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Zizek: seems like a nob

I think Zizekian priest would say that it's important to not believe in God while you are obeying God's commandments because it's not about pleasing God but about doing the right thing.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I don't think Kant opens a massive can of worms. Rather, he gathers the worms together, puts them back in the can, and seals it from inside.

I don't claim in-depth knowledge of Hegel, but to my thinking he doesn't so much continue from Kant as misunderstand him with his ideas about Geist - attempting to say something about the noumenal that he has no right to say. Certainly, that was Schopenhauer's criticism of Hegel, and it seems a fair one to me. And even to this day, you hear philosophers, scientists and other commentators saying things that show that they haven't fully grasped what Kant said. Even now, over 200 years later, imo Kant has not been fully absorbed.

Kant isn't the final word, but if someone who is interested in the limits of knowledge were to ask me who to read, I would direct them towards Kant first, I think.
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Jesus, and you a Marxist?

And you are spouting empty shite about Hegel, there are certainly problems with Hegel but he isn't misunderstanding Kant rather he is struggling to address the relationship between subject and object, rather than leave them as a frozen dualism. He is attempting to deal with change and movement. Something Marx would continue on with and subsequent Post Marxists.

If you think Kant seals up the can of worms you must be one ignorant fuck.
 
I wouldn't describe myself as a Marxist.

As for Kant sealing up the can, I don't have time to do this justice at the moment, and may get back to it in a few days, but most certainly. He straightened things out. I'm probably not the best person to make statements about the broad sweep of Western philosophy, but Kant cleared up a lot of muddles, setting things straight in such a way that nobody who has come since can afford to ignore what he said.
 
at the very least, at least Kant found the can of worms - what he then did with it is open to debate, but we didn't really know the can of worms existed prior to that - or maybe we knew about the worms, but not the can that they either got out of or were put back into - and that's the important part i think, the can itself (and also the acquisition of the sealant if not the actual application of it) - not the worms that may or may not still be in it, they aren't as important as the can - schrodingers worms

revol what specifically do you find objectionable about LBJ's comments about Kant's work - as while i'm loath to say Kant is the final word on it (whatever it actually is here, i'm presuming we're talking specifically about what he covers in Critique of Pure Reason?) I don't find anything that unreasonable about what LBJ has said here - certainly Kant is a far far better place to start than anywhere else for this kind of stuff. And in general I would say a good grounding in Kant is going to give a far better basis for an understanding/appreciation of Marx than anything Zizek has ever done

Although I doubt we'll be seeing Kant appreciation all nighters at trendy london locations where people take turn to read out passages from his three critiques and pay over the odds for books that they can't make head nor tail off
 
That was Zizek at his most impressive IMO. Some interesting stuff in there - and if I'm fair there's plenty that I agree with. (I tend underplay these bits because to me they seem quite banal - but others might get something out of it. Zizek isn't bad as an introduction to a quasi Marxist framing of political questions). Zizek also talks a bit about the working class for a change - but remains skeptical about the working class as a motor of change. What I find revealing is his embrace of Obama's healthcare policies - not as worthwhile reforms but as challenging US ideology (I want to write "ruling class ideology" but that would not be how Zizek sees ideology I think - he dispenses with Marxism as soon as he has extracted what is useful to him.) This is the problem with Zizek's critique of ideology as political discourse - it does not favour any particular way forward and sees no agency for change nor any agency for the maintenance of the status quo. The public intellectual/politician is central for framing questions and even Obama can play this role. Ironically his politics are abstract and not concrete (this is not to say they are theoretical but not practical but rather he theorises and practices abstractly - the critique of ideology abstracted from social relations is an abstraction). I know revol68 wants to keep his "theoretical" work and ignore his politics, but the latter follows quite smoothly from the former in this talk at least.
 
Jesus so much crude shite in that, maybe if you actually read Zizek youd get past such embarrassingly crass ideas.
 
revol68 said:
basically Zizek is trying to rehabilitate the notion of subjectivity, to address it's deconstruction yet maintain the kernel of it, that of the possibility for radical action. He's basically busting out Marx's Theses on Feuerbach for modern readers and I reckon if you read a bit more of him you'd like him, he's pretty self deprecating about intellectuals and philosophy in general and a strong defender of science against those post structuralists who would reduce to just another form of power/knowledge.
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I've been away for a week and see revol68 has had to carry the burden of defending/explaining Z on his own. Gingerly I'll step back in: as I read him, Z sees a distinction between the Real (similar to Kant's thing in itself but not wholly presupposed) and reality-the latter being socially and imaginatively constructed, the former: well the former is perhaps in his view expressed as those points where the subject becomes aware of (posits) more than the currently constituted social/imaginative reality-the Real. Why would the subject do that?...due to failures/deadlocks/lacks experienced by the subject by reference to their desires. Thus the Real is defined by lack...the famous gaps and cracks. I have sympathy with those who get this far and then say that his views don't justify one politics over another: I think that's true: a gap is a gap...it can only be filled by subjective acts that reconstitute the social/imaginative reality in an altered form..there is no "look up table" or "bible" to justify one type of politics filling the gap because there is 1. no way to justify an act based on the pre existing reality (a true act changes that reality) and 2. in fact the Real seen as due to lacks experienced by the subject is of necessity not complete and consistent...it is both pre supposed but incomplete and posited (we recognise it when we don't get what we want). So we are left facing (the title of one of his books) "the abyss of freedom"...how to fill the gap. Why is this important? because 1. the temptation is there to take the currently constituted reality as all there is, or at least as the best there can be, ("thats just the ways things are, deal with it")whereas we can change it with our subjectivity and 2.the temptation is there to imagine a complete consistent Real (eg a wholly deterministic universe) that might lead to procrastination (lets wait till we know more..the answer is out there; the current social antagonisms have an explanation which we just havent arrived at yet). If instead the Real is viewed as necessarily imperfect incomplete and inconsistent, that tendency to look for external support before action is reduced. So for instance the frustration many posters have had in this thread to the effect that Z doesnt add anything...isnt that a sign of 1. the Real (posited by them subjectively as including a meaningless postmodern performer called Zizek) and 2. the tendency to look outside of oneself for the answer, which must be out there, somewhere, but not in Z?

What he adds is a philosophical framework, built on individual subjectivity, that contradicts the current paradigms (social, political, managerial) in a meaningful (lacks, gaps and antagonisms are the mark of the Real) but not in a prescriptive way-his own personal views are left wing, but as he said why would anyone ask him for advice (on how to fill the gap)? Whether this philosophical framework is needed is another matter...the financial or ecological challenges may provoke change anyway....perhaps the task becomes to predict how others with different political views might fill the gaps, and work out how to counter them......
 
Zizek is breathtakingly honest, with no pretensions and is hilarious in a serious way, to make some very valid and important points about the present and the dangers humanity faces now and in the future. 'Do we have to go through horrors to create a better society' being a case in point. This, in comparison to the many Marxist dullards, who have turned the ideas of Marx into studiously obscure waffle - off-putting to many and those fixated on identity politics. Zizek has also opened up a space to be able to discuss communism as a progressive force again, to put across the idea that it can be reinvented/reshaped to serve the interests of humanity, which is the point of communism anyway.
 
Mad4ziz said:
I've been away for a week and see revol68 has had to carry the burden of defending/explaining Z on his own. Gingerly I'll step back in: as I read him, Z sees a distinction between the Real (similar to Kant's thing in itself but not wholly presupposed) and reality-the latter being socially and imaginatively constructed, the former: well the former is perhaps in his view expressed as those points where the subject becomes aware of (posits) more than the currently constituted social/imaginative reality-the Real. Why would the subject do that?...due to failures/deadlocks/lacks experienced by the subject by reference to their desires. Thus the Real is defined by lack...the famous gaps and cracks. I have sympathy with those who get this far and then say that his views don't justify one politics over another: I think that's true: a gap is a gap...it can only be filled by subjective acts that reconstitute the social/imaginative reality in an altered form..there is no "look up table" or "bible" to justify one type of politics filling the gap because there is 1. no way to justify an act based on the pre existing reality (a true act changes that reality) and 2. in fact the Real seen as due to lacks experienced by the subject is of necessity not complete and consistent...it is both pre supposed but incomplete and posited (we recognise it when we don't get what we want). So we are left facing (the title of one of his books) "the abyss of freedom"...how to fill the gap. Why is this important? because 1. the temptation is there to take the currently constituted reality as all there is, or at least as the best there can be, ("thats just the ways things are, deal with it")whereas we can change it with our subjectivity and 2.the temptation is there to imagine a complete consistent Real (eg a wholly deterministic universe) that might lead to procrastination (lets wait till we know more..the answer is out there; the current social antagonisms have an explanation which we just havent arrived at yet). If instead the Real is viewed as necessarily imperfect incomplete and inconsistent, that tendency to look for external support before action is reduced. So for instance the frustration many posters have had in this thread to the effect that Z doesnt add anything...isnt that a sign of 1. the Real (posited by them subjectively as including a meaningless postmodern performer called Zizek) and 2. the tendency to look outside of oneself for the answer, which must be out there, somewhere, but not in Z?

What he adds is a philosophical framework, built on individual subjectivity, that contradicts the current paradigms (social, political, managerial) in a meaningful (lacks, gaps and antagonisms are the mark of the Real) but not in a prescriptive way-his own personal views are left wing, but as he said why would anyone ask him for advice (on how to fill the gap)? Whether this philosophical framework is needed is another matter...the financial or ecological challenges may provoke change anyway....perhaps the task becomes to predict how others with different political views might fill the gaps, and work out how to counter them......
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No offense as I can sort of see what you're getting at, but I've never yet come across a supporter/defender/fanboy of Zizek who can clearly, coherently and efficiently summarise what he's about - that in itself i think tells us something far more concrete than anything that has actually been said

you could have summed up all of the above, for example, in two simple sentences:-

1. Zizek argues that humans can do stuff, but doesn't say what that stuff is

2. People who think Zizek doesn't add anything useful is actually proof that Zizek adds something useful
 
I agree with Mad4ziz's interpretation of Zizek (I'm not sure about the anti-determinism line though). Zizek's political philosophy removes the masses from the centre stage as in Marxism and replaces it with the power of critique. (He misreads Lenin as a sort of ludicrous ultra-vanguardist driving the masses on with his pronouncements.) This is why even pretty ordinary bourgeois politicians can play the role of revolutionary critics of capitalism. To challenge one bourgeois ideology (or to open up a crack in social reality if you prefer the silly language), is more likely to serve an alternative bourgeois ideology than any revolutionary communist cause (Marx&Engels - The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it (Zizek NEVER analyses capitalism in class terms)). In this way Zizek allows space for "communism" to be discussed but only in the negative - as in that which clashes with the general bourgeois outlook. But this "communism" in the negative is completely acceptable to bourgeois academia which is precisely a space for bourgeois ideas to evolve and change.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I wouldn't describe myself as a Marxist.

As for Kant sealing up the can, I don't have time to do this justice at the moment, and may get back to it in a few days, but most certainly. He straightened things out. I'm probably not the best person to make statements about the broad sweep of Western philosophy, but Kant cleared up a lot of muddles, setting things straight in such a way that nobody who has come since can afford to ignore what he said.
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I still don't really have time to do this justice, but I've been vague about Kant so I thought I'd add a little.

I came to Kant backwards. I first tried to read Critique of Pure Reason when I was about 18 and didn't get anything from it at all. It was only years later, when I had myself been questioning the things Kant tackles, that I came back to him and found value in what he was saying: straightening my thought out. I came back to him originally because I was being told that what I was saying was 'Kantian'. I'm still grappling with it - as far as I can tell, Kant got the transcendent nature of space and time wrong, but I've read contradictory commentaries on him and still haven't worked out who I think is right: some seem to believe that Kant's philosophy is compatible with relativity, others don't. It doesn't matter to me too much: it would be rather extraordinary to be able to think yourself into a position that would never need to be amended in light of future scientific discoveries, and future scientific discoveries about the workings of our minds mostly bear out a Kantian conception of self-generated consciousness forming the content of all possible experience, which to me is Kant's central contribution (although he said some pretty damn clever stuff about synthetic/analytic statements too). Whichever details he might have got wrong, it is still fundamentally the right way to think about things.

As for subsequent philosophy written in light of Kant, well it seems to me that the main valuable modifications/advances on Kant have come not from philosophy but from science.

As for Zizek, I've read this thread pretty carefully, and I still wouldn't be able to say anything useful about Zizek's philosophy. I don't even know where he begins, let alone where he ends up.
 
I emphasise my disagreements with Zizek more than my agreements I should say. He is still very much part of dialogue with Judith Butler and Deleuze and all these post-modern liberal types. (He is the negation of them not the negation of the negation ;)). It's a shame that he is so pre-eminent when far better people such as Geoff Pilling remain an obscurity. If you want Marxist philosophy then this is the bollocks:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/index.htm

This is particularly relevant to the discussion on Zizek:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/geoff2.htm
 
The difference between proper Marxism and academic Marxist philosophy is incredibly stark. I've been talking about the weaknesses in the latter, but the former also has some clear flaws. Proper Marxism doesn't take care to categorise what it critiques in all its subtleties, for example. It leaves a lot of wriggle room. In the example I've given, Pilling does not categorise empiricism very well - many empiricists would be able to counter it and many whom Pilling is criticising would distance themselves from empiricism (Zizek is effectively in this second class). Pilling isn't criticising a school of thought but rather a bourgeois ideology - it isn't part of a debate amongst academics but an assault on the academy and the weaponry does not need to be precision weaponry. Pilling is also boringly orthodox - there's no exciting new philosopher's work added and incorporated. He also just churns out all these old awkward diamat terms about contradictions in reality etc.

But the point is it's still effective. It still does the trick. It instructs one in the proper mode of thinking. [I'm against trying to summarise the positions taken - the important thing is the instruction not the technical conclusions cf. my comments about mood earlier]. It's flaws are like the problem of walking with your hands tied behind your back - there is an increased danger of tripping up but you can still get from A to B if you take care (and I think Pilling did).
 
wtf is the "proper mode of thinking"? Proper to whom or what? Getting from A to B? What sort of weird instrumental notion of philosophy is this?

On Zizek, a good place to get the nub of his philosophical project is Fabio Vighi's book "On Zizek's Dialectics" which I reviewed last year, here. Short version is "good critique, now where?"
 
(Proper) Marxist philosophy is 100% instrumental. It's supposed to be a tool for the revolutionary worker. It's not supposed to be particularly rich or sophisticated or meaningful to lonely souls. Cut the crap about instrumental reason as if it's some sort of sin. It's a sin for the bourgeois only.
 
Doesn't the first bit rather rely on it providing some sort of answer to the second?
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Not necessarily - a theory can show how a certain project necessarily undermines itself, without necessarily offering something in its place?
 
Knotted said:
(Proper) Marxist philosophy is 100% instrumental. It's supposed to be a tool for the revolutionary worker. It's not supposed to be particularly rich or sophisticated or meaningful to lonely souls. Cut the crap about instrumental reason as if it's some sort of sin. It's a sin for the bourgeois only.
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total and utter unmitigated bollocks. A tool for the revolutionary worker to do what? Create the revolution? And what is that, how are we to decide what kind of revolution or post-revolutionary society we want to create? Philosophy is normative, it's about making the ends of human life the subject of rational decisions.
 
Of course, but as I hope I have shown by looking at the case of Slavoj Zizek, such a theory is no use as a tool for the revolutionary worker and is predicated on values alien to the workers movement (such as genteel academic discourse).

[OK my I'm being bombastic - there isn't a workers movement to speak of, but philosophy will not help create one, it can only offer a perspective to an already existing movement.]
 
articul8 said:
total and utter unmitigated bollocks. A tool for the revolutionary worker to do what? Create the revolution? And what is that, how are we to decide what kind of revolution or post-revolutionary society we want to create? Philosophy is normative, it's about making the ends of human life the subject of rational decisions.
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What the revolution is for is not a task for the philosopher (king) to decide - that's precisely the task of the revolutionary masses.
 
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