Slavoj Zizek -Timelapse Drawing [+Speech at The European Graduate School]
Talk · Let’sDrawStuff ·
2017 · 0:41:25 · 5,349 words
religion-theologycommunism-socialismideologyhegel-dialecticspsychoanalysissubjectivityphilosophy-generalhistorygeopolitics-warfascism-populism
Žižek argues that 'Christian atheism' is the ethical stance for today, linking three 2017 anniversaries: the 500th of Luther’s 95 Theses, the centenary of the October Revolution, and the 50th of the Shanghai Commune. He posits that Protestantism, particularly through Luther’s insistence on divine impenetrability, offers a model of radical freedom where fate and necessity are retroactively created by free choice, a concept he parallels with psychoanalysis and Hegelian dialectics. Žižek critiques Hannah Arendt’s reading of Eichmann as a Kantian, arguing instead that Eichmann violated Kant by treating duty as an external excuse rather than assuming radical subjective responsibility. He extends this to a critique of Mao Zedong’s cosmic relativism, contrasting it with a Protestant-Christian vision of 'Christian atheism' that unites the objective insignificance of humanity with the subjective weight of ethical struggle. Finally, he reinterprets Marx’s 'opium of the people' to include populism and drugs, while citing Rowan Williams’ reading of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot to define the divine as a negative void or incongruity in reality.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 16
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek’s term for an ethical stance that accepts the death of God and our abandonment, finding freedom not in reunion with the divine but in the realization that God himself is absent/alienated.
The Orthodox tradition of man becoming like God; Žižek contrasts this with Protestantism, which he argues rejects the need for this ascent, accepting God's death as sufficient.
as “God becomes an atheist”
Chesterton’s phrase used by Žižek to describe the moment on the cross when God abandons himself, representing the ultimate separation and the basis for human freedom.
Schelling’s idea that God is not fully God until he incarnates; Žižek twists this to mean God needs us to save him, or that God is incomplete without the human struggle.
as “cosmic cave dweller”
Zapf’s description of God in Job as a 'grotesque primitiveness' and 'braggart,' highlighting God’s qualitative baseness rather than just greatness.
Luther’s insight that we cannot know God’s will or predestination; this ignorance forces radical responsibility and activity, unlike the 'financial transaction' view of Catholicism.
as “transcendental, atemporal free decision”
Schelling’s term for love/fate: a decision that feels like an inescapable necessity, which Žižek identifies as true radical freedom.
The Hegelian idea that a free decision retroactively becomes necessary/fated; we create our fate by choosing, experiencing the choice as 'I had to do it.'
A psychoanalytic concept where one is determined by past traumas; Žižek argues this does not excuse action but increases radical responsibility.
as “You can't do it because you must do it”
Žižek’s reading of Kant: duty cannot be externalized as an excuse; one must subjectively assume the duty itself, not just the action.
The subject cannot refer to duty as an objective determination; one is responsible for one's own freedom and actions, not just following orders.
as “retroactive fate”
A dialectical interconnection where a contingent act, once performed, retroactively becomes one's necessary fate.
The paradoxical unity in Protestant ethics where, despite being objectively a tiny piece of dust in the universe, we act as if the entire universe was created for our ethical struggle.
as “insistent sense of incongruity”
The religious dimension in fiction (citing Williams) where the world is 'out of joint' and lacking something, without a simple alternative to step into.
as “negative theology (redefined)”
Not that God is beyond description, but that God is simply 'this absence' or the 'empty place' before our images; the divine dimension is the void/incongruity in reality.
as “opium of the people (pluralized)”
Žižek argues there are multiple 'opiums': religion (fundamentalism), populism (the phantasmatic 'people'), and literal drugs (opium), all serving as escapes in global capitalism.
Stories he reaches for 3
Mao Zedong claimed US atomic bombs blowing a hole through Earth mean nothing to the universe; Žižek critiques this as a pseudo-Kantian, divine external view that ignores the subjective ethical weight of the event.
“Even if the US atom bombs were so powerful that when dropped on China they would make a hole right through the earth... that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole.”
Workers and students in Shanghai took Mao’s call to 'attack the headquarters' literally, overthrowing local party offices and ignoring the army, leading to a tragic battle where the army turned on the revolutionaries.
“residents of shanghai workers and students decided to take literally mao's call... they took this literally and simply overthrew”
Hannah Arendt claimed Eichmann was a Kantian who followed duty; Žižek argues Eichmann was anti-Kantian because he used duty as an excuse to kill, whereas Kant requires radical subjective responsibility, not blind obedience to orders.
“Eichmann did precisely the wrong thing. He was not a Kantian. Because he did something that Kant strictly prohibit. He used duty as an excuse.”
Works invoked 9
Capital book
Cited as outlining the theoretical foundations of the communist revolution (1867).
The Book of Job book
Used by Zapf to show God’s 'qualitative baseness' and 'grotesque primitiveness,' challenging the idea of God’s greatness.
The Idiot (novel) book
Used via Rowan Williams' analysis to illustrate 'wrong goodness' and the divine as incongruity/void.
Žižek admires the book generally but argues its central thesis about Eichmann's Kantianism is wrong.
Ages of the World book
Schelling’s later text, used to develop the theology of God’s self-alienation and incarnation.
95 Theses other
Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses in 1517, marking the start of Protestantism and a key date for 'Christian atheism'.
Rowan Williams' book on Dostoevsky; Žižek praises it as providing the 'best reading' he can imagine.
Schelling’s text, used to develop the idea that God produces Logos to save himself from madness.
Protestantism Got book
A book by Peter Wessel Zapf (title likely 'Protestantism Got' or similar, possibly 'Protestantism and God'), a reading of Job.
People invoked 26
Saint Athanasius of Alexandria positive
Cited for the Orthodox formula: 'God became man, so that men might become god' (theosis).
Saint Maximus the Confessor positive
Cited for the view that the incarnation provides a warrant for the deification of human nature.
Marine Le Pen negative
Cited as an example of a populist whose 'opium' is the phantasmatic image of 'the people' (the true French people).
Vladimir Lenin positive
Implied through the October Revolution (1917), the first successful attempt to overthrow the bourgeois state.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Mentioned as having previously noted that there are 'two other opiums of the people' (populism and drugs).
Mangled as 'le fe' or 'lfe' in transcript ('from jfe. job. finds himself...'); likely a mis-transcription of a reference to Levinas or a specific theologian, but contextually linked to the reading of Job. Given the high confidence of 'Job' and 'Zapf', this might be a misheard 'Zapf' or 'Levinas'. However, the text says 'from jfe. job. finds himself'. This is likely 'From Job, finds himself'. I will treat 'jfe' as a transcription error for 'Job' or a specific theologian. Actually, looking at 'from jfe. job. finds himself', it is likely 'From Job, finds himself'. I will not add a person here if it's just 'Job'. Wait, 'from jfe' might be 'from J.F.E.'? No, likely 'From Job'. I will skip adding a person for 'jfe' as it's too ambiguous, but I will capture the content in motifs.
Thomas Müntzer negative
The theologian of the German Peasant Revolt; Žižek criticizes him for being too close to a 'perverse instrumental position' akin to totalitarianism.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Žižek’s 'beloved' theologian; cited for the insight that God becomes an atheist on the cross, and that God needs our help.
Likely a transcription error for 'Spark' (Iris Murdoch is not typically grouped this way, but Muriel Spark is. However, 'Spark' is explicitly named. 'Ellis' is likely Anne Ennis or similar? Actually, the standard list Williams cites is O'Connor, Percy, Spark, and maybe someone else. The transcript says 'o'connor, percy, spark and ellis'. I will list 'Ellis' as referenced, likely Anne Ennis or a typo for a specific author. Given 'British Catholic novelists', Muriel Spark is the key. 'Ellis' might be a typo for 'Ellis' (no famous British Catholic novelist named Ellis comes to mind immediately in this quartet). I will leave 'Ellis' as referenced but note the ambiguity. Actually, looking at Williams' book Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction, he discusses O'Connor, Percy, Spark, and maybe someone else. I will list 'Ellis' as a reference but note it might be a typo.
Flannery O'Connor positive
One of four British Catholic novelists (with Percy, Spark, Ellis) cited by Williams to illustrate the 'insistent sense of incongruity' in religious fiction.
Adolf Eichmann negative
Used as the primary example of someone who violated Kantian ethics by using 'duty' as an excuse for mass murder.
Paul Claudel positive
A 'favorite French conservative Catholic' who stated the secret of Christianity is that 'God needs our help' and 'only we can save God.'
Rowan Williams positive
A 'good friend' (though Žižek jokes about boasting) whose reading of Dostoevsky and definition of the divine as 'incongruity' Žižek praises highly.
Likely a transcription error for 'Percy' (Walker Percy), one of the four British Catholic novelists mentioned by Williams. High confidence correction based on the list 'O'Connor, Percy, Spark and Ellis'.
Žižek argues Mao was likely manipulating the Cultural Revolution to regain power, but the Shanghai Commune event itself is fascinating for its radical attempt at direct people's power.
Hannah Arendt negative
Žižek admires her generally but argues she was wrong about Eichmann being a Kantian; he uses her to illustrate a misunderstanding of duty and responsibility.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling positive
Cited for his theology of God producing Logos to save himself from madness, and his concept of 'transcendental, atemporal free decision' in love.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Cited for formulas like 'God is relating itself,' which Žižek links to a paradoxical materialism.
Karl Marx positive
Cited as outlining the theoretical foundations of communist revolution via Capital (1867).
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the concept of 'overdetermination'; Žižek argues this does not negate freedom but increases radical responsibility.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek’s 'favorite'; he uses Hegel’s reading of the cross (God dies, not just his representative) and the Sphinx (secrets are secrets for the Greeks themselves) to explain divine self-alienation.
Immanuel Kant positive
Cited for the ethical insight that one cannot use 'duty' as an excuse; one must subjectively assume the duty itself.
Max Weber positive
Cited for the paradox of why Protestantism (based on predestination) became the background of active capitalism.
Martin Luther positive
Žižek prefers early Luther’s insistence on 'divine impenetrability' over Münzer’s conformism, seeing it as a warning against fundamentalism and totalitarianism.
Peter Wessel Zapffe positive
A Norwegian theologian whose reading of Job describes God as a 'cosmic cave dweller' and 'braggart,' highlighting God's qualitative baseness.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky positive
Žižek states 'I don't like Dostoevsky, but I like his book' (Williams' book on Dostoevsky); he uses Dostoevsky's The Idiot via Williams to discuss the divine.
Transcript 2 turns
Slavoj Žižek
what i want to say is that... earth. i think that. what i call christian atheism is still. the ethical stance which fits today's. predicament. okay. let me begin with a simple observation. those who follow obscure spiritual cosmological speculations. have for sure heard of one of the most popular topics in this domain. you know all these mythical stories that when three planets, usually earth, moon and the sun, find themselves along the same axis, then... some big cataclysmic event takes place, the whole order of the universe is momentarily thrown out of joint and the universe has two. find a new balance. you remember that it wasn't taken seriously but the panic of 2012 where the idea is of some maya old maya predictions precisely because i think earth, moon and sun were in the same line. it's not good. and i think that politically something like this halt for. this year 2017 which is a triple anniversary in 2017 we do not celebrate only the centenary of the october revolution. 1917, but also the 150th anniversary of the first edition of marxist capital. 1867 and maybe the most tragic event, the 50th anniversary of the so-called shanghai commune, when in the climactic moment of the chinese great proletarian cultural revolution. it's a wonderful moment, maybe the crucial moment of 20th century communism. residents of shanghai workers and students decided to take literally mao's call, you know when mao said attack the headquarters. you don't need neither the party nor the army, people should take over. well, they took this literally and simply overthrew. offices destroyed of local communist party ignored the army and took over. and that was the crucial point. because then mao had to send the army. and it's an extremely tragic event because this was then, people don't know this, the biggest battle of the cultural revolution. forget about, okay, they were tragic, all those scenes, you know, red guardists pulling their beard, terrorizing professors, intellectuals, all that. no, it was the battle for shanghai when... the army turned on the very revolutionaries and one doesn't know how many, the idea is that it goes into tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dead people. but i. i think this event is fascinating because i don't like this big question was mao sincere or not? at a certain level he was not. it's clearly that he triggered the cultural revolution to regain his full power in the army sorry in the state. but it doesn't matter if mao was manipulating. things ran out of control. ordinary workers took it seriously. let's have directly the rule of the commune, we don't need the party, we don't need the army and so on. and it went too far. so i think these three events. mark the three stages of the communist movement. first. capital by marx outlined the theoretical foundations of the communist revolution. then the october revolution was the first successful attempt. to overthrow bourgeois state and build a new social economic order and then the shanghai commune. stands for the most radical attempt to immediately realize the most daring aspect of the communist vision, the abolishment of state power and the imposition of direct people's power organized as a network of local commununes. it didn't work and of course i will not answer the question today, namely the big question what went wrong? i think that's my hypothesis. what went wrong with this cycle? perhaps the answer is to be sought. and people don't talk about it, but for me at least, as a christian, a is's the key date. don't you know that today we have another, we have four planets in a line, another mega anniversary. 2017 is the 500 years anniversary of 1517 when martin luther put on that door the 95 thesis, protestantism. and i still think that protestantism is the key, the greatest religious event that you can imagine. why? let me begin. in a very simplified way but i'm not totally bluffing because i presented a version of this text. in a theological at a theological colloquium in cambridge and it went well, what can i say? so i'm not totally bluffing. i'm not totally bluffing. let me begin. by this dryad of orthodoxy, catholicism and protestantism. the way i see it, maybe i'm wrong, central to the orthodox tradition is the notion of theosis of man becoming like god or to quote saint athanasius of alexandria quote she christ or god was incarnate so that we might be made god. what quote what should otherwise seem absurd, that fallen, sinful men may become holy as god is holy, has been made possible through jesus christ, who is god incarnate. and then st. maximus the confessor wrote in the same vein, again, a quote. a sure warrant for looking with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the incarnation of god which makes man god to the same degree as god himself became man. let us become the image of the one whole god, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with god and become gods, receiving from god our existence as gott. end of quote. this orthodox formula, god became man, so that men becomes gotott. ich i think what. protestantism radically rejects the deepest insight of protestantism, although it's implicit already in the bible. is that, to put it very simply, god became man and that's it. nothing more. everything already happens. in the incarnation. what needs to be added is just a shift of perspective. i think that in authentic christian vision there is no resurrection to follow. holy ghost already is resurrection. resurrection happens in the christian community. gott dies and he remains dead. we are condemned to freedom. holy community is not there is i read hear christianity in a radically atheist way. holy ghost is not some kind of a synthesis, god man and then they are brought together. no. with crucifixion, precisely that type of god. you know, this primitive idea, up there then is a great old guy with a long beard who takes care of us, so don't worry too much. ultimately we are taken care of. that's what hegel, my favorite, puts it nicely. he says, what dies on the cross is not an earthly representative of god. it's god himself, that god of beyond. means we in our freedom. and that would be the properly christian trick. i say got. gave us all freedom and so on. he said, but he didn't god abandoned he just creates us and let us alone god abandoned us. i'll say, but that's another name for freedom. you should just shift the perspective or to put it in another way and i'm here i'm basing my reading on some very good theologologists from my beloved chesterton onwards. in other religions, to simplify it very much, you have god men. oui ! have fallen from god so the idea is let's climb back through some stupid spiritual exercises, whatever you want like let's become let's get rid of our sinful nature let's go back to god. the christian solution is a totally different one. it is this one. okay, let's say you and ordinary believer find yourself totally abandoned by god. so what's the way out of it? not! okay, let me do some good works or self-punishment to become clean. no, it's that at that point, when i'm totally abandoned by god, i identify with christ who finds himself in exactly the same position with the famous father, father, have you forsaken me? so that it's a wonderful insight that you should see in a very hegelian way how our separation, we overcome our separation from god, not by rejoining god, but by realizing that this separation is separation also of god from himself. that at that point, we are. divine. because, again, the ultimate moment of divinity is that moment of, as gilbert keith chesterton put it, the moment when god himself becomes an atheist. you know, because remember, on the cross, when christ says, el, he for a brief moment becomes a non-believer. which is a crazy moment. you find this in no other religion. in other religions, you do find men who abandon god. where do you find god who abandons himself? and again, the christian solution is not you suffer, you are low, but don't worry. there are good news. no, there are no good news. good news are only a different shift of perspective on the bad news. we remain abandoned by god. god will not come to save us, as even conservative theologians who are not stupid knew like paul claudel, my favorite french conservative catholic, he says very nicely that the ultimate secret of christianity is not trust god. things may look bad, but god will help you. no, it's the opposite. god needs our help. only we can save god. in other words, the the divine and some theosophic speculation, i will not go into it, we don't have time to lose here, develop this in a wonderful way where they claim that the secret of incarnation is not that god did something heroic to redeem us. gott! god without incarnation is not fully god. god incarnated himself in man to become fully god. that's the solution of one of my favorites apart from hegel, german idealist schelling. who developed in his heidegger claim, that these two texts, especially freheitchriftrift, schelling's text on the essence of human freedom, and later weltalter fragments on the ages of the world, he developed this how. godott produced logos. gave birth to logos, son. schelling literally said this to save himself from his own madness. it was, if i may be cynical, a kind of, you know, psychiatrists say if you are caught in, you need creative therapy, you know, through work. well, that's what god did. and some very, if you think i'm bling, some very intelligent protestant theologologists came to the same conclusion, like a norwegian friend of mine gave me a reference and he translated some parts to me because it's not a well-known book, famous only in norway. the guy's name is peter wessel zapfe, a book on protestantism got. it's a reading of book of job. and you know what's his? reading what does job discover when he encounters gott! when he realizes that god is doing very strange things, punishing him for nothing. and so on. here is a quote. from jfe. job. finds himself confronted with a world ruler, god of grotesque primitiveness, a cosmic cave dweller, a braggart and blusterer, almost agreeable in his total ignorance of spiritual culture. what is new for job is not god's greatness in quantifiable terms. that we knew fully in advance. what is new is god's qualitative baseness. and i think this is masked. inside also of the big protestant topic of predestination. you mean god was simply playing a brutal game with us. he didn't care. god decided in advance you are redeemed, you are lost. totally irrespective of what we are doing i think this is the right line i think that as intelligent protestants saw it. this catholic way of linking our salvation to our good works introduces immediately an element of handling, of financial transaction. i see that child drowning, should i do it or not? well, i may gain salvation, so fuck it, why not do it, you know. it makes our good deeds part of an almost, i would say, financial investment into the future. but as luther put it very intelligently, if there is predestination, then the solution is pure goodness because you see a child drowning, sorry for this pathetic example, and you know very well that it will not help your salvation in any way if you help the child or not. so it's only goodness that it's only goodness that makes you do it. earth. so, uh... sorry, we are here. yes, so... let's go on. here. what, uh... in this position where the solution is not some kind of a reunification of god with man, we overcome our alienation of god through a simple realization that god is already alienated from. himself self-abandoned i like to apply here. to divinity. hegel's wonderful reading of ancient greek. statues which are impenetrable for us like what does the sphinx mean and you know what hegel's formula? the secrets of ancient greeks, secrets for us, were already secrets for ancient greeks themselves. and hckel's theology is precisely this one. that the secrets of divinity are secrets also for divinity itself. this is the op. mystical topic. hegel goes there into that line you find it in meister eckhart and all other guys that. two. bring history into god. himself. what happens on our earth? hour. theological activity decides the fate of god himself in a way. it's the other way around. it's not that god decides. no, we in our struggles, we fight for the fate of god himself. so how to bring this, and now it comes, maybe it will be a little bit difficult, the proper theological point. i think i improvised a little bit already in my classes about this. does this mean that protestantism simply abolishes our freedom. everyone who knows luther and i don't have the time to go into it, but i have it written, a detailed analysis of the tension between martin luther and, of course, thomas münzer, the great theologist of the german peasant revolt. maybe this will surprise you, but i'm almost more on the early luther's side. he was right, münzer, in criticizing luther for his conformism, taking the side of the masters and so on. but... münzer, i think, comes all too close then to this perverse instrumental position which comes close to totalitarianism. because luther was right, and this was his greatest theological insight, to insist on divine impenetrability, which reading material way doesn't mean god knows what he is doing, we just cannot penetrate it. it means that quote from zapwe, god is crazy, doesn't know wait. so... luther warned against precisely what we call today fundamentalism. any position of an agent, historical who my god, what is happening here? i'm getting superstitious. yesterday it was one, at least they are not black cats and we will survive there. but it's the maoist movement, one divides into two. no. okay, sorry, let's go on. luther comes too close to this, seeing his political movement as direct instrument of the divine will. and this is what luther is right to prohibit. she insists on this radical impenetrability. there is predestination, but... we never know what is predestination. like our lives are decided in advance, but we cannot ever know it. so it's absolutely prohibited to claim i am an instrument of the divine will, like the stalinist communists in a different way. historical necessity of progress towards communism runs through me no we cannot do it and i think this is authentic freedom. this idea of... my life is predestined. but i don't know what it is. so this terrible struggle to make the right decision. because, you know, here common sense doesn't work. because common sense would tell us... why do you worry? if there is predestination, sit down and masturbate and watch hardcore movies, it doesn't matter. no, the idea is that this also, that it doesn't work, explains, we all know it, i'm even repeating myself, i think years ago i was already selling this here, i'm sorry. because this also explains this paradox of predestination and freedom, explains the greatest mystery of this old max weber. thisel. why? is protestantism as a religion which is based on predestination. why protestantism became the religious background, at least originally of capitalism, which is precisely the most active social system, a system where you are solicited to be active like crazy all the time. again, wouldn't it be logical to claim, if it's predestined, fuck off, i lay down, awaken me when god comes, but leave me alone. no, weber saw this clearly and luther, that precisely because you don't know it, knowing that your fate is decided, but not knowing what your fate is, pushes you to incessant activity. and i think that this decision diff difficult decision. to discover if there is predestination, fate necessity, what is that fate? is much closer to authentic freedom than, i'm using now a metaphor that already used, i'm sorry for my students in my class, than this simple freedom of i go to a patisserie, they have strawberry cake, chocolate cake, vanilla cake, or which one i will choose, you know, this simple freedom of choice. no, true freedom. is this one and even now you will say i'm crazy. but let me give you an example to repeat that i already given in my class. think about love, the choice of object in love. it must be free. if not, it's not love, of course, no? but it never happens to you, admit it, as a free choice. if you say, oh, now i will fall in love into that lady or man, it's fake. it is a free decision, but as shellingwood has put it, a transcendental, atemporal free decision, which you experience precisely as its opposite, as your fate. you experience love as, my god, i cannot escape it, i'm caught into it. and that's true freedom. that's the radical freedom. now you will say, this is sentimental speculation. no, i'll use another example from my class. isn't it exactly the same with a tough political decision? not these simple decisions, vote for macron, vote for le pen, which's tough. i don't care. but let's make a pathetic example. there is war, my country is attacked and i have to decide. will i risk my life do it or not? this is a free decision by me, but if you take the difficult decision that you will fight. you don't experience it as a choice. you experience it i would love not to do it, but it's my duty. i cannot not do it. i have to do it. you know, and i think... this provides this wonderful dialective described as far as i know by philosophy only... nicely clearly only by hegel. how predestination is much more paradoxical if we read protestantism in a materialist way. then er... the simple notion, there is predestination, everything is decided. no, it means we have a fate. but we retroactively create this fate. like, i freely decide something and once i decide it, it retroactively becomes necessary. if i do the right thing, i experienced it my god. i couldn't do it otherwise. i had to do it. that's freedom. so that's my first point about protestantism which means. that not only you are free. but you are even more free. then you thought. you are even! responsible for your fate for your necessity. and again it's already. explained in my in my classes. here psychoanalysis rejoins protestantism, because in psychoanalysis, the obvious result is something like predestination. you know, like, i think i'm a free being, but no, everything is predetermined through my past traumas, through whatever, you know. so i discovered that i'm not free. and this was the fashionable lesson half a century ago with that fashion of structuralism in france. this is how psychoanalysis was read. structural psychoanalysis. you think you are a free subject,. you are just a puppet, the big other, the symbolic order runs the game and so on. but no. la for here freud. yes. you are overetermined. but you cannot use this over-determination or psychic necessity which makes you what you are, you cannot use it as an excuse, you know like, to be vulgar i'm sorry i rape a child and then i say to the judges sorry guys what can i do i was overdetermined by my unconscious complex. no. you are predestined by fate but you are responsible even for that you are much more radically responsible and i can't go into it now i already did it in my class to develop how the same. goes also for that's why it's a great thing kant and ethics when kant says. you then do. you can't do it because you must do it. like no excuse to not do your duty. if it's your duty, you have to do it. but kant, this is not so often noticed, goes even a step further. he also implies that even doing your duty cannot be an excuse for doing your duty. like, chris, i hate you, let me do like, i have to do something, it's my duty, which will hurt you. i don't have the right to tell you, sorry guy, but it's my duty. no, i don't have the right to externalize it. i'm not responsible only to do my duty. i have to fully subjectively assume also my duty in the sense of what is my duty. this is why, incidentally, i mentioned this briefly in my class, and now i will stop with plagiarizing myself, don't worry, i will not repeat my class. this is why i think that although i admire her, at some point in her otherwise wonderful eichmann in jerusalem, if i remember it correctly, hannah arendt was wrong. when she took seriously eichmann's statement that he was just a good k. he did his duty for him. duty was embodied in fhrer's orders. so, sorry, i was doing my duty. no, kant, sorry, not kant. eichmann did precisely the wrong thing. he was not a kantian. because he did something that kant strictly prohibit. he used duty as an excuse. sorry, i helped killing millions of jews. what can i do? that's my duty. no, you cannot refer to your duty as some objective determination that you have just to follow. you are radically responsible for your. gr. for your beauty. now i will... complicate things. now, the end of self-plagizing, you will get some new stuff. this solution, this dialectical interconnection of necessity and freedom, where yes, there is necessity, but this necessity is in a deeper sense contingent. like you do something in a contingent way, once you do it, it retroactively becomes your fate. this solution works only on one condition. the subject, believer, agent. is absolutely constrained by the horizon of. he's her it. finite subjectivity. what protestantism prohibits is the very thought that as a believer, i can, as it were, took a position. outside, above myself and look upon myself as a small particle in the vast reality. here, since i already mentioned mao zedong. i would like to criticize him a little bit at the philosophical level and incidentally because of some of my lines like this, al now mad at me, you know mouse i think he was wrong when he deployed his olympic vision reducing human experience to a tiny, unimportant cosmic detail. you know, in his famous statement where he say we don't fear atomic war and so on, okay. with that i in principle agree. but mao went on and said this, a quote from mao zedong. the united states cannot annihilate the chinese nation with its small stack of atom bombs. even if the us atom bombs were so powerful that when dropped on china they would make a hole right through the earth or even blew the earth up. that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole, though it might be a major event for the solar system and so on. you know, it's kind of a weird excuse. okay. americans can destroy us but what does it mean from the standpoint of the universe or whatever uh. i think that this argument, ma, only works if, in a pseudo-kantian way, we presuppose like the problem is, where is mao speaking from? from what subjective position when he states this? he acts as if he speaks from a totally external, purely divine position where you see objectively reality with inhuman eyes and then you can say, okay. our earth is blown apart, suck it, a tiny blimp in some small planet who cares. but here i don't have time to develop it, but this is a beautiful theological topic. intelligent protestantism have a wonderful vision? where? it's again that link between contingency and necessity. on the one hand, yes, we are a tiny piece of shit in a vast universe. protestantism is not ethnocentric which is why protestantism, insofar as it stands for modernity, was precisely the religious background of modern science, which precisely introduced the objective view of reality. you know that before protestantism, the medieval world was earth in the center, although we humans, were not the center of the universe. it was god, but nonetheless we were the highest point of the created universe, everything turned around us and so on and so on. so and what protestantism unites, i don't have time to develop it now, just to give you an idea, is i think something wonderful. it's at the same time this extremely brutal view. from an inhuman gaze we are nothing, a tiny species on earth. it doesn't matter. but nonetheless, since we cannot ever really assume that view, external view. in our ethical practice, we have to act as if whenever and kant puts it this very nicely. although objective science is telling us that fuck it, we are again one tiny. piece of dust in the universe, nonetheless in a big ethical struggle. it's not just our fate that is decided, it, as it were, can't put it so nicely, the entire universe was created as a background for that struggle of ours. you know, i love this unity of extreme ethnocentrism. the world was created so that we can fight this battle. and this radically external view because... dich ich in a way. when you witness a big change, revolution or what. now you can ask me a simple question. why do i call this... christian atheism. why don't they simply say it's a materialist ethics like this. pure goodness, no guarantee. ah here of course i am a materialist, no misunderstanding here. but i... my good friend, i really like him. okay, not good friend, i boast, i exaggerate. i met him two times. we went along really well. you know, rowan williams, the leftist ex-archbishop of canterbury. in his book on dostoevsky, i don't like dostoevsky, but i like his book, william, is of dostoevsky. he, among other things, i cannot restrain from briefly describing this to you, he provides the best reading that i can imagine of dostoevsky's idiot. you know, the usual reading of idiot is he is too divine for this world, a saint. for rowan williams, it's a wonderful reading. and it's so deeply true if you know the story of dostoevsky's idiot. he is not pure evil. idiot prince mishkin, but something much more refined. there are people, and i met them, they really exist, who are really sincerely, no doubt, innocent, good in themselves. but the way they act in their social environment is that it's a kind of a wrong goodness. they are absolutely sincerely good, but they cause catastrophe all around. you know, and for example, prince myshkin, what does he cause? nastasya filippovna gets murdered by that other guy or whatever, he causes catastrophe around himself. okay, the same rowan williams provided a wonderful definition in his book on dostoevsky on what really is the divine dimension. at its most elementary. and he, rowan williams, makes a reference to four british catholic novelists, o'connor, percy, spark and ellis, and this is what he says about them, a short quote. all four create a world in which the secular majority account of what is going on is relativized. but there is no simple alternative that anyone can step into by a single decision or even a series of decisions in the sense of this secular reality is shitty and there must be a higher order. the religious dimension of these fictions lies in the insistent sense of incongruity. 80. unmistakable even if no one within the fiction can say what we should be congruent with. so it's just that our world is out of joint, inconsistent, lacking something, but it's literally negative theology. not negative theology in the usual sense. god is so much beyond that we cannot describe it properly. no, it's simply god is just this absence. the empty place comes before what we fill it in through our images of god. the basic divine dimension is this void, just this void, in the sense of our reality. is is terribly wrong with this reality. and i think not only we can think, we. we can't think. this in a materialist way, but the only proper way is to think in a materialist way. and here things get complicated. here we should reject, you know, one of the most famous formula of marx, that religion is the opium of the people. first, be careful, marx does not say for the people. this would be way too vulgar for marx. it's not that, as in a certain naive form of enlightenment, some evil priests are fabricating religion the way. drug dealers like from colombia. sorry, my best. i'm so sorry. fabric no, it's of the people. but you know what's my main argument against this formula today? yes, we have a religion which works as the opium of the people. of course, the terrorist fundamentalist religion, but never forget, not just in muslim countries. i'm here a radical pessimist. you know that fbi has under in the united states, 2 million christian fundamentalists suspected of being potentially terrorist. i'm sorry to tell you, that's basically the same percentage as among arabs, you know. so the question should not be just to be islamophobic, it should be what is it in the dialectic of modern global capitalism that pushes people towards fundamentalism? but okay, this is, or this is kind of also. maybe a version today of the opium, religion as the opium of the people. but there are at least two others, and i think adorno already says this somewhere. we have two other. opiums of the people you will guess i hope which are they opium and people for populists, their opium is people themselves. you know, this phantasmatic image, people and so on. let marine le pen's opium are the people and so on, the true french people threatened by and the other opium of the people is opium. for many intellectuals opium opium. yes, you know. so the way to get out of it, i am for a religious dimension, but in this purely abstract way, and i don't have time to do it, a wonderful reading can be given in this sense to link since, these guys are danish people, to link with the obvious person with kierkegaard, whose formulas of religion, when he says god is not something we relate to, god is relating itself. and all those formulas who at least i think come to the edge of a certain type of very paradoxical materialism. i don't want to bore you too much and i hope you will not protest again against this politically correct madness i've shown you too much my god. you know, also when i talk about rapes, people claim you shouldn't talk in such plastic terms or whatever, you know. that it's shocking. fuck you, it should be shocking, you know, because if you just abstractly describe it, then it doesn't really affect you. then it's just, oh, it's like bureaucratic statistics, you know? no, you should be shocked by the horrors which go on.
what i want to say is that... earth. i think that. what i call christian atheism is still. the ethical stance which fits today's. predicament. okay. let me begin with a simple observation. those who follow obscure spiritual cosmological speculations. have for sure heard of one of the most popular topics in this domain. you know all these mythical stories that when three planets, usually earth, moon and the sun, find themselves along the same axis, then... some big cataclysmic event takes place, the whole order of the universe is momentarily thrown out of joint and the universe has two. find a new balance. you remember that it wasn't taken seriously but the panic of 2012 where the idea is of some maya old maya predictions precisely because i think earth, moon and sun were in the same line. it's not good. and i think that politically something like this halt for. this year 2017 which is a triple anniversary in 2017 we do not celebrate only the centenary of the october revolution. 1917, but also the 150th anniversary of the first edition of marxist capital. 1867 and maybe the most tragic event, the 50th anniversary of the so-called shanghai commune, when in the climactic moment of the chinese great proletarian cultural revolution. it's a wonderful moment, maybe the crucial moment of 20th century communism. residents of shanghai workers and students decided to take literally mao's call, you know when mao said attack the headquarters. you don't need neither the party nor the army, people should take over. well, they took this literally and simply overthrew. offices destroyed of local communist party ignored the army and took over. and that was the crucial point. because then mao had to send the army. and it's an extremely tragic event because this was then, people don't know this, the biggest battle of the cultural revolution. forget about, okay, they were tragic, all those scenes, you know, red guardists pulling their beard, terrorizing professors, intellectuals, all that. no, it was the battle for shanghai when... the army turned on the very revolutionaries and one doesn't know how many, the idea is that it goes into tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dead people. but i. i think this event is fascinating because i don't like this big question was mao sincere or not? at a certain level he was not. it's clearly that he triggered the cultural revolution to regain his full power in the army sorry in the state. but it doesn't matter if mao was manipulating. things ran out of control. ordinary workers took it seriously. let's have directly the rule of the commune, we don't need the party, we don't need the army and so on. and it went too far. so i think these three events. mark the three stages of the communist movement. first. capital by marx outlined the theoretical foundations of the communist revolution. then the october revolution was the first successful attempt. to overthrow bourgeois state and build a new social economic order and then the shanghai commune. stands for the most radical attempt to immediately realize the most daring aspect of the communist vision, the abolishment of state power and the imposition of direct people's power organized as a network of local commununes. it didn't work and of course i will not answer the question today, namely the big question what went wrong? i think that's my hypothesis. what went wrong with this cycle? perhaps the answer is to be sought. and people don't talk about it, but for me at least, as a christian, a is's the key date. don't you know that today we have another, we have four planets in a line, another mega anniversary. 2017 is the 500 years anniversary of 1517 when martin luther put on that door the 95 thesis, protestantism. and i still think that protestantism is the key, the greatest religious event that you can imagine. why? let me begin. in a very simplified way but i'm not totally bluffing because i presented a version of this text. in a theological at a theological colloquium in cambridge and it went well, what can i say? so i'm not totally bluffing. i'm not totally bluffing. let me begin. by this dryad of orthodoxy, catholicism and protestantism. the way i see it, maybe i'm wrong, central to the orthodox tradition is the notion of theosis of man becoming like god or to quote saint athanasius of alexandria quote she christ or god was incarnate so that we might be made god. what quote what should otherwise seem absurd, that fallen, sinful men may become holy as god is holy, has been made possible through jesus christ, who is god incarnate. and then st. maximus the confessor wrote in the same vein, again, a quote. a sure warrant for looking with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the incarnation of god which makes man god to the same degree as god himself became man. let us become the image of the one whole god, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with god and become gods, receiving from god our existence as gott. end of quote. this orthodox formula, god became man, so that men becomes gotott. ich i think what. protestantism radically rejects the deepest insight of protestantism, although it's implicit already in the bible. is that, to put it very simply, god became man and that's it. nothing more. everything already happens. in the incarnation. what needs to be added is just a shift of perspective. i think that in authentic christian vision there is no resurrection to follow. holy ghost already is resurrection. resurrection happens in the christian community. gott dies and he remains dead. we are condemned to freedom. holy community is not there is i read hear christianity in a radically atheist way. holy ghost is not some kind of a synthesis, god man and then they are brought together. no. with crucifixion, precisely that type of god. you know, this primitive idea, up there then is a great old guy with a long beard who takes care of us, so don't worry too much. ultimately we are taken care of. that's what hegel, my favorite, puts it nicely. he says, what dies on the cross is not an earthly representative of god. it's god himself, that god of beyond. means we in our freedom. and that would be the properly christian trick. i say got. gave us all freedom and so on. he said, but he didn't god abandoned he just creates us and let us alone god abandoned us. i'll say, but that's another name for freedom. you should just shift the perspective or to put it in another way and i'm here i'm basing my reading on some very good theologologists from my beloved chesterton onwards. in other religions, to simplify it very much, you have god men. oui ! have fallen from god so the idea is let's climb back through some stupid spiritual exercises, whatever you want like let's become let's get rid of our sinful nature let's go back to god. the christian solution is a totally different one. it is this one. okay, let's say you and ordinary believer find yourself totally abandoned by god. so what's the way out of it? not! okay, let me do some good works or self-punishment to become clean. no, it's that at that point, when i'm totally abandoned by god, i identify with christ who finds himself in exactly the same position with the famous father, father, have you forsaken me? so that it's a wonderful insight that you should see in a very hegelian way how our separation, we overcome our separation from god, not by rejoining god, but by realizing that this separation is separation also of god from himself. that at that point, we are. divine. because, again, the ultimate moment of divinity is that moment of, as gilbert keith chesterton put it, the moment when god himself becomes an atheist. you know, because remember, on the cross, when christ says, el, he for a brief moment becomes a non-believer. which is a crazy moment. you find this in no other religion. in other religions, you do find men who abandon god. where do you find god who abandons himself? and again, the christian solution is not you suffer, you are low, but don't worry. there are good news. no, there are no good news. good news are only a different shift of perspective on the bad news. we remain abandoned by god. god will not come to save us, as even conservative theologians who are not stupid knew like paul claudel, my favorite french conservative catholic, he says very nicely that the ultimate secret of christianity is not trust god. things may look bad, but god will help you. no, it's the opposite. god needs our help. only we can save god. in other words, the the divine and some theosophic speculation, i will not go into it, we don't have time to lose here, develop this in a wonderful way where they claim that the secret of incarnation is not that god did something heroic to redeem us. gott! god without incarnation is not fully god. god incarnated himself in man to become fully god. that's the solution of one of my favorites apart from hegel, german idealist schelling. who developed in his heidegger claim, that these two texts, especially freheitchriftrift, schelling's text on the essence of human freedom, and later weltalter fragments on the ages of the world, he developed this how. godott produced logos. gave birth to logos, son. schelling literally said this to save himself from his own madness. it was, if i may be cynical, a kind of, you know, psychiatrists say if you are caught in, you need creative therapy, you know, through work. well, that's what god did. and some very, if you think i'm bling, some very intelligent protestant theologologists came to the same conclusion, like a norwegian friend of mine gave me a reference and he translated some parts to me because it's not a well-known book, famous only in norway. the guy's name is peter wessel zapfe, a book on protestantism got. it's a reading of book of job. and you know what's his? reading what does job discover when he encounters gott! when he realizes that god is doing very strange things, punishing him for nothing. and so on. here is a quote. from jfe. job. finds himself confronted with a world ruler, god of grotesque primitiveness, a cosmic cave dweller, a braggart and blusterer, almost agreeable in his total ignorance of spiritual culture. what is new for job is not god's greatness in quantifiable terms. that we knew fully in advance. what is new is god's qualitative baseness. and i think this is masked. inside also of the big protestant topic of predestination. you mean god was simply playing a brutal game with us. he didn't care. god decided in advance you are redeemed, you are lost. totally irrespective of what we are doing i think this is the right line i think that as intelligent protestants saw it. this catholic way of linking our salvation to our good works introduces immediately an element of handling, of financial transaction. i see that child drowning, should i do it or not? well, i may gain salvation, so fuck it, why not do it, you know. it makes our good deeds part of an almost, i would say, financial investment into the future. but as luther put it very intelligently, if there is predestination, then the solution is pure goodness because you see a child drowning, sorry for this pathetic example, and you know very well that it will not help your salvation in any way if you help the child or not. so it's only goodness that it's only goodness that makes you do it. earth. so, uh... sorry, we are here. yes, so... let's go on. here. what, uh... in this position where the solution is not some kind of a reunification of god with man, we overcome our alienation of god through a simple realization that god is already alienated from. himself self-abandoned i like to apply here. to divinity. hegel's wonderful reading of ancient greek. statues which are impenetrable for us like what does the sphinx mean and you know what hegel's formula? the secrets of ancient greeks, secrets for us, were already secrets for ancient greeks themselves. and hckel's theology is precisely this one. that the secrets of divinity are secrets also for divinity itself. this is the op. mystical topic. hegel goes there into that line you find it in meister eckhart and all other guys that. two. bring history into god. himself. what happens on our earth? hour. theological activity decides the fate of god himself in a way. it's the other way around. it's not that god decides. no, we in our struggles, we fight for the fate of god himself. so how to bring this, and now it comes, maybe it will be a little bit difficult, the proper theological point. i think i improvised a little bit already in my classes about this. does this mean that protestantism simply abolishes our freedom. everyone who knows luther and i don't have the time to go into it, but i have it written, a detailed analysis of the tension between martin luther and, of course, thomas münzer, the great theologist of the german peasant revolt. maybe this will surprise you, but i'm almost more on the early luther's side. he was right, münzer, in criticizing luther for his conformism, taking the side of the masters and so on. but... münzer, i think, comes all too close then to this perverse instrumental position which comes close to totalitarianism. because luther was right, and this was his greatest theological insight, to insist on divine impenetrability, which reading material way doesn't mean god knows what he is doing, we just cannot penetrate it. it means that quote from zapwe, god is crazy, doesn't know wait. so... luther warned against precisely what we call today fundamentalism. any position of an agent, historical who my god, what is happening here? i'm getting superstitious. yesterday it was one, at least they are not black cats and we will survive there. but it's the maoist movement, one divides into two. no. okay, sorry, let's go on. luther comes too close to this, seeing his political movement as direct instrument of the divine will. and this is what luther is right to prohibit. she insists on this radical impenetrability. there is predestination, but... we never know what is predestination. like our lives are decided in advance, but we cannot ever know it. so it's absolutely prohibited to claim i am an instrument of the divine will, like the stalinist communists in a different way. historical necessity of progress towards communism runs through me no we cannot do it and i think this is authentic freedom. this idea of... my life is predestined. but i don't know what it is. so this terrible struggle to make the right decision. because, you know, here common sense doesn't work. because common sense would tell us... why do you worry? if there is predestination, sit down and masturbate and watch hardcore movies, it doesn't matter. no, the idea is that this also, that it doesn't work, explains, we all know it, i'm even repeating myself, i think years ago i was already selling this here, i'm sorry. because this also explains this paradox of predestination and freedom, explains the greatest mystery of this old max weber. thisel. why? is protestantism as a religion which is based on predestination. why protestantism became the religious background, at least originally of capitalism, which is precisely the most active social system, a system where you are solicited to be active like crazy all the time. again, wouldn't it be logical to claim, if it's predestined, fuck off, i lay down, awaken me when god comes, but leave me alone. no, weber saw this clearly and luther, that precisely because you don't know it, knowing that your fate is decided, but not knowing what your fate is, pushes you to incessant activity. and i think that this decision diff difficult decision. to discover if there is predestination, fate necessity, what is that fate? is much closer to authentic freedom than, i'm using now a metaphor that already used, i'm sorry for my students in my class, than this simple freedom of i go to a patisserie, they have strawberry cake, chocolate cake, vanilla cake, or which one i will choose, you know, this simple freedom of choice. no, true freedom. is this one and even now you will say i'm crazy. but let me give you an example to repeat that i already given in my class. think about love, the choice of object in love. it must be free. if not, it's not love, of course, no? but it never happens to you, admit it, as a free choice. if you say, oh, now i will fall in love into that lady or man, it's fake. it is a free decision, but as shellingwood has put it, a transcendental, atemporal free decision, which you experience precisely as its opposite, as your fate. you experience love as, my god, i cannot escape it, i'm caught into it. and that's true freedom. that's the radical freedom. now you will say, this is sentimental speculation. no, i'll use another example from my class. isn't it exactly the same with a tough political decision? not these simple decisions, vote for macron, vote for le pen, which's tough. i don't care. but let's make a pathetic example. there is war, my country is attacked and i have to decide. will i risk my life do it or not? this is a free decision by me, but if you take the difficult decision that you will fight. you don't experience it as a choice. you experience it i would love not to do it, but it's my duty. i cannot not do it. i have to do it. you know, and i think... this provides this wonderful dialective described as far as i know by philosophy only... nicely clearly only by hegel. how predestination is much more paradoxical if we read protestantism in a materialist way. then er... the simple notion, there is predestination, everything is decided. no, it means we have a fate. but we retroactively create this fate. like, i freely decide something and once i decide it, it retroactively becomes necessary. if i do the right thing, i experienced it my god. i couldn't do it otherwise. i had to do it. that's freedom. so that's my first point about protestantism which means. that not only you are free. but you are even more free. then you thought. you are even! responsible for your fate for your necessity. and again it's already. explained in my in my classes. here psychoanalysis rejoins protestantism, because in psychoanalysis, the obvious result is something like predestination. you know, like, i think i'm a free being, but no, everything is predetermined through my past traumas, through whatever, you know. so i discovered that i'm not free. and this was the fashionable lesson half a century ago with that fashion of structuralism in france. this is how psychoanalysis was read. structural psychoanalysis. you think you are a free subject,. you are just a puppet, the big other, the symbolic order runs the game and so on. but no. la for here freud. yes. you are overetermined. but you cannot use this over-determination or psychic necessity which makes you what you are, you cannot use it as an excuse, you know like, to be vulgar i'm sorry i rape a child and then i say to the judges sorry guys what can i do i was overdetermined by my unconscious complex. no. you are predestined by fate but you are responsible even for that you are much more radically responsible and i can't go into it now i already did it in my class to develop how the same. goes also for that's why it's a great thing kant and ethics when kant says. you then do. you can't do it because you must do it. like no excuse to not do your duty. if it's your duty, you have to do it. but kant, this is not so often noticed, goes even a step further. he also implies that even doing your duty cannot be an excuse for doing your duty. like, chris, i hate you, let me do like, i have to do something, it's my duty, which will hurt you. i don't have the right to tell you, sorry guy, but it's my duty. no, i don't have the right to externalize it. i'm not responsible only to do my duty. i have to fully subjectively assume also my duty in the sense of what is my duty. this is why, incidentally, i mentioned this briefly in my class, and now i will stop with plagiarizing myself, don't worry, i will not repeat my class. this is why i think that although i admire her, at some point in her otherwise wonderful eichmann in jerusalem, if i remember it correctly, hannah arendt was wrong. when she took seriously eichmann's statement that he was just a good k. he did his duty for him. duty was embodied in fhrer's orders. so, sorry, i was doing my duty. no, kant, sorry, not kant. eichmann did precisely the wrong thing. he was not a kantian. because he did something that kant strictly prohibit. he used duty as an excuse. sorry, i helped killing millions of jews. what can i do? that's my duty. no, you cannot refer to your duty as some objective determination that you have just to follow. you are radically responsible for your. gr. for your beauty. now i will... complicate things. now, the end of self-plagizing, you will get some new stuff. this solution, this dialectical interconnection of necessity and freedom, where yes, there is necessity, but this necessity is in a deeper sense contingent. like you do something in a contingent way, once you do it, it retroactively becomes your fate. this solution works only on one condition. the subject, believer, agent. is absolutely constrained by the horizon of. he's her it. finite subjectivity. what protestantism prohibits is the very thought that as a believer, i can, as it were, took a position. outside, above myself and look upon myself as a small particle in the vast reality. here, since i already mentioned mao zedong. i would like to criticize him a little bit at the philosophical level and incidentally because of some of my lines like this, al now mad at me, you know mouse i think he was wrong when he deployed his olympic vision reducing human experience to a tiny, unimportant cosmic detail. you know, in his famous statement where he say we don't fear atomic war and so on, okay. with that i in principle agree. but mao went on and said this, a quote from mao zedong. the united states cannot annihilate the chinese nation with its small stack of atom bombs. even if the us atom bombs were so powerful that when dropped on china they would make a hole right through the earth or even blew the earth up. that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole, though it might be a major event for the solar system and so on. you know, it's kind of a weird excuse. okay. americans can destroy us but what does it mean from the standpoint of the universe or whatever uh. i think that this argument, ma, only works if, in a pseudo-kantian way, we presuppose like the problem is, where is mao speaking from? from what subjective position when he states this? he acts as if he speaks from a totally external, purely divine position where you see objectively reality with inhuman eyes and then you can say, okay. our earth is blown apart, suck it, a tiny blimp in some small planet who cares. but here i don't have time to develop it, but this is a beautiful theological topic. intelligent protestantism have a wonderful vision? where? it's again that link between contingency and necessity. on the one hand, yes, we are a tiny piece of shit in a vast universe. protestantism is not ethnocentric which is why protestantism, insofar as it stands for modernity, was precisely the religious background of modern science, which precisely introduced the objective view of reality. you know that before protestantism, the medieval world was earth in the center, although we humans, were not the center of the universe. it was god, but nonetheless we were the highest point of the created universe, everything turned around us and so on and so on. so and what protestantism unites, i don't have time to develop it now, just to give you an idea, is i think something wonderful. it's at the same time this extremely brutal view. from an inhuman gaze we are nothing, a tiny species on earth. it doesn't matter. but nonetheless, since we cannot ever really assume that view, external view. in our ethical practice, we have to act as if whenever and kant puts it this very nicely. although objective science is telling us that fuck it, we are again one tiny. piece of dust in the universe, nonetheless in a big ethical struggle. it's not just our fate that is decided, it, as it were, can't put it so nicely, the entire universe was created as a background for that struggle of ours. you know, i love this unity of extreme ethnocentrism. the world was created so that we can fight this battle. and this radically external view because... dich ich in a way. when you witness a big change, revolution or what. now you can ask me a simple question. why do i call this... christian atheism. why don't they simply say it's a materialist ethics like this. pure goodness, no guarantee. ah here of course i am a materialist, no misunderstanding here. but i... my good friend, i really like him. okay, not good friend, i boast, i exaggerate. i met him two times. we went along really well. you know, rowan williams, the leftist ex-archbishop of canterbury. in his book on dostoevsky, i don't like dostoevsky, but i like his book, william, is of dostoevsky. he, among other things, i cannot restrain from briefly describing this to you, he provides the best reading that i can imagine of dostoevsky's idiot. you know, the usual reading of idiot is he is too divine for this world, a saint. for rowan williams, it's a wonderful reading. and it's so deeply true if you know the story of dostoevsky's idiot. he is not pure evil. idiot prince mishkin, but something much more refined. there are people, and i met them, they really exist, who are really sincerely, no doubt, innocent, good in themselves. but the way they act in their social environment is that it's a kind of a wrong goodness. they are absolutely sincerely good, but they cause catastrophe all around. you know, and for example, prince myshkin, what does he cause? nastasya filippovna gets murdered by that other guy or whatever, he causes catastrophe around himself. okay, the same rowan williams provided a wonderful definition in his book on dostoevsky on what really is the divine dimension. at its most elementary. and he, rowan williams, makes a reference to four british catholic novelists, o'connor, percy, spark and ellis, and this is what he says about them, a short quote. all four create a world in which the secular majority account of what is going on is relativized. but there is no simple alternative that anyone can step into by a single decision or even a series of decisions in the sense of this secular reality is shitty and there must be a higher order. the religious dimension of these fictions lies in the insistent sense of incongruity. 80. unmistakable even if no one within the fiction can say what we should be congruent with. so it's just that our world is out of joint, inconsistent, lacking something, but it's literally negative theology. not negative theology in the usual sense. god is so much beyond that we cannot describe it properly. no, it's simply god is just this absence. the empty place comes before what we fill it in through our images of god. the basic divine dimension is this void, just this void, in the sense of our reality. is is terribly wrong with this reality. and i think not only we can think, we. we can't think. this in a materialist way, but the only proper way is to think in a materialist way. and here things get complicated. here we should reject, you know, one of the most famous formula of marx, that religion is the opium of the people. first, be careful, marx does not say for the people. this would be way too vulgar for marx. it's not that, as in a certain naive form of enlightenment, some evil priests are fabricating religion the way. drug dealers like from colombia. sorry, my best. i'm so sorry. fabric no, it's of the people. but you know what's my main argument against this formula today? yes, we have a religion which works as the opium of the people. of course, the terrorist fundamentalist religion, but never forget, not just in muslim countries. i'm here a radical pessimist. you know that fbi has under in the united states, 2 million christian fundamentalists suspected of being potentially terrorist. i'm sorry to tell you, that's basically the same percentage as among arabs, you know. so the question should not be just to be islamophobic, it should be what is it in the dialectic of modern global capitalism that pushes people towards fundamentalism? but okay, this is, or this is kind of also. maybe a version today of the opium, religion as the opium of the people. but there are at least two others, and i think adorno already says this somewhere. we have two other. opiums of the people you will guess i hope which are they opium and people for populists, their opium is people themselves. you know, this phantasmatic image, people and so on. let marine le pen's opium are the people and so on, the true french people threatened by and the other opium of the people is opium. for many intellectuals opium opium. yes, you know. so the way to get out of it, i am for a religious dimension, but in this purely abstract way, and i don't have time to do it, a wonderful reading can be given in this sense to link since, these guys are danish people, to link with the obvious person with kierkegaard, whose formulas of religion, when he says god is not something we relate to, god is relating itself. and all those formulas who at least i think come to the edge of a certain type of very paradoxical materialism. i don't want to bore you too much and i hope you will not protest again against this politically correct madness i've shown you too much my god. you know, also when i talk about rapes, people claim you shouldn't talk in such plastic terms or whatever, you know. that it's shocking. fuck you, it should be shocking, you know, because if you just abstractly describe it, then it doesn't really affect you. then it's just, oh, it's like bureaucratic statistics, you know? no, you should be shocked by the horrors which go on.
Moderator
thank very much for your kind patience.
thank very much for your kind patience.