Zizek: seems like a nob

[Mad4ziz]

I think you may be presupposing an unwarranted stability in the concept "best". Truly free acts go beyond the pleasure principle or any libidinal economy of pluses and minuses. They resolve inconsistent choices in a manner that reconfigures what is a plus or minus....the instability of those criteria is what opens up the space for freedom.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Oh, the judgement is a fraught one. Emotions pulling one way, reason another. It is becoming accepted that there are many mechanisms in our brain in which different neural networks 'compete' with each other. One or other 'wins', perhaps modified by the others, and this is what is done.

A simple example is the cigarette I've just stubbed out. I would like to give up, and have tried at various times. The desire for an instant nicotine hit has won out today as I lack the sufficient motivation at the moment to resist it. But whichever course of action wins out is, by definition, that which I judged it best to do at that instant - the 'I' including many contradictory impulses.

I agree with your post right up to the last bit.

This:

They resolve inconsistent choices in a manner that reconfigures what is a plus or minus

Yep. Absolutely. But you don't need 'freedom' to do that. The nature of our brain's networks can do exactly this.

This:

.the instability of those criteria is what opens up the space for freedom.

I do not see how this follows from what went before. The criteria by which we judge what to do are constantly being modified, but again, I see no role for 'freedom' in this process, no need for it, and ultimately no meaning in the idea that it might have a role, no meaning to the concept 'freedom' itself.

 

[Blagsta]

I think you may be presupposing an unwarranted stability in the concept "best". Truly free acts go beyond the pleasure principle or any libidinal economy of pluses and minuses. They resolve inconsistent choices in a manner that reconfigures what is a plus or minus....the instability of those criteria is what opens up the space for freedom.

Can you speak like a normal person?

 

[love detective]

By mixing German Idealism with Lacan and Freud he tries to prove that there is room in a "deterministic" universe for human freedom-for an autonomous subjective act-that changes (as he would put it) the coordinates of (social) reality. Less ambitious than many who prefer "practical" politics;

seems to me that the former is just a fancy way of describing what the later is predicated on

 

[Mad4ziz]

I'm going to have to concede some ground to you little babyjesus, but I will answer Blagsta and love detective at the same time.

The kind of freedom Zizek is getting at is freedom to act politically. The criteria we use to judge between options are not pre given-many are socially/politically constructed and they change only through challenge.

Where is the challenge to come from if people think they do what they do automatically?

So once upon a time society disapproved of being gay-it wasn't normal. Then throughout the bravery of many gays acting against what society wanted (play it safe; compromise; keep it in the closet) we now have a situation which whilst far from perfect generally judges homosexuality more generously.

In much the same way, I as a philo hope to change the way we judge philosophy and political action, Blagsta, even though speaking this way hasn't always been popular with people who speak normally. The benefit may be to make people more willing to act practically, love detective.

 

[Blagsta]

The benefit of what?

 

[DotCommunist]

he owns only one t-shirt.

 

[Mad4ziz]

The benefit of what?

The benefit of using (admittedly obscure) philosophy to counteract the progress of the narrow scientific view that we have no freedom at all because everything we do is determined

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think the concept 'free will' is a bad concept, a meaningless concept when we look closely for it - something that arises out of the way we represent ourselves to ourselves. It is a useful fiction in many ways as it allows us to condense a complex process into something that appears coherent. In some sense, we are free because we believe ourselves to be free. We have identified 'ourselves' as actors and decision-makers. We are self-aware, and this self-awareness allows us to look at what we did in the past in a way that modifies what we will do in the future, not simply through conditioning, but through reflection, through identification of motives. Whether those motives are really there is immaterial - that we think they are there is enough for us to act as if they were there.

But that I think like this about free will doesn't help me to decide how to act, and I still do need to do that thing which is represented in my consciousness as a 'decision'. I still need to reach a decision as to what to do. If I didn't think as I do and I believed, for instance, in some kind of ghost in the machine, that would also not help me to decide how to act. I would be in exactly the same position.

So you solve nothing by proving the existence of freedom, even if you did prove it, which I don't think you can.

What I object to in this talk of things like 'cracked reality' is that this is nonsense-speak. It doesn't mean anything. It appears to me at least to be a descent into bullshit. And this descent into bullshit is undertaken for the sole purpose of demonstrating something that wouldn't solve any problems anyway even if it were true.

 

[Blagsta]

The benefit of using (admittedly obscure) philosophy to counteract the progress of the narrow scientific view that we have no freedom at all because everything we do is determined

What? No one thinks that.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

What? No one thinks that.

You seem to assume there is a seperate modality known as 'thinking'. In reality 'thought' is but the dialectical inversion of non-thought and it is precisely this 'non-thoughtness' opposite that generates the conditions for thought's double negation and inversion of itself, leaving its ontology in tact yet paradoxically its phenomenology fractured along an indefinate number of nodal points all of which ulitimately revert back to thought's biopolitical phallic mirror image. HTH

 

[Blagsta]

Oh yeah, I get it now.

 

[Mad4ziz]

What? No one thinks that.

I think littlebabyjesus thinks we don't have free will, but isn't too bothered.
It seems obvious to you that we have free will but it really isn't so obvious to me at all-would you be bothered if we didn't?

 

[revol68]

littlebabyjesus always goes on about how free will being a crap term, to which I can only reply with meh.

 

[Blagsta]

I think littlebabyjesus thinks we don't have free will, but isn't too bothered.
It seems obvious to you that we have free will but it really isn't so obvious to me at all-would you be bothered if we didn't?

All interesting intellectually, but fuck all use politically.

 

[Mad4ziz]

All interesting intellectually, but fuck all use politically.

Fortunately given your faith in freedom its not needed politically.But if we don't have free will then we are all sorting of obeying orders (even one's political opponents) so what is the point in acting?

In fact littlebabyjesus criticism of Zizek's cracked realities etc is a mark in Z's favour I say...it indeed doesn't help a subject decide what to do.
That's the mark of freedom- there is no help from God, science, philosophy, norms of behaviour...it's down to the subject to decide autonomously. I'd be very unimpressed with a philosophy of freedom that helped me decide in a particular instance what to do.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think littlebabyjesus thinks we don't have free will, but isn't too bothered.
It seems obvious to you that we have free will but it really isn't so obvious to me at all-would you be bothered if we didn't?

It doesn't make any difference. It's the wrong question. Certainly when you're talking about our actions and whether or not it is meaningful to talk about us making decisions, of course, it is. It is entirely meaningful.

 

[Blagsta]

I haven't got a scoobie what you're on about, Mad4ziz.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

In fact littlebabyjesus criticism of Zizek's cracked realities etc is a mark in Z's favour I say...it indeed doesn't help a subject decide what to do.
That's the mark of freedom- there is no help from God, science, philosophy, norms of behaviour...it's down to the subject to decide autonomously. I'd be very unimpressed with a philosophy of freedom that helped me decide in a particular instance what to do.

But its negation doesn't help you decide what to do either.

 

[Mad4ziz]

I've got some tinnies and I'm going to watch the footie and pick this up tomorrow. It's a free choice I swear!

 

[revol68]

I don't see what problem you can have with Zizek's talk of cracks in reality etc, unless of course you don't understand what he means by reality.

Zizek is attempting to bring back a kind of zombie cartesian subject in order to move political philosophy out of the navel gazing quietism brought on by the infinite loop of knowledge/power.

This is why Zizek for all his wank about Chavez or other leftist crap is the fucking daddy.

 

[revol68]

and I too am off to watch the football.

 

[Blagsta]

What's a "zombie cartesian subject"?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't see what problem you can have with Zizek's talk of cracks in reality etc, unless of course you don't understand what he means by reality.

Zizek is attempting to bring back a kind of zombie cartesian subject in order to move political philosophy out of the navel gazing quietism brought on by the infinite loop of knowledge/power.

This is why Zizek for all his wank about Chavez or other leftist crap is the fucking daddy.

I probably don't understand what he means by reality. Can you explain?

I also don't understand what a zombie cartesian subect is, nor do I understand what you're getting at with the phrase 'infinite loop of knowledge/power' or why that would cause navel gazing quietism.

 

[love detective]

Zizek is attempting to bring back a kind of zombie cartesian subject in order to move political philosophy out of the navel gazing quietism brought on by the infinite loop of knowledge/power.

to what end?

 

[revol68]

by zombie cartesian subject I meant a kind of negative empty one which continues to haunt philosophy even after it's death, the idea of the transparent self interested rational cognito replaced instead by the Freudian drive.

regarding Zizek's idea of reality, well it's one that is constituted by discourse, in Freudian terms it is one only possible through repression, of blocking out many things in order for it to sustain any sense or meaning. He isn't however a strong textualist who argues there is nothing outside the discourse, quite the opposite, there is and it haunts us and is the very thing that makes our reality one full of gaps.

by infinite loop of knowledge/power I was referring to how the likes of Foucault in reducing the subject and truth to simply a product of regimes of power, and so ultimately even resistance is still caught within a smooth loop of powers of making. For many this led to an infinite loop of regressive arguments about how the likes of class struggle only serve to reproduce domination and were themselves inherently euro/male centric etc

 

[revol68]

also apologies in advance for that rather shite summary, I've been drinking and the beer makes me retarded.

 

[Mad4ziz]

to what end?

The end Zizek is aiming at is to raise consciousness in the general public that they can act in ways that changes things. Its why he is in the media a lot, and why he does a lot of film criticism. Check out his DVD The pervert's guide to the cinema..its an accessible way to get started with him-thats how I did it.

The fear that haunts Zizek's work is that people today are becoming more and more part of the system, unconsciously . The horizon of their presupposed worldview is constrained by what they take to be inevitable truths and desirable fantasies of what will give them enjoyment. Often they do get enjoyment from them, lets be clear. Psychoanalysis shows that people's drives are not fixated on "natural" pre wired objects of desire; instead they are fluid and will motivate people to get enjoyment out of the strangest things (fetishes being the best, and some might say, exquisite, example).

The point is that in the present situation, what with 24/7 social networking; mass media, the pressure to be sexy/beautiful/successful/powerful…to enjoy life…it is less and less easy to challenge the system and there is less and less belief in the ability to change anything or indeed in the need to change anything. In fact the system is taken to be the natural unchangeable order of things, even by people who say they want to change it: they are bought off by free trade maltesers and their conscience is salved.

Then underneath that level you have the steady advance of neuroscience as well as Charlie Darwin's insight that what works reproductively sticks around and what doesn't doesn't, and from there its a short step to "its the genes/deterministic universe that
made me do it; I have no responsibility for my actions and there is nothing I could have done differently".

All this against the backdrop in the West of our christian heritage which before the enlightenment was thought to be the natural order of things, and when belief wanes we search for some other guarantor or guide to tell us how to act.

What Zizek does in his work is to attempt to bring to the surface the motivating factors behind our behaviour (film criticism being one way of doing that) and then salvage space for truly free acts which don't arise out of help from outside the subject, whether that help be belief in God, rules of society, philosophical systems, pre determined universes.

 

[N_igma]

It's shit when modernity runs out of places to hide. He's a nobody, oedipus' fallopean tube.

 

[Blagsta]

by zombie cartesian subject I meant a kind of negative empty one which continues to haunt philosophy even after it's death, the idea of the transparent self interested rational cognito replaced instead by the Freudian drive.

regarding Zizek's idea of reality, well it's one that is constituted by discourse, in Freudian terms it is one only possible through repression, of blocking out many things in order for it to sustain any sense or meaning. He isn't however a strong textualist who argues there is nothing outside the discourse, quite the opposite, there is and it haunts us and is the very thing that makes our reality one full of gaps.

by infinite loop of knowledge/power I was referring to how the likes of Foucault in reducing the subject and truth to simply a product of regimes of power, and so ultimately even resistance is still caught within a smooth loop of powers of making. For many this led to an infinite loop of regressive arguments about how the likes of class struggle only serve to reproduce domination and were themselves inherently euro/male centric etc

Well that's cleared that up.