# Zizek:  seems like a nob



## el-ahrairah (Jun 11, 2012)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jun/10/slavoj-zizek-humanity-ok-people-boring

it's a name i've heard brought up a fair few times on urban but i know almost nothing about him or his work.  this article made me think he was an idiot, but it doesn't really touch on his actual, you know, philosophy.

is there anything to it that i should be reading in order to have a greater understanding of the world around me?


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## Santino (Jun 11, 2012)

I take it you mean 'knob'. A nob is an aristrocrat.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 11, 2012)

I've never managed to make head nor tail of anything he says, tbh. He seems to write in that deliberately obscure manner beloved of continental philosophers, which I've never been able to fathom.


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## smmudge (Jun 11, 2012)

I like him. I find some of his stuff accessible and illuminating. Not all of it.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 11, 2012)

Santino said:


> I take it you mean 'knob'. A nob is an aristrocrat.


I prefer to spell the insult 'nob', personally. Calling someone a 'knob' makes it sound like you're comparing them to a door handle.


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## Knotted (Jun 11, 2012)

I don't like his books - hard to penetrate and once you have penetrated them they are disappointing. I don't find him very impressive, but I do sort of like him. He's provocative and gets me thinking. Occasionally he gets promoted as a political thinker but most of his political commentary is just not very good... Last time I paid him any attention he was drifting off into some sort of atheistic rehabilitation of Christianity - literally trying to prove that Christianity itself is atheistic (don't ask )... I think he's responsible for some great youtubery and he's a pretty perceptive cultural (esp. film) commentator.


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## Wolveryeti (Jun 11, 2012)

.


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## Wolveryeti (Jun 11, 2012)

He gets thumbs from me for being intelligent and a good observer - and not being afraid to speak his branes. Agree the books are generally not accessible - the films are great though - highly recommend !Zizek and the Pervert's Guide to Cinema.


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2012)

Wolveryeti said:


> He gets thumbs from me for being intelligent and a good observer - and not being afraid to speak his branes. Agree the books are generally not accessible - the films are great though - highly recommend !Zizek and the Pervert's Guide to Cinema.


In the first of your epic series of edits you said 'it'  and that he was happy to talk out about 'it' -what is /was it?

I've got nothing from him but a demand to be political and a rejection of multi-culturalism. His own embrace of politics might have driven the first or the pathetic whining of the left that he now experiences since his rejection.


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## el-ahrairah (Jun 11, 2012)

Santino said:


> I take it you mean 'knob'. A nob is an aristrocrat.


 
nob.  short for nobber.  one who nobs.


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2012)

Knobfuckers.


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## Santino (Jun 11, 2012)

Zizek and I were friends for a while. Well, we went out for meals a few times. Which is to say, we once had lunch together. By which I mean, I once saw him in a restaurant.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Jun 11, 2012)

Santino said:


> I take it you mean 'knob'. A nob is an aristrocrat.


 
Same thing, no?


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## Orang Utan (Jun 11, 2012)

el-ahrairah said:


> nob.  short for nobber.  one who nobs.


That's knob, knobber, knobbing


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## el-ahrairah (Jun 11, 2012)

UD is happy to agree with my variation http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Nobber

so anyway, will i get anything from Zizek?


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2012)

a particularly modern std


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## el-ahrairah (Jun 11, 2012)

best not then


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## Blagsta (Jun 11, 2012)

Like the clap?


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## Blagsta (Jun 11, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> a particularly modern std


You bastard


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2012)

Blagsta said:


> You bastard


I  didn't start it!


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## Knotted (Jun 11, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Last time I paid him any attention he was drifting off into some sort of atheistic rehabilitation of Christianity - literally trying to prove that Christianity itself is atheistic (don't ask ).


 
This, by the way is the reason why he is a better cultural commentator than he is a political commentator. He likes to have everything both ways which is sort of dialectical if you like. When discussing a film or work of art or a cultural norm it's good to pull in all the contradictory aspects but In politics that just means being all over the place.


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## goldenecitrone (Jun 11, 2012)

Wolveryeti said:


> highly recommend !Zizek and the Pervert's Guide to Cinema.


 
Yep, brilliant stuff.


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2012)

I think that says it all.


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## goldenecitrone (Jun 11, 2012)

Indeed.


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## Brainaddict (Jun 11, 2012)

Someone posted this on facebook http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n11/slavoj-zizek/save-us-from-the-saviours
with the comment that something must be going on if even Zizek has stopped talking shit.

Very occasionally he does stop talking shit - I thought some of his comments on occupy were worth the listening time.

But mostly he is a sleb intellectual with too little involvement in actual politics to be able to write good political theory - can't comment on his cultural stuff, except someone pointed out, I think correctly, that The Pervert's Guide to Cinema is not as deep as it seems, because he makes all these Freudian links between film-makers as though it is a stunningly interesting interpretation of their work, when actually a lot of them were steeped in Freud and very deliberately referenced his ideas.

When he does do political commentary he can't seem to get away from authoritarianism either. I think he's called himself a Leninist or something hasn't he?


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2012)

Talking shit is why you are talking about him. You have no idea about his projection of lacanian stuff onto the social level. Hes had more direct involvmenrt in practical politics than you and in very different conditions. If his stuff is striking a chord why? Why not inform yourself about what his leninsim entails? And don't even think about replying well if you're so clever why don't you tell me?

All that wasted learning.


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## bluestreak (Jun 11, 2012)

ok, now tell me about Lacanianism.  we never covered him in my polytechnic philosophy degree either.  he's got a lot to do with Hegel doesn't he?


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2012)

Nope Don't waste your time on this cul-de-sac, i beg you..


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 11, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I prefer to spell the insult 'nob', personally. Calling someone a 'knob' makes it sound like you're comparing them to a door handle.


 
Or a penis-end, which is sort of the point, mate.


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## Blagsta (Jun 11, 2012)

bluestreak said:


> ok, now tell me about Lacanianism. we never covered him in my polytechnic philosophy degree either. he's got a lot to do with Hegel doesn't he?


 
More Freud than Hegel I'd have thought.  Not that I've read any.


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## bluestreak (Jun 11, 2012)

i dunno, i'm just grasping at straws and for some reason i connect the two in my addled brain.


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## bluestreak (Jun 11, 2012)

incidentally, if you google lacanian + cul-de-sac, the third article is about zizek.


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## goldenecitrone (Jun 11, 2012)

bluestreak said:


> ok, now tell me about Lacanianism. we never covered him in my polytechnic philosophy degree either. he's got a lot to do with Hegel doesn't he?


 
Just watch the Pervert's guide. And then watch the films he's talking about. Even if Lacanianism is all bollocks, Zizek will still convince you for a moment or two.


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## discokermit (Jun 11, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> Or a penis-end, which is sort of the point, mate.


it's nob.


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## Orang Utan (Jun 11, 2012)

KNOB


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## discokermit (Jun 11, 2012)

only nobs spell it with a k.


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 11, 2012)

discokermit said:


> it's nob.


 
You poor, benighted Black Country wazzock. All that soot has affected your mental development.   A "nob" is someone the self-esteem-challenged person tips his hat to. A knob is someone who personifies a knob, a cock-tip, a bellend.


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 11, 2012)

discokermit said:


> only nobs spell it with a k.


 
Only the illiterate and the terminally-stupid don't.


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## Orang Utan (Jun 11, 2012)

discokermit said:


> only nobs spell it with a k.


Nobs and people who can spell.
A knob is that thing younger on a door and slang for penis comes from that


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## discokermit (Jun 11, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> You poor, benighted Black Country wazzock. All that soot has affected your mental development.  A "nob" is someone the self-esteem-challenged person tips his hat to. A knob is someone who personifies a knob, a cock-tip, a bellend.


who calls posh people nobs? cap doffing cockernees like you.
posh people are toffs, unless you are a nobend.


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 11, 2012)

discokermit said:


> who calls posh people nobs? cap doffing cockernees like you.


 
Tough luck, wazzock-chops. I'm not a cockney! 
And I don't call posh people "nobs" or "toffs". I call them cunts.



> posh people are toffs, unless you are a nobend.


 
What's one of them, someone who doesn't bend?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 12, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> Or a penis-end, which is sort of the point, mate.


I spell it 'nob' for penis too.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 12, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> projection of lacanian stuff onto the social level


What does that mean?


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

Fuck knows. Seemed a good thing to say last night.


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## Greebo (Jun 12, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I spell it 'nob' for penis too.


  It sticks out, therefore it's a knob.


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## camouflage (Jun 12, 2012)

el-ahrairah said:


> http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jun/10/slavoj-zizek-humanity-ok-people-boring
> 
> it's a name i've heard brought up a fair few times on urban but i know almost nothing about him or his work. this article made me think he was an idiot, but it doesn't really touch on his actual, you know, philosophy.
> 
> is there anything to it that i should be reading in order to have a greater understanding of the world around me?


 
He seems to me a bit like a nob too. I've wondered if some people among the 'intelligentsia' are impressed by his accent.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 12, 2012)

Greebo said:


> It sticks out, therefore it's a knob.


I would think that most people call the forum 'nobbing and sobbing', not 'knobbing and sobbing'. But opinion appears to be divided, which means that both are acceptable. To my eyes, however, 'knob' looks wrong.


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 12, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I would think that most people call the forum 'nobbing and sobbing', not 'knobbing and sobbing'. But opinion appears to be divided, which means that both are acceptable. *To my eyes, however, 'knob' looks wrong*.


 
Heteronormativist!!!


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## el-ahrairah (Jun 12, 2012)

camouflage said:


> He seems to me a bit like a nob too. I've wondered if some people among the 'intelligentsia' are impressed by his accent.


 
stupid intelligentsia


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Nope Don't waste your time on this cul-de-sac, i beg you..


 
He does actually (have quite a bit to do with Hegel, via Kojeve) do a bit more background research next time, eh?


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

articul8 said:


> He does actually (have quite a bit to do with Hegel, via Kojeve) do a bit more background research next time, eh?


Are you hunting me? I love hegel scholars who says _via kojeve_. It means that they've read an intro to hegel's western european influence not hegel himself. Schoolboy error.


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

paranoia complex?!   There are some decent studies of the French reception of Hegel (most of which is via Kojeve) :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Subjects-De...=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339513830&sr=1-3
http://www.amazon.co.uk/French-Hege...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339513866&sr=1-1


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

And hegel, read him? Non-mediated.


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

who?  Me, or them?


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

You


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

It's a threat - an intellectual threat!!!!


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

Well, first of all I'd start by questioning whether a non-mediated reading is possible. It would mean not having read Marx for a start!


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

Oh ffs. That was the point. Cheers for pointing out that you've _also_ not read marx.


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

haha - yes, right


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

What about zizek, have you bothered reading him?


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

articul8 said:


> haha - yes, right


Reduced to this professore?


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

I've read quite a bit of Hegel, Marx, Freud and Zizek (and some Lacan, but mostly via Zizek)


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

But I haven't read everything by any of them. (doubt if many have)


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

articul8 said:


> I've read quite a bit of Hegel, Marx, Freud and Zizek (and some Lacan, but mostly via Zizek)


Them penguin intros are useful aren't they.


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

bit more than that


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

You can only fool a certain amount of the people a certain amount of the time.


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

The fool is the one who thinks he's not deluded at all.

I like how you claim (bizarrely) that Lacan has nothing to do with Hegel, then accuse/imply that my reading is limited!!!


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

articul8 said:


> The fool is the one who thinks he's not deluded at all.


You should do birthday cards. This period is over. It's finished. Four posh lads decided 40 years ago.


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> This period is over. It's finished. Four posh lads decided 40 years ago.


wtf


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

You never went to Moscow. Did you?


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## el-ahrairah (Jun 12, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Them penguin intros are useful aren't they.


 
jesus, if we have to stop claiming we know stuff based on having read one of these, then my debating days are over.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

el-ahrairah said:


> jesus, if we have to stop claiming we know stuff based on having read one of these, then my debating days are over.


The forum  dies


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You never went to Moscow. Did you?


rusting drainpipes perplex field mice.

We can all play this game


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

I don't know why i bother with you sometimes. A philosophy/history forum and the biggest brain on the boards and he cannot work it out.


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

I'm not a fucking mind-reader


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

Yes you are.


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

Who are these posh boys then?


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2012)

What happened 40 years ago?


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## articul8 (Jun 12, 2012)

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threa...usic-it-has-to-be.294630/page-7#post-11250836


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 12, 2012)

articul8 said:


> The fool is the one who thinks he's not deluded at all.
> 
> I like how you claim (bizarrely) that Lacan has nothing to do with Hegel, then accuse/imply that my reading is limited!!!


 
Yeah, but Lacan was to Hegel as Althusser was to Marx, and I mean that in the most uncomplimentary way possible.


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 12, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You never went to Moscow. Did you?


 
He did, in his heart.


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## ska invita (Jun 12, 2012)

im half way through this... his real books are too long (hard) for me - doing a good job of getting to the core of what he's said over the years in a way even i get - minus all the waffle, which he seems to excel at  (in fact i think he has some mild mental illness , by his own admission). Havent got to the defence of revolutionary violence/neo-stalinism yet, so looking forward to that


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## goldenecitrone (Jun 13, 2012)

ska invita said:


> im half way through this... his real books are too long (hard) for me - doing a good job of getting to the core of what he's said over the years in a way even i get - minus all the waffle, which he seems to excel at (in fact i think he has some mild mental illness , by his own admission). Havent got to the defence of revolutionary violence/neo-stalinism yet, so looking forward to that


 
He does keep all his underwear neatly folded in his kitchen drawers.


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## ska invita (Jun 13, 2012)

goldenecitrone said:


> He does keep all his underwear neatly folded in his kitchen drawers.


i know someone who has seen him speak publicly, and he has endless physical tics and mannerism, such as tugging his t-shirt every five seconds... I dont mean to triviliase him, but he definitely has some sort of hyperactivity, and that comes over in - or is responsible for - his 70 odd books or so.

I am surprised by how popular he is. Not saying its undeserved, just surprised.

ETA: Im 3/4 of the way through the guide and its still on his psychoanalytic approach to (marxist ) sociology. I like a bit of psychoanalysis, but I think all this psychoanalysing of societies desires and subconscious etc has as much to do with his own desire to psychoanalise himself - or at least that would be my guess if i had him on the couch!


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## 8ball (Jun 14, 2012)

I just find him really funny.


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## alsoknownas (Jun 15, 2012)

Knotted said:


> This, by the way is the reason why he is a better cultural commentator than he is a political commentator. He likes to have everything both ways which is sort of dialectical if you like. When discussing a film or work of art or a cultural norm it's good to pull in all the contradictory aspects but In politics that just means being all over the place.


This.  So far, in politics and philosophy I find him quite flakey - scattergun technique, which occasionally shines a light, but more often just bluffs and confuses.  But on film he becomes really useful for me.  I guess that is because there is room for (and in fact a neccesity for) ambiguity and loose interpretation.


8ball said:


> I just find him really funny.


And this.  I love the fact that he exists, whether he's right or wrong.  He has his provocateur posture down pat.  He's not the 'Borat of Philosophy' (lazy, racist tag ) , he's more like the Sacha Baron Cohen (poor comparison, but you know what I mean).


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## Idris2002 (Jun 15, 2012)

He reminds me more of Dennis Hopper:


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## ska invita (Jun 15, 2012)

Knotted said:


> ... sort of atheistic rehabilitation of Christianity - literally trying to prove that Christianity itself is atheistic (don't ask )


Something along the lines of that Jesus' crucifixtion is equivalent to the death of God fullstop, plus the Book of Job - Job has a shit life, and when he asks why is God such a cunt for the misery, God chips in to say he moves in mysterious ways - his refusal to explain what He is up to, beyond saying the world is a crrrazy place makes Zizek says this is God arguing for his own  non-existence... this all just ground work and mood music for excusing Stalin though


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## butchersapron (Jun 15, 2012)

Is it frig.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 15, 2012)

I quite that reading of Job, tbf.


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## Idris2002 (Jun 15, 2012)

ska invita said:


> Something along the lines of that Jesus' crucifixtion is equivalent to the death of God fullstop, plus the Book of Job - Job has a shit life, and when he asks why is God such a cunt for the misery, God chips in to say he moves in mysterious ways - his refusal to explain what He is up to, beyond saying the world is a crrrazy place makes Zizek says this is God arguing for his own non-existence... this all just ground work and mood music for excusing Stalin though


 
Genuine question - how does he get from point A to point B? Surely "the world is a crrrazy place" should lead to aggressive scepticism and nihilism, not admiration for Comrade Moustachevili?


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## butchersapron (Jun 15, 2012)

I suspect that ska's reading is not that rigourous. This is the 2nd time i can remember that he's totally misread him.


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## el-ahrairah (Jun 15, 2012)

i dunno, i can see how scepticism and nihilism could lead a number of ways, including towards the admiration of an iron-fisted dictator.  but also towards plenty of other, rather more sensible responses.


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## butchersapron (Jun 15, 2012)

el-ahrairah said:


> i dunno, i can see how scepticism and nihilism could lead a number of ways, including towards the admiration of an iron-fisted dictator. but also towards plenty of other, rather more sensible responses.


But it didn't in zizek.


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## ska invita (Jun 15, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> I suspect that ska's reading is not that rigourous. This is the 2nd time i can remember that he's totally misread him.


 
ive never read him before, but this is what was in the beginners guide - reduced further by me! Sorry to confuse things with my post - I was going to try and post properly what i gleaned from it for urban interrogation later... I do get the impression though that everything he does is ultimately geared towards excusing the excesses of Communism (which he's up for repeating to some extent)...I'll write up why i think that later.


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## el-ahrairah (Jun 15, 2012)

zizek: neither stalinist nor sensible...


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## Knotted (Jun 15, 2012)

My feeling is that he's not that interested in politics anymore and his work on religion is his real passion, I really don't think the latter is mood music for the former. I can't substantiate that, though.


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## ska invita (Jun 15, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> This is the 2nd time i can remember that he's totally misread him.


when was this time - his anti-horizontalist comments on Occupy?


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## butchersapron (Jun 15, 2012)

ska invita said:


> when was this time - his anti-horizontalist comments on Occupy?


Your horrible misreading of him arguing for a SWP type role over occupy. A shameful misreading.


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## ska invita (Jun 15, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Your horrible misreading of him arguing for a SWP type role over occupy. A shameful misreading.


i think it adds up... i just don't trust his communist party allegiances...if it was wrong on this occasion (a matter of opinion - i stand by it, "horrible" though it is  - still reads like a hatchet job to me) its still true of him in general. I remember you also thinking badly of Occupy (at the start at least, not sure about later) along similar lines, but I think his dislike of it comes from a different (ideological) place.


el-ahrairah said:


> zizek: neither stalinist nor sensible...


not a stalinist, but he does defend stalin/ism though


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## butchersapron (Jun 15, 2012)

There are no communist party allegiances. Where are you getting this from?


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## Knotted (Jun 15, 2012)

Zizek:


> My formula is not just that I try to give some atheist reading of Christianity (of how God is really man - that's bullshit). Only through the Christian experience can you reach the abyss of what I call atheism.


 
My take on it before was slightly wrong. He's basically making various Christian theologians (mainly Chesterton) central to an atheist outlook. Without Chesterton atheists aren't real, authentic atheists. Balmy really (and dependent on Lacan; to do with transcendental substructures of belief - an atheist merely believes God is dead, whereas an authentic atheist believes God is unconscious). He theorises by glorifying his prejudices. Zizek can't step outside his (occidental) intellectual tradition.

19-20 minutes in:


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## Knotted (Jun 15, 2012)

I should add that in his exposition there is no analysis of religion as a social phenomenon (he's even worse than the "new atheists" in this respect, let alone a cure for them). Related to this he has only a reformist criticism of religion (or at least Catholicism) as a moral authority.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 15, 2012)

Hmmm.

I've always dismissed Zizek as someone not worth bothering with, but I do think the idea that it is only through monotheism that one can arrive at an atheist position has some merit.

The existence of the Piraha, an Amazonian tribe with no sense of the divine, disproves it as an absolute truth. That doesn't mean it isn't an interesting idea, though.

Monotheism (which is never any such thing really - Christianity isn't monotheism really, strictly speaking) was in some ways a regression from polytheism. Polytheism, with its fluid theology that would adapt to new circumstances, was proto-scientific in its attempt to explain phenomena. The monotheistic monoliths that replaced it introduced dogmas of various kinds, unquestionable absolute truths. But they also involved a regression of the gods from being the direct causes of every event, placing them at a greater distance as the ones that set everything in motion, or set the rules, but then allowed things to proceed from there. That leaves room for the atheist to then doubt the need to postulate a god at all.


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## Knotted (Jun 15, 2012)

Oh it is an interesting idea, but please note that he is being more specific than you are. He is talking about Catholicism not just any old monotheism. It's because he likes Chesterton basically and the interesting idea is Chesterton's not Zizek's. The problem is Zizek's theorising is based on very little and it appears very dogmatic.

His reasoning is very different to your reasoning above. It's about the subtleties of belief. Religious beliefs have a quasi literal/quasi metaphorical character. To arrive at atheism without going through Christianity means your take on what religious belief is emphasises the literal character over the metaphorical character (caution: that's very much my way of putting it not Zizek's).


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## Idris2002 (Jun 16, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Hmmm.
> 
> I've always dismissed Zizek as someone not worth bothering with, but I do think the idea that it is only through monotheism that one can arrive at an atheist position has some merit.
> 
> ...


 
AFAIK the only ethnographic research done on the Piraha has been by a linguist who started out as an Evangelical Christian missionary, before going through a crisis of faith and losing his faith. Like his claim that the Piraha lack the linguistic features that Chomsky considers universal and panhuman, his points about their alleged lack of a "sense of the divine" are intriguing and important, but badly need to be confirmed by another researcher. It may well be that he's right, but it might also be that his particular relationship to religion, coming from his crisis of faith, lead him to misinterpret Piraha culture.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 16, 2012)

Yes, I agree that they need to be confirmed. I probably shouldn't have used the Piraha as my example, because I think that if they really don't have a recursive language, and are as unable to learn other languages as appears to be the case, that might mean something rather more fundamental about their development and particular circumstances: either that their stable environment has meant that they have not faced the challenges of new situations that require new ways of thinking and new ways of reasoning, meaning that their culture has not become one in which full human language is needed; and/or more controversially, that this lack of novelty has in fact led them along a certain separate evolutionary path.

I've been thinking about the Piraha a lot recently, and a lack of recursion in their language _I think_ necessarily would mean that their language lacks the full expressive and creative power of other languages.

I don't know if you've read Everett's work on this. I've read some, and it does sound very convincing.


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## revol68 (Jun 16, 2012)

it's funny watching so many lefties take the hump with him of late, as if his god awful concrete politics weren't obvious from the outset.

I think alot of people are just lazy thinkers and want people like Zizek to give them a complete and consistent answer to the world, and when they inevitably fail to do so, they are disappointed.


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## Idris2002 (Jun 16, 2012)

I loved Zizek's guest appearance on Mad Men:


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## love detective (Jun 16, 2012)

revol68 said:


> it's funny watching so many lefties take the hump with him of late, as if his god awful concrete politics weren't obvious from the outset.
> 
> I think alot of people are just lazy thinkers and want people like Zizek to give them a complete and consistent answer to the world, and when they inevitably fail to do so, they are disappointed.


 
baby night owl


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## revol68 (Jun 19, 2012)

Idris2002 said:


> AFAIK the only ethnographic research done on the Piraha has been by a linguist who started out as an Evangelical Christian missionary, before going through a crisis of faith and losing his faith. Like his claim that the Piraha lack the linguistic features that Chomsky considers universal and panhuman, his points about their alleged lack of a "sense of the divine" are intriguing and important, but badly need to be confirmed by another researcher. It may well be that he's right, but it might also be that his particular relationship to religion, coming from his crisis of faith, lead him to misinterpret Piraha culture.


 
The other thing is that Chomsky's argument is humans have the potential for these linguistic features, a universal language acquisition device, he never said ever human would have them.


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## Idris2002 (Jun 20, 2012)




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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 20, 2012)

revol68 said:


> The other thing is that Chomsky's argument is humans have the potential for these linguistic features, a universal language acquisition device, he never said ever human would have them.


That begs several questions, though. If the Piraha genuinely do have a language that is not recursive, and if this does indeed place limits in the kinds of thing that they can say, what is it about them that has led them not to develop recursive language if they do have the potential? It's a good trick to lie dormant like that. The answer would have to be that they have never been confronted with the kind of problem that required that level of reasoning to solve, which would give some pretty big insights into the likely ways in which recursive human language originally developed, and when.

They might also have lost a formerly recursive language due to generations of living in such a way that it was not required. But again, that begs questions - such as what is it that is different about the Piraha's circumstances from the situation of children who turn pidgin into fully recursive creole.


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## revol68 (Jun 20, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> That begs several questions, though. If the Piraha genuinely do have a language that is not recursive, and if this does indeed place limits in the kinds of thing that they can say, what is it about them that has led them not to develop recursive language if they do have the potential? It's a good trick to lie dormant like that. The answer would have to be that they have never been confronted with the kind of problem that required that level of reasoning to solve, which would give some pretty big insights into the likely ways in which recursive human language originally developed, and when.
> 
> They might also have lost a formerly recursive language due to generations of living in such a way that it was not required. But again, that begs questions - such as what is it that is different about the Piraha's circumstances from the situation of children who turn pidgin into fully recursive creole.



Definitely it raises many many questions, problem is the research is pretty patchy and from what I know seems to rely on one dx missionaries experience. Certainly I dont think theres enough to be making grand claims dismissing Chomsky's theory ofanguage quite yet.


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## Idris2002 (Jun 20, 2012)

This link should take you to a PDF of a paper written as part of a critique of the Piraha claims:

http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/peop...idence_and_Argumentation_Reply_to_Everett.pdf

A lot of it is in technical linguistic jargon that is a bit beyond me, but the gist seems to be that the ex-missionary did indeed lose the run of himself.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 22, 2012)

Idris2002 said:


> This link should take you to a PDF of a paper written as part of a critique of the Piraha claims:
> 
> http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/peop...idence_and_Argumentation_Reply_to_Everett.pdf
> 
> A lot of it is in technical linguistic jargon that is a bit beyond me, but the gist seems to be that the ex-missionary did indeed lose the run of himself.


I'm going to try to struggle through that at some point. Without really engaging with it, which is going to be pretty tough, tbh, it's hard to tell whether or not they have a point. There's quite a bit of angry rhetoric in there, though.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 23, 2012)

As I read him, Zizek is simply reacting to the hopelessness he sees all around hm-the apathy. 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; perhaps more necessary as cognitive neuroscience seems to remove all our agency?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 23, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> cognitive neuroscience seems to remove all our agency?


I don't think it does. But this statement begs a question - what do you mean by 'our'? It seems to me that those who see a problem here feel the need for some kind of cartesian duality to be taking place, but cartesian duality, like the idea of 'god', doesn't actually solve the problem it's usually invoked to solve and itself poses its own problems.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 23, 2012)

If one assumes a smooth consistent unbroken "real" (as is usually the case when a deterministic universe is mentioned) then there is a problem for freedom with or without Descartes. But Schelling as appropriated by Zizek assumes a fissured, cracked "real" as necessary if human subjectivity is to be both immanent to that "real" and yet capable of autonomous acts


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 23, 2012)

The problem for freedom is more fundamental than that. What is freedom? Is it the power not to do what you think it is best to do in any given instant? How would you do that? The concept 'free will' is incoherent - you have the freedom not to do that which you consider it is best to do - a - but instead to do b. But by making that decision to do b instead, b then assumes the position of that which you consider it is best to do. Free will is a concept that cannot even be defined.

And I suppose here you're right that neuroscience has something to say at this point. The 'decision' to act is itself a phenomenon in the self-generated construction 'conscious experience'. We act in certain ways, and explain those actions to ourselves in consciousness using all kinds of meanings, one of which is 'decision'.

I confess that I have no idea what a 'cracked real' could be. That sounds to me like an attempt to introduce dualism.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 23, 2012)

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.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 23, 2012)

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.


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## Blagsta (Jun 23, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> 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?


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## love detective (Jun 23, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> 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


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 23, 2012)

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.


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## Blagsta (Jun 23, 2012)

The benefit of what?


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## DotCommunist (Jun 23, 2012)

he owns only one t-shirt.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 23, 2012)

Blagsta said:


> 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


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 23, 2012)

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.


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## Blagsta (Jun 23, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> 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.


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## Jeff Robinson (Jun 23, 2012)

Blagsta said:


> 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


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## Blagsta (Jun 23, 2012)

Oh yeah, I get it now.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 23, 2012)

Blagsta said:


> 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?


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## revol68 (Jun 23, 2012)

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


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## Blagsta (Jun 23, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> 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.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 23, 2012)

Blagsta said:


> 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.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 23, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> 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.


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## Blagsta (Jun 23, 2012)

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


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 23, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> 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.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 23, 2012)

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!


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## revol68 (Jun 23, 2012)

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.


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## revol68 (Jun 23, 2012)

and I too am off to watch the football.


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## Blagsta (Jun 23, 2012)

What's a "zombie cartesian subject"?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 23, 2012)

revol68 said:


> 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.


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## love detective (Jun 23, 2012)

revol68 said:


> 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?


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## revol68 (Jun 23, 2012)

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


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## revol68 (Jun 23, 2012)

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


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

love detective said:


> 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.


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## N_igma (Jun 24, 2012)

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


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## Blagsta (Jun 24, 2012)

revol68 said:


> 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.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> 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".
> .


I was with you up to this bit. Certainly, I agree that there has been a tendency towards believing that capitalism as we know it is the natural order of things, which limits the ability to see alternatives. But I don't see the leap from that to strict determinism and fatalism. Indeed, often the belief in the natural order of things is accompanied by an unrealistic belief in the individual's ability to change their own circumstances on their own (see American Dream, etc).

I'd say that the current financial crises have caused a very large number of people to question their assumptions, mind you. This is the level at which you can affect people's political beliefs, not at the level of discussions about neuroscience. I don't understand thinking about the 'steady advance of neuroscience' as a threat, though. This suggests a philosophy that is scared of too much knowledge - believing that if we knew our true nature, we would not be able to live with ourselves. I think quite the opposite.


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## butchersapron (Jun 24, 2012)

Hang on, all this is about some form of _consciousness raising?_


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

Perhaps the following examples help in seeing what I think revol68 means:

negative empty subject: this is a reference to the insight that when we are following the tracks of the obvious, right thing to do (eg doing what gives us pleasure without contravening any social rule-eg taking the piss out of continental philosophy) we are not actually free agents. Its only when we face up to situations where there is no pleasurable option and where we are conflicted and have no obvious right way to proceed that we become free subjects

reality constituted by discourse: this is the idea that the horizon of our meaning is set by both the social rules we follow and the other side of those rules-the illusions that unconsciously underpin them e.g. that by buying the BMW 6 I will absorb the Joy Division cool of New Dawn Fades. One insidious aspect is the illusion that those rules seamlessly cover how we should act in all situations in a conflict-free manner

infinite loop knowledge/power: if there were no gaps, no inconsistencies in the discourse, even rebellion would be subsumed within it. Its only gaps, negatives, lacks that open the space for freedom


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I was with you up to this bit. Certainly, I agree that there has been a tendency towards believing that capitalism as we know it is the natural order of things, which limits the ability to see alternatives. But I don't see the leap from that to strict determinism and fatalism. Indeed, often the belief in the natural order of things is accompanied by an unrealistic belief in the individual's ability to change their own circumstances on their own (see American Dream, etc).
> 
> I'd say that the current financial crises have caused a very large number of people to question their assumptions, mind you. This is the level at which you can affect people's political beliefs, not at the level of discussions about neuroscience. I don't understand thinking about the 'steady advance of neuroscience' as a threat, though. This suggests a philosophy that is scared of too much knowledge - believing that if we knew our true nature, we would not be able to live with ourselves. I think quite the opposite.


 
I agree that there may be better ways to raise consciousness or change beliefs than Zizek's philosophy, but the concern is that the knowledge garnered by neuroscience may increase the tendency towards apathy or even worse towards manipulation by those with knowledge power and money.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> negative empty subject: this is a reference to the insight that when we are following the tracks of the obvious, right thing to do (eg doing what gives us pleasure without contravening any social rule-eg taking the piss out of continental philosophy) we are not actually free agents. Its only when we face up to situations where there is no pleasurable option and where we are conflicted and have no obvious right way to proceed that we become free subjects


Why? Where we are conflicted, we still in the end need to make a decision, to resolve those conflicts. And as I said earlier, neuroscience does have something to say about this, as there is a competitive aspect to our brains' functions. In the end one course of action will win out - generally the one that we feel is right emotionally. We often cannot rationalise our decisions in such circumstances - or our rationalisations are fairly arbitrary confabulations - but so what? That's because our emotional responses have dictated our course of action, and emotions cannot be rationalised.


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## Blagsta (Jun 24, 2012)

By buying an expensive car, I'll absorb the cool of a song about suicide? What are you on about? Who thinks that?


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## Blagsta (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> I agree that there may be better ways to raise consciousness or change beliefs than Zizek's philosophy, but the concern is that the knowledge garnered by neuroscience may increase the tendency towards apathy or even worse towards manipulation by those with knowledge power and money.




Which advances in neuroscience?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> I agree that there may be better ways to raise consciousness or change beliefs than Zizek's philosophy, but the concern is that the knowledge garnered by neuroscience may increase the tendency towards apathy or even worse towards manipulation by those with knowledge power and money.


There is always a danger that scientific knowledge can be misused, but I don't share this concern. Take mental health, for example. On the one hand there is a tendency to medicalise and pathologise various behaviours - reach for the drugs cabinet to deal with the problem child, for instance. But there is also the opposite tendency - a growing body of work on the efficacy of non-medical models of mental illness.

But you don't oppose aspects of the medical model of mental illness that you think are wrong by seeking to prevent scientific study of the way our brains work. In fact, you _use_ that new knowledge to show how the medical model is wrong.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

What feels right emotionally may well be rationalisable on evolutionary grounds.

But what about eg hunger strikes on political grounds? Is that also simply the result of exploitation of the hunger striker by others, or could it be a sovereign decision on the part of the striker?


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> There is always a danger that scientific knowledge can be misused, but I don't share this concern. Take mental health, for example. On the one hand there is a tendency to medicalise and pathologise various behaviours - reach for the drugs cabinet to deal with the problem child, for instance. But there is also the opposite tendency - a growing body of work on the efficacy of non-medical models of mental illness.
> 
> But you don't oppose aspects of the medical model of mental illness that you think are wrong by seeking to prevent scientific study of the way our brains work. In fact, you _use_ that new knowledge to show how the medical model is wrong.


 
I dont oppose scientific study, and neither does Zizek as far as I know. Where did you get that from?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> What feels right emotionally may well be rationalisable on evolutionary grounds.


 
Yes, this is true. Our understanding of our own motivation is necessarily limited, though.



Mad4ziz said:


> But what about eg hunger strikes on political grounds? Is that also simply the result of exploitation of the hunger striker by others, or could it be a sovereign decision on the part of the striker?


 
'Sovereign decision'? It's a decision by the hunger striker, sure. It's an example of the way that humans are able to hold ideas in our heads and to act on those ideas. The motivation for the action is not the immediate wellbeing of the individual but a wider good. That for which we act is not just our own individual selves. We can act for the good of a collective too. We can act out of love. Many parents will willingly sacrifice themselves for their children. Some people will sacrifice themselves for a political cause.

I don't see the problem here.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Yes, this is true.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
One such idea being that of freedom rather than overdetermination; another being that of sovereignty over exploitation by other agents....thats what Zizek is about: ideas


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## love detective (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> What Zizek does in his work is to.....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.


 
I admire you & revol's zeal to try and pin something much more profound & revolutionary on Zizek than what most of us see, but don't you see the contradiction in what you write above? 

To talk of any kind of act as not being influenced (or helped as you put it) by something outside of the subject is bizarre - even more so when you talk about Zizek's philosophical work as something that is clearly outside the subject having the potential for something that happens within that subject and then claim that this something doesn't arise out of help from outside the subject

And are things like a 1,000 page tomb on Hegel really the key for awaking the 'boring idiots' (who constitute 99% of the world according to Zizek) from their dogmatic slumber?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> One such idea being that of freedom rather than overdetermination; another being that of sovereignty over exploitation by other agents....thats what Zizek is about: ideas


Ok. We're up against something I often come up against with philosophy, I think, particularly continental philosophy. I simply don't see the problem that Zizek appears to see, which leaves me rather bewildered by his proposed solution.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

love detective said:


> I admire you & revol's zeal to try and pin something much more profound & revolutionary on Zizek than what most of us see, but don't you see the contradiction in what you write above?
> 
> To talk of any kind of act as not being influenced (or helped as you put it) by something outside of the subject is bizarre - even more so when you talk about Zizek's philosophical work as something that is clearly outside the subject having the potential for something that happens within that subject and then claim that this something doesn't arise out of help from outside the subject
> 
> And are things like a 1,000 page tomb on Hegel really the key for awaking the 'boring idiots' (who constitute 99% of the world according to Zizek) from their dogmatic slumber?


 
Let me think about it!


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Ok. We're up against something I often come up against with philosophy, I think, particularly continental philosophy. I simply don't see the problem that Zizek appears to see, which leaves me rather bewildered by his proposed solution.


 
Let me think about it!


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## Knotted (Jun 24, 2012)

love detective said:


> to what end?


 
Perfect question (in context). Zizek, the philosopher, is a critic of capitalism not an advocate of an alternative end (eg. communism). His radicalism could just as easily fuel fascism as anything else - he misreads Lenin atrociously as something approximating Mussolini (driving the masses forward with his revolutionary ire) and he has extraordinary difficulties trying to work out the differences between radical right and radical left. (It's something desperately obscure to do with authentic events. Who can tell whether the revolutionary event is authentic? The authentic revolutionary of course. And who is an authentic revolutionary? Anybody Zizek takes a fancy to.)


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

So Zizek is a revolutionary without a cause?


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## butchersapron (Jun 24, 2012)

I've been reading and following Jodi Dean pretty closely for the last few years. She's someone massively centrally influenced by Zizek and his reading of Lacan in particular. She's taken the Lenin stuff mentioned above and ran with it, going even further than Zizek himself i suspect. She has some very interesting ideas about 'communicative capitalism' as well. I had the same sort of questions of her that have been asked above by l_d and Knotted of Zizek - to what end is all this? What does it mean politically? Is it just traditional old school consciousness raising dressed up in modern langague without overcoming the problems of that model? Occupy and her reactions cleared that up for me . Nothing. A rhetorical obsession but no political content.


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## Knotted (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> So Zizek is a revolutionary without a cause?


 
Not quite - he has political commitments (although my feeling is he is getting more and more apolitical as he gets older), but they are only loosely connected with his philosophy (or "theory") and his philosophy would be compatible with just about anything "radical" ie. radically critically of current mainstream ideologies. His method of theorising is described by Edward Said in _Orientalism _(except of course Zizek applies this method to everything not just the orient)_. _He forces social reality into Lacanian boxes and uses examples to exemplify the theory and counter examples to also exemplify the theory. He calls himself a Marxist but in practice he is completely 100% anti-Marxist (I'm not being purist here - Nial Ferguson is more of a Marxist than Zizek), there is never any attempt at understanding social/political phenomenon in terms of history, economics, social reality etc. but always in terms of these top-down Lacanian schemata.


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

love detective said:


> I admire you & revol's zeal to try and pin something much more profound & revolutionary on Zizek than what most of us see, but don't you see the contradiction in what you write above?
> 
> To talk of any kind of act as not being influenced (or helped as you put it) by something outside of the subject is bizarre - even more so when you talk about Zizek's philosophical work as something that is clearly outside the subject having the potential for something that happens within that subject and then claim that this something doesn't arise out of help from outside the subject
> 
> And are things like a 1,000 page tomb on Hegel really the key for awaking the 'boring idiots' (who constitute 99% of the world according to Zizek) from their dogmatic slumber?


 
I think the contradiction is answered by saying that the point of Zizek is to allow subjects to recognise those situations that call for sovereign acts, and to recognise that they need no support from outside beyond the fact of that recognition to decide what to do

Since I'm not a philosopher by trade, as I said earlier I started with Zizek via the film criticism stuff and what I read in the media. As I read more deeply I think he actually is a philosopher first and foremost (ie 1000 page tomes on Hegel is his thing-as he sais to the Guardian, why would anyone ask him for advice?)


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Not quite - he has political commitments (although my feeling is he is getting more and more apolitical as he gets older), but they are only loosely connected with his philosophy (or "theory") and his philosophy would be compatible with just about anything "radical" ie. radically critically of current mainstream ideologies. His method of theorising is described by Edward Said in _Orientalism _(except of course Zizek applies this method to everything not just the orient)_. _He forces social reality into Lacanian boxes and uses examples to exemplify the theory and counter examples to also exemplify the theory. He calls himself a Marxist but in practice he is completely 100% anti-Marxist (I'm not being purist here - Nial Ferguson is more of a Marxist than Zizek), there is never any attempt at understanding social/political phenomenon in terms of history, economics, social reality etc. but always in terms of these top-down Lacanian schemata.


I don't know much about Lacan. What do you mean by 'Lacanian boxes'?


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## Mad4ziz (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> So Zizek is a revolutionary without a cause?


His cause is the resurrection of the soveriegn subject


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## butchersapron (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> His cause is the resurrection of the soveriegn subject


Oh god that sounds like terrible old fashioned frankfurt school misanthropy.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> His cause is the resurrection of the soveriegn subject


When was it killed?

tbh I don't see any sense in this. I think ld touched on it - we make decisions, but our decisions can only be understood in the wider context of our relations with others. There's no contradiction here - we only exist as individuals in our relations with others, in our relations with the world. Even your hunger striker example: their decision to go on hunger strike is taken after consideration of their position in the world, ie their relations with others.


Look at how solitary confinement ultimately destroys our sense of self - destroys our ability to make decisions...


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## Blagsta (Jun 24, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> His cause is the resurrection of the soveriegn subject


 
What do you mean by "sovereign subject"?


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## Knotted (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I don't know much about Lacan. What do you mean by 'Lacanian boxes'?


 
I don't know much about Lacan either (and I don't know (or care very much) if Zizek is faithful to Lacan). He theorises by putting things into theoretical boxes rather than by looking at them in their own right.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Oh god that sounds like terrible old fashioned frankfurt school misanthropy.


It sounds horribly like Ayn Rand-style nonsense - the glorious progression of humanity towards true autonomy of the 'I'.


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## Knotted (Jun 24, 2012)

I think if you strip Zizek of his difficult, philosophical language then he becomes something quite banal (although I maintain that he's still interesting as a cultural commentator). I think the value of a lot of this Hegelian or Lacanian verbiage is that it allows the reader to fill it with their own content and in that way Zizek becomes all things to all men. At the risk of over generalising - that's what continental philosophy tends to do, it glorifies the reader's prejudices. I can't think of anything Zizek has said that really challenges me, or makes me want to rethink. In fact I like what he says. But at the same time I get nothing from him - especially at the theoretical level. Mad4ziz compares the use of arcane philosophical language to the struggle for gay rights - as if the language itself is somehow provoking a revolution. That's surely quite mad! Shouldn't the language used be judged in terms of what it can express?


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## Knotted (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> It sounds horribly like Ayn Rand-style nonsense - the glorious progression of humanity towards true autonomy of the 'I'.


 
I think with Zizek (I don't know about Mad4ziz), it's about the value of religious moral authority. The one thing Rand got right was her rejection of religious moralism.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

Knotted said:


> At the risk of over generalising - that's what continental philosophy tends to do, it glorifies the reader's prejudices.


That makes sense to me. Continental philosophy seems to me to be aiming at some kind of poetic truth, to be alluding towards something through metaphor. Perhaps that's why I keep not getting it - I don't expect that from philosophy. I expect something more rigorous, something Kant would approve.

So, for instance, when I hear a term like 'cracked reality', I expect something to do with theoretical physics. When I discover that it isn't a discussion at that level, I'm left wondering what kind of thing is under discussion, and discover that it appears to be a rather trivial thing, not to do with the ultimate nature of reality at all.


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## Knotted (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> So, for instance, when I hear a term like 'cracked reality', I expect something to do with theoretical physics.


 
I think it is something to do with theoretical physics. Zizek does discuss quantum mechanics (not very well it should be said) and he does like the Copenhagen interpretation and he does like the idea that reality is in some sense incomplete (like a computer game where the programmer has not worked out the unnecessary details) and yes this is an instance of pushing god bothering as politically radical.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 24, 2012)

In some ways that makes it even worse. Quantum mechanics - wooooooo.

Our access to 'reality' may be incomplete, but that's not the same as saying that reality itself is incomplete. I don't know, but I'd guess he's making the mistake of thinking of our perception as reality. Kant put that one to bed. 

Mind you, Penrose thinks a similar thing, doesn't he, that the non-algorithmic nature of our thinking is rooted in quantum-level phenomena. As far as I know, he's never properly explained how, though. It's more of a hunch than anything else.


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## revol68 (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Our access to 'reality' may be incomplete, but that's not the same as saying that reality itself is incomplete. I don't know, but I'd guess he's making the mistake of thinking of our perception as reality. Kant put that one to bed.


 
I'm pretty certain Zizek is aware of such arguments...

why don't you actually read him instead of making such daft claims.


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## Knotted (Jun 24, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Our access to 'reality' may be incomplete, but that's not the same as saying that reality itself is incomplete. I don't know, but I'd guess he's making the mistake of thinking of our perception as reality. Kant put that one to bed.


 
That's more or less right. It's Heisenberg's positivism (what we can measure is what is real) versus Bohr's more subtle neo-Kantianism. I can't remember what Zizek's position is exactly - but I do remember he hadn't grasped all the subtleties in any case.




			
				littlebabyjesus said:
			
		

> Mind you, Penrose thinks a similar thing, doesn't he, that the non-algorithmic nature of our thinking is rooted in quantum-level phenomena. As far as I know, he's never properly explained how, though. It's more of a hunch than anything else.


 
I think you're mixing things up. Penrose is a realist who argues against the Copenhagen interpretation. Whether reality can be simulated algorithmically or not does not affect it's real character. The physics part of Penrose's argument is plausible, it's the biology part that's extremely dodgy.


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## Knotted (Jun 24, 2012)

I should say that the nature of quantum mechanics and the question of determinism have no social or political consequences. These are questions of physics not politics. It's just silly to bring them up as part of a political/social theory.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 25, 2012)

revol68 said:


> I'm pretty certain Zizek is aware of such arguments...
> 
> why don't you actually read him instead of making such daft claims.


To clarify, the ideas as presented on this thread make no sense to me. Can you explain what he means by 'reality'?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 25, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I should say that the nature of quantum mechanics and the question of determinism have no social or political consequences. These are questions of physics not politics. It's just silly to bring them up as part of a political/social theory.


I agree.


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I agree.


 
Zizek doesn't, he's pretty clear that he uses them only in a metaphorical sense, infact he's scathing of new age twats who seek to justify their shite through vague appeals to quantum physics.

Also regarding Zizek's idea of reality, it's not the Kantian thing in itself, quite the opposite, it's the world of knowledge, of constituted truths, ofcourse as a good Hegelian he is also interested in false truths, in what is true in them.For him reality is not some immediate thing that we seek to grasp but is actually always already mediated. Truth and reality aren't about stripping away layers to get at some unmediated thing in itself but rather are active processes.


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## articul8 (Jun 25, 2012)

There is a difference between 'the Real' and "reality" for Zizek though?  The Real seems quite close to the Kantian noumenal tbf?


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

articul8 said:


> There is a difference between 'the Real' and "reality" for Zizek though? The Real seems quite close to the Kantian noumenal tbf?


 
that's kind of been my point, lbj has been treating Zizek's idea of reality for a thing in itself.

I don't think the real can be reduced to the thing in itself either, rather the real is the gap between the two, which is felt as a kind of symptom, a disruption of reality. In this way Zizek manages to engage with the richness of post structuralism without lapsing into an overegged textualism.


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## love detective (Jun 25, 2012)

revol68 said:


> that's kind of been my point, lbj has been treating Zizek's idea of reality for a thing in itself.


 
He hasn't actually - quite the reverse in fact - he suggested that Zizek is '_making the mistake of thinking of our perception as reality'_ - which in Kantian terms is the 'opposite' of the thing in itself/noumenon, i.e. the phenomenon

In fact what lbj was getting at in terms of what he thinks Zizek thinks is reality is very similar to what you say below, i.e. it's a mediated thing, a synthesis of what is given to us via the senses and what we do with it via understanding/concepts/processing, something that we actually create for ourselves within ourselves (i.e. in the Kantian notion of how we produce our own experience, rather than it being wholey 'given' to us from outside)




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> Also regarding Zizek's idea of reality, it's not the Kantian thing in itself, quite the opposite, it's the world of knowledge, of constituted truths, ofcourse as a good Hegelian he is also interested in false truths, in what is true in them.*For him reality is not some immediate thing that we seek to grasp but is actually always already mediated*


 
So I would say what you have said there about Zizek, backs up LBJ's guess at what Zizek is all about. I can't comment much about Zizek as i've not read much of him, I have read a lot of Kant though - much more useful than hanging about on Zizek's coattails I would say



> In this way Zizek manages to engage with the richness of post structuralism without lapsing into an overegged textualism.


 
i'll ask once again, to what end?


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

love detective said:


> He hasn't actually - quite the reverse in fact - he suggested that Zizek is '_making the mistake of thinking of our perception as reality'_ - which in Kantian terms is the 'opposite' of the thing in itself/noumenon, i.e. the phenomenon
> 
> In fact what lbj was getting at in terms of what he thinks Zizek thinks is reality is very similar to what you say below, i.e. it's a mediated thing, a synthesis of what is given to us via the senses and what we do with it via understanding/concepts/processing, something that we actually create for ourselves within ourselves (i.e. in the Kantian notion of how we produce our own experience, rather than it being wholey 'given' to us from outside)
> 
> ...


 
I mean he is mistaking Zizek's discussion of "reality" for a discussion for the thing in itself, hence him finding it absurd that Zizek can talk about gaps in reality etc.

The fact he suggests Zizek is making the error of mistaking our perception of reality is to really miss Zizek's point and absurdly suggest that Zizek is some sort of idiot unaware of the distinction. On the contrary Zizek is well aware of such a distinction and his whole point is to try and examine the relationship between them.

I mean do you think someone as well versed in german idealism isn't aware of Kant's argument, do you think Kant is the final word on such matters or rather opens a massive can of worms that continues on in Hegel, through Marx and on into the post structuralism.

As to what end, well Zizek is quite modest in what he thinks the role of such philosophising is, but certainly I think his own arguments are to resurrect a concept of subjectivity or the possibility of agency and radical action against the whole death of the subject proclaimed by post structuralism, and any concept of universalism, which was cast out as merely cover for euro/male centrism.

Do I think such arguments and debates are vital for TEH REVOLUTION!!!11!, of course not, neither is tight readings of Capital but they are interesting in themselves and can often help to throw new light on concrete issues.


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

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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## love detective (Jun 25, 2012)

revol68 said:


> I mean he is mistaking Zizek's discussion of "reality" for a discussion for the thing in itself, hence him finding it absurd that Zizek can talk about gaps in reality etc.


 
as i said in the last post, no he isn't - no one but you has mentioned the thing in itself though, lbj hasn't even inferred it from anything he's said



> The fact he suggests Zizek is making the error of mistaking our perception of reality is to really miss Zizek's point


 
Not being funny, but what is Zizek's point? Ideally summed up in plain english if possible



> As to what end, well Zizek is quite modest in what he thinks the role of such philosophising is, but certainly I think his own arguments are to resurrect a concept of subjectivity or the possibility of agency and radical action against the whole death of the subject proclaimed by post structuralism, and any concept of universalism, which was cast out as merely cover for euro/male centrism.


 
so basically he's arguing we can do stuff?



> Do I think such arguments and debates are vital for TEH REVOLUTION!!!11!, of course not....but they are interesting in themselves and can often help to throw new light on concrete issues.


 
do you have a concrete example of an issue that Zizek's work has thrown new light on?

edit: posted the above before seeing your last post - also above comes across as a bit confrontational, just playing devils advocate a bit to try and get behind all the fuss


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## butchersapron (Jun 25, 2012)

He is a fucking knob though, them idiots at his feet at that all night event like some pathetic black cows. He birthed them and then he milked them.


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## love detective (Jun 25, 2012)

and he thinks they're idiots like the rest of us


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## butchersapron (Jun 25, 2012)

_Zizek - milk is made at night._


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

love detective said:


> as i said in the last post, no he isn't - no one but you has mentioned the thing in itself though, lbj hasn't even inferred it from anything he's said
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
LBJ said he finds Zizek's talk of gaps in reality and such absurd, which I replied to by pointing out that "reality" for Zizek is used in a specific manner, it is the world of our knowledge, senses and perception, it isn't some objective thing in itself.

LBJ replied by suggesting Zizek had made the error of mistaking how things are for how we perceive/come to know them, which is just a tad arrogant a suggestion, as if Zizek is some utter cretin unaware of such a distinction.

Well he's arguing we can do stuff that can radically change the political and social world, that emanicpatory politics are possible and not condemned to merely reproduce systems of power and domination. Furthermore he argues that such a radical and universal project is vital whilst the proliferation of various identity politics and single issues actually serve to maintain late capitalism, stuck as they are within it's base assumptions, at best tweaking various things around the edges without confronting capitalism at it's core, namely class struggle.

Well he has written some very good critiques of multiculturalism, humanitarian interventions and the inverted racism of liberalism, as well asa whole ton of other issues. He also engages quite a bit in the whole value form discussion in a couple of his books and tears apart the claims about structural antisemitism.

On many other things he also talks some shite eg Chavez and other leftist crap, but he's still an interesting writer and I find it odd not to mention pretty petty minded to be asked to justify a writer on the basis of "to what end", frankly it's crude, utilitarian bollocks and I can only imagine you are engaging in it to live up to your dour Scottish calvinist image .


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> He is a fucking knob though, them idiots at his feet at that all night event like some pathetic black cows. He birthed them and then he milked them.


 
I'm pretty certain he would admit to loathing them.


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> _Zizek - milk is made at night._


 
only after the owl minerva has taken flight.


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## Knotted (Jun 25, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Zizek doesn't, he's pretty clear that he uses them only in a metaphorical sense, infact he's scathing of new age twats who seek to justify their shite through vague appeals to quantum physics.


 
I don't think he uses quantum mechanics to directly justify his claims but he uses it to illustrate and exemplify his claims. I think that's how he operates in general and this is precisely the problem - he theorises like an orientalist. If you treat his ideas as proper theories and look at his claims and his evidence and what is explained by his theories then it all evaporates. It is rather predictions and characterisations based on pithy pronoucements sexed up by references to exotic (usually Lacanian or Hegelian) wisdom. Strip all the crap out and you are left with just the pithy pronoucements (and that's fine - they're quite good as far as they go). What he does is propagandise for a certain point of view. He uses Stalin's old trick, the amalgam, to make his philosophical opponents look compromised. This may appear to be some sort of Hegelian dialectical brilliance - it isn't it's Stalinistic propagandising brilliance. This is why revol brings up new age nonsense. It's because Zizek hits "scientistic" ways of looking at the world with the amalgam - look at what happened to David Bohm etc.




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> Also regarding Zizek's idea of reality, it's not the Kantian thing in itself, quite the opposite, it's the world of knowledge, of constituted truths, ofcourse as a good Hegelian he is also interested in false truths, in what is true in them.For him reality is not some immediate thing that we seek to grasp but is actually always already mediated. Truth and reality aren't about stripping away layers to get at some unmediated thing in itself but rather are active processes.


 
The thing that strikes me most about Zizek is how little interest he has in truth and reality. He's an atheist but the lack of a God is just a stupid fact, so let's talk theology. Is that Hegelian? I don't think so. In temperament it's the opposite of Hegel. It's an unresolved contradiction - having your cake and eating it. Hegel is almost fanatical in trying to resolve contradictions and put everything in order in one giant absolute whole. Despite Hegel's reputation he's very no nonsense but Zizek's a playful wee scamp. [Is temperament important to philosophy or is philosophy more about content than temper? I think philosophy is very much about temperament - different philosophers will see the same thing in different ways, with different moods.]

Zizek eclipses his influences. He "does violence" to them - which is basically Heidegger's sexed up term for "abusing for my own purposes".


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

also I like him cos he sticks the boot into the Frankfurt School for abandoning class struggle in favour of wankky critiques of instrumental reason and such.

only problem is now half the wankers who he was railing against who were stuck with their head up their arses reading Adbusters and misreading the Situations are now hanging off him, the cunts.


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## love detective (Jun 25, 2012)

baby owl of minerva


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I don't think he uses quantum mechanics to directly justify his claims but he uses it to illustrate and exemplify his claims. I think that's how he operates in general and this is precisely the problem - he theorises like an orientalist. If you treat his ideas as proper theories and look at his claims and his evidence and what is explained by his theories then it all evaporates. It is rather predictions and characterisations based on pithy pronoucements sexed up by references to exotic (usually Lacanian or Hegelian) wisdom. Strip all the crap out and you are left with just the pithy pronoucements (and that's fine - they're quite good as far as they go). What he does is propagandise for a certain point of view. He uses Stalin's old trick, the amalgam, to make his philosophical opponents look compromised. This may appear to be some sort of Hegelian dialectical brilliance - it isn't it's Stalinistic propagandising brilliance. This is why revol brings up new age nonsense. It's because Zizek hits "scientistic" ways of looking at the world with the amalgam - look at what happened to David Bohm etc.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
Zizek has never denied arguing from a specific point of view, infact he proudly proclaims it, on the contrary attacking those who refuse to come to admit their own ideology.

Your claim Zizek has little interest in truth and reality is baffling, i'd suggest it's the core of his work, and one of his longstanding projects is to rehabilitate a concept of truth that is neither frozen into some crude objective TRUTH or reduced to inane relativism, which is why for all his differences with Badiou he has respect for him. It's also why Zizek has been banging on about a return to Plato for quite some time. The only way you would imagine Zizek has little interest in truth, reality or fully examining contradictions is if you're knowledge of him was a couple of essays, video clips and some lectures. If you read his main books you'd recognise straight away that what made him stand out from the rest of the post structuralist academia was his concern for truth, for universalism and subjective agency.


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

I'm also aware this thread is making me look like some sort of Zizek fan boi, and that's annoying cos I think he's wrong on a great deal of things, just not the things people seem to be taking issue with him on in this thread.


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## love detective (Jun 25, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Well he's arguing we can do stuff that can radically change the political and social world, that emanicpatory politics are possible and not condemned to merely reproduce systems of power and domination. Furthermore he argues that such a radical and universal project is vital whilst the proliferation of various identity politics and single issues actually serve to maintain late capitalism, stuck as they are within it's base assumptions, at best tweaking various things around the edges without confronting capitalism at it's core, namely class struggle.


 
but what's so profound or even novel about this? why do we need him to say what plenty others before him have said far more coherently and succinctly



> I find it odd not to mention pretty petty minded to be asked to justify a writer on the basis of "to what end", frankly it's crude, utilitarian bollocks and I can only imagine you are engaging in it to live up to your dour Scottish calvinist image .


 
Well to be fair when i first asked to 'to what end' it was in response to a post of yours that said this:-




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> 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.


 
So you were setting him up as the 'fucking daddy' - you were saying he was attempting to do something, that seemed to me you saw as something particularly profound/revolutionary/novel/unique/useful (i.e. a move away from naval gazing), so in that context I find it a bit odd, not to mention pretty contradictory, that when challenged on what the purpose of him doing this was, the discussion slips back to something which suggests that to ask what the purpose of that something is, is crude utilitarian bollocks. You put him forward as attempting to do something that sounded like you thought useful, so I was merely asking you why you thought it was so and for what purpose he was doing it, and what so unique/novel/profound about it


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## butchersapron (Jun 25, 2012)

revol68 said:


> also I like him cos he sticks the boot into the Frankfurt School for abandoning class struggle in favour of wankky critiques of instrumental reason and such.
> 
> only problem is now half the wankers who he was railing against who were stuck with their head up their arses reading Adbusters and misreading the Situations are now hanging off him, the cunts.


Well you've now got the other one defending a reading that is just frankfurt school.


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## love detective (Jun 25, 2012)

revol68 said:


> It's also why Zizek has been banging on about a return to Plato for quite some time.


 
Yeah we need more Philosopher Kings


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## Knotted (Jun 25, 2012)

You confuse interest in the theory of truth with interest in the truth itself. I think Zizek wants to theorise a form of non-relativistic reality which we have access to which is nevertheless quite unimportant and plays second fiddle to some sort of theological/Lacanian/Hegelian psychoscape (my words no Zizek's). It's very striking - you should watch some of his brilliant youtubery and put down his bloody awful books. He's very expressive - which as I say I think is very important in philosophy.

I think this is the reason why his politics falls so short of any satisfactory revolutionary outlook. Reality is where the fucking pain is. The fluffy stuff about Jesus is just escapism.


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

love detective said:


> but what's so profound or even novel about this? why do we need him to say what plenty others before him have said far more coherently and succinctly
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
well, nothing in of itself, but certainly within political philosophy Zizek was quite a breath of fresh air, I remember first hearing of him about 2002 or something and being like "finally, someone kicking the cunt out of Foucault fan boys and drippy Derridaistas", arguing unapologetically for universalism and class struggle against the prevailing current of identity politics and post modern relativism. It was essentially a defence of Marx's underlying philosophy but one that was fully engaged with the debates of post structuralism, that is not simply rejecting them as nonsense but actually taking the criticisms more seriously than the most post structuralists. 

of course if you aren't interested in that kind of thing it's of no great relevance, he's just another public intellectual with a few pithy remarks and better than average politics, but sure some people think the same about Marx.


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

love detective said:


> Yeah we need more Philosopher Kings


 
Not that type of return.


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## love detective (Jun 25, 2012)

revol68 said:


> well, nothing in of itself, but certainly within political philosophy Zizek was quite a breath of fresh air, I remember first hearing of him about 2002 or something and being like "finally, someone kicking the cunt out of Foucault fan boys and drippy Derridaistas", arguing unapologetically for universalism and class struggle against the prevailing current of identity politics and post modern relativism. It was essentially a defence of Marx's underlying philosophy but one that was fully engaged with the debates of post structuralism, that is not simply rejecting them as nonsense but actually taking the criticisms more seriously than the most post structuralists.


 
Right I get you a bit more now - thankfully all that post structuralist stuff passed me by (and I would imagine most people) so never really needed an antidote to it - see if you stand still for long enough you eventually become ahead of the game!



> of course if you aren't interested in that kind of thing it's of no great relevance, he's just another public intellectual with a few pithy remarks and better than average politics, but sure some people think the same about Marx.


 
true - but I can't imagine bulletin boards being stacked full of long threads in 150 years time arguing about what Zizek really meant


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## Knotted (Jun 25, 2012)

What are the parameters of theological discussion? Is reality the main concern? No it's 1) scripture and 2) what we fancy and 3) reconciling 1)&2). Zizek's self-declared militant atheism means very little considering his love of certain theologians. Is the important thing about atheism the technicality of rejecting God or is it in the rejection of all the bumf that comes with God?


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

Knotted said:


> You confuse interest in the theory of truth with interest in the truth itself. I think Zizek wants to theorise a form of non-relativistic reality which we have access to which is nevertheless quite unimportant and plays second fiddle to some sort of theological/Lacanian/Hegelian psychoscape (my words no Zizek's). It's very striking - you should watch some of his brilliant youtubery and put down his bloody awful books. He's very expressive - which as I say I think is very important in philosophy.
> 
> I think this is the reason why his politics falls so short of any satisfactory revolutionary outlook. Reality is where the fucking pain is. The fluffy stuff about Jesus is just escapism.


 
Have you read many of his books, cos most of them are concerned with the truth of modern capitalism and liberal democracy. His little aside into christian theology is just that, though of course as a Hegelian and a Marxist you could say a securalised christianity is at the core of his writings.

I've seen enough of him in videos and the like, he's very entertaining but his books are much better, he has much more room to explain his often counter intuitive proclamations. Zizek is not one of those wankers who gets caught up so busy in justifying a theory of truth that every assertion he makes is qualified into inanity, infact he takes the piss out of the likes of Butler for being unable to call a glass of water a glass of water. 

The idea that most of his work is fluffy stuff about jesus is just nonsense btw.


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

Knotted said:


> What are the parameters of theological discussion? Is reality the main concern? No it's 1) scripture and 2) what we fancy and 3) reconciling 1)&2). Zizek's self-declared militant atheism means very little considering his love of certain theologians. Is the important thing about atheism the technicality of rejecting God or is it in the rejection of all the bumf that comes with God?


 
Well Zizek isn't one of your crude wanker atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens, he is a philosopher who recognises the massive influence of christianity on western thought and so feels no shame in engaging with it, to see what truths it does contain, to look at the contradictions within it and how it contains the seeds of atheism and materialism.


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## butchersapron (Jun 25, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Well Zizek isn't one of your crude wanker atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens, he is a philosopher who recognises the massive influence of christianity on western thought and so feels no shame in engaging with it, to see what truths it does contain, to look at the contradictions within it and how it contains the seeds of atheism and materialism.


You sound like articul8 now. Apart from the end bit.


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You sound like articul8 now. Apart from the end bit.


 
aye but Zizek didn't need to join a church to examine it's contradictions. 

edit: Terry Eagleton on the otherhand...


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

anyways I have to say this new book of his is a struggle, just started it and so far it's a tough tough read, makes The Ticklish Subject look like his My Booky Wook.


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## Knotted (Jun 25, 2012)

Again you're confusing the importance of Zizek's theory of truth/reality with the importance of reality itself. It's all very well enthusiastically affirming that there really is lion in the room and it really is biting your arm off and Judith Butler yah boo sucks etc. But then there is the actual lion and you might want to do something about it.

Zizek isn't concerned with capitalism. He's concerned with a critique of ideology - and this again is largely flights of fancy (not outright fantasy - just overgeneralisations suitable for a Grumpy Old Men talking head). For Zizek, capitalism is not something described by Marx in Capital, it's not something to do with extraction of surplus value, it's something to do with the type of society that expresses ideologies to be critiqued by Zizek. What is the working class for Zizek? Wage earners or objects of oppression or what? I bring up the theological stuff only because it's more obvious he is going astray here.


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Again you're confusing the importance of Zizek's theory of truth/reality with the importance of reality itself. It's all very well enthusiastically affirming that there really is lion in the room and it really is biting your arm off and Judith Butler yah boo sucks etc. But then there is the actual lion and you might want to do something about it.
> 
> Zizek isn't concerned with capitalism. He's concerned with a critique of ideology - and this again is largely flights of fancy (not outright fantasy - just overgeneralisations suitable for a Grumpy Old Men talking head). For Zizek, capitalism is not something described by Marx in Capital, it's not something to do with extraction of surplus value, it's something to do with the type of society that expresses ideologies to be critiqued by Zizek. What is the working class for Zizek? Wage earners or objects of oppression or what? I bring up the theological stuff only because it's more obvious he is going astray here.


 
You really are just talking shit now.

Firstly Zizek understands the capital-labour relationship, and certainly doesn't view it as simply an ideology per se, it's what allows him to critique the frankfurt school, as well as crude Marxist's who fetishise the working class as a positive entity rather than as a negation of itself.

The fact you think the idea of ideology is so disconnected from Marx's analysis in Capital suggests you don't know what you are talking about, neither does your dicthomony of "wage earners or objects of oppression". 

One chapter in "Living In Times" alone would show up your claims for absolute bollocks


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## revol68 (Jun 25, 2012)

Jesus if you are going to have a pop at Zizek, why not do it on his bullshit Leninism, or how his notion of the radical act is too bound to the notion of the messiah which shows in his hard on for the likes of Lenin and Robespierre, not to mention his shocking lack of historical knowledge.


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## Knotted (Jun 26, 2012)

revol68 said:
			
		

> and certainly doesn't view it as simply an ideology per se


 
I didn't actually say that though. What are the challenges Zizek sees to capitalism - environmentalism, "post-human" cybernetics and intellectual property rights (if I remember rightly). Nothing to do with the working class in any case. You're being evasive.


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## Knotted (Jun 26, 2012)

revol68 said:
			
		

> The fact you think the idea of ideology is so disconnected from Marx's analysis in Capital suggests you don't know what you are talking about, neither does your dicthomony of "wage earners or objects of oppression".


 
Did I say this? Zizek's critique of ideology is (almost) completely disconnected with Marx's critique of ideology, though. And there isn't a dichotomy of wage earners and objects of oppression - I'm talking about the defining characteristic. Is the proletariat defined by the need to sell their labour for a wage? Again you're being evasive.


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## Knotted (Jun 26, 2012)

To illustrate the point - Zizek sees the Book of Job as the first critique of ideology - before Marx and Freud. Yet does Zizek ever look at property relations in ancient Israel? His critique of ideology is abstract and independent of class and capital and history.

Edit: In Marxist terms - Zizek's philosophy is strictly bourgeois. It critiques current ruling class ideas as if they were eternal and always with us, making the bourgeoisie the permanent, natural ruling class and this is cemented by his use of Lacan in terms of psychological structures which are super historical and super political. Zizek's social liberal, pro-capitalist restoration politics are directly connected with his social/critical "theorising". Zizek's "Leninism" is like his Lenin - a man who magics radical change by the revolutionary act - the working class are not the motor of revolution but rather the recipients of Leninist wisdom. This "Leninism" is not just "authoritarian" in anarchist terms, but more importantly it's comfortably hopeless, abstract revolutionising.


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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2012)

revol68 said:


> also I like him cos he sticks the boot into the Frankfurt School for abandoning class struggle in favour of wankky critiques of instrumental reason and such


  The critique of instrumental reason isn't "abandoning class struggle" - it was a way of examining the historical/material conditions for the emergence of class domination.


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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Reality is where the fucking pain is.


That is a perfectly Lacanian proposition.


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## butchersapron (Jun 26, 2012)

articul8 said:


> The critique of instrumental reason isn't "abandoning class struggle" - it was a way of examining the historical/material conditions for the emergence of class domination.


Domination! Domination! Domination everywhere!!!


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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Domination! Domination! Domination everywhere!!!


You can laugh, but their concern about instrumental reason saw them oppose both US capitalism and stalinism, war and the arms industry, a critique of the environmental implications of existing forms of production, the cheapening and commodfication of sexuality...etc. Not such a bad record to defend.


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## butchersapron (Jun 26, 2012)

And the w/c. 

They sound a bit like Laurie Penny actually.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 26, 2012)

revol68 said:


> I mean do you think someone as well versed in german idealism isn't aware of Kant's argument, do you think Kant is the final word on such matters or rather opens a massive can of worms that continues on in Hegel, through Marx and on into the post structuralism.
> .


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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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2012)

> They sound a bit like Laurie Penny actually


Fuck off!  They went to the US to avoid a nazi genocide (those that made it - Benjamin RIP )

Maybe Marcuse got a bit daft in the 60s. They didn't hate the w/c.  That's a lazy, ill-informed cliche


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## butchersapron (Jun 26, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Fuck off!  They went to the US to avoid a nazi genocide (those that made it - Benjamin RIP )
> 
> Maybe Marcuse got a bit daft in the 60s.


That's the spirit - _run away._


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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2012)

Oh FFS.  When the alternative was Auschwitz?


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## butchersapron (Jun 26, 2012)

Every militant KPD that stood and fought was worth more than the lot of them. And the choice wasn't death camps or exile in 1933.


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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2012)

Really not your place to judge people for fleeing the onset of nazi persecution.  Jewish academics were already being purged from their jobs.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 26, 2012)

At risk of wanting things both ways, I think it is possible to applaud those who stayed and fought the system while not condemning those who left at the first opportunity. I can imagine that if a state were starting to introduce racist laws and I had the opportunity to leave, I'd be likely to take it. If you have children, you could see it as your moral duty to take it.


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## love detective (Jun 26, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> 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.


 
Absolutely

Critique of Pure Reason is hard to get into at first, not just because of some of the fairly impenetrable language employed but the sheer profoundness of the topic, but it's definitely worth the perseverance and worth reading a guide alongside it to stop you just giving up at the beginning (i used this one which was really helpful).

While it may not be the final word it lays the ground for so much that came after it, so even that is worth it alone in terms of context & scene setting

I ended up getting into Kant as a route into Hegel but instead of moving on to him after CPR, I ended up ploughing through the two other critiques (practical reason and judgement), although not to the same extent as the first one, but was surprised just how much of an integrated system the three ended up being - and far more radical than i'd ever thought it would be


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## Knotted (Jun 26, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Well Zizek isn't one of your crude wanker atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens, he is a philosopher who recognises the massive influence of christianity on western thought and so feels no shame in engaging with it, to see what truths it does contain, to look at the contradictions within it and how it contains the seeds of atheism and materialism.


 
What are the merits of atheism and materialism? Surely it's not about resolving moral problems in theology. What next? Atheist priests? Why would they be better than theist priests? Besides I can imagine the reception Zizek gets from religious types - "I agree with him up to the point where he sees atheism as the solution" just as you agree with him up until the point he come out in favour of Lenin etc. They're just as good at weasling as you are.

I can understand where you are coming from - Zizek is a breath of fresh air _compared to_ the rest of bourgeois philosophy (people used to say the same about Roy Bhaskar). But why do you expect to find anything politically decent in bourgeois philosophy? Such "radicalism" is about letting the gas escape from the pressure cooker.


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## 8ball (Jun 26, 2012)

There are plenty of atheist priests...


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## Knotted (Jun 26, 2012)

Alright - priests of atheism not priests who are secretly atheist.


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## butchersapron (Jun 26, 2012)

Atheists who are secretly priests. Dangerous.


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## 8ball (Jun 26, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Alright - priests of atheism not priests who are secretly atheist.


 
Maybe that kind of priest would be useful if you're having a shit time because they could console you with the fact that it's nothing personal...


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## Knotted (Jun 26, 2012)

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._


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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Atheists who are secretly priests. Dangerous.


anyone in mind?


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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2012)

a light interlude


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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2012)

OMG:


>


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## revol68 (Jun 26, 2012)

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.


 
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.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 27, 2012)

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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## el-ahrairah (Jun 27, 2012)

revol68 said:


> If you think Kant seals up the can of worms you must be one ignorant fuck.


 
i know shit all about kant nor do i wish to join this argument, but this is my favourite quote of the lunchtime.


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## love detective (Jun 27, 2012)

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


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## Knotted (Jun 27, 2012)

Zizek being crackers on the Big Bang Theory:
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.co...ceterrorrevolution-slavoj-zizek/#comment-6501


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## sunnysidedown (Jun 28, 2012)

A recording of the Hackney night here:

http://soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/sets/24-hour-zizek/

there's a bit of heckling in the middle by a bloke from the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Prospect review here: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blog/24-hour-zizek-less-than-nothing-hegel/


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## Knotted (Jun 28, 2012)

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.


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## revol68 (Jun 30, 2012)

Jesus so much crude shite in that, maybe if you actually read Zizek youd get past such embarrassingly crass ideas.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 1, 2012)

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.


 
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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## audiotech (Jul 1, 2012)

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.


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## love detective (Jul 1, 2012)

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......


 
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


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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

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.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 1, 2012)

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.


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.


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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

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


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## love detective (Jul 1, 2012)

fit young things in their early/mid twenties aren't going to swoon over anyone called Geoff


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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

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).


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2012)

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?"


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2012)

Doesn't the first bit rather rely on it providing some sort of answer to the second?


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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

(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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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2012)

> Doesn't the first bit rather rely on it providing some sort of answer to the second?


Not necessarily - a theory can show how a certain project necessarily undermines itself, without necessarily offering something in its place?


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2012)

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.


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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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

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.]


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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

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.


 
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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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2012)

You sounds like a stalinist - with some already defined notion of what is to count as revolution and what isn't, and the workers are mobilised as some stage army to play out a role you've already written the script for.


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2012)

Knotted said:


> values alien to the workers movement


This for example sounds like a classic piece of bureaucrat speak...


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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

Why was Geoff Pilling infinetly superiour to Zizek and Althusser and Adorno and all the rest? Because he was part of a revolutionary workers movement. Even Gerry Healy's grotesque SLL/WRP at least had the pretences of a revolutionary workers party. The point was not to do soul searching about the meaning of life and the meaninglessness of existence under capitalism. Nor was it even to strip bear the workings of capital. Nor was it to perform some sort of critical criticism. It was to see capitalism as an historical entity based on historical predicates and limited by it's own creation of a revolutionary proletariat. How could bourgeios academia not fail to look down upon it? Who, for example, takes Engels seriously in academia? You will never hear of it in a university.


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2012)

I've never heard of Geoff Pilling until you just mentioned him.    And Engels (whatever the vital importance of his early contributions) incorporated a load of old mechanistic shite into Marx that it's taken well of a century to put to bed.


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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

You've never heard of Britain's greatest Marxist thinker and yet you've heard of Deleuze and Badiou and Foucault and all this crap? This is what is wrong with you. This is why you are wondering lonely as a Labour party activist.


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2012)

articul8 said:


> I've never heard of Geoff Pilling until you just mentioned him. And Engels (whatever the vital importance of his early contributions) incorporated a load of old mechanistic shite into Marx that it's taken well of a century to put to bed.


Thanks to academic marxists. Price well worth paying.


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## audiotech (Jul 1, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Who, for example, takes Engels seriously in academia? You will never hear of it in a university.



One academic on a Social Policy degree course I was on raised a criticism of Marxism for it not touching on the subject of the environment. I responded by suggesting he read Engels 1844 work: Conditions of the Working Class in England as a starter. He was notably dumbfounded at this suggestion.


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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

articul8 said:


> And Engels (whatever the vital importance of his early contributions) incorporated a load of old mechanistic shite into Marx that it's taken well of a century to put to bed.


 
This is just what you get from dull academic specialisation. Engels talks about mechanisms because he was in part concerned by natural science which is mechanistic by nature. If anything he wasn't mechanistic enough - trying to find a dialectics of nature meant he ended being flowery and vague. If you read the sections on political economy in, say, Anti-Duhring, they are anything but mechanistic. His pamphlet on Ludwig Feuerbach is a classic.

You judge philosophy by narrow egotistical standards - how it matters to you and your outlook. You judge it by its personal worth to the individual and their personal relation to capital. Hence your distaste for anything mechanistic or instrumental - it reminds your petty soul of how you are treated mechanistically or instrumentally.


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## Knotted (Jul 1, 2012)

Another thing always ignored about Marx (to be fair it is in part because it is very dated) - Marx wanted to combine education with industry. Every petty bourgeois academic and teacher wants education for education's sake. No academic wants their work to be held accountable to industry. Every academic loves Chomsky when he talks about the campus as a precious space for free speech. The academic's worst nightmare is to be proletarianised and they cherish their status as an intellectual and an outstanding member of the community. Hence the rejection of anything not flowery enough in Marxism - instrumentalism, mechanism, the order and ingenuity of industry and of course the great unwashed.


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2012)

Knotted said:


> You've never heard of Britain's greatest Marxist thinker and yet you've heard of Deleuze and Badiou and Foucault and all this crap? This is what is wrong with you. This is why you are wondering lonely as a Labour party activist.


Haha - see you next Mayday with your 6ft banner of Geoff next to Stalin, Mao and Ho chi minh!


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Another thing always ignored about Marx (to be fair it is in part because it is very dated) - Marx wanted to combine education with industry. Every petty bourgeois academic and teacher wants education for education's sake. No academic wants their work to be held accountable to industry. Every academic loves Chomsky when he talks about the campus as a precious space for free speech. The academic's worst nightmare is to be proletarianised and they cherish their status as an intellectual and an outstanding member of the community. Hence the rejection of anything not flowery enough in Marxism - instrumentalism, mechanism, the order and ingenuity of industry and of course the great unwashed.


You will be engineering the next wave of gulags comrade.  Liquidate the academics!


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 1, 2012)

Knotted said:


> 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.]


 
Agreed: at the end of the day, that is what Zizek does for me: offer a perspective. Whether its a useful perspective depends on one's aims, the tools at hand etc. In fact in a sense he argues that is what any subject is: simply a perspective that at moments of breakdown of the smooth running of things (whether practical matters; political or the intuitions of common sense as one imagines travelling on a light beam a la Einstein) works to suture the gap.

So the criticism many posts back that he forces things into Lacanian boxes: he does: its part of his perspective. Why does he do it; to what ends, is a different question.  If I were to advise him I'd be tempted to tell him to make clear that the department for practical political action is to be found further down the corridor.


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## love detective (Jul 1, 2012)

or in a completely different building


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## petee (Jul 1, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Every petty bourgeois academic and teacher wants education for education's sake. No academic wants their work to be held accountable to industry. Every academic loves Chomsky when he talks about the campus as a precious space for free speech. The academic's worst nightmare is to be proletarianised and they cherish their status as an intellectual and an outstanding member of the community. Hence the rejection of anything not flowery enough in Marxism - instrumentalism, mechanism, the order and ingenuity of industry and of course the great unwashed.


 
are you speaking on your own authority here?


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## revol68 (Jul 1, 2012)

Yeah like if he cant tell us what to do, whats the point...

How come david harvey doesnt get this shit despite the fact he offers little beyond fluffy platitudes when it comes to concrete responses to capitalism or overthrowing it? 

And chomsky actually has a well drawn out critique of academia so i dont know why knotted is  dragging him into it. Seems to me some people are frustrated that they have difficulty getting Zizek and the reaction is hence akin to lots of activists who find. Marx difficult, that is they whinge about what is the point in all his waffle about dialectics, Hegel and negation. 

Knotted in particar has came out with some of the most crude instrumental crap ive ever read on these forums, and no Marx's idea of praxis is not the same as the shit you are proposing, it was incomplete contrast to it. Marx was trying to overcome both the scholastic idealism of germab philosophy whilst rejecting the crude mechanical instrumentalism of contemporary materialism.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 2, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Marx was trying to overcome both the scholastic idealism of germab philosophy whilst rejecting the crude mechanical instrumentalism of contemporary materialism.


Another sentence from you that I don't understand. My problem in this thread hasn't been that I don't get Zizek. It's been that I don't get you. One of the mistakes you seem to be making is a conflation of 'idealism' with 'dualism', which causes you to set idealism up in opposition to materialism. I don't think any of this is correct. Perhaps this is your point above, but what exactly does 'crude mechanical instrumentalism of contemporary materialism' actually mean? What would be an alternative to it?


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## Knotted (Jul 2, 2012)

If anything instrumentalism is incompatible with crude mechanical materialism. If you see things as being for a purpose then you are assuming the existence of a subject...

In what way was Marx not a mechanical materialist? Well if you look at political economy in terms of mechanisms and cause and effect then you have the law of supply and demand and you have the market and you have money and you have capital and labour etc. But you don't have the social relations underlying these categories or the historical conditions that predicate these relations. I think a lot of the time when people attack "crude mechanical materialism" they usually have little idea of what these terms mean and little idea of what sort of materialism they prefer instead. There's too much idealistic fluff maskerading as sophisticated materialism.


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## revol68 (Jul 2, 2012)

That post doesnt make sense. Marx was critiquing political economy for reifying social relations into static categories like the market  etc He went beyond standard materialism however by showing how this inversion is materially produced, that is what he took from Hegel, that went beyond Feuerbach.


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## Knotted (Jul 2, 2012)

revol68 said:


> That post doesnt make sense. Marx was critiquing political economy for reifying social relations into static categories like the market etc He went beyond standard materialism however by showing how this inversion is materially produced, that is what he took from Hegel, that went beyond Feuerbach.


 
I don't think that's quite right. He didn't merely critique political economy - Das Kapital isn't merely a critique, it's a worked system of political economy in its own right. And it's even more than that - it's a presentation of the problem which doesn't reify the social relations. Marx wasn't merely critiquing but showing a way out. The proof is in the pudding not in various jargonistic declarations. So what Marx took from Hegel was method not any theory or contention or something "beyond Feuerbach" - he took a method which he applied. There is no particular lesson or form of materialism involved because Marx creatively applied the method.

This is the task of Marxist philosophy - to create an environment for such clarity of thought from the perspective of a working class movement. This last is extremely important to understand - I think you and a8 are judging Marxist philosophy on the wrong terms. Your values are screwed up.

As to mechanical materialism - this something that's been dead since the 18th century. It relates to predominantly French ideas about materialism, empiricism and post-Cartesian rationalism and takes an encylopaedic form. Engels makes clear that the rejection of this older form of materialism stems from scientific results such as the discovery of cells and the science of embryology, the theory of energy in physics and evolutionary biology which have the result of unifying various fields under certain paradigms so that various topics are not isolated dynamical systems but all encompassing theories where things that seem radically different can change and transform into one another.

There's this tedious thing when ever Western (academic) Marxism gets criticised we hear yelping of mechanism and instrumentalism and barely any coherence on what these terms mean. To be honest I don't think there is anything particularly sophisticated about the ideas of Zizek or Adorno, there is just a great deal of snobbery towards (if you like) instrumentalising philosophy for the purposes of class struggle.


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## revol68 (Jul 2, 2012)

The fact you think Adorno and Zizek are equivalent is only highlighting your ignorance. Honestly youve spent most of this thread making empty claims regarding Zizek's writings, time you might have better spent reading up on him. 

And Marx was not writing an alternative political economy, he was writing a critique and one in which the only way out of it was its negation. 

I cant even be arsed to post more cos im unemployed and drinking all day in wetherspoons.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 2, 2012)

revol68 said:


> The fact you think Adorno and Zizek are equivalent is only highlighting your ignorance. Honestly youve spent most of this thread making empty claims regarding Zizek's writings, time you might have better spent reading up on him.
> 
> And Marx was not writing an alternative political economy, he was writing a critique and one in which the only way out of it was its negation.
> 
> I cant even be arsed to post more cos im unemployed and drinking all day in wetherspoons.


the dole must be significantly more than it used to be if you can afford a few jars each day in a wetherspoons.


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## butchersapron (Jul 2, 2012)

monday is cheap shit day


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## revol68 (Jul 3, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> the dole must be significantly more than it used to be if you can afford a few jars each day in a wetherspoons.


 
where did you read each day?

and yes it was like 1.70 a pint, I also had a mexican burger but don't let the daily mail know.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 3, 2012)

revol68 said:


> where did you read each day?
> 
> and yes it was like 1.70 a pint, I also had a mexican burger but don't let the daily mail know.


"i'm unemployed and drinking all day in wetherspoons"


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## Pickman's model (Jul 3, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> monday is cheap shit day


i thought every day is cheap shit day on wetherspoons


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## sunnysidedown (Jul 3, 2012)

John Gray on Zizek: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jul/12/violent-visions-slavoj-zizek/

Zizek answers: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1046


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## articul8 (Jul 3, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Das Kapital isn't merely a critique, it's a worked system of political economy in its own right.


 
What?  Where is the positive alternative vision of political economy sponsored by Marx?  At most certain qualities can be inferred from the critique of bourgeois political economy.  But the idea he has a fully articulated alternative ready to go - madness.



> To be honest I don't think there is anything particularly sophisticated about the ideas of Zizek or Adorno, there is just a great deal of snobbery towards (if you like) instrumentalising philosophy for the purposes of class struggle.


 
Once you instrumentalise philosophy it's only a baby step from instrumentalising the working class itself in the name of some pre-conceived ideal of 'socialism', and then from instrumentalising the class in the name of the party, and instrumentalising the party in the name of the leader. - you might as well argue for the total instrumentalisation of art.  What good is any amount of formal innovation?  Just depict a nasty boss, a heroic worker and a tractor comrade!!  Stalinism all along the line....


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## love detective (Jul 3, 2012)

a worked system of political economy is not the same thing as an alternative system to a particular mode of production articul8

the former is an analysis/understanding of the later, not a replacement of it


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## Knotted (Jul 3, 2012)

articul8 said:


> What? Where is the positive alternative vision of political economy sponsored by Marx? At most certain qualities can be inferred from the critique of bourgeois political economy. But the idea he has a fully articulated alternative ready to go - madness.


 
I think we're talking at cross purposes.




			
				articul8 said:
			
		

> Once you instrumentalise philosophy it's only a baby step from instrumentalising the working class itself


 
That's a really bizarre contention.




			
				articul8 said:
			
		

> in the name of some pre-conceived ideal of 'socialism', and then from instrumentalising the class in the name of the party, and instrumentalising the party in the name of the leader. - you might as well argue for the total instrumentalisation of art. What good is any amount of formal innovation? Just depict a nasty boss, a heroic worker and a tractor comrade!! Stalinism all along the line....


 
The most striking thing about the above is that you think socialist realism is the worst thing about Stalinism and not the bureaucratic disenfranchisement of the working class, forced collectivisation and the gulags. I think when it comes to political matters - and marxist philosophy is political or it is nothing - then any form of self-indulgence should be frowned on. If you think that's Stalinism then you are quite confused about Stalinism. Perhaps you think Stalinism was the result of bad philosophy? Some sort of instrumentalising original sin? This illustrates the problem with abandoning historical materialism for bourgeois philosophy - you end up very confused.


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## articul8 (Jul 3, 2012)

Stalinism was most certainly, amongst other things. the result of bad philosophy.



> Self-indulgence should be frowned on


Never was a more small minded, petit bourgeois puritanical load of codswallop ever spoken.

I think socialist realism is the logical conclusion of an instrumentalisation of thought, as is the rise of bureaucracy, forced collectivisation and the gulags. Ultimately, you are trying to pre-empt the ends to which the class struggle is waged and to deny everyone (including the working class as a whole) their participation in the full rational determination of ends.

Your thinking is that of the worst kind of bureaucrat.


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## Knotted (Jul 3, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Stalinism was most certainly, amongst other things. the result of bad philosophy.
> 
> 
> Never was a more small minded, petit bourgeois puritanical load of codswallop ever spoken.
> ...


 
I think the above is what happens when you think ideas drive history and you see history as the product of great/terrible men.

To my thinking philosophy is something that can do actual harm to the individual. You and revol68 are prime examples. It can be something which confuses and more seriously can mask that confusion with a sense of sophistication. Your comments and revol68's comments on this thread have been clumsy and reactive. Philosophy can be like political propaganda it tends to fuse certain ideas together - where does this fusion of "instrumentalism" and "mechanical materialism" and "Stalinism" come from? At first sight this fusion is bizarre, but it's merely a bucket in which you place everything that's bad (remember I pointed out how Zizek uses the amalgam earlier in the thread).

So the question is if you are philosophising like a political propagandist - we have to ask whose political propaganda you are pushing and what cause it serves.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Lol you complain of amalgam and then speak as if me and articul8 are one and the same. 

Youre a tedious simple minded fuck dressing their ignorance up as hard hitting political pragmatism. If articul8 and tendencies of western marxism have tended to bend the stick to far away from materialism towards a kind of cultural or textual idealism it can atleast be partially understood as a reaction to the kind of crude bastardisation of Marxism as championed so hilariously by you on this thread.

The irony of course being that Zizek is quite ardent in his criticism of much of what is loosely called western marxism, but he also quite rightly rejects the simplistic objectivism of the 2nd international and co. Both of which he regards as two sides of the same undialectical coin, and which whilst starting from seemingly opposing positions end up proclaiming the death of the subject. 

as for your "self indulgence" comment, id suggest you read Marx on such matters he had nothing but contempt for such utilitarian bollocks.


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Lol you complain of amalgam and then speak as if me and articul8 are one and the same.
> 
> The irony of course being that Zizek is quite ardent in his criticism of much of what is loosely called western marxism, but he also quite rightly rejects the simplistic objectivism of the 2nd international and co. Both of which he regards as two sides of the same undialectical coin, and which whilst starting from seemingly opposing positions end up proclaiming the death of the subject.


 
You don't understand how the amalgam works.


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I think the above is what happens when you think ideas drive history and you see history as the product of great/terrible men.


 
Anything to back up the claim i "see history as the product of great/terrible men", other than my use of the term "Stalinism", by which of course I don't mean that Stalin was a bad philosopher (I wouldn't even grant him that status!), but that a degenerate philosophy was a material determinant of the corruption of the workers state which he happened to preside over (if not him, it would have been another)? 

Ideas have an active material presence in the world.   People like Korsch and Lukacs got called "idealists" by jumped up bureaucrats with a hatred of philosophy too. 



> To my thinking philosophy is something that can do actual harm to the individual.


 
Mental hygiene comrades!  Avoid philosophy! 



> You and revol68 are prime examples. It can be something which confuses and more seriously can mask that confusion with a sense of sophistication. Your comments and revol68's comments on this thread have been clumsy and reactive. Philosophy can be like political propaganda it tends to fuse certain ideas together - where does this fusion of "instrumentalism" and "mechanical materialism" and "Stalinism" come from? At first sight this fusion is bizarre, but it's merely a bucket in which you place everything that's bad (remember I pointed out how Zizek uses the amalgam earlier in the thread).
> 
> So the question is if you are philosophising like a political propagandist - we have to ask whose political propaganda you are pushing and what cause it serves.


 
This fusion, this amalgam is a historical actuality - from the 2nd international through to the dogmatism of the Stalinists.  Why are you so keen to defend it, even after seeing its effects.  First time as tragedy, second as farce?


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> If articul8 and tendencies of western marxism have tended to bend the stick to far away from materialism towards a kind of cultural or textual idealism it can atleast be partially understood as a reaction to the kind of crude bastardisation of Marxism as championed so hilariously by you on this thread.


 
evidence for me tending towards "a kind of cultural or textual idealism"?  It's true I think there can be no immediate access to reality that isn't mediated conceptually.    But I'd be critical of a concept of culture that swallowed everything into itself.



> The irony of course being that Zizek is quite ardent in his criticism of much of what is loosely called western marxism


Why?  On what grounds?  Where?


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Anything to back up the claim i "see history as the product of great/terrible men", other than my use of the term "Stalinism", by which of course I don't mean that Stalin was a bad philosopher (I wouldn't even grant him that status!), but that a degenerate philosophy was a material determinant of the corruption of the workers state which he happened to preside over (if not him, it would have been another)?


 
A degenerate philosophy? What are you on about? The degeneration of the Soviet Union occured in the 1920's when art and philosophy were anything but degenerate.




			
				articul8 said:
			
		

> Ideas have an active material presence in the world. People like Korsch and Lukacs got called "idealists" by jumped up bureaucrats with a hatred of philosophy too.


 
Lukacs at the time of History and Class Consciousness retained idealist concepts. And it was proper to jump on that. But Lukacs was never of the Western Marxist mold that I'm talking about. The section on Antimonies of Bourgeois thought is classic.




			
				articul8 said:
			
		

> Mental hygiene comrades! Avoid philosophy!


 
No, just treat it like the bourgeois propaganda it is. Especially Zizek.




			
				articul8 said:
			
		

> This fusion, this amalgam is a historical actuality - from the 2nd international through to the dogmatism of the Stalinists. Why are you so keen to defend it, even after seeing its effects. First time as tragedy, second as farce?


 
Why are you so keen to lump all Marxist thought into the 2nd International and Stalinism (by the way, you aren't far from Mao with your anti-mechanicalism). There is more to the Marxist tradition. I've already mentioned Pilling, but there's also Lenin and Trotsky obviously. There's Lukacs, there's Hook, there's Ilyenkov, there's Dunayvskaya, there's James. There is plenty of serious work done by serious Marxists which does not fall into the pitfalls of 2nd International style diamat (and by the way Plekhanov is well worth reading). Just because the 2nd International existed does not mean I have to tolerate anti-Marxist bourgeois philosophers such as Adorno or Zizek.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Anything to back up the claim i "see history as the product of great/terrible men", other than my use of the term "Stalinism", by which of course I don't mean that Stalin was a bad philosopher (I wouldn't even grant him that status!), but that a degenerate philosophy was a material determinant of the corruption of the workers state which he happened to preside over (if not him, it would have been another)?


do you agree with nordau on degeneration? simple question, y/n

while you're about it, you could let us know what you mean by 'a degenerate philosophy'.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

Lukacs (Preface to H&CC):


> THE collection and publication of these essays in book form is not intended to give them a greater importance as a whole than would be due to each individually. For the most part they are attempts, arising out of actual work for the party, to clarify the theoretical problems of the revolutionary movement in the mind ,of the author and his readers.
> ...
> 
> For it is our task — and this is the fundamental conviction underlying this book — to understand the essence of Marx’s method and to apply it correctly. In no sense do we aspire to ‘improve’ on it.




Can you imagine Zizek saying this?


----------



## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Lukacs (Preface to H&CC):
> 
> 
> Can you imagine Zizek saying this?


no, it would take zizek 30 pages and 18 examples and no one would understand it.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 4, 2012)

> For it is our task — and this is the fundamental conviction underlying this book — to understand the essence of Marx’s method and to apply it correctly. In no sense do we aspire to ‘improve’ on it.


Dangerous. This is setting Marx up as some kind of religious text. In the end, this makes challenging the orthodoxy impossible - you saw this in the universities of the old Eastern Bloc, and still see it in the universities of Cuba. And of course, the orthodoxy is defined by those in power.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

The problem isn't in the utilising of philosophical efforts the problem is on whose behalf they are utilised - the bureaucracy and the state or for the democratic movement. If we are looking at philosophy in such an instrumental fashion, then yes it is going to be conservative. If you have an adequate tool for the task then you don't need to go hunting for a new tool. Of course the essence of academia is to publish novelties and innovations. The contrast between an activist philosopher such as Lukacs and an academic philosopher such as Adorno is stark even when the latter is borrowing from the former. The work of the philosopher is predicated on the social conditions of that philosopher.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 4, 2012)

Who decides that the tool is adequate, though? That's not merely conservative - it is necessarily authoritarian.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

The adequacy of the tool should be decided in the normal way - as a matter of judgement for the individuals involved. The point is the importance of the values involved in order to make that judgement. If you read the prefaces (1922&1967) to H&CC you will see those values come shining through.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/preface-1922.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/lukacs67.htm


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 4, 2012)

I'll give them a better read later, but a cursory glance reinforces my suspicions. I spent some time at a Cuban university many years ago, and the attitude there was exactly this - Marx is right; we proceed from there. Our work is merely that of exegesis - explaining the text and explaining how it can be applied to today's conditions. It is not permissible even to suggest that Marx might have been wrong. I would imagine universities in, say, Iran are very similar - but for Marxism, read Islam. It reminds me of Egyptian universities, in which it is forbidden to philosophy students even to suggest as a thought experiment that god does not exist.


----------



## 8ball (Jul 4, 2012)

Bit like questioning the all-knowing benificence of capitalism at Nottingham Uni, then.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 4, 2012)

8ball said:


> Bit like questioning the all-knowing benificence of capitalism at Nottingham Uni, then.


I don't doubt that there are courses in UK unis where such questioning is frowned upon. There are also courses where it is not frowned upon, though. It is not a matter of top-down policy that the goodness of capitalism should not be questioned. There's a big difference.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Lukacs, such a party hack he disowned his own writings, what a perfect illustration of Knotted's line of argument.

Zizek has a very good critique of Lukacs as it is.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.23...id=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=47699116221787

I don't have a jstor log in but you can get this off isohunt from a bigger compilation of philosophy texts.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

1967 preface:


> If I now regard this disharmonious dualism as characteristic of my ideas at that period it is not my intention to paint it in black and white, as if the dynamics of the situation could be confined within the limits of a struggle between revolutionary good and the vestigial evil of bourgeois thought. The transition from one class to the class directly opposed to it is a much more complex business than that. Looking back at it now I see that, for all its romantic anti-capitalistic overtones, the ethical idealism I took from Hegel made a number of real contributions to the picture of the world that emerged after this crisis. Of course, they had to be dislodged from their position of supremacy (or even equality) and modified fundamentally before they could become part of a new, homogeneous outlook




There's couple of things that are worth pointing out here. Firstly there is this business of taking from Hegel. Lukacs like Marx in 1845 was moving from (post)-Hegelian philosophy into communist activism. There is value in the picture offered by Hegelian idealism, but note also that there is still a need to fundamentally modify Hegelianism. There is the difference between the philosophical worth and the technical worth. It is not about preserving Hegelian_ positions. _CF the 1st Thesis on Feuerbach.

The other thing worth noting is that the class character of the work is hard to characterise. The author's contradictions are not necessarily resolved and were in fact heightened at this point. However it is possible to characterise Lukac's direction. This is why bourgeois philistines always try to rescue Lukacs from revolutionary Marxism - they see in him what he had to say at that point in time, they don't see where he was coming from or where he was going (note the genteel distaste for ad hominen - something Lukacs didn't spare himself from). It is a question that you are not supposed to ask of acadmeics such as Zizek. When I point out Zizek's fascination with theology in general and Chesterton in particular, it is not about discussing the theoretical value of Zizek's (other) work (which is minimal in any case) but rather about indicating the direction he is headed in. Zizek is more interested in pilfering various baubles from Marx for his own purposes than he is in providing clarity about Marx. Where Zizek explains Marx you should ask yourself for what use he is about to put these little explanations...


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Was he a communist activist when he worked for the Hungarian Communist Party?

I think our understanding of communism is somewhat at odds.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> do you agree with nordau on degeneration? simple question, y/n


n



> while you're about it, you could let us know what you mean by 'a degenerate philosophy'.


I meant degenerate in the sense that it was a "Marxist" philosophy that had regressed back much further than Marx methodologically speaking.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Lukacs (Preface to H&CC):
> 
> 
> Can you imagine Zizek saying this?


 
FFS - this is Lukacs trying to cover his back from arseholes like you saying, "but Marx was a MATERIALIST - we needn't talk about the bourgeois idealist Hegel being any kind of serious influence on our great Marx".  He thought he needed to say that I'm not advocating anything other than Marx himself.   Sadly, it was Lukacs willingness to bend to this kind of crude bureaucratic diktat that  compromised him in the end.

It would've been extraordinary if Marx _hadn't_ fallen victim on occasion to 19th C discourses that were dominant in his own day.  The idea that we should treat Marx like holy writ is totally antithetical to the project of a critical historical materialism.  Daniel Bensaid wrote very well on this in his book "A Marx for our Times".


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

It's just quite obvious that Knotted hasn't bothered reading Zizek to any extent, I mean his earlier claims that Zizek replaces class struggle with a disembodied ideology and notion of "oppression" proved that.

He's a joke.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> 1967 preface:
> 
> The other thing worth noting is that the class character of the work is hard to characterise. The author's contradictions are not necessarily resolved and were in fact heightened at this point.




Jesus, listen to yourself.  No wonder he tried to cover his back from people like you.





> When I point out Zizek's fascination with theology in general and Chesterton in particular, it is not about discussing the theoretical value of Zizek's (other) work (which is minimal in any case) but rather about indicating the direction he is headed in.


 
If I talk about Fifty Shades of Grey does it mean I'm heading in the direction of sado-masochism?


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Jesus, listen to yourself. No wonder he tried to cover his back from people like you.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
if you're reading that shite you're already there.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Is Knotted actually trolling us with his rewarmed Party rhetoric?

He sounds like a fucking Weekly Worker article.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> If you have an adequate tool for the task then you don't need to go hunting for a new tool.


but you want to make philosophy 100% instrumental (you said) - so by that token you prohibit further thought on the ends of this activity.  The working class is a tool, and the party/leader will set them their task(s).


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

fuck i really hate those tool analogies, such bourgeois shit.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Is Knotted actually trolling us with his rewarmed Party rhetoric?


Jack Conrad?  Maybe...it's depressing if he's serious..


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> fuck i really hate those tool analogies, such bourgeois shit.


He's talking the language of the working man.  Tools and shit.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

nearly as depressing as your labour party membership, but atleast it helps your career.

[fuck the popular front, class war on all fronts]


----------



## 8ball (Jul 4, 2012)




----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

Zizek on Lukacs:


> Lukacs, of course, is opposed to the ideology of "spontaneity," which advocates the autonomous grass-roots self-organization of the working masses against the externally imposed "dictatorship" of the Party bureaucrats.


http://www.scribd.com/doc/88410798/...ment-And-Back-On-Lukacs-Adorno-And-Horkheimer

Lukacs:


> The form taken by the class consciousness of the proletariat is the _Party. _Rosa Luxemburg had grasped the spontaneous nature of revolutionary mass actions earlier and more clearly than many others. (What she did, incidentally, was to emphasise another aspect of the thesis advanced earlier: that these actions are the necessary product of the economic process.) It is no accident, therefore, that she was also quicker to grasp the role of the party in the revolution.[15] For the mechanical vulgarisers the party was merely a form of organisation – and the mass movement, the revolution, was likewise no more than a problem of organisation.
> 
> Rosa Luxemburg perceived at a very early stage that the organisation is much more likely to be the effect than the cause of the revolutionary process, just as the proletariat can constitute itself as a class only in and through revolution. In this process which it can neither provoke nor escape, the Party is assigned the sublime role of _bearer of the class consciousness of the proletariat and the conscience of its historical vocation. _The superficially more active and ‘more realistic’ view allocates to the party tasks concerned predominantly or even exclusively with organisation. Such a view is then reduced to an unrelieved fatalism when confronted with the realities of revolution, whereas Rosa Luxemburg’s analysis becomes the fount of true revolutionary activity. The Party must ensure that “in every phase and every aspect of the struggle the total sum of the available power of the proletariat that has already been unleashed should be mobilised and that it should be expressed in the fighting stance of the Party. The tactics of Social Democracy should always be more resolute and vigorous than required by the existing power relations, and never less.”[16] It Must immerse its own truth in the spontaneous mass movement and raise it from the depths of economic necessity, where it was conceived, on to the heights of free, conscious action. In so doing it will transform itself in the moment of the outbreak of revolution from a party that makes demands to one that imposes an effective reality.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/ch02.htm

Ignoring problems with Lukacs's point of view, Zizek's characterisation of Lukacs is ludicrous and dilettantish if not outright dishonest. This is why I don't trust Zizek and why I can't take Zizek seriously. Zizek's discussion of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism in terms of some sort of Hegelianised syllogism is beyond parade. As if history followed particular forms of logic - perhaps films do...


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> nearly as depressing as your labour party membership, but atleast it helps your career.


 
What Labour Party membership?... What career?


----------



## 8ball (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> What Labour Party membership?... What career?


 
Come on, we all know you're the drummer from Blur.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

> fuck the popular front, class war on all fronts


Fucking third period madness is what it is.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Ignoring problems with Lukacs's point of view, Zizek's characterisation of Lukacs is ludicrous and dilettantish if not outright dishonest. This is why I don't trust Zizek and why I can't take Zizek seriously. Zizek's discussion of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism in terms of some sort of Hegelianised syllogism is beyond parade. As if history followed particular forms of logic - perhaps films do...


 
Not sure what Lukacs said in his short book on Lenin but wouldn't be at all surprised to see him argue differently there.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Zizek's take on the rise of Stalinism falls down where all leninist readings fall down.

Zizek is however pretty spot on in how the theorectical seed of Stalinism lay in the Party as stand in for the class, which he points out was shared by even supposed heretics like Lukacs.

And yes despite what Lukacs says about Luxemburg, his theory was always trapped within the notion of Party as subject. It still had that dualism, it wasn't dialectic enough. Whether you are Kautsky or Lukacs, the Party is the deux ex machina that resolves the contradiction. Zizek to his credit instead holds that it is the contradiction itself that grounds subjectivity, which is why for all his sins he's a good lad.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Not sure what Lukacs said in his short book on Lenin but wouldn't be at all surprised to see him argue differently there.


 
But Zizek's discussing History and Class Consciousness! You are... an extraordinary individual.

From Lukacs's pamphlet on Lenin:


> For it is of the essence of history always to create the _new, _which cannot be forecast by any infallible theory. It is through struggle that the new element must be recognized and consciously brought to light from its first embryonic appearance. In no sense is it the party’s role to impose any kind of abstract, cleverly devised tactics upon the masses. On the contrary, it must continuously _learn _from their struggle and their conduct of it. But it must remain active while it learns, preparing the next revolutionary undertaking. It must unite the spontaneous discoveries of the masses, which originate in their correct class instincts, with the totality of the revolutionary struggle, and bring them to consciousness. In Marx’s words, it must explain their own actions to the masses, so as not only to preserve the continuity of the proletariat’s revolutionary experiences, but also consciously and actively to contribute to their further development. The party organization must adapt itself to become an instrument both of this totality and of the actions which result from it.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/1924/lenin/ch03.htm

It's perhaps a fractionally more Stalinist formulation, but it still preserves the importance of the spontaneity of the masses and the need for the party to be an instrument of the "totality" of the "proletariat's revolutionary experiences". That is the party is the instrument of the class not the vice versa.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Zizek's take on the rise of Stalinism falls down where all leninist readings fall down.


 
No it doesn't. It bares no relation to Leninism at all. Not even vaguely. Nial Ferguson is more of a Leninist than Zizek.




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> Zizek is however pretty spot on in how the theorectical seed of Stalinism lay in the Party as stand in for the class, which he points out was shared by even supposed heretics like Lukacs.
> 
> And yes despite what Lukacs says about Luxemburg, his theory was always trapped within the notion of Party as subject. It still had that dualism, it wasn't dialectic enough. Whether you are Kautsky or Lukacs, the Party is the deux ex machina that resolves the contradiction. Zizek to his credit instead holds that it is the contradiction itself that grounds subjectivity, which is why for all his sins he's a good lad.


 
You're as mental as articul8.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> But Zizek's discussing History and Class Consciousness! You are... an extraordinary individual.
> 
> From Lukacs's pamphlet on Lenin:
> 
> ...


 
LOLOCAUST!


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

Alright, Lukacs saw the party as the instrument of the class and not vice versa. The point is Zizek's inability to represent Lukacs's point of view regardless of how much you deride that point of view.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Stalin said the same...

It's almost like what people say about themselves isn't the same as what they are.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Alright, Lukacs saw the party as the instrument of the class and not vice versa. The point is Zizek's inability to represent Lukacs's point of view regardless of how much you deride that point of view.


His point is that Lukacs didn't think that the spontaneity of the masses was an adequate basis for revolutionary struggle in the absence of the party.  - for GL's Lenin, the masses need to be "brought to consciousness" which wouldn't happen if they organised autonomously.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

It's trade union consciousness with a degree in philosophy.

Ironic though that a labour party member should criticise it.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

Love this. Both articul8 and revol68 have used the defense:

1) Zizek didn't say what he really meant, what he really meant was what I really mean.
2) Lukacs later became a Stalinist so who cares if what we say about him is accurate.

Is it really so difficult to recognise that Zizek has plainly distorted Lukacs?

I'm dealing with fanatics here.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

yawn

You don't even read the one line you've ripped out of context


> Lukacs, of course, is opposed to the ideology of "spontaneity," *which advocates the autonomous grass-roots self-organization of the working masses against the externally imposed "dictatorship" of the Party bureaucrats *




Lukacs doesn't favour autonomous organisation over the democratic centralist vanguard - even the "good" Lukacs who makes space for spontaneity whilst criticising the "ideology of "spontaneity".


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

Remember my earlier remark - Zizek (in practice and mood) is strikingly unconcerned about truth and reality.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

You have yet to demonstrate this.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Love this. Both articul8 and revol68 have used the defense:
> 
> 1) Zizek didn't say what he really meant, what he really meant was what I really mean.
> 2) Lukacs later became a Stalinist so who cares if what we say about him is accurate.
> ...


 
I never said that Zizek didn't say what he really meant, I said what Zizek says about Lukacs is true and what Lukacs, like every other party hack, says about the Party being an instrument of the class is a joke and not a very funny one.

The more the Party claims to be an instrument of the class, instead of for itself, the more it denies it's own subjectivity, the more it actually asserts itself over the class. It's quite basic stuff really.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Incidentally, the phrase "the ideology of "spontaneity" is well chosen.  Appealing to the "spontaneous actions of the masses" can be just as ideological as the party stuff.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

I mean am I suppose to just let that one slip when I read Zizek? Am I supposed to nod along oblivious to the actual Lukacs with whom I am familiar? How do you read Zizek without a red pen to cross out the errors in every other sentence? Do errors not matter? Not even gross ones? Is it the story that counts? The narrative? Because I can read you bed time stories if you like...


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> I never said that Zizek didn't say what he really meant, I said what Zizek says about Lukacs is true and what Lukacs, like every other party hack, says about the Party being an instrument of the class is a joke and not a very funny one.


 
OK you just pretend that Zizek makes the same anarchist assumptions that you make. It's just pity with all these anarchist assumptions that Zizek didn't arrive at anarchist conclusions. How did that happen?


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I mean am I suppose to just let that one slip when I read Zizek? Am I supposed to nod along oblivious to the actual Lukacs with whom I am familiar? How do you read Zizek without a red pen to cross out the errors in every other sentence? Do errors not matter? Not even gross ones? Is it the story that counts? The narrative? Because I can read you bed time stories if you like...


 
I know imagine what someone says about someone not matching what the person thinks of themselves.

Christ, did you read that essay I linked to, Zizek's whole fucking point is that the constant claims that the Party doesn't stand over the class, as seperate from it, is precisely how the ideology of the party functioned.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> OK you just pretend that Zizek makes the same anarchist assumptions that you make. It's just pity with all these anarchist assumptions that Zizek didn't arrive at anarchist conclusions. How did that happen?


 
It's not an anarchist assumption you clown.

And Zizek's knowledge of anarchism or indeed historical events is pretty shit and something he can be quite rightly taken to task for.
Also this is why Zizek has a hard on for Lenin, he see's Lenin as the practical rejection of the party form, as a kind of shorthand for his notion of subjectivity, shown when he forced the party to go with the revolution.

That's a problem with Zizek, his location of subjectivity in messiah figures, though one gets the impression a large part of that is to troll liberals ie Robespierre etc

In short I think Zizek's concept of subjectivity is worthwhile, even if the examples he chooses to illustrate it with are somewhat lacking.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

You can't be serious, now. Yes I read the essay and yes I know that's what Zizek said. What does Zizek know about the subject matter though? Nothing. The treatment is not serious. It's a joke. I know there's lots of revolutionary posturing and know he has a unique take on it and I know he makes it sound sexy. But non of that amounts to anything serious. Is this some sort of post modern joke? Or is it just the Johann Hari of philosophy?

Read Lukacs's preface (1922 if you can't stomach the 1967 one). There's a man who was the model of seriousness whatever his flaws.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> That's a problem with Zizek, his location of subjectivity in messiah figures, though one gets the impression a large part of that is to troll liberals ie Robespierre etc
> 
> In short I think Zizek's concept of subjectivity is worthwhile, even if the examples he chooses to illustrate it with are somewhat lacking.


 
Listen to yourself.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

So Zizek's criticism of the conflation of the party and the class is wrong, how and why?

Tell you what since you were insisting we look at the person and not their theories per se, lets consider Lukacs career, his role in the ruling Communist party and his inability to fully break with it in 1956, instead being forced out.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Where is Zizek meant to have misrepresented Lukacs?  At what point is Lukacs meant to have preferred autonomous organising to democratic centralism?


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 4, 2012)

To a layperson, this is all utterly baffling.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Where is Zizek meant to have misrepresented Lukacs? At what point is Lukacs meant to have preferred autonomous organising to democratic centralism?


 
Nice try. Misrepresent the misrepresentation.

To be fair Zizek isn't outright lying. He is saying Lukacs rejected this straw man idea about spontaneity. But he ignores the fact that Lukacs has spontaneity as a central part of his theory of the party. Zizek goes on to talk about the opposition between party and spontaneous masses in Lukacs. It's painful to read.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> So Zizek's criticism of the conflation of the party and the class is wrong, how and why?


 
Who is making the conflation? Not Lukacs.

What is wrong with Zizek's criticism? He states that the stance legitimises the party to exert dictatorial pressure over the working class as a form of education. This is absurd on the face of it - the party does not have dictatorial powers, the state has dictatorial powers and he has ignored Lenin's theory of the state.




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> Tell you what since you were insisting we look at the person and not their theories per se, lets consider Lukacs career, his role in the ruling Communist party and his inability to fully break with it in 1956, instead being forced out.


 
Go ahead, then.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Who is making the conflation? Not Lukacs.
> 
> What is wrong with Zizek's criticism? He states that the stance legitimises the party to exert dictatorial pressure over the working class as a form of education. This is absurd on the face of it - the party does not have dictatorial powers, the state has dictatorial powers and he has ignored Lenin's theory of the state.
> 
> ...


 
Jesus christ it's like arguing with someone from 1934.

And Zizek actually doesn't ignore Lenin's theory of state, as laid out in State and Revolution, rather he hails it as Lenin breaking from social democracy. This is why he has such a hard on for Lenin, overlooking of course that the working class forced Lenin's hand on the matter.


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Zizek is clearly talking about people who use "spontaneity" as a justification for rejecting the form of the vanguard party, which Lukacs didn't do.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> And Zizek actually doesn't ignore Lenin's theory of state, as laid out in State and Revolution, rather he hails it as Lenin breaking from social democracy. This is why he has such a hard on for Lenin, overlooking of course that the working class forced Lenin's hand on the matter.


 
He ignores it in this essay, he discusses one doctrinal commitment visa vie the party and its alleged implications while ignoring other doctrinal commitments.

Read Lukacs - the idea that the party dictates to the class is completely alien.



> The Russian Revolution clearly exposed the limitations of the West European organisations. Their impotence in the face of the spontaneous movements of the masses was clearly exposed on the issues of mass actions and the mass strike. A fatal blow was dealt to the opportunistic illusion implicit in the notion of the ‘organisational preparation’ for such actions. It was plainly demonstrated that such organisations always limp behind the real actions of the masses, and that they impede rather than further them, let alone lead them.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/ch08.htm

Lukacs's concern was that the party can become an impediment to the revolution. So it isn't actually unfair to say that Lukacs favoured an ideology of spontaneity as Zizek defines it.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> n
> 
> 
> I meant degenerate in the sense that it was a "Marxist" philosophy that had regressed back much further than Marx methodologically speaking.


I don't think that's meaningful


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> I don't think that's meaningful


Why not?  You are aware of the verb "to degenerate"?


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> I don't think that's meaningful


 
are you mental?


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> He ignores it in this essay, he discusses one doctrinal commitment visa vie the party and its alleged implications while ignoring other doctrinal commitments.
> 
> Read Lukacs - the idea that the party dictates to the class is completely alien.
> 
> ...


 
Oh for fucksake, Zizek's whole point is that the idea of young Lukacs being some kind of subjectivist against the objectivist orthodoxy of the 2nd international is false, that he was the flipside of this objectivism and so despite his radical reputation he still fell in behind the party and ultimately conflates the Party and class. So yes, superficially he seems like a break from crass objectivism but on closer reading it ends up the same. Something played out in his own political career.

It's like when Zizek argues that Habermas is actually more post modern thanthe post modernists, it's proven false by Habermas making claims that he isn't. It's a theoretical examination bringing out hidden/implicit assumptions.

You really need to go read one of Zizek's more substantial texts, then you might be able to engage in the discussion properly. Fuck knows, you might even produce a criticism of some substance.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

I know what Zizek's point is I just don't care about it. Since it relies on a false characterisation of Lukacs his point is moot.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I know what Zizek's point is I just don't care about it. Since it relies on a false characterisation of Lukacs his point is moot.


 
You do realise that every party hack in the world has always claimed that the Party is the instrument of the working class.

And Lukacs took office with the Party as state, so make of that what you will.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> You do realise that every party hack in the world has always claimed that the Party is the instrument of the working class.
> 
> And Lukacs took office with the Party as state, so make of that what you will.


 
Has every party hack claimed that the party is an impediment to the revolution? You do know that his writings on the subject were not popular in the party? You should read the 1967 preface. He describes his political development. He was coming from a left communist perspective towards a more Leninist perspective and eventually ending up as a Stalinist. His thoughts were not fixed and at the time of writing H&CC he was heavily influenced by Luxemburg and others such as Pannekoek. As I say part of what makes it interesting is not just where he stood but where he was coming from and where he was going. You are dodgy and weaving now - trying to make this into a discussion about the merits of H&CC. Zizek claims Lukacs rejected an "ideology of spontaneity" which at best gives a false impression and at worst is a flat out falsification. (It certainly isn't a characterisation of Lukacs really was as opposed to what he claimed he was - that's just you clutching at straws.) Zizek's treatment is not serious - he has pre-conceived ideas and fits the reality to them.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Why not? You are aware of the verb "to degenerate"?


i am aware of a lot of things, but awareness of verbs doesn't add meaning where meaning is absent.


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

the meaning is there for all but an imbecile to see


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> the meaning is there for all but an imbecile to see





articul8 said:


> I meant degenerate in the sense that it was a "Marxist" philosophy that had regressed back much further than Marx methodologically speaking.


perhaps you could explain the meaning you find so obvious in this post. go on, imagine i'm an imbecile and explain it simply.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

*taps watch*


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Alright dear - unlike you I'm not on here 24/7

(little imagination necessary btw)

Those who held Marx to be the last word in philosophical modernity, and who regarded Hegel and the whole idealist tradition as outdated and superceded, actually missed what was most important in Marx and were left with a philosophy which returned to an earlier, Kantian epistemological problematic.


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

Are you seriously suggesting that Stalinism was the result of a Kantian epistemological problematic?


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

No I doubt Stalin knew or cared about epistemology, Kantian or otherwise.  But the crude notion of "materialist" determination that passed for Marxism effectively meant that the bureaucrats could consign philosophy as a whole to the sphere of bourgeois mystification.  Much like you have tried to do.


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> No I doubt Stalin knew or cared about epistemology, Kantian or otherwise. But the crude notion of "materialist" determination that passed for Marxism effectively meant that the bureaucrats could consign philosophy as a whole to the sphere of bourgeois mystification. Much like you have tried to do.


 
Just for revol68's education - the above is the amalgam. X is against us and Y is against us therefore X=Y.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Just for revol68's education - the above is the amalgam. X is against us and Y is against us therefore X=Y.



And if we swap x for articulate and y for revol68...


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Alright dear - unlike you I'm not on here 24/7
> 
> (little imagination necessary btw)
> 
> Those who held Marx to be the last word in philosophical modernity, and who regarded Hegel and the whole idealist tradition as outdated and superceded, actually missed what was most important in Marx and were left with a philosophy which returned to an earlier, Kantian epistemological problematic.


and what was most important in marx was...


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> And if we swap x for articulate and y for revol68...


 
You are saying much the same thing as each other and even being slippery in similar ways. There are differences - you have this theory/practice distance which allows you to reject Zizek's politics while praising his theory and you are more critical of the Frankfurters. You have political differences with a8 while sharing similar philosophical interests - but that's because neither of you know how to draw political conclusions from any of this. You can waffle on about objectivity and subjectivity and how important it is to guard this waffle from vulgar materialism but where does that leave you? Anywhere you fancy. I think I said earlier - there is nothing challenging in Zizek, he won't change your outlook both you and a8 read Zizek to reaffirm what you already believe.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

You seem to want some sort of theory that neatly and linearly leads toa set of definite politics, its almost cute, playing 2nd international dress up.


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> and what was most important in marx was...


 
OK, and amongst other things - that knowledge is not just passively imprinted onto consciousness as a reflection of "how things really are in reality" - sense is made and transformed actively, through a practical engagement with the world.  That our alienation is not some natural condition but a product of our own activity, and as such capable of being reversed through recognition, awareness, self-consciousness etc...all key Hegelian notions that don't really figure for mechanical materialists.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> OK, and amongst other things - that knowledge is not just passively imprinted onto consciousness as a reflection of "how things really are in reality" - sense is made and transformed actively, through a practical engagement with the world. That our alienation is not some natural condition but a product of our own activity, and as such capable of being reversed through recognition, awareness, self-consciousness etc...all key Hegelian notions that don't really figure for mechanical materialists.


and where does kant come into all this?


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> You seem to want some sort of theory that neatly and linearly leads toa set of definite politics, its almost cute, playing 2nd international dress up.


He doesn't want any theory at all that isn't just a confirmation of what he's already decided anyway (and he doesn't want anyone challenging his assumptions about what advances the class struggle either).  It's dogmatism pure and simple.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Also why is it seen as a failing of Zizeks that people from varying shades of the left can take something from his writings? David Harvey works with even less abstract stuff yet is respected by everyone from social democrats to anarchists.


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## love detective (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> OK, and amongst other things - that knowledge is not just passively imprinted onto consciousness as a reflection of "how things really are in reality" - sense is made and transformed actively, through a practical engagement with the world.


 
Sounds very Kantian to me


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> and where does kant come into all this?


For Kant there is a layer of meaning/sense/intelligibility that is given to things in themselves which is necessarily beyond our comprehension. For Hegel/Marx the apparent meaningfulness of "things in themselves" is a consequence of a subject/object dichotomy that has at its roots the alienation of the subject from its own self-possession, and which is therefore capable of being reclaimed at a higher stage of understanding.


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

love detective said:


> Sounds very Kantian to me


Without Kant no Hegel.  Hegel is not UnKantian or Anti-Kantian but post-Kantian.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> For Kant there is a layer of meaning/sense/intelligibility that is given to things in themselves which is necessarily beyond our comprehension. For Hegel/Marx the meaningulness of "things in themselves" is a consequence of a subject/object dichotomy that has at its roots the alienation of the subject from its own self-possession, and which is therefore capable of being reclaimed at a higher stage of understanding.


it seems to me that you're talking a bit of bollocks, treating kant as though he's a degenerate marxist - which imo flies somewhat in the face of the chronology of the situation. in addition, despite your insistence on methodology you've not adduced any evidence to support your position.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

This thread is the fucking pits, I'm stuck agreeing with articul8 ffs


----------



## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)




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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> it seems to me that you're talking a bit of bollocks, treating kant as though he's a degenerate marxist - which imo flies somewhat in the face of the chronology of the situation. in addition, despite your insistence on methodology you've not adduced any evidence to support your position.


 
Not at all.  Kant's contribution is a major advance.  I'm not sure what you think would count as "evidence" here?


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> it seems to me that you're talking a bit of bollocks, treating kant as though he's a degenerate marxist - which imo flies somewhat in the face of the chronology of the situation. in addition, despite your insistence on methodology you've not adduced any evidence to support your position.


 
are you really that stupid?

articul8 was clearly saying that much of "Marxist" theory had degenerated in such a manner that it didn't so much surpass Hegel as to revert back to Kant. He wasn't saying Kant was a degenerate marxist, only a fuckwit or a tedious wanker desperate to make another inane facetious snipe could read as that.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Not at all. Kant's contribution is a major advance. I'm not sure what you think would count as "evidence" here?


some reference to methedology would have been nice.


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## love detective (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Without Kant no Hegel. Hegel is not UnKantian or Anti-Kantian but post-Kantian.


 
well that's my point - you said that '_those who held Marx to be the last word in philosophical modernity, and who regarded Hegel and the whole idealist tradition as outdated and superceded, *actually missed what was most important in Marx and were left with a philosophy which returned to an earlier, Kantian epistemological problematic*.'_

then when asked what was the most important in Marx - you reel off a bog standard Kantian epistemological speel - so on one hand you're criticising those who returned to an earlier kantian epistemology as they missed out on the what was most important in Marx, yet when asked what this most important thing was you give a standard kantian epistemology

maybe i've not picked up on the context in which this is being discussed as its looks boring as shite - but what you seem to be saying is that whether people missed out on what was important in marx or not, they end up at the same place, your kantian epistemological. As whether they degenerate back to kant or whether they get what was most important in marx - both these things - in your words, are the same. As what you described as the most important part of marx (which those deginerates miss out on) is something that could be derived purely from kant anyway. So both routes lead to the same thing, except one of these routes you see as positive and the other deginerate


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> some reference to methedology would have been nice.


I'm referring to philosophical method - beginning with the idea that sense is created through an active subject's relation to the world without positing some unknowable externality.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> some reference to methedology would have been nice.


 
Is that what you're smoking?


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Hegel added history.

Don't you bitches read the The Theses on Feuerbach?


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Also why is it seen as a failing of Zizeks that people from varying shades of the left can take something from his writings? David Harvey works with even less abstract stuff yet is respected by everyone from social democrats to anarchists.


 
David Harvey is an educator - he helps the understanding of Marx. He offers clarity. Zizek is trying to be novel. People follow Zizek. Zizek has a fan club. David Harvey just has people who appreciate his efforts. Zizek is a philosopher. Harvey is an economist - and as an economist the theorising is determined to an extent by the subject matter.


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

love detective said:


> well that's my point - you said that '_those who held Marx to be the last word in philosophical modernity, and who regarded Hegel and the whole idealist tradition as outdated and superceded, *actually missed what was most important in Marx and were left with a philosophy which returned to an earlier, Kantian epistemological problematic*.'_
> 
> then when asked what was the most important in Marx - you reel off a bog standard Kantian epistemological speel - so on one hand you're criticising those who returned to an earlier kantian epistemology as they missed out on the what was most important in Marx, yet when asked what this most important thing was you give a standard kantian epistemology
> 
> maybe i've not picked up on the context in which this is being discussed as its looks boring as shite - but what you seem to be saying is that whether people missed out on what was important in marx or not, they end up at the same place, your kantian epistemological - as whether they degenerate back to kant or whether they get what was most important in marx - both these things, in your words, are the same


 
No - Hegel showed that when something appeared "unknowable" or inherently external/objective, what was at stake was a fundamental alienation/disavowal of something previously intimately known to/by the subject.   Kant leaves open the idea of a knowing subject in a universe that it can never get to know adequately.  Hegel posits objectivity as always already given to the subject and therefore potentially recoverable.


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## love detective (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> articul8 was clearly saying that much of "Marxist" theory had degenerated in such a manner that it didn't so much surpass Hegel as to revert back to Kant.


 
Yet when asked what was the most important point of Marx that these degenerates had missed out on he points to something that could have been lifted straight out of Critique of Pure Reason

Degener8 articul8


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## love detective (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> No - Hegel showed that when something appeared "unknowable" or inherently external/objective, what was at stake was a fundamental alienation/disavowal of something previously intimately known to/by the subject. Kant leaves open the idea of a knowing subject in a universe that it can never get to know adequately. Hegel posits objectivity as always already given to the subject and therefore potentially recoverable.


 
that's all very nice, but doesn't bear in relation to the point being made


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> are you really that stupid?
> 
> articul8 was clearly saying that much of "Marxist" theory had degenerated in such a manner that it didn't so much surpass Hegel as to revert back to Kant. He wasn't saying Kant was a degenerate marxist, only a fuckwit or a tedious wanker desperate to make another inane facetious snipe could read as that.


you seem to think that there's an evolution, that 'if kant, then hegel; if hegel, then marx'. that this was a necessary and teleological series of events. but it wasn't. and it's a nonsense to say that degenerate marxism, whatever that may be, reverts back down the path of influence from marx to kant skipping hegel. perhaps you don't like the way i phrased myself. but your agreeing with articul8 seems to me agreeing with a fool: not that it's to me any surprise that you'd harness yourself to a foolish argument.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Is that what you're smoking?


most people i know who bring up marx's methodology would have mentioned something like his theory of history. they wouldn't have gone into some blather like articul8 did.

i see you mention history, it's a pity articul8 hasn't had the same nous.


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

It does - It's the crucial gap that let in the dismissal of philosophy - once you accept that there is some other realm of influence beyond what the subject can know directly, then you've opened the way to the idea that there are material forces that can have determinate effects on our sense of what is meaningful which operates on and not through the subject.  Crude base/structure determinism ahoy!!  I don't blame Kant for this - what he did understand was a massive breakthrough.  Hegel just closed the door on the arseholes.  They are still knocking on the door.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> you seem to think that there's an evolution, that 'if kant, then hegel; if hegel, then marx'. that this was a necessary and teleological series of events. but it wasn't. and it's a nonsense to say that degenerate marxism, whatever that may be, reverts back down the path of influence from marx to kant skipping hegel. perhaps you don't like the way i phrased myself. but your agreeing with articul8 seems to me agreeing with a fool: not that it's to me any surprise that you'd harness yourself to a foolish argument.


 
well actually quite a fewof the 2nd International theorists did explicitly reject Hegel and talked of Kantian Marxism. Either way it's quite obvious what he meant by Marxism degenerating back to a pre Hegel Kantian position.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Jesus christ it's like arguing with someone from 1934.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> It does - It's the crucial gap that let in the dismissal of philosophy - once you accept that there is some other realm of influence beyond what the subject can know directly, then you've opened the way to the idea that there are material forces that can have determinate effects on our sense of what is meaningful which operates on and not through the subject. Crude base/structure determinism ahoy!! I don't blame Kant for this - what he did understand was a massive breakthrough. Hegel just closed the door on the arseholes. They are still knocking on the door.


 
Aye but you don't want to go full Hegelian, you need a dose of THE REAL, to stop yourself going FULL PHILDWYER.

Which brings me onto the point Knotted says about Zizek trying to be"novel", cos Zizek has never claimed anything as such, instead he see's himself as reading Hegel, Marx and Lacan through each other. Something that is quite interesting and allows for a defence of subjectivity against the crude materialism and post structuralist death of the author.


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> well actually quite a fewof the 2nd International theorists did explicitly reject Hegel and talked of Kantian Marxism. Either way it's quite obvious what he meant by Marxism degenerating back to a pre Hegel Kantian position.


 
Not only is it not obvious, it's ambiguous. Different people take different things from Kant and Hegel, they see different bits as important, they interpret them differently. It is 100% unobvious what a8 meant - even if you know Kant and Hegel. This is why philosophical sloganeering is a bit daft - only people with a very similar backgrounds and interests will even understand you.


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## love detective (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Aye but you don't want to go full Hegelian, you need a dose of THE REAL, to stop yourself going FULL PHILDWYER.
> 
> Which brings me onto the point Knotted says about Zizek trying to be"novel", cos Zizek has never claimed anything as such, instead he see's himself as reading Hegel, Marx and Lacan through each other. Something that is quite interesting and allows for a defence of subjectivity against the crude materialism and post structuralist death of the author.


once again it comes back to the interesting insight from zizek that people can do stuff - where would we be without him


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> well actually quite a fewof the 2nd International theorists did explicitly reject Hegel and talked of Kantian Marxism. Either way it's quite obvious what he meant by Marxism degenerating back to a pre Hegel Kantian position.


only to the cognescenti: and i suppose that contrary to zizek, the kantian marxists of whom you talk weren't trying to be novel. they were trying to draw more meaning out of marx by doing what zizek does with lacan and hegel, with kant. but degenerate has, as i suppose you and articul8 know, rather negative connotations: it suggests to me that you think you know better than other people what is and what is not 'marxism'. it suggests to me that you see yourself as a definer of an orthodoxy in the subject.


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

I wasn't the one telling people that theory/philosophy was just a manner of confusing the workers.  I'm opposed to attempts to shut down debate in the name of these debates being irrelevant to the class, a distraction from the struggle etc etc.   Beyond that, let 1000 flowers bloom


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

articul8 said:


> I wasn't the one telling people that theory/philosophy was just a manner of confusing the workers. I'm opposed to attempts to shut down debate in the name of these debates being irrelevant to the class, a distraction from the struggle etc etc. Beyond that, let 1000 flowers bloom


good for you


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

Who were the Kantian Marxists? I can name two - Eduard Bernstein and Galvano Della Volpe.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Who were the Kantian Marxists? I can name two - Eduard Bernstein and Galvano Della Volpe.


the one d. 1932, the other d. 1968.

who are the contemporary degenerates?  name names


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Not only is it not obvious, it's ambiguous. Different people take different things from Kant and Hegel, they see different bits as important, they interpret them differently. It is 100% unobvious what a8 meant - even if you know Kant and Hegel. This is why philosophical sloganeering is a bit daft - only people with a very similar backgrounds and interests will even understand you.


 
That is true within any subject, genre etc Sure you bust out marxist leninist terminology all the time under the assumption that those engaging with you have some grasp or shared understanding.

What an inane point to make.

Perhaps we should get back to Zizek and how you hold that he has no real concept of class struggle and replaces it instead with disembodied ideology and a general concern with "oppression". 

I don't have any of my Zizek books with me at my ma's but I'm back home in Belfast tomo night so I'll provide some quotes to show that Zizek has a pretty good grasp on Marx, value, commodity fetishism and class struggle, certainly a much better one than yourself.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Who were the Kantian Marxists? I can name two - Eduard Bernstein and Galvano Della Volpe.


 
Korsch names some in Marxism and Philosophy, I'll have to hunt it out.


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## articul8 (Jul 4, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> who are the contemporary degenerates?  name names


 
Knotted for one


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

revol68 said:


> That is true within any subject, genre etc Sure you bust out marxist leninist terminology all the time under the assumption that those engaging with you have some grasp or shared understanding.


 
I could talk about some pretty obscure mathematics and very few people would understand, but those who did would not find it ambiguous. That's not true of philosophy. Philosophical jargon is highly ambiguous and is often used in different ways by different people. Even political jargon is less ambiguous.




			
				revol68 said:
			
		

> Perhaps we should get back to Zizek and how you hold that he has no real concept of class struggle and replaces it instead with disembodied ideology and a general concern with "oppression".
> 
> I don't have any of my Zizek books with me at my ma's but I'm back home in Belfast tomo night so I'll provide some quotes to show that Zizek has a pretty good grasp on Marx, value, commodity fetishism and class struggle, certainly a much better one than yourself.


 
I don't think that was quite what I said. But go on.


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## Knotted (Jul 4, 2012)

Alright, what's grinding my gears about Zizek's notion of class struggle is this quote from the Ticklish Subject:


> From a truly radical Marxist perspective, although there is a link between 'working class' as a social group and 'proletariat' as the position of the militant fighting for universal Truth, the link is not a determining causal connection, and the two levels must be strictly distinguished: to be a 'proletarian' involves assuming a certain _subjective stance_ (of class struggle destined to achieve the Redemption through Revolution) which, in principle, can be adopted by _any_ individual - to put it in religious terms, irrespective of his (good) works, any individual can be 'touched by Grace' and interpellated as a proletarian subject. The line that separates the two opposing sides in the class struggle is therefore not 'objective', it is not the line separating two positive social groups, but ultimately _radically subjective_ - it involves the position individuals assume towards the Truth-Event. Subjectivity and universalism are thus not only not exclusive, but two sides of the same coin: it is precisely because 'class struggle' interpellates individuals to adopt the subject stance of a 'proletarian' that its appeal is universal, aiming at everyone without exception.


 
Several comments:
1) Zizek is not just clarifying Marx and Marxism but elaborating a "truly radical Marxist" (whatever that means) stance.
2) This isn't the definition of "proletarian" in Marx. That's not a big deal but why is he reinventing terms - why can't he just talk about "partisans of the working class" or something?
3) Why all the religious stuff? (Zizek was talking about St Paul being a proto-Lenin in the previous paragraph!)
4) Even putting aside the obscurity of the term "Truth-Event", it's a classless term. The proletariat for Zizek is neither defined in terms of it's economic position nor ultimately in terms of class struggle! There is then this bit where class struggle is important for "interpellating" individuals to adopt the stance of the proletariat - but I have to ask what else might interpellate people into proletarians?What concretely is going on here? What is the actual link Zizek talks about between the working class and the proletariat? Class struggle makes its appearance in the abstract.
5) Radical subjectivity. Is this profound and provocative or is he really just saying that people have their own "subjective" politics. In what sense is that 'radical'? In any case where does this leave the "objective" working class?
6) "Fighting for universal Truth". Is that the ultimate goal or is it a necessary goal. This is just bizarre.
7) He writes really badly.

I'm inclined to take this very general way of talking to mean that he is revising Marxist concepts and reinterpreting them for contemporary times. To understand him I have to see how he applies all this - which is why I find it utterly bizarre that revol68 wants to separate his theory from his political conclusions. What _is_ his theory here? This generalised way of talking seems designed to be filled with any content you fancy. Do I have the patience to nail the jelly to the ceiling? Is it possible to do so?


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

jesus, it's all already there in Marx's distinction between a class for itself and a class in itself. He's saying that the proletariat in the Marxist sense isn't simply an objective sociological group but involves a subjective political stance, that of seeing itself as the negation of capital. It's him rejecting the obvious falseness of objectivist marxism that see's the class struggle simply flow from an objective social position but instead makes clear the need for a subjectivity, a site of conflict which isn't just a crude reflection of the "base".

It's also a restatement of universalism through subjectivity, that is that the proletariat is the universal class but only in so much as it represents the negation of all classes. The religious stuff isn't odd, Zizek is hardly the first person to understand communism as a materialist redemption, which again isn't odd considering Marx's relationship with Hegel. Christianity is universal in that is open to all, not just the chosen people, it is a religion for jew and gentile, all it requires is fidelity to Christ, a belief in the Resurrection.

it's a rejection of understanding the working class as just another social group, another interest to be represented by the likes of that Owen's. The proletariat is not a positive identity, it is a negative one, based on it's antagonism to capitalism. Without this subjective position, it becomes just another class fighting for it's interests within society rather than one that can explode it's foundations.

Sure some of his language is flowery but hey I quite like it and he is giving the likes of Laclau and Mouffe a good kicking.

As to where it leaves the objective working class, well in the same place it always was, stuck within the logic of capital until it comes to understand itself as a revolutionary class, which isn't an automatic process brought about through class struggle, rather struggle is also dependent on taking certain subjective positions.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

also when he says truly radical Marxist perspective, he is clearly distinguishing it from the crude Marxism which fetishes the working class in itself, that celebrates good working class values like the work ethic etc

All of this is fitting with his criticisms of Lukacs etc

p.s. you should read all of The Ticklish Subject, not just mine it for quotes, it's probably his best work.


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## revol68 (Jul 4, 2012)

and yes I'm very aware this whole thread is a load of foppish waffle but then that's the case with all this pish.


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## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

revol68 said:


> also when he says truly radical Marxist perspective, he is clearly distinguishing it from the crude Marxism which fetishes the working class in itself, that celebrates good working class values like the work ethic etc


 
He's giving his own view and attributing it to Marx - he's being slippery. He wants to revise Marx while at the same time appearing to be orthodox. You should read Marx sometime. By the way you have succeeded in Kantianising Marx (does this mean you are now a Stalinist?). Marx NEVER makes the distinction between class in itself and class for itself. Here's Marx:


> Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02e.htm

There is no concept of class in itself for Marx. Besides this passage is very different from Zizek's passage - Zizek's "proletariat" does not necessarily have anything to do with the working class at all! And it shouldn't need saying that there aren't any of these quasi-religious phrases in Marx.

Besides this objectivist/subjectivist stuff misses the point. The subject is an object and the object is a subject. Zizek is not criticising 2nd International type Marxism - he does not go beyond Plekhanov who was quite capable of criticising the "objectivism" of 18th century (predominantly French) materialist thought.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

revol68 said:


> it's a rejection of understanding the working class as just another social group, another interest to be represented by the likes of that Owen's. The proletariat is not a positive identity, it is a negative one, based on it's antagonism to capitalism. Without this subjective position, it becomes just another class fighting for it's interests within society rather than one that can explode it's foundations.


 
This is all fine - perfectly ordinary Marxism. Even 2nd International types and Stalinists would say the above. The only thing that is different is this idea that the working class are thus in a subjective position. There is nothing particularly subjective about it. Every class is in a subjective position. The ruling class is subjective (and also universalist most of the time). Zizek doesn't contrast class outlooks but political outlooks - he contrasts communism with Nazism.


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

> it shouldn't need saying that there aren't any of these quasi-religious phrases in Marx.


Like the commodity "abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties" or having a "mysterious" or "mystical" character?(Capital Ch4)


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## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Like the commodity "abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties" or having a "mysterious" or "mystical" character?(Capital Ch4)


 
That's ironic! Unless your name is Phil Dwyer...


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## butchersapron (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Like the commodity "abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties" or having a "mysterious" or "mystical" character?(Capital Ch4)


Chapter 1.


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

yep OK, Ch1, section 4


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## butchersapron (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> yep OK, Ch1, section 4


Have you got round to reading it yet?


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

I'd read that section already  I really should tackle the whole thing .


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## butchersapron (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> I'd read that section already  I really should tackle the whole thing .


Yes, I too reckon that you should probably read that and plenty of other stuff marx wrote.


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

Apart from the late anthropological notebooks I'm not sure how much other stuff I'm missing...not read the Grundrisse in full....other than that...?


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## love detective (Jul 5, 2012)

so you've pretty much read all of Marx apart from the Anthropological notebooks, Capital/TSV and the Grundrisse


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> No - Hegel showed that when something appeared "unknowable" or inherently external/objective, what was at stake was a fundamental alienation/disavowal of something previously intimately known to/by the subject. Kant leaves open the idea of a knowing subject in a universe that it can never get to know adequately. Hegel posits objectivity as always already given to the subject and therefore potentially recoverable.


Can't comment on much of this thread, but I can comment on this, I think.

You have a slightly erroneous story in your head that Kant discovered X, Hegel improved on it, Marx took Hegel on, etc.

This is a 'standing on the shoulders of giants' approach that fits well with the natural sciences, but less well with epistemology, I think. And I don't think it applies here. To my thinking, your first sentence sums up something that Hegel got wrong, or at least that Hegel's followers seem to get wrong. I'm going to be a little rude here and suggest that you yourself have no idea what you mean when you say 'a fundamental alienation/disavowal of something previously intimately known to/by the subject'. Strictly speaking, I would say that Kant is right, and Hegel overextends himself in an attempt to prove the knowability of something unknowable. Now of course, we take certain things to be true in order to make progress, in order to allow us to think about things. Otherwise we just slip into empty solipsism, but that doesn't mean that we have to lie to ourselves about what it is that we are doing.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 5, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Can't comment on much of this thread, but I can comment on this, I think.
> 
> You have a slightly erroneous story in your head that Kant discovered X, Hegel improved on it, Marx took Hegel on, etc.
> 
> This is a 'standing on the shoulders of giants' approach that fits well with the natural sciences, but less well with epistemology, I think. And I don't think it applies here. To my thinking, your first sentence sums up something that Hegel got wrong, or at least that Hegel's followers seem to get wrong. I'm going to be a little rude here and suggest that you yourself have no idea what you mean when you say 'a fundamental alienation/disavowal of something previously intimately known to/by the subject'. Strictly speaking, I would say that Kant is right, and Hegel overextends himself in an attempt to prove the knowability of something unknowable. Now of course, we take certain things to be true in order to make progress, in order to allow us to think about things. Otherwise we just slip into empty solipsism, but that doesn't mean that we have to lie to ourselves about what it is that we are doing.


yeh, this is what i meant here


Pickman's model said:


> you seem to think that there's an evolution, that 'if kant, then hegel; if hegel, then marx'. that this was a necessary and teleological series of events. but it wasn't. and it's a nonsense to say that degenerate marxism, whatever that may be, reverts back down the path of influence from marx to kant skipping hegel. perhaps you don't like the way i phrased myself. but your agreeing with articul8 seems to me agreeing with a fool: not that it's to me any surprise that you'd harness yourself to a foolish argument.


although i must say lbj's put it rather better


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I'm going to be a little rude here and suggest that you yourself have no idea what you mean when you say 'a fundamental alienation/disavowal of something previously intimately known to/by the subject'.


 
I know exactly what I mean - and this is precisely where Hegel meets Freud/Lacan - on the terrain of something that the subject projects into the "external" world as something alien, objectified.  That "we lie to ourselves" about what we are doing when we divide the world up between the knowable and the unknowable is precisely the point from a psychoanalytical point of view.


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

Hegel had to go through and beyond Kant.  And Marx is clearly responding to a Hegelian framework.    What is objectionable here?


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

love detective said:


> so you've pretty much read all of Marx apart from the Anthropological notebooks, Capital/TSV and the Grundrisse



I don't know - there's probably untranslated ephemera, his doctoral thesis, some of his journalism no doubt...


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## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

I too think it's wrong to see Hegel as post-Kantian (it's better to see Hegel as post-Spinozan in my opinion) and Marx as post-Hegelian. The differences in each case are greater than the similarities.

Anyway here's Hegel on Critical Theory (basically Kant and post-Kantian philosophy including Fichte and Schelling):
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/sl_iv.htm
This will be difficult reading if you are not familiar with Hegel's terminology but there are links throughout the text. One thing I should note is that Hegel is less technical than Kant and this may seem unsatisfying - Hegel doesn't really tackle the problems Kant was dealing with but rather places Kant at a stage of development in the history of philosophpy.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> I don't know - there's probably untranslated ephemera, his doctoral thesis, some of his journalism no doubt...


using this handy index http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/index.htm why don't you tell us what you haven't read: or, if it's shorter, what you have read


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## Pickman's model (Jul 5, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I too think it's wrong to see Hegel as post-Kantian (it's better to see Hegel as post-Spinozan in my opinion) and Marx as post-Hegelian. The differences in each case are greater than the similarities.
> 
> Anyway here's Hegel on Critical Theory (basically Kant and post-Kantian philosophy including Fichte and Schelling):
> http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/sl_iv.htm
> This will be difficult reading if you are not familiar with Hegel's terminology but there are links throughout the text. One thing I should note is that Hegel is less technical than Kant and this may seem unsatisfying - Hegel doesn't really tackle the problems Kant was dealing with but rather places Kant at a stage of development in the history of philosophpy.


oh but hegel was post-kant and pre-marxian and therefore a step up from kant and a step down from marx


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

> it's wrong to see Hegel as post-Kantian


  I don't understand on what basis.  Hegel isn't neo-Kantian, but is quite clearly post-Kantian (not only in chronological terms but also in terms of his argument).  Hegel doesn't seek to answer Kantian problems, he demonstrates the aporetic nature of the way he frames the questions...


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> oh but hegel was post-kant and pre-marxian and therefore a step up from kant and a step down from marx


I've explicitly rejected that approach - Kant's contribution was enormous, without Kant no Hegel (IMV).  Without Hegel no Marx.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> I've explicitly rejected that approach - Kant's contribution was enormous, without Kant no Hegel (IMV). Without Hegel no Marx.





articul8 said:


> I don't understand on what basis. Hegel isn't neo-Kantian, but is quite clearly post-Kantian (not only in chronological terms but also in terms of his argument). Hegel doesn't seek to answer Kantian problems, he demonstrates the aporetic nature of the way he frames the questions...


are you sure you've rejected that approach?


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> using this handy index http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/index.htm why don't you tell us what you haven't read: or, if it's shorter, what you have read


there's rather a lot I haven't read - but I have read most of the major historical/philosophical works but not too much of the political economy.  It's something I intend to address.


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## butchersapron (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:
			
		

> I don't know - there's probably untranslated ephemera, his doctoral thesis, some of his journalism no doubt...


You mean the 37 huge volumes of his collected work, minus 15 or so of correspondence published so far with material for another 120 volumes? Come on, you're not some teenage trot.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> there's rather a lot I haven't read - but I have read most of the major historical/philosophical works but not too much of the political economy. It's something I intend to address.


what about the mathematical manuscripts?


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## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> I don't understand on what basis. Hegel isn't neo-Kantian, but is quite clearly post-Kantian (not only in chronological terms but also in terms of his argument). Hegel doesn't seek to answer Kantian problems, he demonstrates the aporetic nature of the way he frames the questions...


 
I would say Hegel was for the main anti-Kantian with small bits of Kant nevertheless absorbed (basically the transcendental dialectic without the transcendentalism and the "speculative" nature of the synthetic a priori without the synthetic a priori).

In terms of the philosophy of mathematics (which interests me if nobody else ) Hegel was plain anti-Kantian and could be seen as pre-Fregean and a fore-runner to analytic philosophy.


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> are you sure you've rejected that approach?


absolutely - Kant was heroic and courageous in pushing his argument as far as he did.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> absolutely - Kant was heroic and courageous in pushing his argument as far as he did.


so it's just coincidence which leads you to make apparently the same argument pretty much right after me.


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> what about the mathematical manuscripts?


No - didn't know they existed.  No particular desire to read them either unless someone explains why I should...


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## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> what about the mathematical manuscripts?


 
They're probably best forgotten about...


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You mean the 37 huge volumes of his collected work, minus 15 or so of correspondence published so far with material for another 120 volumes? Come on, you're not some teenage trot.


Have I fuck read it all.  You have I suppose?


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## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

Post-Kant German philosophy summarised:
Schopenhauer = neo-Kantian
Fichte, Schelling = post-Kantian
Hegel = anti-Kantian
Old Hegelians = neo-Hegelian
Young Hegelians = post-Hegelian
Feuerbach = anti-Hegelian
Marx = Marx


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## love detective (Jul 5, 2012)

Zizek = a nob


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

I don't think Hegel was anti-Kantian, he should be in there with the post-Kantians

And where are Novalis and Schlegel?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> I don't think Hegel was anti-Kantian,


Schopenhauer did.

Do you think both Hegel and Schopenhauer are post-Kantian? How do you square the differences between them if you do?


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## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

articul8 said:


> I don't think Hegel was anti-Kantian, he should be in there with the post-Kantians


 
I know, but you're wrong. 




			
				articul8 said:
			
		

> And where are Novalis and Schlegel?


 
Neo-Kantians. (That's where Hegel puts them at least, along with Fries iirc)


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## articul8 (Jul 5, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Do you think both Hegel and Schopenhauer are post-Kantian? How do you square the differences between them if you do?


 
They are post-Kantian in different ways.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 5, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Post-Kant German philosophy summarised:
> Schopenhauer = neo-Kantian
> Fichte, Schelling = post-Kantian
> Hegel = anti-Kantian
> ...


& nietzsche?


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## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Neo-Kantians. (That's where Hegel puts them at least, along with Fries iirc)


 
Or maybe neo-Fichteans... Or whatevva.


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## Knotted (Jul 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> & nietzsche?


 
Post-Schopenhauer?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 5, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> & nietzsche?


neo-Schopenhauer, no?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 5, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Post-Schopenhauer?


Snap!


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## love detective (Jul 5, 2012)

you know the rules of snap LBJ!


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## Captain Hurrah (Jul 5, 2012)

love detective said:


> Zizek = a nob


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## phildwyer (Jul 8, 2012)

Knotted said:


> That's ironic! Unless your name is Phil Dwyer...


 
What do you mean ''ıt's ıronıc?''

Do you mean that Marx _dıdn't _thınk the commodıty was ''full of metaphysıcal subtletıes'' etc?


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## 8ball (Jul 8, 2012)

And the universe is back in order - this thread has been missing Phil's presence for too long.


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## phildwyer (Jul 8, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Hegel doesn't seek to answer Kantian problems


 
Yes he does.  He trıes to answer the questıon of why we cannot know the thıng-ın-ıtself.


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## phildwyer (Jul 8, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Zizek's "proletariat" does not necessarily have anything to do with the working class at all!


 
Neıther does Marx's.  Anyone who works for a wage ıs a proletarıan--even ıf that wage ıs ten mıllıon pounds a second.


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## phildwyer (Jul 8, 2012)

love detective said:


> you reel off a bog standard Kantian epistemological speel


 
Brıllıant.  But I thınk your argument lacks a certaın _jenersayquoy._ 



love detective said:


> one of these routes you see as positive and the other deginerate


 
Excellent.  But your case seems to be dıjıneratıng a bıt here.


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## phildwyer (Jul 8, 2012)

love detective said:


> where would we be without him


 
Stuck wıth just more degınerate speel I suppose.


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## phildwyer (Jul 8, 2012)

love detective said:


> that's all very nice, but doesn't bear in relation to the point being made


 
But ıt does bear ın relatıon to the Kantıan speel doesn't ıt?  Or does ıt bear ın relatıon to the degıneratatıon?


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## phildwyer (Jul 8, 2012)

love detective said:


> what you seem to be saying is that whether people missed out on what was important in marx or not, they end up at the same place, your kantian epistemological. As whether they degenerate back to kant or whether they get what was most important in marx - both these things - in your words, are the same. As what you described as the most important part of marx (which those deginerates miss out on) is something that could be derived purely from kant anyway.


 
But thıs ıs mere degınarate speel!  It doesn't bear ın relatıon to anythıng. 

What you seem to be sayıng ıs that the Kantıan epıstemelogıcal bears ın relatıon to the speel that ends up back ın the same place that was most ımportant ın Marx's speel.  As whether they dıgenerate back to what you saıd was the most ımportant bıt of the speel you dıdn't say whether the relatıon was born ınto any Kantıan speel or coppıng a feel lıke the fıfth wheel underneath the ıron heel of the keel's speel.  _Both _these thıngs.


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## Knotted (Jul 8, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> What do you mean ''ıt's ıronıc?''
> 
> Do you mean that Marx _dıdn't _thınk the commodıty was ''full of metaphysıcal subtletıes'' etc?


 
Marx goes on to list the origins of these "mystical properties".
1) Commodities are product of human labour
2) The manner in which the quantity and quality of labour go into making up the quantitative determination of value
3) The social character of labour

So yes the commodity has these metaphysical subtleties but the origin of these subtleties is mundane. Marx is showing how the commodity form is something really very peculiar and bound up with certain historical developments.


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## articul8 (Jul 8, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Yes he does. He trıes to answer the questıon of why we cannot know the thıng-ın-ıtself.


Well, only by showing how it was a false problem - it doesn't have a solution on the terms that the question is asked.


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## Greebo (Jul 8, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> But thıs ıs mere degınarate speel! It doesn't bear ın relatıon to anythıng.
> 
> What you seem to be sayıng ıs that the Kantıan epıstemelogıcal bears ın relatıon to the speel that ends up back ın the same place that was most ımportant ın Marx's speel. As whether they dıgenerate back to what you saıd was the most ımportant bıt of the speel you dıdn't say whether the relatıon was born ınto any Kantıan speel or coppıng a feel lıke the fıfth wheel underneath the ıron heel of the keel's speel. _Both _these thıngs.


Spiel FFS!


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## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

Greebo said:


> Spiel FFS!


 
How dare you ımpose your bourgeoıs speelıng standards on us vanguard of the proolytorıot.


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## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Marx goes on to list the origins of these "mystical properties".
> 1) Commodities are product of human labour
> 2) The manner in which the quantity and quality of labour go into making up the quantitative determination of value
> 3) The social character of labour
> ...


 
Actually he's alludıng to the debate about transubstantıatıon, as he often does ın _Capıtal_.  Yet another example of how modern ıgnorance of theology bars many from an accurate readıng of Marx.


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## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

articul8 said:


> Well, only by showing how it was a false problem - it doesn't have a solution on the terms that the question is asked.


 
Yes, and Hegel thınks that ıt can have a solutıon ın some post-apocalyptıc future.  Yet another example of hıs essentıally theologıcal conceptıon of hıstory.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 9, 2012)

What's hegel have to say about usury?


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## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

love detective said:


> well that's my point - you said that '_those who held Marx to be the last word in philosophical modernity, and who regarded Hegel and the whole idealist tradition as outdated and superceded, *actually missed what was most important in Marx and were left with a philosophy which returned to an earlier, Kantian epistemological problematic*.'_
> 
> then when asked what was the most important in Marx - you reel off a bog standard Kantian epistemological speel - so on one hand you're criticising those who returned to an earlier kantian epistemology as they missed out on the what was most important in Marx, yet when asked what this most important thing was you give a standard kantian epistemology
> 
> maybe i've not picked up on the context in which this is being discussed as its looks boring as shite - but what you seem to be saying is that whether people missed out on what was important in marx or not, they end up at the same place, your kantian epistemological. As whether they degenerate back to kant or whether they get what was most important in marx - both these things - in your words, are the same. As what you described as the most important part of marx (which those deginerates miss out on) is something that could be derived purely from kant anyway. So both routes lead to the same thing, except one of these routes you see as positive and the other deginerate


 
I really must take ıssue wıth your speel here. 

You seem to be suggestıng that the bog standard Kantıan epıstemologıcal speel was nothıng more than whether some people mıssed out on what was ımportant ın marx or not theır Kantıan epıstemologıcal had even then degıneroot back to marx when _both _these thıngs--ın your speel--are the same.  As what you descrıbed as the most speelıng kınd of speel (whıch those dıogererereretees mıısed out) ıs somethıng that couldn't not be derıved purely fromthe kantıan epıstemologıcal speel anyway.  So both routes lead to the same thıng, except that one speel ıs another man's degoonerıght.

Wanker.


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## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> What's hegel have to say about usury?


 
He calls usurers ''the worst of men.''


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## Knotted (Jul 9, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Actually he's alludıng to the debate about transubstantıatıon, as he often does ın _Capıtal_. Yet another example of how modern ıgnorance of theology bars many from an accurate readıng of Marx.


 
Does somebody else want to field this one? I'm sure I've done my fair share of pointing out why Phil Dwyer is wrong.


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## revol68 (Jul 9, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Does somebody else want to field this one? I'm sure I've done my fair share of pointing out why Phil Dwyer is wrong.



He's not wrong on this one though, a commodity is an article faith, value being not simply dependent on properties internal to it but rather relying on a community of believers to impart it with special powers.


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## Greebo (Jul 9, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> How dare you ımpose your bourgeoıs speelıng standards on us vanguard of the proolytorıot.


 It's like hearing an amazing guitar riff played by a highly competent musician who keeps getting the same chord wrong.  A beginner does it because they can't help it, better players do it to annoy or for effect.  So the effect you were aiming for was what? Apart from getting me to walk right into that one?


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## Greebo (Jul 9, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> He calls usurers ''the worst of men.''


A man after your own heart (or at least hobby horse) then.


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## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

revol68 said:


> He's not wrong on this one though, a commodity is an article faith, value being not simply dependent on properties internal to it but rather relying on a community of believers to impart it with special powers.


 
Aye.  Marx's whole theory of commodıty fetıshısm ıs based on Luther's crıtıque of transubstantıatıon, as he makes clear several tımes: ''Adam Smıth was the Luther of polıtıcal economy... the Scots hate gold...'' and lots of other cıtatıons that I can't be bothered to dıg out at present.


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## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

Greebo said:


> A man after your own heart (or at least hobby horse) then.


 
Well modesty really does forbıd... let's say ıt's more lıke the other way around...


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## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

Greebo said:


> It's like hearing an amazing guitar riff played by a highly competent musician who keeps getting the same chord wrong. A beginner does it because they can't help it, better players do it to annoy or for effect. So the effect you were aiming for was what? Apart from getting me to walk right into that one?


 
well that's my point - you said that the speel of the real ıs nothıng but a steal and those who held Marx to be the last word in philosophical modernity and those who regarded Hegel's speel and the whole deegeroot idealist tradition as outdated and superceded and degooerıte actually missed the speel of what was most important in Marx and were left with a neo-Kantıan philosophy which returned to an earlier Kantian epistemological problematic but then when asked what was the most important Kantıan cunt in Marx - you reel off a bog standard Kantian epistemological speel - so on one hand you're criticising those who wouldn't have not returned to an earlier kantian epistemology as they speeled on the what was not least important in the Marxıam epıstemology yet when asked what this most important thing was you give a standard kantian epistemology bog spee standard thıng - but maybe i've not picked up on the context in which this is being discussed as its looks boring as shite - but what you seem to be saying is that whether people missed out on what was important in marx or not theır speel end up at the same place your kantian epistemological speel but whether they digenerate back to kant or whether they get what was most important in marx - both these things - in your speel were not even the same as what you described as the most important part of marx (which those deginerates miss out on) is something that could be derived purely from kant anyway so both routes lead to the same thing except one of these routes you see as positive and the other deginerate speeling up the bum.


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## articul8 (Jul 9, 2012)

Have a lie down?


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## Greebo (Jul 9, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> well that's my point <long barely coherent screed>


Sweetie, kindly desist from channelling methlab.  If you don't want to engage, nobody's forcing you to.


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## Knotted (Jul 9, 2012)

revol68 said:


> He's not wrong on this one though, a commodity is an article faith, value being not simply dependent on properties internal to it but rather relying on a community of believers to impart it with special powers.


 
I refer you to the reply I gave earlier. The commodity character is imparted by the underlying social relation - those social relations are not a product of belief that (presumably) can be explained away. You've got to stop trying to understand Marx by reading contemporary manglings of him.


----------



## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I refer you to the reply I gave earlier. The commodity character is imparted by the underlying social relation - those social relations are not a product of belief that (presumably) can be explained away.


 
Nobody ıs denyıng any of thıs, nor ıs ıt remotely ıncompatıble wıth what I saıd earlıer.


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## Knotted (Jul 9, 2012)

You and revol think you are in agreement but you aren't. Don't confuse his subjective idealism with your objective idealism.

I am quite aware that what I say is not in contradiction with what you say. If you want to make your case make it - at the minute all with have are a few nudges and winks.


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## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

Greebo said:


> Sweetie, kindly desist from channelling methlab. If you don't want to engage, nobody's forcing you to.


 
Now waıt just a mınute - you said that those who held Marx's deginerate bog standard epistemology neo-Kantıan  speel to be the last word in philosophical modernity and who regarded Hegel and the whole idealist neo-Kantıan tradition speel as outdated and superceded your bog standard epistemology speel actually missed what was most important in Marx - both these bog standard epistemology things - and were left with a philosophy which returned to an earlier deginerate Kantian epistemological problematic speel but that was before you saıd when asked what was the most important in Marx - you reel off a bog standard Kantian epistemological speel - so on one hand you're criticising those who returned to an earlier kantian epistemology as they missed out on the what was most important in Marx, yet when asked what this most important thing was you give a standard kantian epistemology you said that the speel of the real ıs nothıng but a steal and those who held Marx to be the last word in philosophical modernity speel and those who regarded Hegel's bog standard epistemology speel and the whole deegeroot idealist tradition as outdated and superceded and degooerıte - both these things - actually missed the speel of what was most important in Marx - both these things - and were left with a neo-Kantıan philosophy which returned to an earlier Kantian epistemological neo-Kantıan problematic speel but then when asked what was the most important Kantıan cunt in Marx - you reel off a bog standard Kantian deginerate epistemological speel - so on one hand you're criticising those neo-Kantıans who wouldn't have not returned to an earlier kantian bog standard epistemology as they speeled on the what was not least important in the Marxıam epıstemology yet when asked what this most important thing was bog standard epistemology you give a standard kantian epistemology bog speel standard thıng - but maybe i've not picked up on the deginerate context in which this is being discussed as its looks boring as bog standard epistemology shite - but what you seem to be saying is that whether people missed out on what was important in marx - both these things - or not theır neo-Kantıan speel end up at the same place your kantian epistemological speel - both these things - but whether they digenerate back to kant or whether they get what was most important in marx - both these things - in your speel were not even the same as what you described as the most important part of deginerate marx (which those deginerates miss out on) is something that could be derived purely from kant anyway so both routes lead to the same thing except one of these routes you see as positive and the other deginerate speeling up the bum now maybe i've not picked up on the neo-Kantıan context in which this is being discussed as its looks boring as bog standard epistemology shite - but what you seem to be saying is that whether people missed out on what was important in neo-Kantıan marx or not - both these things - they end up at the same place, your kantian epistemological neo-Kantıan as whether they degenerate back to kant or whether they get what was most important in marx - both these things - in your words, are the same as what you described as the most important part of neo-Kantıan  marx (which those deginerates miss out on) is something that could be derived purely from kant anyway. So both routes lead to the same thing - both these things - except one of these routes you see as positive and the other bog standard epistemology deginerate speel.


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## 8ball (Jul 9, 2012)

. . . and breathe


----------



## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

Knotted said:


> You and revol think you are in agreement but you aren't. Don't confuse his subjective idealism with your objective idealism.


 
Both routes lead to the same thıng.


----------



## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

8ball said:


> . . . and breathe


 
BOTH ROUTES LEAD TO THE SAME THING.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jul 9, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> BOTH ROUTES LEAD TO THE SAME THING.


calm down dear, it's only a bulletin board


----------



## phildwyer (Jul 9, 2012)

love detective said:


> both routes lead to the same thing


 
No they fucking don't.


----------



## 8ball (Jul 9, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> BOTH ROUTES LEAD TO THE SAME THING.


 
They may well do.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 9, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Both routes lead to the same thıng.


 
Is this a zen thing?

Nice speel by the way.


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## cesare (Jul 9, 2012)




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## revol68 (Jul 9, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I refer you to the reply I gave earlier. The commodity character is imparted by the underlying social relation - those social relations are not a product of belief that (presumably) can be explained away. You've got to stop trying to understand Marx by reading contemporary manglings of him.



Stop telling me things im quite aware of, I don't need an abc on Marx from a gimp like yourself. You also need to stop mistaking subjective with some stupud atomised individual perspective and certainly not as being immaterial.


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## Knotted (Jul 9, 2012)

To be perfectly honest revol, you come across as being almost but not quite completely unaware of anything Marx ever said (at least Phil has read Marx in order to pervert him - you're not even aware that you are perverting Marx, you are so far gone!).

Now I haven't mistaken subjective with individual perspective nor with being immaterial. This is not what idealism is - the idealist can recognise the material but insists on describing the material in terms of the ideal. Which is precisely what you did.


----------



## revol68 (Jul 9, 2012)

You think because i pointed out the theological elements in Marx's writings that i have embraced idealism. I think its more idealist to overlook the role christian theology has had on western philosophy and therefore how it is interwoven into the fabric into the thought of even materialists like Marx.


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## Knotted (Jul 9, 2012)

As for reading theology - I was reading GK Chesterton a couple of weeks ago. The guy's quite smart, but his ideas are dire. The matter of your religion is a lifestyle choice dressed up as a discussion about some sort of spiritual reality. I believe this dirty little (self-)deception is at the heart of all theology and that's why it shouldn't be taken seriously. But I have read a bit of theology and I am aware of what transubstantiation is. Is it relevant to Capital beyond following Marx's metaphors? I don't think so.


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## Knotted (Jul 9, 2012)

revol68 said:


> You think because i pointed out the theological elements in Marx's writings that i have embraced idealism. I think its more idealist to overlook the role christian theology has had on western philosophy and therefore how it is interwoven into the fabric into the thought of even materialists like Marx.


 
No, you're an idealist because you reduce social reality to a matter of belief and faith.


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## revol68 (Jul 9, 2012)

News to me that.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 9, 2012)

love detective said:


> Zizek = a nob


 
To which I reply (from http://www.lacan.com/zizwoman.htm, with a bit added in italics):
Here, one should recall the passage from consciousness to self-consciousness in Hegel's _Phenomenology of Spirit_: what one encounters in the suprasensible Beyond is, as to its positive content, the same as our terrestrial everyday world; this same content is merely transposed to a different modality. Hegel's point, however, is that it would be false to conclude from this identity of content that there is no difference between the terrestrial reality and its Beyond: in its original dimension, Beyond is not some positive content but an empty place, a kind of screen onto which one can project any positive content whatsoever {_e.g. for instance, Z's nob}_ this empty space is the subject. Once we become aware of it, we pass from Substance to Subject, i.e., from consciousness to self-consciousness.


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## love detective (Jul 9, 2012)

So to summarise, from our terrestrial reality & every day world perspective, Zizek is a nob

But in the suprasensible beyond, while he retains his nobishness, albeit transposed to a different a modality, he's primarily an empty place with no positive content?


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## TruXta (Jul 9, 2012)

You should all be ashamed of yourselves.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 10, 2012)

> Beyond is not some positive content but an empty place, a kind of screen onto which one can project any positive content whatsoever {_e.g. for instance, Z's nob}_ this empty space is the subject. Once we become aware of it, we pass from Substance to Subject, i.e., from consciousness to self-consciousness.


 
I think this is slightly careless use of the word consciousness - this is happening on the plant consciousness thread too. Humans become self-consciousness at around age 3-5. This isn't an all-of-a-sudden thing, but a gradual realisation, which happens due to the recognition of others. Does that mean that we are 'substance' before the age of 4, say? Why so? To be conscious but not to be aware that you are conscious is still to be a subject. After all, when we are totally engrossed in an activity, we are not at that moment self-conscious.


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## phildwyer (Jul 10, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I was reading GK Chesterton a couple of weeks ago. The guy's quite smart, but his ideas are dire.


 
Quite smart?  _Quıte smart?  _The greatest Englısh poet of the twentıeth century ıs what he ıs: 

''Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,  
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,  
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,  
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,  
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,  
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.  
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,  
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.  
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

DON JOHN OF AUSTRİA İS GOİNG TO THE WAR!''


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## sunnysidedown (Jul 10, 2012)

christ on a bike.


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## Greebo (Jul 10, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> Quite smart? _Quıte smart? _The greatest Englısh poet of the twentıeth century ıs what he ıs<snip>


Take more water with it.  He's okay, but not the greatest.  Far better at fiction.


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## Greebo (Jul 10, 2012)

sunnysidedown said:


> christ on a bike.


Quite.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 10, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I think this is slightly careless use of the word consciousness - this is happening on the plant consciousness thread too. Humans become self-consciousness at around age 3-5. This isn't an all-of-a-sudden thing, but a gradual realisation, which happens due to the recognition of others. Does that mean that we are 'substance' before the age of 4, say? Why so? To be conscious but not to be aware that you are conscious is still to be a subject. After all, when we are totally engrossed in an activity, we are not at that moment self-conscious.



I think the self consciousness being referred to is the awareness of the anamorphotic aspect- not the awareness of self, but the perspective from which the activity in question makes sense (due to the fantastic character of what fills the empty space. The subject is the perspectival aspect itself


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 11, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> I think the self consciousness being referred to is the awareness of the anamorphotic aspect- not the awareness of self, but the perspective from which the activity in question makes sense (due to the fantastic character of what fills the empty space. The subject is the perspectival aspect itself


Right. Well I would think that most people would call that simple 'consciousness'. In the above formulation, 'self-conscious' is being used to mean what I would call 'conscious', while 'conscious' is being used to mean what I would call 'not conscious'.

It is simply a rather obscure restatement of the problem, rather than any kind of proposed solution. Perhaps that's one of my problems with continental philosophy - it isn't offering the kind of solutions I think it is suggesting that it is offering; it's simply offering ever more opaque and confusing ways of stating the problem.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 11, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Right. Well I would think that most people would call that simple 'consciousness'. In the above formulation, 'self-conscious' is being used to mean what I would call 'conscious', while 'conscious' is being used to mean what I would call 'not conscious'.
> 
> It is simply a rather obscure restatement of the problem, rather than any kind of proposed solution. Perhaps that's one of my problems with continental philosophy - it isn't offering the kind of solutions I think it is suggesting that it is offering; it's simply offering ever more opaque and confusing ways of stating the problem.


 
Perhaps a way to look at it is this: the empty space is empty due to being an unconscious blank (void) around which our everyday life (conducted symbolically) circulates; we fill it with conscious "positive content"; when we become (somewhat) aware of the perspectival, anamorphotic aspect of what we consciously posit (what our contribution to the scene is-what Lacan would call objet petit a), we are (to some extent) self conscious.

I fear your "consciousness" tacitly assumes a neutral ground "out there", rather than taking account of the possibility that we find only what we search for


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## articul8 (Jul 13, 2012)

The real is _both_ a void and a threateningly full presence (parallax).  And self-consciousness is always necessarily misrecognition.


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## love detective (Jul 13, 2012)

lol


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## butchersapron (Jul 13, 2012)

articul8 said:


> The real is _both_ a void and a threateningly full presence (parallax). And self-consciousness is always necessarily misrecognition.


_Have you heard of a man called John Mcdonnell?_


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## articul8 (Jul 13, 2012)

and your point is?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

articul8 said:


> The real is _both_ a void and a threateningly full presence (parallax).


Hmmm. That sounds like what Dennett would call a deepity. It's either wrong, or it is trivially true. I'm not sure it actually means anything at all, mind. Sounds like a mystic formulation intended to sound deep and meaningful, but really just a fairly random and arbitrary selection of phrases.


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## love detective (Jul 13, 2012)

the zizek of emptiness, the emptiness of zizek


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## Knotted (Jul 13, 2012)

Interesting speel.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 13, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Hmmm. That sounds like what Dennett would call a deepity. It's either wrong, or it is trivially true. I'm not sure it actually means anything at all, mind. Sounds like a mystic formulation intended to sound deep and meaningful, but really just a fairly random and arbitrary selection of phrases.


 
Dan Dennett has argued (in "Freedom evolves") and I agree with him that the toss of a coin results in an event without a cause-all the myriad influences that determine the outcome are condensed into a binary result .

Zizek would argue that a subject is the blinding effect of the excess of the real that cannot be assimilated in the symbolic (so that as articul68 puts it the excess results in a void).

Where Zizek would differ from DD is that DD believes that in principle there is a God like perspective "on everything" i.e that determinism means that effectively the universe may be seen as in amber.

Zizek thinks there is no neutral ground ie that the universe isn't deterministic. See my very early posts on this forum.


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## love detective (Jul 13, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> so that as articul68 puts it


 




> the blinding effect of the excess of the real


 
it's just words isn't it, empty empty words

at what stage does realness get too much that there's an excess which starts to blind us?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> Zizek would argue that a subject is the blinding effect of the excess of the real that cannot be assimilated in the symbolic
> .


That makes no real sense to me. At best it sounds like another unnecessarily obscure restatement of the problem under discussion. What does it add?


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 13, 2012)

love detective said:


> it's just words isn't it, empty empty words
> 
> at what stage does realness get too much that there's an excess which starts to blind us?


 
When things don't run smoothly...perhaps when one needs a therapist? Or a beer?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> When things don't run smoothly...perhaps when one needs a therapist? Or a beer?


This is (bad) poetry, not philosophy, surely.


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## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> Perhaps a way to look at it is this: the empty space is empty due to being an unconscious blank (void) around which our everyday life (conducted symbolically) circulates; we fill it with conscious "positive content"; when we become (somewhat) aware of the perspectival, anamorphotic aspect of what we consciously posit (what our contribution to the scene is-what Lacan would call objet petit a), we are (to some extent) self conscious.
> 
> I fear your "consciousness" tacitly assumes a neutral ground "out there", rather than taking account of the possibility that we find only what we search for


 
This mismatched salad of words simply boils down to the fact that we have limited attention spans (temporally and spatially) and as such must partially at least construct the world based on what our social relations allow us. This has been known to anyone who's ever learned a language and discovered words for things he/she never knew about before. And what the cocking fuck does anamorphotic mean?


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 13, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> That makes no real sense to me. At best it sounds like another unnecessarily obscure restatement of the problem under discussion. What does it add?


 
Tritely, but with some seriousness, I'll say "Depends on whether one's perspective is scientistic normative, or continental normative"

Perhaps a continental philo would ask what DD's obscure words (bootstrap; evitability) add?


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## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> Zizek would argue that a subject is the blinding effect of the excess of the real that cannot be assimilated in the symbolic.


 
You don't actually believe this has any meaning do you? The excess of the real? Sounds like what happens the day after a big session.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

God I hate that word 'scientistic', as if a scientific viewpoint were merely one position out of many equally valid positions. It's kind of on a par with assertions that evolution is 'just a theory'.


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## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

It is a theory tho. A good one too.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> Perhaps a continental philo would ask what DD's obscure words (bootstrap; evitability) add?


I have loads of disagreements with Dennett, but I've never, ever seen him write in an obscure manner. He's very clear about what he means.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 13, 2012)

TruXta said:


> This mismatched salad of words simply boils down to the fact that we have limited attention spans (temporally and spatially) and as such must partially at least construct the world based on what our social relations allow us. This has been known to anyone who's ever learned a language and discovered words for things he/she never knew about before. And what the cocking fuck does anamorphotic mean?


 
It means that the contribution we make (that you refer to) is constitutive of the world, rather than the world being "out there".


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

TruXta said:


> It is a theory tho. A good one too.


I know - note I said '*just* a theory'


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 13, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I have loads of disagreements with Dennett, but I've never, ever seen him write in an obscure manner. He's very clear about what he means.


 
Thats fair. He is clearer than Z. But I think Z may be onto something. Then again..


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## Knotted (Jul 13, 2012)

The contrast between analytic and continental philosophy in two sentences:


Mad4ziz said:


> Dan Dennett has argued (in "Freedom evolves") and I agree with him that the toss of a coin results in an event without a cause-all the myriad influences that determine the outcome are condensed into a binary result .
> 
> Zizek would argue that a subject is the blinding effect of the excess of the real that cannot be assimilated in the symbolic (so that as articul68 puts it the excess results in a void).


 
Dennett makes me think "hmm". Zizek makes me think "lolwut".


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## Knotted (Jul 13, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> Perhaps a continental philo would ask what DD's obscure words (bootstrap; evitability) add?


 
But Dennett's phrases are like engineer's jargon. Which is for real men.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 13, 2012)

Knotted said:


> But Dennett's phrases are like engineer's jargon. Which is for real men.


 
Bugger. I thought I'd get the ladies by being continental...Sartre did, and I'm even uglier than him


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## articul8 (Jul 13, 2012)

what does (the) woman want is a question that stumped Herr Freud.


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## love detective (Jul 13, 2012)

so, articul68

who did that offend the most


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## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> It means that the contribution we make (that you refer to) is constitutive of the world, rather than the world being "out there".


 
Why didn't you say so rather than using a 100% obscurantist term? And why can't both be true? In fact, both are true. It's what science tells us. It's what common sense tells us. We've no real reason to disbelieve that the world as we know it is the only world there is. If humans were wiped up out tomorrow, stones would still be stones, planets would still circle stars. Hence this _excess of the real_ is no such thing, it's merely an excess of idle idiosyncratic bullshit musings, nothing personal. It's pure solipsism writ large and it has exactly zero to say about anything of importance.


----------



## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I have loads of disagreements with Dennett, but I've never, ever seen him write in an obscure manner. He's very clear about what he means.


 
Which is not the same as having convincing arguments.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

TruXta said:


> Which is not the same as having convincing arguments.


True. As I said, I have disagreements with Dennett. I think his 'multiple drafts' theory of consciousness is wrong, for instance, and his and Churchland's dismissal of qualia as a problem to be explained is also imo wrong. Subject for another thread to explain why I think he's wrong, but I understand his arguments well enough. Zizek - well I've not read much, but what I have read has made as much sense to me as those on this thread defending him - ie not much.

I'm quite glad you've turned up. I was going to introduce some science to this discussion earlier as an example of the light science can shed on these questions. Bjorn Merker has come up with a model of consciousness that does not require many of the things that, imo, the likes of Dennett have been distracted by – all the clever things humans can do. This article is written for neuroscientists, but it's readable, fascinating, and I think largely right, at least in what it is trying to address, namely what it is to, as Merker puts it, 'inhabit a neural simulation'.

imo one of the hardest things with consciousness is finding the right questions to ask. That is where science has to come in. It's pointless trying to understand consciousness without it.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 13, 2012)

Einstein's theories of relativity are very good examples of theories which describe the world in "out there" terms by taking into account that we constitute the world. Now _that's_ dialectical.


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## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

I'm not too bothered about qualia being a problem. It is a problem, but a pretty minor one in a scientific sense. I have much bigger problems with bullshit. I don't mind "continental" philosophy as such, I just think certain directions, like the Lacan-Zizek one, is plain and simple bullshit. Zizek is at least half-way enteraining and half-way tongue in cheek. Lacan actually believed he was onto something big. Derrida had one grand ideaBut then you have people like Deleuze, Gadamer and Habermas, who at least have some intelligible message to their arguments.


----------



## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Einstein's theories of relativity are very good examples of theories which describe the world in "out there" terms by taking into account that we constitute the world. Now _that's_ dialectical.


 
How does the TOR take into account that we constitute the world?


----------



## Knotted (Jul 13, 2012)

Our inertial frame of reference constitutes the world as we see it.


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## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Our inertial frame of reference constitutes the world as we see it.


 
Are you being serious?


----------



## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

I don't think you know what the TOR means by inertial frame of reference. Got nothing to do with human observers at all.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

Not sure I understand you either, Knotted. I'm intrigued as I'm sure you understand the basics of relativity. It says that no one frame of reference is privileged, but it actually give completely precise means to deal with that, doesn't it - to measure precisely what would be happening in other frames of reference.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 13, 2012)

Yes, we're possibly talking at cross purposes. Descriptions of various dynamical systems change with the inertial frame of reference of the observer, but this is in order to explain the fact that the speed of light does not change regardless of the inertial frame of reference. And yes we can work out various precise descriptions for various frames of reference.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 13, 2012)

TruXta said:


> I don't think you know what the TOR means by inertial frame of reference. Got nothing to do with human observers at all.


 
Yes, I'm being a bit sloppy. There is a difference between "relative" and "subjective" (and conversely "absolute" and "objective").


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

Ok, question:

Quantum entanglement depends on simultaneity. In a very real sense, two electrons doing the same thing at the same time in different places can be considered to be the same one electron in both places. Now relativity teaches us that simultaneity depends on your frame of reference. Change your frame of reference and different events become simultaneous.But would that mean that different entanglements will be seen to occur depending on the observer's frame of reference? Or have I missed something obvious?


----------



## TruXta (Jul 13, 2012)

Knotted said:


> Yes, I'm being a bit sloppy. There is a difference between "relative" and "subjective" (and conversely "absolute" and "objective").


 
Yes, relative here has a precise mathematical meaning, whereas subjective isn't even a term that enters into any equation. I think you've been reading about _observers_ when reading descriptions of what inertial frame of reference is. "We observe an inertial frame of reference" etc. The thing is that that's just a way of relating it back to more easily understandable concepts for lay people. It has no real theoretical implication, e.g. it doesn't matter whether the "observer" is a stone, a star or a squirrel. Basically all any "frame of reference" means is that we have two or more objects moving through space-time, thus moving relative to each other.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 13, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Ok, question:
> 
> Quantum entanglement depends on simultaneity.


 
No it doesn't quite.

Quantum mechanics has been made compatible with special relativity but not general relativity. You can put a relativistic correction on quantum mechanics and you end up with quantum field theory. So all this can come out in the wash.

You are probably interpreting QM in a certain way - probably subconsciously. Some interpretations require a notion of simultaneity - namely the pilot wave interpretation (and maybe others) but even this can be modified.

Bell's theorem about inequalities does not depend on any notion of simultaneity. It is something that needs to be stated very carefully. I think I will say (without looking it up) that it states that _if_ there is a causal description of an entangled pair _then_ that description cannot be described in terms of local causality (ie. there is not a state of affairs in the past time cones of both observers that can be used to predict the results). Bell's notion of non-local does not require simultaneity, but merely that _if _there is an action _then _it is a superluminal action.


----------



## Knotted (Jul 13, 2012)

TruXta said:


> Yes, relative here has a precise mathematical meaning, whereas subjective isn't even a term that enters into any equation. I think you've been reading about _observers_ when reading descriptions of what inertial frame of reference is. "We observe an inertial frame of reference" etc. The thing is that that's just a way of relating it back to more easily understandable concepts for lay people. It has no real theoretical implication, e.g. it doesn't matter whether the "observer" is a stone, a star or a squirrel. Basically all any "frame of reference" means is that we have two or more objects moving through space-time, thus moving relative to each other.


 
I don't think it is just about making it more accessible to lay people. There is the matter that all that we know about all of this is based on observations. We are generalising from our (subjective) observations to an objective description and the theory is verified when it explains our (subjective) observations. And I don't think "subjective" is any less precise than "relative". Subjective=relative to a (human) observer.

I _do_ think the objective nature of the universe is relative to our frames of reference. The various momentums of various bodies are both real and relative.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

Knotted said:


> No it doesn't quite.
> 
> Quantum mechanics has been made compatible with special relativity but not general relativity. You can put a relativistic correction on quantum mechanics and you end up with quantum field theory. So all this can come out in the wash.
> 
> ...


Ta. I assumed I must have been getting something wrong. I'll refresh my memory of Bell's theorem. I'm a bit rusty on this stuff annoyingly. When I study it, I grasp it, but when I neglect it, I lose that grasp somewhat.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 13, 2012)

TruXta said:


> I'm not too bothered about qualia being a problem. It is a problem, but a pretty minor one in a scientific sense.


Not sure I agree with that. The qualities of our qualia and how these qualities are expressed may, I suspect, shed a great deal of light on the way our consciousness develops. How do those qualities become attached to perceptions, and why those particular qualities? They clearly must represent the importance and meaning to us of the respective perceptions, reflecting among other things our emotional responses to them - and perhaps even in an important sense _being_ our emotional responses.

Actually, that is somewhere where I don't understand Dennett/Churchland. They claim that qualia do not exist. But they do exist. We _know_ they exist.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 13, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Not sure I agree with that. The qualities of our qualia and how these qualities are expressed may, I suspect, shed a great deal of light on the way our consciousness develops. How do those qualities become attached to perceptions, and why those particular qualities? They clearly must represent the importance and meaning to us of the respective perceptions, reflecting among other things our emotional responses to them - and perhaps even in an important sense _being_ our emotional responses.
> 
> Actually, that is somewhere where I don't understand Dennett/Churchland. They claim that qualia do not exist. But they do exist. We _know_ they exist.


 
Z would agree with you I think. He would say something like "once one has subtracted every descriptive predicate of a mental state, some X nevertheless remains" The X would be the qualia. I think DD gets to zero for the result of the subtraction.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 13, 2012)

TruXta said:


> Why didn't you say so rather than using a 100% obscurantist term? And why can't both be true? In fact, both are true. It's what science tells us. It's what common sense tells us. We've no real reason to disbelieve that the world as we know it is the only world there is. If humans were wiped up out tomorrow, stones would still be stones, planets would still circle stars. Hence this _excess of the real_ is no such thing, it's merely an excess of idle idiosyncratic bullshit musings, nothing personal. It's pure solipsism writ large and it has exactly zero to say about anything of importance.


 
I used the term to try and get into Z's way of thinking. Its what I did many years ago when I took a science degree-you know, I used terms unfamiliar to people who weren't studying the subject so as to communicate symbolically with other students who also used similar terms. I think your phrase _it's merely an excess of idle idiosyncratic bullshit musings, nothing personal"  _was used by my dad to describe what I was learning. You will probably think "yes but science has real useful effects in the world whereas this Z stuff doesnt". Useful to..oh yes, human subjects and the world they have constituted. If our civilisation collapses to a lower level of complexity the few humans left alive will have a very different view of what is of importance and I doubt science will feature. After Rome came Christianity


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## phildwyer (Jul 14, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Actually, that is somewhere where I don't understand Dennett/Churchland. They claim that qualia do not exist. But they do exist. We _know_ they exist.


 
But scientifically they _can't _exist.  That's why Dennett and his ilk must simply deny them--in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.  This is the point at which the pretensions of science to objectivity become ludicrous.


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## phildwyer (Jul 14, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> imo one of the hardest things with consciousness is finding the right questions to ask. That is where science has to come in. It's pointless trying to understand consciousness without it.


 
No, this is the point at which science fails and _history _must be introduced.

Specifically, we must answer the question of why consciousness has come to seem implausible (to science) at this particular historical juncture.  And that is a question that science can't even ask, let alone answer.


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## Knotted (Jul 14, 2012)

I think the problem with qualia goes like this:
You hear a musical note and then you hear the same note as part of a melody. Are you experience the same quale each time?


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 14, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I think the problem with qualia goes like this:
> You hear a musical note and then you hear the same note as part of a melody. Are you experience the same quale each time?


 
Interesting. I would say not. Perhaps one could conceive in principle of a complete description of at least the melody up to just before the note in question, and then perhaps there is some form of Bayesian evolved predictive coding aspect in the subject's mind to predict what may come next. The quale would then be influenced by both the specific melody to date and the degree of error in the prediction. X remains, even after subtracting the past history and the Bayesian prediction moment to moment.


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## Knotted (Jul 14, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> Bayesian evolved predictive coding


 
You're alright you are. 

There is this debate and it get more and more bogged down with qualifications and contextualisations about qualia. I don't see the need for the concept, though. Do we really have units of experience which are then interpreted in a certain way? I think it's something more subtle than that. I don't think that what we perceive is some sort of definite thing which is then modified. Believing in qualia is a bit like believing in the geocentric model in astronomy - you have to add in epicycles to make it work.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

Knotted said:


> I think the problem with qualia goes like this:
> You hear a musical note and then you hear the same note as part of a melody. Are you experience the same quale each time?


I think this is just a definitional problem. I don't conceive of qualia as some kind of preexisting qualities that appear in my consciousness. However, there is such a thing as 'redness' and 'blueness'. Now with musical notes, I think mad4ziz's idea about Bayesian predictive coding is very likely to be happening in some form or another, but also, the qualia of musical notes for anyone who does not have perfect pitch are relative - we hear 'higher'/'lower', but we do not have in our heads the quality 'Cness' or 'Asharpness' in the same way that we have the quality 'blueness' in our heads. This is different for people with perfect pitch, who do experience different notes as others would experience different colours.

As for the idea of 'believing in' qualia, that's not necessary. I would say that we cannot not believe in them. Sometimes I think some people - such as Dennett - think the word means more than it actually does. It is a problem associated with the hard problem of consciousness, certainly. Some people would deny that problem exists too.


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## Knotted (Jul 14, 2012)

Is the redness quale of a red dot on a blue background the same as the redness quale of a red dot on a yellow background?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

No. We always perceive colours, shades, shapes, everything in terms of its context.

But I don't see the problem with that. Could you not think of 'redness' as something like Wittgenstein's idea of a 'family' of things that conform to different words. I can sit here, close my eyes, and conjure up the idea 'redness'.

However, I don't have perfect pitch, so I cannot sit here and conjure up the idea 'Cflat'. I can only conjure up intervals between notes.


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## Knotted (Jul 14, 2012)

I think you can make the concept of qualia workable but then you can also make the geo-centric world view workable. I just doubt the usefulness of the exercise.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

I think we're at crossed purposes, and defining qualia somewhat differently. I don't see the concept as an explanation of anything. It is simply a description of something - a part of the phenomenology of consciousness. So taking your cosmology analogy further, qualia are the observation - the phenomenon - that there are celestial bodies moving around. The explanation for that movement, whatever it may be, is something further.


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## Knotted (Jul 14, 2012)

You don't observe qualia, you experience them and given that we are trying to work out what consciousness and experience are, then surely qualia are supposed to be the building blocks of what constitute some sort of theory.

What is gained by talking about qualia? We can say we have experienced the qualia corresponding to a red dot on a blue background or we could just say that we have seen a red dot on a blue background. Are these two different observations?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

Knotted said:


> You don't observe qualia, you experience them and given that we are trying to work out what consciousness and experience are, then surely qualia are supposed to be the building blocks of what constitute some sort of theory.


Yes, indeed. And that's where ideas such as those of Bjorn Merker come in. We construct our experience, generate it ourselves - but that includes the construction of the observer as well as the observed. We actually do observe qualia in our experience - because that's how our experience is constructed: with an observer and that which the observer is observing. Without both those elements, we wouldn't be able to do anything with our consciousness - we need to place ourselves in the scene as the one observing that cannot be observed - and the crucial point is that the whole thing is a self-generated construction, including the observer.

So, qualia are simply a part of the phenomenology of consciousness, and I defy anyone to come up with a phenomenology of consciousness that does not include them. You can't. They're there. We know they are there.


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## 8ball (Jul 14, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> But scientifically they _can't _exist.


 


(that's all I have to say on that, though it's nice to see a philosophy thread that doesn't revolve entirely around silly word games)


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## 8ball (Jul 14, 2012)

Knotted said:


> You hear a musical note and then you hear the same note as part of a melody. Are you experience the same quale each time?


 
No, and musicians make plenty of use of this, such as repeated phrases in solos that seem to vary when it is just the bass note on another instrument that is changing (cheap musical trick for making it sound like you're better at playing something than you really are  ).


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

8ball said:


> (that's all I have to say on that, though it's nice to see a philosophy thread that doesn't revolve entirely around silly word games)


It's been highjacked by the scientistic types, that's why.


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## 8ball (Jul 14, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> It's been highjacked by the scientistic types, that's why.


 
Empiricist bastards!!


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

8ball said:


> No, and musicians make plenty of use of this, such as repeated phrases in solos that seem to vary when it is just the bass note on another instrument that is changing (cheap musical trick for making it sound like you're better at playing something than you really are  ).


Indeed, and here we need to remember that all the qualia in our experience are not 'out there' at all. They only exist 'in here'. They are self-generated. I actually think Knotted may be forgetting this. It's an easy thing to do.


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## TruXta (Jul 14, 2012)

phildwyer said:


> No, this is the point at which science fails and _history _must be introduced.
> 
> Specifically, we must answer the question of why consciousness has come to seem implausible (to science) at this particular historical juncture. And that is a question that science can't even ask, let alone answer.


 
Consciousness does not seem implausible to science at this juncture. Some people, like Denett and Churchland, want to define their way out of empirical questions. They are in the minority, besides, they're not scientists, they're philosophers. I know many scientists who study human consciousness for a living, through both experimental/quantitative and discursive/qualitative means, often in combination. You're spouting your usual mad, uninformed drivel as usual.


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## TruXta (Jul 14, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Yes, indeed. And that's where ideas such as those of Bjorn Merker come in. We construct our experience, generate it ourselves - but that includes the construction of the observer as well as the observed. We actually do observe qualia in our experience - because that's how our experience is constructed: with an observer and that which the observer is observing. Without both those elements, we wouldn't be able to do anything with our consciousness - we need to place ourselves in the scene as the one observing that cannot be observed - and the crucial point is that the whole thing is a self-generated construction, including the observer.
> 
> So, qualia are simply a part of the phenomenology of consciousness, and I defy anyone to come up with a phenomenology of consciousness that does not include them. You can't. They're there. We know they are there.


 
Forget about that hard constructionist stuff. It doesn't conform to what we know about the embodied/extended/materially grounded way that cognition works. Constructionism is a trivial consequence of our neurology (limited attention spans and senses) that simply means we have an incomplete picture of the world - we don't sense magnetism very much for example, so we leave that bit out of our experiential sphere. Doesn't mean that the world we experience is in any important sense NOT THE REAL WORLD. It's the only world we've got. Even if a convoluted theoretical argument can be constructed to claim that the really real REAL is not our real, it means the square root of fuck all to any reasonable attempt at _finding_ _out how things work_ i.e. science and social inquiry. It's a sideshow.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

What do you mean by 'materially grounded way that cognition works'? There is no way of telling _from inside_ that what we're experiencing is really in response to input from our senses or an entirely self-constructed hallucination. The experience may be identical in both cases. That we generate our own models of reality and these models constitute experience is _empirically important_. That's not a sideshow at all. It's central.

How and where is this model constructed? That's a big question, imo, and Merker gives a possible solution, far from the usual idea - in the brainstem, in an area in which experience is built up in a topographically layered shape, specifically in the superior colliculus. IMO this kind of investigation is only made possible because Merker is thinking about consciousness in the right way.


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## TruXta (Jul 14, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> What do you mean by 'materially grounded way that cognition works'? There is no way of telling _from inside_ that what we're experiencing is really in response to input from our senses or an entirely self-constructed hallucination. The experience may be identical in both cases. That we generate our own models of reality and these models constitute experience is _empirically important_. That's not a sideshow at all. It's central.


 
You're already positing that all we experience is from inside our own Cartesian theatre. Begging the question in other words. And if the experience was identical, why this ontological posturing? It's like saying we could be the dream of a god, well yes, but why would it matter?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

TruXta said:


> You're already positing that all we experience is from inside our own Cartesian theatre.


 
The point about the Cartesian theatre, imo, that is often missed is that both the play and the audience are our own constructions. I think sometimes theorists about consciousness underplay the importance of the actual lived experience that being conscious is and the phenomena of that experience.

An example of how this can help me at least to think about things: multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder. Recent research has shown that this can be far more than merely pretending to be different people, and a common trait to people exhibiting this very rare phenomenon is that they were abused before the age of 4. In other words, they were abused before the age at which the 'I' part of their experience had been fully constructed. In order to make sense of, say, 'dad the abuser' and 'dad the loving dad', two different, separate 'I's are constructed to deal with the different situations. This only makes sense when you think of both the observer and the observed in consciousness as constructions generated by us.


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## 8ball (Jul 14, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> The point about the Cartesian theatre, imo, that is often missed is that both the play and the audience are our own constructions.


 
And the stage.


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## TruXta (Jul 14, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> The point about the Cartesian theatre, imo, that is often missed is that both the play and the audience are our own constructions. I think sometimes theorists about consciousness underplay the importance of the actual lived experience that being conscious is and the phenomena of that experience.


 
And right there you step right into Ryle's regress. You're taking the classic cognitivist stance that thought precedes action. I'm saying that not only can thought stem from action, but thoughts are actions taking place in the only reality there is. Thoughts are material actions taking place in a single commonly knowable world.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

Thoughts are actions. Sure. I agree with that. Consciousness doesn't require thoughts, though. Thoughts appear in consciousness, or at least representations of thoughts appear in consciousness, just like all the other phenomena there.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

8ball said:


> And the stage.


Yes, and the stage. The whole damn theatre and everything in it.


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## TruXta (Jul 14, 2012)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Thoughts are actions. Sure. I agree with that. Consciousness doesn't require thoughts, though. Thoughts appear in consciousness, or at least representations of thoughts appear in consciousness, just like all the other phenomena there.


 
See, I think this is a category error, pure and simple. Consciousness too is an action, a process, not a static entity. We sleep, we dream, we hallucinate, we become psychotic, entranced, what have you. These are all materially grounded events. It's not one unchanging thing called consciousness to which other things happen. Thoughts and the event of being conscious are on the same causal, epistemological and ontological level. Which isn't to say that there aren't varieties of consciousness or that it can't vary in strength and complexity. Like all matter, consciousness has phases - more or less solid, more or less durable and ordered, more or less at rest.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

TruXta said:


> These are all materially grounded events.


I agree. And finding out how the materially grounded event of consciousness occurs requires you, imo, to first understand what consciousness is and what it is _for_, and, crucially, what it is not and what it is not for. Consciousness of a thought is not thought. It is a model of 'thought'. Same goes for everything that appears in consciousness, including the subject of consciousness, the observer, itself. It is a story we tell, if you like, the first layer of memory. And that is what consciousness is _for_ - no consciousness, no story.


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## TruXta (Jul 14, 2012)

I think if you replace "consciousness" with "metacognition" in your post there, lbj, that's all you need conceptually to start a reasoned inquiry into how consciousness works. As I see it what you are on about is our ability to think about thoughts, to be reflective, to recursively and purposively model  states of affairs in our minds. That's a neat trick for sure, but it's just one among many neat tricks that evolution has produced. No need to accord it some kind of exalted metaphysical status and have the universe literally revolve around it.


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## TruXta (Jul 14, 2012)

Anyway I'm off to the pub. Take that, consciousness!


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 14, 2012)

TruXta said:


> I think if you replace "consciousness" with "metacognition" in your post there, lbj, that's all you need conceptually to start a reasoned inquiry into how consciousness works. .


That sounds similar to the 'global workspace' conception of consciousness. I think this is wrong, and that it will be proved to be wrong empirically in the years to come. I think it is already being proved to be wrong by what we are finding out. Consciousness is something far more concrete than that, imo.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a theory that conscious representation first evolved in order to give animals with eyes a useful image of themselves in the world that they could use to make sense of their vision - to produce a stable image requires the modelling of that which is seeing and compensating for its movement. This gives a jumping-off point for the development of consciousness as a concrete, discrete mental process.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 15, 2012)

TruXta said:


> I think if you replace "consciousness" with "metacognition" in your post there, lbj, that's all you need conceptually to start a reasoned inquiry into how consciousness works. As I see it what you are on about is our ability to think about thoughts, to be reflective, to recursively and purposively model states of affairs in our minds. That's a neat trick for sure, but it's just one among many neat tricks that evolution has produced. No need to accord it some kind of exalted metaphysical status and have the universe literally revolve around it.


 
There is no feel to consciousness, since it doesnt involve interacting with the environment (what Zizek calls the Real). All feelings come from interacting with the Real. Of course, if one is focussing one's attention on a particular interaction, one is conscious of the feel (the redness, say or the melody), but that doesn't have to be the case-my mind often is thinking about philosophy rather than, say the driving that I am doing. Not good! Of course, Zizek would say that my "self", the one who becomes conscious of the feel, is a socially constructed fiction, and therefore that one can change that self "at will" through an act-broadly, if one is prepared to live with the adverse reactions of society. But that would be bringing this thread back to philosophy, and I think there are only scientists left.


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## TruXta (Jul 15, 2012)

There's plenty of philosophy in this thread, just not of the kind you like.


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## Knotted (Jul 15, 2012)

If we're talking about philosophy of mind, I wouldn't be name checking Zizek or any continental philosopher. I think of continental philosophy as panoramic and soft-focus. Not suitable for any load bearing work.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 15, 2012)

TruXta said:


> There's plenty of philosophy in this thread, just not of the kind you like.


I like the philosophy of mind engendered by the likes of DD, its just that this is a thread about Z! Very happy to contribute to a thread about DD if there is one?


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 15, 2012)

Knotted said:


> If we're talking about philosophy of mind, I wouldn't be name checking Zizek or any continental philosopher. I think of continental philosophy as panoramic and soft-focus. Not suitable for any load bearing work.


 
So if Iain McGilchrist is right in Master and his Emissary, one hemisphere (the right) isn't suitable for load bearing work, whereas in your view the left is? I prefer to see science as plumbing, rather than foundations.


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## articul8 (Jul 15, 2012)

Mad4ziz said:


> ! Of course, Zizek would say that my "self", the one who becomes conscious of the feel, is a socially constructed fiction, and therefore that one can change that self "at will" through an act-broadly, if one is prepared to live with the adverse reactions of society. But that would be bringing this thread back to philosophy, and I think there are only scientists left.


 
You can't change yourself at will - the self might be a socially constructed fiction but it is a fiction with a real material presence in the world.  It's true that an event might rupture the pattern of real/symbolic/imaginary - but fidelity to the event is not the same as freedom from determination.


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## butchersapron (Jul 15, 2012)

So vote labour until something happens.


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## TruXta (Jul 15, 2012)

That's the rupturing event that sunders your symbolic, butchers. Vote Labour, wake up a different man, FREED FROM THE SHACKLES.


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## articul8 (Jul 16, 2012)

There is virtually no role for political strategy in Zizek - that's one of my main criticisms.


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## revol68 (Jul 16, 2012)

articul8 said:


> There is virtually no role for political strategy in Zizek - that's one of my main criticisms.


 
and yet he is still miles in advancement of you...


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## TruXta (Jul 16, 2012)

revol68 said:


> and yet he is still miles in advancement of you...


 
That's a back-handed compliment if I ever saw one.


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## Mad4ziz (Jul 16, 2012)

articul8 said:


> You can't change yourself at will - the self might be a socially constructed fiction but it is a fiction with a real material presence in the world.  It's true that an event might rupture the pattern of real/symbolic/imaginary - but fidelity to the event is not the same as freedom from determination.



So the sum total of human freedom is staying 1 step ahead of the game until we die? Elbow room only, in DD's terms? Where is the proof of that?


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## Mapped (Sep 14, 2012)

My mate just asked me to get tickets for this film



> The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
> Slavoj Žižek unleashes his voracious intellect on films from The Sound of Music to Full Metal Jacket, in this wilfully provocative documentary essay.


 
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Onli...icle_id=0A7503C2-C369-4CCD-B88E-AFC5052D1D50#

I know little about him bar what I saw on that 'Examined Life' film a couple of years ago (not a big reader ). I'll have to have a trawl though this thread beforehand (or after-hand)


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## Left (Sep 15, 2012)

Can't be arsed to read through this thread, but I'd just like to say that anyone whose main philosophical influences are Hegel, Marx and Lacan is indeed a nob.


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## articul8 (Sep 16, 2012)

Left said:


> Can't be arsed to read through this thread, but I'd just like to say that anyone whose main philosophical influences are Hegel, Marx and Lacan is indeed a nob.


wtf?


----------



## Riklet (Sep 16, 2012)

Left said:


> Can't be arsed to read through this thread, but I'd just like to say that anyone whose main philosophical influences are Hegel, Marx and Lacan is indeed a nob.


 
yay go Nihilism, the never ending exhausting struggle against urgggg.


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## love detective (Sep 21, 2012)

The thinker of choice for Europe's young intellectual vanguard.


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## butchersapron (Sep 21, 2012)

Only £15


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## goldenecitrone (Sep 22, 2012)

Zizek is to philosophy what Terry Nutkins was to evolutionary theory.


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## butchersapron (Sep 22, 2012)

Ufo maid. I do like your little sallies into this forum.


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## Left (Sep 24, 2012)

at his ironic Stalinism.


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## revol68 (Sep 27, 2012)

Left said:


> at his ironic Stalinism.


 
Another clown who hasn't read him.


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## phildwyer (Sep 28, 2012)

articul8 said:


> There is virtually no role for political strategy in Zizek - that's one of my main criticisms.


 
There is little role for political strategy in Marx either.


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## articul8 (Sep 28, 2012)

That is true, but more excusable


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## butchersapron (Sep 28, 2012)

articul8 said:


> That is true, but more excusable


Read him now then? Excellent.


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## articul8 (Sep 28, 2012)

I haven't read the whole MEGA - should I say three hail mary's?


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## Johnny Canuck3 (Oct 9, 2012)

Just heard this guy on CBC radio. He was articulate, with well-developed ideas. He has a new book, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, which I look forward to reading.


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## sunnysidedown (Oct 9, 2012)

Excerpt here:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/08/capitalism

_The main victim of the ongoing crisis is thus not capitalism, which appears to be evolving into an even more pervasive and pernicious form, but democracy -- not to mention the left, whose inability to offer a viable global alternative has again been rendered visible to all. It was the left that was effectively caught with its pants down. It is almost as if this crisis were staged to demonstrate that the only solution to a failure of capitalism is more capitalism._


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## dilberto (Oct 11, 2012)

Capitalism is like evolution, sometimes it reaches a dead end but it does not stop.


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## Left (Nov 16, 2012)

From his recent Guardian article: 




			
				Zizek said:
			
		

> In Europe, the ground floor of a building is counted as zero, so the floor above it is the first floor, while in the US, the first floor is on street level. This trivial difference indicates a profound ideological gap: Europeans are aware that, before counting starts – before decisions or choices are made – there has to be a ground of tradition, a zero level that is always already given and, as such, cannot be counted. While the US, a land with no proper historical tradition, presumes that one can begin directly with self-legislated freedom – the past is erased. What the US has to learn to take into account is the foundation of the "freedom to choose".


 
ffs

This kind of thing is why no one takes philosophy seriously.


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## Mapped (Nov 16, 2012)

Saw that film at the LFF. I liked some of the examples and there were soe funny bits. But it was 3hrs of listening to him wittering on on-screen, and that was a bit much. We left before the Q&A. My wife hated it, she called it 'Macdonalds philosphy'


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## butchersapron (Nov 16, 2012)

Left said:


> From his recent Guardian article:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Can you give us some examples of stuff that _would_ make people 'take philosophy seriously' and make a case as to why they _should _take philosophy seriously?


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## Left (Nov 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Can you give us some examples of stuff that _would_ make people 'take philosophy seriously' and make a case as to why they _should _take philosophy seriously?


 
I'm not a philosopher, but if I were I would mention the scientific method and set theory as two of philosophy's greatest achievements.

As far as contemporary philosophy goes, I can't answer your question.


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## butchersapron (Nov 16, 2012)

I didn't quite ask for philosophy's greatest achievements though - i asked for the sort of 'thing' that would make people take philosophy seriously.

I didn't ask about contemporary philosophy either. I asked for an argument why people should take philosophy seriously.


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## Left (Nov 16, 2012)

I don't really understand what you're getting at. I didn't say people should take philosophy seriously, I just gave an example of why many people don't.

However, given that every academic discipline has its roots in philosophy, it seems silly to dismiss it as a whole.


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## 8ball (Nov 16, 2012)

A certain degree of competence in logic and metaphysics is useful if you want to get to the other side of the street in one piece.


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## butchersapron (Nov 16, 2012)

Left said:


> I don't really understand what you're getting at. I didn't say people should take philosophy seriously, I just gave an example of why many people don't.
> 
> However, given that every academic discipline has its roots in philosophy, it seems silly to dismiss it as a whole.


Ok, why and how is that  an example of why many people don't take philosophy seriously?

They don't, but why would that be a good reason not to dismiss philosophy entire?


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## 8ball (Nov 16, 2012)

Many people don't take anything seriously bar their immediate physical needs, football, shopping and celebrity reality television programmes.

Doesn't render everything else in the world redundant.


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## Ibn Khaldoun (Nov 18, 2012)

I had written a long post about Zizek, with some references, but lost it after hitting send |:< then my attention was drawn to other topics in the thread. . .

IMO, there is no consciousness prior to the perception/use of symbols. So, closely connected with 'language', yes?

And philosophy is essential as a mode of reflection, at a certain distance from a world of fragmented disciplines whilst being relevant to many of them. Social theory stems from political philosophy, for example, and then there's immanence in physics etc.. Makes things a little bit interesting anyway.


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## Hocus Eye. (Nov 18, 2012)

Left said:


> From his recent Guardian article:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That extract from Zizek's article makes perfect sense within the context of the rest of the piece on Obama and the problems he had in getting a compromise deal for some basic healthcare. Taken out of context it loses its meaning. The whole article is itself set in the larger context of the serious problems of capitalism and the our understanding of it. That is a perfectly reasonable subject for philosophy, the study of ideas.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/13/obama-ground-floor-thinking


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## phildwyer (Nov 22, 2012)

Hocus Eye. said:


> philosophy, the study of ideas.


 
The love of wisdom, not ¨the study of ideas.¨  A rather different thang.


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## Hocus Eye. (Nov 22, 2012)

You old Romantic you.


----------



## Jeff Robinson (Jun 26, 2013)

Chomsky slams Zizek and Lacan:


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## articul8 (Jun 26, 2013)

playfulness, theatricality, pleasure in the absurd - all missing in old man Chomsky.


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## butchersapron (Jun 26, 2013)

Do you know why he's old?


----------



## Dillinger4 (Jun 26, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> Do you know why he's old?


 

he has been aged by the weight of his knowledge.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 26, 2013)

Jeff Robinson said:


> Chomsky slams Zizek and Lacan:





Interviewer not quite able to think on his feet - he'd already covered the second question in his answer to the first.

I think quite a lot of people take Zizek seriously in an attempt not to look stupid, but then when challenged to say what they get from Zizek, they are suddenly confronted by the opposite problem. The interviewer dodged Chomsky's own question in that regard.


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## Knotted (Jun 26, 2013)

articul8 said:


> playfulness, theatricality, pleasure in the absurd - all missing in old man Chomsky.


 

Present in Tim Vine though.


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## audiotech (Jun 26, 2013)

Zizek understands perfectly well and puts across clearly that it's a crisis of captalism and those who think to make it any "purer", as some were arguing in the Communist bloc about the Communist system back in his youthful days will not solve the crisis this way. It's the logic of the system that's the problem. Furthermore, he's honest and pessimistic and sees no way out, but notes that 'capitalism has "enormous elasticity" to push its way through a crisis'. His conclusion? 'To see what happens, but neither the market, nor the state will bring a solution. Humanity will have to Invent a new way of living. with "solidarity and discipline"'. He also rightly attacks the moralistic answers to complex issues that the "left" put forward, nevertheless 'it's only the radical left that can provide a "good theory" to what went wrong with Communism'. "The left will have to begin from the beginning" and that is the "problem" he argues. In comparison, I'm not clear on what Chomsky says about what to do now and in the future?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 26, 2013)

audiotech said:


> Humanity will have to Invent a new way of living. with "solidarity and discipline"'.


Sounds as empty and vacuous as Che Guevara's 'New Man'.

Problem with 'let's see what happens' is that we are not outsiders to the process. We are within it. By adopting an attitude of wait and see, you are affecting the outcome.


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## audiotech (Jun 26, 2013)

In Brazil in April of this year on the 'limits and contradictions of capitalism and the renewal of communism'. He opens with criticisms of Chavez, Chomsky's friend, and notes that Chavez died on the very day that Stalin died:


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## butchersapron (Jun 26, 2013)

audiotech said:


> In Brazil in April of this year on the 'limits and contradictions of capitalism and the renewal of communism'. He opens with criticisms of Chavez, Chomsky's friend, and notes that Chavez died on the very day that Stalin died:



Chavez's friend? You might want to check that.


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## audiotech (Jun 26, 2013)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Sounds as empty and vacuous as Che Guevara's 'New Man'.
> 
> Problem with 'let's see what happens' is that we are not outsiders to the process. We are within it. By adopting an attitude of wait and see, you are affecting the outcome.


 

On the contrary, Zizek recognizes that class struggle continues and today also the large demonstrations taking place world-wide, but 'no organised movement exists', nevertheless, he argues for spaces now to act and to, as stated, for the radical left ("problematic" admittedly) to have a discourse on what went wrong with Communism and to begin from the beginning. To organise at a local level for the widest possible participation of local people and communities, to discuss things, organise themselves etc. Warns against being "pushed towards violence", which he see's as a "sign of impotence".

Edit: Neolibralism is "not homogeneous", nor omnipotent and you do not have to "obey". Again, 'spaces exist within the present global system, so think and do something.'


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## audiotech (Jun 26, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> Chavez's friend? You might want to check that.


 

I did take that as stated, if that's Zizek "posturing" then I'll accept this.


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## Frumious B. (Jun 27, 2013)

He's overrated. He doesn't care for blowjobs or bumsex. The same shortcoming of that other great thinker the Dalai Lama. As he said to the Telegraph, "one hole, not three".


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## articul8 (Jun 27, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> Do you know why he's old?


 Is this a gag set up?  No, tell me, why is he old....?


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## butchersapron (Jun 27, 2013)

Because he was born in 1928.


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## Pickman's model (Jun 27, 2013)

audiotech said:


> In Brazil in April of this year on the 'limits and contradictions of capitalism and the renewal of communism'. He opens with criticisms of Chavez, Chomsky's friend, and notes that Chavez died on the very day that Stalin died:



not wanting to piss on your parade but stalin died in 1953 and chavez didn't.


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## audiotech (Jun 27, 2013)

Well shiver me timbers, same day and month as, Ioseb Besarionis je J̌uḡašvili, different year. a number 3 in both years.


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## xslavearcx (Jun 27, 2013)

so has a consensus as to the question of whether zizek is a nob emerged yet?


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## Jeff Robinson (Jun 27, 2013)

xslavearcx said:


> so has a consensus as to the question of whether zizek is a nob emerged yet?


 
I think Chomksy had him nailed.


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## xslavearcx (Jun 27, 2013)

littlebabyjesus said:


> 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.


 
Just out of interest LBJ, why Kant first, rather than say Locke or Hume?


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## CharlieChaplin (Jun 27, 2013)

I watched a BBC programme about the French revolution and he was basically supporting Robespierre and justifying the death of so many people. I think he is a bit of a tit also.


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## Hocus Eye. (Jun 27, 2013)

CharlieChaplin said:


> I watched a BBC programme about the French revolution and he was basically supporting Robespierre and justifying the death of so many people. I think he is a bit of a tit also.


So I take it you support the Aristos and the old guard?


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## Fruitloop (Jun 27, 2013)

I thought he was ace in that.


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## CharlieChaplin (Jun 27, 2013)

Hocus Eye. said:


> So I take it your support the Aristos and the old guard?


 

No, but the bloodshed is not excusable.


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## audiotech (Jun 27, 2013)

"Rivers of blood" especially.


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## butchersapron (Jun 27, 2013)

CharlieChaplin said:


> No, but the bloodshed is not excusable.


 
That must be why you're joining the army then. You realise pro-revolutionists killed 20 000 tops (and for proper crimes), and the royalists killed around 100 000 civilians in revenge? (Their successors killed 30 000 in a single week in 1871. Who do you a) condemn? b) Know about? Are taught about?


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## audiotech (Jun 27, 2013)

The British Army?


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## Knotted (Jun 27, 2013)

I tried the Niels Bohr "it works even if you don't believe it" gag at work yesterday. They were having an argument about whether jade brings you luck. I said I didn't believe it did but added it works even if you don't believe it. "See it works even if you don't believe it!" was the reply I got. Whoosh. Woman in question isn't stupid either (just a bit superstitious). I'm not sure if Bohr's joke really is the cutting edge of social criticism.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jun 27, 2013)

xslavearcx said:


> Just out of interest LBJ, why Kant first, rather than say Locke or Hume?


Kant saw clearly what philosophy is, and importantly what it isn't. He prefigures Wittgenstein's Tractatus in this, I think. Critique of Pure Reason, VII:



> Such a science must not be called a doctrine, but only a
> critique of pure reason; and its use, in regard to speculation, would be
> only negative, not to enlarge the bounds of, but to purify, our reason,
> and to shield it against error--which alone is no little gain.


 
He sees what he is doing as science. It can be nothing else. He goes on:



> This investigation, which we cannot properly call a doctrine, but only a
> transcendental critique, because it aims not at the enlargement, but
> at the correction and guidance, of our knowledge, and is to serve as a
> touchstone of the worth or worthlessness of all knowledge a priori, is
> the sole object of our present essay.


 
This bit - 'which we cannot properly call a doctrine' - is the key point. There are no doctrines to be found in philosophy. Wittgenstein saw this, too - If you understand what I write, said Wittgenstein, you understand how little it says. (I paraphrase him here).

My knowledge of the history of philosophy is patchy, but Kant is the first I know of to express this so explicitly. Kant defines what philosophy is and what it can be. He shows all the ways in which the likes of Plato with their doctrines were wrong. And I can't see how anyone can do philosophy after Kant without acknowledging what Kant shows.


ETA: With Kant, I'm only really referring to his Critique of Pure Reason, btw. I've read other bits by him, but find his ethics and political writings to be pretty worthless, as I do most moral philosophy, tbh. Philosophy is mostly an examination of the bleeding obvious, but some bleeding obvious things are simply not that interesting or puzzling to warrant examination.

What I object to most about the likes of Zizek and other continental philosophers is that they take the obvious and instead of simplifying it and clarifying it, they complicate it and obscure it. At its best, continental philosophy is 5 percent poetry and 95 percent bullshit. But that bullshit can be damaging, I suggest, when it is mistaken for obscure, hard-to-grasp wisdom. I think a lot of people are put off by analytical philosophy because of its lack of poetry, which is fair enough, but there's no need to turn towards the obscurantists. Why not just stick to poets?


----------



## audiotech (Jun 27, 2013)

Knotted said:


> I tried the Niels Bohr "it works even if you don't believe it" gag at work yesterday. They were having an argument about whether jade brings you luck. I said I didn't believe it did but added it works even if you don't believe it. "See it works even if you don't believe it!" was the reply I got. Whoosh. Woman in question isn't stupid either (just a bit superstitious). I'm not sure if Bohr's joke really is the cutting edge of social criticism.


 

But confirms in a small way the "spiritual hedonism" that is developing at a rate.


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## yield (Jun 27, 2013)

What is "spiritual hedonism" audiotech? To be frank I prefer Zizek to Chomsky. He makes me laugh and makes me think even when he is wrong.

What are we to think of Foucaults relationship with Islam or Heideggers with Nazism except for laughter? It's funny.

"What is to be done?" in In Defense of Lost Causes is worth serious thought but yeah let's ignore it because he's a buffoon?

Zizek takes the scatter gun appraoch to philosophy. Sort the wheat from the chaff it's worth it.


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## audiotech (Jun 28, 2013)

Chanting mainly, with candles and incense and warm baths with salts, that if you don't give time to dissolve graze your arse. All that 60's crap about cult leaders, mysticism and the like. Ended up with the 'Manson family'.


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## yield (Jun 28, 2013)

audiotech said:


> Chanting mainly, with candles and incense and warm baths with salts, that if you don't give time to dissolve graze your arse.


Sounds like hippies audiotech. Is that what Zizek is encouraging?


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## audiotech (Jun 28, 2013)

Discouraging. To use his words: "No bullshit".


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

yield said:


> What is "spiritual hedonism" audiotech? To be frank I prefer Zizek to Chomsky. He makes me laugh and makes me think even when he is wrong.
> 
> What are we to think of Foucaults relationship with Islam or Heideggers with Nazism except for laughter? It's funny.
> 
> ...


 
Foucault's thing for the islamists just showed him up as a bit of a twat - whereas Heidegger had people forced from their jobs and into labour camps. Not laugh out loud funny if you ask me.


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2013)

Did he?


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

Well he forced people out of their jobs for being Jewish.  I wasn't accusing him of directly forcing them into the chambers, but indirectly I his actions contributed


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2013)

articul8 said:


> Well he forced people out of their jobs for being Jewish. I wasn't accusing him of directly forcing them into the chambers, but indirectly I his actions contributed


 



> whereas Heidegger had people forced from their jobs and into labour camps


 
Jesus christ.


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

having been stripped of your job for being a Jew would make you a more likely candidate for the labour camps, no?


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2013)

_ whereas Heidegger had people forced from their jobs and into labour camps_


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## frogwoman (Jul 1, 2013)

I didn't know he had forced people out of their jobs for being Jewish. I thought he was just a water-carrier for them. That's bad enough mind.


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

He was installed as a university rector and oversaw the early attempts to force Jewish profs out of their jobs in the earliest days of the regime (he quit after about a year, but stayed a member of the Nazi party until Hitler's fall).


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2013)

_whereas Heidegger had people forced from their jobs and into labour camps_


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## frogwoman (Jul 1, 2013)

oh ok so involved at a very early stage and basically just an ideological water-carrier. so a total cunt but not very involved in the whole state apparatus then?


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

Not in state apparatus no - but entirely aware of, and prepared to take responsibility for, early de-judification of workforce.


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## Santino (Jul 1, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> oh ok so involved at a very early stage and basically just an ideological water-carrier. so a total cunt but not very involved in the whole state apparatus then?


More or less. It's very murky though, and there is a whole cottage industry in researching Heidegger's involvement with the Nazis.


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2013)

articul8 said:


> Not in state apparatus no - but entirely aware of, and prepared to take responsibility for, early de-judification of workforce.


 
So _whereas Heidegger had people forced from their jobs and into labour camps?_


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> oh ok so involved at a very early stage and basically just an ideological water-carrier. so a total cunt but not very involved in the whole state apparatus then?


 
Have a read of this. (pdf warning)


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## cesare (Jul 1, 2013)

No-one's disputing that Heidegger was further entrenched in nazi ideology than Foucault was with the Iranian Revolution though?


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

gave a misleading impression, I grant you.  But the first claim is accurate, and the net effect of dejudification was to make people vulnerable later down the line unless they could flee Nazi rule.


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## Santino (Jul 1, 2013)

cesare said:


> No-one's disputing that Heidegger was further entrenched in nazi ideology than Foucault was with the Iranian Revolution though?


It's difficult to say with Heidegger. Certainly he talked the talk for a while, but he did drop out of active participation very quickly.


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## cesare (Jul 1, 2013)

Santino said:


> It's difficult to say with Heidegger. Certainly he talked the talk for a while, but he did drop out of active participation very quickly.


Ah, ok, cheers. I'll take a read of the PDF that Butchers linked to as well (although 325 pages, eek).


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

Santino said:


> It's difficult to say with Heidegger. Certainly he talked the talk for a while, but he did drop out of active participation very quickly.


 But didn't surrender his party card


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## Pickman's model (Jul 1, 2013)

articul8 said:


> But didn't surrender his party card


you've not surrendered yours, i note.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 1, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> you've not surrendered yours, i note.


Something for which he gets a good deal of grief.


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## Santino (Jul 1, 2013)

articul8 said:


> But didn't surrender his party card


As I said, it's very murky.


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

articul8 said:


> But didn't surrender his party card


 social fascist?


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2013)

> articul8 said:
> 
> 
> > But didn't surrender his party card
> ...


 
Look at his vacillation everyone.


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

what vacillation?


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## butchersapron (Jul 1, 2013)

Are you going to have to be spoon fed all week? And sort your tag-line out, it's a disgrace.


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## articul8 (Jul 1, 2013)

still no idea what you're talking about.  And why is my tagline a disgrace?


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## audiotech (Jul 17, 2013)

Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chomsky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empirically Wrong’


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## butchersapron (Jul 17, 2013)

Great, he's now using cold-war tropes to undermine opponents. That's it? The Khmer Rouge?


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## audiotech (Jul 17, 2013)

You've read it, ask him.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jul 17, 2013)

Seems a bit odd to use an eg from 1976. If I were arguing that someone was wrong all the time, I'd pick the most recent eg I could think of. I'd also give more than one eg ideally to show the 'all the time bit'. 

Reads to me like he's only got that one eg.


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## butchersapron (Jul 17, 2013)

audiotech said:


> You've read it, ask him.


 
What a really odd thing to say.


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## Pickman's model (Jul 17, 2013)

articul8 said:


> still no idea what you're talking about. And why is my tagline a disgrace?


it's not just your tagline that's a disgrace


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## audiotech (Jul 18, 2013)

Selective bull-shit.


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## butchersapron (Jul 18, 2013)

audiotech said:


> Selective bull-shit.


 
Thanks for saving us the time.


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## xslavearcx (Jul 18, 2013)

interesting that the way he talks there is pretty straightforward reasoned way (despite maybe how crap said reasoning was as pointed out above) and not like the way he writes which is mainly what i think chomsky was attacking - its almost like hes confirmed pretty much what chomksy has said by virtue of him being able to explain his ideas in a pretty straightforward manner..


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## articul8 (Jul 18, 2013)

Zizek hits back


> _What is that about, again, the academy and Chomsky and so on? Well with all deep respect that I do have for Chomsky, my first point is that Chomsky, who always emphasizes how one has to be empirical, accurate, not just some crazy Lacanian speculations and so on… well I don’t think I know a guy who was so often empirically wrong in his descriptions in his whatever! Let’s look… I remember when he defended this demonstration of Khmer Rouge. And he wrote a couple of texts claiming: No, this is Western propaganda. Khmer Rouge are not as horrible as that.” And when later he was compelled to admit that Khmer Rouge were not the nicest guys in the Universe and so on, his defense was quite shocking for me. It was that “No, with the data that we had at that point, I was right. At that point we didn’t yet know enough, so… you know.” But I totally reject this line of reasoning._​_For example, concerning Stalinism. The point is not that you have to know, you have photo evidence of gulag or whatever. My God you just have to listen to the public discourse of Stalinism, of Khmer Rouge, to get it that something terrifyingly pathological is going on there. For example, Khmer Rouge: Even if we have no data about their prisons and so on, isn’t it in a perverse way almost fascinating to have a regime which in the first two years (’75 to ’77) behaved towards itself, treated itself, as illegal? You know the regime was nameless. It was called “Angka,” an organization — not communist party of Cambodia — an organization. Leaders were nameless. If you ask “Who is my leader?” your head was chopped off immediately and so on._​_Okay, next point about Chomsky, you know the consequence of this attitude of his empirical and so on — and that’s my basic difference with him — and precisely Corey Robinson and some other people talking with him recently confirmed this to me. His idea is today that cynicism of those in power is so open that we don’t need any critique of ideology, you reach symptomatically between the lines, everything is cynically openly admitted. We just have to bring out the facts of people. Like “This company is profiting in Iraq” and so on and so on. Here I violently disagree._​_First, more than ever today, our daily life is ideology. how can you doubt ideology when recntly I think Paul Krugman published a relatively good text where he demonstrated how this idea of austerity, this is not even good bourgeois economic theory! It’s a kind of a primordial, common-sense magical thinking when you confront a crisis, “Oh, we must have done something wrong, we spent too much so let’s economize and so on and so on.”_​_My second point, cynicists are those who are most prone to fall into illusions. Cynicists are not people who see things the way they really are and so on. Think about 2008 and the ongoing financial crisis. It was not cooked up in some crazy welfare state; social democrats who are spending too much. The crisis exploded because of activity of those other cynicists who precisely thought “screw human rights, screw dignity, all that maters is,” and so on and so on._​_So as this “problem” of are we studying the facts enough I claim emphatically more than ever “no” today. And as to popularity, I get a little bit annoyed with this idea that we with our deep sophisms are really hegemonic in the humanities. Are people crazy? I mean we are always marginal. No, what is for me real academic hegemony: it’s brutal. Who can get academic posts? Who can get grants, foundations and so on? We are totally marginalized here. I mean look at my position: “Oh yeah, you are a mega-star in United States.” Well, I would like to be because I would like power to brutally use it! But I am far from that. I react so like this because a couple of days ago I got a letter from a friend in United States for whom I wrote a letter of recommendation, and he told me “I didn’t get the job, not in spite of your letter but because of your letter!” He had a spy in the committee and this spy told him “You almost got it, but then somebody says “Oh, if Žižek recommends him it must be something terribly wrong with him.”_​_So I claim that all these “how popular we are” is really a mask of… remember the large majority of academia are these gray either cognitivists or historians blah blah… and you don’t see them but they are the power. They are the power. On the other hand, why are they in power worried? Because you know… don’t exaggerate this leftist paranoia idea that ”we can all be recuperated” and so on and so on. No! I still quite naively believe in the efficiency of theoretical thinking. It’s not as simple as to recuperate everything in. But you know there are different strategies of how to contain us. I must say that I maybe am not innocent in this, because people like to say about me, “Oh, go and listen to him, he is an amusing clown blah blah blah.” This is another way to say “Don’t take it seriously.”_​


​_http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/slavoj-zizek-responds-to-noam-chomsky.html_​


----------



## xslavearcx (Jul 18, 2013)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Seems a bit odd to use an eg from 1976. If I were arguing that someone was wrong all the time, I'd pick the most recent eg I could think of. I'd also give more than one eg ideally to show the 'all the time bit'.
> 
> Reads to me like he's only got that one eg.


 
and all zizek is doing is proving chomksys point really, that theorising is only really worthwhile when it can be put into propositions that can have a verifiable truth value established. In this case Chomksy put foward a proposition that had truth value of false.

Its really hard to see what Zizek is saying here, beyond saying that a critique of ideology is neccesary. Fair enough, but does it have to be done so in referentially opaque language, and if so why? Zizek in the above does not appear to answer that question which basiclly means he has not addressed Chomskys contention in the slightest where he (chomsky)stated:

_not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that when the fancy words are decoded. I can’t._

http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/slavoj-zizek-responds-to-noam-chomsky.html

Also, where did Chomsky say that a critique of ideology wasn't neccesary? I cant see that anywhere in the youtube video. Seems a bit strawmannish of our friend Zizek..


----------



## TruXta (Jul 18, 2013)

As a response to Chomsky it's 100% bullshit (bar the Khmer Rouge thing). As anything else, it's pretty trivial.


----------



## Santino (Jul 18, 2013)

Chomsky's problem is that he isn't wrong enough.


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## articul8 (Jul 18, 2013)

Can Chomsky explain relativity or chaos theory in 5 mins to a twelve year old?


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 18, 2013)

articul8 said:


> Can Chomsky explain relativity or chaos theory in 5 mins to a twelve year old?


Why not? One of the clearest books i've ever read is einstein's relativity. 

Relativity is tricky. Chaos theory isn't though. Chaos theory is disarmingly simple


----------



## butchersapron (Jul 18, 2013)

articul8 said:


> Can Chomsky explain relativity or chaos theory in 5 mins to a twelve year old?


 
Can he make it sound like he can?


----------



## sihhi (Jul 18, 2013)

Why on earth would he want to do that?

What kind of twelve year old asks a greying elderly linguist grandparent?


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jul 19, 2013)

I reckon I could explain chaos theory to a 12 year old in five minutes.

Restricting relativity to special relativity, I'd give it a go. What I'd be doing is repeating Einstein's explanation using a person on a train and a person on the railtrack. Some might get it, others not. But it's definitely worth a shot.


tbh I hate the underlying assumption here. Richard Feynman wrote an excellent book about quantum mechanics, which explains things in a way that is accessible to everyone. With short words, short sentences. It takes longer than 5 minutes, but he goes step by step and there is no difficult step in there.

The more complex the ideas, the simpler the language you should be using to explain them.


----------



## DotCommunist (Jul 19, 2013)

zizeck looks like a cock there for mocking chomsky's oft use of the phrase 'and so on'


----------



## articul8 (Jul 19, 2013)

No zizek uses that all the time too not just here


----------



## DotCommunist (Jul 19, 2013)

oh ok, maybe they both share that verbal tic- I thought he was being snide


----------



## seventh bullet (Jul 19, 2013)

Where did the philosopher get his knowledge of the KR from, Wikipedia?


----------



## CNT36 (Jul 21, 2013)

http://www.zcommunications.org/fantasies-by-noam-chomsky
A response to Zizek's response.


----------



## butchersapron (Jul 22, 2013)

From that:



> For example, in the Winter 2008 issue of the German cultural journal Lettre International,_* Žižek attributed to me a racist comment on Obama by Silvio Berlusconi.*_ I ignored it. Anyone who strays from ideological orthodoxy is used to this kind of treatment. However, an editor of Harper’s magazine, Sam Stark, was interested and followed it up. In the January 2009 issue he reports the result of his investigation. Žižek said he was basing the attribution on something he had read in a Slovenian magazine. A marvelous source, if it even exists. And anyway, he continued, attributing to me a racist comment about Obama is not a criticism, because I should have made such remarks as “a fully admissible characterization in our political and ideological struggle.” I leave it others to decode. When asked about this by Slovene journalist/activist Igor Vidman, Žižek answered that he had discussed it with me over the phone and I had agreed with him: http://www.vest.si/2009/01/31/zizkov-kulturni-boj/. Of course, sheer fantasy.


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## audiotech (Jul 22, 2013)

As for the link in the quoted piece:
*Oops! Google Chrome could not find www.vest.si*
...and a partial comment from that:


> God knows, I've fought my way through enough theory texts for a lifetime...but Zizek is just absurd. You could have a better conversation with a tomato plant than with a guy ike that is my guess,..


All becoming bonkers overall.


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## killer b (Dec 11, 2018)

I came across this wonderful thing this morning, and it brought a little sunshine into my life: in 2003, Zizek wrote some ludicrous text for an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. Some highlights in the page linked to below, but do have a look through the full catalogue, which is hilarious from beginning to end. 

| That Time Zizek Wrote for Abercrombie & FitchCritical-Theory.com


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## petee (Aug 6, 2022)




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## LDC (Aug 6, 2022)

Watched 'The Pervert's Guide to Ideology' recently, it made a long train journey in Europe both seem longer and more surreal.


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## Idris2002 (Aug 6, 2022)

Idris2002 said:


> AFAIK the only ethnographic research done on the Piraha has been by a linguist who started out as an Evangelical Christian missionary, before going through a crisis of faith and losing his faith. Like his claim that the Piraha lack the linguistic features that Chomsky considers universal and panhuman, his points about their alleged lack of a "sense of the divine" are intriguing and important, but badly need to be confirmed by another researcher. It may well be that he's right, but it might also be that his particular relationship to religion, coming from his crisis of faith, lead him to misinterpret Piraha culture.


I heard last year that this particular linguist pissed off so many people in Brazil, including indigenous people, that he's banned from working in indigenous areas in Brazil.


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## NoXion (Aug 6, 2022)

petee said:


>


I mean, depending on who he's referring to and why, I could agree with him.


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## petee (Aug 6, 2022)

NoXion said:


> I mean, depending on who he's referring to



yourself?


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## NoXion (Aug 6, 2022)

petee said:


> yourself?


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## Karl Masks (Aug 19, 2022)

At the risk of sound like a massive thundercunt, I find the creepy transphobic lispy twat an utter cunt


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## chilango (Aug 19, 2022)

Transphobic?


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## iamwithnail (Aug 19, 2022)

I went to a talk he gave a few years ago at UCL and there were definitely a few transphobic remarks, need to see if I can find a transcript somewhere.


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## 8ball (Aug 19, 2022)

Something something malleability of identity fitting in perfectly with the ideology of capitalism?


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