The Interaction with the Other in Hegel
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2009 · 2:07:30 · 17,846 words
hegel-dialecticspsychoanalysisethicsconsciousness-mindcinema-art-cultureideologyphilosophy-generalscience-physics
This is a seminar lecture in which Žižek ranges across Hegel's dialectics, the problem of consciousness in cognitive science, Kantian ethics, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He explains Hegel's notion of dialectical process as distinct from organic self-reproduction, using Marx's analysis of capital and the figure of Antigone to illustrate how meaning is retroactive and universality itself is historical. He explores the Kantian problem of radical evil and its Lacanian re-reading ('Kant with Sade'), then pivots to the Lacanian Real as spectral appearance rather than hidden depth, illustrated through film examples (The Mask, Mulholland Drive, Once Upon a Time in America) and the Zeuxis-Parrhasius legend. The lecture closes with Calvino's 'A King Listens' retooled as a Hegelian-Stalinist parable about the impossibility of innocent externality.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 31
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's counter-intuitive thesis against cognitive complexity arguments: consciousness does not emerge with complexity but is the function that simplifies, it isolates one feature from a complex situation.
as “point (le point)”
Badiou's concept: in a complex situation, the act of intelligence is to reduce everything to a binary decision, yes or no, rather than proliferating complexity.
Žižek's hypothesis: consciousness originally emerges as awareness of a malfunction, you become conscious of an activity precisely when something does not function automatically.
David Chalmers's term for the explanatory gap: even if you reduce complex activity to neuronal processes, it remains unexplained why there is raw awareness at all rather than 'just' blind mechanism.
Adding epicycles to protect a theoretical framework from contradicting data; applied to string theory's ever-increasing extra dimensions as evidence that it is not yet the needed Copernican revolution in physics.
Brain science concept discussed approvingly as providing Hegelian philosophers (especially Malabou) useful scientific grounding for ideas about the plasticity and transformation of mind.
as “Aufhebung (sublation)”
Hegel's core dialectical operation of cancelling-and-preserving; discussed in relation to Derrida's différance, which Žižek argues is closer to Aufhebung than standard deconstructionists admit.
The model Hegel explicitly contrasts with dialectics: a universal principle sustains itself through continuous change at the particular level, so that things change in order to remain the same.
as “dialectical process”
For Hegel, not the self-reproduction of a stable universal through change but the transformation of the very universal itself: what was a subordinate moment (money, production) becomes the totalizing subject of the process.
Žižek's term for what actually happens in Hegelian history: not the differentiation of a stable totality but its repeated restructuring so that what was a subordinate moment becomes the new totalizing principle.
Hegel's idea that there is no neutral metalanguage from which to classify particulars: every mapping of the totality (of philosophy, of politics) is already partisan, embedded in a particular standpoint.
as “historicity proper”
Žižek's term for genuine Hegelian historicity: not the deployment of a pre-given universal through time but the transformation of universality itself, history happens at the level of universality.
Hegel's standard reading of historical agency: great individuals think they pursue private ends but are instruments of a higher historical rationality; Žižek rejects this deterministic gloss in favor of genuine contingency.
Bernard Williams's concept, endorsed by Žižek as deeply Hegelian: the ethical status of an act cannot be assessed in advance from purity of intention alone but depends on how it turns out.
Borrowed from Stephen Jay Gould to describe the Hegelian historical process: things done for one purpose are reappropriated for entirely different ends, making history a fundamentally open and improvisational process.
as “retroactivity of meaning”
Hegel's (and Lacan's) anti-intentionalist principle: the meaning of an act is not pre-given in the agent's intention but arises through the act itself, discovered only after the fact.
Hegel's category for Antigone's mode of ethical life: acting from unwritten laws felt as one's own nature, without reflective distance or strategic deliberation.
Schelling's concept (linked to the Freudian fundamental fantasy): an atemporal, unconscious act by which the subject chooses its own nature; one is responsible even for what one could not have done otherwise.
Psychoanalytic concept cited in connection with Schelling's transcendental a priori act: the unconscious, atemporal choice of the framework of one's desire, for which one is nonetheless responsible.
as “subjective autonomy”
Kant's notion that in modernity you are responsible not only for whether you follow your duty but also for defining what your duty is; you cannot hide behind an external substantial authority.
as “radical evil (diabolical evil)”
Kant's concept of evil done purely for its own sake, not for pathological profit; Žižek shows that Kant ultimately retreats from this because it becomes structurally indistinguishable from the categorical good (both are acts ex nihilo beyond pathological causality).
Phrase from Milton's Satan, used to describe the figure of Don Giovanni and the Byronist demonic hero who insists on evil even when it costs everything, pure choice of evil as a supreme principle.
Lacan's formula: not that Kant is secretly sadistic, but that Sade is a Kantian, his unconditional imperative of pleasure beyond the pleasure principle mirrors the structure of the categorical imperative.
as “the Real as spectral appearance”
Žižek's reading of late Lacan: the Real is not the hard, traumatic kernel hidden behind appearances but the uncanny, haunting force of appearance itself, the mask, the voice, the surface that persists without a substance behind it.
Used via the Zeuxis-Parrhasius story: the highest illusion is not a copy of an object but the organization of a surface (a painted curtain) so as to generate the impression that something lies behind it, depth as a pure appearance-effect.
Lacan's concept, illustrated by the Zeuxis-Parrhasius story: the illusion is not what lies behind the curtain but the very illusion of depth produced by the surface.
as “cheating by telling the truth”
Only humans can perform this reflexive deception: you say A knowing the other will take it as a mask for B, but you actually mean A, you lie by telling the truth, exploiting the other's suspicion.
Linked here to the Lacanian Real as compulsion to repeat: the dance that continues after the music stops, the phone that keeps ringing, pure appearance deprived of its substance.
as “authenticity of the mask”
Opposed to Actors Studio authenticity of tearing down masks: true authenticity is full tragic identification with the role one plays, as in the crook who dies as General della Rovere.
as “paranoic hermeneutics”
The mode of interpretation characteristic of modern totalitarianism (Stalinism): every sound, rumor, or event is suspected to be a coded message requiring interpretation, producing an endless, paranoid circle.
Susan Sontag's thesis, used as a foil: the idea that the pure immediacy of art or life can break out of the prison of interpretive representation; Žižek rejects this as a metaphysical myth.
Stories he reaches for 11
Antigone believes she acts from universal principle (bury the dead), but after the act she reveals she would only have done it for her brother. Goethe and Judith Butler tried to dismiss this as a later interpolation; Žižek insists with Hegel it is the whole point.
“through the act she thinks before acting that I'm doing this out of a general principle when confronted with the true consequences of the act she gets becomes aware that no she wouldn't have done it”
At the climax of Mozart's opera, the Stone Guest gives Don Giovanni a chance to repent and be saved; Giovanni refuses seven times and goes to hell. This is a pure ethical act: he has nothing to gain from persisting, yet insists on his evil as his supreme good.
“Don Giovanni knows he has nothing to gain by remaining faithful to his sinful life… nonetheless he insists it's evil as precisely evil be thou my good”
In a legendary competition, Zeuxis paints grapes so real birds peck them. Parrhasius paints a curtain so convincing that Zeuxis asks to see behind it. Parrhasius wins: the true illusion is not copying an object but organizing a surface to generate the impression of hidden depth.
“he said nothing I just painted the curtain… the true illusion is to organize the surface in such a way that it generates the trompe l'oeil”
Balanchine choreographed Webern's ultra-short pieces by having the dancers continue dancing after the music stops, the effect was of living dead, a pure compulsive drive without its life-substance.
“music stops they continue to dance I mean the effect was terrifying as if the living dead”
Žižek's Hegelian joke about the gap between appearance and reality collapsing: behind the veil of appearance is nothing, only what we put there.
“this guy talks as an idiot acts as an idiot this shouldn't deceive you this guy is an idiot”
In Lynch's film, a singer on stage collapses but the music (a playback) keeps going, like the Cheshire Cat's smile surviving the cat. The persistence of appearance after the substance withdraws is the Lacanian Real as death drive.
“an actress is singer is singing on stage she collapses the singing goes on this is the moment of the real”
Hegel's example of how a contingent individual act repeats and becomes universal necessity: 'Caesar' was a person's name, then became the title of all emperors. Napoleon also had to lose twice for his defeat to register as historical necessity.
“Hegel uses this nice paradox that Caesar is at the same time the name of an individual and then it became a title”
A crook physically resembling a dead resistance leader is sent by the Germans to spy in prison by impersonating the hero. He comes to fully identify with the role and is executed as General della Rovere. For Žižek this is the model of authentic identification with the mask.
“he identifies with the role he plays the role to the end he is shot as General della Rovere… the authenticity of the mask itself”
When the protagonist puts on the mask he becomes a cartoon entity of pure drive, totally unable to stop. The Real is not his face beneath the mask but the mask's spectral excess, once you put it on, you become a compulsive undead entity.
“real you remember when he puts the mask on he gets caught into this absolute compulsion to act like a cartoon character this is the spectral undead real”
In Leone's film the phone rings, then there is a three-minute hallucination flashback, then the hand picks up, but the ringing continues, because the pick-up was still within the hallucination. Appearance (the ringing) haunts, persisting without ground.
“you remember at the beginning the phone is ringing endlessly… the ringing goes on now of course this is not a magic movie”
Avital Ronell gave a talk arguing that Nietzsche's greatness was betraying his master Wagner; Badiou destroyed it with one question: 'Where is your betrayal of Derrida?' A deconstructionist desperately replied that Derrida betrays himself constantly.
“okay where is your betrayal of Derrida and then it was incredible how this simple remark”
Works invoked 21
Implicitly the source of Hegel's analysis of Antigone and the passage from tragedy to comedy discussed in detail throughout.
Antigone play
The central text of the lecture's Hegel section; used to illustrate immediate ethical substance, retroactivity of meaning, the limitation of naive ethics, and the passage from tragedy to comedy.
The Parallax View book
Žižek refers to its middle section on how all cognitivists have to admit a 'magic short circuit' in the passage from neuronal retroaction to consciousness.
Don Giovanni opera
Mozart's opera used as the paradigmatic example of the demonic hero who chooses evil for its own sake (Kant's radical evil), the Stone Guest scene analyzed in detail.
The Mask film
Jim Carrey's film used as an illustration of the Lacanian Real as compulsion to repeat: the mask transforms the character into an entity of pure drive, a 'spectral undead real.'
Mulholland Drive film
Lynch's film; the playback-singer scene (she collapses, song continues) is cited as an illustration of the Lacanian Real as death drive, appearance without substance.
Kant's book providing the definition of marriage as a sex-organ contract and the troubling examples about the illegitimate child and the duel; Žižek treats these as revelatory of Kantian consistency.
City Lights film
Chaplin's film briefly cited: the triumphant Puccini-like music swelling over the final image is called 'kitschy' but used as an example of how music can produce a life-force excess over images.
The Future of Hegel book
Catherine Malabou's Princeton University Press book, with Derrida's introduction, recommended as showing that Hegel and deconstruction/neuroscience are far closer than usually assumed.
Leone's 'underestimated masterpiece'; the phone-ringing-through-the-flashback scene illustrates death drive as compulsive appearance persisting beyond its support.
Kant's late book cited as 'maybe the most provocative Kant'; the discussion of radical/diabolical evil is the main focus of Žižek's argument about Kant's paraconsistency.
General della Rovere film
Rossellini's film about a crook who fully identifies with the role of a resistance hero and dies for it; cited as Žižek's paradigm case of authentic mask-identification.
Paradise Lost book
Milton's Satan's line 'evil be thou my good' is cited as the definitive formulation of the Kantian-Sadean principle of choosing evil as an autonomous supreme principle.
120 Days of Sodom book
Described as 'one of the most boring books I've read, which is why I didn't read it to the end' but intellectually used to show Sade's Kantian formalism.
Julian Jaynes's book, raised by a student; Žižek knows only the central idea and is cautiously interested but skeptical about how scientifically tested it is.
Žižek's favorite Brecht; argues it is not a justification of Stalinist purges but a reflection on the betrayal of tearing off the mask, the young comrade's crime is revealing himself as a person.
Raised by a student in connection with the skinning motif and the question of where the Real gets its power; Žižek acknowledges the question without fully resolving it.
Spider's Stratagem film
Bertolucci's adaptation of Borges; used alongside General della Rovere to illustrate the authenticity of fictional mask-identification.
Borges's short story (set in Ireland, filmed by Bertolucci in fascist Italy) illustrating how a traitor is turned into a hero through a collective fiction everyone is in on except the protagonist's son.
Bertolucci early film praised alongside Spider's Stratagem as a true masterpiece.
A King Listens book
Calvino's story used and rewritten as a Hegelian/Stalinist parable; Žižek disagrees with Calvino's own intended meaning (innocent outside) and adds a new ending to make the opposite point.
People invoked 38
Avital Ronell negative
Her talk on Nietzsche's betrayal of Wagner is used as the occasion for Badiou's devastating riposte ('where is your betrayal of Derrida?'), which Žižek clearly enjoys.
Bernard Williams positive
His concept of moral luck is endorsed as 'deeply Hegelian': the ethical status of an act cannot be settled in advance from purity of intention but depends on how it turns out.
Marquis de Sade positive
Used (via Lacan) to clarify Kantian ethics: Sade is a Kantian because his absolute pleasure-imperative has the same formal structure as the categorical imperative, action for the sake of principle, free of pathological motivation.
Claude Lévi-Strauss positive
Cited for the joke/rule that all dreams have a sexual meaning except sexual dreams, applied to Antigone's brother relation to argue against the incest reading.
His supposedly anti-Hegelian deconstructionism is shown to be much closer to Hegel than claimed; Malabou's book converted Derrida toward Hegel on Aufhebung/différance. His introduction to Malabou's book is praised.
Susan Sontag negative
Her 'against interpretation' thesis, that the vicious circle of interpretation can be broken by returning to immediate presence, is called 'a metaphysical myth' and rejected via the Calvino rewrite.
'A King Listens' is used as a Hegelian thought experiment; Žižek admires the story but disagrees with Calvino's intended reading (pure outside of interpretation) and rewrites the ending.
Sergio Leone positive
Once Upon a Time in America called an 'underestimated masterpiece'; the phone-ringing scene is used to illustrate the Lacanian Real as compulsive appearance without ground.
Jacques Lacan positive
Invoked throughout: 'Kant with Sade,' the Zeuxis-Parrhasius story, femininity as masquerade, cheating by telling the truth, the Real as spectral appearance. Lacan is consistently affirmed as the key reference.
Stephen Jay Gould positive
Described as a 'Marxist Darwinian'; his concept of exaptation is adopted to characterize the Hegelian historical process as fundamentally open and improvisational.
Cited as the composer for the Balanchine ballet illustration; noted for his extreme brevity (complete works on three CDs).
David Lynch positive
Mulholland Drive's playback-singer scene is cited to illustrate the Lacanian Real as death drive, appearance persisting after its support collapses.
Daniel Dennett negative
Otherwise appreciated but criticized for playing the card of complexity, arguing consciousness arises as a central coordinating agency at a sufficient level of complexity, which Žižek rejects.
Judith Butler negative
Her book on Antigone is criticized for joining the embarrassed critics who try to dismiss or explain away the 'only for my brother' passage, which Žižek insists is Hegel's entire point.
George Balanchine positive
His staging of Webern, dancers continuing after the music stops, is cited as a traumatically effective illustration of death drive as pure appearance deprived of its life substance.
Alain Badiou positive
Described as a colleague and friend with shared problems; Žižek jokes about his Stalinist teaching methods but endorses his concept of 'le point' and his dialectical interventions against Derrida and Wolfgang.
Marlon Brando negative
Stands for the Actors Studio model of authenticity, tearing down the mask, acting out true impulses, which Žižek rejects as ideological.
David Chalmers negative
Partially endorsed for rejecting complexity as the answer to consciousness, but his solution, consciousness as a fifth fundamental force, is dismissed as combining idealism with vulgar materialism.
His account of music as directly rendering the Will (life force) is cited as a foil, the romantic interpretation of musical power, against which Žižek poses the Lacanian Real.
Bertolt Brecht positive
Defended against pseudo-Brechtian estrangement readings; Žižek's favorite Brecht is Die Maßnahme. He is on Brecht's side against Aristotelian catharsis, reading Brecht's Verfremdung as displaying the gap between actor and role.
Richard Feynman positive
A student cites Feynman's brick demonstration that there is nothing but surfaces, smash a brick and you get more surfaces, as an analogy for Žižek's point about the Lacanian Real.
Jim Carrey positive
The Mask is cited approvingly as an illustration of the Lacanian Real as compulsion to repeat, the mask turns Carrey's character into an entity of pure drive.
Catherine Malabou positive
Praised as a 'Hegelian brain scientist' whose Princeton book The Future of Hegel (with Derrida's introduction) convincingly links Hegelian philosophy to neuroscience and neuroplasticity.
Described as a 'proto-fascist populist' whose 'Kärnten bleibt deutsch' slogan is used as the political example for the ideology of innocent externality.
Referenced obliquely as the source of the view that analytic philosophy is not 'real' philosophy; Heidegger's concepts of Ereignis and Lichtung mentioned as the Heideggerian counter to analytic bias.
Appears in the Freudian slip anecdote at Miller's seminar in Paris; Miller's cold response to Žižek's confusion of pisser and pécher is recounted as a personal memory.
Roberto Rossellini positive
General della Rovere is cited as a 'really nice film' and the paradigm example of authenticity through full mask-identification.
Bernardo Bertolucci positive
His early films (Spider's Stratagem, Before the Revolution) praised as true masterpieces; later films (The Little Buddha, La Luna) dismissed as 'stuff for the Gulag.'
Hannah Arendt negative
Her reading of Eichmann as a genuine Kantian is explicitly rejected: Kant's autonomy forbids the 'I was just following orders' defense because you must be responsible for defining your duty, not only executing it.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling positive
His 'subversive beautiful speculations' on unconscious freedom are cited approvingly: the idea that the highest freedom is unconscious and that one is responsible even for what one could not have helped (Judas example).
Joan Copjec positive
Mentioned in a self-mocking anecdote about footnote bad faith; Žižek confesses to inverting the standard acknowledgment to claim her idea as his own.
Mentioned in connection with the consciousness-as-breakdown thesis; Žižek knows only that Jaynes argued pre-Greek peoples were still bicameral and expresses cautious interest.
Sophocles positive
Antigone is the key text for Hegel's discussion of immediate ethical substance, retroactivity, and the passage from tragedy to comedy.
John Milton positive
Paradise Lost's Satan ('evil be thou my good') is cited as the classic formulation of the principle of doing evil for its own sake, used to gloss Kant's radical evil and Don Giovanni.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for the commodity-money-commodity to M-C-M analysis as a paradigm case of Hegelian retotalization; Say's Law discussed in this context.
Jorge Luis Borges positive
'Theme of the Traitor and Hero' (filmed by Bertolucci as Spider's Stratagem) is used to illustrate the same point as General della Rovere about authentic identification with a fictional role.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central figure of the lecture; Žižek explicates and defends Hegel's dialectics, historicity, reading of Antigone, critique of Kant, and theory of comedy vs. tragedy throughout.
Immanuel Kant positive
Treated as an extremely interesting philosopher whose paraconsistencies (on radical evil, marriage, the illegitimate child) are productive; Žižek endorses the Lacanian project of 'repeating Kant' via the ethics of psychoanalysis.
What it argues
dialectical process vs. organic evolution: the universality itself changesretroactivity of meaning — you discover what you meant through the actAntigone as limit case of immediate ethical substance vs. modern reflexive ethicsKantian radical evil and its structural identity with moral goodLacanian Real as spectral force of appearance, not hidden depththe authenticity of full identification with the maskthe impossibility of innocent externality (Calvino/Haider)
Dialectical moves 11
“things change in order to remain the same — but for Hegel, in dialectics proper, the universal itself changes, not merely the particulars”
Distinguishes Hegelian dialectics from organic evolution: the point is not that a stable totality maintains itself through flux but that the totalizing principle itself is replaced.
“money was previously a subordinate moment, then becomes the subject of the process — what was the medium becomes the encompassing totality”
Marx's commodity-money-commodity to money-commodity-money shift illustrates the Hegelian retotalization: the formerly subordinated element seizes the position of the universal.
“Caesar is at the same time the name of an individual and then became a title — through repetition, contingency asserts itself as necessity”
The first occurrence is a particular fact; its repetition retroactively transforms it into a universal necessity, showing how history works through retrospective re-signification.
“the true externality — the innocent voice outside the palace — is already a trap, already inscribed inside the representational circle it pretends to escape”
Any appeal to a pure outside of interpretation is itself a fantasy produced by the inside; there is no innocent exteriority.
“behind the veil of appearances is nothing — there is only what we put behind it; depth is the appearance of depth”
The Hegelian/Lacanian thesis that reality has no hidden interior: depth-effects are produced by the organization of surfaces, not by anything actually beneath them.
“it is not Kant who is a sadist — it is Sade who is a Kantian”
Reverses the usual psychoanalytic debunking of Kant (repressed sadism lurks beneath duty): instead, Sade's unconditional pleasure-imperative formally mirrors the categorical imperative.
“far from radical evil being the opposite of the good, it is structurally indistinguishable from it — both are acts done purely for the sake of principle, not for pathological profit”
The categorical imperative and diabolical evil share the same formal structure (act ex nihilo, free of all pathological motivation), which is why Kant ultimately retreats from his own concept.
“the Real is not what you find once you tear away appearances — the Real is the spectral force of appearance itself”
Inverts the naive materialist picture: rather than reality being hidden behind the veil, the veil itself, as pure surface, is the site of the Real.
“the true authenticity is not tearing off the mask to reveal the real person, but full identification with the mask itself”
Actors Studio 'true self' authenticity is ideological; the authentic ethical act is to assume the mask completely, as the crook who dies as General della Rovere.
“Antigone thinks she is acting from universal principle, but through the act she discovers she would only do it for her brother — the act reveals what she really meant”
Demonstrates Hegel's retroactivity: the supposed universal (bury the dead) turns out to be the concrete particular; the act produces its own meaning rather than expressing a pre-formed intention.
“consciousness is not produced by complexity — it is on the contrary an operator of simplification, and it originates as consciousness of failure”
Reverses the standard cognitivist assumption: rather than arising with greater functional complexity, consciousness is the response to breakdown, the awareness of something not working.
Claims 20
asserts
Hegelian dialectics is not the self-reproduction of a universal through change but the transformation of the universal itself — what was subordinate (money, production) becomes the new totalizing principle.Hegel's dialectical process vs. organic evolution
asserts
History is not the differentiation of a stable totality but a constant process of retotalization in which the struggle is always at the level of universality.Hegelian historicity and concrete universality
asserts
There is no neutral metalanguage for classifying philosophy or politics: every mapping of the totality already presupposes a particular standpoint within it.concrete universality and the impossibility of metalanguage
rejects
The cunning of reason reading of Hegel (great individuals as unconscious tools of historical rationality) should be rejected in favor of genuine contingency: an act may retrospectively establish itself as necessity through repetition.standard reading of Hegel's philosophy of history
asserts
The meaning of an act is not pre-given in intention but arises retroactively through the act itself — you discover what you really meant only after doing it.Hegel's anti-intentionalism and retroactivity of meaning
asserts
Antigone's ethics represents the limit of immediate ethical substance: her 'universal' principle (bury the dead) turns out, through the act, to be the concrete privileged particular (only for her brother).Hegel's reading of Antigone
asserts
Antigone's unconditional love of her brother is love of a corpse — to love someone for what they are, not what they did, is ultimately to love them as dead.the limitation of Antigone's naive ethics
reframes
The passage from tragedy to comedy in Hegel is not a position of ironic wisdom but a moment of comical reflexivity within the tragic itself: Antigone starts composing poems on herself, playing the role of Antigone.Hegel on tragedy and comedy
rejects
Eichmann's invocation of Kant to justify following orders is precisely wrong: Kant's autonomy forbids this — you cannot turn yourself into an instrument, and you are responsible for defining your duty, not just executing it.Hannah Arendt's reading of Eichmann as Kantian
asserts
Kant's radical evil ultimately becomes indistinguishable from the moral good because both are acts done purely for the sake of a principle, not for pathological reasons; this is why Kant retreats from it.Kant's concept of diabolical/radical evil
reframes
Lacan's 'Kant with Sade' does not mean Kant is secretly sadistic; it means Sade is a Kantian — his unconditional imperative of absolute crime mirrors the formal structure of the categorical imperative.Lacan's 'Kant with Sade'
asserts
Consciousness is not a product of complexity but an operator of simplification, and it originates as consciousness of a malfunction or failure.the origin and function of consciousness in cognitive science
rejects
Chalmers's solution — positing consciousness as a fifth fundamental force of nature — is a false move that combines idealism with the most vulgar materialism.David Chalmers's solution to the hard problem of consciousness
asserts
The Lacanian Real is not the hard kernel hidden behind appearances but the spectral, uncanny force of appearance itself — pure surface deprived of substance.Lacanian Real vs. naive realism and early Lacan
rejects
Confronting the 'real' beneath appearances (the medieval cure for lust, pseudo-Brechtian theater) is not the Lacanian Real but an escape from it — the Real is the power of surface, not what lies beneath.pseudo-Brechtian 'return of the real' as ideology
reframes
True authenticity is not tearing down the mask to reveal the real person (Actors Studio method) but full tragic identification with the mask itself.authenticity and identity
rejects
Calvino's fantasy of a pure outside — the innocent feminine voice that breaks the circle of interpretive representation — is itself a fantasy; the supposedly innocent externality is always already inscribed in the same representational system.Calvino's 'A King Listens' and Susan Sontag's 'against interpretation'
asserts
String theory is a Ptolemaization, not a Copernican revolution; a far more radical revolution is needed, likely requiring that time or space be eliminated as a fundamental constituent of reality.string theory and physics
asserts
Proverbs are the stupidity of language embodied: whatever you do, there is always a proverb to justify it, making them epistemically vacuous.proverbs and folk wisdom
asserts
True philosophy begins with Kant and ends with Hegel; everything before was confused intuition, everything after was misunderstanding.the history of philosophy
Quotes 18
“I think that precisely these oscillations are very productive — a theory gets interesting precisely when you are forced to be inconsistent.”Slavoj Žižek · productive inconsistency in theory
“consciousness is an operator of simplification — the act of consciousness is precisely when you have a complex phenomenon and to isolate one feature to say but it's really about this.”Slavoj Žižek · consciousness as simplification
“my idea was simply to generalize this radically — what if consciousness as such is originally linked to some ultimate failure”Slavoj Žižek · consciousness as consciousness of failure
“there is no metalanguage — every all-encompassing view on history is already part of history”Slavoj Žižek · no neutral metalanguage in Hegel
“history is history of universalities — history means precisely there is no metalanguage”Slavoj Žižek · historicity and concrete universality
“proverbs are the stupidity of language embodied — whatever you do you always find a proverb to justify it”Slavoj Žižek · critique of folk wisdom
“for Kant you are not only responsible to do your duty you are also responsible to define what your duty is — there is no substantial other which guarantees to you that this is your duty”Slavoj Žižek · Kantian subjective autonomy
“there is also no excuse for doing your duty — you cannot say sorry that's my duty”Slavoj Žižek · Kant's radical autonomy — no excuse for duty
“it is not Kant who is a sadist — it is Sade who is a Kantian”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's Kant with Sade, reversed
“he has nothing to gain by remaining faithful to his sinful life… nonetheless he insists — it's evil as precisely evil be thou my good”Slavoj Žižek · Don Giovanni as pure choice of evil for its own sake
“behind the veil of appearances is nothing — there is only what we put behind — depth is the appearance of depth”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel/Lacan on appearances and the Real
“the real is not the reality behind the mask — the real is that spectral excess of the mask itself”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian Real as spectral appearance
“the appearance of maybe there being something behind it… that's also the power — when appearance is deprived of its substance this is death drive”Slavoj Žižek · death drive as appearance without substance
“I prefer much this much more as a model of authenticity the full identification with the mask than this idea of tearing down the mask — tearing down the mask is always the worst of ideology”Slavoj Žižek · authenticity as identification with the mask
“the true intelligent plot is precisely to give you a way out — when the king exits the palace following the voice he is immediately arrested”Slavoj Žižek · there is no innocent outside of ideological representation
“true philosophy is something which started with Kant and ended with Hegel — before they were doing some confused intuitions after they tried to overturn him but nobody even understood Hegel”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's periodization of philosophy
“brother is for Antigone an other deprived of all personal features — to love someone for what he is not for what he did is ultimately to love him as a corpse”Slavoj Žižek · the mortifying dimension of Antigone's love
“string theory is not too radical but not radical enough — it's still a Ptolemaization”Slavoj Žižek · string theory as Ptolemaization
Transcript 51 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Did you squeeze did you have just if I may inquire now you are my spies did you have a short did you what happened yesterday at Badiou did you have an interesting debate did you squeeze his organs of of fertility a little bit or what we
Did you squeeze did you have just if I may inquire now you are my spies did you have a short did you what happened yesterday at Badiou did you have an interesting debate did you squeeze his organs of of fertility a little bit or what we
unknown
don't talk
don't talk
Slavoj Žižek
in his class sorry he doesn't let us talk in his class oh I know ah that's the Badiou that I know Stalinist
in his class sorry he doesn't let us talk in his class oh I know ah that's the Badiou that I know Stalinist
unknown
he wanted only written we submit written questions he answers oh
he wanted only written we submit written questions he answers oh
Slavoj Žižek
but then he the last day he will because he told me that he did one session but that it took all the time only to answer I don't know eight nine of twenty-seven or what yeah six or seven maybe yesterday he answered six of fifty questions but there's like thirty now
but then he the last day he will because he told me that he did one session but that it took all the time only to answer I don't know eight nine of twenty-seven or what yeah six or seven maybe yesterday he answered six of fifty questions but there's like thirty now
unknown
yeah
yeah
Slavoj Žižek
sorry there's like thirty questions now well it's bad for you I think he did mention your question he told us to point out which was is the
sorry there's like thirty questions now well it's bad for you I think he did mention your question he told us to point out which was is the
unknown
event the does it have to be something that afterwards you retroactively verify for it to be an event but he
event the does it have to be something that afterwards you retroactively verify for it to be an event but he
Slavoj Žižek
said no it is the process of the event yeah but again but that's the point what does he mean by process of the event because he explicitly says he emphasized this all the time that an event is something momentary evanescent and that then the point is fidelity traces and so on you know what I mean like of course there is a process but my point is precisely how does this sounds for me too Hegelian to be his position the idea that put it speculatively the event is nothing but its own process no he has a gap there he always emphasizes that event is like a momentary flash and then you have the problem of fidelity I don't think he would have accepted it's a no no no again let me be very clear I'm here on his side I share the same problems in a properly Hegelian way I think that precisely these oscillations are very productive I think a theory gets interesting precisely when you you are forced to be inconsistent and you you know because theories which just function smoothly are totally are simply not interesting the same is when we were talking about it for example in cognitivism I like intelligent cognitivists who admit for who admit you know there is a deadlock a problem here something happens and then this is on what I focus in the middle chapter of the part of that obscenity parallax view on how all of them have to admit that in order from all this brain neuronal retroaction to get to consciousness a kind of a magic short circuit should happen when it appears as if the result effect causes its own cause and it's interesting how totally different authors they all have recourse to the same metaphor I think that's where Freud or Hegel should enter and again I like there are intelligent there are intelligent cognitivists who admit this deadlock because I you maybe know the debate between so-called reductionists and the great idealist guy is David Chalmers how he's called Chalmers the great who simply thinks that that he has a point but I don't take his point he his position is to put it very simply that there that there is a way of course all conscious activities even the most complex ones of course you can somehow reduce them to neuronal processes and so on but his point is very nice he says the problem is not complexity he rejects and I totally agree with him here the idea that we can have a stupid automatic mechanism as long as the tasks are relatively simple that you need consciousness with a certain amount of complexity I don't think this I think first if anything consciousness as every neurobiologist will tell you consciousness is an operator of simplification consciousness simplifies and I think if there is a my dogma is twin here and I don't know if they were just flattering me but when I had a debate I mean private debate not big public with some neurologists they I will be very modest I don't want to boast too much they pretended I don't know what they were talking after I left maybe oh that jerk good that we got rid of him but at least face to face they pretended that they were interested that there is something in it namely in what I I said that my two basic dogmas are a that it's not complexity it's quite the opposite the simplification you know this is what Badiou meant probably he explained it also to you during his classes this crucial point what he calls of le point the point you know you have a complex situation then at a certain point you should say a decision yes or no this brutal reduction and also for example when you have a complex situation the true work of intelligence is not this here me and Badiou that's our private joke like to make fun of unfair a little bit of Derrida he says that Derrida's basic dogma is always oh but the situation is a little bit more complex you know like it's not like this it's more no of course it's complex but this is common sense stupidity how should I put it no the the act of consciousness is precisely when you have a complex phenomenon and of course in real life everything is complex to isolate one feature to say but it's really about this so that again consciousness is an operator of simplification all that complexity your unconscious not even in the Freudian sense in the simple sense of you know what goes non-conscious sorry non-conscious yes can do and second thing and that's what interests some did interest some brain scientists I spoke with is my idea is that I base it on a very simple analogy that consciousness is at its zero level it must have emerged as a consciousness of a failure in the you know in a simple sense you are for example writing you write it automatically it's totally ingrained into your neuronal reflexes you don't think about it when do you become aware of it as such when something doesn't function at that point oh my god you know you notice things when they don't function and my idea was simply to generalize this radically what if consciousness as such is originally linked to some ultimate failure maybe Heideggerians would have said death or some failure non-functioning and so on so that again I want to because you know why this is I think the only way to avoid one of the good arguments of those who of Chalmers and those guys who have a very good argument against these people who try to prove that consciousness can be reduced to neuronal processes what they prove is let's say they take a very complex activity and then they prove it that you can account for this activity at the purely material level of neuronal interaction whatever that you can reduce it but then a question remains if you can reduce it why then consciousness at all you know what I mean the better you explain complex activities through neuronal mechanism the more the enigma remains why do you need to be aware of it why I mean why doesn't it simply function as a kind of a complex computer what is the function of awareness and I don't think that they usually then even with Dennett whom I otherwise appreciate I don't agree here he tends to play the card of complexity like when things get complex at a certain level you simply need some kind of a central agency who introduces order blah blah blah I don't I don't think that I don't think that works here again I have a limited sympathy with how is the guy called with Chalmers who says that you know his big argument that the problem is not complexity the problem is this how do they call it the hard problem raw fact of awareness why awareness in what sense does it help our survival adaptation to be aware of something why cannot our they okay it's easy to say for let me take an example you can say my god I walk around I become aware of an oh my god I will be evil towards you it's my nature sorry don't take it personally I like that scorpion you know who bites the frog in the middle of the stream even if he will die for it let's say I walk on Saspe I see one of you my reaction is let's take a tour so that you don't ask me some stupid questions sorry it's my nature what I want to say is that now you will say awareness functions as a survival mechanism and so on no how it helps me survive but then I can say but still it's not clear why should I be aware of it why can't we do it as a simple blind mechanism which perceives the danger and gives the signal take you know what I mean the raw fact of awareness is an enigma and but I don't agree again with Chalmers' conclusion where immediately where as you probably know his idea is simply that to the four I think this is the weak strong atomic force gravity whatever magnetic force that the only solution is to a kind of it's ironic how as a big idealist he end up in a way in a strange mixture of idealism with the most vulgar materialism he says that the only way is to grasp awareness as simply another fundamental natural force it's literally you know quintessence you know what quintessence means the fifth essence so that on the top of you know the four ones the weak strong atomic force and what magnetic and what's the other shit gravity or what no that to this four we should simply add another fundamental force but I think this is precisely the false issue he he simply I mean you mean a standard the standard theory in physics yeah forces four there are four and now we all know the story I mean superficially the big problem is how to unite them and all that and so on and a few interesting things happened you know this oscillation about string theory first it was winning then it was losing then some ten years ago it was winning but now this is the stock market tendency in quantum physics now it's losing again and it's very interesting what's the latest tendency I was told you know there is a wonderful term called how should I call it Ptolemaization you know Ptolemaeus his his was geocentric system and then there were new and new data which didn't fit it so he to maintain his model he had to introduce more and more complex supplementary hypothesis so the idea is that yes we have a problem but that string theory is not too radical but not radical enough it's still a Ptolemaization it's not yet Copernicus Ptolemaization which is why they need all this shit you know ten dimensions and the tragedy is they it's not only that we cannot measure them they even didn't devise a possible experiment of how to measure and so on so I like this speculation the idea is that we will have to wait for a much more radical much more radical revolution and the hypothesis is that one or two either time or space will have to go probably time that is to say that one of these very elementary constituents of reality will have to be erased now finally to
said no it is the process of the event yeah but again but that's the point what does he mean by process of the event because he explicitly says he emphasized this all the time that an event is something momentary evanescent and that then the point is fidelity traces and so on you know what I mean like of course there is a process but my point is precisely how does this sounds for me too Hegelian to be his position the idea that put it speculatively the event is nothing but its own process no he has a gap there he always emphasizes that event is like a momentary flash and then you have the problem of fidelity I don't think he would have accepted it's a no no no again let me be very clear I'm here on his side I share the same problems in a properly Hegelian way I think that precisely these oscillations are very productive I think a theory gets interesting precisely when you you are forced to be inconsistent and you you know because theories which just function smoothly are totally are simply not interesting the same is when we were talking about it for example in cognitivism I like intelligent cognitivists who admit for who admit you know there is a deadlock a problem here something happens and then this is on what I focus in the middle chapter of the part of that obscenity parallax view on how all of them have to admit that in order from all this brain neuronal retroaction to get to consciousness a kind of a magic short circuit should happen when it appears as if the result effect causes its own cause and it's interesting how totally different authors they all have recourse to the same metaphor I think that's where Freud or Hegel should enter and again I like there are intelligent there are intelligent cognitivists who admit this deadlock because I you maybe know the debate between so-called reductionists and the great idealist guy is David Chalmers how he's called Chalmers the great who simply thinks that that he has a point but I don't take his point he his position is to put it very simply that there that there is a way of course all conscious activities even the most complex ones of course you can somehow reduce them to neuronal processes and so on but his point is very nice he says the problem is not complexity he rejects and I totally agree with him here the idea that we can have a stupid automatic mechanism as long as the tasks are relatively simple that you need consciousness with a certain amount of complexity I don't think this I think first if anything consciousness as every neurobiologist will tell you consciousness is an operator of simplification consciousness simplifies and I think if there is a my dogma is twin here and I don't know if they were just flattering me but when I had a debate I mean private debate not big public with some neurologists they I will be very modest I don't want to boast too much they pretended I don't know what they were talking after I left maybe oh that jerk good that we got rid of him but at least face to face they pretended that they were interested that there is something in it namely in what I I said that my two basic dogmas are a that it's not complexity it's quite the opposite the simplification you know this is what Badiou meant probably he explained it also to you during his classes this crucial point what he calls of le point the point you know you have a complex situation then at a certain point you should say a decision yes or no this brutal reduction and also for example when you have a complex situation the true work of intelligence is not this here me and Badiou that's our private joke like to make fun of unfair a little bit of Derrida he says that Derrida's basic dogma is always oh but the situation is a little bit more complex you know like it's not like this it's more no of course it's complex but this is common sense stupidity how should I put it no the the act of consciousness is precisely when you have a complex phenomenon and of course in real life everything is complex to isolate one feature to say but it's really about this so that again consciousness is an operator of simplification all that complexity your unconscious not even in the Freudian sense in the simple sense of you know what goes non-conscious sorry non-conscious yes can do and second thing and that's what interests some did interest some brain scientists I spoke with is my idea is that I base it on a very simple analogy that consciousness is at its zero level it must have emerged as a consciousness of a failure in the you know in a simple sense you are for example writing you write it automatically it's totally ingrained into your neuronal reflexes you don't think about it when do you become aware of it as such when something doesn't function at that point oh my god you know you notice things when they don't function and my idea was simply to generalize this radically what if consciousness as such is originally linked to some ultimate failure maybe Heideggerians would have said death or some failure non-functioning and so on so that again I want to because you know why this is I think the only way to avoid one of the good arguments of those who of Chalmers and those guys who have a very good argument against these people who try to prove that consciousness can be reduced to neuronal processes what they prove is let's say they take a very complex activity and then they prove it that you can account for this activity at the purely material level of neuronal interaction whatever that you can reduce it but then a question remains if you can reduce it why then consciousness at all you know what I mean the better you explain complex activities through neuronal mechanism the more the enigma remains why do you need to be aware of it why I mean why doesn't it simply function as a kind of a complex computer what is the function of awareness and I don't think that they usually then even with Dennett whom I otherwise appreciate I don't agree here he tends to play the card of complexity like when things get complex at a certain level you simply need some kind of a central agency who introduces order blah blah blah I don't I don't think that I don't think that works here again I have a limited sympathy with how is the guy called with Chalmers who says that you know his big argument that the problem is not complexity the problem is this how do they call it the hard problem raw fact of awareness why awareness in what sense does it help our survival adaptation to be aware of something why cannot our they okay it's easy to say for let me take an example you can say my god I walk around I become aware of an oh my god I will be evil towards you it's my nature sorry don't take it personally I like that scorpion you know who bites the frog in the middle of the stream even if he will die for it let's say I walk on Saspe I see one of you my reaction is let's take a tour so that you don't ask me some stupid questions sorry it's my nature what I want to say is that now you will say awareness functions as a survival mechanism and so on no how it helps me survive but then I can say but still it's not clear why should I be aware of it why can't we do it as a simple blind mechanism which perceives the danger and gives the signal take you know what I mean the raw fact of awareness is an enigma and but I don't agree again with Chalmers' conclusion where immediately where as you probably know his idea is simply that to the four I think this is the weak strong atomic force gravity whatever magnetic force that the only solution is to a kind of it's ironic how as a big idealist he end up in a way in a strange mixture of idealism with the most vulgar materialism he says that the only way is to grasp awareness as simply another fundamental natural force it's literally you know quintessence you know what quintessence means the fifth essence so that on the top of you know the four ones the weak strong atomic force and what magnetic and what's the other shit gravity or what no that to this four we should simply add another fundamental force but I think this is precisely the false issue he he simply I mean you mean a standard the standard theory in physics yeah forces four there are four and now we all know the story I mean superficially the big problem is how to unite them and all that and so on and a few interesting things happened you know this oscillation about string theory first it was winning then it was losing then some ten years ago it was winning but now this is the stock market tendency in quantum physics now it's losing again and it's very interesting what's the latest tendency I was told you know there is a wonderful term called how should I call it Ptolemaization you know Ptolemaeus his his was geocentric system and then there were new and new data which didn't fit it so he to maintain his model he had to introduce more and more complex supplementary hypothesis so the idea is that yes we have a problem but that string theory is not too radical but not radical enough it's still a Ptolemaization it's not yet Copernicus Ptolemaization which is why they need all this shit you know ten dimensions and the tragedy is they it's not only that we cannot measure them they even didn't devise a possible experiment of how to measure and so on so I like this speculation the idea is that we will have to wait for a much more radical much more radical revolution and the hypothesis is that one or two either time or space will have to go probably time that is to say that one of these very elementary constituents of reality will have to be erased now finally to
unknown
get back to your fundamental theory about a failure that accounts for at least the question of why consciousness yeah this reminds me of Julian Jaynes you know who is this Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
get back to your fundamental theory about a failure that accounts for at least the question of why consciousness yeah this reminds me of Julian Jaynes you know who is this Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Slavoj Žižek
ah yeah yeah yeah the idea was that
ah yeah yeah yeah the idea was that
unknown
like with mirror neurons this was a kind of fundamental breakdown and because the brain needs to talk to itself neurophysiologically even this this is what creates consciousness it's kind of like a materialism but not exactly do you know
like with mirror neurons this was a kind of fundamental breakdown and because the brain needs to talk to itself neurophysiologically even this this is what creates consciousness it's kind of like a materialism but not exactly do you know
Slavoj Žižek
that work no no no I only know is he I know this idea of is he the guy who claimed that for example prior to ancient Greece people simply were still bicameral in the sense that they they they for them simply for example what they experienced as sacred and so on consciousness it was simply another power yes so culture
that work no no no I only know is he I know this idea of is he the guy who claimed that for example prior to ancient Greece people simply were still bicameral in the sense that they they they for them simply for example what they experienced as sacred and so on consciousness it was simply another power yes so culture
unknown
becomes the stitching together of these two
becomes the stitching together of these two
Slavoj Žižek
consciousnesses not spontaneous you know what's only my problem here I am afraid of a temptation here temptation in the sense that you know these theories are so attractive that we bluffing philosophers are easily seduced and oh my god then you link this to Hegel oh I am a little bit I don't know if you have this expression if you are too pretentious we in Slovene we have this back to obscenity we have this expression you think you are holding God by his balls how should I put it no so I'm just I like the theory I'm just simply skeptical in the sense of how tested it is scientifically I know the wonderful things Catherine Malabou that Hegelian brain scientist convinced me that wonderful things are going on now in brain sciences on the top quality especially about this we all know this so-called plasticity of mind no neuroplasticity yeah not only this vulgar plasticity in the sense of trans-functioning and so on but all the stuff which makes it very easy and nice for a Hegelian like her to so if you want a good book on Hegel again look at it's published by Princeton University Press okay the title is The Future of Hegel Malabou M-A-L-A-B-O-U Catherine Malabou it's translated in English what's also very good is that it has a long introduction which was originally in French a review of the book a long introduction by Derrida which is a wonderful text you can see that you cannot oppose in this simplistic way Derrida versus Hegel Hegel total metaphysics everything is swallowed by the by the idea Derrida no something remains and so on Derrida is almost she almost reconverted Derrida to Hegel because Derrida was if you read him closely was all the time much more ambiguous towards Hegel for example a standard deconstructionist would tell you the basic mechanism Hegelian of thought is Aufhebung sublation you took something and you elevate it internalize it through idealization but then it appears that the basic motive of deconstruction is but this sublation the reduction of the otherness through mediation internalization never fully functions there is always a remainder and so on so it appears as if the final sorry the ultimate push topic of Derrida is precisely anti-sublation anti-Hegel but no already somewhere in his early works I don't know where forgot Derrida says that sublation what Hegel calls Aufhebung is so close to différance that the line is almost imperceptible sometimes so again Derrida always emphasized that he even says sometimes that maybe Hegel is not the ultimate idealism but on the contrary the point where metaphysics comes closest to closest to deconstruction no no okay but listen we get lost here let me do some work Hegel today and maybe a little bit tomorrow and some ethics okay so I want to begin with again the basic difference between this kind of organic evolution and what Hegel means by a dialectical process organic evolution is to put it very simply a self-deployment of a global universal principle at all levels at the individual level you have an organism of course everything changes your stuff changes you are in contact but through all these gradual changes the organism survives this you know like you have a certain we cannot say universality but encompassing entity it is the one how the organic process is how the one survives through the continuous generation corruption and so on things change all the time so that they remain the same how should I put it no and even if we move from individual level to the higher level of a species you can say it's the same it's the individuals die are born struggle but through organic precisely through this very constant dynamic process the species remains the same sustains itself and this is what people usually understand by dialectics how you don't have on the one hand this stability of some universal principle and then the irrelevant empirical movement but that an idea is alive precisely when it maintains itself through its dynamic but for Hegel this precisely is the limit of nature in this okay now you will say but also in nature a species can vanish yes but then it's simple external negation Hegel would have said it's not an inherent negation like I reproduce myself then a stronger animal comes eats me up or an asteroid hits me I die okay but this is Hegel would have put it totally external contingency happen of course but it's irrelevant the principle again of life is that the universality or the one remains by itself through the other you interact with the other and it is this very interaction which sustains you as the one and of course then this sounds very dialectic like oh my god you see how sameness and unity are connected the only way to remain the same is to change blah blah blah with Hegel something different happens let's say we start with one we have a process but then as I developed yesterday you remember when I said how an idea in its realization undermines itself we have one an idea I want to be this then I realize myself in particular life and the idea itself dissolves and another element as it were takes over the change is at this level for Hegel the change the universal itself it's not just it's not just the medium which remains the same the changes are at this level so that we people usually say but it all remains with Hegel within the same totality the subject externalizes itself then it swallows back the otherness and so on yes if the idea comes back to itself but to put it in vulgar terms it's no longer the same idea the idea this disappears and through the process another idea comes up which idea which was previously just a moment here what do I mean by this for example take take Marx puts this in wonderfully simple terms take the relationship of money and capital first money is the encompassing no even at the zero level what runs the process are simply commodities commodity is the master you produce something that you want to exchange and money is just a subordinate moment no in the sense of I don't know I produce something you produce something we we exchange it but then it gets too complex what if you have something that I want and we need a mediator money blah blah blah so it's money here at the elementary level money still appears to be a subordinate moment then medium of exchange then something happens with capital it is that money which was previously a subordinate moment becomes the subject of the process it's no longer commodity-money-commodity it's no longer that you know this again as Marx put it in a simple pre-capitalist exchange the movement is commodity-money-commodity I sell something in order to buy another thing with capital money which was just the subordinating mediator becomes the subject so that it is what encompasses the process the true subject of the process becomes what was previously just a subordinate moment was money itself the same goes for Marx for production Marx put this in wonderful terms when he says that from the individual standpoint of the producer you produce to satisfy your needs but from the global standpoint needs are generated in order to keep the production running that the true goal of the historical process is not to satisfy your need but is the development of production itself and so on and so on is that Say's law sorry Say's law is that an economic ah no how do you call it you see here I'm an idiot please S-A-Y-S what S-A-Y apostrophe okay yeah yeah yeah but what does it mean that what does it say this law the need generates the production or is it that the production generates the need yes Say's law you produce the goods and need will arise yeah although yeah yeah I didn't even know that it's called Say's law because I mean it's already how should I put it the I mean Marx said this already in a different way and so on that the produce the even the early Marx whom I intensely dislike the humanist Marx and so on kind of reverses the usual capitalist formula of a finite need fulfilled by infinite production oh yeah yes yes you made the goods who cares and then eventually the need will just pop arise out of the money yeah yeah you can say that but what I okay but let's remain sorry oh yeah it sounds it sounds like Lewis Mumford's ideas on technological determinism that the way of doing something becomes the reason for doing something yeah yeah but yeah okay but let's not lose a thread now I agree but these are all examples you see how in this is what Hegel how the process is a process of something a subject what happens for Hegel in spiritual properly dialectics is that it's not only that the same reproduces itself through changes is that the very encompassing unity as it were of a process changes what you know something which was previously a subordinated moment becomes the totalizing moment so what happens in history is not that a totality differentiates itself no that historical process is rather a constant process of retotalization what changes it's not that you have let us say let's take state again you don't have a concept of state which then realizes itself in different forms what is for Hegel at stake in historical changes is that the very general notion of what is at what a state means changes you the struggle is at the level of universality let me give you an example it's a simple one but I'm not a let's make something clear with all my evil so that you will not misunderstand me if when I say let's take a simple example the idiot I'm addressing here it's me not you that is to say I'm always obsessed precisely because I'm dealing with theorists who are usually considered difficult to read even for some people bluffing like Lacan Hegel I'm obsessed with this idea if you can't put it clearly don't bluff about it and so on so I the art is and here this is Hegel's strength often to provide a simple formula or image and then all of a sudden oh my god you say now I see it which is why I will later come to a joke which I think it's the ultimate Hegelian joke probably you know it but let's go back to it let's take I think I mentioned this in one of my books let's take the history of philosophy you cannot say this is what I mean and Hegel means with either concrete universality or this change at the level very level of at at of of universality or historicity proper when you read an introduction to philosophy you usually get it's very simple point again that I will be making you usually get some kind of a qualification some kind of general classification it can be of philosophical disciplines or it can be of different orientations you can say what would be the usual thing to say if we that we have today three four main tendencies in philosophy we have different modes of analytic philosophy more traditional philosophy of science language analysis or now more cognitivism brain sciences we have phenomenology we have deconstructionism we have versions of German idealism so you simply differentiate but you know where I challenge you this would be the Hegelian challenge that if you look at it closely you will see that no such mapping is neutral every such mapping presupposes already a certain philosophical standpoint there is no metalanguage it is clear that for example usually such a distinction of philosophy either has an analytic bias where the story is and I can be very arrogant today the story is that only with contemporary analytic philosophy post-classical not that logical empiricism but this contemporary cognitivism philosophy simply became another positive knowledge science so that the gap is continental philosophy is poetry it can have interesting metaphorical insights but a Heideggerian would have put a totally different accent that analytic philosophy is not a proper philosophy at all it's basically just some kind of positive description that the task of philosophy is to think to reflect on I simplify what Heidegger calls Ereignis event or Lichtung in the sense of opening clearing the way the
consciousnesses not spontaneous you know what's only my problem here I am afraid of a temptation here temptation in the sense that you know these theories are so attractive that we bluffing philosophers are easily seduced and oh my god then you link this to Hegel oh I am a little bit I don't know if you have this expression if you are too pretentious we in Slovene we have this back to obscenity we have this expression you think you are holding God by his balls how should I put it no so I'm just I like the theory I'm just simply skeptical in the sense of how tested it is scientifically I know the wonderful things Catherine Malabou that Hegelian brain scientist convinced me that wonderful things are going on now in brain sciences on the top quality especially about this we all know this so-called plasticity of mind no neuroplasticity yeah not only this vulgar plasticity in the sense of trans-functioning and so on but all the stuff which makes it very easy and nice for a Hegelian like her to so if you want a good book on Hegel again look at it's published by Princeton University Press okay the title is The Future of Hegel Malabou M-A-L-A-B-O-U Catherine Malabou it's translated in English what's also very good is that it has a long introduction which was originally in French a review of the book a long introduction by Derrida which is a wonderful text you can see that you cannot oppose in this simplistic way Derrida versus Hegel Hegel total metaphysics everything is swallowed by the by the idea Derrida no something remains and so on Derrida is almost she almost reconverted Derrida to Hegel because Derrida was if you read him closely was all the time much more ambiguous towards Hegel for example a standard deconstructionist would tell you the basic mechanism Hegelian of thought is Aufhebung sublation you took something and you elevate it internalize it through idealization but then it appears that the basic motive of deconstruction is but this sublation the reduction of the otherness through mediation internalization never fully functions there is always a remainder and so on so it appears as if the final sorry the ultimate push topic of Derrida is precisely anti-sublation anti-Hegel but no already somewhere in his early works I don't know where forgot Derrida says that sublation what Hegel calls Aufhebung is so close to différance that the line is almost imperceptible sometimes so again Derrida always emphasized that he even says sometimes that maybe Hegel is not the ultimate idealism but on the contrary the point where metaphysics comes closest to closest to deconstruction no no okay but listen we get lost here let me do some work Hegel today and maybe a little bit tomorrow and some ethics okay so I want to begin with again the basic difference between this kind of organic evolution and what Hegel means by a dialectical process organic evolution is to put it very simply a self-deployment of a global universal principle at all levels at the individual level you have an organism of course everything changes your stuff changes you are in contact but through all these gradual changes the organism survives this you know like you have a certain we cannot say universality but encompassing entity it is the one how the organic process is how the one survives through the continuous generation corruption and so on things change all the time so that they remain the same how should I put it no and even if we move from individual level to the higher level of a species you can say it's the same it's the individuals die are born struggle but through organic precisely through this very constant dynamic process the species remains the same sustains itself and this is what people usually understand by dialectics how you don't have on the one hand this stability of some universal principle and then the irrelevant empirical movement but that an idea is alive precisely when it maintains itself through its dynamic but for Hegel this precisely is the limit of nature in this okay now you will say but also in nature a species can vanish yes but then it's simple external negation Hegel would have said it's not an inherent negation like I reproduce myself then a stronger animal comes eats me up or an asteroid hits me I die okay but this is Hegel would have put it totally external contingency happen of course but it's irrelevant the principle again of life is that the universality or the one remains by itself through the other you interact with the other and it is this very interaction which sustains you as the one and of course then this sounds very dialectic like oh my god you see how sameness and unity are connected the only way to remain the same is to change blah blah blah with Hegel something different happens let's say we start with one we have a process but then as I developed yesterday you remember when I said how an idea in its realization undermines itself we have one an idea I want to be this then I realize myself in particular life and the idea itself dissolves and another element as it were takes over the change is at this level for Hegel the change the universal itself it's not just it's not just the medium which remains the same the changes are at this level so that we people usually say but it all remains with Hegel within the same totality the subject externalizes itself then it swallows back the otherness and so on yes if the idea comes back to itself but to put it in vulgar terms it's no longer the same idea the idea this disappears and through the process another idea comes up which idea which was previously just a moment here what do I mean by this for example take take Marx puts this in wonderfully simple terms take the relationship of money and capital first money is the encompassing no even at the zero level what runs the process are simply commodities commodity is the master you produce something that you want to exchange and money is just a subordinate moment no in the sense of I don't know I produce something you produce something we we exchange it but then it gets too complex what if you have something that I want and we need a mediator money blah blah blah so it's money here at the elementary level money still appears to be a subordinate moment then medium of exchange then something happens with capital it is that money which was previously a subordinate moment becomes the subject of the process it's no longer commodity-money-commodity it's no longer that you know this again as Marx put it in a simple pre-capitalist exchange the movement is commodity-money-commodity I sell something in order to buy another thing with capital money which was just the subordinating mediator becomes the subject so that it is what encompasses the process the true subject of the process becomes what was previously just a subordinate moment was money itself the same goes for Marx for production Marx put this in wonderful terms when he says that from the individual standpoint of the producer you produce to satisfy your needs but from the global standpoint needs are generated in order to keep the production running that the true goal of the historical process is not to satisfy your need but is the development of production itself and so on and so on is that Say's law sorry Say's law is that an economic ah no how do you call it you see here I'm an idiot please S-A-Y-S what S-A-Y apostrophe okay yeah yeah yeah but what does it mean that what does it say this law the need generates the production or is it that the production generates the need yes Say's law you produce the goods and need will arise yeah although yeah yeah I didn't even know that it's called Say's law because I mean it's already how should I put it the I mean Marx said this already in a different way and so on that the produce the even the early Marx whom I intensely dislike the humanist Marx and so on kind of reverses the usual capitalist formula of a finite need fulfilled by infinite production oh yeah yes yes you made the goods who cares and then eventually the need will just pop arise out of the money yeah yeah you can say that but what I okay but let's remain sorry oh yeah it sounds it sounds like Lewis Mumford's ideas on technological determinism that the way of doing something becomes the reason for doing something yeah yeah but yeah okay but let's not lose a thread now I agree but these are all examples you see how in this is what Hegel how the process is a process of something a subject what happens for Hegel in spiritual properly dialectics is that it's not only that the same reproduces itself through changes is that the very encompassing unity as it were of a process changes what you know something which was previously a subordinated moment becomes the totalizing moment so what happens in history is not that a totality differentiates itself no that historical process is rather a constant process of retotalization what changes it's not that you have let us say let's take state again you don't have a concept of state which then realizes itself in different forms what is for Hegel at stake in historical changes is that the very general notion of what is at what a state means changes you the struggle is at the level of universality let me give you an example it's a simple one but I'm not a let's make something clear with all my evil so that you will not misunderstand me if when I say let's take a simple example the idiot I'm addressing here it's me not you that is to say I'm always obsessed precisely because I'm dealing with theorists who are usually considered difficult to read even for some people bluffing like Lacan Hegel I'm obsessed with this idea if you can't put it clearly don't bluff about it and so on so I the art is and here this is Hegel's strength often to provide a simple formula or image and then all of a sudden oh my god you say now I see it which is why I will later come to a joke which I think it's the ultimate Hegelian joke probably you know it but let's go back to it let's take I think I mentioned this in one of my books let's take the history of philosophy you cannot say this is what I mean and Hegel means with either concrete universality or this change at the level very level of at at of of universality or historicity proper when you read an introduction to philosophy you usually get it's very simple point again that I will be making you usually get some kind of a qualification some kind of general classification it can be of philosophical disciplines or it can be of different orientations you can say what would be the usual thing to say if we that we have today three four main tendencies in philosophy we have different modes of analytic philosophy more traditional philosophy of science language analysis or now more cognitivism brain sciences we have phenomenology we have deconstructionism we have versions of German idealism so you simply differentiate but you know where I challenge you this would be the Hegelian challenge that if you look at it closely you will see that no such mapping is neutral every such mapping presupposes already a certain philosophical standpoint there is no metalanguage it is clear that for example usually such a distinction of philosophy either has an analytic bias where the story is and I can be very arrogant today the story is that only with contemporary analytic philosophy post-classical not that logical empiricism but this contemporary cognitivism philosophy simply became another positive knowledge science so that the gap is continental philosophy is poetry it can have interesting metaphorical insights but a Heideggerian would have put a totally different accent that analytic philosophy is not a proper philosophy at all it's basically just some kind of positive description that the task of philosophy is to think to reflect on I simplify what Heidegger calls Ereignis event or Lichtung in the sense of opening clearing the way the
unknown
meaning of being
meaning of being
Slavoj Žižek
being is disclosed to us in this kind of a ultra
being is disclosed to us in this kind of a ultra
unknown
transcendental reflection of what historically for us today means something really exists
transcendental reflection of what historically for us today means something really exists
Slavoj Žižek
being and so on so for him that's not so what I'm telling you is that is that there is no neutral classification that how should I put it each philosophical orientation is not only itself but it's itself and a certain view on the totality and the point is that you cannot step on your own shoulder and give a neutral classification every classification each the totality of philosophy appears to you
being and so on so for him that's not so what I'm telling you is that is that there is no neutral classification that how should I put it each philosophical orientation is not only itself but it's itself and a certain view on the totality and the point is that you cannot step on your own shoulder and give a neutral classification every classification each the totality of philosophy appears to you
unknown
differently if you are analytic philosopher if
differently if you are analytic philosopher if
Slavoj Žižek
you
you
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are a deconstructionist if you are a deconstructionist the big divide will be
are a deconstructionist if you are a deconstructionist the big divide will be
unknown
between you know this constant attempt how to overcome metaphysics that story is there is a certain metaphysical closure and then the measure is how much did you break through to some other sphere which is why and here Badiou once wonderfully annoyed Wolfgang where Wolfgang was attacking in one debate years ago this stupid
between you know this constant attempt how to overcome metaphysics that story is there is a certain metaphysical closure and then the measure is how much did you break through to some other sphere which is why and here Badiou once wonderfully annoyed Wolfgang where Wolfgang was attacking in one debate years ago this stupid
Slavoj Žižek
evening talks me and Alain as being too dualistic you know you still think in old metaphysical category this that dualistic but he says no today we live in a different era we are entering different domain post-metaphysical blah blah and then of course Badiou in a very nasty way said so your dualism is dualism and non-dualism it's a self-referential dualism which is even a stronger a even a stronger one no also I remember oh this was a nice story oh it was so evil she was so mad although I'm friendly with her Avital Ronell gave a talk some maybe some of you were there some four years ago I think where on Wagner and Nietzsche and her point was that the the greatness of Nietzsche was to find the strength to betray Wagner his master teacher and then she went into all this poetry of how the creative moment of thinking is the betrayal of the master no and then with one bitchy remark Badiou ruined the show he just asked her okay where is your betrayal of Derrida and then it was incredible how this simple remark there was also the other how is he called another deconstructionist follower of Derrida I forgot his name the German guy who was there and Avital's answer was to immediate restore to what Badiou would have called paraconsistent logic yes it's not really always there are exceptions no that then then some how is it called some something that deconstructionist did a very desperate move he said Derrida doesn't need this because he is so creative that he is all the time already betraying himself and so on no it was quite funny to note how they okay that's a nice Hegelian moment but let me go on so philosophy back you see at the very simple point the wager of Hegel's notion of historicity or concrete universality it's not that there is no universality there is universality but that the life is in universality itself we are at the level of and this is history history is history of universalities history means precisely there is no metalanguage in the sense of there is no you cannot step out of view on your shoulder and see globally how things are every all-encompassing view on history is already part of history for example even in politics you remember if you are not too young that now I'm bitchy but it's unfortunately true that you remember that once upon a time in politics there was something called left and right maybe you remember those old old times you know what's here you have this what I'm talking about at its purest left and right yes but you cannot give I challenge you to give a neutral description of the social political space where you will say what is left what is right if you look closely you will see that every description of what is left and what is right is already either leftist or rightist description because left and right are not just two political position within a political space the totality of the space appears to you differently if you are right-winger or a left-winger to put it in very simplistic terms not always but fundamentally the basic rightist motive is that of organic stability first a true right-winger doesn't say I'm a right-winger he likes to they like to distinguish the organic center and the extreme and the extremes for them it would be this organic stable center and the extreme excesses for the left-winger it's the opposite it's that the fundamental fact is struggle as such so you see my point this is what Hegel means by historicity proper that that again it's not only that a universal idea then articulates itself that for example philosophy subdivides into this that philosophy and so on each particularity as it were has its own universality the only way to define what is philosophy is to go through all forms of philosophy not because of a simple evolutionism philosophy develops but again because there is no neutral universal notion of philosophy you know the movement is at the level of universality itself that's that would have been to put it in very simple point and which is why in politics for Hegel the historical moment proper occurs in this in the moments when a certain historical form is threatened and then and Hegel is very clearly here this is the role of so-called great historical personalities heroes who are at the same time criminals criminals in the sense of outside the law the way Hegel is usually read is that yes you as a hero follow your arrogant instincts like of course Caesar wanted power but you are following the line of what Hegel calls cunning of reason you are an unconscious tool of a historical reason you think you are following your narrow motives egotism and so on but in reality you just you are just an instrument of the higher rationality reasoning history and so on and so on I don't think this I don't think it works as such it works like this in Hegel I think we should here take into account what I already said and rather see the process as much more open when a certain historical form is falling apart there is a moment of genuine contingency and then the hero does something and if he is lucky you have here following what in his wonderful text you should read him he is not an idiot the guy who died the British philosopher Bernard Williams you know what he calls moral luck this is a deeply Hegelian idea the idea that that even in morality you cannot in advance measure the ethical status of an act by the purity of intention whatever that it depends on the very ethical status of an act depends on how it turns and so on and so on so again Hegel's idea is rather that something which is a contingency may through a repetition then establish itself as necessity the example here would look precisely Caesar you know Hegel uses this nice paradox that Caesar is at the same time the name of an individual and then it became a title that's for Hegel the function of repetition first you do it you fail but you return as universality in order for a thing to assert itself as necessity it has to repeat itself through again first you have a person Caesar then it's repeated as a title and in a wonderfully funny way Hegel goes through history giving other examples of how Napoleon also had to lose twice first in then in no so that his loss was a loss was a necessity so now let's go on what does Hegel means by this retrospective character of the meaning of our acts that's again now I will do a little bit of Antigone because that's Hegel's basic insight that Hegel is not an intentionalist his position is extremely interesting here very modern if you want Hegel's point is not you do something that you know all this game of intentions you intend to do something that for Hegel the meaning of an act arises only through the act itself for Hegel the rule is rather that you intend to do something and it's only through the meaning sorry through the act itself that you discover retroactively what you really meant to do meaning is not pre-existing Hegel is not here in this sense an internalist Hegel is totally opposed to this false hermeneutic idea of what do I know what did you mean with that I would have to know your mind to know what did you mean it no for Hegel you yourself don't know what you meant you wanted something but it's through the act that your that it becomes retroactively clear to you what you meant and again in a radical reading of Hegel I claim this doesn't mean that somebody else does know that you know that you are just a tool you think you are doing A but some divine intelligence reason history controls it no it's contingency reason of history it's it's it's it's history is as Hegel would at as Gould Stephen Jay Gould the Marxist Darwinian would have put it one big process of exaptation Hegel I think is the arch theorist of exaptation you do something meant for a certain goal it's exapted it's but in a in a improvised open way I will try to prove this to you now by taking the big example from phenomenology Antigone it is so elementary that I didn't want you to to give you the literature but if you want tomorrow I can give you some parts of Hegel which are worth reading I prefer this arrogant way not you read Hegel then we interpret me I tell you what to look in Hegel then you read Hegel more explaining sorry yeah okay so for Hegel what is crucial as you maybe know is the passage from tragedy to comedy comedy is for Hegel the truth of tragedy he doesn't mean the usual thing that tragedy is not see the way Hegel is interpreted here is again in a false pseudo-dialectical way people usually think like this once you are caught into the action you participate it's tragic it's the real struggle but then from the position of the universal idea you see how all these struggles are just moments in a global unity so this is wisdom how oh we fight our struggles but you know all these ridiculously stupid proverbs like aren't we only elements in some higher theater piece written by God we don't even know what and so on and so on I hate proverbs I think proverbs are the stupidity of language embodied what are proverbs whatever you do you always find a proverb to justify it I claim let's say I'm doing something which is a little bit risky I succeed what will be your reaction if you are stupid I'm not saying you are probably you will tell something like I don't know in Slovene we have proverbs like only those who risk profit or whatever like proverbs justifying the necessity of taking a risk let us say that I fail oh you will have again I don't know we in Balkan at least in Slovenia we have a nice proverb this skeptical it says something like you cannot urinate against the wind you know and incidentally if you talk about slips of tongue which produce obscene effects this is my favorite ultimate obscenity once I made this point in Paris at a seminar by Jacques-Alain Miller and I wanted to make this point again and I wanted to translate of course it was in French into French this you cannot piss urinate against the wind I confused the French words and I confused shit I instead of on ne peut pisser I said on ne peut pécher you cannot cheat contre le vent and Miller was here he just looked coldly at me and said the wind must be really strong in your country and so on I know these were nice moments of my life experience there okay but let's okay let's go on so it's not this position of wisdom that Hegel means by the passage from tragedy to comedy he means something else what he wants to illustrate apropos Antigone is again precisely this retroactivity of the true meaning of our acts you do something retrospectively you discover but for Hegel this discovery is constitutive you get my point it's not that some higher intelligence knew from the very beginning no there is no reasoning history in this sense reason is always retroactive you can tell a story but only afterwards okay what's Hegel's point of Antigone Antigone for Hegel deploys what happens when a subject acts upon the premises of some what Hegel calls ethics of immediate substantial custom what the idea is that you know how Antigone acts confronting Creon it's not a reflective acting it's not the idea her point is not to argue in this typical modern way conflicting ethical claims she simply does it because it's her nature to do it she is referring as a fact to some something some unwritten laws compel her to do it what she is doing and for Hegel this immediate reliance on this ethical substance you know Antigone is not thinking strategically like in certain situation you act like this like that it's this kind of ethical substantial immediacy here is this beautiful quote Zeus did not announce those laws laws which justify her resistance to Creon Zeus did not announce those laws to me and justice living with the gods below sent no such laws for men I did not think anything which you proclaimed strong enough to let a mortal override the gods and their unwritten and unchanging laws they are not just for today or yesterday but exist forever and no one knows where they first appeared so I did not mean to let a fear of any human will lead to my punishment among the gods so again her position here is what Hegel calls immediate ethical substance you rely on your let's call it very naively spontaneous ethical instinct I cannot do it otherwise that's the substantial justice that is an organic part of my being Hegel is very precise here he doesn't oppose this to freedom now let's do a little bit of analysis Hegel is not saying that Antigone is as it were dominated by some compulsive mechanism no no this is already the modern notion if you experience something as some kind of a blind mechanism which compels you to act in a certain way it means you already have a minimum of distance to experience it as something externally imposed which is why Hegel is totally right to say that this idea of l'homme machine with humans are just victims dominated by some objective mechanism this is a typical position of modern freedom because you know you already in order to experience something as a compulsion you already must have a minimal position outside if you are in the compulsion it's not a compulsion now this is why Antigone is for Hegel also the figure of love what is love love is on the one hand the ultimate freedom we all know you cannot fall in love on a on an order you can be although okay it's more complex in politics everything is possible we do say you must love your parents you must love your country but that's another point let's not go what I'm saying is that let's say if you fall in love that's the paradox of love on the one hand it's free free in the sense that you shouldn't be if you are forced by yourself or by an external authority to love somebody it's no longer love so love is in this sense free you feel all your being in authentic passionate love but at the same time it's not free in the sense that you have absolutely no choice you know what I mean like you cannot say no I will not point out so that you will not you must already probably have a long list to report me to some politically correct committee or what I don't want to act but okay let's I will look up okay so that you will not you know if I say now I want to fall in love it's a lady there there there let's compare the moment I approach it's not love love is always the choice of love is always retroactive in authentic love you never know when you fall in love all of a sudden retroactively you discover I am in love you cannot the now is never here and here you have I'm so sad we don't have time for it the most subversive beautiful speculations of the other great German idealist Schelling who goes into this how the highest freedom is always unconscious namely contrary to the common sense which tells us free acts must be conscious for Schelling the ultimate freedom is unconscious in the sense of this fundamental decision which you with your conscious ego like fundamental decision like the choice of a love partner for example which is contingent totally free like love is by definition contingent you never know in whom love can be totally arbitrary you never know in whom you end up falling in love but the point is that it is necessarily experienced as something not even blindly imposed it's simply your nature you cannot do it otherwise and I like this Schelling's nice totalitarian view his idea is that even if you have no choice you are still fully responsible for it that what you cannot do is to do is to say he even takes this theological examples he says okay slightly anti-Semitic I'm sorry the example he says it was forever decided determined in the very fate of Judas that he will betray Christ he didn't have a choice it was his destiny but nonetheless he is fully responsible for it and then he makes a much more appropriate not such a stupid anti-Semitic concrete example and it's true when he says that when you encounter a truly evil person and I did encounter some of them it's true you can see that their evil is part of their nature they simply are like that but nonetheless they are responsible okay Schelling's solution of this enigma which you find already in Kant is a wonderful one is a kind of a transcendental a priori act it sounds idealist but it's not it's very close to what in psychoanalysis we would have called the choice of the fundamental fantasy that in some kind of atemporal a priori act we are as Sartre would have put it responsible for our project for what we are of course in our temporal reality we experience this as our nature you cannot change it but fundamentally at an unconscious level we are responsible for it and this is how also Freud says when you know Freud already answers this boring Foucauldian reproach before Foucault's time of course that psychoanalysis is comparable to confession you have to confess your blah blah no Freud says psychoanalysis is much worse in confession you are responsible for what you did for blah blah in for for what you know you should tell everything in psychoanalysis you are responsible even for what you don't know and what you didn't do and so on no because again it's this choice of a fundamental fun but okay now let's go further here you can see the difference between what Hegel calls the substantial ethics this naivety of ethical substance where you simply act like this because you cannot do it otherwise and the modern ethics the modern ethics for Hegel is the paradigm of modern ethics is Immanuel Kant there Kant brings to extreme this idea of reflexive character of all ethical norms in the sense of for Kant the laws that you have moral laws moral norms whatever that you follow are never simply given to you you are responsible for them this is what Kant means by subjective autonomy and so on which is exactly the opposite of Antigone he doesn't want to say oh you are free to act autonomously no what Kant prohibits is you know this typical ethical excuse let's say I have to hurt you as part of my duty I have to do something because of my moral duty which will hurt you and you are my friend and then the usual hypocritical excuse is I'm sorry but I know it will hurt you but I cannot help it it's not my choice it's my duty no you cannot say this for Kant for Kant you are not only responsible to do your duty you are also responsible to define what your duty is you should stand behind it there is no again this is typical modernity there is no substantial other which guarantees as it were to you that this is your duty that's modern freedom it's kind of a more reflexive freedom it's not only freedom you can follow your duty or not it's freedom in the sense of responsibility or so to put it in another way people usually say there is no excuse for not doing your duty you have to do it Kant is adding another twist to it his point is there is also no excuse for doing your duty in the sense of you cannot say sorry that's my duty no you have to stand fully behind it this is why going back to the start sorry give you a good example yes yesterday the Scottish Justice Minister yes I gestured yesterday also yeah and he says I'm doing my job I didn't choose this moment I am doing my job and he stood behind it he didn't blame anybody I don't remember if it was him or what or whatever but he was he you know what bothered me okay let's not lose time on this but I would like to reply to you just for example you know what interests me if that I have no sympathy for terrorist blah blah but something did intrigue me if you watch TV did you notice that Scottish guy I think the father of one of the victims at some time who said if that is true it really puts everything in the new light that they discovered that there was some break into where the luggage was kept at Heathrow the night before for this flight and that not only they didn't inquire into this but that this entire event was suppressed which is with great probability probably where the bomb was I mean if this is true then it's truly it's not just Arab terrorists looking for excuses if you want in that actual truth the real story is there is a strong suspicion by not the usual suspects yeah but by mainstream media that something is being suppressed that he really is not guilty yeah more likely grand and illegitimate yeah again I'm not here too paranoiac I don't buy those stories although again I know there are some shady tricks you know those stories of the September 11th was all staged by I don't know enough about it no but generally I tend to be more skeptical you know why because my position is that ultimately I don't think it matters what matters is how it was used ideologically I don't I think that paranoiac theories tend to overdo their point what they don't get is that the point they are trying to make can be made also without this paranoiac surplus as they put it no but okay let's go back to Kant so you know this story here I respectfully disagree with Hannah Arendt this story that Kant is the philosopher of unconditional duty whatever you should do your duty and that in this sense Eichmann was genuinely a Kantian because you know that Eichmann's defense was a Kantian one he explicitly referred to Kant he said I just did what I perceived as my duty my duty was to follow the orders for my country and Führer's law command was for me my duty so I was just a Kantian I think it's totally wrong because what Kant prohibits you is precisely this way of erasing it's not me I was just following orders no you have to stand behind you cannot you cannot turn yourself just into an instrument that's what Kant's autonomy is it's a much more radical position much more radical position than it may appear and incidentally don't dismiss Kant as too easy Kant is an extremely interesting philosopher where things get so complex there is no Hegel without Kant because my view of history of philosophy is a very simple one you will laugh true philosophy is something which started with Kant and ended with Hegel before they were doing some confused intuitions after they tried to overturn him but nobody even understood Hegel and so on and so on everything happened there so what is so interesting in Kant here is the same as with Hegel let's do a short we are back to Hegel I didn't lose my track Hegelian critique of Kant Kant often makes a philosophical choice and then as Badiou would have put it he behaves paraconsistently no he wants to withdraw he is afraid of the consequence which is why today we should repeat Kant and I think what Lacan did is to repeat Kant in this sense Lacanian ethics of psychoanalysis in a way is very Kantian what do I mean by this let me give you a couple of examples which will interest you first minor examples which are funny but crucial you know how Kant often says something and then is afraid of the consequences and withdraws for example Kant asks the question at some point in his metaphysics of morals rather of customs Sitten are there situations where you are allowed to kill another human being with impunity then he he enumerates two such possibilities one is the relatively obvious one in his life the duel of honor apart from war which is collective killing of course the duel if you have a duel I challenge you you kill me it's okay it may not be legal but it's somehow ethically acceptable for me to give you maybe then he does an example which is terrifying to kill an illegitimate child and he uses the terrifying parallel with smuggled commodity he said in the same way that a state has the right to destroy a smuggled commodity because it physically exists but not legally it's not covered by the law in the same way an illegitimate child exists just physically not legally and parents have the right to kill it the mother and then in a typical Kantian move in a footnote he said of course this doesn't mean we should really do it blah blah blah but it's there another Kantian madness and Hegel was shocked by this you know in the same book metaphysics of morals Kant's extremely brutally consequent definition of marriage you must know it it's wonderful that it's the contract between the two adults of a mutual use of sex organs for pleasure none of this you know higher unity blah blah and Kant gives a wonderful answer when okay let's not go into it what I want to tell you is that he is consequent here because it's not just this one point because if you look at the page later this is Kant at his comical best he asks the question if a husband runs away from a wife does the wife have the right to call police to bring the husband back Kant's answer is yes why because the husband ran away with a piece of property which according to the marriage contract was the property of a wife the penis so it's not some spiritual unity it's just you know bringing back property and so on and so on now let's go to more serious waters but what would Hegel answer about the contract pretty boy that Kant doesn't see the higher spiritual unity and that it's not just sexual pleasure this is Hegel at his worst I claim then he plays this all the spiritual unity stuff and so on okay but then where things go really great is in what is maybe the best the most provocative Kant the late Kant he writes his last big book on it's called Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone where he as you probably know proposes this strange category of and you will see immediately why the oscillation is crucial what he first calls diabolical evil what's his problem there his problem is that you could be there are elementary forms of evil which are simple egotism like I don't know I don't know you have money there I push you away I steal the money why because I want the money for profitable reasons or whatever I sorry for tasteless examples I rape you for pleasure I humiliate you to win or whatever it's you know it's evil things you do for obvious profitable reasons and Kant is well aware that these reasons can be that this works even for good and that if you do it for some what Kant calls pathological reason Kant doesn't mean it in the sense of criminal pathology but in the sense of contingent depending on contingent immediate empirical circumstances it disqualifies you what you do as a true ethical act for example I help you but I do this even if I am not aware of it in order to impress others no that what really pushes me is how nice I will appear in the eyes of others or even a step further even if it's only that it makes me feel well that I will admire myself it's also disqualifies it so then for Kant a true ethical act must be done that's his famous definition purely autonomously only for the sake of duty you did it because you knew you have to do it because it's your duty not because of any profit even it's a very sublime profit of feeling well then Kant encounters a problem where he asks the question but is it possible also to imagine a radical diabolical evil along the same lines an evil which you do not because of any profit
evening talks me and Alain as being too dualistic you know you still think in old metaphysical category this that dualistic but he says no today we live in a different era we are entering different domain post-metaphysical blah blah and then of course Badiou in a very nasty way said so your dualism is dualism and non-dualism it's a self-referential dualism which is even a stronger a even a stronger one no also I remember oh this was a nice story oh it was so evil she was so mad although I'm friendly with her Avital Ronell gave a talk some maybe some of you were there some four years ago I think where on Wagner and Nietzsche and her point was that the the greatness of Nietzsche was to find the strength to betray Wagner his master teacher and then she went into all this poetry of how the creative moment of thinking is the betrayal of the master no and then with one bitchy remark Badiou ruined the show he just asked her okay where is your betrayal of Derrida and then it was incredible how this simple remark there was also the other how is he called another deconstructionist follower of Derrida I forgot his name the German guy who was there and Avital's answer was to immediate restore to what Badiou would have called paraconsistent logic yes it's not really always there are exceptions no that then then some how is it called some something that deconstructionist did a very desperate move he said Derrida doesn't need this because he is so creative that he is all the time already betraying himself and so on no it was quite funny to note how they okay that's a nice Hegelian moment but let me go on so philosophy back you see at the very simple point the wager of Hegel's notion of historicity or concrete universality it's not that there is no universality there is universality but that the life is in universality itself we are at the level of and this is history history is history of universalities history means precisely there is no metalanguage in the sense of there is no you cannot step out of view on your shoulder and see globally how things are every all-encompassing view on history is already part of history for example even in politics you remember if you are not too young that now I'm bitchy but it's unfortunately true that you remember that once upon a time in politics there was something called left and right maybe you remember those old old times you know what's here you have this what I'm talking about at its purest left and right yes but you cannot give I challenge you to give a neutral description of the social political space where you will say what is left what is right if you look closely you will see that every description of what is left and what is right is already either leftist or rightist description because left and right are not just two political position within a political space the totality of the space appears to you differently if you are right-winger or a left-winger to put it in very simplistic terms not always but fundamentally the basic rightist motive is that of organic stability first a true right-winger doesn't say I'm a right-winger he likes to they like to distinguish the organic center and the extreme and the extremes for them it would be this organic stable center and the extreme excesses for the left-winger it's the opposite it's that the fundamental fact is struggle as such so you see my point this is what Hegel means by historicity proper that that again it's not only that a universal idea then articulates itself that for example philosophy subdivides into this that philosophy and so on each particularity as it were has its own universality the only way to define what is philosophy is to go through all forms of philosophy not because of a simple evolutionism philosophy develops but again because there is no neutral universal notion of philosophy you know the movement is at the level of universality itself that's that would have been to put it in very simple point and which is why in politics for Hegel the historical moment proper occurs in this in the moments when a certain historical form is threatened and then and Hegel is very clearly here this is the role of so-called great historical personalities heroes who are at the same time criminals criminals in the sense of outside the law the way Hegel is usually read is that yes you as a hero follow your arrogant instincts like of course Caesar wanted power but you are following the line of what Hegel calls cunning of reason you are an unconscious tool of a historical reason you think you are following your narrow motives egotism and so on but in reality you just you are just an instrument of the higher rationality reasoning history and so on and so on I don't think this I don't think it works as such it works like this in Hegel I think we should here take into account what I already said and rather see the process as much more open when a certain historical form is falling apart there is a moment of genuine contingency and then the hero does something and if he is lucky you have here following what in his wonderful text you should read him he is not an idiot the guy who died the British philosopher Bernard Williams you know what he calls moral luck this is a deeply Hegelian idea the idea that that even in morality you cannot in advance measure the ethical status of an act by the purity of intention whatever that it depends on the very ethical status of an act depends on how it turns and so on and so on so again Hegel's idea is rather that something which is a contingency may through a repetition then establish itself as necessity the example here would look precisely Caesar you know Hegel uses this nice paradox that Caesar is at the same time the name of an individual and then it became a title that's for Hegel the function of repetition first you do it you fail but you return as universality in order for a thing to assert itself as necessity it has to repeat itself through again first you have a person Caesar then it's repeated as a title and in a wonderfully funny way Hegel goes through history giving other examples of how Napoleon also had to lose twice first in then in no so that his loss was a loss was a necessity so now let's go on what does Hegel means by this retrospective character of the meaning of our acts that's again now I will do a little bit of Antigone because that's Hegel's basic insight that Hegel is not an intentionalist his position is extremely interesting here very modern if you want Hegel's point is not you do something that you know all this game of intentions you intend to do something that for Hegel the meaning of an act arises only through the act itself for Hegel the rule is rather that you intend to do something and it's only through the meaning sorry through the act itself that you discover retroactively what you really meant to do meaning is not pre-existing Hegel is not here in this sense an internalist Hegel is totally opposed to this false hermeneutic idea of what do I know what did you mean with that I would have to know your mind to know what did you mean it no for Hegel you yourself don't know what you meant you wanted something but it's through the act that your that it becomes retroactively clear to you what you meant and again in a radical reading of Hegel I claim this doesn't mean that somebody else does know that you know that you are just a tool you think you are doing A but some divine intelligence reason history controls it no it's contingency reason of history it's it's it's it's history is as Hegel would at as Gould Stephen Jay Gould the Marxist Darwinian would have put it one big process of exaptation Hegel I think is the arch theorist of exaptation you do something meant for a certain goal it's exapted it's but in a in a improvised open way I will try to prove this to you now by taking the big example from phenomenology Antigone it is so elementary that I didn't want you to to give you the literature but if you want tomorrow I can give you some parts of Hegel which are worth reading I prefer this arrogant way not you read Hegel then we interpret me I tell you what to look in Hegel then you read Hegel more explaining sorry yeah okay so for Hegel what is crucial as you maybe know is the passage from tragedy to comedy comedy is for Hegel the truth of tragedy he doesn't mean the usual thing that tragedy is not see the way Hegel is interpreted here is again in a false pseudo-dialectical way people usually think like this once you are caught into the action you participate it's tragic it's the real struggle but then from the position of the universal idea you see how all these struggles are just moments in a global unity so this is wisdom how oh we fight our struggles but you know all these ridiculously stupid proverbs like aren't we only elements in some higher theater piece written by God we don't even know what and so on and so on I hate proverbs I think proverbs are the stupidity of language embodied what are proverbs whatever you do you always find a proverb to justify it I claim let's say I'm doing something which is a little bit risky I succeed what will be your reaction if you are stupid I'm not saying you are probably you will tell something like I don't know in Slovene we have proverbs like only those who risk profit or whatever like proverbs justifying the necessity of taking a risk let us say that I fail oh you will have again I don't know we in Balkan at least in Slovenia we have a nice proverb this skeptical it says something like you cannot urinate against the wind you know and incidentally if you talk about slips of tongue which produce obscene effects this is my favorite ultimate obscenity once I made this point in Paris at a seminar by Jacques-Alain Miller and I wanted to make this point again and I wanted to translate of course it was in French into French this you cannot piss urinate against the wind I confused the French words and I confused shit I instead of on ne peut pisser I said on ne peut pécher you cannot cheat contre le vent and Miller was here he just looked coldly at me and said the wind must be really strong in your country and so on I know these were nice moments of my life experience there okay but let's okay let's go on so it's not this position of wisdom that Hegel means by the passage from tragedy to comedy he means something else what he wants to illustrate apropos Antigone is again precisely this retroactivity of the true meaning of our acts you do something retrospectively you discover but for Hegel this discovery is constitutive you get my point it's not that some higher intelligence knew from the very beginning no there is no reasoning history in this sense reason is always retroactive you can tell a story but only afterwards okay what's Hegel's point of Antigone Antigone for Hegel deploys what happens when a subject acts upon the premises of some what Hegel calls ethics of immediate substantial custom what the idea is that you know how Antigone acts confronting Creon it's not a reflective acting it's not the idea her point is not to argue in this typical modern way conflicting ethical claims she simply does it because it's her nature to do it she is referring as a fact to some something some unwritten laws compel her to do it what she is doing and for Hegel this immediate reliance on this ethical substance you know Antigone is not thinking strategically like in certain situation you act like this like that it's this kind of ethical substantial immediacy here is this beautiful quote Zeus did not announce those laws laws which justify her resistance to Creon Zeus did not announce those laws to me and justice living with the gods below sent no such laws for men I did not think anything which you proclaimed strong enough to let a mortal override the gods and their unwritten and unchanging laws they are not just for today or yesterday but exist forever and no one knows where they first appeared so I did not mean to let a fear of any human will lead to my punishment among the gods so again her position here is what Hegel calls immediate ethical substance you rely on your let's call it very naively spontaneous ethical instinct I cannot do it otherwise that's the substantial justice that is an organic part of my being Hegel is very precise here he doesn't oppose this to freedom now let's do a little bit of analysis Hegel is not saying that Antigone is as it were dominated by some compulsive mechanism no no this is already the modern notion if you experience something as some kind of a blind mechanism which compels you to act in a certain way it means you already have a minimum of distance to experience it as something externally imposed which is why Hegel is totally right to say that this idea of l'homme machine with humans are just victims dominated by some objective mechanism this is a typical position of modern freedom because you know you already in order to experience something as a compulsion you already must have a minimal position outside if you are in the compulsion it's not a compulsion now this is why Antigone is for Hegel also the figure of love what is love love is on the one hand the ultimate freedom we all know you cannot fall in love on a on an order you can be although okay it's more complex in politics everything is possible we do say you must love your parents you must love your country but that's another point let's not go what I'm saying is that let's say if you fall in love that's the paradox of love on the one hand it's free free in the sense that you shouldn't be if you are forced by yourself or by an external authority to love somebody it's no longer love so love is in this sense free you feel all your being in authentic passionate love but at the same time it's not free in the sense that you have absolutely no choice you know what I mean like you cannot say no I will not point out so that you will not you must already probably have a long list to report me to some politically correct committee or what I don't want to act but okay let's I will look up okay so that you will not you know if I say now I want to fall in love it's a lady there there there let's compare the moment I approach it's not love love is always the choice of love is always retroactive in authentic love you never know when you fall in love all of a sudden retroactively you discover I am in love you cannot the now is never here and here you have I'm so sad we don't have time for it the most subversive beautiful speculations of the other great German idealist Schelling who goes into this how the highest freedom is always unconscious namely contrary to the common sense which tells us free acts must be conscious for Schelling the ultimate freedom is unconscious in the sense of this fundamental decision which you with your conscious ego like fundamental decision like the choice of a love partner for example which is contingent totally free like love is by definition contingent you never know in whom love can be totally arbitrary you never know in whom you end up falling in love but the point is that it is necessarily experienced as something not even blindly imposed it's simply your nature you cannot do it otherwise and I like this Schelling's nice totalitarian view his idea is that even if you have no choice you are still fully responsible for it that what you cannot do is to do is to say he even takes this theological examples he says okay slightly anti-Semitic I'm sorry the example he says it was forever decided determined in the very fate of Judas that he will betray Christ he didn't have a choice it was his destiny but nonetheless he is fully responsible for it and then he makes a much more appropriate not such a stupid anti-Semitic concrete example and it's true when he says that when you encounter a truly evil person and I did encounter some of them it's true you can see that their evil is part of their nature they simply are like that but nonetheless they are responsible okay Schelling's solution of this enigma which you find already in Kant is a wonderful one is a kind of a transcendental a priori act it sounds idealist but it's not it's very close to what in psychoanalysis we would have called the choice of the fundamental fantasy that in some kind of atemporal a priori act we are as Sartre would have put it responsible for our project for what we are of course in our temporal reality we experience this as our nature you cannot change it but fundamentally at an unconscious level we are responsible for it and this is how also Freud says when you know Freud already answers this boring Foucauldian reproach before Foucault's time of course that psychoanalysis is comparable to confession you have to confess your blah blah no Freud says psychoanalysis is much worse in confession you are responsible for what you did for blah blah in for for what you know you should tell everything in psychoanalysis you are responsible even for what you don't know and what you didn't do and so on no because again it's this choice of a fundamental fun but okay now let's go further here you can see the difference between what Hegel calls the substantial ethics this naivety of ethical substance where you simply act like this because you cannot do it otherwise and the modern ethics the modern ethics for Hegel is the paradigm of modern ethics is Immanuel Kant there Kant brings to extreme this idea of reflexive character of all ethical norms in the sense of for Kant the laws that you have moral laws moral norms whatever that you follow are never simply given to you you are responsible for them this is what Kant means by subjective autonomy and so on which is exactly the opposite of Antigone he doesn't want to say oh you are free to act autonomously no what Kant prohibits is you know this typical ethical excuse let's say I have to hurt you as part of my duty I have to do something because of my moral duty which will hurt you and you are my friend and then the usual hypocritical excuse is I'm sorry but I know it will hurt you but I cannot help it it's not my choice it's my duty no you cannot say this for Kant for Kant you are not only responsible to do your duty you are also responsible to define what your duty is you should stand behind it there is no again this is typical modernity there is no substantial other which guarantees as it were to you that this is your duty that's modern freedom it's kind of a more reflexive freedom it's not only freedom you can follow your duty or not it's freedom in the sense of responsibility or so to put it in another way people usually say there is no excuse for not doing your duty you have to do it Kant is adding another twist to it his point is there is also no excuse for doing your duty in the sense of you cannot say sorry that's my duty no you have to stand fully behind it this is why going back to the start sorry give you a good example yes yesterday the Scottish Justice Minister yes I gestured yesterday also yeah and he says I'm doing my job I didn't choose this moment I am doing my job and he stood behind it he didn't blame anybody I don't remember if it was him or what or whatever but he was he you know what bothered me okay let's not lose time on this but I would like to reply to you just for example you know what interests me if that I have no sympathy for terrorist blah blah but something did intrigue me if you watch TV did you notice that Scottish guy I think the father of one of the victims at some time who said if that is true it really puts everything in the new light that they discovered that there was some break into where the luggage was kept at Heathrow the night before for this flight and that not only they didn't inquire into this but that this entire event was suppressed which is with great probability probably where the bomb was I mean if this is true then it's truly it's not just Arab terrorists looking for excuses if you want in that actual truth the real story is there is a strong suspicion by not the usual suspects yeah but by mainstream media that something is being suppressed that he really is not guilty yeah more likely grand and illegitimate yeah again I'm not here too paranoiac I don't buy those stories although again I know there are some shady tricks you know those stories of the September 11th was all staged by I don't know enough about it no but generally I tend to be more skeptical you know why because my position is that ultimately I don't think it matters what matters is how it was used ideologically I don't I think that paranoiac theories tend to overdo their point what they don't get is that the point they are trying to make can be made also without this paranoiac surplus as they put it no but okay let's go back to Kant so you know this story here I respectfully disagree with Hannah Arendt this story that Kant is the philosopher of unconditional duty whatever you should do your duty and that in this sense Eichmann was genuinely a Kantian because you know that Eichmann's defense was a Kantian one he explicitly referred to Kant he said I just did what I perceived as my duty my duty was to follow the orders for my country and Führer's law command was for me my duty so I was just a Kantian I think it's totally wrong because what Kant prohibits you is precisely this way of erasing it's not me I was just following orders no you have to stand behind you cannot you cannot turn yourself just into an instrument that's what Kant's autonomy is it's a much more radical position much more radical position than it may appear and incidentally don't dismiss Kant as too easy Kant is an extremely interesting philosopher where things get so complex there is no Hegel without Kant because my view of history of philosophy is a very simple one you will laugh true philosophy is something which started with Kant and ended with Hegel before they were doing some confused intuitions after they tried to overturn him but nobody even understood Hegel and so on and so on everything happened there so what is so interesting in Kant here is the same as with Hegel let's do a short we are back to Hegel I didn't lose my track Hegelian critique of Kant Kant often makes a philosophical choice and then as Badiou would have put it he behaves paraconsistently no he wants to withdraw he is afraid of the consequence which is why today we should repeat Kant and I think what Lacan did is to repeat Kant in this sense Lacanian ethics of psychoanalysis in a way is very Kantian what do I mean by this let me give you a couple of examples which will interest you first minor examples which are funny but crucial you know how Kant often says something and then is afraid of the consequences and withdraws for example Kant asks the question at some point in his metaphysics of morals rather of customs Sitten are there situations where you are allowed to kill another human being with impunity then he he enumerates two such possibilities one is the relatively obvious one in his life the duel of honor apart from war which is collective killing of course the duel if you have a duel I challenge you you kill me it's okay it may not be legal but it's somehow ethically acceptable for me to give you maybe then he does an example which is terrifying to kill an illegitimate child and he uses the terrifying parallel with smuggled commodity he said in the same way that a state has the right to destroy a smuggled commodity because it physically exists but not legally it's not covered by the law in the same way an illegitimate child exists just physically not legally and parents have the right to kill it the mother and then in a typical Kantian move in a footnote he said of course this doesn't mean we should really do it blah blah blah but it's there another Kantian madness and Hegel was shocked by this you know in the same book metaphysics of morals Kant's extremely brutally consequent definition of marriage you must know it it's wonderful that it's the contract between the two adults of a mutual use of sex organs for pleasure none of this you know higher unity blah blah and Kant gives a wonderful answer when okay let's not go into it what I want to tell you is that he is consequent here because it's not just this one point because if you look at the page later this is Kant at his comical best he asks the question if a husband runs away from a wife does the wife have the right to call police to bring the husband back Kant's answer is yes why because the husband ran away with a piece of property which according to the marriage contract was the property of a wife the penis so it's not some spiritual unity it's just you know bringing back property and so on and so on now let's go to more serious waters but what would Hegel answer about the contract pretty boy that Kant doesn't see the higher spiritual unity and that it's not just sexual pleasure this is Hegel at his worst I claim then he plays this all the spiritual unity stuff and so on okay but then where things go really great is in what is maybe the best the most provocative Kant the late Kant he writes his last big book on it's called Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone where he as you probably know proposes this strange category of and you will see immediately why the oscillation is crucial what he first calls diabolical evil what's his problem there his problem is that you could be there are elementary forms of evil which are simple egotism like I don't know I don't know you have money there I push you away I steal the money why because I want the money for profitable reasons or whatever I sorry for tasteless examples I rape you for pleasure I humiliate you to win or whatever it's you know it's evil things you do for obvious profitable reasons and Kant is well aware that these reasons can be that this works even for good and that if you do it for some what Kant calls pathological reason Kant doesn't mean it in the sense of criminal pathology but in the sense of contingent depending on contingent immediate empirical circumstances it disqualifies you what you do as a true ethical act for example I help you but I do this even if I am not aware of it in order to impress others no that what really pushes me is how nice I will appear in the eyes of others or even a step further even if it's only that it makes me feel well that I will admire myself it's also disqualifies it so then for Kant a true ethical act must be done that's his famous definition purely autonomously only for the sake of duty you did it because you knew you have to do it because it's your duty not because of any profit even it's a very sublime profit of feeling well then Kant encounters a problem where he asks the question but is it possible also to imagine a radical diabolical evil along the same lines an evil which you do not because of any profit
unknown
that
that
Slavoj Žižek
you will get from it pleasure power
you will get from it pleasure power
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humiliating the other
humiliating the other
Slavoj Žižek
whatever but just for the sake of it that you are as it
whatever but just for the sake of it that you are as it
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were evil
were evil
Slavoj Žižek
out of principle and here again he oscillates he starts by affirming it but then he quickly not explicitly but if you follow closely you can see it he gets the terrifying consequence which is that if you allow for an evil act like this radical evil then it is undistinguishable from the good because Kant defines good as something that you do just for the sake of principle not for pathological reasons not because it bring you esteem pleasure money but just because you get to do it now if you allow for this kind of radical evil the and in this sense here things get complicated this is why Kant then is forced to save his notion of the good is forced to proclaim that this kind of diabolical radical evil is not possible evil done just for the sake of it but that he then quickly reinterprets diabolical radical evil not as an act
out of principle and here again he oscillates he starts by affirming it but then he quickly not explicitly but if you follow closely you can see it he gets the terrifying consequence which is that if you allow for an evil act like this radical evil then it is undistinguishable from the good because Kant defines good as something that you do just for the sake of principle not for pathological reasons not because it bring you esteem pleasure money but just because you get to do it now if you allow for this kind of radical evil the and in this sense here things get complicated this is why Kant then is forced to save his notion of the good is forced to proclaim that this kind of diabolical radical evil is not possible evil done just for the sake of it but that he then quickly reinterprets diabolical radical evil not as an act
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which is done just
which is done just
Slavoj Žižek
for the sake of it but as you know which would be maybe it's more complex the one of the definitions of this kind of diabolical evil you know Milton Paradise Lost you know that famous statement by Devil evil be thou my good so you do evil because you treat it as the supreme good not for any pathological profit and so on so then Kant reinterprets radical evil as simply a radical tendency in our human nature to do evil just that evil is not just a kind of a contingent element some of us have it some not it's an something that cannot be eradicated an eternal constitutive propensity of our being which totally which of course makes it much more inoffensive what's Kant's problem this is why Lacan then made you know the line proposed that Kant with Sade what does Kant aim at why is this because for Lacan when he says Kant-Sade is the truth of Kant be very careful Lacan's point is not Kant was secretly a sadist this is the standard reading no that beneath this Kantian duty is this sadistic pleasure haha you have to do your duty even if it would be a catastrophe this kind of a super-ego you know like the proverbial school teacher who beats the children his pupils and says to himself oh it makes me cry but I have to do it it's duty it's for their own good but really it's for your sadistic deep pleasure this is how Kant's moral revolution no what Lacan claims is that it's no it's not Kant who is a sadist it's Sade who is a Kantian that is to say Marquis de Sade's injunction of this unconditional pleasure is beyond the pleasure principle it's somehow it's in a way a choice of evil for the sake of it and as I repeated in two of my books you know which is the best example of this I cannot restrain from repeating it do you know Don Giovanni not earlier version there is more complex but Mozart's opera you know what happens at the end when the Stone Guest arrives and confronts Don Giovanni read it carefully the libretto the Stone Guest is not there to punish Don Giovanni he comes there to help him he basically tells Don Giovanni your life is at an end you will now die now I give you a final chance if before dying you repent your sins then you still can be saved if not you go to hell you will burn forever what Don Giovanni does is he said no no no seven times I don't repent but look this is pure ethical act because Don Giovanni knows he has nothing to gain by remaining faithful to his sinful life he is at the end the only he gains nothing if he repents he can be saved if he persists in his sins he will burn forever and nonetheless he insists it's evil as precisely evil be thou my good it's even if you pay the highest price I insist in my evil and this brings us to this typical romantic figure you know the Byronist demonic hero this is where things get interesting with Kant you can also see where Sade was a Kantian at another level if you read Marquis de Sade there is first an obvious ways to see way to see where Sade is Kantian I mean like one of the most boring books that I've read which is why I didn't read it to the end is that Days of Sodom no you know how it gets more and more purely formalized up to number there are at least some descriptions of the acts but then around two-three hundred it gets more and more a purely mathematical permutation like take a cow a dog two young ladies and two boys and they screw in this way then the next one take one cow three boys it becomes kind of how should I put it it's purely intellectual cold it's the coldest thing you can imagine there is no earthly passion in it and to go on if you read Sade carefully you can see what's his problem he starts as a primitive naturalist he claims we have a nature which not only wants to create but also wants to destroy the natural way is this circle of life things have to fall apart so that new things are born and so on so you have this then anti-oppressive message religion is unnatural is suppressing our true nature so let's throw off religious chains let's fully live our nature but then in a much more interesting way Sade gets the point that in this way we just exchange one chain one slavery for another we are no longer we are no longer slaves of God but we still remain slaves of nature and here then comes to Sade the idea of what he calls absolute crime an act of violence which is so radical that it doesn't only fit the flow doesn't only fit the flow of nature but that it interrupts the very flow of nature like it interrupts this which is why Sade was so interested in this radical death where you don't just kill someone so that then out of this another person is born whatever but you as it were stop the very cycle of reproduction and so on and what's my point here that what Kant calls an autonomous act is precisely the same thing it's as Kant put it something which cannot be accounted for in the terms of the chain of natural causalities it's an act ex nihilo out of nowhere so things are much more much more complex here but nonetheless let's go a little bit further before the break if you allow me with Hegel so again back to Antigone she is the opposite of this modern reflexive ethics where you don't just do your duty the most more painful part is to decide what your duty is you know this is a typically modern Freudian but already in Hegel you find it suspicion that your this is unimaginable for Antigone for this naive world of antiquity the idea that you cannot trust your substantial ethical instincts they can cheat you can experience something as your duty but what if you are doing it for some secretly pathological reasons to profit in a secret way this universalized suspicion is typically modern attitude okay let's go on with Antigone so this is her immediate ethical nature but Hegel tries to prove that there is already a crack in this edifice that Antigone's universe collapses how his point is that this is her starting point of Antigone the this unwritten eternal laws which are simply here are telling her that a dead person should be properly buried through the ritual and so on and that's her duty that's what she is she cannot help it but once she does the forbidden act performing the funeral rite for how do you pronounce it I pronounce it usually the Greek way Polyneikes how do you pronounce it Polyneices whatever okay I will stick to the Greek way and confronts the consequences the threat that she will die while still alive you know that she will be excommunicated buried alive only then she becomes aware of the actual rule that guided her through the act she discovers beneath this universality one has to respect unwritten laws say which we bury she said only for the brother and it's interesting how traumatic this point is do you know that there is if you know the history of interpretations of Antigone do you know that for a long time one of the predominant way to get rid of it for example Goethe claimed this must have been a later insertion it cannot be it's so vulgar the idea only for my brother and now comes a friendly step at my friend enemy even Judith Butler in her book on Antigone goes into this like it's not only brother brother everyone is embarrassed by this motive but for Hegel that's the whole point through the act she thinks before acting that I'm doing this out of a general principle when confronted with the true consequences of the act she gets becomes aware that no she wouldn't have done it if another of her relatives or friends would have been left unburied there it's only for her brother why now we come to the crucial point which will bring us to Antigone's limitation of course what you will say is ho ho it's incest of course incestuous love and then you have one maybe good argument to claim it it's that okay maybe it wouldn't have been incest in another family but fuck it we are talking about Oedipus' family no if it's not incest here then where where it is but I claim no I claim that and this is the genius of Jacques Lacan's interpretation of Antigone in his seminar of ethics how he never mentions incest I think we should apply here that wonderful rule by Lévi-Strauss who claimed maybe it's false I don't know that he discovered Claude Lévi-Strauss the anthropologist a tribe which claimed that all dreams have sexual meaning all except sexual dreams so I claim that precisely because this is Oedipus' family where incest was like practical affair of the day you cannot persist this into it why then why the brother again Antigone was able to formulate this insight only after she accomplished her act only once she did it did she become aware of what she did of what really of what really motivated her so again through the act we pass from abstract universality respect the dead they all deserve funeral rites to this concrete privileged example why okay Hegel gives then a wonderful reason why because the link to the brother is the link to pure otherness what kind of other is brother here we encounter the Hegel's reading that here we encounter the limitation of Antigone brother is for Antigone an other deprived of all personal features which is why Antigone's deed you know when she says it doesn't matter what my brother did it may all be true what Creon claims he was a traitor wanted to destroy our city and so on but but he is my brother so Hegel's point is that that's the limit of this naive ethics that the respect you pay to another no longer concerns the living but the dead to love some someone for what he is not for what he did is ultimately to love him as a corpse that is to say that's for him the inherent limitation again of Antigone of this naive love that it works only if the other whom you unconditionally love is is reduced to a dead one okay here Antigone catastrophically again confronts the limitation and so on and so on but how then do we pass from this to tragedy ah this is the beauty of Hegel Hegel's point and I think he was absolutely right is that it's not that after the Greek tragedies there comes comedy either already in the Greek time you know how it was usually done four games I think per day this like not double bill as in Hollywood when I was young but quadruple bill how should they put it no that it was you know three tragedies and a comedy not only in this way and also not only historically in the sense that you know that later in Roman times we have comedies for Hegel there is a precise point precisely as a reaction to realizing the deadlock of her love this mortifying dimension that a comical element enters occurs in Antigone herself let me be precise here how Hegel noticed something weird happening to Antigone after she pathetically assumes her fate you know after she is condemned and she knows she will die she totally changes if you look the play attentively you will even notice that only at that time she becomes beautiful sublime before she is like a nasty bitch remember her conversations with Ismene her sister how brutal she is towards her and so on I mean if there is a so-called warm human being in Antigone it's Ismene by the way Antigone is a bitch I mean fuck you I wouldn't like to have Antigone for my sister if you ask me no because she would celebrate me after I'm dead her story what she does to cope with her predicament is that's Hegel's point she starts to act she loses this natural immediacy I organically do my duty she displays already a level of self-awareness and reflectivity about her role let me give you one of the quotes where she says I've heard about a guest of ours daughter of Tantalus from Phrygia she went to an excruciating death in Sipylus right on the mountain peak the stone there just like clinging ivy wore her down and now so people say the snow and rain never leave her there as she laments below her weeping eyes her neck is wet with tears god brings me to a final rest which most resembles hers why is this comedy for Hegel she is already composing poems on herself you know what she is doing here it's no longer immediate suffering it's as if I'm dying and I say imagine I'm like a hero and so on you know what I mean she is immediately as it were mythifying herself she is using metaphors to designate herself displaying a self-consciously artistic ability involved in playing the role of a character in other words at this moment Antigone is no longer immediately Antigone as we put it she starts to play Antigone she starts to construct a role of Antigone and this for Hegel this is how he defines comedy for him in comedy he gives a very strange definition of comedy which appears counter-intuitive but I think it's wonderfully correct for Hegel in a comedy the gap between the actor as real person and the role he acts is displayed on the stage itself what does Hegel mean by this not that you do not act your role but you comment on it but something different something that let me give you an example what makes it comical a certain situation is that you act a certain role but then and it's part of your role as an actor I'm not talking about now as acting that you include some kind of ironic comments on what on what you are doing example for example do you remember those I think this is the famous feature of those I Love Lucy Lucille Ball series how you know when something ridiculous happens she looks into the camera and has you know yeah this kind you know that's the moment of reflexivity but this is not the real Lucille Ball this is the comical reflexivity like directly addressing the public what's happening here and so on and the idea is that Antigone at that point becomes Lucille Ball if you want her version her version of saying this so again for Hegel the crucial thing that happened with the passage from comedy tragedy to comedy is that you lose this organic immediacy you no longer are what you are you play yourself you play a role of what you are now let's go a step further this Hegel's point is here a wonderful one it's quite the opposite of the usual postmodern the bad postmodernism the postmodern version of the so-called return of the real wisdom you know some people think it's somehow how should I put it avant-garde radical when you awaken people from the illusion of reality a theater and when you make them aware that it's only a theater piece it's only a film I don't know when I was young for example it was fashionable to slaughter a chicken on stage really the idea was this pseudo-Brechtianism you know destroy the illusion make people aware and so on now here if you allow me a brief reference to Lacanian real this is not Lacanian real this is exactly I claim the escape from the real for Lacan real is precisely that what you try to escape from when you escape into reality you are afraid that the illusion would grab you too deeply that the real of the illusion would grab you how do I mean this for example where is the real in sexuality sorry back to my vulgar nature I read somewhere that one of the medieval strategies to cure a man from lust for women was to look at a beautiful I will not show at any of you not to be a truth let's say this is a woman okay to look at a woman who is now young beautiful and imagine either how she will be forty years from now without teeth stinking and so on whatever or even more evil imagine how she is within her body you know it look a nice skin but then you know all the shit the intestines and so on and so on so the idea is confront that real and it will cure you of desire but that's not the Lacanian real the Lacanian real is the this is wisdom this is wisdom confront reality and so on for Lacan the real is precisely the pure power of this surface which may drag you into it Real is for Lacan pure appearance it's not this idea of we have appearances and we have to penetrate the appearances into the real Real is not what you get at once you tear away the the screen of appearances Real is the how should I call it spectral power of appearance as such you know which movie portrays this nicely I hope you saw it fuck it I like it I admit it Jim Carrey The Mask the real is not the real behind the mask is just his fucking stupid face and his face is stupid enough the real is and here you see why real is for Lacan death drive and compulsion to repeat real you remember when he puts the mask on he gets caught into this absolute compulsion to act like a cartoon character this is the spectral undead real he becomes an entity of pure drive he he even uses once I mean the character he plays a wonderful phrase where he says where he says it's horrible I'm totally lost because I can do whatever I want and so on so what I and I made if you don't believe to me here you can encounter I made a very brutal I don't want to repeat it it wasn't nice experiment with my son here when he was young children are not stupid here I showed him my I approached him with a mask on he was a little bit afraid then I put the mask off so he oh it's only your stupid fucking father then I put the mask on he was terrified even more again and he was right is it connected with two no connected with two in the sense that he knew that there is more reality in the mask that you know the real is not the reality behind the mask the real is that spectral excess of the mask itself yes so what if we confront for instance the Aristotle and Bertolt Brecht notion of theater in Lacanian terms the real is the Aristotle catharsis I mean oh you got me here here I okay there are limits to my bluffing I'm tempted to say I don't know I don't know enough to answer you properly because I maybe should have say this but I am much spontaneously I am on the side of Brecht here the way I would have saved Brecht would have been to claim that this reading of Brecht this so-called estrangement alienation yeah I prefer not to say alienation because for Brecht is the opposite no like it's not alienation in this Marxist sense it's just this denaturalization no I think is not Brecht's deepest message is not be aware although Brecht sometimes talks about this be aware that it's only an illusion reality behind no Brecht was fully aware of this logic of the mask which is why for example my favorite Brecht of course the most Stalinist one is that famous Die Maßnahme the measure taken where a couple of comrades have to sacrifice one of their it was usually read as a justification of Stalinist purges which is totally not true that play precisely was never performed in Soviet Union and they and you have this wonderful notion also of a forced choice then the colleagues tell to the young revolutionary be a tell him there is a custom now we have to kill you now we will ask you do you want do you accept to be killed but whatever you say we will kill you or something like giving you a choice but but what is so crucial there if you read the play is that what was the mistake of the young comrade that when he saw suffering he tear off the mask the mask of the general scene of the play is when he and says but people I'm here to help you and so on and so on that was the betrayal that was the betrayal which is why again and then you have all this Brecht's extreme almost comic revolutionary masochism where after killing him I love this the chorus of these comrades sings a song where they say oh if I were to be the last piece of shit of dirt which has to be cleansed so that the room is clean at the end and so on and so on but again what I'm saying this is why also Brecht was against psychology he was always for a form you know Brecht also played this game of and this is what I like in Brecht this his estrangement I think it's not so much reality it's actors commenting on their role but not from the standpoint of as real person but from much more abstract theoretical point like a live I like in Brecht this totally unrealistic way where you know an actor comes on stage addresses the public and says I am a journalist who is paid by imperialists to spread reactionary propaganda now I will approach a worker and I will try to corrupt him and so on and so on this kind of a fake transparency which again I don't think it's it's reality I mean Brecht was deeply fascinated by the real in the mask know that above his table he had the Japanese mask of some evil spirit this kind of a distorted face and he wrote a wonderful poem terrifying maybe claiming that this mask is there to remind him how difficult is to be truly evil that any idiot can be good you just help people blah blah but to sorry ah no do you want something to say or okay you mentioned backtracking you said you mentioned Lacan in the spectral stage of the mirror stage which he the synonym for that is the real stage ah no no no ah that's a good point no no no I just wanted to make one point about that and that is actually in physics it's true there are only surfaces Richard Feynman Nobel Prize for Electrodynamics yeah he used to bring a brick in to his students and he'd say okay these are the surfaces of the brick show me inside the brick and then he'd smash it with a hammer and he'd say okay what's inside the brick and they'd see oh it has two more surfaces so they'd say well we don't know then he'd smash it again and say okay now we have a hundred surfaces and then there'd be nothing but white rubble and they'd say okay now we have millions of surfaces there's nothing but surface in this brick there's nothing in it so the whole idea that the surface is not real and that we have to go inside to find it is actually physically not true it's just physically but what I would have said is two thing what I already said is that nonetheless isn't it that in a way the moment you are at the level of life it is true you know what I mean like it's counter-intuitive to say I will again have to be tasteless okay I'll be tasteless against myself that okay this is surface but then you cut in and it's another surface it's not simply another surface there is there is the skin is effectively a surface in some sense you cannot say you know that when you which is why my ultimate dream that I like is this idea to treat skin as another dress for example I am still shocked I remember when I was a young boy I remember a wonderful cartoon a little bit anti-feminist where a woman after a party washes herself and goes to the toilet and puts with a cream and soap off first all the maquillage lips and then she goes on washing her face and puts off the eyes the nose and so on so after finishing the wash she is just a head like that kind of a I mean you know what I again I think that here but I'll go a step further I agree that the notion of depth is purely a how should I put it there are only surfaces but there is an irreducible depth effect and this is what Lacan's point if you must know it that wonderful old story that Lacan refers returns to again and again when Lacan tries to explain why only human why what is the difference between humans and animals what humans maybe it's wrong I spoke with some biologists maybe who study animal behavior they were ambiguous some of them okay it doesn't matter it's just the logic you know that famous sorry if I repeat myself you must know it example that Lacan refers returns to again and again about legendary ancient myth of a competition Zeuxis-Parrhasius between the two painters ancient and they compete who will do a better painting first one of them I always forget which one paints paints a painting of grapes it's so realistic that when the birds see it they hit it to eat the grapes then the other one invites him to his room and the painter sees a curtain and asks him okay show me what is behind the curtain what did you paint and he said nothing I just painted the curtain no and he wins that is to say that the true illusion is not what is behind the curtain the true illusion is to organize the surface in such a way that it generates the trompe l'oeil sorry trompe l'oeil yeah but in this precise sense that you and Lacan's idea is this is femininity as masquerade it's not nothing behind the curtain the illusion is the very illusion of depth how should I put it and then we can debate this is how then Lacan connects this kind of cheating with the idea that animals can be cheated in a simple direct way of you pretend that you are A but you are in reality B only humans can cheat according to Lacan I know it you know it if it's true in a reflexive way that you cheat in such a way that you say A because you you count on the fact that the other will think that this is only a mask for B but you cheat by telling the truth that only humans can cheat by telling the truth like let's say another sadistic example sorry I love you all but let's say this will be really evil let's say but I will meet you this is just my evil mind you know what Aristotle said my god Plato there are only two kinds of persons those who have evil dreams and those who do evil things in reality no I am of the first kind let's say let's say I I know that you know that you suspect me that I want to avoid you talking with you your boring questions after the class no let us say that I know that you know so let us say you encounter me on the street and I you ask me where will you be in the evening up here or down in the lobby now I tell you I will be down in the lobby my idea is that because you suspect me you will come here he was lying no but I will count on this and I will really stay in the lobby how should I put it no you know that to lie to lie to lie to lie in the guise of truth or how should I put it to feign to feign as Lacan puts it to play to play that's for Lacan the truly symbolic trick and so sorry immediately back to this point so for Lacan this is this is how should I put it this is the symbolic symbolic cheating as such and sorry you want well there's a famous Jewish joke about the two businessmen from Minsk that's Lacan's big example yes that where
for the sake of it but as you know which would be maybe it's more complex the one of the definitions of this kind of diabolical evil you know Milton Paradise Lost you know that famous statement by Devil evil be thou my good so you do evil because you treat it as the supreme good not for any pathological profit and so on so then Kant reinterprets radical evil as simply a radical tendency in our human nature to do evil just that evil is not just a kind of a contingent element some of us have it some not it's an something that cannot be eradicated an eternal constitutive propensity of our being which totally which of course makes it much more inoffensive what's Kant's problem this is why Lacan then made you know the line proposed that Kant with Sade what does Kant aim at why is this because for Lacan when he says Kant-Sade is the truth of Kant be very careful Lacan's point is not Kant was secretly a sadist this is the standard reading no that beneath this Kantian duty is this sadistic pleasure haha you have to do your duty even if it would be a catastrophe this kind of a super-ego you know like the proverbial school teacher who beats the children his pupils and says to himself oh it makes me cry but I have to do it it's duty it's for their own good but really it's for your sadistic deep pleasure this is how Kant's moral revolution no what Lacan claims is that it's no it's not Kant who is a sadist it's Sade who is a Kantian that is to say Marquis de Sade's injunction of this unconditional pleasure is beyond the pleasure principle it's somehow it's in a way a choice of evil for the sake of it and as I repeated in two of my books you know which is the best example of this I cannot restrain from repeating it do you know Don Giovanni not earlier version there is more complex but Mozart's opera you know what happens at the end when the Stone Guest arrives and confronts Don Giovanni read it carefully the libretto the Stone Guest is not there to punish Don Giovanni he comes there to help him he basically tells Don Giovanni your life is at an end you will now die now I give you a final chance if before dying you repent your sins then you still can be saved if not you go to hell you will burn forever what Don Giovanni does is he said no no no seven times I don't repent but look this is pure ethical act because Don Giovanni knows he has nothing to gain by remaining faithful to his sinful life he is at the end the only he gains nothing if he repents he can be saved if he persists in his sins he will burn forever and nonetheless he insists it's evil as precisely evil be thou my good it's even if you pay the highest price I insist in my evil and this brings us to this typical romantic figure you know the Byronist demonic hero this is where things get interesting with Kant you can also see where Sade was a Kantian at another level if you read Marquis de Sade there is first an obvious ways to see way to see where Sade is Kantian I mean like one of the most boring books that I've read which is why I didn't read it to the end is that Days of Sodom no you know how it gets more and more purely formalized up to number there are at least some descriptions of the acts but then around two-three hundred it gets more and more a purely mathematical permutation like take a cow a dog two young ladies and two boys and they screw in this way then the next one take one cow three boys it becomes kind of how should I put it it's purely intellectual cold it's the coldest thing you can imagine there is no earthly passion in it and to go on if you read Sade carefully you can see what's his problem he starts as a primitive naturalist he claims we have a nature which not only wants to create but also wants to destroy the natural way is this circle of life things have to fall apart so that new things are born and so on so you have this then anti-oppressive message religion is unnatural is suppressing our true nature so let's throw off religious chains let's fully live our nature but then in a much more interesting way Sade gets the point that in this way we just exchange one chain one slavery for another we are no longer we are no longer slaves of God but we still remain slaves of nature and here then comes to Sade the idea of what he calls absolute crime an act of violence which is so radical that it doesn't only fit the flow doesn't only fit the flow of nature but that it interrupts the very flow of nature like it interrupts this which is why Sade was so interested in this radical death where you don't just kill someone so that then out of this another person is born whatever but you as it were stop the very cycle of reproduction and so on and what's my point here that what Kant calls an autonomous act is precisely the same thing it's as Kant put it something which cannot be accounted for in the terms of the chain of natural causalities it's an act ex nihilo out of nowhere so things are much more much more complex here but nonetheless let's go a little bit further before the break if you allow me with Hegel so again back to Antigone she is the opposite of this modern reflexive ethics where you don't just do your duty the most more painful part is to decide what your duty is you know this is a typically modern Freudian but already in Hegel you find it suspicion that your this is unimaginable for Antigone for this naive world of antiquity the idea that you cannot trust your substantial ethical instincts they can cheat you can experience something as your duty but what if you are doing it for some secretly pathological reasons to profit in a secret way this universalized suspicion is typically modern attitude okay let's go on with Antigone so this is her immediate ethical nature but Hegel tries to prove that there is already a crack in this edifice that Antigone's universe collapses how his point is that this is her starting point of Antigone the this unwritten eternal laws which are simply here are telling her that a dead person should be properly buried through the ritual and so on and that's her duty that's what she is she cannot help it but once she does the forbidden act performing the funeral rite for how do you pronounce it I pronounce it usually the Greek way Polyneikes how do you pronounce it Polyneices whatever okay I will stick to the Greek way and confronts the consequences the threat that she will die while still alive you know that she will be excommunicated buried alive only then she becomes aware of the actual rule that guided her through the act she discovers beneath this universality one has to respect unwritten laws say which we bury she said only for the brother and it's interesting how traumatic this point is do you know that there is if you know the history of interpretations of Antigone do you know that for a long time one of the predominant way to get rid of it for example Goethe claimed this must have been a later insertion it cannot be it's so vulgar the idea only for my brother and now comes a friendly step at my friend enemy even Judith Butler in her book on Antigone goes into this like it's not only brother brother everyone is embarrassed by this motive but for Hegel that's the whole point through the act she thinks before acting that I'm doing this out of a general principle when confronted with the true consequences of the act she gets becomes aware that no she wouldn't have done it if another of her relatives or friends would have been left unburied there it's only for her brother why now we come to the crucial point which will bring us to Antigone's limitation of course what you will say is ho ho it's incest of course incestuous love and then you have one maybe good argument to claim it it's that okay maybe it wouldn't have been incest in another family but fuck it we are talking about Oedipus' family no if it's not incest here then where where it is but I claim no I claim that and this is the genius of Jacques Lacan's interpretation of Antigone in his seminar of ethics how he never mentions incest I think we should apply here that wonderful rule by Lévi-Strauss who claimed maybe it's false I don't know that he discovered Claude Lévi-Strauss the anthropologist a tribe which claimed that all dreams have sexual meaning all except sexual dreams so I claim that precisely because this is Oedipus' family where incest was like practical affair of the day you cannot persist this into it why then why the brother again Antigone was able to formulate this insight only after she accomplished her act only once she did it did she become aware of what she did of what really of what really motivated her so again through the act we pass from abstract universality respect the dead they all deserve funeral rites to this concrete privileged example why okay Hegel gives then a wonderful reason why because the link to the brother is the link to pure otherness what kind of other is brother here we encounter the Hegel's reading that here we encounter the limitation of Antigone brother is for Antigone an other deprived of all personal features which is why Antigone's deed you know when she says it doesn't matter what my brother did it may all be true what Creon claims he was a traitor wanted to destroy our city and so on but but he is my brother so Hegel's point is that that's the limit of this naive ethics that the respect you pay to another no longer concerns the living but the dead to love some someone for what he is not for what he did is ultimately to love him as a corpse that is to say that's for him the inherent limitation again of Antigone of this naive love that it works only if the other whom you unconditionally love is is reduced to a dead one okay here Antigone catastrophically again confronts the limitation and so on and so on but how then do we pass from this to tragedy ah this is the beauty of Hegel Hegel's point and I think he was absolutely right is that it's not that after the Greek tragedies there comes comedy either already in the Greek time you know how it was usually done four games I think per day this like not double bill as in Hollywood when I was young but quadruple bill how should they put it no that it was you know three tragedies and a comedy not only in this way and also not only historically in the sense that you know that later in Roman times we have comedies for Hegel there is a precise point precisely as a reaction to realizing the deadlock of her love this mortifying dimension that a comical element enters occurs in Antigone herself let me be precise here how Hegel noticed something weird happening to Antigone after she pathetically assumes her fate you know after she is condemned and she knows she will die she totally changes if you look the play attentively you will even notice that only at that time she becomes beautiful sublime before she is like a nasty bitch remember her conversations with Ismene her sister how brutal she is towards her and so on I mean if there is a so-called warm human being in Antigone it's Ismene by the way Antigone is a bitch I mean fuck you I wouldn't like to have Antigone for my sister if you ask me no because she would celebrate me after I'm dead her story what she does to cope with her predicament is that's Hegel's point she starts to act she loses this natural immediacy I organically do my duty she displays already a level of self-awareness and reflectivity about her role let me give you one of the quotes where she says I've heard about a guest of ours daughter of Tantalus from Phrygia she went to an excruciating death in Sipylus right on the mountain peak the stone there just like clinging ivy wore her down and now so people say the snow and rain never leave her there as she laments below her weeping eyes her neck is wet with tears god brings me to a final rest which most resembles hers why is this comedy for Hegel she is already composing poems on herself you know what she is doing here it's no longer immediate suffering it's as if I'm dying and I say imagine I'm like a hero and so on you know what I mean she is immediately as it were mythifying herself she is using metaphors to designate herself displaying a self-consciously artistic ability involved in playing the role of a character in other words at this moment Antigone is no longer immediately Antigone as we put it she starts to play Antigone she starts to construct a role of Antigone and this for Hegel this is how he defines comedy for him in comedy he gives a very strange definition of comedy which appears counter-intuitive but I think it's wonderfully correct for Hegel in a comedy the gap between the actor as real person and the role he acts is displayed on the stage itself what does Hegel mean by this not that you do not act your role but you comment on it but something different something that let me give you an example what makes it comical a certain situation is that you act a certain role but then and it's part of your role as an actor I'm not talking about now as acting that you include some kind of ironic comments on what on what you are doing example for example do you remember those I think this is the famous feature of those I Love Lucy Lucille Ball series how you know when something ridiculous happens she looks into the camera and has you know yeah this kind you know that's the moment of reflexivity but this is not the real Lucille Ball this is the comical reflexivity like directly addressing the public what's happening here and so on and the idea is that Antigone at that point becomes Lucille Ball if you want her version her version of saying this so again for Hegel the crucial thing that happened with the passage from comedy tragedy to comedy is that you lose this organic immediacy you no longer are what you are you play yourself you play a role of what you are now let's go a step further this Hegel's point is here a wonderful one it's quite the opposite of the usual postmodern the bad postmodernism the postmodern version of the so-called return of the real wisdom you know some people think it's somehow how should I put it avant-garde radical when you awaken people from the illusion of reality a theater and when you make them aware that it's only a theater piece it's only a film I don't know when I was young for example it was fashionable to slaughter a chicken on stage really the idea was this pseudo-Brechtianism you know destroy the illusion make people aware and so on now here if you allow me a brief reference to Lacanian real this is not Lacanian real this is exactly I claim the escape from the real for Lacan real is precisely that what you try to escape from when you escape into reality you are afraid that the illusion would grab you too deeply that the real of the illusion would grab you how do I mean this for example where is the real in sexuality sorry back to my vulgar nature I read somewhere that one of the medieval strategies to cure a man from lust for women was to look at a beautiful I will not show at any of you not to be a truth let's say this is a woman okay to look at a woman who is now young beautiful and imagine either how she will be forty years from now without teeth stinking and so on whatever or even more evil imagine how she is within her body you know it look a nice skin but then you know all the shit the intestines and so on and so on so the idea is confront that real and it will cure you of desire but that's not the Lacanian real the Lacanian real is the this is wisdom this is wisdom confront reality and so on for Lacan the real is precisely the pure power of this surface which may drag you into it Real is for Lacan pure appearance it's not this idea of we have appearances and we have to penetrate the appearances into the real Real is not what you get at once you tear away the the screen of appearances Real is the how should I call it spectral power of appearance as such you know which movie portrays this nicely I hope you saw it fuck it I like it I admit it Jim Carrey The Mask the real is not the real behind the mask is just his fucking stupid face and his face is stupid enough the real is and here you see why real is for Lacan death drive and compulsion to repeat real you remember when he puts the mask on he gets caught into this absolute compulsion to act like a cartoon character this is the spectral undead real he becomes an entity of pure drive he he even uses once I mean the character he plays a wonderful phrase where he says where he says it's horrible I'm totally lost because I can do whatever I want and so on so what I and I made if you don't believe to me here you can encounter I made a very brutal I don't want to repeat it it wasn't nice experiment with my son here when he was young children are not stupid here I showed him my I approached him with a mask on he was a little bit afraid then I put the mask off so he oh it's only your stupid fucking father then I put the mask on he was terrified even more again and he was right is it connected with two no connected with two in the sense that he knew that there is more reality in the mask that you know the real is not the reality behind the mask the real is that spectral excess of the mask itself yes so what if we confront for instance the Aristotle and Bertolt Brecht notion of theater in Lacanian terms the real is the Aristotle catharsis I mean oh you got me here here I okay there are limits to my bluffing I'm tempted to say I don't know I don't know enough to answer you properly because I maybe should have say this but I am much spontaneously I am on the side of Brecht here the way I would have saved Brecht would have been to claim that this reading of Brecht this so-called estrangement alienation yeah I prefer not to say alienation because for Brecht is the opposite no like it's not alienation in this Marxist sense it's just this denaturalization no I think is not Brecht's deepest message is not be aware although Brecht sometimes talks about this be aware that it's only an illusion reality behind no Brecht was fully aware of this logic of the mask which is why for example my favorite Brecht of course the most Stalinist one is that famous Die Maßnahme the measure taken where a couple of comrades have to sacrifice one of their it was usually read as a justification of Stalinist purges which is totally not true that play precisely was never performed in Soviet Union and they and you have this wonderful notion also of a forced choice then the colleagues tell to the young revolutionary be a tell him there is a custom now we have to kill you now we will ask you do you want do you accept to be killed but whatever you say we will kill you or something like giving you a choice but but what is so crucial there if you read the play is that what was the mistake of the young comrade that when he saw suffering he tear off the mask the mask of the general scene of the play is when he and says but people I'm here to help you and so on and so on that was the betrayal that was the betrayal which is why again and then you have all this Brecht's extreme almost comic revolutionary masochism where after killing him I love this the chorus of these comrades sings a song where they say oh if I were to be the last piece of shit of dirt which has to be cleansed so that the room is clean at the end and so on and so on but again what I'm saying this is why also Brecht was against psychology he was always for a form you know Brecht also played this game of and this is what I like in Brecht this his estrangement I think it's not so much reality it's actors commenting on their role but not from the standpoint of as real person but from much more abstract theoretical point like a live I like in Brecht this totally unrealistic way where you know an actor comes on stage addresses the public and says I am a journalist who is paid by imperialists to spread reactionary propaganda now I will approach a worker and I will try to corrupt him and so on and so on this kind of a fake transparency which again I don't think it's it's reality I mean Brecht was deeply fascinated by the real in the mask know that above his table he had the Japanese mask of some evil spirit this kind of a distorted face and he wrote a wonderful poem terrifying maybe claiming that this mask is there to remind him how difficult is to be truly evil that any idiot can be good you just help people blah blah but to sorry ah no do you want something to say or okay you mentioned backtracking you said you mentioned Lacan in the spectral stage of the mirror stage which he the synonym for that is the real stage ah no no no ah that's a good point no no no I just wanted to make one point about that and that is actually in physics it's true there are only surfaces Richard Feynman Nobel Prize for Electrodynamics yeah he used to bring a brick in to his students and he'd say okay these are the surfaces of the brick show me inside the brick and then he'd smash it with a hammer and he'd say okay what's inside the brick and they'd see oh it has two more surfaces so they'd say well we don't know then he'd smash it again and say okay now we have a hundred surfaces and then there'd be nothing but white rubble and they'd say okay now we have millions of surfaces there's nothing but surface in this brick there's nothing in it so the whole idea that the surface is not real and that we have to go inside to find it is actually physically not true it's just physically but what I would have said is two thing what I already said is that nonetheless isn't it that in a way the moment you are at the level of life it is true you know what I mean like it's counter-intuitive to say I will again have to be tasteless okay I'll be tasteless against myself that okay this is surface but then you cut in and it's another surface it's not simply another surface there is there is the skin is effectively a surface in some sense you cannot say you know that when you which is why my ultimate dream that I like is this idea to treat skin as another dress for example I am still shocked I remember when I was a young boy I remember a wonderful cartoon a little bit anti-feminist where a woman after a party washes herself and goes to the toilet and puts with a cream and soap off first all the maquillage lips and then she goes on washing her face and puts off the eyes the nose and so on so after finishing the wash she is just a head like that kind of a I mean you know what I again I think that here but I'll go a step further I agree that the notion of depth is purely a how should I put it there are only surfaces but there is an irreducible depth effect and this is what Lacan's point if you must know it that wonderful old story that Lacan refers returns to again and again when Lacan tries to explain why only human why what is the difference between humans and animals what humans maybe it's wrong I spoke with some biologists maybe who study animal behavior they were ambiguous some of them okay it doesn't matter it's just the logic you know that famous sorry if I repeat myself you must know it example that Lacan refers returns to again and again about legendary ancient myth of a competition Zeuxis-Parrhasius between the two painters ancient and they compete who will do a better painting first one of them I always forget which one paints paints a painting of grapes it's so realistic that when the birds see it they hit it to eat the grapes then the other one invites him to his room and the painter sees a curtain and asks him okay show me what is behind the curtain what did you paint and he said nothing I just painted the curtain no and he wins that is to say that the true illusion is not what is behind the curtain the true illusion is to organize the surface in such a way that it generates the trompe l'oeil sorry trompe l'oeil yeah but in this precise sense that you and Lacan's idea is this is femininity as masquerade it's not nothing behind the curtain the illusion is the very illusion of depth how should I put it and then we can debate this is how then Lacan connects this kind of cheating with the idea that animals can be cheated in a simple direct way of you pretend that you are A but you are in reality B only humans can cheat according to Lacan I know it you know it if it's true in a reflexive way that you cheat in such a way that you say A because you you count on the fact that the other will think that this is only a mask for B but you cheat by telling the truth that only humans can cheat by telling the truth like let's say another sadistic example sorry I love you all but let's say this will be really evil let's say but I will meet you this is just my evil mind you know what Aristotle said my god Plato there are only two kinds of persons those who have evil dreams and those who do evil things in reality no I am of the first kind let's say let's say I I know that you know that you suspect me that I want to avoid you talking with you your boring questions after the class no let us say that I know that you know so let us say you encounter me on the street and I you ask me where will you be in the evening up here or down in the lobby now I tell you I will be down in the lobby my idea is that because you suspect me you will come here he was lying no but I will count on this and I will really stay in the lobby how should I put it no you know that to lie to lie to lie to lie in the guise of truth or how should I put it to feign to feign as Lacan puts it to play to play that's for Lacan the truly symbolic trick and so sorry immediately back to this point so for Lacan this is this is how should I put it this is the symbolic symbolic cheating as such and sorry you want well there's a famous Jewish joke about the two businessmen from Minsk that's Lacan's big example yes that where
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are you going they always lie because they recognize each other I'm going to Minsk and then the
are you going they always lie because they recognize each other I'm going to Minsk and then the
Slavoj Žižek
funny one the person says the truth I'm going to Minsk and yes you say you lie you really are going to Minsk yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Freudian version is but you know who has the best example of this I eternally quote it I'm sorry if I repeat my myself it is the classical one Marx brothers you know that one this guy talks as an idiot acts as an idiot this shouldn't deceive you this guy is an idiot I mean so in this sense Hegel uses exactly the same metaphor where he says that behind the veil of appearances is nothing there is only what we put behind or to put it in another way for Hegel depth is the appearance of depth in the sense of how should I put it depth is a matter of appearance in the sense of there is nothing really behind but you can organize appearances in such a way that the appearance will be generated that there is something behind the appearance how should I put it that all there are are appearances all there are are inconsistencies so what does this mean now just to conclude then you get your fucking break yes a question concerning the real yeah and I'm thinking of the Silence of the Lambs in the movie yeah with the skinning yeah is that because that's yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so I'm trying to see how do you where do you think that the power of the real gets its strength gets where where does the real get its its own strength like where does the mask become you know a frightening thing I mean how is it if you ask yeah I see your question it's a good question maybe I again I don't like to bluff more than necessary I don't think I have a proper answer now what I would have said it's what I would have said is that the point is yes I agree with you and this is linked to the remark you made before no Lacan started with this depreciation of appearance as imaginary and so on and so on I think it's crucial in how only in later Lacan starting from the seminar the the real is no longer this hard real this pseudo-Nietzschean real you know this idea of real is too traumatic too painful so we need screens we need masks to no that the real is this spectral force of appearance as such now my answer would have been it's a very abstract one I know it will not convince you but all I can all I can do now is just to give you a general
funny one the person says the truth I'm going to Minsk and yes you say you lie you really are going to Minsk yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Freudian version is but you know who has the best example of this I eternally quote it I'm sorry if I repeat my myself it is the classical one Marx brothers you know that one this guy talks as an idiot acts as an idiot this shouldn't deceive you this guy is an idiot I mean so in this sense Hegel uses exactly the same metaphor where he says that behind the veil of appearances is nothing there is only what we put behind or to put it in another way for Hegel depth is the appearance of depth in the sense of how should I put it depth is a matter of appearance in the sense of there is nothing really behind but you can organize appearances in such a way that the appearance will be generated that there is something behind the appearance how should I put it that all there are are appearances all there are are inconsistencies so what does this mean now just to conclude then you get your fucking break yes a question concerning the real yeah and I'm thinking of the Silence of the Lambs in the movie yeah with the skinning yeah is that because that's yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so I'm trying to see how do you where do you think that the power of the real gets its strength gets where where does the real get its its own strength like where does the mask become you know a frightening thing I mean how is it if you ask yeah I see your question it's a good question maybe I again I don't like to bluff more than necessary I don't think I have a proper answer now what I would have said it's what I would have said is that the point is yes I agree with you and this is linked to the remark you made before no Lacan started with this depreciation of appearance as imaginary and so on and so on I think it's crucial in how only in later Lacan starting from the seminar the the real is no longer this hard real this pseudo-Nietzschean real you know this idea of real is too traumatic too painful so we need screens we need masks to no that the real is this spectral force of appearance as such now my answer would have been it's a very abstract one I know it will not convince you but all I can all I can do now is just to give you a general
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direction my answer would have been the way Lacan treats fantasy that is to say how does the mask relate to to the its location if a mask masks
direction my answer would have been the way Lacan treats fantasy that is to say how does the mask relate to to the its location if a mask masks
Slavoj Žižek
some symbolic or whatever other content it's
some symbolic or whatever other content it's
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still imaginary if the mask is a mask of nothing it's real you know which I will give you a simple example but maybe it will work which I often use to show this power of real as death drive and compulsion to repeat and so on and so on that's real you remember did you see David Lynch Mulholland Drive you remember that nice scene when they are in some city jazz or whatever club where an actress is singer is singing on stage she collapses the singing goes on this is the moment of the real where as it were it's almost like you know Cheshire
still imaginary if the mask is a mask of nothing it's real you know which I will give you a simple example but maybe it will work which I often use to show this power of real as death drive and compulsion to repeat and so on and so on that's real you remember did you see David Lynch Mulholland Drive you remember that nice scene when they are in some city jazz or whatever club where an actress is singer is singing on stage she collapses the singing goes on this is the moment of the real where as it were it's almost like you know Cheshire
Slavoj Žižek
cat in Alice in Wonderland when the partial object the full the smile survives insists so here ah there is even a better scene that you find along the same lines I really love it it's maybe the best in that underestimated masterpiece by Sergio Leone his last film Once Upon a Time in America you remember at the beginning the phone is ringing endlessly and then you get a whole flashback three minutes then the guy hand picks up the phone but the ringing goes on now of course this is not a magic movie that is to say both in Lynch and here in Sergio Leone you immediately afterwards get a rational explanation in Lynch it's of course that it was a playback in Sergio Leone is simply that the scene we saw somebody picking up the phone was still within the hallucination that it wasn't the real phone and so on but what I'm saying is that this magical moment when some appearance haunts you but appearance beneath which there is nothing I think this is maybe the most horrible experience the experience when appearance is deprived of its substance this is death drive let me give you another example to make it clear are you just scratching or you have a question okay then I just finish then sorry you know usually we say images are just appearances and there is a substance behind this is how for example Schopenhauer interpreted the power of music that why is music more forceful than other arts he said the other arts work through representations images but music in its rhythm directly renders what Schopenhauer calls the will the life force and you could get this excess in a romantic way did you see for example the effect is usually kitschy Chaplin's masterpiece I think City Lights yeah you remember at the end when the girl recognized your skin you have this Puccini-like kitschy triumphant music and then you have the end but the music goes on it's as if you have this excess over the images of pure life force but that would be life drive but then the the example I usually quote maybe you know it it really traumatized me when I saw it it really worked some Balanchine you know the ballet guy staged some piece of Webern Anton Webern you know what's the problem with Webern you have his complete works on three CDs no like Webern's longest piece is ten minutes or something like that no so of course how did Balanchine do it you have dancers dancing on music then music stops they continue to dance I mean the effect was terrifying as if the living dead you know it's as if precisely they are before you took the appearance as representation of the will life force or whatever but then this death drive force of appearance is for me precisely when you subtract the life substance but but the appearance goes on but let me just conclude because then after the break we will go into another line if you allow me just I just want now to overrun another criticism that you may have which is is then my result this kind of extremely boring postmodern stupidity that you know we just play roles there are just appearances there is no authenticity but before I do this sorry you have a question please well I just wanted to add to the the not only the sort of this mask with nothing behind it but the appearance of maybe there being something behind it the phallus is the sort of um like last time when you mentioned the square root of negative one is something to do with the real it also also Lacan you know calls the phallus so in terms of like where it sort of hauntiness comes from yeah there's the hauntiness of the mask with nothing behind it but even in things like the mask the mask that it like twists and kind of like distorts his face that weird distortion that holy shit there is something behind it and there shouldn't
cat in Alice in Wonderland when the partial object the full the smile survives insists so here ah there is even a better scene that you find along the same lines I really love it it's maybe the best in that underestimated masterpiece by Sergio Leone his last film Once Upon a Time in America you remember at the beginning the phone is ringing endlessly and then you get a whole flashback three minutes then the guy hand picks up the phone but the ringing goes on now of course this is not a magic movie that is to say both in Lynch and here in Sergio Leone you immediately afterwards get a rational explanation in Lynch it's of course that it was a playback in Sergio Leone is simply that the scene we saw somebody picking up the phone was still within the hallucination that it wasn't the real phone and so on but what I'm saying is that this magical moment when some appearance haunts you but appearance beneath which there is nothing I think this is maybe the most horrible experience the experience when appearance is deprived of its substance this is death drive let me give you another example to make it clear are you just scratching or you have a question okay then I just finish then sorry you know usually we say images are just appearances and there is a substance behind this is how for example Schopenhauer interpreted the power of music that why is music more forceful than other arts he said the other arts work through representations images but music in its rhythm directly renders what Schopenhauer calls the will the life force and you could get this excess in a romantic way did you see for example the effect is usually kitschy Chaplin's masterpiece I think City Lights yeah you remember at the end when the girl recognized your skin you have this Puccini-like kitschy triumphant music and then you have the end but the music goes on it's as if you have this excess over the images of pure life force but that would be life drive but then the the example I usually quote maybe you know it it really traumatized me when I saw it it really worked some Balanchine you know the ballet guy staged some piece of Webern Anton Webern you know what's the problem with Webern you have his complete works on three CDs no like Webern's longest piece is ten minutes or something like that no so of course how did Balanchine do it you have dancers dancing on music then music stops they continue to dance I mean the effect was terrifying as if the living dead you know it's as if precisely they are before you took the appearance as representation of the will life force or whatever but then this death drive force of appearance is for me precisely when you subtract the life substance but but the appearance goes on but let me just conclude because then after the break we will go into another line if you allow me just I just want now to overrun another criticism that you may have which is is then my result this kind of extremely boring postmodern stupidity that you know we just play roles there are just appearances there is no authenticity but before I do this sorry you have a question please well I just wanted to add to the the not only the sort of this mask with nothing behind it but the appearance of maybe there being something behind it the phallus is the sort of um like last time when you mentioned the square root of negative one is something to do with the real it also also Lacan you know calls the phallus so in terms of like where it sort of hauntiness comes from yeah there's the hauntiness of the mask with nothing behind it but even in things like the mask the mask that it like twists and kind of like distorts his face that weird distortion that holy shit there is something behind it and there shouldn't
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be that's also the power and
be that's also the power and
Slavoj Žižek
fear yeah no no no I agree here yes this I mean one should don't have time now to go this in detail just again I want to make that point clearly why the I think maybe you know it but I cannot restrain repeating it a wonderful movie example of how we can nonetheless gain authenticity but the notion of authenticity that emerges here is not this Actors Studio authenticity you know like this is why I hate Marlon Brando and those guys like as if you know tear down the masks act out your true impulses but what if we define authenticity as a kind of a tragic full identification with the mask itself I'm talking here maybe you know it about a really nice film by Roberto Rossellini maybe you know it I think it's available now difficult to get from General della Rovere it's a story about it takes place in in the north occupied Italy about a small-time crook
fear yeah no no no I agree here yes this I mean one should don't have time now to go this in detail just again I want to make that point clearly why the I think maybe you know it but I cannot restrain repeating it a wonderful movie example of how we can nonetheless gain authenticity but the notion of authenticity that emerges here is not this Actors Studio authenticity you know like this is why I hate Marlon Brando and those guys like as if you know tear down the masks act out your true impulses but what if we define authenticity as a kind of a tragic full identification with the mask itself I'm talking here maybe you know it about a really nice film by Roberto Rossellini maybe you know it I think it's available now difficult to get from General della Rovere it's a story about it takes place in in the north occupied Italy about a small-time crook
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who who is physically very similar to a big resistance leader so the Germans had that leader arrested but he died in prison so the Germans made a plan they arrest this small crook and offer him a deal the resistance that's crucial
who who is physically very similar to a big resistance leader so the Germans had that leader arrested but he died in prison so the Germans made a plan they arrest this small crook and offer him a deal the resistance that's crucial
Slavoj Žižek
to know doesn't yet know that that General della Rovere the big hero is dead so they tell him we will dress you like General della Rovere and we will put you in prison we will put you into prison to mingle with other prisoners as General della Rovere because they will think you are the big resistance hero they will confide you about you know resistance activity so you will tell us what you learn then you can go to Switzerland with money or whatever the guy accepts it but then he identifies with the role he plays the role to the end he is shot as General della Rovere and so on that's for me a very nice example of the authenticity of the mask itself you play to the I prefer much this much more as a model of authenticity the full identification with the mask than this idea of tearing down the mask I already as I mentioned to you at the first or the second day I think this idea of tearing down the mask is always the worst of ideology you know this cheap wisdom of yeah we are not only our ideological roles we are humans and so on yes there's another great example from Jorge Luis Borges in his which one I will plagiarize you the movie version's called Spider's Stratagem by Bertolucci ah yeah yeah yeah and the short story is called Theme of the Traitor and Hero and in the short story set in Ireland in which this son comes back to town where his father's a mythical hero yeah and in it he discovers in fact that his father was not a hero but he betrayed the cause and the partisans or the the the insurrectionists took him as a traitor as a traitor and shot him but but they organized it to look like he was acting for the cause so the traitor becomes the hero yeah yeah yeah yeah but he also assumes it yeah yeah yeah yeah and in the Italian version in the movie the young man visits the hometown where it's set in fascist Italy like ah yeah yeah yeah I get the idea and then he discovers that everybody is in on the play he's the only one that doesn't know oh my god thanks very much give me your name so that then I can put you know how we we do it I love this absolute hypocrisy that when I will be honest I will put a footnote but you know a small footnote at the end of the book I owe this idea to you you know how you can play even a nastier game that so that you you say after writing this book I discovered that a good friend of mine had a similar idea and so on you know all these strategies of cheating and so on you know where I was the nastiest but she was mad at me with Joan Copjec I took an idea from her so in the first version I put a footnote you know you have this phrase typical where you say I borrowed this idea from blah blah but of course it's his idea but all if there are any mistakes misdevelopments they are my fault I just turned it around I said I took this idea from Joan Copjec but I developed it so it's mine but if anything is wrong then fuck it it's her idea and so on unfortunately she disappointed me she had some problems she didn't want to be cele... okay but you know what there are yes speaking Bertolucci I totally agree with you I think the early Bertoluccis are his true masterpieces this one and then of course Prima della rivoluzione Before the Revolution and so on he was ruined I think starting this 20th century Novecento is so-so after that starting with that with Jill Clayburgh La Luna incest story it goes down then movies like The Little Buddha they are stuff for Gulag how should they put it to be okay let's do it now and then we go on you want okay now okay
to know doesn't yet know that that General della Rovere the big hero is dead so they tell him we will dress you like General della Rovere and we will put you in prison we will put you into prison to mingle with other prisoners as General della Rovere because they will think you are the big resistance hero they will confide you about you know resistance activity so you will tell us what you learn then you can go to Switzerland with money or whatever the guy accepts it but then he identifies with the role he plays the role to the end he is shot as General della Rovere and so on that's for me a very nice example of the authenticity of the mask itself you play to the I prefer much this much more as a model of authenticity the full identification with the mask than this idea of tearing down the mask I already as I mentioned to you at the first or the second day I think this idea of tearing down the mask is always the worst of ideology you know this cheap wisdom of yeah we are not only our ideological roles we are humans and so on yes there's another great example from Jorge Luis Borges in his which one I will plagiarize you the movie version's called Spider's Stratagem by Bertolucci ah yeah yeah yeah and the short story is called Theme of the Traitor and Hero and in the short story set in Ireland in which this son comes back to town where his father's a mythical hero yeah and in it he discovers in fact that his father was not a hero but he betrayed the cause and the partisans or the the the insurrectionists took him as a traitor as a traitor and shot him but but they organized it to look like he was acting for the cause so the traitor becomes the hero yeah yeah yeah yeah but he also assumes it yeah yeah yeah yeah and in the Italian version in the movie the young man visits the hometown where it's set in fascist Italy like ah yeah yeah yeah I get the idea and then he discovers that everybody is in on the play he's the only one that doesn't know oh my god thanks very much give me your name so that then I can put you know how we we do it I love this absolute hypocrisy that when I will be honest I will put a footnote but you know a small footnote at the end of the book I owe this idea to you you know how you can play even a nastier game that so that you you say after writing this book I discovered that a good friend of mine had a similar idea and so on you know all these strategies of cheating and so on you know where I was the nastiest but she was mad at me with Joan Copjec I took an idea from her so in the first version I put a footnote you know you have this phrase typical where you say I borrowed this idea from blah blah but of course it's his idea but all if there are any mistakes misdevelopments they are my fault I just turned it around I said I took this idea from Joan Copjec but I developed it so it's mine but if anything is wrong then fuck it it's her idea and so on unfortunately she disappointed me she had some problems she didn't want to be cele... okay but you know what there are yes speaking Bertolucci I totally agree with you I think the early Bertoluccis are his true masterpieces this one and then of course Prima della rivoluzione Before the Revolution and so on he was ruined I think starting this 20th century Novecento is so-so after that starting with that with Jill Clayburgh La Luna incest story it goes down then movies like The Little Buddha they are stuff for Gulag how should they put it to be okay let's do it now and then we go on you want okay now okay
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we will not be able to go through the the entire line but I will try to give you an idea of what Hegel calls reflexivity how this functions in contrast what I announced already at the beginning in contrast to what is usually referred to as this post-Hegelian anti-philosophy this idea that we should break out of the closed circle of philosophical
we will not be able to go through the the entire line but I will try to give you an idea of what Hegel calls reflexivity how this functions in contrast what I announced already at the beginning in contrast to what is usually referred to as this post-Hegelian anti-philosophy this idea that we should break out of the closed circle of philosophical
Slavoj Žižek
idealist representation into some kind of real life foundations my thesis will be in I will take as my example a short story by Italo Calvino which I want to give a twist to it kind of a Stalinist twist making it Hegelian it's a just to give you first an idea of this reflexivity between inside-outside the story is told maybe you know it it's one of these it one of these well-known volumes A King Listens it focuses on the sense of hearing in an anonymous kingdom the royal palace becomes a giant ear and the king obsessed and paralyzed by fears of rebellion tries to hear every fragile sound that reverberates in his palace footsteps of the servants whispers conversations fanfare trumpets at the raising of the flag ceremonies sounds of the city at the outskirts of the palace riots rumble of the riots and so on and so on the king cannot see the source of all these sounds but is obsessed by interpreting their meaning and the destiny they are predicting this interpretive paranoia only seems to so again that's how the king lives it's kind of you know sounds everywhere my god totally paranoic what do they mean and so on and so on is it a plot against me or whatever interpreting all of this then something happens which puts a stop to this interpretive paranoia and completely enchants the king through the window the wind brings in a singing voice of a woman a voice of pure beauty unique irreplaceable for the king it is the sound of freedom he steps out
idealist representation into some kind of real life foundations my thesis will be in I will take as my example a short story by Italo Calvino which I want to give a twist to it kind of a Stalinist twist making it Hegelian it's a just to give you first an idea of this reflexivity between inside-outside the story is told maybe you know it it's one of these it one of these well-known volumes A King Listens it focuses on the sense of hearing in an anonymous kingdom the royal palace becomes a giant ear and the king obsessed and paralyzed by fears of rebellion tries to hear every fragile sound that reverberates in his palace footsteps of the servants whispers conversations fanfare trumpets at the raising of the flag ceremonies sounds of the city at the outskirts of the palace riots rumble of the riots and so on and so on the king cannot see the source of all these sounds but is obsessed by interpreting their meaning and the destiny they are predicting this interpretive paranoia only seems to so again that's how the king lives it's kind of you know sounds everywhere my god totally paranoic what do they mean and so on and so on is it a plot against me or whatever interpreting all of this then something happens which puts a stop to this interpretive paranoia and completely enchants the king through the window the wind brings in a singing voice of a woman a voice of pure beauty unique irreplaceable for the king it is the sound of freedom he steps out
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of the palace
of the palace
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into the open space and mingles there with the crowd now again the first thing you should bear in mind here is that this king is not the traditional monarch but a modern totalitarian tyrant a traditional king doesn't care about his environment he arrogantly ignores it he leaves the worry to prevent plots to his ministers it is the modern leader who is obsessed by plots to rule is to interpret is a
into the open space and mingles there with the crowd now again the first thing you should bear in mind here is that this king is not the traditional monarch but a modern totalitarian tyrant a traditional king doesn't care about his environment he arrogantly ignores it he leaves the worry to prevent plots to his ministers it is the modern leader who is obsessed by plots to rule is to interpret is a
Slavoj Žižek
perfect
perfect
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formula for Stalinism which was the
formula for Stalinism which was the
Slavoj Žižek
system
system
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of endless paranoic hermeneutics so when the king is seduced by the pure feminine voice of immediate life pleasure this is
of endless paranoic hermeneutics so when the king is seduced by the pure feminine voice of immediate life pleasure this is
Slavoj Žižek
obviously although unfortunately not for Calvino himself a fantasy precisely the fantasy of breaking out of the closed circle of representations of rejoining the pure outside of the innocent presence of the feminine voice which is a kind of excess in excess of the self-mirroring prison-house of representations this voice needs no interpretation it only gives body to the voice which enjoys as it were its own exercise but this is again if I got it correctly how Calvino himself proposes the story it's another variation on this old Susan Sontag motive of against interpretation that this vicious circle of interpretation is a kind of closure prison of language of our existence at that the art of life is to break out of this into the fresh air of immediate presence but I think that I will simply try now to of course I disagree with this I don't I think this is a metaphysical myth so how should we rewrite the story if you know my evil Stalinist mind you will already have guessed it how should we rewrite the story to make it the way I want to have it what is missing here is the way this innocent externality of the voice is itself already marked inscribed into the mirror of interpretive representation what we should do is this I think this is how I would have added another just one paragraph to the story when the king exits the palace following the voice he is immediately arrested the feminine voice was an instrument of the plotters to lure him out of the safety of the guarded palace and so on and so on I would like to think that precisely you know this point of externality he clings to he falls into the trap that's the true plot the true plot is not all the rumors and so on the true intelligent plot is precisely to give you a way out which brings us if I may indulge in another ideological reflection maybe you know this line but I like it and nonetheless which brings us to how we should interpret this critique of ideology this how should I call it reference to the obscenity of the sounds themselves the obscene materiality of language voice of symbolic texture maybe you know the story but now I would like to repeat it something happened some you know I come from Slovenia which is south of Austria in south of Austria bordering Slovenia there is a province called Kärnten Carinthia they had the glorious leader haha Jörg Haider you know the well-known proto-fascist populist his card which he played again and again in politics was that which is totally ridiculous that we Slovenes pose a threat to Carinthia that we want to occupy it so his big political motto was Kärnten bleibt deutsch Carinthia will or should remain German how did some friends of mine not of mine friends I met them later leftists counter-attack not as you would have expected with a complex interpretation
obviously although unfortunately not for Calvino himself a fantasy precisely the fantasy of breaking out of the closed circle of representations of rejoining the pure outside of the innocent presence of the feminine voice which is a kind of excess in excess of the self-mirroring prison-house of representations this voice needs no interpretation it only gives body to the voice which enjoys as it were its own exercise but this is again if I got it correctly how Calvino himself proposes the story it's another variation on this old Susan Sontag motive of against interpretation that this vicious circle of interpretation is a kind of closure prison of language of our existence at that the art of life is to break out of this into the fresh air of immediate presence but I think that I will simply try now to of course I disagree with this I don't I think this is a metaphysical myth so how should we rewrite the story if you know my evil Stalinist mind you will already have guessed it how should we rewrite the story to make it the way I want to have it what is missing here is the way this innocent externality of the voice is itself already marked inscribed into the mirror of interpretive representation what we should do is this I think this is how I would have added another just one paragraph to the story when the king exits the palace following the voice he is immediately arrested the feminine voice was an instrument of the plotters to lure him out of the safety of the guarded palace and so on and so on I would like to think that precisely you know this point of externality he clings to he falls into the trap that's the true plot the true plot is not all the rumors and so on the true intelligent plot is precisely to give you a way out which brings us if I may indulge in another ideological reflection maybe you know this line but I like it and nonetheless which brings us to how we should interpret this critique of ideology this how should I call it reference to the obscenity of the sounds themselves the obscene materiality of language voice of symbolic texture maybe you know the story but now I would like to repeat it something happened some you know I come from Slovenia which is south of Austria in south of Austria bordering Slovenia there is a province called Kärnten Carinthia they had the glorious leader haha Jörg Haider you know the well-known proto-fascist populist his card which he played again and again in politics was that which is totally ridiculous that we Slovenes pose a threat to Carinthia that we want to occupy it so his big political motto was Kärnten bleibt deutsch Carinthia will or should remain German how did some friends of mine not of mine friends I met them later leftists counter-attack not as you would have expected with a complex interpretation