Slavoj Zizek (Nov 11, 2017) - God, Athesism & 'Lord of the Rings' materialism philosophy of
Talk · Slavoj žižek ·
2017-11-11 · 0:51:52 · 6,945 words
religion-theologyideologycinema-art-culturepsychoanalysishegel-dialecticscapitalismrace-antisemitismliberalism-political-correctnessethicssubjectivityphilosophy-general
A single long Žižek talk in Portland, opening with Hitchcock's Vertigo and Powell's bookstore, then turning to a sustained theological argument: Žižek defends the film The Rapture as staging an authentic ethical act of refusing a narcissistic God, and develops the thesis that only by going through Christianity can one become a radical atheist. He traces this through Malebranche, Marx's commodity fetishism, Chesterton on the cross, Hegel on the death of the God of beyond, the Book of Job, and the Hitchcock TV episode The Glass Eye, ending with a political pivot against multiculturalism and for a Malcolm X-style universalism.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 15
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Marx's 'sie wissen das nicht aber sie tun es' means not that you think one thing and do another, but that you do not know the illusions you follow while you are doing them.
Lacan's late formula of true atheism: not 'God is dead' but 'God is unconscious', even if you are an atheist, your unconscious remains divine.
Lacan's analytic concept that Žižek bends (via 'the chicken which is your unconscious') into the analytic task of convincing the unconscious itself.
Marx's point in Capital ch.1 §4: a commodity looks trivial but is 'a very strange thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties'; the fetishism is not conscious superstition but the theological niceties structuring our practice even as enlightened utilitarians.
as “the crucifixion”
Read with Hegel as the death of the God of beyond, the death of the idea of a secret master pulling strings to guarantee a happy ending.
Žižek's Lacanian coinage (twisting 'subject supposed to know'): we don't believe but we structurally need another naive gaze that believes for us, the children who must not know about the orgies.
Protestant doctrine read as the secret of Protestantism: a brutal ignorant God who makes decisions without criteria, the God of Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around and of Levi's Auschwitz selection.
as “God abdicates”
His formulation of what happens on the cross: God no longer believes in himself, a self-deposition of God rather than a messenger mission.
What remains after God's abdication on the cross, not a transcendent guarantee but our freedom, the community of believers.
Usually the idea that God is beyond all positive determinations; Žižek radicalizes it to mean locating negativity into God itself, so God fills a negative place that precedes divinity.
A basic feeling of being out of joint that precedes any positive transcendence; Žižek locates it inside God himself rather than beyond God.
as “the opium of the people is opium itself”
His update of Marx's religion-as-opium: today religion is no longer the opium of the people because opium (drugs) is increasingly literally the opium of the people.
His ironic name for 'new materialism' / re-enchantment of reality as immanently spiritualized: a fully self-enclosed spiritualized universe with magical beings but no transcendent dimension.
His paradox: without the authentic theological experience of the world's out-of-jointness, even a self-styled materialist ends up a 'cheap perverted spiritualist'.
The symbolic guarantor invoked in the Stalinist position of 'I am an instrument of historical necessity', the theological structure Žižek detects in Stalinism.
Stories he reaches for 7
A scientist friend asks Bohr why he keeps a superstitious horseshoe at his door; Bohr replies: I know I don't believe in it, I'm a scientist, but I was told it works even if you don't believe in it.
“I know I don't believe in it I'm a scientist but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it.”
Malcolm X's point that the X, having no hierarchic traceable roots, is both the horror done to black people by white people and a unique chance for a universalism more universalist than whiteness.
“this horror that white people did to us is at the same time a unique chance of freedom to be more universalist than white people.”
Job's theological friends tell him his suffering has a deeper meaning; Jehovah appears and says Job was right, the suffering has no meaning. Chesterton reads God's 'where were you when I created monsters' speech not as arrogance but as: look, the whole world is a mess, you're not an exception.
“your suffering has no meaning.”
Chesterton's claim that only in Christianity does God, at the cry from the cross, become for an instant an atheist, forsaken of God, so atheists find only one divinity that ever uttered their isolation.
“only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to become an atheist.”
In Hitchcock Presents' 'The Glass Eye' a lonely woman falls for a handsome ventriloquist, Max Collodi; when she finally approaches and touches him, the big man collapses as a doll, the true living being is the small dummy, and a desperate midget steps out of the costume.
“the ventriloquist was in fact the dummy while the hideous dummy is the actual ventriloquist.”
Hegel's reading: what dies on the cross is the God of beyond, the idea of a secret master up there pulling strings to guarantee everything ends well, the 'Mona Lisa seen from one inch' harmonizing God.
“what dies on the cross is the God of beyond itself.”
Mimi Rogers plays Sharon, an LA woman whose religious fanaticism ends with her shooting her daughter to reach heaven; the rapture actually happens but she refuses, in the film's purgatory, to declare love for a cruel God, even knowing she will stay there forever.
“I am not ready to declare my love for God who acted with such cruelty towards my family for no reason at all.”
Works invoked 15
Capital book
Marx's Capital ch.1 §4 on commodity fetishism is read as the paradigmatic case of theological niceties structuring enlightened practice.
Vertigo film
Hitchcock film; Žižek quips San Francisco was constructed so that Hitchcock could shoot Vertigo in it.
The Book of Job book
Read as 'the first and maybe one of the greatest books of critique of ideology'; God sides with Job against his theological friends.
If This Is a Man book
Primo Levi's memoir; the Auschwitz 'selection' scene is paralleled with the Last Judgment in Cash's song as the structure of predestination.
The Birds film
Hitchcock film in which Jessica Tandy plays the mother; mentioned as part of the Hitchcock web around The Glass Eye.
Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful; liked 'up to a point' and used as the structural example of a belief sustained by fiction, with Žižek's counterfactual reading of the son also knowing.
Annie Hall film
Woody Allen film; its McLuhan dream scene is the analogue Žižek uses to introduce the Talmud passage where Jehovah appears to the rabbis.
The Rapture film
1991 film by Michael Tolkin starring Mimi Rogers as Sharon; the central set-piece for the thesis of refusing love to a real but cruel God.
Lord of the Rings book
Used ironically as the namesake of 'Hobbit or Lord of the Rings materialism', a fully self-enclosed spiritualized universe with magical beings but no transcendent dimension, the target of Žižek's critique of new materialism.
Not I play
Beckett play called 'maybe the greatest Beckett play', a partial object talking, the mouth; Jessica Tandy was the original performer.
Opening episode of the third year of Alfred Hitchcock Presents; the ventriloquist/dummy reversal is Žižek's closing image for God the Father as the dead doll.
The Man Comes Around song
Johnny Cash's last hit; praised for the horror of its Last Judgment portrayal, the model for the brutal ignorant Protestant God.
Talmud book
The sacred text from which Žižek draws the 'Annie Hall' passage where rabbis debate and dismiss Jehovah, proof that the theological tradition itself contains God's comic impotence.
Quoted for the idealist remark that the Peloponnesian War was fought so that Thucydides could write a book on it, the model of spiritual game Žižek applies to San Francisco/Vertigo.
Chesterton's short essay giving a 'terribly convincing' reading of God's answer to Job: not arrogance but 'look at the world I created, everything is a mess, you are not an exception'.
People invoked 34
Michael Tolkin positive
Writer/director of The Rapture, the film Žižek uses to stage the authentic ethical act of refusing a cruel God.
Primo Levi positive
Cited for If This Is a Man's account of the Auschwitz 'selection', paralleled with the Last Judgment in Cash's song.
Roberto Benigni positive
Director/star of La Vita Bella, a film Žižek liked 'up to a point' and uses as the structural example of belief-by-fiction, with a counterfactual reading.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Introduced as 'my friend' and 'one of those whom I consider my secret master'; Žižek jokes he acted like a Stalinist rewriting his own past when their lines of thought diverged.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Member of his 'Slovene Lacanian gang'; credited with reapplying the chicken joke to God ('I know God is dead but does God know it?').
Jacques Lacan positive
Drawn on for 'God is unconscious' as the formula of true atheism and as the source Žižek twists into 'subject supposed to believe'.
Walker Percy positive
One of the four British Catholic novelists Williams reads; cited via Williams.
Job positive
Biblical figure whose book Žižek reads as the first great critique of ideology; Job is right against his theological friends.
Jessica Tandy positive
Actress in The Glass Eye, The Birds, and the original Not I, the Beckett play Žižek calls 'maybe the greatest Beckett play'.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Called 'my favorite theologian'; cited for the claim that Christianity is unique in having a God who for an instant became an atheist, and for his reading of God's answer to Job.
Referenced only via the Annie Hall scene in which he appears to settle a debate.
Plays Sharon in The Rapture; mentioned for role attribution only.
Muriel Spark positive
One of the four British Catholic novelists Williams reads; cited via Williams.
Flannery O'Connor positive
One of the four British Catholic novelists Rowan Williams reads; cited via Williams's quotation as creating a world where the secular account is relativized.
Annie Hall's dream scene (McLuhan appearing to settle an argument) is the analogue Žižek uses to frame the Talmud passage where Jehovah appears to the rabbis.
Paul Claudel positive
Conservative Catholic intellectual Žižek 'appreciates very much', cited for 'God is impotent without us', God as a witness who relies on us.
Jesus Christ positive
Central figure of the talk: Žižek's reading makes Christ, not God the Father, the only living pole of divinity after the cross.
Nicolas Malebranche positive
Cartesian theologian drawn on for the narcissistic God who loves only himself and uses human suffering for his glory, and the claim that all had to fall so God could redeem some.
Samuel Beckett positive
Not I is called 'maybe the greatest Beckett play', a partial object talking, the mouth.
Werner Heisenberg negative
Mentioned dismissively as having 'got it wrong with that uncertainty principle', in contrast to Bohr.
Johnny Cash positive
'I don't like Johnny Cash as a singer but what I like in this song is the horror', The Man Comes Around is praised for its brutal portrayal of the Last Judgment.
Malcolm X positive
Disagrees with much of what Malcolm X wrote but credits him with 'a stroke of a genius': seeing the X, no traceable roots, as a unique chance for a stronger universalism.
Richard Dawkins negative
His evolutionary materialism should be rejected: even if factually true 'at some stupid factual level', he 'totally doesn't get the point of religion'.
Rowan Williams positive
Called 'my friend, the ex archbishop of Canterbury' and 'not an idiot'; quoted on the four British Catholic novelists and the 'insistent sense of incongruity' as the religious dimension of fiction.
Named as 'my good friend', the literary theorist who refused Žižek's point-blank question about believing in God at the London conference.
Ellis positive
The fourth of the four British Catholic novelists Williams comments on, named in the transcript only by surname 'Ellis'; cited via Williams.
Niels Bohr positive
Praised as 'a true genius much more than Heisenberg'; the horseshoe anecdote is used as a model for how ideology works today.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Invoked at the opening (Vertigo) and the close (The Glass Eye episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents); Žižek positions himself and Dupuy as 'Hitchcockologists'.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Criticized for 'playing games' with 'oh I'm an agnostic maybe God exists maybe not', Žižek explicitly contrasts his own atheism with this.
Joseph Stalin negative
Stalinism is the example of an immanently theological politics, the Stalinist as 'instrument of some big other historical necessity'.
Karl Marx positive
Despite being 'very critical towards a lot of his work', Žižek affirms Marx on commodity fetishism: fetishism is not conscious superstition but the theological niceties of our practice.
Mentioned only as Malebranche's teacher ('a pupil of Descartes').
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Quoted on the Peloponnesian War/Thucydides and especially on the crucifixion as the death of the God of beyond; Žižek explicitly calls his reading 'basically Hegel's reading'.
Gérard Wajcman positive
French Lacanian cited for the observation that the price of today's sexual permissiveness is the obliteration of Freud's insight into children's sexuality.
What it argues
Atheism only through ChristianityThe crucifixion as the death of the God of beyondBelief without belief and the subject supposed to believeCommodity fetishism as unconscious theologyThe monstrosity and narcissism of GodRadical negativity against re-enchanted materialismUniversalism against multicultural global capitalism
Dialectical moves 10
“Only true Christianity can you really be an atheist. You have to go through Christian experience.”
The inversion: atheism is achieved by passing through Christianity, not by skipping it.
“the ventriloquist was in fact the dummy while the hideous dummy is the actual ventriloquist.”
Reversal applied to God the Father and Christ: the big Father-God is the dead doll; the small dummy (Christ) is the living agent.
“the bad news is we are alone no God will take care of us. And the good news is wonderful so we are free.”
The good news and the bad news are the same content read in opposite polarity: abandonment is freedom.
“the very gap that separates you from God is an inner self-separation of God himself.”
Distance from God is internal to God, the cross splits God from himself.
“the formula of true atheism is not God is dead but God is unconscious.”
Lacan's inversion Žižek deploys: the problem isn't God's existence but the divine unconscious that survives atheism.
“it is precisely when you feel totally abandoned by God you are in the position of Christ.”
The lowest point of abandonment coincides with the highest Christological position.
“only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to become an atheist.”
Chesterton via Žižek: Christianity is unique because God himself, on the cross, stops believing in God.
“a commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious trivial thing but its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”
Marx's inversion Žižek stresses: the trivial commodity is the theological object, while enlightened materialism is the superstition.
“this horror that white people did to us is at the same time a unique chance of freedom to be more universalist than white people.”
Malcolm X's inversion Žižek endorses: the deprivation of roots is the opening to a stronger universalism.
“the true temptation to be resisted is to declare our love for a God who doesn't deserve it even if he really is a God.”
Reversal of the usual atheist temptation: the danger is not the false God but loving a real but unworthy God.
Claims 17
asserts
Only by going through Christianity can one become a radical atheist; without that theological experience one ends up a cheap perverted spiritualist.atheism and Christianity
asserts
Sharon's refusal in The Rapture to declare love for a cruel God is an authentic ethical act, not a rejection of a false God.The Rapture and the ethical act
asserts
God (in the Malebranche/Chesterton lineage) is narcissistic or monstrous, using human suffering to promulgate his own glory.the nature of God
asserts
Marx's commodity fetishism is not a naive superstition to be enlightened away but the theological niceties structuring our enlightened utilitarian practice.commodity fetishism
asserts
The Book of Job is the first great critique of ideology: God sides with Job against his theological friends and admits the suffering has no deeper meaning.Book of Job and ideology
asserts
What dies on the cross is the God of beyond — the idea of a secret master pulling strings — not a failed messenger mission.Hegel's reading of the crucifixion
asserts
The Holy Spirit is just our freedom — the community of believers — with no transcendent guarantee.Holy Spirit
asserts
We believe today through a 'subject supposed to believe' — another naive gaze that believes for us — even when no empirical individual believes.structure of contemporary belief
asserts
The true task of psychoanalysis is not to convince you of your unconscious desires but to convince the chicken that is your unconscious.psychoanalysis and belief
asserts
Stalinism is immanently theological because the Stalinist positions himself as an instrument of a big Other historical necessity.Stalinism and theology
asserts
Religion is no longer the opium of the people because opium itself (drugs) is increasingly the opium of the people.religion and ideology today
rejects
Dawkins-style evolutionary materialism, even if factually true, totally misses the point of religion.Dawkins and new atheism
rejects
New materialism / re-enchantment of reality ('Hobbit materialism') must be rejected in favour of keeping alive radical out-of-jointness.new materialism
reframes
The gap that separates us from God is an inner self-separation of God himself — feeling abandoned by God is precisely the position of Christ.distance from God and divinity
reframes
The good news of the New Testament is the same as the bad news: we are alone, no God will take care of us — and that is precisely our freedom.Christian good news
rejects
Global capitalism is inherently multicultural and cannot be fought by retreating into local traditions.multiculturalism and anti-capitalism
asserts
Malcolm X's X — the loss of traceable roots — is at the same time a unique chance for a universalism more universal than whiteness.Malcolm X and universalism
Quotes 17
“I consider myself an atheist. But only true Christianity can you really be an atheist. You have to go through Christian experience.”Slavoj Žižek · atheism through Christianity
“the formula of true atheism is not God is dead but God is unconscious.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's atheism formula
“even if you are an atheist your unconscious remains divine.”Slavoj Žižek · unconscious belief
“the true task of psychoanalysis is not to convince you about your unconscious desires whatever but to convince the chicken which is your unconscious.”Slavoj Žižek · analytic task
“I know God doesn't exist but nonetheless he gave us West Bank.”Slavoj Žižek · disavowed belief
“I know there is no God but he is nonetheless a noble and uplifting illusion.”Slavoj Žižek · belief as noble illusion
“today the opium of the people is more and more simply opium itself no drugs and so on.”Slavoj Žižek · religion no longer opium
“the ventriloquist was in fact the dummy while the hideous dummy is the actual ventriloquist.”Slavoj Žižek · the reversal of God the Father
“forget about God the father he was just a dead a big fat dead doll. All that is alive is Christ there and love that accept that.”Slavoj Žižek · Christian reversal
“the bad news is we are alone no God will take care of us. And the good news is wonderful so we are free.”Slavoj Žižek · good news = bad news
“the very gap that separates you from God is an inner self-separation of God himself.”Slavoj Žižek · distance from God is divine
“God is impotent without us.”Slavoj Žižek · Claudel's Christian message
“only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to become an atheist.”Slavoj Žižek · Chesterton on the cross
“the religious dimension of these fictions lies in the insistent sense of incongruity unmistakable even if no one within the fiction can say what we should be congruent with.”Slavoj Žižek · Rowan Williams on negative theology
“we don't believe but we always structurally need another naive gaze”Slavoj Žižek · subject supposed to believe
“this horror that white people did to us is at the same time a unique chance of freedom to be more universalist than white people”Slavoj Žižek · Malcolm X's X
“global imperialism whatever we call it is inherently multicultural.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism is multicultural
Transcript 1 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I cannot say first how honored I am to be here first in the city of Portland. You can imagine what I did this morning. I went to the sacred place here which is Powell’s the bookstore of course. You know Hegel says says something wonderful in his lectures on the philosophy of history that wonderful idealist remark that the Peloponnesian War, the real one, was fought so that Thucydides was able to write a book on it. This is the spiritual game. In the same sense, I agree with you, the city of San Francisco was constructed so that Hitchcock was able to shoot Vertigo in it. Very good yes. And Portland is here to have the bookstore palace. If you lose that one, you lose your endogenous fixed point and so on you. And no play with superposition here you know you. Okay. So I’m proud to be here point two thanks to all of you especially John and Michael for organizing this and I’m especially honored to be here with my friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy. Not only this, it’s more than a friend. He is really one of those whom I consider my secret master you know like I read his books and then I behaved towards you I didn’t tell you this in a totally opportunistic way in the sense of I follow a certain line of thought then I discover that you took a different line so once I really acted learning that as a pure Stalinist. I quickly run home and erased all those files with the I tried to change my own past which didn’t fit with yours. So I’m just glad to be here. I have so many points to but let’s leave this to further our later debate to go on. Let me just deliver my paper which unfortunately will not have this logical consistency of yours but it will make some points which I think that at a deeper level do echo some of your points. Let me begin with a very weird film. Probably not a lot of you saw it because it’s half forgotten today. It’s a it’s one of those religious Christian films called The Rapture from written and directed by Michael Tolkin a film in which Mimi Rogers plays Sharon. A young LA woman who works during the day as a phone operator endlessly repeating the same questions in a small cubicle while in the evening she engages in orgies and so on. Bored and dissatisfied at leading such an empty life Sharon becomes member of a sect which preaches that the end of time and rapture are imminent. So turning into a passionate believer she begins to practice a new pious lifestyle. She gets married with Randy one of her previous swinging partners and they have had a daughter Mary. Six years later when Randy is shot to death by a madman this totally meaningless catastrophe makes her Sharon and her daughter even more convinced that rapture is approaching. Sharon believes God told her that she should go with Mary to a nearby desert camping place and wait there until the two of them she and her daughter will be taken up to heaven to be reunited with Randy. Mary the daughter gets impatient and proposes her mother that they simply kill themselves so that they reach heaven quickly. After a couple of weeks Sharon decides totally desperate tired of waiting decides to do this. She shoots her daughter but then stops doesn’t shoot herself realizing that suiciders are not allowed into heaven. But the point is not that this is a simple opportunistic fear. No she immediately goes to the police confesses her act and is arrested and taken to a local jail. Now up to this point it can be a simple even atheist critical story about how how religious fanaticism ends up in disaster. We can imagine the ending how Sharon is alone totally broken aware of the horror she is committed and she has committed and so on and so on. But now there comes why I like the movie. At this point totally weird things begin to happen. While she is desperate alone in the prison cell rapture happens. The real one. Literally. In all naivety including bad special effects. First deep in the night Mary her daughter appears to her with two angels and then a loud trumpet blast is heard all around and prison bars fall down. She escapes the prison runs into the desert and sees the four horsemen running around horsemen of the apocalypse. I like this first reversal because it is as if we have a brutal ironic God who does the opposite of what we half believers half atheists would have expected. Our expectation is something like oh maybe Bible is not to be taken literally of course all these are ridiculous superstitious stories but it’s just that you know we should look at it metaphorically symbolically it simply means there is some deeper spiritual truth whatever. No here God’s message to man is something like you read the Bible what did you think that I was kidding or what? No screw your you know search for deeper meaning I wrote what I plan and here you got it now. Now comes an even weirder reversal. That’s not the end. Sharon is then raptured transported to a purgatory like landscape. We see paradise in far distance like some enlightened castle. Then in a vision Mary her deceased daughter approaches her and pleads with her to accept God. She said in a very Pascalian way it doesn't matter do you really believe or not just say Jesus I love you or whatever and look we are here me and the Randy your husband my father we are just gladly waiting for you. Then something incredible happens and that’s the end of the film already. Sharon simply refuses. Although again there is no doubt now there is God and so on she said that I am not ready to declare my love for God who acted with such cruelty towards my family for no reason at all. When Mary asks her her mother does do you know mother what this means? Do you know how long you will be confined to stay here if you refuse to say to God I love you? Sharon replies yes I know forever. The end of the film. I mean it’s a totally crazy incredible film. Why do I like it? So Sharon realizes that she wasted her life appeasing a God who is only toying with her feelings. And that’s the paradox of the film. It would be very easy to accept all this if we were to discover that God doesn't exist that Sharon was just caught into her religious imagination delirious imagination. But the paradox is she persists in renouncing a God who is real but a narcissist giving us life for the sole purpose of demanding unconditional love in return no matter how much damage his demands have inflicted on human lives. Now this is not a joke. Such indifferent and narcissistic God is part of a certain at least Christian tradition. For Nicolas Malebranche a pupil of Descartes in the same way that the saintly person uses the suffering of others to bring about his own narcissistic satisfaction Malebranche had no illusions here in helping those in distress God also ultimately loves only himself. He merely uses us our human suffering to promulgate his own glory. So Malebranche draw this incredible conclusion. It is not true that if Christ had not come to earth to deliver humanity that if Christ had not come to earth to deliver redeem us everyone would have been lost. Quite on the contrary nobody would have been lost. All of us had to fall so that to gave God the opportunity to come and deliver some of us. It’s a very weird logic and you find a similar absolute miracles in Malebranche. For example it’s close to morbidity for example he said that at no point was God more happy than when he observed his son dying in pain on the cross. Okay now back to the movie. Sharon’s resistance to God her refusal to declare her love for him is I would claim an authentic ethical act. It would be totally wrong to say that she rejects the false God and that in an authentically Christian version of the film the true Christ should appear at the end proclaim her a true believer precisely because she rejected to declare that she loves the false God and so on. The true temptation to be resisted is to declare our love for a God who doesn’t deserve it even if he really is a God. Now I confront the obvious naive materialist questions. All this cannot but appear as a pseudo topic a rather stupid mental experiment. Isn’t this obvious? Why engage in these stupid games? Isn’t it that simply for a consequent materialist we should simply renounce God? There is no God and not play these stupid games God is but he is maybe evil not good whatever. But I think that there is something much subtler here at work. We should in the consequent materialism undermine as it were the fiction of God from within because if we don’t do that then this fiction can prolong its hold over us in the form of disavowal which is almost I’m tempted to say the way a great majority of us continue to believe. I'm always making this experiment with all my relatives friends I ask them okay cut the crap do you believe in God or not? And it’s absolutely incredible sorry for this brief improvisation what answers do I have like half a year ago we had in London a conference on the actuality of theologico-political. And there were there some big theologians and so on literary theorists others and I did something which obviously broke all the rules of polite conversation. I asked them listen I’m sorry but this is a conference on theology. Do you believe in God or not? It was incredible. They reacted as if I asked them like in what position did you have sex last night or what? Absolutely one of them I will name him he is my good friend Eric Santner he said well I prefer not to engage in that direction because I speak here we as a literary theorist don’t mess with me into that and so on. There were theologians then leftist theologians who said listen that’s not the point the point is how to mobilize progressive politics today and so on and so on. So I think that far from being an exception this is our belief today. It’s even something like I know there is no God but he is nonetheless a noble and uplifting illusion. Some of some of my Jewish friends who are Zionists even one of them openly told me another version of this paradox when we debated West Bank. He said I know God doesn’t exist but nonetheless he gave us West Bank. Why? Now we are now I’m going to much more serious waters. You can imagine what I will try to prove in a bloody very serious way I’m not kidding. I consider myself an atheist. But only true Christianity can you really be an atheist. You have to go through Christian experience. If not then you don’t believe it but the fiction persists determines you. How? Let me do now something for which I’ll really hate myself but it’s necessary here. Let me repeat an old joke which I used I would say at least a conservative estimate some to times in my work. So it’s an old joke you are not obliged to laugh to laugh but its structure is wonderful you know that classical joke about an idiot who believes he is a grain of seed and it’s finally cured in the lunatic asylum is left out then comes running back and his psychiatrist asks him but why why are you so frightened? Why do you come back? The guy says well I met a chicken and I was afraid the chicken will eat me no? And the doctor his psychiatrist says but wait a minute we cured you you know that you you are not a grain of corn or whatever. And he says yes I know it now but does the chicken know it? Also. This is how we believe today. Another story which I used only five times in my books so I can tell it to you the one you mentioned quantum physics. We all admire him he was a true genius much more than Heisenberg who got it wrong with that uncertainty principle Niels Bohr. You know there is a wonderful anecdote about him. He had a small wooden house in some in suburb around Copenhagen and at the entrance of that house there was a horseshoe. In Europe this is a superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And a scientist friend visited him and told him wait a minute you are a scientist you shouldn't be superstitious why do you have that horseshoe there? You cannot beat Niels Bohr you know what was his answer? I know I don’t believe in it I’m a scientist but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don’t believe in it. That’s how this is ideology today. In what sense? Now you will say I’m telling you jokes. Oh let’s go further. First I’m saying this is what Jacques Lacan means by the idea in late Lacan he liked to repeat that the formula of true atheism is not God is dead but God is unconscious. It means precisely that for example in psychoanalysis yo today patients are cynical. You know that Freudian standard joke this is not my mother. When you ask a patient who is that woman in your dream and he answers I don’t know who that woman is I’m just sure that it’s not my mother. Well today we don’t have patients like that. A patient today would probably immediately told you almost the opposite like I don’t know who that woman is in my dream but I trust you probably it has something to do with my mother or whatever. So the point is not to the true to put it in this metaphorical term terms the true task of psychoanalysis is not to convince you about your unconscious desires whatever but to convince the chicken which is your unconscious. It’s much more difficult. Who you know who knew this although I’m very critical towards a lot of his work Marx. What Marx meant by commodity fetishism is something much more mysterious than it may appear. Look how Marx begins his famous sub-chapter to the the supplement subdivision four of the chapter one of Capital on commodity fetishism. I quote Marx a commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious trivial thing but its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. End of quote. Are we aware what a strange things Marx is saying here? It’s the exact opposite of the naive materialist enlightened critique of religion which says oh you I’m simplifying it you idiot you live in your obscure religious fantasies no but in reality in real no Marx is saying the opposite. You think a commodity is just an ordinary object there you think money is just an instrument for us exchanging commodities but what has to be brought out is precisely the implicit metaphysical topics that you practice even if you do not believe in it. In other words even if you are an atheist your unconscious remains divine. Which is why when Marx provides his definition of ideology sie wissen das nicht aber sie tun es they don’t know it but they are doing it. It doesn’t mean the vulgarity oh you think one thing but you are doing another thing. It means you do not know the illusions that you follow but you are doing them. Like to be to put it in simple terms in your self-consciousness you are a vulgar materialist like utilitarian you think money is just an object blah blah blah. But what you are not aware is that in your social practice you act as if you believe in magical properties in money. And commodities are here chicken. Marx evokes this idea when he says if commodities could speak they would say this and so on and so on. It’s this weird fiction of commodities speaking to another. Now so again the point is of fetishism Marx is not that we live in some superstitions and some naive enlightened procedure should clear enable us to guess rid of it. No Marx’s point is precisely that especially in modern era where we appear to be enlightened utilitarians we are not aware of the theological niceties etc which continue to structure our life. And my friend Alenka Zupančič one of the members of my Slovene Lacanian gang applied also this chicken joke or Marx’s joke on commodities to God. She said instead of lunatic asylum imagine a revolutionary materialist society where those who still believe in God are treated like madmen and they are ideologically brainwashed. So imagine one of them being finally cured now you know there is no God and so on and he is released but he comes running back back back and says he is scared of being punished by God. Now the teacher there tells him teacher of materialism but you know now that God doesn't exist. He said I know that God is dead but does God know it? I’m afraid that God didn't learn this news and so on. Now why am I mentioning this? Now I turn to my favorite theologian the old Catholic British Gilbert Keith Chesterton who got this point. He said that all other religions of course you find in them atheists people who don’t believe in God. But he says only in Christianity you find a God who at least for a brief moment doesn't believe in himself. Here is this wonderful quote: when the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven it was not at the crucifixion but at the cry from the cross the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and so on they will not find another God who has himself been in revolt. Let the atheists themselves choose a God they will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to become an atheist. And I don’t have time to develop it but this is why I claim today’s era is perhaps less atheist than ever. We don’t believe but we always structurally need another naive gaze what following Jacques Lacan maybe I could have called a subject supposed to believe who believes for us like I’m old enough unfortunately I never participated in them but to remember late sixties seventies sexual revolution swinging orgies I had some friends who were already in middle ages which means family they had children and I noticed how all of them they were participating in orgies blah but everything turned on how their children or parents there always was someone who shouldn't know about it. If they were to learn that that one learns about it it would have meant it would have meant the end of it all. That’s why I think I mean this is total distraction but how our era which may appear even in sexuality the most permissive one and so on as many intelligent observers like the French Lacanian Gérard Wajcman they noticed how you know the usual dogma is who needs Freud today we are open we can admit all our desires. Yes but did you notice how one the price of this permissiveness today is that one basic insight of Freud is totally obliterated children sexuality. Children are again elevated into innocent beings and child molesting is returned as the worst you can imagine the ultimate crime. There are some other crimes I don’t have time to go into them I don’t smoke but my wife does and she converted me not into smoking into believing it how I think it’s part of the same ideology this obsession with how dangerous with how dangerous smoking is. It would be nice just to follow in Hollywood who still smokes today basically serial killers and Arab terrorists before they explode bombs and so on. But okay so my point is we need another innocent one and I’m sad to say that even a film which I up to a point liked up to a point Roberto Benigni’s La Vita Bella you know relies on this structure. We know what Auschwitz is but in order to save the innocent child you have to construct for him the fiction that this is just a big game we are free to leave at any point we want and so on. You know let me make a mental counterfactual mental experiment don’t you think that it would have been a much more desperate film if you remember the last scene when they are taking Benigni to be shot at the very end and he waves at his son. If at that point somehow his son were to let him know that he also knew it all the time that they are in a camp but that for the same reason as his father he he just pretended to believe him to make it easier for his father because he knew that if his father were to know that the son so this is my category here which is absolutely crucial the category of a social belief which can function as a belief even if nobody believes even if no empirical individual believes. Now let me go on. The reason I’m fully attached shamelessly to so-called I hate the term Judeo-Christian tradition is that I claim that this is part this insight into the horror of God and so on monstrosity of God is the lesson of Judeo-Christian tradition. How? It all began with the book of how do you pronounce it the guy who got screwed up Job the book of Job. I think this is the first and maybe one of the greatest books of critique of ideology. Why? Remember what happens in it. After Job is hit by all the calamities what happens then? Three or four theological friends come and each of them gives him Job the same message. Your not so much is he innocent or not but your suffering has a deeper meaning. The first one tells him basically even if you think you are innocent look more deep into yourself the other one tells him maybe God is testing you just persist. The message is your suffering has a deeper meaning. What and now comes the first shock. You know when Jehovah God comes surprisingly he says I simplify it what these theological friends were telling is bullshit you Job were right. Your suffering has no meaning. I think that this is the first big lesson this resistance to search for a deeper meaning when we encounter catastrophes. But then things go on again I will refer to Chesterton. After getting this answer for God that he is right Job nonetheless asks okay but tell me but why then did all this happen to me? Then comes God’s answer which I claim is usually totally misread. Where were basically a kind of arrogant speech. Where were you when I created all those strange creatures monsters you know you usually these lines are read as assertion of God’s arrogance in the sense of who are you tiny creepy mortal to know it we are simply on a different level. But Chesterton in his short essay essay on the book of Job gives and for me it’s terribly convincing gives a totally different reading. He says that God’s answer is rather something like you think you are in trouble but look at the world that I created everything is a mess in it you are not an exception. And now you will say I’m dreaming here. Hop my Jewish friends provided me in my last book blah blah you find the proper quotes. Do you know that in Talmud there are two passages which I call you will immediately see why Annie Hall passages. You know that dream scene at the beginning of Annie Hall the movie where where Woody Allen character is debating with a guy about about Marshall McLuhan theories. And then Marshall McLuhan comes and says you know says of course to Woody Allen you are totally right that guy is an idiot he doesn't and I’m not kidding this is not a joke this is the sacred text Talmud. Two rabbis debate some theological point. The one who is losing the debate says to the other but listen who are we to decide let’s call Jehovah. It happens. Jehovah an old guy comes but before he even starts to talk the other rabbi starts to shout at God. Listen old man you did your job you did it pretty bad but okay you did it. Now beat it we theologians have to debate some serious matter. And you know what Jehovah says he answers oh my God you got me and runs away. It’s absolutely breathtaking. Now I will probably yes it looks bad. So let me jump something that I wanted to say how this big what I okay I will condense this part. What I wanted to develop also is the different problems and readings of the book of Job. The way I understand it is that the secret of Protestantism is that what predestination means it is that you have a brutal ignorant God who simply without any criteria makes his in predestination makes his makes decisions. So I even wanted to play it I didn’t want to you know the last Johnny Cash hit The Man Comes Around. This is for me the best of this Protestant God. What I I don’t like Johnny Cash as a singer but what I like in this song is the horror of how the last judgment is portrayed presented. It’s not oh my God we the righteous will stand up it’s literally like we are all lined a man like some police comes and you are in you are out you are in you are out. I was shocked to establish the clear parallel between last judgment here and the way in his If This Is a Man Primo Levi describes what he calls selection selectio you know every two months in concentration camp all the inmates had to run naked in front of a some SS doctor and he just quickly took a look and quickly yes no means gas chamber or you continue to survive. Again you will say why this crazy vision of God? What has this to do? I think to arrive at what Jesus Christ means you have to go through this. I think that that with what because what happens for me that’s my reading which is basically Hegel’s reading. What happens on the cross it’s not that God send us a messenger and okay it failed sorry God says to Christ come back to me come back to your dad I will try maybe in a thousand of years. No as Hegel put it what dies on the cross is the God of beyond itself. What dies on the cross is precisely this idea of God as a secret master up there who no matter how bad things look down here on earth he pulls the strings and guarantees that everything will end well. You know this I find it ethically repulsive this metaphor for God which was usually evoked by all theologians which is that we ordinary mortals are like are like one who imagine a big classical beautiful painting. We look with our limited view we look too close at it and you know like if you look at Mona Lisa from from one inch you see just a stain but if you step back and see all of it you see how what you misperceived as a stain contributes to harmony of it all. This God dies there. And I think that the ethical reasons are clear like let’s say somebody complains about Holocaust or Gulag or other things are you really to say are you really ready to say to this guy listen Holocaust may appear to you as something horrible but can’t you see how it contributes to the harmony of it all and so on and so on. The gesture of Christ is precisely a kind of a self-deposition of God. What happens of the cross is I think on the cross is God abdicates. God no longer believes even in himself. So what happens is Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit which is just our freedom the community of believers. This is I think again what it’s the ultimate message of Christianity. It’s not you are safe because no matter how confused things are God is up there taking care of it. No it’s God lost control it’s up to you. And even not only Chesterton some very intelligent Catholic intellectuals saw this. For example a conservative like Paul Claudel whom I appreciate very much he said that the ultimate message of Christianity is God is impotent without us. It’s not we have to rely on God is that the message of the cross is God is just a witness who relies on us. And just now a little bit of a conclusion so what kind of theology can we bring out of this if at the end we just get the suffering Christ pure impassive compassion and basically telling us no transcendental guarantee no one is pulling the strings? I think that incidentally only with such a radical reading can you really give I don’t have time to go into this now of course a consistent interpretation of all those problematic passages in the Bible. You know I this is my long tradition for example in Vienna and Munich I had a debate even with some bishops and I asked them this totally simple questions. For example when God says if you don’t hate your mother your father you are not my follower. What does this mean? It’s incredible what answers I got if we were to be in medieval times I would have burned them all. One of them a bishop told me God just meant don’t be excessive in your earthly loves reserve the true love for me. I find this disgusting and horrible as if God is some jealous mafia boss who says okay love that woman a little bit just I want to be sure that you love me more. I think it’s exactly the opposite. In Christianity you don’t have to love God. God is love. God is here when you passionately love someone and so on and so on. So if we are in this universe which is radically atheist it’s not only that you think there is no God also you don’t have this unconscious God as the appearance on which you rely. What remains of religion? Here if you allow me just some good five minutes to conclude I would like to quote a guy whom I’m honored to call my friend the ex archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who is not an idiot. It’s not a total idiot and I mean this sincerely there are two types of people total idiots and not total idiots there is no third option. He commenting on the work of four British Catholic novelists O’Connor, Percy, Spark and Ellis Rowan Williams wrote I quote all four these four writers create a world in which the secular majority account of what is going on is severely relativized. But there is no simple alternative that anyone can step into by a single decision or even a series of decisions. The religious dimension of these fictions lies in the insistent sense of incongruity unmistakable even if no one within the fiction can say what we should be congruent with. End of quote. So the term negative theology is here meant in a much more radical sense than usually where the idea is simply God is so much beyond that all of our positive determinations fail. The the idea is rather that that that we locate negativity into God itself that like it is as if God as a positive entity fills in a certain negative place which precedes divinity. Which is precisely the place of did what in my Hegelianism I would have call negativity this basic feeling of being out of joint and so on and so on which I think precedes any positive transcendence. In this sense I’m not playing cheap paradoxical game that I say that theology for me as an atheist can survive. Religion is no longer the opium of the people today because if for no other reasons than and I like this well-known saying that today the opium of the people is more and more simply opium itself no drugs and so on. But this and here I also think we should do two things. First this is I think that we should reject not only evolutionary materialists like Richard Dawkins and so on and so on. I mean now I will be paradoxical here. Maybe all that Dawkins is describing is at some stupid factual level true but still he totally doesn't get the point of religion. It’s simply not even if it’s true. And this is my position of negativity here another thing. I think we should also reject I don’t have time to go into it now but I think we should also reject all this how should I call it what is usually referred to to today as new materialism this re-enchantment of reality as immanently spiritualized. What I ironically like to call the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings materialism. Because did you notice that in Lord of the Rings universe there are no gods. All the magic is material magic. You have magical beings this that but there is no other dimension. It’s a fully self-enclosed spiritualized universe. I I think that we have to keep alive precisely this sense of radical out of jointness. To just now the last two three minutes just to make this clear and in your spirit I would like also if you began with Vertigo I would like much more modestly to end with with one of the most disturbing TV episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Present the early ones minutes they are now republishing them it’s the one called The Glass Eye the opening episode of the third year where Jessica Tandy incidentally this is if you are like the two of us Hitchcockologists she is a crucial actress on the one hand she is the mother in in The Birds oh yeah but at the same time you know for what I what I perceive as maybe the greatest Beckett play the Not I which is really a partial object talking the mouth. She was there she was the original. Okay she plays a lone woman who falls in love with a handsome ventriloquist Max Collodi the obvious reference to Pinocchio. So every evening he performs in a small cabaret she is there in the first row observing him how he ventriloquism then comes I was even shocked I didn't expect this. Then the last evening it’s his last performance she gathers the courage and approaches him while the people are leaving there on stage and touches him like Hi look at me no? And can you imagine what happens. She discovers the the big guy collapses as a doll. She discovers that the truly living being is the doll the small one. That there is a midget in there and that the truly manipulated one was the big one you know. And then out of that of that costume steps out a dwarf totally desperate and starts to cry and runs away and so on and so on. So what I’m saying is that the again the result is the the ventriloquist was in fact the dummy while the hideous dummy is the actual ventriloquist. And what I claim is that God is dead means something similar. That we have to abandon the common notion of Christ as God who is the father’s puppet. No the Christian reversal is something like this: forget about God the father he was just a dead a big fat dead doll. All that is alive is Christ there and love that accept that. So again my point is I will develop this in my next book much more in detail but my point is and I hope we agree here that I don’t like to bluff here. I’m not playing those games that Jürgen Habermas is now playing Oh I’m an agnostic maybe God exists maybe not. No I am an atheist. But I think that without this radi that my paradox would be this one. Only by going through Christianity you can be in this sense a radical atheist. Without this authentic theological experience of out of joint of this world we are in is not it. You even if you pretend to be a materialist you end up as some kind of a cheap perverted spiritualist. This is why it’s easy to prove for example how Stalinism is immanently but in a perverted way theological. Because you know the whole position of a Stalinist communist is a position of an instrument of some big other historical necessity and so on like I’m not myself I’m an instrument of and so on and so on. This is why I claim here as a Hegelian that in what sense does does God give us freedom? Let’s say you find yourself okay I’ll put it like this just to conclude let’s say you find yourself in a position where you feel experience yourself as abandoned by God. Oh God is out there I’m alone and so on. All other religions offer you the path of reconciliation. Eh whip yourself a little bit more more good deeds suffer and maybe you will be able to rejoin God. The answer of Christianity is a totally different one. It is precisely when you feel totally abandoned by God you are in the position of Christ. That is to say who on the cross is you know Father why have you abandoned me and so on. So in other words the very gap that separates you from God is an inner self-separation of God himself. Your your distance from God is part of divinity. Which is why I think that’s the good news of New Testament. The good news are not oh Godfather is there every no the good news are in a Hegelian way if my put it exactly the same as the bad news. The bad news is we are alone no God will take care of us. And the good news is wonderful so we are free. This loneliness which succeed self-erasure was is precisely freedom. And that’s the fundamental insight of Christianity which is I wonder if you will agree here which is extremely important even politically today. Which is why against political correctness I’m totally opposed to this idea bad global capitalism secular and then we can resuscitate some stupid local traditions you know like Brazilian friends try to convince me that there are some tribes in Lower Amazon which has some primordial wisdom whatever how you are you we don’t just ex. My point is this one. I’m here on the side of Malcolm X. You know what is I disagree with many things that he wrote. But one things was a stroke of a genius. X. This is not a simple complaint oh bad white people deprived us blacks of our authentic roots. No what Malcolm X saw is that this X which means we have no hierarchic roots in tradition we cannot trace our roots. That this horror that white people did to us is at the same time a unique chance of freedom to be more universalist than white people to ge he saw this and this is so important today I think. We cannot f fight I think global imperialism whatever we call it is inherently multicultural. You don’t fi fight it by sticking to your low this is typical global capitalist subject. It’s not the one who eat hamburgers but it’s the one who works for a big company and then if you're a Buddhist you do your meditation. If you're a Hindu you do your sacrifices whatever. All this fits perfectly global capitalism. The problem is to beat it with even stronger globalism. I’m very sorry if I used too much time but that’s it. Thanks very much.
I cannot say first how honored I am to be here first in the city of Portland. You can imagine what I did this morning. I went to the sacred place here which is Powell’s the bookstore of course. You know Hegel says says something wonderful in his lectures on the philosophy of history that wonderful idealist remark that the Peloponnesian War, the real one, was fought so that Thucydides was able to write a book on it. This is the spiritual game. In the same sense, I agree with you, the city of San Francisco was constructed so that Hitchcock was able to shoot Vertigo in it. Very good yes. And Portland is here to have the bookstore palace. If you lose that one, you lose your endogenous fixed point and so on you. And no play with superposition here you know you. Okay. So I’m proud to be here point two thanks to all of you especially John and Michael for organizing this and I’m especially honored to be here with my friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy. Not only this, it’s more than a friend. He is really one of those whom I consider my secret master you know like I read his books and then I behaved towards you I didn’t tell you this in a totally opportunistic way in the sense of I follow a certain line of thought then I discover that you took a different line so once I really acted learning that as a pure Stalinist. I quickly run home and erased all those files with the I tried to change my own past which didn’t fit with yours. So I’m just glad to be here. I have so many points to but let’s leave this to further our later debate to go on. Let me just deliver my paper which unfortunately will not have this logical consistency of yours but it will make some points which I think that at a deeper level do echo some of your points. Let me begin with a very weird film. Probably not a lot of you saw it because it’s half forgotten today. It’s a it’s one of those religious Christian films called The Rapture from written and directed by Michael Tolkin a film in which Mimi Rogers plays Sharon. A young LA woman who works during the day as a phone operator endlessly repeating the same questions in a small cubicle while in the evening she engages in orgies and so on. Bored and dissatisfied at leading such an empty life Sharon becomes member of a sect which preaches that the end of time and rapture are imminent. So turning into a passionate believer she begins to practice a new pious lifestyle. She gets married with Randy one of her previous swinging partners and they have had a daughter Mary. Six years later when Randy is shot to death by a madman this totally meaningless catastrophe makes her Sharon and her daughter even more convinced that rapture is approaching. Sharon believes God told her that she should go with Mary to a nearby desert camping place and wait there until the two of them she and her daughter will be taken up to heaven to be reunited with Randy. Mary the daughter gets impatient and proposes her mother that they simply kill themselves so that they reach heaven quickly. After a couple of weeks Sharon decides totally desperate tired of waiting decides to do this. She shoots her daughter but then stops doesn’t shoot herself realizing that suiciders are not allowed into heaven. But the point is not that this is a simple opportunistic fear. No she immediately goes to the police confesses her act and is arrested and taken to a local jail. Now up to this point it can be a simple even atheist critical story about how how religious fanaticism ends up in disaster. We can imagine the ending how Sharon is alone totally broken aware of the horror she is committed and she has committed and so on and so on. But now there comes why I like the movie. At this point totally weird things begin to happen. While she is desperate alone in the prison cell rapture happens. The real one. Literally. In all naivety including bad special effects. First deep in the night Mary her daughter appears to her with two angels and then a loud trumpet blast is heard all around and prison bars fall down. She escapes the prison runs into the desert and sees the four horsemen running around horsemen of the apocalypse. I like this first reversal because it is as if we have a brutal ironic God who does the opposite of what we half believers half atheists would have expected. Our expectation is something like oh maybe Bible is not to be taken literally of course all these are ridiculous superstitious stories but it’s just that you know we should look at it metaphorically symbolically it simply means there is some deeper spiritual truth whatever. No here God’s message to man is something like you read the Bible what did you think that I was kidding or what? No screw your you know search for deeper meaning I wrote what I plan and here you got it now. Now comes an even weirder reversal. That’s not the end. Sharon is then raptured transported to a purgatory like landscape. We see paradise in far distance like some enlightened castle. Then in a vision Mary her deceased daughter approaches her and pleads with her to accept God. She said in a very Pascalian way it doesn't matter do you really believe or not just say Jesus I love you or whatever and look we are here me and the Randy your husband my father we are just gladly waiting for you. Then something incredible happens and that’s the end of the film already. Sharon simply refuses. Although again there is no doubt now there is God and so on she said that I am not ready to declare my love for God who acted with such cruelty towards my family for no reason at all. When Mary asks her her mother does do you know mother what this means? Do you know how long you will be confined to stay here if you refuse to say to God I love you? Sharon replies yes I know forever. The end of the film. I mean it’s a totally crazy incredible film. Why do I like it? So Sharon realizes that she wasted her life appeasing a God who is only toying with her feelings. And that’s the paradox of the film. It would be very easy to accept all this if we were to discover that God doesn't exist that Sharon was just caught into her religious imagination delirious imagination. But the paradox is she persists in renouncing a God who is real but a narcissist giving us life for the sole purpose of demanding unconditional love in return no matter how much damage his demands have inflicted on human lives. Now this is not a joke. Such indifferent and narcissistic God is part of a certain at least Christian tradition. For Nicolas Malebranche a pupil of Descartes in the same way that the saintly person uses the suffering of others to bring about his own narcissistic satisfaction Malebranche had no illusions here in helping those in distress God also ultimately loves only himself. He merely uses us our human suffering to promulgate his own glory. So Malebranche draw this incredible conclusion. It is not true that if Christ had not come to earth to deliver humanity that if Christ had not come to earth to deliver redeem us everyone would have been lost. Quite on the contrary nobody would have been lost. All of us had to fall so that to gave God the opportunity to come and deliver some of us. It’s a very weird logic and you find a similar absolute miracles in Malebranche. For example it’s close to morbidity for example he said that at no point was God more happy than when he observed his son dying in pain on the cross. Okay now back to the movie. Sharon’s resistance to God her refusal to declare her love for him is I would claim an authentic ethical act. It would be totally wrong to say that she rejects the false God and that in an authentically Christian version of the film the true Christ should appear at the end proclaim her a true believer precisely because she rejected to declare that she loves the false God and so on. The true temptation to be resisted is to declare our love for a God who doesn’t deserve it even if he really is a God. Now I confront the obvious naive materialist questions. All this cannot but appear as a pseudo topic a rather stupid mental experiment. Isn’t this obvious? Why engage in these stupid games? Isn’t it that simply for a consequent materialist we should simply renounce God? There is no God and not play these stupid games God is but he is maybe evil not good whatever. But I think that there is something much subtler here at work. We should in the consequent materialism undermine as it were the fiction of God from within because if we don’t do that then this fiction can prolong its hold over us in the form of disavowal which is almost I’m tempted to say the way a great majority of us continue to believe. I'm always making this experiment with all my relatives friends I ask them okay cut the crap do you believe in God or not? And it’s absolutely incredible sorry for this brief improvisation what answers do I have like half a year ago we had in London a conference on the actuality of theologico-political. And there were there some big theologians and so on literary theorists others and I did something which obviously broke all the rules of polite conversation. I asked them listen I’m sorry but this is a conference on theology. Do you believe in God or not? It was incredible. They reacted as if I asked them like in what position did you have sex last night or what? Absolutely one of them I will name him he is my good friend Eric Santner he said well I prefer not to engage in that direction because I speak here we as a literary theorist don’t mess with me into that and so on. There were theologians then leftist theologians who said listen that’s not the point the point is how to mobilize progressive politics today and so on and so on. So I think that far from being an exception this is our belief today. It’s even something like I know there is no God but he is nonetheless a noble and uplifting illusion. Some of some of my Jewish friends who are Zionists even one of them openly told me another version of this paradox when we debated West Bank. He said I know God doesn’t exist but nonetheless he gave us West Bank. Why? Now we are now I’m going to much more serious waters. You can imagine what I will try to prove in a bloody very serious way I’m not kidding. I consider myself an atheist. But only true Christianity can you really be an atheist. You have to go through Christian experience. If not then you don’t believe it but the fiction persists determines you. How? Let me do now something for which I’ll really hate myself but it’s necessary here. Let me repeat an old joke which I used I would say at least a conservative estimate some to times in my work. So it’s an old joke you are not obliged to laugh to laugh but its structure is wonderful you know that classical joke about an idiot who believes he is a grain of seed and it’s finally cured in the lunatic asylum is left out then comes running back and his psychiatrist asks him but why why are you so frightened? Why do you come back? The guy says well I met a chicken and I was afraid the chicken will eat me no? And the doctor his psychiatrist says but wait a minute we cured you you know that you you are not a grain of corn or whatever. And he says yes I know it now but does the chicken know it? Also. This is how we believe today. Another story which I used only five times in my books so I can tell it to you the one you mentioned quantum physics. We all admire him he was a true genius much more than Heisenberg who got it wrong with that uncertainty principle Niels Bohr. You know there is a wonderful anecdote about him. He had a small wooden house in some in suburb around Copenhagen and at the entrance of that house there was a horseshoe. In Europe this is a superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And a scientist friend visited him and told him wait a minute you are a scientist you shouldn't be superstitious why do you have that horseshoe there? You cannot beat Niels Bohr you know what was his answer? I know I don’t believe in it I’m a scientist but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don’t believe in it. That’s how this is ideology today. In what sense? Now you will say I’m telling you jokes. Oh let’s go further. First I’m saying this is what Jacques Lacan means by the idea in late Lacan he liked to repeat that the formula of true atheism is not God is dead but God is unconscious. It means precisely that for example in psychoanalysis yo today patients are cynical. You know that Freudian standard joke this is not my mother. When you ask a patient who is that woman in your dream and he answers I don’t know who that woman is I’m just sure that it’s not my mother. Well today we don’t have patients like that. A patient today would probably immediately told you almost the opposite like I don’t know who that woman is in my dream but I trust you probably it has something to do with my mother or whatever. So the point is not to the true to put it in this metaphorical term terms the true task of psychoanalysis is not to convince you about your unconscious desires whatever but to convince the chicken which is your unconscious. It’s much more difficult. Who you know who knew this although I’m very critical towards a lot of his work Marx. What Marx meant by commodity fetishism is something much more mysterious than it may appear. Look how Marx begins his famous sub-chapter to the the supplement subdivision four of the chapter one of Capital on commodity fetishism. I quote Marx a commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious trivial thing but its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. End of quote. Are we aware what a strange things Marx is saying here? It’s the exact opposite of the naive materialist enlightened critique of religion which says oh you I’m simplifying it you idiot you live in your obscure religious fantasies no but in reality in real no Marx is saying the opposite. You think a commodity is just an ordinary object there you think money is just an instrument for us exchanging commodities but what has to be brought out is precisely the implicit metaphysical topics that you practice even if you do not believe in it. In other words even if you are an atheist your unconscious remains divine. Which is why when Marx provides his definition of ideology sie wissen das nicht aber sie tun es they don’t know it but they are doing it. It doesn’t mean the vulgarity oh you think one thing but you are doing another thing. It means you do not know the illusions that you follow but you are doing them. Like to be to put it in simple terms in your self-consciousness you are a vulgar materialist like utilitarian you think money is just an object blah blah blah. But what you are not aware is that in your social practice you act as if you believe in magical properties in money. And commodities are here chicken. Marx evokes this idea when he says if commodities could speak they would say this and so on and so on. It’s this weird fiction of commodities speaking to another. Now so again the point is of fetishism Marx is not that we live in some superstitions and some naive enlightened procedure should clear enable us to guess rid of it. No Marx’s point is precisely that especially in modern era where we appear to be enlightened utilitarians we are not aware of the theological niceties etc which continue to structure our life. And my friend Alenka Zupančič one of the members of my Slovene Lacanian gang applied also this chicken joke or Marx’s joke on commodities to God. She said instead of lunatic asylum imagine a revolutionary materialist society where those who still believe in God are treated like madmen and they are ideologically brainwashed. So imagine one of them being finally cured now you know there is no God and so on and he is released but he comes running back back back and says he is scared of being punished by God. Now the teacher there tells him teacher of materialism but you know now that God doesn't exist. He said I know that God is dead but does God know it? I’m afraid that God didn't learn this news and so on. Now why am I mentioning this? Now I turn to my favorite theologian the old Catholic British Gilbert Keith Chesterton who got this point. He said that all other religions of course you find in them atheists people who don’t believe in God. But he says only in Christianity you find a God who at least for a brief moment doesn't believe in himself. Here is this wonderful quote: when the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven it was not at the crucifixion but at the cry from the cross the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and so on they will not find another God who has himself been in revolt. Let the atheists themselves choose a God they will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to become an atheist. And I don’t have time to develop it but this is why I claim today’s era is perhaps less atheist than ever. We don’t believe but we always structurally need another naive gaze what following Jacques Lacan maybe I could have called a subject supposed to believe who believes for us like I’m old enough unfortunately I never participated in them but to remember late sixties seventies sexual revolution swinging orgies I had some friends who were already in middle ages which means family they had children and I noticed how all of them they were participating in orgies blah but everything turned on how their children or parents there always was someone who shouldn't know about it. If they were to learn that that one learns about it it would have meant it would have meant the end of it all. That’s why I think I mean this is total distraction but how our era which may appear even in sexuality the most permissive one and so on as many intelligent observers like the French Lacanian Gérard Wajcman they noticed how you know the usual dogma is who needs Freud today we are open we can admit all our desires. Yes but did you notice how one the price of this permissiveness today is that one basic insight of Freud is totally obliterated children sexuality. Children are again elevated into innocent beings and child molesting is returned as the worst you can imagine the ultimate crime. There are some other crimes I don’t have time to go into them I don’t smoke but my wife does and she converted me not into smoking into believing it how I think it’s part of the same ideology this obsession with how dangerous with how dangerous smoking is. It would be nice just to follow in Hollywood who still smokes today basically serial killers and Arab terrorists before they explode bombs and so on. But okay so my point is we need another innocent one and I’m sad to say that even a film which I up to a point liked up to a point Roberto Benigni’s La Vita Bella you know relies on this structure. We know what Auschwitz is but in order to save the innocent child you have to construct for him the fiction that this is just a big game we are free to leave at any point we want and so on. You know let me make a mental counterfactual mental experiment don’t you think that it would have been a much more desperate film if you remember the last scene when they are taking Benigni to be shot at the very end and he waves at his son. If at that point somehow his son were to let him know that he also knew it all the time that they are in a camp but that for the same reason as his father he he just pretended to believe him to make it easier for his father because he knew that if his father were to know that the son so this is my category here which is absolutely crucial the category of a social belief which can function as a belief even if nobody believes even if no empirical individual believes. Now let me go on. The reason I’m fully attached shamelessly to so-called I hate the term Judeo-Christian tradition is that I claim that this is part this insight into the horror of God and so on monstrosity of God is the lesson of Judeo-Christian tradition. How? It all began with the book of how do you pronounce it the guy who got screwed up Job the book of Job. I think this is the first and maybe one of the greatest books of critique of ideology. Why? Remember what happens in it. After Job is hit by all the calamities what happens then? Three or four theological friends come and each of them gives him Job the same message. Your not so much is he innocent or not but your suffering has a deeper meaning. The first one tells him basically even if you think you are innocent look more deep into yourself the other one tells him maybe God is testing you just persist. The message is your suffering has a deeper meaning. What and now comes the first shock. You know when Jehovah God comes surprisingly he says I simplify it what these theological friends were telling is bullshit you Job were right. Your suffering has no meaning. I think that this is the first big lesson this resistance to search for a deeper meaning when we encounter catastrophes. But then things go on again I will refer to Chesterton. After getting this answer for God that he is right Job nonetheless asks okay but tell me but why then did all this happen to me? Then comes God’s answer which I claim is usually totally misread. Where were basically a kind of arrogant speech. Where were you when I created all those strange creatures monsters you know you usually these lines are read as assertion of God’s arrogance in the sense of who are you tiny creepy mortal to know it we are simply on a different level. But Chesterton in his short essay essay on the book of Job gives and for me it’s terribly convincing gives a totally different reading. He says that God’s answer is rather something like you think you are in trouble but look at the world that I created everything is a mess in it you are not an exception. And now you will say I’m dreaming here. Hop my Jewish friends provided me in my last book blah blah you find the proper quotes. Do you know that in Talmud there are two passages which I call you will immediately see why Annie Hall passages. You know that dream scene at the beginning of Annie Hall the movie where where Woody Allen character is debating with a guy about about Marshall McLuhan theories. And then Marshall McLuhan comes and says you know says of course to Woody Allen you are totally right that guy is an idiot he doesn't and I’m not kidding this is not a joke this is the sacred text Talmud. Two rabbis debate some theological point. The one who is losing the debate says to the other but listen who are we to decide let’s call Jehovah. It happens. Jehovah an old guy comes but before he even starts to talk the other rabbi starts to shout at God. Listen old man you did your job you did it pretty bad but okay you did it. Now beat it we theologians have to debate some serious matter. And you know what Jehovah says he answers oh my God you got me and runs away. It’s absolutely breathtaking. Now I will probably yes it looks bad. So let me jump something that I wanted to say how this big what I okay I will condense this part. What I wanted to develop also is the different problems and readings of the book of Job. The way I understand it is that the secret of Protestantism is that what predestination means it is that you have a brutal ignorant God who simply without any criteria makes his in predestination makes his makes decisions. So I even wanted to play it I didn’t want to you know the last Johnny Cash hit The Man Comes Around. This is for me the best of this Protestant God. What I I don’t like Johnny Cash as a singer but what I like in this song is the horror of how the last judgment is portrayed presented. It’s not oh my God we the righteous will stand up it’s literally like we are all lined a man like some police comes and you are in you are out you are in you are out. I was shocked to establish the clear parallel between last judgment here and the way in his If This Is a Man Primo Levi describes what he calls selection selectio you know every two months in concentration camp all the inmates had to run naked in front of a some SS doctor and he just quickly took a look and quickly yes no means gas chamber or you continue to survive. Again you will say why this crazy vision of God? What has this to do? I think to arrive at what Jesus Christ means you have to go through this. I think that that with what because what happens for me that’s my reading which is basically Hegel’s reading. What happens on the cross it’s not that God send us a messenger and okay it failed sorry God says to Christ come back to me come back to your dad I will try maybe in a thousand of years. No as Hegel put it what dies on the cross is the God of beyond itself. What dies on the cross is precisely this idea of God as a secret master up there who no matter how bad things look down here on earth he pulls the strings and guarantees that everything will end well. You know this I find it ethically repulsive this metaphor for God which was usually evoked by all theologians which is that we ordinary mortals are like are like one who imagine a big classical beautiful painting. We look with our limited view we look too close at it and you know like if you look at Mona Lisa from from one inch you see just a stain but if you step back and see all of it you see how what you misperceived as a stain contributes to harmony of it all. This God dies there. And I think that the ethical reasons are clear like let’s say somebody complains about Holocaust or Gulag or other things are you really to say are you really ready to say to this guy listen Holocaust may appear to you as something horrible but can’t you see how it contributes to the harmony of it all and so on and so on. The gesture of Christ is precisely a kind of a self-deposition of God. What happens of the cross is I think on the cross is God abdicates. God no longer believes even in himself. So what happens is Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit which is just our freedom the community of believers. This is I think again what it’s the ultimate message of Christianity. It’s not you are safe because no matter how confused things are God is up there taking care of it. No it’s God lost control it’s up to you. And even not only Chesterton some very intelligent Catholic intellectuals saw this. For example a conservative like Paul Claudel whom I appreciate very much he said that the ultimate message of Christianity is God is impotent without us. It’s not we have to rely on God is that the message of the cross is God is just a witness who relies on us. And just now a little bit of a conclusion so what kind of theology can we bring out of this if at the end we just get the suffering Christ pure impassive compassion and basically telling us no transcendental guarantee no one is pulling the strings? I think that incidentally only with such a radical reading can you really give I don’t have time to go into this now of course a consistent interpretation of all those problematic passages in the Bible. You know I this is my long tradition for example in Vienna and Munich I had a debate even with some bishops and I asked them this totally simple questions. For example when God says if you don’t hate your mother your father you are not my follower. What does this mean? It’s incredible what answers I got if we were to be in medieval times I would have burned them all. One of them a bishop told me God just meant don’t be excessive in your earthly loves reserve the true love for me. I find this disgusting and horrible as if God is some jealous mafia boss who says okay love that woman a little bit just I want to be sure that you love me more. I think it’s exactly the opposite. In Christianity you don’t have to love God. God is love. God is here when you passionately love someone and so on and so on. So if we are in this universe which is radically atheist it’s not only that you think there is no God also you don’t have this unconscious God as the appearance on which you rely. What remains of religion? Here if you allow me just some good five minutes to conclude I would like to quote a guy whom I’m honored to call my friend the ex archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who is not an idiot. It’s not a total idiot and I mean this sincerely there are two types of people total idiots and not total idiots there is no third option. He commenting on the work of four British Catholic novelists O’Connor, Percy, Spark and Ellis Rowan Williams wrote I quote all four these four writers create a world in which the secular majority account of what is going on is severely relativized. But there is no simple alternative that anyone can step into by a single decision or even a series of decisions. The religious dimension of these fictions lies in the insistent sense of incongruity unmistakable even if no one within the fiction can say what we should be congruent with. End of quote. So the term negative theology is here meant in a much more radical sense than usually where the idea is simply God is so much beyond that all of our positive determinations fail. The the idea is rather that that that we locate negativity into God itself that like it is as if God as a positive entity fills in a certain negative place which precedes divinity. Which is precisely the place of did what in my Hegelianism I would have call negativity this basic feeling of being out of joint and so on and so on which I think precedes any positive transcendence. In this sense I’m not playing cheap paradoxical game that I say that theology for me as an atheist can survive. Religion is no longer the opium of the people today because if for no other reasons than and I like this well-known saying that today the opium of the people is more and more simply opium itself no drugs and so on. But this and here I also think we should do two things. First this is I think that we should reject not only evolutionary materialists like Richard Dawkins and so on and so on. I mean now I will be paradoxical here. Maybe all that Dawkins is describing is at some stupid factual level true but still he totally doesn't get the point of religion. It’s simply not even if it’s true. And this is my position of negativity here another thing. I think we should also reject I don’t have time to go into it now but I think we should also reject all this how should I call it what is usually referred to to today as new materialism this re-enchantment of reality as immanently spiritualized. What I ironically like to call the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings materialism. Because did you notice that in Lord of the Rings universe there are no gods. All the magic is material magic. You have magical beings this that but there is no other dimension. It’s a fully self-enclosed spiritualized universe. I I think that we have to keep alive precisely this sense of radical out of jointness. To just now the last two three minutes just to make this clear and in your spirit I would like also if you began with Vertigo I would like much more modestly to end with with one of the most disturbing TV episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Present the early ones minutes they are now republishing them it’s the one called The Glass Eye the opening episode of the third year where Jessica Tandy incidentally this is if you are like the two of us Hitchcockologists she is a crucial actress on the one hand she is the mother in in The Birds oh yeah but at the same time you know for what I what I perceive as maybe the greatest Beckett play the Not I which is really a partial object talking the mouth. She was there she was the original. Okay she plays a lone woman who falls in love with a handsome ventriloquist Max Collodi the obvious reference to Pinocchio. So every evening he performs in a small cabaret she is there in the first row observing him how he ventriloquism then comes I was even shocked I didn't expect this. Then the last evening it’s his last performance she gathers the courage and approaches him while the people are leaving there on stage and touches him like Hi look at me no? And can you imagine what happens. She discovers the the big guy collapses as a doll. She discovers that the truly living being is the doll the small one. That there is a midget in there and that the truly manipulated one was the big one you know. And then out of that of that costume steps out a dwarf totally desperate and starts to cry and runs away and so on and so on. So what I’m saying is that the again the result is the the ventriloquist was in fact the dummy while the hideous dummy is the actual ventriloquist. And what I claim is that God is dead means something similar. That we have to abandon the common notion of Christ as God who is the father’s puppet. No the Christian reversal is something like this: forget about God the father he was just a dead a big fat dead doll. All that is alive is Christ there and love that accept that. So again my point is I will develop this in my next book much more in detail but my point is and I hope we agree here that I don’t like to bluff here. I’m not playing those games that Jürgen Habermas is now playing Oh I’m an agnostic maybe God exists maybe not. No I am an atheist. But I think that without this radi that my paradox would be this one. Only by going through Christianity you can be in this sense a radical atheist. Without this authentic theological experience of out of joint of this world we are in is not it. You even if you pretend to be a materialist you end up as some kind of a cheap perverted spiritualist. This is why it’s easy to prove for example how Stalinism is immanently but in a perverted way theological. Because you know the whole position of a Stalinist communist is a position of an instrument of some big other historical necessity and so on like I’m not myself I’m an instrument of and so on and so on. This is why I claim here as a Hegelian that in what sense does does God give us freedom? Let’s say you find yourself okay I’ll put it like this just to conclude let’s say you find yourself in a position where you feel experience yourself as abandoned by God. Oh God is out there I’m alone and so on. All other religions offer you the path of reconciliation. Eh whip yourself a little bit more more good deeds suffer and maybe you will be able to rejoin God. The answer of Christianity is a totally different one. It is precisely when you feel totally abandoned by God you are in the position of Christ. That is to say who on the cross is you know Father why have you abandoned me and so on. So in other words the very gap that separates you from God is an inner self-separation of God himself. Your your distance from God is part of divinity. Which is why I think that’s the good news of New Testament. The good news are not oh Godfather is there every no the good news are in a Hegelian way if my put it exactly the same as the bad news. The bad news is we are alone no God will take care of us. And the good news is wonderful so we are free. This loneliness which succeed self-erasure was is precisely freedom. And that’s the fundamental insight of Christianity which is I wonder if you will agree here which is extremely important even politically today. Which is why against political correctness I’m totally opposed to this idea bad global capitalism secular and then we can resuscitate some stupid local traditions you know like Brazilian friends try to convince me that there are some tribes in Lower Amazon which has some primordial wisdom whatever how you are you we don’t just ex. My point is this one. I’m here on the side of Malcolm X. You know what is I disagree with many things that he wrote. But one things was a stroke of a genius. X. This is not a simple complaint oh bad white people deprived us blacks of our authentic roots. No what Malcolm X saw is that this X which means we have no hierarchic roots in tradition we cannot trace our roots. That this horror that white people did to us is at the same time a unique chance of freedom to be more universalist than white people to ge he saw this and this is so important today I think. We cannot f fight I think global imperialism whatever we call it is inherently multicultural. You don’t fi fight it by sticking to your low this is typical global capitalist subject. It’s not the one who eat hamburgers but it’s the one who works for a big company and then if you're a Buddhist you do your meditation. If you're a Hindu you do your sacrifices whatever. All this fits perfectly global capitalism. The problem is to beat it with even stronger globalism. I’m very sorry if I used too much time but that’s it. Thanks very much.