The truth about our predicament is that a monstrous caricature renders much better our situation than a realist portrayal. So I think we should be we should go mit Hegel durch Hegel, through Hegel forward but with Hegel. And again we discover that that for example abstract art it's not less spiritual just turned towards material forms, no, it discovered geistige Vermittlung spiritual mediation already at this immediate level of materiality. So in Hegel's sense modern art is much more spiritual than traditional art for which the colors you use the images are just a medium for the portrayal of some transcendent content. And here Hegel would also have clearly seen the alienation of contemporary society. Back to the point about taste, Hegel would have been horrified by taste. And it would be very nice but I'm too stupid to do it to deploy develop this analysis not only at the level of works of art but also at the level of the very formal organization of art. For example more and more I discovered I read about it that what Hegel Hegel is always interested in the figures of Vermittlung mediation. Today for example as far as I can see in visual arts it's not only me as average idiot, the public, and the work of art or the painter. What is absolutely crucial today is the rise of this weird figure of curator. Curator organizes the exhibition often today not only in the sense that he goes around and collects objects. He often even gives practically order, demands to the painters or visual artists do this do that. At the same time we viewers asked our comments are at the level of taste. We act as beings of taste, you know you quickly run through an exhibition and you notice something oh my god I like that that makes me feel and so on and so on. But we just taste is Meinung an opinion. But we trust the curator to take a look at the work of art. We don't even we go to the exhibition and I notice how at openings of exhibitions are usually parties you have a drink you communicate about your stupid taste "oh I like this no sorry I like more that" and so on and so on. So it's as if curator is ein Vermittler the mediator who at the same time we trust him like we don't have even to look properly at the images curator did this for us. As my friend Robert Faller would have put it, we observe pictures interpassively through curators. We just come to an exhibition and blah blah talk about oh stupidities it's the curator who guarantees that the works are well observed. And on the opposite side for the artists the problem is not to directly address the public but to fascinate the curator. I think curator is in some sense the symptomatic evil figure in today's arts. Enough for the moment. Thank you. Hey thank you thank you very much Slavoj for these deep insights into the art world. What you said about ordinary life or art is a copy of ordinary life sounds very much like Jonathan's conception of the dictatorship of art. Do you want to react directly on what Slavoj said Jonathan? Ja, I agree with everything that Slavoj said except go to the exception. The exception comes later. Okay. Comes later. But first I drink a little bit of Hegel wine which I got it. And no I think that the circle you made is right. I think the taste creates Befindlichkeit and the Befindlichkeit creates zwangskollektivierte people and the Befindlichkeit creates geschmackvolle Diktatoren. We don't need tasteful dictators. If we need dictators please no taste. And also Hegel I like so much he was not tasteful, he didn't look tasteful. And I don't want to be a tasteful artist. I have no taste, I am geschmacksneutral. I want to have no taste. I want to be the fool on the hill. I want to be smelly. And but nobody wants the fool on the hill anymore, they are even afraid of them. They run away to build groups again. You have the climate religion, you have the corona religion, you have the anti-Putin sekte, you have the pro-Putin sekte. You have only Sekten, Sekten and sects and religions and groups. Mehrheit und Minderheit and you only have these people who clap their shoulders and say how fantastic it is but they want to be individuals but they are not at all. They are zwangskollektivierte assholes. And they don't know what abstraction is, they are Form-Fleisch-Menschen, they are made, they are klebrig, they glue together. They don't, sie können nichts mehr aushalten. They cannot deal with the past because they cannot aushalten them anymore. Sie können nicht mehr mit einer Sprache umgehen von früher. Sie halten Begriffe von vor Jahren nicht mehr aus. Sie verstehen nicht dass es vor Jahren anders war. Sie halten Skulpturen von vor Jahren nicht mehr aus. A guy like Hegel he would be horrified by all these religiously befindliche people who think their little limited life is important as the measurement of art or of the measurement of the future. I mean we have at the moment billion dictators on this planet. Ja. The children are okay because they are not ideological they have an opinion that leads to screaming. But opinion to have an opinion is one of the worst things you should do. Don't have an opinion. Never tell your opinion because your opinion is not important. I love Žižek because he's like a machine gun he has the pressure in his brain to put everything out as quickly as possible. And he is not right or left because this is also an opinion. And we put now all the Pathos into reality where it doesn't belong. Pathos should be in films and in art but not in reality. And we should stop the Zwangskollektivation that comes from right and left wing and we have to stop the religious impact. We are we have to know that Hegel said nicht ich denke, not you think, es denkt. Es denkt. Like Mr. Spock. Mr. Spock is no Glaubensbekenntnis. It is no speculation it's logic. Ja now soon Slavoj is back. Und es geht um die Selbst um das Selbst es geht um das Risiko. Ja der Hegel hat ein Risiko ist er eingegangen. He went into a risk. He played Risiko. He played risk by being hermetic. Hermetic. Ja this is something nobody's hermetic anymore. Everyone is durchflutet with his own ego with his own taste with his own Befindlichkeit even the big guys in society who lead the countries. They are only taste they are they are they are caricatures of themselves. Ja at least I mean Donald Trump has a caricature face. Thank you for that. He has at least even Putin has a caricature face which I think is quite okay. But to have these political faces or these religious faces they have no contour they have no pressure. You cannot paint them. I can paint Marquis de Sade I can paint Hitler I can paint Stalin. Ja I can but these politicians nowadays I cannot paint them. But why? Because they are not hermetic enough. They only want their own taste to be in power. They have no vision at all. They are without any vision. They are realists. They are total realist realistico. They are not Klaus Kinski they are not Ludwig the Second of Bavaria they are not Richard Wagner. They hate Richard Wagner. There is no politician at the moment on the planet who loves Richard Wagner. Ja. And I feel I've never felt so unwelcome like nowadays. I'm so unwelcome as an artist. I am only accepted because I'm there for so long. Otherwise I would not have any chance
No, I try not to be. I wouldn't, I would be horrified at my art. But let me link to what was just said. Because first, it's not about Hegel this remark, but nonetheless I want to say that I deeply agree with this judgment that today we live in an era of taste. And I think we should return here forcefully to Hegel. For Hegel, art is not about taste, it's about, not in a metaphysical sense, but in a deeper existential sense, art is about Wahrheit. Art, not Wahrheit in a metaphysical sense, copying a theoretical idea or what, but it tells something about our global existential predicament. Now I will try to specify this. I will refer to a book that I advise all of you to read although the guy who wrote that book, the American Hegelian Robert Pippin, is often polemical against me. But he, in his book After the Beautiful, he tried to redeem Hegel. Not that art is really at its end, but his point is that representative realist art is at its end. And it's in literature, in painting, in music. And if I may improvise a little bit, you stop me when I talk too much. I would like to give you a simple example. Think about horrors of the 20th century, Gulag, Auschwitz, Holocaust, other horrors and so on. It's not an accident that we don't have and cannot have a big realist novel about Auschwitz. You know, this classic in the style of great realists Stendhal, Balzac, portrayal of life in Auschwitz and so on and so on. It would have been a fake. Something in the horrors of 20th century resists to this type of realist interpretation. And if I may go further, as a Hegelian analyzing for example Gulag. That's why I don't think Solzhenitsyn who tried to do this in some of his novels to realistically represent life in Gulag, that's why György Lukács praised Solzhenitsyn. No, I think it's Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales who is the true one. It's no longer this broad realism and so on. So again, what Pippin tries to demonstrate in his book is that what Hegel correctly got is the end of this classical realist representative art, art as a sign referring to a pre-existing reality and so on. His idea of the end of art hits only this type of art. Now, if I may briefly resume Pippin's argument. He points out nicely that if confronted by post-realist and then lately abstract painting, Hegel would have been probably enthusiastic about it because he would see for example, the most classical example, pictures by somebody like Kandinsky or Malevich, they are different I know, which are of course abstract or at least non-realist paintings. His insight would have been that this fits even better his own Hegel's theory because what Kandinsky and other abstract paintings saw, that when you paint something the idea, the spiritual content doesn't come only from the content of the painting. It is already inscribed spiritually mediated at the very level of immediate pre-representative elements. Drawings, lines, colors and so on. Spirit is already there. That's what, that's how it would have looked Hegel's theory of abstract art. So next step that Hegel would have raised would have been what happened with modernity, post-Hegelian modernity, not Descartes and so on, but modernity that Hegel feared in his last years. What happened after Hegel's model of rational state described in his Rechtsphilosophie disintegrated. A new era was dawning, what we call Massengesellschaft, crowd society and so on. And Hegel suspected and I think we see it clearly that again at this point realism becomes a lie. People like maybe Tolstoy, already not Dostoevsky, Dickens and so on, Zola tried could still aim at giving a large realist portrait, but it doesn't work. That's why a proponent of realism like Lukács he didn't see that to paint unsere geistige Situation, our spiritual situation, Kafka as a non-realist hit it much more adequately than any realist portrayal of today's bureaucratic alienation and so on and so on. That's the beautiful paradox that Hegel would notice. I will stop immediately just to add the opposite point which I like immensely in Hegel. You know that at the end of his aesthetics when Hegel raises the question of, but nonetheless how will art in this post-Versöhnung reconciliation modern world, how, what kind of art will survive? Hegel adds a couple of extraordinary lines where he says the only topic of art remaining is what Hegel calls Humanus and he specifies it. That is everyday life adventures which are not indications of symbols of some deeper spiritual conflict but just the mess, endless mess of everyday life. Love adventures, illness, professional failures, this everyday life. And I think that's my crazy totally crazy thesis that maybe that's how Hegel would have understood the big popularity of today's these endless TV series half comic half dramatic like Seinfeld, Cheers and so on. This is what Hegel means. Ordinary lives, there is no struggle about a higher inner truth there. It's just the portrayal of people. I get ill, I am unfortunately in love, I have a conflict with my friend. Sometimes things end luckily the other time not, but it's this would be for Hegel very clearly one dimension and the opposite dimension would have been, this was the limit of Hegel's aesthetics because of his roots in his time. The limit would have been the monstrous, the monstrosity. How it is the end of the traditional beauty. Modern art is the passage from the beauty not to the traditional sublime but to the monstrosity. The truth about our predicament is that a monstrous caricature renders much better our situation than a realist portrayal. So I think we should be we should go mit Hegel durch Hegel, through Hegel forward but with Hegel. And again we discover that that for example abstract art it's not less spiritual just turned towards material forms, no, it discovered geistige Vermittlung spiritual mediation already at this immediate level of materiality. So in Hegel's sense modern art is much more spiritual than traditional art for which the colors you use the images are just a medium for the portrayal of some transcendent content. And here Hegel would also have clearly seen the alienation of contemporary society. Back to the point about taste, Hegel would have been horrified by taste. And it would be very nice but I'm too stupid to do it to deploy develop this analysis not only at the level of works of art but also at the level of the very formal organization of art. For example more and more I discovered I read about it that what Hegel Hegel is always interested in the figures of Vermittlung mediation. Today for example as far as I can see in visual arts it's not only me as average idiot, the public, and the work of art or the painter. What is absolutely crucial today is the rise of this weird figure of curator. Curator organizes the exhibition often today not only in the sense that he goes around and collects objects. He often even gives practically order, demands to the painters or visual artists do this do that. At the same time we viewers asked our comments are at the level of taste. We act as beings of taste, you know you quickly run through an exhibition and you notice something oh my god I like that that makes me feel and so on and so on. But we just taste is Meinung an opinion. But we trust the curator to take a look at the work of art. We don't even we go to the exhibition and I notice how at openings of exhibitions are usually parties you have a drink you communicate about your stupid taste "oh I like this no sorry I like more that" and so on and so on. So it's as if curator is ein Vermittler the mediator who at the same time we trust him like we don't have even to look properly at the images curator did this for us. As my friend Robert Faller would have put it, we observe pictures interpassively through curators. We just come to an exhibition and blah blah talk about oh stupidities it's the curator who guarantees that the works are well observed. And on the opposite side for the artists the problem is not to directly address the public but to fascinate the curator. I think curator is in some sense the symptomatic evil figure in today's arts. Enough for the moment. Thank you. Hey thank you thank you very much Slavoj for these deep insights into the art world. What you said about ordinary life or art is a copy of ordinary life sounds very much like Jonathan's conception of the dictatorship of art. Do you want to react directly on what Slavoj said Jonathan? Ja, I agree with everything that Slavoj said except go to the exception. The exception comes later. Okay. Comes later. But first I drink a little bit of Hegel wine which I got it. And no I think that the circle you made is right. I think the taste creates Befindlichkeit and the Befindlichkeit creates zwangskollektivierte people and the Befindlichkeit creates geschmackvolle Diktatoren. We don't need tasteful dictators. If we need dictators please no taste. And also Hegel I like so much he was not tasteful, he didn't look tasteful. And I don't want to be a tasteful artist. I have no taste, I am geschmacksneutral. I want to have no taste. I want to be the fool on the hill. I want to be smelly. And but nobody wants the fool on the hill anymore, they are even afraid of them. They run away to build groups again. You have the climate religion, you have the corona religion, you have the anti-Putin sekte, you have the pro-Putin sekte. You have only Sekten, Sekten and sects and religions and groups. Mehrheit und Minderheit and you only have these people who clap their shoulders and say how fantastic it is but they want to be individuals but they are not at all. They are zwangskollektivierte assholes. And they don't know what abstraction is, they are Form-Fleisch-Menschen, they are made, they are klebrig, they glue together. They don't, sie können nichts mehr aushalten. They cannot deal with the past because they cannot aushalten them anymore. Sie können nicht mehr mit einer Sprache umgehen von früher. Sie halten Begriffe von vor Jahren nicht mehr aus. Sie verstehen nicht dass es vor Jahren anders war. Sie halten Skulpturen von vor Jahren nicht mehr aus. A guy like Hegel he would be horrified by all these religiously befindliche people who think their little limited life is important as the measurement of art or of the measurement of the future. I mean we have at the moment billion dictators on this planet. Ja. The children are okay because they are not ideological they have an opinion that leads to screaming. But opinion to have an opinion is one of the worst things you should do. Don't have an opinion. Never tell your opinion because your opinion is not important. I love Žižek because he's like a machine gun he has the pressure in his brain to put everything out as quickly as possible. And he is not right or left because this is also an opinion. And we put now all the Pathos into reality where it doesn't belong. Pathos should be in films and in art but not in reality. And we should stop the Zwangskollektivation that comes from right and left wing and we have to stop the religious impact. We are we have to know that Hegel said nicht ich denke, not you think, es denkt. Es denkt. Like Mr. Spock. Mr. Spock is no Glaubensbekenntnis. It is no speculation it's logic. Ja now soon Slavoj is back. Und es geht um die Selbst um das Selbst es geht um das Risiko. Ja der Hegel hat ein Risiko ist er eingegangen. He went into a risk. He played Risiko. He played risk by being hermetic. Hermetic. Ja this is something nobody's hermetic anymore. Everyone is durchflutet with his own ego with his own taste with his own Befindlichkeit even the big guys in society who lead the countries. They are only taste they are they are they are caricatures of themselves. Ja at least I mean Donald Trump has a caricature face. Thank you for that. He has at least even Putin has a caricature face which I think is quite okay. But to have these political faces or these religious faces they have no contour they have no pressure. You cannot paint them. I can paint Marquis de Sade I can paint Hitler I can paint Stalin. Ja I can but these politicians nowadays I cannot paint them. But why? Because they are not hermetic enough. They only want their own taste to be in power. They have no vision at all. They are without any vision. They are realists. They are total realist realistico. They are not Klaus Kinski they are not Ludwig the Second of Bavaria they are not Richard Wagner. They hate Richard Wagner. There is no politician at the moment on the planet who loves Richard Wagner. Ja. And I feel I've never felt so unwelcome like nowadays. I'm so unwelcome as an artist. I am only accepted because I'm there for so long. Otherwise I would not have any chance
unknown
because artists are totally unwelcome. They should be in the Sekte, pro-Staat demonstrieren auf der Straße. Die sollen bei irgendwelchen riesigen Veranstaltungen ihre Fresse hinhalten um zu Gelatine zu werden. Das sind Geschmacksverstärker
because artists are totally unwelcome. They should be in the Sekte, pro-Staat demonstrieren auf der Straße. Die sollen bei irgendwelchen riesigen Veranstaltungen ihre Fresse hinhalten um zu Gelatine zu werden. Das sind Geschmacksverstärker
Slavoj Žižek
diese
diese
unknown
ganzen Typen. Wie heißt das Geschmacksverstärker? Das ist Glutamat. Wir haben wir haben mit Glutamat-Menschen zu tun. Glutamat. Diese Typen sind Glutamat. Linkspolitische rechtspolitische Typen they are Glutamat. Ja. To press Germany into a political party das ist Glutamatismus. Das ist total krank. Wie klein willst du Deutschland, Österreich oder Amerika denken dass es in eine politische Partei passt? Das ist doch total krank. Sorry. Maybe I can reply? I would gladly. Because just linking to what was now said, I like very much this term Zwangskollektivierung. And I would say the problem is, and that's for me what's so horrible today, that this Zwangskollektivierung where you really lose your individuality is ideologically presented as your free choice as you are truly free but freedom is freedom of your taste. And I will give you a couple of examples how horrible it is when this expands to art and philosophy. For example okay it's not about Hegel it's about Kant. Once I was explaining at an American university where I was teaching a class Kant's categorical imperative and how this functions an ethical act. And then a student raised his hand and says „Sorry, I don't agree with Kant, this is not how I experience an ethical act.“ You know, for me this was horrible like no logic no argumentation just „Oh sorry it doesn't fit my taste I don't experience it.“ Can't they see? And Hegel saw this clearly that opinion of taste even if it's I don't know how sincere it can be a lie. I go a step further. Would you agree that this Zwangskollektivierung you were right Jonathan to claim left and right, has different forms today. One is this crazy neo-rightist nationalist whatever form Donald Trump new sects and so on and so on. On the other hand it's also I think we also have a politically correct Zwangskollektivierung where nobody knows how but something at a certain point becomes prohibited. And if you do not follow it. For example I don't know if you followed this a couple of months ago. A young Japanese composer, one of the geniuses who teaches introduction to music, was showed in his class Laurence Olivier's Othello, movie from early 60s where of course Othello is played by Laurence Olivier and of course his face is darkened. And students boycotted it. They wrote
ganzen Typen. Wie heißt das Geschmacksverstärker? Das ist Glutamat. Wir haben wir haben mit Glutamat-Menschen zu tun. Glutamat. Diese Typen sind Glutamat. Linkspolitische rechtspolitische Typen they are Glutamat. Ja. To press Germany into a political party das ist Glutamatismus. Das ist total krank. Wie klein willst du Deutschland, Österreich oder Amerika denken dass es in eine politische Partei passt? Das ist doch total krank. Sorry. Maybe I can reply? I would gladly. Because just linking to what was now said, I like very much this term Zwangskollektivierung. And I would say the problem is, and that's for me what's so horrible today, that this Zwangskollektivierung where you really lose your individuality is ideologically presented as your free choice as you are truly free but freedom is freedom of your taste. And I will give you a couple of examples how horrible it is when this expands to art and philosophy. For example okay it's not about Hegel it's about Kant. Once I was explaining at an American university where I was teaching a class Kant's categorical imperative and how this functions an ethical act. And then a student raised his hand and says „Sorry, I don't agree with Kant, this is not how I experience an ethical act.“ You know, for me this was horrible like no logic no argumentation just „Oh sorry it doesn't fit my taste I don't experience it.“ Can't they see? And Hegel saw this clearly that opinion of taste even if it's I don't know how sincere it can be a lie. I go a step further. Would you agree that this Zwangskollektivierung you were right Jonathan to claim left and right, has different forms today. One is this crazy neo-rightist nationalist whatever form Donald Trump new sects and so on and so on. On the other hand it's also I think we also have a politically correct Zwangskollektivierung where nobody knows how but something at a certain point becomes prohibited. And if you do not follow it. For example I don't know if you followed this a couple of months ago. A young Japanese composer, one of the geniuses who teaches introduction to music, was showed in his class Laurence Olivier's Othello, movie from early 60s where of course Othello is played by Laurence Olivier and of course his face is darkened. And students boycotted it. They wrote
unknown
„This is blatant racism“. Not only the movie but even the even just the act of showing this movie because it's the appropriation of black culture and so on, racism. And now linking to Jonathan, what interested me is the term they used. They said universities should be a safe space and showing this movie made me feel threatened I no longer feel safe here. Safe means you have the right to your taste and you should be protected from anything that can brutally intervene into it. But I think great art, serious art, not classical, any art, is precisely here to traumatize you, to making you feel unsafe. And so what again for me political correctness is in this sense Zwangskollektivierung that apparently it refers to you individual you are the victim and so on and so on, but they don't they simply don't do what they promise. What do I mean by this? I notice with today's conspiracy theories about COVID and other things that first they begin like anti-dogmatic you know their motto is „Don't trust the establishment do your own research“. But what does this practically mean? Go to Google, search and put „COVID conspiracy theories“ and of course it's pre-determined what you will get there. But I this paradox is horrifying for me that unfreedom is presented to you as a higher form of of freedom. It's just the freedom of your stupid taste which even isn't individualized it's extremely mediated intersubjectively. Many people I spoke with them who go to these Ausstellungen and so on to watch new works of art, they pretend to give their opinion on their taste but usually they calculate it very well how not to offend others how it will work and so on and so on. So again the figure that you mention of Zwangskollektivierung is crucial I think. This is how our reality works today. We are in collectives which apparently address us formally as free individuals like they will say „Don't follow the dogma, think with your head, express your taste.“ But the horror is that at that level we are most enslaved. And again I repeat it, that's for me the danger of our era. That unfreedom is experienced at its opposite, as your stupid freedom to do trivial things and so on and so on. So I think that I agree with you Jonathan that we need, correctly understood of course, some kind of new new brutal imposition disturbing of truth and so on against this false liberty of taste. Freedom hurts. Freedom if I think if you say freedom it means and especially freedom to say the truth it means it hurts. If it doesn't hurt it's not the truth. Absolutely. Ja, Slavoj is right again. We live in Mittelmäßigkeit-Fanatismus. The people are fanatically to be average. They want average to rule them. They want the past to rule them. They want their ego to rule them. It's Etikettenschwindel on the highest possible level. Zwangskollektivismus as Slavoj said is it is in ganz toll verpackt. It reached left wing, right wing, it it reached every religion it reached everybody to celebrate censorship.
„This is blatant racism“. Not only the movie but even the even just the act of showing this movie because it's the appropriation of black culture and so on, racism. And now linking to Jonathan, what interested me is the term they used. They said universities should be a safe space and showing this movie made me feel threatened I no longer feel safe here. Safe means you have the right to your taste and you should be protected from anything that can brutally intervene into it. But I think great art, serious art, not classical, any art, is precisely here to traumatize you, to making you feel unsafe. And so what again for me political correctness is in this sense Zwangskollektivierung that apparently it refers to you individual you are the victim and so on and so on, but they don't they simply don't do what they promise. What do I mean by this? I notice with today's conspiracy theories about COVID and other things that first they begin like anti-dogmatic you know their motto is „Don't trust the establishment do your own research“. But what does this practically mean? Go to Google, search and put „COVID conspiracy theories“ and of course it's pre-determined what you will get there. But I this paradox is horrifying for me that unfreedom is presented to you as a higher form of of freedom. It's just the freedom of your stupid taste which even isn't individualized it's extremely mediated intersubjectively. Many people I spoke with them who go to these Ausstellungen and so on to watch new works of art, they pretend to give their opinion on their taste but usually they calculate it very well how not to offend others how it will work and so on and so on. So again the figure that you mention of Zwangskollektivierung is crucial I think. This is how our reality works today. We are in collectives which apparently address us formally as free individuals like they will say „Don't follow the dogma, think with your head, express your taste.“ But the horror is that at that level we are most enslaved. And again I repeat it, that's for me the danger of our era. That unfreedom is experienced at its opposite, as your stupid freedom to do trivial things and so on and so on. So I think that I agree with you Jonathan that we need, correctly understood of course, some kind of new new brutal imposition disturbing of truth and so on against this false liberty of taste. Freedom hurts. Freedom if I think if you say freedom it means and especially freedom to say the truth it means it hurts. If it doesn't hurt it's not the truth. Absolutely. Ja, Slavoj is right again. We live in Mittelmäßigkeit-Fanatismus. The people are fanatically to be average. They want average to rule them. They want the past to rule them. They want their ego to rule them. It's Etikettenschwindel on the highest possible level. Zwangskollektivismus as Slavoj said is it is in ganz toll verpackt. It reached left wing, right wing, it it reached every religion it reached everybody to celebrate censorship.
Slavoj Žižek
These people are Ego-Neurotics and they only want to be geschmacksbestätigt. All these people that go to exhibitions at the moment want their taste to be bestätigt. They want to go home and say „Wow I saw a mirror of myself and I'm happy.“ But that doesn't make them happy because they live in total Mittelmaß. And ja and we always think die Würfel sind gefallen. You have to destroy the dices. You have to destroy the Würfel and you have to go back to Marquis de Sade you have to go back to people like Nero, Caligula, Seneca. You have to think about what they said. They were so advanced. Ja and they were children ja. They didn't believe in religion. That is what I also love so much about Hegel. He talks about religion but in a totally different way than the people nowadays. Nowadays the people talk about religion as if this is their comfort zone. Ja. They don't want to they want to live without any risk. They want to be in Orkanstärke null. They don't want to be on the Bounty. They don't want to go through Kap Horn. They don't want. I mean art is living and acting and working without a Reeling. You are in in Windstärke You are in a traumatic situation. You have to break every taboo, every rule. Ja. And you have to also you have to be able to accept Balthus. You have to be able to to aushalten a sculpture of a slave driver. You have to be able to laugh about general. You have to be able to laugh about the language that was used years ago. You have to be able to talk about cannibalism. And if you are a student who is wants to be safe, then go into religion. Then you are safe. Ja. Go don't study if you want a safe situation. Go build a time machine and go back into the past where you want it to be. But don't want future because future is a risk. It is something that is not a comfort zone. It's not made for you. You have to fight. And don't fight in Zwangskollektivismus. Don't fight in Gruppenzwang or Gruppendynamik. Don't fight in workshops or or in in these strategies. Fight for yourself. It's time to fight for yourself. And don't put the opinions of these crazy priests that are around you into your wallet. These are priests. We live in the most religious times ever. It was never as religious as nowadays. Because everybody has his private religion at home and then tries to glue it together with the people who have your the same taste. My god. I'm sure that I'm sure that Hegel would totally agree to what you said before because his conception of reason is terror Slavoj, we talked about this last year. And I have the feeling that this rule of reason or the Herrschaft der Vernunft operates very similarly to what is in Jonathan's work the rule of art or the dictatorship of art. Slavoj is there something similar for you to the dictatorship of art in philosophy? Namely the dictatorship of philosophy especially with regard to Hegel and his conception of Golgatha and the Schädelstätte des absoluten Geistes. Yeah. Can I add something? It's very important this idea of we live in a religious time, religion as a safety net. For me authentic religion is, as it was with Socrates, the discovery of an idea. You live in your stupid daily life and then something hits you and you are totally derailed, thrown off. The encounter of the divine dimension is like falling in love. It ruins your peaceful stupid daily happiness. But today again religion is propagated but first it's and it's not a metaphor what Jonathan was saying, it's literally, it's „Okay, is your taste more towards this type of meditation, become a neo-Buddhist? Is are you more for another type of meditation, become a become a Christian mystic or whatever?“ Literally this I always admired in strong religions what is on the other hand their horrible side, this I'm not afraid to use the word fanaticism. They they mean it you know, it's not this peaceful tolerance. That's why and that remark costed me dearly in I forgot which one of my earlier books. Do you remember when Taliban bombed in Bamyan or where those statues of Buddha? It was horrible but I said but they are taking Buddhism much more seriously than us. They saw „We have a truth, this is an alternative truth and we have to destroy it.“ But it was a way to say it's a serious conflict of truth. But for a multicultural tolerant guy he would say „No listen each one has his own truth, for some people it's better Buddha from for others it's it's better that“ and so on and so on. So again this is this is crucial for me. There is I think no contradiction between what you said Jonathan that we need more authentic religion and that we live in the most religious time. But it's an obscenely religious time where again I will I would even go as far as this. You know probably the story, it's not sure if it's true or not, that when Napoleon walked towards the Pope to be crowned as the Emperor, he took the crown from Pope's hands and put it the crown himself on his head. So then Pope gave him that's the anecdote, probably not literally true, the Pope's comment was „I know sir what you want to do. You want to destroy Christianity. But believe me you will not succeed. We the Church are trying to do it for years and we didn't succeed.“ So for me today's religions are if anything a fanatical fear of authentic religious experience which you find you have to go I agree with you Jonathan into the past. My top contenders are I don't know Meister Eckhart, Jakob Böhme and so on, that Rheinisch German mysticism
These people are Ego-Neurotics and they only want to be geschmacksbestätigt. All these people that go to exhibitions at the moment want their taste to be bestätigt. They want to go home and say „Wow I saw a mirror of myself and I'm happy.“ But that doesn't make them happy because they live in total Mittelmaß. And ja and we always think die Würfel sind gefallen. You have to destroy the dices. You have to destroy the Würfel and you have to go back to Marquis de Sade you have to go back to people like Nero, Caligula, Seneca. You have to think about what they said. They were so advanced. Ja and they were children ja. They didn't believe in religion. That is what I also love so much about Hegel. He talks about religion but in a totally different way than the people nowadays. Nowadays the people talk about religion as if this is their comfort zone. Ja. They don't want to they want to live without any risk. They want to be in Orkanstärke null. They don't want to be on the Bounty. They don't want to go through Kap Horn. They don't want. I mean art is living and acting and working without a Reeling. You are in in Windstärke You are in a traumatic situation. You have to break every taboo, every rule. Ja. And you have to also you have to be able to accept Balthus. You have to be able to to aushalten a sculpture of a slave driver. You have to be able to laugh about general. You have to be able to laugh about the language that was used years ago. You have to be able to talk about cannibalism. And if you are a student who is wants to be safe, then go into religion. Then you are safe. Ja. Go don't study if you want a safe situation. Go build a time machine and go back into the past where you want it to be. But don't want future because future is a risk. It is something that is not a comfort zone. It's not made for you. You have to fight. And don't fight in Zwangskollektivismus. Don't fight in Gruppenzwang or Gruppendynamik. Don't fight in workshops or or in in these strategies. Fight for yourself. It's time to fight for yourself. And don't put the opinions of these crazy priests that are around you into your wallet. These are priests. We live in the most religious times ever. It was never as religious as nowadays. Because everybody has his private religion at home and then tries to glue it together with the people who have your the same taste. My god. I'm sure that I'm sure that Hegel would totally agree to what you said before because his conception of reason is terror Slavoj, we talked about this last year. And I have the feeling that this rule of reason or the Herrschaft der Vernunft operates very similarly to what is in Jonathan's work the rule of art or the dictatorship of art. Slavoj is there something similar for you to the dictatorship of art in philosophy? Namely the dictatorship of philosophy especially with regard to Hegel and his conception of Golgatha and the Schädelstätte des absoluten Geistes. Yeah. Can I add something? It's very important this idea of we live in a religious time, religion as a safety net. For me authentic religion is, as it was with Socrates, the discovery of an idea. You live in your stupid daily life and then something hits you and you are totally derailed, thrown off. The encounter of the divine dimension is like falling in love. It ruins your peaceful stupid daily happiness. But today again religion is propagated but first it's and it's not a metaphor what Jonathan was saying, it's literally, it's „Okay, is your taste more towards this type of meditation, become a neo-Buddhist? Is are you more for another type of meditation, become a become a Christian mystic or whatever?“ Literally this I always admired in strong religions what is on the other hand their horrible side, this I'm not afraid to use the word fanaticism. They they mean it you know, it's not this peaceful tolerance. That's why and that remark costed me dearly in I forgot which one of my earlier books. Do you remember when Taliban bombed in Bamyan or where those statues of Buddha? It was horrible but I said but they are taking Buddhism much more seriously than us. They saw „We have a truth, this is an alternative truth and we have to destroy it.“ But it was a way to say it's a serious conflict of truth. But for a multicultural tolerant guy he would say „No listen each one has his own truth, for some people it's better Buddha from for others it's it's better that“ and so on and so on. So again this is this is crucial for me. There is I think no contradiction between what you said Jonathan that we need more authentic religion and that we live in the most religious time. But it's an obscenely religious time where again I will I would even go as far as this. You know probably the story, it's not sure if it's true or not, that when Napoleon walked towards the Pope to be crowned as the Emperor, he took the crown from Pope's hands and put it the crown himself on his head. So then Pope gave him that's the anecdote, probably not literally true, the Pope's comment was „I know sir what you want to do. You want to destroy Christianity. But believe me you will not succeed. We the Church are trying to do it for years and we didn't succeed.“ So for me today's religions are if anything a fanatical fear of authentic religious experience which you find you have to go I agree with you Jonathan into the past. My top contenders are I don't know Meister Eckhart, Jakob Böhme and so on, that Rheinisch German mysticism
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and this is something
and this is something
Slavoj Žižek
so disturbing if you go
so disturbing if you go
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into this. It's like going through madness. But again today we experience we reduce religion to just another of these psychotherapy to make you feel safe. So although we are all the time saying how we live in dangerous times and so on and so on, no maybe we are still way too safe. That's why I wrote how we like to watch TV news where horrors are shown but it's always on another part of the world. „Oh my god children are dying in Somalia, people are killed in Syria“ or whatever, but like it's not our reality. You see it out there on the screen. I think that what we need today is that we lose this distance of safety, that what is out there on the screen should enter reality. You know from different fantastic stories my favorite stories were always those where where a person which is only on a painting magically steps out of the painting into reality. Or like in a Woody Allen movie I forgot which one you remember when actors step out and talk with
into this. It's like going through madness. But again today we experience we reduce religion to just another of these psychotherapy to make you feel safe. So although we are all the time saying how we live in dangerous times and so on and so on, no maybe we are still way too safe. That's why I wrote how we like to watch TV news where horrors are shown but it's always on another part of the world. „Oh my god children are dying in Somalia, people are killed in Syria“ or whatever, but like it's not our reality. You see it out there on the screen. I think that what we need today is that we lose this distance of safety, that what is out there on the screen should enter reality. You know from different fantastic stories my favorite stories were always those where where a person which is only on a painting magically steps out of the painting into reality. Or like in a Woody Allen movie I forgot which one you remember when actors step out and talk with
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that's what authentic art strong art does. And it's while we like to do the opposite, to fictionalize our our reality. Absolutely. And I also have to say I am an I am an art fanatic. I am totally fanatic and an extremist extremistico of art. I think that art should rule the world. Art has to be in power like Richard Wagner said like Ludwig the Second of Bavaria said we need the Gesamtkunstwerk. And we cannot vote the future. This is a very very bad concept. Future is not votable. We can only let it happen and put us aside to let it happen. The future is not our lifestyle, ja. It's not folklore, ja. It's not a safety net. It's a Blitzschlag. Ja. The future cannot be voted it should be we should let it pass by that we can experience it, ja. But we don't know it. If we know the future then we are priests, ja. We but we are not priests, we are Spielkinder. We have no fear, we have no panic. I am not fearful. I think these times are beautiful because we have so many chances, ja. Because the enemy is so clear, ja. I have so many enemies around me I can I cannot count them anymore. Ja. That's why I love to stay at home because I do Distanzschaffungsmaßnahme. I do my own stuff. And I try to be fit in a way in my in my brain and I try to be as fanatic as possible in art. But not in reality because there it's just blah blah, ja. In reality to be fanatic makes no sense. Savonarola was better, ja. Nero was better, Caligula was better, much better, ja. Jeanne d'Arc was also much better than these people who are around now who pretend to be these religious Abziehbilder of these people. Ja. This is crazy. I mean these people who are now around who make all this noise in reality, ja, they are so weak because their only their only reason is taste. They have no view on volcanoes who produce CO2. CO2 is a is a chemical formula that's why it cannot be a bad thing it's not an enemy. The the sun we cannot live on the sun. It's not our enemy, ja. It is not a religious enemy it is nothing that we have to get rid of, we just have to live with it we have to also with a smile we have to go into the Herausforderung of the future. And not with Verbitterung. These degenerated verbitterte people who are gathering in thousands thousands
that's what authentic art strong art does. And it's while we like to do the opposite, to fictionalize our our reality. Absolutely. And I also have to say I am an I am an art fanatic. I am totally fanatic and an extremist extremistico of art. I think that art should rule the world. Art has to be in power like Richard Wagner said like Ludwig the Second of Bavaria said we need the Gesamtkunstwerk. And we cannot vote the future. This is a very very bad concept. Future is not votable. We can only let it happen and put us aside to let it happen. The future is not our lifestyle, ja. It's not folklore, ja. It's not a safety net. It's a Blitzschlag. Ja. The future cannot be voted it should be we should let it pass by that we can experience it, ja. But we don't know it. If we know the future then we are priests, ja. We but we are not priests, we are Spielkinder. We have no fear, we have no panic. I am not fearful. I think these times are beautiful because we have so many chances, ja. Because the enemy is so clear, ja. I have so many enemies around me I can I cannot count them anymore. Ja. That's why I love to stay at home because I do Distanzschaffungsmaßnahme. I do my own stuff. And I try to be fit in a way in my in my brain and I try to be as fanatic as possible in art. But not in reality because there it's just blah blah, ja. In reality to be fanatic makes no sense. Savonarola was better, ja. Nero was better, Caligula was better, much better, ja. Jeanne d'Arc was also much better than these people who are around now who pretend to be these religious Abziehbilder of these people. Ja. This is crazy. I mean these people who are now around who make all this noise in reality, ja, they are so weak because their only their only reason is taste. They have no view on volcanoes who produce CO2. CO2 is a is a chemical formula that's why it cannot be a bad thing it's not an enemy. The the sun we cannot live on the sun. It's not our enemy, ja. It is not a religious enemy it is nothing that we have to get rid of, we just have to live with it we have to also with a smile we have to go into the Herausforderung of the future. And not with Verbitterung. These degenerated verbitterte people who are gathering in thousands thousands
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of people. They think the more they are the the stronger is the message. No, the the less strong is the message. Je mehr du bist umso verwässerter ist dein Anliegen. And if you have this guru system and you have these Mitläufer like all diese ganzen Klimakonferenzen und Wirtschaftskonferenzen und Konferenzen und Konferenzen und Konferenzen und Konferenzen. Da sind nur Loser. Da sind nur Kacke. Da sind nur Scheiße. Da sind nur Anti-Zukunftsmenschen.
of people. They think the more they are the the stronger is the message. No, the the less strong is the message. Je mehr du bist umso verwässerter ist dein Anliegen. And if you have this guru system and you have these Mitläufer like all diese ganzen Klimakonferenzen und Wirtschaftskonferenzen und Konferenzen und Konferenzen und Konferenzen und Konferenzen. Da sind nur Loser. Da sind nur Kacke. Da sind nur Scheiße. Da sind nur Anti-Zukunftsmenschen.
Slavoj Žižek
Da sind nur religiöse Typen die sich in eine Sekte begeben wollen. Das sind Sektenmitglieder die sich gegenseitig vollfurzen und sagen „Das ist das neue Ding“. Das ist aber nicht das neue Ding, ja. Das neue Ding kommt immer aus dem einzelnen Gehirn. Dem einzelnen Kindergehirn, ja. Und niemals Guru. Und du machst eine Sache you don't make it better when you have followers. Work that you have no followers. Talk so fast like Žižek and me and so much rubbish also that nobody can follow you. Then you are on the unsafe side. You are always unsafe. I'm always on the risk. I'm always in the risk room. Always. This is my I'm always on the front. Ich bin immer vor der Front. I was always there. And nothing harmed me because I trusted in art. I trusted in the future but I didn't vote it. And I don't want to press Germany into a political party. I want the kein Parteienstaat. We had the Mehrparteienstaat, we had the Einparteienstaat, and now we have the Mehrparteienstaat again. Why not the kein Parteienstaat? What we experience in Germany now is total anarchy. This total anarchy is Willkür. We have the most Willkür democratic situation ever. This is a Willkür-Staat like every Staat. Europe, the world, we have only Willkürstaaten. Alles ist Willkür, ja. Es wird nur anders verkauft. Wir leben in einem zwangskollektiven Staat. Das ist doch vollkommen eindeutig. Aber man kann es lustig machen wie ich. I do it with humor, I laugh about it. Because I I build my own bunker, meine meine Oase. And I will press my Oase so big that it's big like Germany like the whole world. I I really take Richard Wagner serious but not Bierschiss serious but I take him serious. He wanted a Gesamtkunstwerk. That was one of the most clever and wonderful things that somebody thought. And Ludwig the Second of Bavaria wanted to really build it. But the politicians fought against him. They wanted him away because he was too much an artist. Slavoj, I think I think Jonathan's position is totally clear. He's a fanatic of art. What does it mean for you as a philosopher? Are you also a fanatic of philosophy or how would you describe yourself? It's a very obscure domain because okay I will return to this. Can I make a couple of friendly comments again because it gave me so much to think. First, it's what Jonathan said, first it's very important what he Jonathan said about future. And it's the very and it's what Hegel is saying, don't forget that Hegel is not a naive progressivist who knows in future things will go on more and more freedom. You know Hegel says future does not belong to philosophy. Philosophy can only describe not even the present, he says a system of Lebenswelt of life which is already in its decay. I agree with you Jonathan that risky prophets, madmen can say do something which some of them can at the end turn out to be just madmen but many of them nonetheless become prophets retroactively. You have to take a risk there. And Hegel knew it, that's why you don't find any speculations about future in it. Second thing how I would read Jonathan. You know when we are in a period of crisis like now, COVID, global warming and other things and so on, this is not simply an empirical trouble that we will more or less successfully resolve or fail. All these lockdown prohibitions, ecological limitations, I think this will affect fundamentally what it means to be human. Maybe we will have to change very many very elementary rules of our cohabitation and so on. We don't know. Future is extremely risky. And there is the mistake of, as you Jonathan said, this Sektenideologie. I think Glasgow negotiations were a failure because what they tried to do is build a coalition of sects, you know. Different sects „Oh let's make a coalition a little bit.“ But there was no true shattering truth event. And for this now I will say something horrible. But I agree with you here, we cannot vote about the future. Future comes and to help us with all the risks that this implies, it's horrible what I will say, but we need strong leaders also. Not leaders in the sense of physical dictators killing. Good leader is not in the egotistic sense but in the sense of fanaticism is so
Da sind nur religiöse Typen die sich in eine Sekte begeben wollen. Das sind Sektenmitglieder die sich gegenseitig vollfurzen und sagen „Das ist das neue Ding“. Das ist aber nicht das neue Ding, ja. Das neue Ding kommt immer aus dem einzelnen Gehirn. Dem einzelnen Kindergehirn, ja. Und niemals Guru. Und du machst eine Sache you don't make it better when you have followers. Work that you have no followers. Talk so fast like Žižek and me and so much rubbish also that nobody can follow you. Then you are on the unsafe side. You are always unsafe. I'm always on the risk. I'm always in the risk room. Always. This is my I'm always on the front. Ich bin immer vor der Front. I was always there. And nothing harmed me because I trusted in art. I trusted in the future but I didn't vote it. And I don't want to press Germany into a political party. I want the kein Parteienstaat. We had the Mehrparteienstaat, we had the Einparteienstaat, and now we have the Mehrparteienstaat again. Why not the kein Parteienstaat? What we experience in Germany now is total anarchy. This total anarchy is Willkür. We have the most Willkür democratic situation ever. This is a Willkür-Staat like every Staat. Europe, the world, we have only Willkürstaaten. Alles ist Willkür, ja. Es wird nur anders verkauft. Wir leben in einem zwangskollektiven Staat. Das ist doch vollkommen eindeutig. Aber man kann es lustig machen wie ich. I do it with humor, I laugh about it. Because I I build my own bunker, meine meine Oase. And I will press my Oase so big that it's big like Germany like the whole world. I I really take Richard Wagner serious but not Bierschiss serious but I take him serious. He wanted a Gesamtkunstwerk. That was one of the most clever and wonderful things that somebody thought. And Ludwig the Second of Bavaria wanted to really build it. But the politicians fought against him. They wanted him away because he was too much an artist. Slavoj, I think I think Jonathan's position is totally clear. He's a fanatic of art. What does it mean for you as a philosopher? Are you also a fanatic of philosophy or how would you describe yourself? It's a very obscure domain because okay I will return to this. Can I make a couple of friendly comments again because it gave me so much to think. First, it's what Jonathan said, first it's very important what he Jonathan said about future. And it's the very and it's what Hegel is saying, don't forget that Hegel is not a naive progressivist who knows in future things will go on more and more freedom. You know Hegel says future does not belong to philosophy. Philosophy can only describe not even the present, he says a system of Lebenswelt of life which is already in its decay. I agree with you Jonathan that risky prophets, madmen can say do something which some of them can at the end turn out to be just madmen but many of them nonetheless become prophets retroactively. You have to take a risk there. And Hegel knew it, that's why you don't find any speculations about future in it. Second thing how I would read Jonathan. You know when we are in a period of crisis like now, COVID, global warming and other things and so on, this is not simply an empirical trouble that we will more or less successfully resolve or fail. All these lockdown prohibitions, ecological limitations, I think this will affect fundamentally what it means to be human. Maybe we will have to change very many very elementary rules of our cohabitation and so on. We don't know. Future is extremely risky. And there is the mistake of, as you Jonathan said, this Sektenideologie. I think Glasgow negotiations were a failure because what they tried to do is build a coalition of sects, you know. Different sects „Oh let's make a coalition a little bit.“ But there was no true shattering truth event. And for this now I will say something horrible. But I agree with you here, we cannot vote about the future. Future comes and to help us with all the risks that this implies, it's horrible what I will say, but we need strong leaders also. Not leaders in the sense of physical dictators killing. Good leader is not in the egotistic sense but in the sense of fanaticism is so
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self-possessed that as Jacques Lacan said somewhere, a good leader is indifferent towards being betrayed. Because a good leader is not flirting with people „Follow me.“ He tells his or her truth. And then and I like very much Jonathan that you mention Joan of Arc. He is today she is today often dismissed as, you know, a little bit crazy and so on. No, she was a figure of truth ruined by whom? Not just by the British, by the coalition between French king nobility and the British. Together they betrayed her like „Oh her time is over we no longer need her“ and so on and so on. So maybe to propose to conclude a formula. This would have been Hegel's formula. Philosophy deals with what is here but not with the future. The future is the domain of crazy artists prophets and so on. And philosophy should be, that would be my formula here, just respectful. You know like leave it open, we'll see. Philosophy, the business of philosophy is not to justify what the prophets are saying, no, because the situation is open. Just the business of philosophy like Hegel says is to really believe in how the future is open. That's why I always say Hegel is for me in some sense more materialist than Marx because Marx still believed there is a historical progress towards communism whatever and today we the Marxists we know where the history is moving and we can help it move and so on and so on. I much prefer here that's the politicians that I like. Was it Saint-Just or Robespierre? I think Saint-Just. Oh you are crazy look. Yeah. He is my guy. He is my guy. Absolutely. You know I don't know which of them said beautifully. I think Saint-Just that a revolutionary is not one realizing his history. He said revolutionary authentic one yes is like a navigator on a ship without a compass. Lost at sea having to take risky decisions and so on and so on. That's why I never accepted this stupid idea that that the so-called Jacobin terror is the first step towards totalitarian terror. No. Mostly they were right. Do you know Jonathan what I learned now from some British historians who are even more conservative. Do you know that Danton who was guillotined by now they open up British archives no? And they discovered Danton was
self-possessed that as Jacques Lacan said somewhere, a good leader is indifferent towards being betrayed. Because a good leader is not flirting with people „Follow me.“ He tells his or her truth. And then and I like very much Jonathan that you mention Joan of Arc. He is today she is today often dismissed as, you know, a little bit crazy and so on. No, she was a figure of truth ruined by whom? Not just by the British, by the coalition between French king nobility and the British. Together they betrayed her like „Oh her time is over we no longer need her“ and so on and so on. So maybe to propose to conclude a formula. This would have been Hegel's formula. Philosophy deals with what is here but not with the future. The future is the domain of crazy artists prophets and so on. And philosophy should be, that would be my formula here, just respectful. You know like leave it open, we'll see. Philosophy, the business of philosophy is not to justify what the prophets are saying, no, because the situation is open. Just the business of philosophy like Hegel says is to really believe in how the future is open. That's why I always say Hegel is for me in some sense more materialist than Marx because Marx still believed there is a historical progress towards communism whatever and today we the Marxists we know where the history is moving and we can help it move and so on and so on. I much prefer here that's the politicians that I like. Was it Saint-Just or Robespierre? I think Saint-Just. Oh you are crazy look. Yeah. He is my guy. He is my guy. Absolutely. You know I don't know which of them said beautifully. I think Saint-Just that a revolutionary is not one realizing his history. He said revolutionary authentic one yes is like a navigator on a ship without a compass. Lost at sea having to take risky decisions and so on and so on. That's why I never accepted this stupid idea that that the so-called Jacobin terror is the first step towards totalitarian terror. No. Mostly they were right. Do you know Jonathan what I learned now from some British historians who are even more conservative. Do you know that Danton who was guillotined by now they open up British archives no? And they discovered Danton was
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really paid by the British. He was corrupted. It's proven today. To say in this sense Danton was literally true. You see, we we now said something very important here. Hegel is silent on future. This doesn't mean we should just interpret the past. Hegel leaves the space open for artists, madmen and so on. That's the other side of Hegel I think. He doesn't talk a lot about it but he kind of was very curious. And one thing another in defense of Hegel. You know that he wasn't an idiot when he talked about very moderately modestly about the future. You know that in his Philosophie der Geschichte, when in the introduction he talks about America, North America, and Russia, Russland. He both times he says we cannot say anything about these countries, they didn't yet deploy their spiritual potential. And he said in „Next century will be theirs.“ So Hegel was not a speculative idiot. But these were just modest opinions. Maybe it will be like this. We should learn more from Hegel today. Ja, I just want to interfere in this because you mention the name that I really wanted to introduce because I had brought two books. It's Saint-Just, ja. I'm reading them at the moment. For me Saint-Just is one of the biggest leaders of all times. He was the totalitarian beauty. He was so beautiful that he was totalitarian in this, in the beauty of art. And he was a Überkind. He was the Übermensch what Nietzsche always wanted. The child in you. He was still a child. He was so beautiful that these old farts had to kill him because he was too beautiful and he was so extreme. On the other hand his talks were so crazy and he would have survived if his talk on the last day he did a big talk one day before he was killed. That was so intelligent that they would have freed him but somehow there was a tumult or something. Ja, ja. This guy was just I mean he was Robespierre was the höchstes Wesen of course and they celebrated themselves also like like dolls of art. I mean this was more an art event, this was a big exhibition. The convent exhibition of Jacobinism or something. And it was about leadership in an artistic way. And these people were undressierbar. They they ran into the abyss because they have
really paid by the British. He was corrupted. It's proven today. To say in this sense Danton was literally true. You see, we we now said something very important here. Hegel is silent on future. This doesn't mean we should just interpret the past. Hegel leaves the space open for artists, madmen and so on. That's the other side of Hegel I think. He doesn't talk a lot about it but he kind of was very curious. And one thing another in defense of Hegel. You know that he wasn't an idiot when he talked about very moderately modestly about the future. You know that in his Philosophie der Geschichte, when in the introduction he talks about America, North America, and Russia, Russland. He both times he says we cannot say anything about these countries, they didn't yet deploy their spiritual potential. And he said in „Next century will be theirs.“ So Hegel was not a speculative idiot. But these were just modest opinions. Maybe it will be like this. We should learn more from Hegel today. Ja, I just want to interfere in this because you mention the name that I really wanted to introduce because I had brought two books. It's Saint-Just, ja. I'm reading them at the moment. For me Saint-Just is one of the biggest leaders of all times. He was the totalitarian beauty. He was so beautiful that he was totalitarian in this, in the beauty of art. And he was a Überkind. He was the Übermensch what Nietzsche always wanted. The child in you. He was still a child. He was so beautiful that these old farts had to kill him because he was too beautiful and he was so extreme. On the other hand his talks were so crazy and he would have survived if his talk on the last day he did a big talk one day before he was killed. That was so intelligent that they would have freed him but somehow there was a tumult or something. Ja, ja. This guy was just I mean he was Robespierre was the höchstes Wesen of course and they celebrated themselves also like like dolls of art. I mean this was more an art event, this was a big exhibition. The convent exhibition of Jacobinism or something. And it was about leadership in an artistic way. And these people were undressierbar. They they ran into the abyss because they have
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no fear. And they also understood that art created everything because of pressure. The Urknall is not a religious aspect. It didn't happen through religion or God, it was pressure. Like the diamond or
no fear. And they also understood that art created everything because of pressure. The Urknall is not a religious aspect. It didn't happen through religion or God, it was pressure. Like the diamond or
Slavoj Žižek
something. The Urknall is an artificial art explosion and these people these individuals took this and took it serious and transformed it into art. And I'm totally agree with this. We need the strongest leaders but they should be very abstract and they should just lead without having a taste connection to us. They should lead like a robot or like like a painting or like a film or like the Wizard of Oz or I don't know. I mean there are so many blinde Flecken. We have so many white spots that were not discovered yet. We are all these people who are now unterwegs they are slaves of their own ego and they all go in the same rille, they all go in the same canyon. But everything around this canyon is free. There's nobody walking there. Totally. Yeah. Can I just confirm what you said with one detail because I also read a lot about Saint-Just. You know that when they were arrested, the two and others on when Jacobinism fell, that Robespierre had a momentary breakdown, cried, shouted. Not Saint-Just. Saint-Just remained absolute perfect to the end. And second thing if you read closely as much as we know their last letters, texts and so on, this makes nonetheless Robespierre also both of them truly gigantic. It was clear to them that they will that the tendency goes towards new emperor Napoleon and they knew the choice. Either they themselves become emperors or lose life even. And they have chosen that. They rather than to compromise their pure sense, they risked their life. I mean they were not idiots. You know what's the proof that they were not totalitarians? We tend to forget that they in the in the convent they were voted out of power. There was no coup d'etat against them. What totalitarian would have what true dictator would have allowed that. They knew that something is pre that a plot against them is prepared. All the Paris was talking about them. So don't underestimate them, don't confuse them with the usual Stalinist dictators or whatever and so on you know. Exactly. And of course they were like for me I always have this image that they went hand in hand towards the future and then they just fell into the abyss but that is the risk. That is the step a little too far but they calculated it. It was like computer calculation, they knew what they were doing and they knew that the world formulas art and they were in the Thermidor, ja. I mean we have to also understand these words. Convent, Thermidor, Saint-Just. I mean these names are already crystals. And then we come to the father of all this, the abstract theoretical person Marquis de Sade. We come to Marquis de Sade who was also one of these Überkindern. He was even doing art in jail because he didn't care, ja. He was the big big state creator of France. I mean we should have taken him more serious and then everything would have changed. It was not about sex. No no I agree I agree yeah. Ja, he just used the metaphor but it was about a reconstruction to solve the chaotic system. To bring a certain order into something he used this sex metaphor and he made it like like a schnitzel ja he boom boom boom boom boom boom and he put the pressure out of it but the people didn't understand him because he was too extreme. Ja and I'm I'm really I'm totally interested and fascinated by this French Revolution and Saint-Just especially because I think it was a big playground. Like Nero. Nero just hat alles ad absurdum geführt. Politics, religion. He just played with the priests he played played with the senate, played like Caligula. Und er wollte die Grenze verschieben. He wanted to make the room bigger. That is what art does. Art doesn't make the room small, or it makes the rooms that are not possible or able to be art to collapse. But he and these people like Caligula wanted to expand Rome. He wanted Rome to be a total theater, a total opera. Ja I mean everybody knows this and then we are so skeptical about Nero. How can we be skeptical? He was one of the biggest leaders of all time. And he was so beautiful. But let me intervene Slavoj, if I understand you correctly you handed over the world to the artists as I understand you correctly. No, no. No. The future is dark, we cannot vote it, and all I'm saying is that all that we have are to get a glimpse of what there may be in the future all that we have is this kind of a like Blitz, like lightning striking signs from the future. That's all we have and it's not guaranteed. It's not that then an official interpreter can comes and says „That's how we write it down now we know what to do.“ No, it doesn't work like that. We still have to take risks. But I would agree with this again. Art, what we know about future is only through art. From Kafka and Kafka is for me interesting because I think we tend even many leftists to totally misread Kafka when they reduce him to this you know poet of bureaucratic alienation, dark godless. Kafka is full of obscene pleasure. The castle is the place of obscenity, the court and so on. Kafka Kafka knew so many things that you know that's the the problem is this one. That our saddest experience at the end of 20th century was the fall of socialism, no, disintegration, and then this totally naive belief now we will catch up with the West we will have capitalist democracy everything will be better. No, some artists already knew it that that's why I still like our Slovene post-punk group Laibach. Their whole work was a premonition like „Don't expect too much from this happy passage to democracy. There is another dimension very dark and we see it today coming with what is happening in Eastern Europe and so on and so on.“ Ja, I have to add something because it's always democracy and art has nothing to do with each other. Because art is it it cannot be combined. Art is not votable you cannot ask many people to make their vote towards art or against it.
something. The Urknall is an artificial art explosion and these people these individuals took this and took it serious and transformed it into art. And I'm totally agree with this. We need the strongest leaders but they should be very abstract and they should just lead without having a taste connection to us. They should lead like a robot or like like a painting or like a film or like the Wizard of Oz or I don't know. I mean there are so many blinde Flecken. We have so many white spots that were not discovered yet. We are all these people who are now unterwegs they are slaves of their own ego and they all go in the same rille, they all go in the same canyon. But everything around this canyon is free. There's nobody walking there. Totally. Yeah. Can I just confirm what you said with one detail because I also read a lot about Saint-Just. You know that when they were arrested, the two and others on when Jacobinism fell, that Robespierre had a momentary breakdown, cried, shouted. Not Saint-Just. Saint-Just remained absolute perfect to the end. And second thing if you read closely as much as we know their last letters, texts and so on, this makes nonetheless Robespierre also both of them truly gigantic. It was clear to them that they will that the tendency goes towards new emperor Napoleon and they knew the choice. Either they themselves become emperors or lose life even. And they have chosen that. They rather than to compromise their pure sense, they risked their life. I mean they were not idiots. You know what's the proof that they were not totalitarians? We tend to forget that they in the in the convent they were voted out of power. There was no coup d'etat against them. What totalitarian would have what true dictator would have allowed that. They knew that something is pre that a plot against them is prepared. All the Paris was talking about them. So don't underestimate them, don't confuse them with the usual Stalinist dictators or whatever and so on you know. Exactly. And of course they were like for me I always have this image that they went hand in hand towards the future and then they just fell into the abyss but that is the risk. That is the step a little too far but they calculated it. It was like computer calculation, they knew what they were doing and they knew that the world formulas art and they were in the Thermidor, ja. I mean we have to also understand these words. Convent, Thermidor, Saint-Just. I mean these names are already crystals. And then we come to the father of all this, the abstract theoretical person Marquis de Sade. We come to Marquis de Sade who was also one of these Überkindern. He was even doing art in jail because he didn't care, ja. He was the big big state creator of France. I mean we should have taken him more serious and then everything would have changed. It was not about sex. No no I agree I agree yeah. Ja, he just used the metaphor but it was about a reconstruction to solve the chaotic system. To bring a certain order into something he used this sex metaphor and he made it like like a schnitzel ja he boom boom boom boom boom boom and he put the pressure out of it but the people didn't understand him because he was too extreme. Ja and I'm I'm really I'm totally interested and fascinated by this French Revolution and Saint-Just especially because I think it was a big playground. Like Nero. Nero just hat alles ad absurdum geführt. Politics, religion. He just played with the priests he played played with the senate, played like Caligula. Und er wollte die Grenze verschieben. He wanted to make the room bigger. That is what art does. Art doesn't make the room small, or it makes the rooms that are not possible or able to be art to collapse. But he and these people like Caligula wanted to expand Rome. He wanted Rome to be a total theater, a total opera. Ja I mean everybody knows this and then we are so skeptical about Nero. How can we be skeptical? He was one of the biggest leaders of all time. And he was so beautiful. But let me intervene Slavoj, if I understand you correctly you handed over the world to the artists as I understand you correctly. No, no. No. The future is dark, we cannot vote it, and all I'm saying is that all that we have are to get a glimpse of what there may be in the future all that we have is this kind of a like Blitz, like lightning striking signs from the future. That's all we have and it's not guaranteed. It's not that then an official interpreter can comes and says „That's how we write it down now we know what to do.“ No, it doesn't work like that. We still have to take risks. But I would agree with this again. Art, what we know about future is only through art. From Kafka and Kafka is for me interesting because I think we tend even many leftists to totally misread Kafka when they reduce him to this you know poet of bureaucratic alienation, dark godless. Kafka is full of obscene pleasure. The castle is the place of obscenity, the court and so on. Kafka Kafka knew so many things that you know that's the the problem is this one. That our saddest experience at the end of 20th century was the fall of socialism, no, disintegration, and then this totally naive belief now we will catch up with the West we will have capitalist democracy everything will be better. No, some artists already knew it that that's why I still like our Slovene post-punk group Laibach. Their whole work was a premonition like „Don't expect too much from this happy passage to democracy. There is another dimension very dark and we see it today coming with what is happening in Eastern Europe and so on and so on.“ Ja, I have to add something because it's always democracy and art has nothing to do with each other. Because art is it it cannot be combined. Art is not votable you cannot ask many people to make their vote towards art or against it.
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It is something different, it is even the opposite. Art cannot deal with democracy. Art is Wahrheit, aber auch Abrechnung und Rache. And I also took this book. It's about Schatzsuche, ja. It's about finding treasures. And there are so many treasures to find but you cannot find them collectively and you cannot find them through democracy. Democracy weakens everything, sorry you know that I'm against it because I think we
It is something different, it is even the opposite. Art cannot deal with democracy. Art is Wahrheit, aber auch Abrechnung und Rache. And I also took this book. It's about Schatzsuche, ja. It's about finding treasures. And there are so many treasures to find but you cannot find them collectively and you cannot find them through democracy. Democracy weakens everything, sorry you know that I'm against it because I think we
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deserve something better and we have to work for something that comes and we should not always cook in the same soup. We cooked in this soup now for decades and it doesn't make it better. So we have to find something new, we have to go on a new adventure to find I call it dictatorship of art. We can also say Gesamtkunstwerk Deutschland, we can say Gesamtkunstwerk Europe, Gesamtkunstwerk the whole world. We should not go back in the past because we had all this, like Slavoj always says we had the highlights of communism, Stalinism, Hitlerism, ja, we all had that. So and now we had also the highlight of democracy maybe years ago. Why why stick to it? Why stick to it? It's done. Ja now. I totally agree with you here that people hate but and I'm not saying this as a kind of a fanatic, but are we aware that what we are witnessing today at a quite literal realist level is how the form of democracy that we have today, this opinion's democracy, people express their opinion when they vote and so on, is simply inoperative confronting the big challenges that we are facing today. Then when I say this, people accuse me „Oh you want a China-style dictatorship or what?“ No, I'm just saying if you want us to avoid the danger of Chinese way then the first thing to do is to look for a step beyond democracy that we have it now. If we stick to that democracy it will be more and more threatened by people like Trump and so on and so on. Hegel would have seen this clearly. Because you know when you have like in the United States normality, by normality I mean pre-Trumpian peaceful state normal of United States where Democrats, Republicans
deserve something better and we have to work for something that comes and we should not always cook in the same soup. We cooked in this soup now for decades and it doesn't make it better. So we have to find something new, we have to go on a new adventure to find I call it dictatorship of art. We can also say Gesamtkunstwerk Deutschland, we can say Gesamtkunstwerk Europe, Gesamtkunstwerk the whole world. We should not go back in the past because we had all this, like Slavoj always says we had the highlights of communism, Stalinism, Hitlerism, ja, we all had that. So and now we had also the highlight of democracy maybe years ago. Why why stick to it? Why stick to it? It's done. Ja now. I totally agree with you here that people hate but and I'm not saying this as a kind of a fanatic, but are we aware that what we are witnessing today at a quite literal realist level is how the form of democracy that we have today, this opinion's democracy, people express their opinion when they vote and so on, is simply inoperative confronting the big challenges that we are facing today. Then when I say this, people accuse me „Oh you want a China-style dictatorship or what?“ No, I'm just saying if you want us to avoid the danger of Chinese way then the first thing to do is to look for a step beyond democracy that we have it now. If we stick to that democracy it will be more and more threatened by people like Trump and so on and so on. Hegel would have seen this clearly. Because you know when you have like in the United States normality, by normality I mean pre-Trumpian peaceful state normal of United States where Democrats, Republicans
Slavoj Žižek
change each other. And then you have something like Trump. Hegel's point would have been not as unfortunately Joschka Fischer said once, Trump just fell from space and ruined everything. No. Trump is a symptom of what was already wrong, non-functioning in democracy. The solution is not to return to old normal welfare state democracy. Ja and I mean we can make democracy smoother and smoother and smoother and die bereifte Leberwurst und immer feiner feiner feiner but then we are voting voting voting till we are dead, till the patient is dead. We are still voting and voting and voting and voting and and workshops and voting and then it's always the perspective of the victim. We should go away from this victimizing ourselves. We are not the Opfer. We are Spielkinder, we are people who want something different, ja. We want to conquer, that was so good with in Hegel's times. The people were so positive about conquering the world, to do something, to to conquer nature, to do maybe it was a little selfish it was a little arrogant but at least it had a power it had a wish I mean like Humboldt and all these people who went into the blind spaces
change each other. And then you have something like Trump. Hegel's point would have been not as unfortunately Joschka Fischer said once, Trump just fell from space and ruined everything. No. Trump is a symptom of what was already wrong, non-functioning in democracy. The solution is not to return to old normal welfare state democracy. Ja and I mean we can make democracy smoother and smoother and smoother and die bereifte Leberwurst und immer feiner feiner feiner but then we are voting voting voting till we are dead, till the patient is dead. We are still voting and voting and voting and voting and and workshops and voting and then it's always the perspective of the victim. We should go away from this victimizing ourselves. We are not the Opfer. We are Spielkinder, we are people who want something different, ja. We want to conquer, that was so good with in Hegel's times. The people were so positive about conquering the world, to do something, to to conquer nature, to do maybe it was a little selfish it was a little arrogant but at least it had a power it had a wish I mean like Humboldt and all these people who went into the blind spaces
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and tried to discover something. And I I am not a victim, I hate to be a victim, I I don't want the victim perspective in art. I always refused it. And for me to say something against democracy is something very fulfilling. It is just saying the status quo should be changed. It's just saying we need something else. And the people are so afraid always. Why? What are they so religious? Is this the end state for them? Is this the endpoint of their thinking existence? To make democracy even more and more feingeistig and and and lifestyle soll es immer kleiner gerieben werden, soll Deutschland immer kleiner gepresst werden, Europa immer kleiner, immer zu kleineren Männern. I agree totally with you you know at what point? That colonialism did horrible things but are we aware that all serious critiques of colonialism come come from Europe. They are without European enlightenment we wouldn't have even anti-colonialism
and tried to discover something. And I I am not a victim, I hate to be a victim, I I don't want the victim perspective in art. I always refused it. And for me to say something against democracy is something very fulfilling. It is just saying the status quo should be changed. It's just saying we need something else. And the people are so afraid always. Why? What are they so religious? Is this the end state for them? Is this the endpoint of their thinking existence? To make democracy even more and more feingeistig and and and lifestyle soll es immer kleiner gerieben werden, soll Deutschland immer kleiner gepresst werden, Europa immer kleiner, immer zu kleineren Männern. I agree totally with you you know at what point? That colonialism did horrible things but are we aware that all serious critiques of colonialism come come from Europe. They are without European enlightenment we wouldn't have even anti-colonialism
Slavoj Žižek
and so on. We so we shouldn't ask
and so on. We so we shouldn't ask
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as many European left liberals do today „Oh we are horrible, we should humiliate ourselves, anti-Eurocentrism“. No. Today we should ask more than ever what we Europe nonetheless can give the world. We should have more positive attitude not this absolute victimization in the sense not that we are victims but in the sense that you know others were our victims so now whatever befell us we should tolerate everything, we are the mega-guilty or whatever. No we are not. We can still give great things to the world. Exactly. Guilt is the worst Ratgeber. To feel guilty is a personal thing that you cannot put into collectivism. If you are afraid of something then deal with it your own, go to a doctor if you feel really threatened but all these people who want to make Angst transform it into others. They say oh „Alle müssen jetzt Angst haben vor Hautfarben alle müssen jetzt Angst haben vor Rassismus alle müssen jetzt Angst haben vor Antirassismus“. Alle schmeißt diese
as many European left liberals do today „Oh we are horrible, we should humiliate ourselves, anti-Eurocentrism“. No. Today we should ask more than ever what we Europe nonetheless can give the world. We should have more positive attitude not this absolute victimization in the sense not that we are victims but in the sense that you know others were our victims so now whatever befell us we should tolerate everything, we are the mega-guilty or whatever. No we are not. We can still give great things to the world. Exactly. Guilt is the worst Ratgeber. To feel guilty is a personal thing that you cannot put into collectivism. If you are afraid of something then deal with it your own, go to a doctor if you feel really threatened but all these people who want to make Angst transform it into others. They say oh „Alle müssen jetzt Angst haben vor Hautfarben alle müssen jetzt Angst haben vor Rassismus alle müssen jetzt Angst haben vor Antirassismus“. Alle schmeißt diese
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Medaille mal weg. Rassismus ist Antirassismus. Antirassismus ist Rassismus. It is the same. Throw the medal away. Ja like left and right it's the same.
Medaille mal weg. Rassismus ist Antirassismus. Antirassismus ist Rassismus. It is the same. Throw the medal away. Ja like left and right it's the same.
Slavoj Žižek
You have right here and left here throw it away. Ja as long as you are still in these systems you are just the opposite. You are just. And at the moment sorry to say anti-racists are even more boring than racists. Ja. And I'm so bored by these sensors. I'm so bored by these taste people. I mean I then I prefer a radical fanatic religious person than these shallow people who who who say „We are all one, everything is the same.“ Yeah, yeah. Nothing is the same. Everything is totally different. Ja. And yeah there are so many chances that we have to really bring something positive into the future but we should not so much abrechnen mit der Vergangenheit. Die Vergangenheit is gone. Ja diese die Vergangenheit zu säubern. Das ist das ist ein Fehler. Ja. Man muss das säubern was gerade vor einem ist. Aber nicht was hinter mir ist. Die Vergangenheit zu säubern selbstgerecht darüber zu sprechen dass man anders wäre als vor Jahren, Jahren, Jahren. Die Mitläufer von heute wären auch die Mitläufer von früher gewesen. Ja. The gurus from today would have been the gurus of yesterday, ja. And these people who take everything personal, ja, they are the worst. They are so religious they are in power they take everything personal. The the skin color, the books that were written years ago. They take sculptures personal, they take paintings personal, they take
You have right here and left here throw it away. Ja as long as you are still in these systems you are just the opposite. You are just. And at the moment sorry to say anti-racists are even more boring than racists. Ja. And I'm so bored by these sensors. I'm so bored by these taste people. I mean I then I prefer a radical fanatic religious person than these shallow people who who who say „We are all one, everything is the same.“ Yeah, yeah. Nothing is the same. Everything is totally different. Ja. And yeah there are so many chances that we have to really bring something positive into the future but we should not so much abrechnen mit der Vergangenheit. Die Vergangenheit is gone. Ja diese die Vergangenheit zu säubern. Das ist das ist ein Fehler. Ja. Man muss das säubern was gerade vor einem ist. Aber nicht was hinter mir ist. Die Vergangenheit zu säubern selbstgerecht darüber zu sprechen dass man anders wäre als vor Jahren, Jahren, Jahren. Die Mitläufer von heute wären auch die Mitläufer von früher gewesen. Ja. The gurus from today would have been the gurus of yesterday, ja. And these people who take everything personal, ja, they are the worst. They are so religious they are in power they take everything personal. The the skin color, the books that were written years ago. They take sculptures personal, they take paintings personal, they take
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Stalin personal. Ja. I mean people who were under Stalin are have the right to take him personal. But not people who who didn't experience him. How can you take Hitler personal if you have not lived in that time? My mother she lived in Hitler times. She can take him personally. She is allowed. But everybody who is under living after cannot take Hitler personal because that is voodoo. That is a voodoo system. This is Gehirnwäsche. If you take something personal that has not have anything to do with your life. Ja. I can only take things personal that were existing after because then I was born. Ja. I cannot take these big conquerors Vasco da Gama and all these people personal. I cannot take the Incas, Aztecs, Atahualpa and all these people because I had no connection. Ja. This is not voodoo. Then then to conclude sorry I am now slowly dropping. Would you agree and you also Robert with my conclusion that where I would be critical I didn't already mention this of Adorno you know when Adorno says „no poetry after Auschwitz“. I would say no, no realist prose after Auschwitz but poetry yes. Poetry can deal with it. Realist realist prose cannot do it cannot
Stalin personal. Ja. I mean people who were under Stalin are have the right to take him personal. But not people who who didn't experience him. How can you take Hitler personal if you have not lived in that time? My mother she lived in Hitler times. She can take him personally. She is allowed. But everybody who is under living after cannot take Hitler personal because that is voodoo. That is a voodoo system. This is Gehirnwäsche. If you take something personal that has not have anything to do with your life. Ja. I can only take things personal that were existing after because then I was born. Ja. I cannot take these big conquerors Vasco da Gama and all these people personal. I cannot take the Incas, Aztecs, Atahualpa and all these people because I had no connection. Ja. This is not voodoo. Then then to conclude sorry I am now slowly dropping. Would you agree and you also Robert with my conclusion that where I would be critical I didn't already mention this of Adorno you know when Adorno says „no poetry after Auschwitz“. I would say no, no realist prose after Auschwitz but poetry yes. Poetry can deal with it. Realist realist prose cannot do it cannot
Slavoj Žižek
deal with Auschwitz no. You are right. Realität kann am wenigsten nichts macht nichts. Ja. No chance. Ja because then you are just. Coming back coming back to the beginning of this talk. Sorry one two minutes because this is very important. We live in illustrative times. Everything is illustrated. Your own opinion, your taste. And to illustrate these crazy things it's not possible. You can deal with art. Art is no illustration. Theater for example is nearly dead because the theaters always want to illustrate reality. The stage design or or operas want to illustrate what is happening outside. And there is no chance because then the outside will win. You have to put art against reality. Ja art against ja die Antirealität die Gegenwelt das Niemandsland. Das sind die wichtigen Punkte. We cannot conquer politics or destroy it by being politicians. We cannot destroy religion by being religious, ja. You can only destroy things through the something that has nothing to do with it. Art has nothing to do with religion. That's why it's stronger. Art
deal with Auschwitz no. You are right. Realität kann am wenigsten nichts macht nichts. Ja. No chance. Ja because then you are just. Coming back coming back to the beginning of this talk. Sorry one two minutes because this is very important. We live in illustrative times. Everything is illustrated. Your own opinion, your taste. And to illustrate these crazy things it's not possible. You can deal with art. Art is no illustration. Theater for example is nearly dead because the theaters always want to illustrate reality. The stage design or or operas want to illustrate what is happening outside. And there is no chance because then the outside will win. You have to put art against reality. Ja art against ja die Antirealität die Gegenwelt das Niemandsland. Das sind die wichtigen Punkte. We cannot conquer politics or destroy it by being politicians. We cannot destroy religion by being religious, ja. You can only destroy things through the something that has nothing to do with it. Art has nothing to do with religion. That's why it's stronger. Art
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is stronger than politics because it is not politics. Ja. But if you as an artist tries to be a politician then you are a Funktionär then you are out of art and then you are a Politiker. And this is a big big problem. The people always think they can destroy things by being the same. Be the total difference but even on another planet, ja. No connection. Politics has to go, religions have to go. Ja. There is no Schnittmenge. It will never happen. I have politicians as friends and religious people. But we always argue because they have no future and they know it. They are just willing to be in the comfort safety zone. That's why they are weak. Ja. We artists are weak because they are depressive, they are crazy people sometimes or very infantile or something. But we deal with ourselves. Das machen wir mit uns selber aus. Das Selbst ist das Entscheidende nicht das Ich, ja. Und auch bei Slavoj sehe ich kein Ich. Ich kann's nicht erkennen. Der Typ ist ja wie eine Zeitbombe. Also jemand der eine Zeitbombe is hat kein
is stronger than politics because it is not politics. Ja. But if you as an artist tries to be a politician then you are a Funktionär then you are out of art and then you are a Politiker. And this is a big big problem. The people always think they can destroy things by being the same. Be the total difference but even on another planet, ja. No connection. Politics has to go, religions have to go. Ja. There is no Schnittmenge. It will never happen. I have politicians as friends and religious people. But we always argue because they have no future and they know it. They are just willing to be in the comfort safety zone. That's why they are weak. Ja. We artists are weak because they are depressive, they are crazy people sometimes or very infantile or something. But we deal with ourselves. Das machen wir mit uns selber aus. Das Selbst ist das Entscheidende nicht das Ich, ja. Und auch bei Slavoj sehe ich kein Ich. Ich kann's nicht erkennen. Der Typ ist ja wie eine Zeitbombe. Also jemand der eine Zeitbombe is hat kein
Slavoj Žižek
Ich. Das ist die die Zeitbombe ist gestellt und irgendwann explodiert sie und dann ist er tot. Bei mir ist es genauso. Irgendwann. That's why that's why I said before he operates like an a little bit like an artist sorry to say this Slavoj. Coming back to the beginning of our talk. I think when Hegel said that art is a thing of the past he just meant what you said realist art, a special kind of art. And I think art is more alive than ever if you if you listen to Jonathan and his perspective of art, a very abstract kind of art the dictatorship of art. But but you both know that it was also meant as a book presentation today. I think the Hegel-Haus will be very unhappy if we don't show the book to the camera. This is the the new book
Ich. Das ist die die Zeitbombe ist gestellt und irgendwann explodiert sie und dann ist er tot. Bei mir ist es genauso. Irgendwann. That's why that's why I said before he operates like an a little bit like an artist sorry to say this Slavoj. Coming back to the beginning of our talk. I think when Hegel said that art is a thing of the past he just meant what you said realist art, a special kind of art. And I think art is more alive than ever if you if you listen to Jonathan and his perspective of art, a very abstract kind of art the dictatorship of art. But but you both know that it was also meant as a book presentation today. I think the Hegel-Haus will be very unhappy if we don't show the book to the camera. This is the the new book
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coming out today. Can you can you show it? Maybe we can bring some of the of the
coming out today. Can you can you show it? Maybe we can bring some of the of the
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Hegel wine. Did you get a bottle of the Hegel wine Slavoj? No, sorry. It's too complex where I am now. I cannot bring it. We'll do it for you we'll do it for you. Is this? Yeah. My evil idea is this real Hegel wine or did you buy some cheap wines? No, it's a the real they said it's a real it's a the grave is called Hegel. The grave is called Hegel itself. Literally. Yes yes. You know that Hegel was a heavy drinker wasn't he? I know and I think he drank
Hegel wine. Did you get a bottle of the Hegel wine Slavoj? No, sorry. It's too complex where I am now. I cannot bring it. We'll do it for you we'll do it for you. Is this? Yeah. My evil idea is this real Hegel wine or did you buy some cheap wines? No, it's a the real they said it's a real it's a the grave is called Hegel. The grave is called Hegel itself. Literally. Yes yes. You know that Hegel was a heavy drinker wasn't he? I know and I think he drank
Slavoj Žižek
a lot.
a lot.
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But he didn't drink just German wine. Hegel once told me that he was also ordering from France expensive [unintelligible] and so on. Yeah he was an international. Yeah yeah. He was an international drinker. So so maybe coming coming to the end. But there's one thing I want to ask you Slavoj because I read I know that Jonathan likes to sleep. Sleeping is is for him a kind of or a way to do to do art. And I was so pleased when I when I read in an interview with you with German magazine Die Zeit that you also like to sleep a lot. That you also like to sleep a lot and I think you that's why I said before that you you operate a bit a little bit like an artist that when you when you when you write for example writing is for you not to write you try to to have a trick you are a little bit of a trickster when you when you write. That's what you said in this interview because you write in blocks for example. But you know what I'm always doing moment just before I fall I fall asleep or if I awaken in the middle of the night or when I'm slowly awakening in the morning. This is one version. I always have a small notebook with me. The best ideas come for me in this half-sleep. And I don't trust my
But he didn't drink just German wine. Hegel once told me that he was also ordering from France expensive [unintelligible] and so on. Yeah he was an international. Yeah yeah. He was an international drinker. So so maybe coming coming to the end. But there's one thing I want to ask you Slavoj because I read I know that Jonathan likes to sleep. Sleeping is is for him a kind of or a way to do to do art. And I was so pleased when I when I read in an interview with you with German magazine Die Zeit that you also like to sleep a lot. That you also like to sleep a lot and I think you that's why I said before that you you operate a bit a little bit like an artist that when you when you when you write for example writing is for you not to write you try to to have a trick you are a little bit of a trickster when you when you write. That's what you said in this interview because you write in blocks for example. But you know what I'm always doing moment just before I fall I fall asleep or if I awaken in the middle of the night or when I'm slowly awakening in the morning. This is one version. I always have a small notebook with me. The best ideas come for me in this half-sleep. And I don't trust my
Slavoj Žižek
memory
memory
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because I think my conscious mind is evil and tries to sabotage me here. To make me forget this idea. So I gather all the
because I think my conscious mind is evil and tries to sabotage me here. To make me forget this idea. So I gather all the
Slavoj Žižek
strength to turn on the light
strength to turn on the light
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and write just the
and write just the
Slavoj Žižek
basic point of the idea. It's a catastrophe I can be in bad mood for a week if I knew that I had a wonderful idea but I forgot it you know. No no it's
basic point of the idea. It's a catastrophe I can be in bad mood for a week if I knew that I had a wonderful idea but I forgot it you know. No no it's
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not
not
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sleep as such. It's those intermediary moment you know you are at that point my mind opens and I'm desperately trying to catch those moments. It's a little bit like the Nacht der Welt as Hegel describes it, the night of the world isn't it? Yeah precisely, yes those monstrous appearances and so on. Jonathan do you want to describe your art practice a little bit in the ending here? Is it similar? I love to sleep too because in sleep you are not ideological and you are not voting and you are not political and you are not religious. And you get knowledge through osmosis. Also Wissen durch Osmose. Das ist wieder aus dem Film Zardoz und Z liest ja alles he reads every book through osmosis and that I always try to do. That's why I have books. I buy books a day. Ja and I think I'm art is the sleeping beauty. And it will wake up when the time is ripe for it. And then we will have a new future. And we have to have something that really surprises us. We need a super surprise. The people don't want to be surprised anymore. And coming back to Hegel he used this words of absolut das Absolute, ja. Das und auch diese the terminologies that Hegel used they are very good: Idee, Wesen, das Absolute. And that is all connected to sleep. And to dream and to art. Because art is
sleep as such. It's those intermediary moment you know you are at that point my mind opens and I'm desperately trying to catch those moments. It's a little bit like the Nacht der Welt as Hegel describes it, the night of the world isn't it? Yeah precisely, yes those monstrous appearances and so on. Jonathan do you want to describe your art practice a little bit in the ending here? Is it similar? I love to sleep too because in sleep you are not ideological and you are not voting and you are not political and you are not religious. And you get knowledge through osmosis. Also Wissen durch Osmose. Das ist wieder aus dem Film Zardoz und Z liest ja alles he reads every book through osmosis and that I always try to do. That's why I have books. I buy books a day. Ja and I think I'm art is the sleeping beauty. And it will wake up when the time is ripe for it. And then we will have a new future. And we have to have something that really surprises us. We need a super surprise. The people don't want to be surprised anymore. And coming back to Hegel he used this words of absolut das Absolute, ja. Das und auch diese the terminologies that Hegel used they are very good: Idee, Wesen, das Absolute. And that is all connected to sleep. And to dream and to art. Because art is
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a dream that comes true if we want it. Ja. And ja I need I need the soldiers of art around me and I need the people who let me sleep. Maybe we should end with a toast on even if there is noise around me I can fall asleep I learned this when serving the army years ago. Maybe we should end with a toast on Hegel because he died years before you know that this is today we celebrate his anniversary today. I know but that's another proposal that if we will still be alive whatever will happen let's look to years you know.
a dream that comes true if we want it. Ja. And ja I need I need the soldiers of art around me and I need the people who let me sleep. Maybe we should end with a toast on even if there is noise around me I can fall asleep I learned this when serving the army years ago. Maybe we should end with a toast on Hegel because he died years before you know that this is today we celebrate his anniversary today. I know but that's another proposal that if we will still be alive whatever will happen let's look to years you know.
Slavoj Žižek
What could be what could be
What could be what could be
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a
a
Slavoj Žižek
good toast on Hegel? What would you
good toast on Hegel? What would you
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propose a toast to on Hegel? Sei dein
propose a toast to on Hegel? Sei dein
Slavoj Žižek
eigener Hegel. Sei dein
eigener Hegel. Sei dein
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eigener Hegel. Be your own Hegel. Be your own Hegel maybe. Ah yeah. No we can just okay I would just make a kind of a reversal. Yeah toast to Hegel who is in the past but although he is past he comes to us from the future still. Very good. A perfect ending. Slavoj thank you very much and Jonathan as well. It was was a great moment for me today bringing you both together I think for all the audience listening to you and
eigener Hegel. Be your own Hegel. Be your own Hegel maybe. Ah yeah. No we can just okay I would just make a kind of a reversal. Yeah toast to Hegel who is in the past but although he is past he comes to us from the future still. Very good. A perfect ending. Slavoj thank you very much and Jonathan as well. It was was a great moment for me today bringing you both together I think for all the audience listening to you and
Slavoj Žižek
yeah hope to see you soon we will keep in touch and go on with this conversation maybe in Berlin or in Ljubljana. We will see. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye bye. Have a great bye bye have a good. Bye bye I leave bye bye. Bye good to see you bye bye bye bye thank you. Bye bye. Thanks Jonathan thanks Slavoj. It was great.
yeah hope to see you soon we will keep in touch and go on with this conversation maybe in Berlin or in Ljubljana. We will see. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye bye. Have a great bye bye have a good. Bye bye I leave bye bye. Bye good to see you bye bye bye bye thank you. Bye bye. Thanks Jonathan thanks Slavoj. It was great.
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Everything super. Be your own
Everything super. Be your own
Slavoj Žižek
Hegel. Ciao. Ja, wir mal kurz
Hegel. Ciao. Ja, wir mal kurz
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ausschalten. So ist es, wenn zwei wirklich
ausschalten. So ist es, wenn zwei wirklich
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super intensive Stars aus zwei Milieus aufeinander treffen. Ich war auch froh, dass ich das so laufen lassen konnte, ehrlich gesagt. Ich hatte das gehofft, dass beide sich so gut verstehen, aber wenn es dann tatsächlich passiert, ist es für mich immer eine Sternstunde. Ich hoffe, es ist Ihnen ganz genauso gegangen hier im Hegel-Haus. Umso mehr freue ich mich jetzt, dass ich noch einen großen Schluck Hegel-Wein jetzt am Ende von diesem Feuerwerk zu mir nehmen darf. Ihnen schönen Abend noch und tschüss. Und schauen Sie sich vor allen Dingen die Ausstellung an und kaufen und lesen Sie das Buch. Es
super intensive Stars aus zwei Milieus aufeinander treffen. Ich war auch froh, dass ich das so laufen lassen konnte, ehrlich gesagt. Ich hatte das gehofft, dass beide sich so gut verstehen, aber wenn es dann tatsächlich passiert, ist es für mich immer eine Sternstunde. Ich hoffe, es ist Ihnen ganz genauso gegangen hier im Hegel-Haus. Umso mehr freue ich mich jetzt, dass ich noch einen großen Schluck Hegel-Wein jetzt am Ende von diesem Feuerwerk zu mir nehmen darf. Ihnen schönen Abend noch und tschüss. Und schauen Sie sich vor allen Dingen die Ausstellung an und kaufen und lesen Sie das Buch. Es
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ist gut. Es bringt's. Tschüss.
ist gut. Es bringt's. Tschüss.