Why there's no such thing as knowledge | Slavoj Žižek and Hilary Lawson
Debate · The Institute of Art and Ideas ·
published 2026-06-20 · 0:21:45 · 3,313 words
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ideologyphilosophy-generallanguagerace-antisemitismfascism-populismsubjectivityhistory
Žižek and Hilary Lawson debate whether we can navigate the world without a single true version of reality. Lawson presents his 'closure' theory: reality is not pre-divided, we hold the open world through closures that are unlimited, always fail to match the stuff out there, and must be stable. Žižek broadly agrees but adds that every closure already implies an idea of what lies beyond it, and distinguishes factual truth from an immanent subjective truth, using Lacan's pathological-jealousy example and Nazi antisemitism to argue that a position can be a lie even when its factual claims are true, because the truth lies in why the subject needs it.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 9
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “ideological perception”
The ideological mediation that structures all 'objective' reality, so that at the factual level there is no objective truth.
Truth not as out-there objective reality (always mediated by ideology) but as the subjective structure of how a position sustains itself, which can make a position a lie even when factually accurate.
Plato's 'half-spiritualized matter', cited as an early example of how a system (Plato's idealism) already contains an idea of what exceeds its closure.
Hilary Lawson's term for how we hold the open world through created identities; Žižek adds that a closure always carries an idea of what lies beyond it.
The level of propositions about how things really are, which Žižek grants but separates from the immanent subjective truth of a position.
Lacan's example: jealousy is pathological not when factually false but when the subject needs the suspicion to sustain his identity.
The external evil intruder fascism needs to sustain its political identity and to displace the social antagonism it cannot acknowledge.
The basic Marxist antagonism within society that fascism must deny in order to present society as an organic whole.
The fascist image of society as a collaborative body whose members all fit together, which requires an external intruder to explain conflict.
Stories he reaches for 3
Lacan's example that a pathologically jealous husband is still pathological even if his wife really is cheating, because the truth lies in why he needs the suspicion to sustain his identity.
“if you are jealous pathologically of your wife thinking she's cheating on you all the time and even if it's a nice point even if factually it's all true your jealousy is still pathological”
Žižek imagines debating a Nazi-sympathetic friend; he could list true facts (Jews over-represented among Berlin critics, journalists, lawyers), but insists the true question is why the Nazis need the figure of the Jew, and that accepting the factual debate already concedes the frame.
“the moment you accept the debate what are really the jews in some sense you already sold your soul to the devil”
Plato the idealist nonetheless introduces chora, a half-spiritualized matter, showing that even the most closed idealist system carries an idea of what exceeds its closure.
“plato idealist but then he introduced chora which is some kind of a half-spiritualized matter”
Works invoked 2
Lawson's book, described as the first non-realist metaphysics, offering a new account of language, truth and reality; the closure framework he presents in the debate.
The Golden Bough book
Frazer's compilation of world religious and mythical views; cited by Lawson as the moment listing them side by side (including Christianity) made any one being true seem implausible.
People invoked 8
Hilary Lawson positive
Co-debater; Žižek says he agrees with all of Lawson's critique of Enlightenment realism and his 'closure' framework, but pushes him to add that every closure implies an idea of its outside and to distinguish a subjective immanent truth.
Paul Feyerabend positive
Named alongside Kuhn as applying the perspectival turn to science.
James George Frazer positive
Cites Frazer's Golden Bough as the moment the perspectival genie left the bottle in Britain, by listing the world's religious and mythical views side by side including Christianity.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cites Lacan's remark that pathological jealousy remains pathological even if factually true, as the founding example of immanent subjective truth; flags the remark's male-chauvinist bias but still uses it.
Thomas Kuhn positive
Named as one who applied perspectivism to science: we operate within paradigms and can't reach facts independent of the framework.
Plato positive
Cites Plato the idealist introducing chora (half-spiritualized matter) as an early case of a closure that implies an idea of what exceeds it.
Karl Marx positive
Invokes 'vulgar Marxism' as a heuristic: fascism denies basic social antagonism by posing society as an organic whole and displacing conflict onto an external intruder.
Immanuel Kant negative
Lawson frames his project as the opposite of Kant's: instead of identifying the structure of thought that enables knowledge, we must explain how we intervene without knowledge.
What it argues
truth beyond objectivitythe subjective structure of antisemitismclosure and its outsidewhy fascism needs the figure of the Jewideology and the framing of debateLacan on pathological jealousyperspectivism versus immanent truth
Dialectical moves 4
“even if factually it's all true your jealousy is still pathological”
The truth of a subjective position is not its factual accuracy but the need that sustains it; factual confirmation does not redeem pathology.
“the true question is not what are what the nazis are claiming about jews factually true or not... the true question is why do the nazis need a figure of the jew to maintain their identity”
Shift the interrogation from the content of a claim to the subjective function it performs.
“the moment you accept the debate what are really the jews in some sense you already sold your soul to the devil”
To accept the fascist's framing of the question is already to have lost; the frame must be refused, not argued within.
“there is no objective truth but in some sense there is an immanent subjective truth or lie”
The collapse of objective out-there truth is the very condition that opens the space of subjective immanent truth.
Claims 9
asserts
Every closure is not merely a bounded space but always already implies an idea of what lies beyond it.closure
asserts
At the level of out-there reality there is no objective truth, because reality is always structured through ideological perception.objective truth
asserts
Alongside factual truth there is an immanent subjective truth or lie, which is what is ethically and politically decisive.subjective truth
asserts
Pathological jealousy remains pathological even when the wife's cheating is factually confirmed, because the pathology lies in the subject's need for the suspicion.jealousy (Lacan)
reframes
The true question about jealousy is not whether the facts check out but why the subject needs the figure of the unfaithful wife to sustain his identity.jealousy
asserts
Nazi antisemitism was unambiguously a lie in that concrete situation even if some of its factual claims about Jews (as journalists, lawyers, critics in Berlin) were true.antisemitism
asserts
Fascism denies basic social antagonism by imagining society as an organic whole, and so requires an external evil intruder to account for conflict.fascism
reframes
The true question about Nazi antisemitism is not whether its factual claims about Jews are true but why the Nazis need the figure of the Jew to maintain their political identity.antisemitism debate
asserts
To accept the debate over whether the Nazis' factual claims about Jews are true is already to have sold one's soul to the devil.the frame of debate
Quotes 5
“the moment you accept the debate what are really the jews in some sense you already sold your soul to the devil”Slavoj Žižek · refusing the fascist frame
“the true question is why do the nazis need a figure of the jew to maintain their identity”Slavoj Žižek · subjective truth over factual truth
“even if factually it's all true your jealousy is still pathological”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan on jealousy
“there is no objective truth but in some sense there is an immanent subjective truth or lie”Slavoj Žižek · immanent subjective truth
“every closure has an idea of what is beyond closure”Slavoj Žižek · closure's outside
Transcript 15 turns
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Now as it were we have as a result of our observation of the world discovered that we don't have knowledge we can't we are always trapped by our perspective
Now as it were we have as a result of our observation of the world discovered that we don't have knowledge we can't we are always trapped by our perspective
Slavoj Žižek
if we define truth not in the sense of out there there is reality at that level of course it's always structured through our ideological perception there is no objective truth but in some sense there is an immanent subjective truth or lie did i go too far
if we define truth not in the sense of out there there is reality at that level of course it's always structured through our ideological perception there is no objective truth but in some sense there is an immanent subjective truth or lie did i go too far
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thank you so much fantastic now before i start with the blurb of this thing i'm just going to say right now that this is obviously going to be a spicy debate and i have been given express permission to be the human face of stalin and to make like some people in history and crack out a weapon of mass destruction in to your physical body should you talk overtime slavoj so if i kick him don't be surprised is my point here
thank you so much fantastic now before i start with the blurb of this thing i'm just going to say right now that this is obviously going to be a spicy debate and i have been given express permission to be the human face of stalin and to make like some people in history and crack out a weapon of mass destruction in to your physical body should you talk overtime slavoj so if i kick him don't be surprised is my point here
Slavoj Žižek
i'm well known never to talk too much absolutely
i'm well known never to talk too much absolutely
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exactly so now that we're all in on this we're here today to talk about beyond truth and reality most think that they have a
exactly so now that we're all in on this we're here today to talk about beyond truth and reality most think that they have a
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good grip on what is true and what is real yet in a world of radically incompatible and competing perspectives we can't all be right and many conclude that we have to give up on the idea that there is a single true version of the world but what is the alternative and how can we navigate a world without assuming there is one true version of reality we're joined today by two radical philosophers slavoj žižek and hilary lawson as they debate the nature of truth reality and the illusory ideas about them that continue to hold the modern mind captive slavoj žižek is a senior research fellow at the university of ljubljana’s department of philosophy and arguably the most provocative philosopher of our times foreign policy named žižek a top global thinker quote for giving voice to an era of absurdity his work focuses on marxism hegel psychoanalysis philosophy politics film and culture to my immediate right we have hilary lawson who is a philosopher and renowned critic of philosophical realism and the editorial director of the institute of art and ideas the work for which he is best known is closure a story of everything and has been described as the first non-realist metaphysics and offers a radically new account of language truth and reality so this event is um an in conversation format and we're going to start basically by me asking um each of you how do we navigate a world without assuming there is one true version of reality you each get five minutes hilary how do we do that
good grip on what is true and what is real yet in a world of radically incompatible and competing perspectives we can't all be right and many conclude that we have to give up on the idea that there is a single true version of the world but what is the alternative and how can we navigate a world without assuming there is one true version of reality we're joined today by two radical philosophers slavoj žižek and hilary lawson as they debate the nature of truth reality and the illusory ideas about them that continue to hold the modern mind captive slavoj žižek is a senior research fellow at the university of ljubljana’s department of philosophy and arguably the most provocative philosopher of our times foreign policy named žižek a top global thinker quote for giving voice to an era of absurdity his work focuses on marxism hegel psychoanalysis philosophy politics film and culture to my immediate right we have hilary lawson who is a philosopher and renowned critic of philosophical realism and the editorial director of the institute of art and ideas the work for which he is best known is closure a story of everything and has been described as the first non-realist metaphysics and offers a radically new account of language truth and reality so this event is um an in conversation format and we're going to start basically by me asking um each of you how do we navigate a world without assuming there is one true version of reality you each get five minutes hilary how do we do that
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well i think slavoj and i have many similarities in the approach in that both of us are critical of the enlightenment idea that we can reach through and say how it is and describe reality but the real question of course is what do we do as a consequence of that and how do we make sense of our space given that that's the case now i think um it's a commonplace at the moment to say we're seeing the end of the west um in sort of geopolitics and that is um encouraged by the actions of the american president but i think the signs of the end of the west conceptually stem a lot further back because the idea that we can describe reality is a core part of western thought and that has been undermined and what has it been undermined by is i think a recognition of the importance of perspective in the case of britain it probably first came into public view with the publication years ago of frazer's golden bough where he just listed the various religious and mythical views from around the world and when they were listed one after the other it just seemed implausible that any one of them might be true and he included christianity which of course turned it into a sensation but the
well i think slavoj and i have many similarities in the approach in that both of us are critical of the enlightenment idea that we can reach through and say how it is and describe reality but the real question of course is what do we do as a consequence of that and how do we make sense of our space given that that's the case now i think um it's a commonplace at the moment to say we're seeing the end of the west um in sort of geopolitics and that is um encouraged by the actions of the american president but i think the signs of the end of the west conceptually stem a lot further back because the idea that we can describe reality is a core part of western thought and that has been undermined and what has it been undermined by is i think a recognition of the importance of perspective in the case of britain it probably first came into public view with the publication years ago of frazer's golden bough where he just listed the various religious and mythical views from around the world and when they were listed one after the other it just seemed implausible that any one of them might be true and he included christianity which of course turned it into a sensation but the
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perspectival genie was out of the bottle and it wasn't long before it was applied to morality of course the recognition that language shapes the way that we understand the world was another key twist in that and postwar we had people like kuhn and feyerabend who applied it to science as well that we operate within paradigms that you can't get at facts independent of the framework so there we are by the time we get to postmodernism we are lost in a series of alternative frameworks and we have apparently no easy way of determining which one dominates and a lot of people are uncomfortable with that so what do we do about that and it seems to me that we have to give an account of how it is it's the opposite of what the german philosopher kant said a couple of hundred years ago where he said we've got to identify what the structure of thought is in enough it is for us to be able to have knowledge and now as it were we have as a result of our observation of the world discovered that we don't have knowledge we can't we are always trapped by our perspective so the challenge that we have now and that what the theory of closure is seeking to address is how is it possible that we are able to intervene in the world even though we don't have knowledge of it that is the key story so my in order to answer that i think we've got to change our notion of reality language and thought and step one of that instead of thinking of the world as being already divided and differentiated into bits and things we have to give up that idea and stop thinking that what language and our thought is doing is somehow naming the bits as if there's a correct answer as if that's the point of philosophy the point of science is just to get the correct answer instead we should see it as a space of potential i call it the openness of the world and we can't describe that stuff we can't break through as it were and say what the openness of the world is but what we can do is hold it in certain ways and we we hold it through what i call closures which are the creation of identities and we create identities in all sorts of different ways so at a very basic physiological level when you look out your neurons in your eye respond to the whole openness of the world in two ways they either fire or they don't fire they don't do anything else they don't describe the stuff out there they just respond with creation of an identity the firing of a neuron one step up with sensation we hold hundreds of millions of neurons together as one thing say a patch of blue there is not blue out there anymore than there's a firing of a neuron out there they are ways of holding the world and language is one step up again it holds the world through the closures of language and i think that if you look at that process of closure that process of core of creating identities you can learn a great deal about the nature and structure of our thought and how we might go forward so very briefly i would just want to identify three key characteristics of closure which are embedded in all of our sorts of thought and a thought of language and the first of which is it's unlimited um you can take any bit of the world and you can close it in an indefinite number of ways different species on the planet physiologically close the world in different ways there is no correct way of doing it there's an indefinite number of ways of
perspectival genie was out of the bottle and it wasn't long before it was applied to morality of course the recognition that language shapes the way that we understand the world was another key twist in that and postwar we had people like kuhn and feyerabend who applied it to science as well that we operate within paradigms that you can't get at facts independent of the framework so there we are by the time we get to postmodernism we are lost in a series of alternative frameworks and we have apparently no easy way of determining which one dominates and a lot of people are uncomfortable with that so what do we do about that and it seems to me that we have to give an account of how it is it's the opposite of what the german philosopher kant said a couple of hundred years ago where he said we've got to identify what the structure of thought is in enough it is for us to be able to have knowledge and now as it were we have as a result of our observation of the world discovered that we don't have knowledge we can't we are always trapped by our perspective so the challenge that we have now and that what the theory of closure is seeking to address is how is it possible that we are able to intervene in the world even though we don't have knowledge of it that is the key story so my in order to answer that i think we've got to change our notion of reality language and thought and step one of that instead of thinking of the world as being already divided and differentiated into bits and things we have to give up that idea and stop thinking that what language and our thought is doing is somehow naming the bits as if there's a correct answer as if that's the point of philosophy the point of science is just to get the correct answer instead we should see it as a space of potential i call it the openness of the world and we can't describe that stuff we can't break through as it were and say what the openness of the world is but what we can do is hold it in certain ways and we we hold it through what i call closures which are the creation of identities and we create identities in all sorts of different ways so at a very basic physiological level when you look out your neurons in your eye respond to the whole openness of the world in two ways they either fire or they don't fire they don't do anything else they don't describe the stuff out there they just respond with creation of an identity the firing of a neuron one step up with sensation we hold hundreds of millions of neurons together as one thing say a patch of blue there is not blue out there anymore than there's a firing of a neuron out there they are ways of holding the world and language is one step up again it holds the world through the closures of language and i think that if you look at that process of closure that process of core of creating identities you can learn a great deal about the nature and structure of our thought and how we might go forward so very briefly i would just want to identify three key characteristics of closure which are embedded in all of our sorts of thought and a thought of language and the first of which is it's unlimited um you can take any bit of the world and you can close it in an indefinite number of ways different species on the planet physiologically close the world in different ways there is no correct way of doing it there's an indefinite number of ways of
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closing the world linguistically we close it into individual things so you and i i use this example with steven pinker yesterday if you look at this you probably think oh glass but there's a whole load of other ways you can close it it's a weapon it's a series of silicon atoms it's an example in a conversation there's no limit to the way that you close any one bit of the world there's an indefinite number of ways of closing it so that's the first thing closure is unlimited so don't be surprised that there are lots of different perspectives in the world the second is that every closure fails it's not the same thing as the stuff out there it's a different sort of thing there's no connection between the firing of the neuron and the stuff out there there's no connection between glass we can't go looking for the glass as if we find it in the world it fails and if you try and look at it well you might think well you know do we dig down do we think that each of the atoms has a little label on it which says glass well no of course it doesn't and you can't identify what is it that makes it glass and that's because all closure fails and there's one last characteristic which is um closures need to be stable that is we can only hold one of them at any one time so you all know those pictures that you can see two ways there's a duck or a rabbit you can't see them at the same time as a duck and a rabbit you can only do one and that's because closure has to provide us with some stability in our interaction with the world and that's why when we look around we think it's pretty static don't we we think oh well there are people and there are lights and there's a tent and you know all of those sort of things and we think we know but every bit of our visual field we could hold in an indefinite number of different ways but we need stability so those three characteristics are i think embedded in every way that we hold the world and determine how we might go about holding it differently in the future to do things that we can't do at the moment
closing the world linguistically we close it into individual things so you and i i use this example with steven pinker yesterday if you look at this you probably think oh glass but there's a whole load of other ways you can close it it's a weapon it's a series of silicon atoms it's an example in a conversation there's no limit to the way that you close any one bit of the world there's an indefinite number of ways of closing it so that's the first thing closure is unlimited so don't be surprised that there are lots of different perspectives in the world the second is that every closure fails it's not the same thing as the stuff out there it's a different sort of thing there's no connection between the firing of the neuron and the stuff out there there's no connection between glass we can't go looking for the glass as if we find it in the world it fails and if you try and look at it well you might think well you know do we dig down do we think that each of the atoms has a little label on it which says glass well no of course it doesn't and you can't identify what is it that makes it glass and that's because all closure fails and there's one last characteristic which is um closures need to be stable that is we can only hold one of them at any one time so you all know those pictures that you can see two ways there's a duck or a rabbit you can't see them at the same time as a duck and a rabbit you can only do one and that's because closure has to provide us with some stability in our interaction with the world and that's why when we look around we think it's pretty static don't we we think oh well there are people and there are lights and there's a tent and you know all of those sort of things and we think we know but every bit of our visual field we could hold in an indefinite number of different ways but we need stability so those three characteristics are i think embedded in every way that we hold the world and determine how we might go about holding it differently in the future to do things that we can't do at the moment
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interesting okay slavoj what what's your take on this how can we navigate a world without assuming there is one true version of reality
interesting okay slavoj what what's your take on this how can we navigate a world without assuming there is one true version of reality
Slavoj Žižek
eh eh i agree with all you said i would just like to try to not relativize it but eh play a little bit with it and i wonder if you will follow me or not the first thing thing that i would like to add i wonder if you would agree is that you know closure is not simply a closure in the sense of i'm within a limit mostly we our common view is not just there is a closure but we often even had an idea which is often also wrong every closure has an idea of what is beyond closure how to put it you know for example eh from plato onwards you know plato idealist but then he introduced chora which is some kind of a half-spiritualized matter and so on or eh like closure is for me not simply a closed space and many thing outside closure also always implies a certain idea of what is outside i would say eh second thing eh so that i don't get lost in eh where the way i would take your example of closure and so on what interests me and eh is that i would like to introduce maybe you would disagree i don't know nonetheless eh relatively naive distinction between eh factual truth things really are like that and i don't mean it in any mystical higher sense but i call it but it's still obligatory something very serious real subjective truth if you permit me and then i will simply stop one or two examples it's my eternal example sorry if some of you know it my starting point here is eh wonderful remark by jacques lacan who said somewhere it's a little bit male chauvinist bias i don't like it but nonetheless eh if you are jealous pathologically of your wife thinking she's cheating on you all the time and even if it's a nice point even if factually it's all true your jealousy is still pathological because and lacan's point is and i will immediately to show you the relevance of this take a different example eh also eh because eh the question to ask is not okay do i hire a good enough private detective did he miss something no the question is why do i why am i so fixated on my wife cheating me or not why do i need to sustain my identity a figure of or a suspicion at least of my wife is cheating on me this is the truth of it and now you will say ridiculous example ah let's take a similar example but at slightly a different level let's imagine we are in let's say in nazi germany i am eh i will take the bad role i'm not but let's say i am anti-semitic support the nazis which i don't and my friend is more sympathetic towards the jews and we debate are the nazis right or not and i can tell you in advance if i am intelligent tricky enough the result will be by definition undecided i can list the whole series of facts which are absolutely true let's begin with it's true what nazis were saying that percent of literary literary critics in berlin in were jews journalists were mostly jews lawyers were mostly jews eh then you have these ideas jews are seducing our girls well all i can say is i hope they did and i hope also the other way around and so on but you know what i mean the true question is not what are what the nazis are claiming about jews factually true or not we should clarify this i don't eh doubt it mostly it's a lie what i'm just saying is that the true question for me is why do the nazis need a figure of the jew to maintain their political agency to act because if you take to simplify to the utmost very vulgar marxism nazi fascism denies i'm sorry to be so simplistically marxist basic social antagonism for them societies are in themselves organic whole where all the members collaborate and eh then you need an external evil intruder who brings class struggle and so on and so on so again the it's the moment you accept the debate what are really the jews in some sense you already sold your soul to the devil the true question is why do the nazis need the figure of a jew to maintain their identity and here i claim here i would say not absolutely from standpoint of eternity but in that concrete situation it was simply unambiguously a lie their anti-semitism even if some of their claims were factually true and i'm very i'm here not in any sense pro-israel i've written a lot about what the israel is doing now and so on let's i don't want to you made the point yeah i made the point so again would you do you think this is and then i have another point but for this later does it tell this to you something this basic idea that in situations like killing torturing criminal anti-semitism all that if we define truth not in the sense of out there there is reality and eh at that level of course it's always structured through our ideological perception there is no objective truth but in some sense there is an immanent subjective truth or lie did i go too far
eh eh i agree with all you said i would just like to try to not relativize it but eh play a little bit with it and i wonder if you will follow me or not the first thing thing that i would like to add i wonder if you would agree is that you know closure is not simply a closure in the sense of i'm within a limit mostly we our common view is not just there is a closure but we often even had an idea which is often also wrong every closure has an idea of what is beyond closure how to put it you know for example eh from plato onwards you know plato idealist but then he introduced chora which is some kind of a half-spiritualized matter and so on or eh like closure is for me not simply a closed space and many thing outside closure also always implies a certain idea of what is outside i would say eh second thing eh so that i don't get lost in eh where the way i would take your example of closure and so on what interests me and eh is that i would like to introduce maybe you would disagree i don't know nonetheless eh relatively naive distinction between eh factual truth things really are like that and i don't mean it in any mystical higher sense but i call it but it's still obligatory something very serious real subjective truth if you permit me and then i will simply stop one or two examples it's my eternal example sorry if some of you know it my starting point here is eh wonderful remark by jacques lacan who said somewhere it's a little bit male chauvinist bias i don't like it but nonetheless eh if you are jealous pathologically of your wife thinking she's cheating on you all the time and even if it's a nice point even if factually it's all true your jealousy is still pathological because and lacan's point is and i will immediately to show you the relevance of this take a different example eh also eh because eh the question to ask is not okay do i hire a good enough private detective did he miss something no the question is why do i why am i so fixated on my wife cheating me or not why do i need to sustain my identity a figure of or a suspicion at least of my wife is cheating on me this is the truth of it and now you will say ridiculous example ah let's take a similar example but at slightly a different level let's imagine we are in let's say in nazi germany i am eh i will take the bad role i'm not but let's say i am anti-semitic support the nazis which i don't and my friend is more sympathetic towards the jews and we debate are the nazis right or not and i can tell you in advance if i am intelligent tricky enough the result will be by definition undecided i can list the whole series of facts which are absolutely true let's begin with it's true what nazis were saying that percent of literary literary critics in berlin in were jews journalists were mostly jews lawyers were mostly jews eh then you have these ideas jews are seducing our girls well all i can say is i hope they did and i hope also the other way around and so on but you know what i mean the true question is not what are what the nazis are claiming about jews factually true or not we should clarify this i don't eh doubt it mostly it's a lie what i'm just saying is that the true question for me is why do the nazis need a figure of the jew to maintain their political agency to act because if you take to simplify to the utmost very vulgar marxism nazi fascism denies i'm sorry to be so simplistically marxist basic social antagonism for them societies are in themselves organic whole where all the members collaborate and eh then you need an external evil intruder who brings class struggle and so on and so on so again the it's the moment you accept the debate what are really the jews in some sense you already sold your soul to the devil the true question is why do the nazis need the figure of a jew to maintain their identity and here i claim here i would say not absolutely from standpoint of eternity but in that concrete situation it was simply unambiguously a lie their anti-semitism even if some of their claims were factually true and i'm very i'm here not in any sense pro-israel i've written a lot about what the israel is doing now and so on let's i don't want to you made the point yeah i made the point so again would you do you think this is and then i have another point but for this later does it tell this to you something this basic idea that in situations like killing torturing criminal anti-semitism all that if we define truth not in the sense of out there there is reality and eh at that level of course it's always structured through our ideological perception there is no objective truth but in some sense there is an immanent subjective truth or lie did i go too far
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so the question that you raise is obviously in fact an absolutely central one for the outlook that i've put and indeed i have had that conversation with not with me i've had that conversation with eh somebody who had a relative who was in auschwitz and he said to me so are you saying that this is just a relative truth eh and that it didn't actually happen so it is an absolutely central eh thing for me to identify so i think there are there are a couple of things that i'd want to say about that the first of which is that the account that i've given doesn't mean that we can't identify lies lies don't require eh there to be objective truth when you when somebody lies they are saying something to you which is not what they think they are pretending to say something and that is what makes it a lie it's not that somehow eh they're saying a lie because it's not true out there in fact i think there are occasions where people might be eh lying in the sense they're pretending something and they happen to be saying that most of eh people think is socially normally true so i don't think that the framework i've got means that you can't say people are lying but there's a second question are there some things we just want to say well that is absolutely true well i think of course we make choices about which closures we want to operate with and if you are dealing with a neo-nazi who says actually the whole of the holocaust was eh a fake it didn't really happen the whole thing was made up then there are a whole series of ways in which you can respond to that not by just saying you're wrong but saying well if you think that doesn't it also mean this shouldn't we be able to go here and find that shouldn't we be able to so you can within their account of the world within their closure as it were you can examine that and test it and say that doesn't add up now i would though at the same time caution that it is always the case that we can maintain closures that it doesn't matter how seemingly absurd it is you can always make a move the nazi can always say actually all of these evidence you're showing me are fake somebody has produced them these eh these eh statements are wrong the people who are claimed to remember this are are not real they can always make moves in that direction but you what you hope you can do is to demonstrate that the in order to be able to maintain all of
so the question that you raise is obviously in fact an absolutely central one for the outlook that i've put and indeed i have had that conversation with not with me i've had that conversation with eh somebody who had a relative who was in auschwitz and he said to me so are you saying that this is just a relative truth eh and that it didn't actually happen so it is an absolutely central eh thing for me to identify so i think there are there are a couple of things that i'd want to say about that the first of which is that the account that i've given doesn't mean that we can't identify lies lies don't require eh there to be objective truth when you when somebody lies they are saying something to you which is not what they think they are pretending to say something and that is what makes it a lie it's not that somehow eh they're saying a lie because it's not true out there in fact i think there are occasions where people might be eh lying in the sense they're pretending something and they happen to be saying that most of eh people think is socially normally true so i don't think that the framework i've got means that you can't say people are lying but there's a second question are there some things we just want to say well that is absolutely true well i think of course we make choices about which closures we want to operate with and if you are dealing with a neo-nazi who says actually the whole of the holocaust was eh a fake it didn't really happen the whole thing was made up then there are a whole series of ways in which you can respond to that not by just saying you're wrong but saying well if you think that doesn't it also mean this shouldn't we be able to go here and find that shouldn't we be able to so you can within their account of the world within their closure as it were you can examine that and test it and say that doesn't add up now i would though at the same time caution that it is always the case that we can maintain closures that it doesn't matter how seemingly absurd it is you can always make a move the nazi can always say actually all of these evidence you're showing me are fake somebody has produced them these eh these eh statements are wrong the people who are claimed to remember this are are not real they can always make moves in that direction but you what you hope you can do is to demonstrate that the in order to be able to maintain all of
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those things they have to build an ever bigger extraordinary structure to enable them to maintain that structure and at some point it's just not going to be plausible they just can't eh retain that and last thought on that this particular thing it doesn't help truth doesn't help if you're dealing with a neo-nazi and you say oh no it's just not true that doesn't convince them they're not convinced oh i see i see i've got it wrong the objective truth means that i no the only way you convince somebody is to stand in their closure and use it and say look these are the consequences this is what will happen if you see it like that and we don't or i don't want those consequences and that's why we shouldn't adopt that closure not because of some abstract notion of objective
those things they have to build an ever bigger extraordinary structure to enable them to maintain that structure and at some point it's just not going to be plausible they just can't eh retain that and last thought on that this particular thing it doesn't help truth doesn't help if you're dealing with a neo-nazi and you say oh no it's just not true that doesn't convince them they're not convinced oh i see i see i've got it wrong the objective truth means that i no the only way you convince somebody is to stand in their closure and use it and say look these are the consequences this is what will happen if you see it like that and we don't or i don't want those consequences and that's why we shouldn't adopt that closure not because of some abstract notion of objective
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truth out there eh
truth out there eh
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that can i
that can i