The Irony of Buddhism
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2012 · 1:36:27 · 2,040 words
communism-socialismhegel-dialecticsreligion-theologyideologyrevolution-violencepsychoanalysisphilosophy-generalhistory
Žižek diagnoses the contemporary left's failure to articulate a positive alternative after the financial crisis, contrasting strategic-conformist opportunism (Talleyrand, Stalin's Marxism-as-objective-science) with the structure of authentic revolutionary commitment. Drawing on Jansenism, Calvinist predestination, and Hegelian retroactivity, he argues that genuine political acts and authentic faith share the same logical structure: they retroactively create the conditions of their own possibility rather than choosing from pre-given options. The talk weaves together philosophy of religion, Lacan, Badiou, Dupuy, and Hegel to articulate a non-opportunist theory of the act.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 12
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “over-orthodoxy”
A critical strategy in which a thinker follows an ideology's premises so rigorously and literally that the result becomes subversive, exposing internal contradictions; Žižek attributes the concept to Lucien Goldmann and applies it to Ayn Rand.
Catholic theological movement advocating predestination; Žižek identifies it as closest to his own ontological orientation because it combines Catholic sacramentalism with Protestant necessity.
Used not theologically but as the materialist-Hegelian structure whereby necessity is readable only retroactively from what has happened, not as a pre-set determinism.
Once a contingent event occurs, the entire past is restructured so that it appears as having always been a preparation for that event, making the contingent appear necessary after the fact.
Following Badiou, a rupture that violates the existing field of possibilities and cannot be reduced to strategic calculation within that field.
A genuine act is not strategic choice among pre-given possibilities but a gesture that retroactively creates its own possibility; it appears crazy before the fact and becomes understandable only after.
The opposed mode to the authentic act: surveying available possibilities and choosing the best option, which for Žižek is always conformist and incapable of genuine change.
as “retroactively creates its own possibility”
Žižek's formula for the paradoxical logic of the act: by doing something seemingly impossible, the act makes itself retroactively appear possible and necessary.
as “authentic faith”
The structure of genuine belief in which you do not first evaluate reasons and then believe, but must already be inside the belief in order for the reasons to be intelligible; analogous to the revolutionary commitment.
Stalin's scientistic claim that Marxist theory provides neutral objective insight into historical necessity, which Žižek treats as a cynical, conformist distortion of authentic Marxist commitment.
Žižek's image for Stalinist-conformist Marxism: joining the cause not out of commitment but because historical analysis tells you this side will win, like backing a horse you calculate will come first.
The opportunist stance of joining whichever side is winning rather than committing to a cause on principle; exemplified by Talleyrand and, in a different register, by Stalin's Marxism.
Stories he reaches for 2
The Rubicon is in reality just a small stream you get wet to the knee in, the act's greatness is not in the physical barrier but in the retroactive necessity it creates for all of Caesar's prior life.
“After he crossed Rubicon you have to read all his life as preparation to—you know it was.”
Stalin's text On Dialectical and Historical Materialism argues that 19th-century social scientists could see workers would become the revolutionary subject and rationally chose to align with them, like backing a horse you calculate will win.
“I look around and even if this horse now runs slowly I know this is the winning horse so I quickly join the future winners”
Works invoked 3
Vertigo film
Hitchcock's film; Dupuy is praised for having written one of the best analyses of it, though it is only briefly mentioned in passing.
Stalin's philosophical text; called 'the most terrible philosophical text of all times' and used to exemplify the conformist distortion of Marxism into pseudo-objective science.
Goldmann's 1956-57 study of Pascal and Jansenism; described as 'a wonderful book'; credited with informing Žižek's interest in Jansenism and over-orthodoxy.
People invoked 15
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Called 'very intelligent'; praised as a theorist of catastrophe and rational choice who found the Balladur-Le Monde formula and wrote one of the best analyses of Hitchcock's Vertigo.
Blaise Pascal positive
Named as the subject of Goldmann's Le Dieu caché and implicitly associated with Jansenism, the ontological orientation closest to Žižek.
Named only as the subject of the Le Monde formula on retroactive necessity; no intellectual assessment.
Ayn Rand positive
Nominates her provocatively as the greatest American writer of the 20th century; argues she is genuinely interesting as an exemplar of 'over-orthodoxy' even though the usual attitude is to make fun of her.
Georg Lukács positive
Mentioned only as Goldmann's teacher; no extended discussion.
Used as the exemplar of pure conformism: his quip about 'our side winning' during street fighting while dining luxuriously is Žižek's image of strategic opportunism.
Jacques Lacan positive
Briefly invoked in connection with retroactivity and the problem of predestination and free choice; the talk's logic of retroactive constitution is implicitly Lacanian.
Alain Badiou positive
Žižek mentions having disagreements with Badiou but also credits his theory of the event/act as relevant here; describes it with mild irony ('all that bullshit') but uses it positively.
Fredric Jameson positive
Cited as a friend and major theoretician; praised for identifying predestination as the theological concept most useful to Marxism, and for arguing that authentic revolutionary commitment requires an irrational-seeming theological model.
Alvin Plantinga negative
Described as a 'very interesting guy, very intelligent' Calvinist analytical philosopher-theologian; his solution to reconciling predestination and free choice is judged 'not radical enough' and 'too easy', though logically coherent.
T. J. Clark positive
Žižek cites Clark's New Left Review text on the left's failure to provide an alternative after the financial crisis as support for his own diagnosis.
Lucien Goldmann positive
Described as a 'great Hegelian Western-oriented Marxist, pupil of Lukács'; credited with giving Žižek the category of 'over-orthodoxy' and praised for his book Le Dieu caché on Pascal and Jansenism.
Joseph Stalin negative
His On Dialectical and Historical Materialism is called 'the most terrible philosophical text of all times'; his scientistic Marxism is treated as conformist opportunism masquerading as objective knowledge.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central theoretical authority throughout; the Hegelian reading of predestination as retroactivity is the backbone of the talk's argument; described as 'a good Jansenist or rather Protestant'.
Max Weber positive
Cited for the thesis that Calvinist Protestantism was the religious foundation of capitalism's work ethic, which Žižek uses as the paradox of predestination driving maximal activity.
What it argues
the left's lack of a positive alternative after crisispredestination and retroactivityauthentic faith vs. rational persuasionthe structure of the revolutionary actconformism and strategic opportunismJansenism and Calvinist capitalismover-orthodoxy as critical category
Dialectical moves 6
“If everything is predestined, you might think this removes pressure to act—but the opposite is true: it is precisely because you cannot know how God has decided that you are driven to work obsessively to read the signs.”
The apparent consequence of predestination (passivity) is inverted: uncertainty about election produces maximal anxious activity.
“It's not that you become a Christian because you understood the reasons. In order to understand the reasons, you already have to be a Christian.”
The relation between belief and its justification is inverted: faith is the precondition for comprehending arguments for faith, not their result.
“In a true act, you do something which retroactively creates its own possibility—it appears crazy before you do it, but once you do it, it becomes understandable retroactively.”
Acts are not selections within a space of pre-given possibilities but events that constitute their own possibility space after the fact.
“If Monsieur Balladur will win next weekend's election, his victory will be necessary.”
Contingent outcomes, once actualized, appear as necessary; the conditional 'if' reveals that necessity is a retroactive attribution, not a prior structure.
“The Hegelian reading is not 'it was predestined, Caesar was a great guy'—after he crossed the Rubicon you have to read all his life as preparation for it.”
Greatness is not pre-given but retroactively constituted by the act; predestination is a reading backward, not a script written in advance.
“Once you fall in love, all the past is restructured—you experience it as if all my life was the preparation for that moment.”
Love as the paradigm of Hegelian retroactivity: a contingent event rewrites the subject's entire biographical past as necessary preparation.
Claims 10
asserts
The contemporary left failed after the financial crisis because it could not articulate a positive alternative, not merely because it was repressed.the contemporary left's political impotence
asserts
Ayn Rand is genuinely interesting as a thinker because she exemplifies 'over-orthodoxy': taking capitalist premises so seriously that the result becomes grotesque and revealing.Ayn Rand
asserts
Calvinist predestination is paradoxically the religious ideology of capitalism, which seems irrational since if everything is predestined there is no reason to work hard.the paradox of Calvinist capitalism
reframes
Predestination should be read in a Hegelian-Lacanian way as retroactivity: necessity is not pre-set but is constituted after the fact by the event itself.theological predestination
asserts
A genuine political act is not a strategic choice among given possibilities but a gesture that retroactively creates its own possibility.the structure of the revolutionary act
asserts
The proper model for authentic revolutionary commitment is not strategic joining of the winning side but the structure of religious faith, in which you must already be inside the belief for its reasons to make sense.the epistemology of revolutionary commitment
rejects
Stalin's presentation of Marxism as objective social science that allows one to calculate the winning side is a cynical conformist distortion of what Marx actually claimed.Stalinist epistemology of Marxism
rejects
Plantinga's solution to reconciling predestination and free choice—God knows in advance how you will freely decide—is too easy and not radical enough.Plantinga's analytical theology of freedom and predestination
asserts
Fredric Jameson was right that predestination is the theological concept most useful to historical materialism, because it encodes the logic of retroactive necessity.the Marxist use of theological concepts
asserts
The left's problem is not just tactical but ontological: protest movements cannot substitute for a positive programmatic answer to the question 'what do you want?'the left and protest politics
Quotes 8
“What do you want? That is to say, okay, you have this protest movement, but what do you want? Take power, just be a civil society group putting pressure? If you take power, what?”Slavoj Žižek · the left's failure to articulate a positive program
“It's not that you become a Christian because you understood the reasons. In order to understand reasons, you already have to be a Christian.”Slavoj Žižek · authentic faith precedes its own justification
“In a true act, you do something which retroactively creates its own possibility. It's paradoxically by doing it, it appears crazy before you do it, but once you do it, it becomes understandable retroactively.”Slavoj Žižek · the act retroactively creates its own possibility
“If Monsieur Balladur will win next weekend's election, his victory will be necessary.”Slavoj Žižek · retroactive necessity — the Hegelian formula
“once you fall in love, all the past is restructured, you experience it as if all my life was the preparation for that moment”Slavoj Žižek · love as the paradigm of retroactivity
“which element of theology, which notion is most useful to historical materialism, to Marxism? … he said predestination.”Slavoj Žižek · Jameson: predestination is the theological concept most useful to Marxism
“act is not strategic thinking. In strategic thinking you look around, make a rational choice, you look around what are the possibilities and you choose the best possibility.”Slavoj Žižek · act vs. strategic calculation
“They are the only Catholics who advocate predestination… this is just one of the things, they are the only Catholics, Jansenists, they are the only Catholics who advocate predestination.”Slavoj Žižek · Jansenism as Žižek's closest ontological orientation
Transcript 6 turns
unknown
It’s very, very tragic. Because even
It’s very, very tragic. Because even
Slavoj Žižek
the same, up to a point, not totally, happening today. I think I already mentioned here a text in New Left Review by T.J. Clark who says, you know that one would have thought, okay, that’s the line, I’m sorry if I repeat myself, that officially what was the politics, political attitude of radical left till this crisis? It was we live in apparently good times, but there will be a crisis, it will be our moment and so on, no? To play this dark prophet. Okay, now there is a crisis and we have, we had rebellions, demonstrations, but where was the crisis, and it’s basically let’s be honest, this last crisis the big winner is not the left. I mean, they simply didn’t provide an alternative, no? And this is why, and people hate me, I had problems with Badiou here, I had problems with my leftist friends even in Greece and so on, when they consider me a traitor, like once they shouted at me as saboteur, traitor, when I asked them, all I did is I asked them a simple question: What do you want? That is to say, okay, you have this protest movement, but what do you want? Take power, just be a civil society group putting pressure? If you take power, what? Some kind of a more Keynesian, more welfare state, like what do you want? And for them this was sabotage, that you don’t, you don’t talk about it, you know? Because I still think that the left doesn’t have an, you know what which is, I have it I think even in this last big thick book of mine, this problem where I like to provoke people and you know who is, okay let me test your general education, who is the greatest American writer of the 20th century? Think evil, Ayn Rand, you know her? Some know, no? Okay, okay, I mean, we make fun of her, but first, I think that she is interesting, you know why? I often use this category of over-orthodoxy. This idea was given to me by you don’t know who he was, he is forgotten today, Lucien Goldmann, a great Hegelian Western-oriented Marxist, pupil of Lukács who was doing his work mostly in France in the '50s, and he wrote a wonderful book in '56, '57 I think, Le Dieu caché, The Hidden God, about Pascal and this Jansenism. You know, they are, if you ask me, one ontological orientation which is closest to me, it would be Jansenism. You know why? They are, this is just one of the things, they are the only Catholics, Jansenists, they are the only Catholics who advocate predestination. You know, usually Catholicism is you have to earn your redemption through your good work, no? And Protestants, everything is predestined. But here things get interesting. Okay, I'm sorry if I repeat myself, but you know, it’s this is why as my friend Fredric Jameson told me once, he even wrote about it, it he you know here when you have pearls like this you can see that the guy really is a theoretician, he knows. Once he was asked, Fred Jameson, which element of theology, which notion is most useful to historical materialism, to Marxism? And everyone expected some humanist stupidity like, you know, like just believe in progress, freedom, no, he said predestination. That predestination is, why? Because first, did you notice this wonderful paradox, I repeat it all the time, how as we all know, up to a point it's even true from Max Weber, radical Calvinist Protestantism is, was the religious foundation, ideology, however you put it, of capitalism. Okay, but are you aware how prima facie from a common sense view, how weird this is? Because capitalism is definitely the most dynamic socio-economic system, like it pushes you to work all the time. So common sense will tell you, wait a minute, why, why then Calvinist Protestantism? I mean, if everything is predestined, let me sit at home, masturbate and watch movies, you know? It's like who cares, it's already decided. Isn't it logical to claim that precisely if everything depends on me, this would put a permanent pressure on me? No, the, because you know what's the point, no? And you can have wonderful very Lacanian observations about we are back to that problem of retroactivity and so on. Everything is decided, but you don't know how, you know? Like you just have to give a little bit of a shift into you retroactively create your choice, and I forgot his name, it's not I think it's Plantinga, I forgot his name, you know it's a great American Calvinist theologian. He is he's a very interesting guy, very intelligent, and he is almost kind of an analytical philosophy theologian because he is very well versed in all those Davidson problems and so on, and he tried to find a solution to this freedom of how to unite predestination and freedom of choice. But I think it's not radical enough, but it is intelligent, admit it. His solution is this one: there is predestination, but nonetheless, when you act now, here, you choose freely. How? Ah. How then if you choose now freely what right and to be sinner or not, how then could God have decided at the very beginning no, predestined your salvation or not? But it's a very primitive solution, but it's logical. His his solution is simply to say no, now you are totally free. But God is omnipotent and knows everything, and he knows in advance how you will freely decide now, you know? It's a kind of too easy. But what I am saying is that, okay let's not go into this, something else. What is, you know what is the the Marxist or Hegelian solution of predestination? That it's okay, again, old guy like me, I talk about things that I cannot do, my obsessions with sex, love and so on. You know when you fall in love, you have this magical feeling, even if it's purely contingent, like let's imagine a stupid thing. You walk towards a job, you sleep this proverbial stupidity, you sleep on a banana peel, on a banana, you are taken to a to a emergency and there the doctor is a nice woman and you fall passionately in love with her. So it's pure stupid contingency. But nonetheless, isn't it that automatically once you fall in love, all the past is restructured, you experience it as if all my life was the preparation for that moment, you know? Along these lines one should do it. And maybe these are I think parts which are not totally bad that I quote in my book, this is the materialist reading of predestination. Like here Hegel is a good Jansenist or rather Protestant. You know because let's take the big
the same, up to a point, not totally, happening today. I think I already mentioned here a text in New Left Review by T.J. Clark who says, you know that one would have thought, okay, that’s the line, I’m sorry if I repeat myself, that officially what was the politics, political attitude of radical left till this crisis? It was we live in apparently good times, but there will be a crisis, it will be our moment and so on, no? To play this dark prophet. Okay, now there is a crisis and we have, we had rebellions, demonstrations, but where was the crisis, and it’s basically let’s be honest, this last crisis the big winner is not the left. I mean, they simply didn’t provide an alternative, no? And this is why, and people hate me, I had problems with Badiou here, I had problems with my leftist friends even in Greece and so on, when they consider me a traitor, like once they shouted at me as saboteur, traitor, when I asked them, all I did is I asked them a simple question: What do you want? That is to say, okay, you have this protest movement, but what do you want? Take power, just be a civil society group putting pressure? If you take power, what? Some kind of a more Keynesian, more welfare state, like what do you want? And for them this was sabotage, that you don’t, you don’t talk about it, you know? Because I still think that the left doesn’t have an, you know what which is, I have it I think even in this last big thick book of mine, this problem where I like to provoke people and you know who is, okay let me test your general education, who is the greatest American writer of the 20th century? Think evil, Ayn Rand, you know her? Some know, no? Okay, okay, I mean, we make fun of her, but first, I think that she is interesting, you know why? I often use this category of over-orthodoxy. This idea was given to me by you don’t know who he was, he is forgotten today, Lucien Goldmann, a great Hegelian Western-oriented Marxist, pupil of Lukács who was doing his work mostly in France in the '50s, and he wrote a wonderful book in '56, '57 I think, Le Dieu caché, The Hidden God, about Pascal and this Jansenism. You know, they are, if you ask me, one ontological orientation which is closest to me, it would be Jansenism. You know why? They are, this is just one of the things, they are the only Catholics, Jansenists, they are the only Catholics who advocate predestination. You know, usually Catholicism is you have to earn your redemption through your good work, no? And Protestants, everything is predestined. But here things get interesting. Okay, I'm sorry if I repeat myself, but you know, it’s this is why as my friend Fredric Jameson told me once, he even wrote about it, it he you know here when you have pearls like this you can see that the guy really is a theoretician, he knows. Once he was asked, Fred Jameson, which element of theology, which notion is most useful to historical materialism, to Marxism? And everyone expected some humanist stupidity like, you know, like just believe in progress, freedom, no, he said predestination. That predestination is, why? Because first, did you notice this wonderful paradox, I repeat it all the time, how as we all know, up to a point it's even true from Max Weber, radical Calvinist Protestantism is, was the religious foundation, ideology, however you put it, of capitalism. Okay, but are you aware how prima facie from a common sense view, how weird this is? Because capitalism is definitely the most dynamic socio-economic system, like it pushes you to work all the time. So common sense will tell you, wait a minute, why, why then Calvinist Protestantism? I mean, if everything is predestined, let me sit at home, masturbate and watch movies, you know? It's like who cares, it's already decided. Isn't it logical to claim that precisely if everything depends on me, this would put a permanent pressure on me? No, the, because you know what's the point, no? And you can have wonderful very Lacanian observations about we are back to that problem of retroactivity and so on. Everything is decided, but you don't know how, you know? Like you just have to give a little bit of a shift into you retroactively create your choice, and I forgot his name, it's not I think it's Plantinga, I forgot his name, you know it's a great American Calvinist theologian. He is he's a very interesting guy, very intelligent, and he is almost kind of an analytical philosophy theologian because he is very well versed in all those Davidson problems and so on, and he tried to find a solution to this freedom of how to unite predestination and freedom of choice. But I think it's not radical enough, but it is intelligent, admit it. His solution is this one: there is predestination, but nonetheless, when you act now, here, you choose freely. How? Ah. How then if you choose now freely what right and to be sinner or not, how then could God have decided at the very beginning no, predestined your salvation or not? But it's a very primitive solution, but it's logical. His his solution is simply to say no, now you are totally free. But God is omnipotent and knows everything, and he knows in advance how you will freely decide now, you know? It's a kind of too easy. But what I am saying is that, okay let's not go into this, something else. What is, you know what is the the Marxist or Hegelian solution of predestination? That it's okay, again, old guy like me, I talk about things that I cannot do, my obsessions with sex, love and so on. You know when you fall in love, you have this magical feeling, even if it's purely contingent, like let's imagine a stupid thing. You walk towards a job, you sleep this proverbial stupidity, you sleep on a banana peel, on a banana, you are taken to a to a emergency and there the doctor is a nice woman and you fall passionately in love with her. So it's pure stupid contingency. But nonetheless, isn't it that automatically once you fall in love, all the past is restructured, you experience it as if all my life was the preparation for that moment, you know? Along these lines one should do it. And maybe these are I think parts which are not totally bad that I quote in my book, this is the materialist reading of predestination. Like here Hegel is a good Jansenist or rather Protestant. You know because let's take the big
unknown
element of contingency, I'm sorry if I repeat myself, but at least in this class I wasn't saying this yet. Caesar crossing
element of contingency, I'm sorry if I repeat myself, but at least in this class I wasn't saying this yet. Caesar crossing
Slavoj Žižek
Rubicon. And I like that example because you know since this is such a great heroic act, you probably expect it to be some wide dangerous river. No, you know what is the fucking Rubicon? A small stream, you get wet only up to here and so on. So. But the point is this one. Hegelian the Hegelian reading is not it was predestined Caesar great guy. No. After he crossed Rubicon you have to read all his life as preparation to, you know it was. Okay, I'm sorry if I repeat a line which you must know, but maybe I often quote but it's the best. The guy whom I already praised to you, one of you I think mentioned him, he is worth reading but unfortunately his best work is published in French although he also teaches at Stanford, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, the French theorist of catastrophe and rational choice. He is very intelligent. He incidentally also wrote one of the best analyses of Hitchcock's Vertigo, but that's another story. Okay, he found a wonderful quote, you know it's worth dying for to find, from Le Monde, you know the French daily, where there were some fifteen years ago I think elections where the candidate in some pre-elections look was Édouard Balladur, who was at some point also prime minister, doesn't matter. Okay, it wasn't certain what will happen, and then Le Monde put a wonderful Hegelian formula. They wrote: If, 'if' in the sense of contingent, 'If Monsieur Balladur will win next weekend's election, his victory will be necessary.' And that's it, you know? Once, and this is even go to Alain Badiou, this is crucial about his theory of act, event, all that bullshit, no? That this is why an event or, I speak more about an act, is precisely something which violates the field, act is not strategic thinking. In strategic thinking you look around, make you make a rational choice, you look around what are the possibilities and you choose the best possibility. In a true act, as they put it, you do something which retroactively creates its own possibility. It's paradoxically by doing it, it appears crazy before you do it, but once you do it, it becomes understandable retroactively. And it's the same even for belief, which is why here I had another debate with Fredric Jameson, and it was wonderful, where he told me that how sometimes Marxist revolutionaries have to refer to what may appear most irrational, revolutionary, reactionary in theology as a model for how we should think, but not in this stupid liberal sense 'yes because you Marxists are the worst, in reality you know theologians believing in
Rubicon. And I like that example because you know since this is such a great heroic act, you probably expect it to be some wide dangerous river. No, you know what is the fucking Rubicon? A small stream, you get wet only up to here and so on. So. But the point is this one. Hegelian the Hegelian reading is not it was predestined Caesar great guy. No. After he crossed Rubicon you have to read all his life as preparation to, you know it was. Okay, I'm sorry if I repeat a line which you must know, but maybe I often quote but it's the best. The guy whom I already praised to you, one of you I think mentioned him, he is worth reading but unfortunately his best work is published in French although he also teaches at Stanford, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, the French theorist of catastrophe and rational choice. He is very intelligent. He incidentally also wrote one of the best analyses of Hitchcock's Vertigo, but that's another story. Okay, he found a wonderful quote, you know it's worth dying for to find, from Le Monde, you know the French daily, where there were some fifteen years ago I think elections where the candidate in some pre-elections look was Édouard Balladur, who was at some point also prime minister, doesn't matter. Okay, it wasn't certain what will happen, and then Le Monde put a wonderful Hegelian formula. They wrote: If, 'if' in the sense of contingent, 'If Monsieur Balladur will win next weekend's election, his victory will be necessary.' And that's it, you know? Once, and this is even go to Alain Badiou, this is crucial about his theory of act, event, all that bullshit, no? That this is why an event or, I speak more about an act, is precisely something which violates the field, act is not strategic thinking. In strategic thinking you look around, make you make a rational choice, you look around what are the possibilities and you choose the best possibility. In a true act, as they put it, you do something which retroactively creates its own possibility. It's paradoxically by doing it, it appears crazy before you do it, but once you do it, it becomes understandable retroactively. And it's the same even for belief, which is why here I had another debate with Fredric Jameson, and it was wonderful, where he told me that how sometimes Marxist revolutionaries have to refer to what may appear most irrational, revolutionary, reactionary in theology as a model for how we should think, but not in this stupid liberal sense 'yes because you Marxists are the worst, in reality you know theologians believing in
unknown
communism'. No, he told me, you know this basic reversal of every authentic, I think I maybe mentioned this one already here, of every authentic faith, how you should never say 'I believe in Christ because I was convinced by the arguments for it', you know? This is blasphemy. Who are you to judge it, you know? Like you say 'I read Bible, I
communism'. No, he told me, you know this basic reversal of every authentic, I think I maybe mentioned this one already here, of every authentic faith, how you should never say 'I believe in Christ because I was convinced by the arguments for it', you know? This is blasphemy. Who are you to judge it, you know? Like you say 'I read Bible, I
Slavoj Žižek
read Talmud, I read Buddha, and okay I have some doubts, but after thinking about it I was'. Every good theologian will tell you the opposite. It’s not that you become a Christian because you understood the reasons. Ah no, in order to understand reasons, you already have to be a Christian. And now you will say what has this to do with revolution? Ah this is crucial, it concerns the status of Marxist theory. What Marx is really saying, it's not Stalin is saying this, that Marxism is a kind of an objective knowledge. You know, like for example where does Stalin claim this? In this most terrible philosophical text of all times, you know this thirty pages of sacred text, Stalin’s On the Dialectical and Historical Materialism, where he explains the growth of Marxism in Tsarist Russia. And he says like this: at that point late 19th century workers were still a tiny minority. But intelligent social scientists analyzed society and saw that although workers are still a minority, if you take into account necessary historical process you will see that they will become the crucial part, the subject of a revolution. So they’ve chosen to link themselves to the workers. This is of course cynical manipulative reasoning, like I look around and even if this horse now runs slowly I know this is the winning horse so I quickly join the future winners, you know? This reminds me of, you know who was Talleyrand? Talleyrand, the ultimate conformist, the the eternal foreign minister of France under Napoleon, after Napoleon all the time. He has a saying which I like so much, it's conformism at its best. Do we used to use it here? I don't know. It’s once he was, he was very much a bon vivant, you know, revolutions were going on but he still received friends, luxury dinners, lunches. Once he had a lunch with his friends and they heard some street fighting, shooting outside of their palace, no? And Talleyrand said, 'You see, our side is winning
read Talmud, I read Buddha, and okay I have some doubts, but after thinking about it I was'. Every good theologian will tell you the opposite. It’s not that you become a Christian because you understood the reasons. Ah no, in order to understand reasons, you already have to be a Christian. And now you will say what has this to do with revolution? Ah this is crucial, it concerns the status of Marxist theory. What Marx is really saying, it's not Stalin is saying this, that Marxism is a kind of an objective knowledge. You know, like for example where does Stalin claim this? In this most terrible philosophical text of all times, you know this thirty pages of sacred text, Stalin’s On the Dialectical and Historical Materialism, where he explains the growth of Marxism in Tsarist Russia. And he says like this: at that point late 19th century workers were still a tiny minority. But intelligent social scientists analyzed society and saw that although workers are still a minority, if you take into account necessary historical process you will see that they will become the crucial part, the subject of a revolution. So they’ve chosen to link themselves to the workers. This is of course cynical manipulative reasoning, like I look around and even if this horse now runs slowly I know this is the winning horse so I quickly join the future winners, you know? This reminds me of, you know who was Talleyrand? Talleyrand, the ultimate conformist, the the eternal foreign minister of France under Napoleon, after Napoleon all the time. He has a saying which I like so much, it's conformism at its best. Do we used to use it here? I don't know. It’s once he was, he was very much a bon vivant, you know, revolutions were going on but he still received friends, luxury dinners, lunches. Once he had a lunch with his friends and they heard some street fighting, shooting outside of their palace, no? And Talleyrand said, 'You see, our side is winning