zizek
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Added: 5 years ago
From: relajalafaja
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  • He's so adorably negative.

  • @zerkocelot well said.

  • @Israe5l thanks

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  • A person can have an optimistic understanding of the world or pessimistic one, but all creature exist in the present. Therefore all creature have sense and action to relate to the world. Sense and action is not polorized. It just exists.

  • What a dumb ass. Why does he not just kill himself and put himself out of his misery.

  • Intelectual95 has ended his account so no use in replying.

  • haha.. what did they even ask him??

  • He's spot on.

  • @28g34ajbsd i disagree.

  • fantastic satirist... one of the best of today's comic voices... hope he plays Ireland.

  • Zizek is quite mad. He used to say some sensible things, now he's just embraced gibberish.

  • Zizek is sounding pretty Gnostic right here.

  • Zizek needs God.

  • @LASALLIONSTALLION to debate with.

  • @1989DaVinci and subsequently win

  • Zizek is so, so highly overrated. Have any of you even read any of his works, let alone comprehended one of them? Do you need your intellectual food handed to you in the form of a whacky slovenian youtube personality before you'll pay any attention?

    I despise this new breed of faggy pseudo-intellectuals the internet is churning out - people who haven't read a book in their lives, yet fancy themselves philosophers. Go and namedrop Zizek to your hipster friends you failures.

  • @Intelectual95

    so do you have any 'intelligent' reasons for generalizing all people listening to him as hipsters? or a reason as to why he is not a good philosopher? do you find nothing stimulating about him?

    what philosophy do you find stimulating?

  • @alliant Even though, I still believe 'intelligence' is not the most important capacity. But I will not argue that here. I will just say, intelligence these days falls back on "efficency". How fast can one do a task with a given resource? Its really about time. And also there is a difference between Reason and intelligence. Reason thinks about the presuppositions. Intelligence, the presuppositions are given.

  • @Intelectual95 Seriously? Your username is "Intelectual" and you're accusing others of being posers? Awesome.

  • @Intelectual95 aha, hes overrated. ok, so name me one philosopher whos a better philosopher in your mind?

  • @Intelectual95 you are full of banal accusations..

  • @Intelectual95 Yeah, I prefer hipsters that just wear skinny jeans and listen to indie rock.... Relax, kind sir. At least they're into something or someone that adds to the academic world. Considering all the philosophers out in the world and how many of them and their books are, a lot of the time, almost foreign to every mind, it's good to have someone that gets through to people, even if it is just a little bit. To go around saying, "HAve you comprehended one of his books?" is a bit arrogant.

  • Have you comprehended one of his books or any philosopher's book in its entirety? Keep in mind, philosophers are not necessarily writers, meaning, it is not as if they are highly skilled in making their thoughts come out coherently. A few of my professors, and you can always say they were just bad professors (I like to think not), would hint at us that anyone going around claiming they have fully understood any thinker or school of thought is being foolish. Knowledge is always in flux.

  • He sounds like hes talking and eating at the same time.

    RRRRRRRRRRRRRR

  • In effect, he is saying that from a position that is too away from the intelligence, you dont get anything about the mean of all this thing

  • "there is nothing, basically"

    YES, i can do what i want now. no real metaphysical justification for myself makes me want to commit suicide though. ah who cares.

  • Well, an intelligent person says all that. But intelligence may not be the most important .

  • @Israe5l it was intelligence that pioneered the computer so you could type the most retarded thing anyone's ever heard

  • @southsydney They made room full of electronics just to do additions. I am not sure that looked all that intelligent.

  • @Israe5l what on earth could be more important than intelligence, it got us from living in caves to skyscrapers for the love of fuck

  • Mind fucked harder then inception.

  • Read Lacan first please

  • I saw "ZIZEK!" earlier this year and found the man interesting, but I forgot his name.. until tonight I remembered it -- fortunately. This guy indeed is amazing :) (Not that I agree with every single thing he thinks and says, though.)

  • Zizek makes sense in this clip, you just have to listen to it over and over and then it hits you. His view of mistake is another word for imperfection. This imperfection is a huge part of creation but it also means that love is a result of this imperfection and self lack. It makes sense to me like that anyways....now I have to try explain it in detail for a paper haha but I get it now. Kinda scary but also eye opening at the same time.

  • this guy was interviewed for a news show a few weeks back. he seemed crazy. he didn't make a single coherent point after ten minutes.

  • @gorgolyt It's the language barrier.. he also repeats a lot of his material from his books (any lecturer will) and lectures.. it takes a bit of concentration to get his points but its worth it (even if you end up disagreeing with him).

  • As mad as a hatter

  • Bullshit

  • Sup Nathan!

  • "things exist by mistake" lol thats awesome

  • i love him too

  • he's crazy

  • Yes, gnostic in the sense that the world wasn't meant to be created. But not that there is some religious reason as to this mistake. Unless Zizek IS actually the demiurge!

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  • Interesting video, but Žižek makes two mistakes here: 1) According to the laws of thermodynamics, the entropy of the universe was very small during the Big Bang and therefore it was far from a "cosmic catastrophe". 2) Not all love is necessarily evil. Human love is limited in the way that Žižek explains, but if there is a God, His love probably doesn't have this limitation.

  • 1) Castatrophe in the sense that is meant here refers to what he says about two seconds earlier, "Something went terribly wrong";

    2) Zizek is asked about his stance towards being, and his view does not include a God.

  • Adunatos, while talking about physics, how would you define the word "wrong" as in "something went terribly wrong"?

  • Hi Dernsten, that's an interesting question in its own right, but Zizek is describing his 'spontaneous attitude towards the universe' and he only refers to quantumphysics as an idea that appeals to him. When he says "something went terribly wrong", he is describing the moment at which the universe sprang into existence. I think the idea is that 'cosmic imbalance' was a sine qua non from the very start. He's trying to categorize the universe as inherently imbalanced, that is to say flawed.

  • Zizek is defining love. You can't say "Zizek's definition is correct but there's an exception". Either his definition is correct or it is incorrect.

  • @Dernsten Lol "there is a God".

  • Love getting high and listen to Žižek :)

  • Hehe. He is against legalization of dope though. ;)

  • against legalizing it, not using it. big difference

  • esta filmacion se hizo en buenos aires. Detras se puede ver la Biblioteca Nacional, obra del arquitecto Clorindo Testa

  • Creation as a disturbance. Interesting point. It sounds gnostic to me in a sense.

  • The grand stroke of Zizek, both in his message, but mainly in effect, has been to shed light on the left from somewhere other than the right. Emerson, read by Nietzsche, prioritized provocation over instruction. To dismiss such a talent as Zizek is almost as bad as agree with everything he says. The only way to improve on Zizek is to take him absolutely seriously. Micheal Moore works there, Chomsky over this way, and Rorty over that way. Now we have Zizek bubbling our blood.

  • What a wonderful comment. I just discovered Zizek today and saw a 30 minute interview with him. I think it is appropriate that he is mentioned in the same breath as Chomsky.

  • Utube comments section: hordes of idiotically self complacent american suburbanites trying to spread their immature wisdom.

  • I think a lot of people dislike Zizek because many of the things that he says are fundamentally contradictory to the way that they live their lives. Horrifying even.

  • The fucking free will is a myth. The universe evolves according to predictable laws........at the macro to the micro levels ........humans are just very tiny parts of the evolving universe......go stick that up your freewilling wishful thinking ass.....

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  • Zizek is greatest living leftist philosopher. Most of the others just repeat the same old crap over and over.

  • Well, I find Zizek pretty repetitive too. He always seems to reiterate all his little quaint anecdotes, as if to entertain more than enlighten.

  • what's the difference

  • Between what? Entertaintment and enlightenment? lol-o are u seriosly asking me that question l;ol

  • Lol He He i guess you don't understand what the point of rhetoric or pontification is. god, i hope you don't start prattling whatever information you have to the poor, bored people that have to listen to it

  • Why do you have to be so rude? My critique of Zizek is perfectly valid. This man does nothing but criticize great thinkers like Rand, people who have contributed much more to humanity than he could ever dream of. He's a quirky soothsayer, nothing more. He won't be remembered by future scholars, because he's just a footnote in the pamphlet of postmodernism, which, let's face it, isn't excactly voluminous.

  • I am very sorry to have accidentally dropped into this conversation, but you are what we call a misreader. And, if you think that post-moderism isn't voluminous, you obviously don't read enough -- and everyone who reads this should consider anything you say to be silly. Not to mention that Zizek is widely considered to be one of the most relevant critics of post-structuralism. Oh, how I loath most of the cafeteria youtube philosophers.

  • Being one of the most "relevant" critics of post-structuralism doesn't add up to much when post-structuralism itself is a hackneyed school, built on sophistry and resentment. That's like having a doctorate in phrenology.

    Zizek himself is a phoney cafeteria philosopher who, like his French predecessors, refuses to qualify his terms or prove his theories, and as a consequence, is universally rediculed for doing so. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the cafeteria.

    Run along now, sophist.

  • oh right, you're a Randist, how did i forget.

    Glory Be To Rand! She's so easy and nice to understand, i dont even have to read Kant! she does it for me and arrives at a sociopathic knaves' conclusion. yayy!

  • Rand accomplished more in her life than Zizek ever will. If you can't accept that, you're lost.

    If you wanna prove me wrong, stop childishly insulting me, and give me some proof instead. What has Zizek done for philosophy? It's ironic that Rand preached rational selflishness and individualism, yet Marxist Zizek has probably alienated more students with his inane babble than Rand could ever dream of. What excact virtues do you believe Zizek is able to offer the student body?

  • the virtue of not being the knave to a bunch of greedy sociopaths

    if nothing else, zizek infuriates parasites and liars and allows them to identify themselves as the cretins they are

    criticizing ayn rand is like criticizing intelligent design. one can see the absurdity of Randian logic (or lack thereof) on the face of it, and most educated people wouldn't lower themselves to dignify it with a response.

    All one has to do is bring up William Edward Hickman.

  • There you go again with your name calling. I should have ignored your stupid comments from the start. Here I thought you were a person who could be persuaded with reason, but you're just a mindless drone and an intellectually dishonest troglodyte.

  • oh here's another excellent, direct, empirical disproval of her entire philosophy: corporations, the most efficient extractors of wealth in the world, developed under capitalism and really let free-reign under the guiding of the proselytes of Rand and Friedman. Even in the age of unrestrained Capital, people seek social unity, because of their tribalist nature. Even the sociopaths at the top.

  • Just because people tend to sway towards tribalism, doesn't mean it's the best way to live your life. It's an evolutional remnant, which still lingers on today. It's survival doesn't entail it validity.

  • the 'best way to live your life' doesn't involve being a sociopath, sorry. not in any sense, philosophically, biologically, socially. maybe you just don't pay attention to the news?

    you should probably just go ahead and quote the 40 page monologue from Atlas Shrugged or her rape fantasies

    or you can actually read Kant and see how she developed her view on subjectivity by completely misinterpreting him. but maybe that'll not tickle your Rugged Individualist Rational Acting.

  • haha well i see you have not only trouble parsing ideas, but parsing language. oh well.

  • Alright then. No intelligent rebuttal, just hopelessly unclever insults. Check.

  • Criticizing Ayn Rand by equating her logic with that of intelligent design is not a refutation of her philosophy. It's just a smear. To refute it, you have to present evidence, which you have yet to do. So what you have accomplished so far in your critique of her is excactly nil.

    Am I getting through to you? If not, read "The Virtue of Selfishness" and Allan Gotthelf's excellent "On Ayn Rand", and you'll be presented with a refutation of everything postmodernism stands for.

  • any reading of history or social psychology will reveal how brain dead her assertion of selfishness as a virtue, not to mention her casting it as non-self destructive. humans aren't sociopathic competitive actors. they did not wander the Serengeti on their lonesome, seeking profit, no matter what your crazy idol says.

    Speaking of what your crazy idol says: William Edward Hickman, murderer and psychopath, Rand called "the best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I ever heard."

  • I stood idly by and et you call me a Randist, but I won't have you refer to her as my "idol". I'm not an Objectivist. Get it through your fucking thick skull and stop referring to me as if I was one.

  • "To the tribal lone wolf , "reality" is a meaningless term; his metaphysics consists in the cronic feeling that life, somehow is a conspiracy of people and things against him, and he will walk over piles of corpses -- in order to assert himself? -- no, in order to hide (or fill) the nagging inner vacuum left by his aborted self... The grim joke on mankind is that he is held up as a symbol of selfishness."

    Philosophy: Who Needs It?, p. 50

  • Who's this "we" all of a sudden. Are you a collectivist, searching for a group to latch on to?

    As for your accusation, there is no misreading this guy. To misread him, he has to have something concrete to say, but all Zizek ever does is spew pointless, pseudo-philosophical anecdotes that don't go anywhere.

    The best example to use is his famous toilet anecdote which he's been recycling for decades. What's his point? What's he talking about?

    This man is a joke.

  • I should add, you have the audacity to proclaim that future scholars won't even remember him? And that Ayn Rand is a "great thinker"? How unscholarly! Go back to your community college!

  • Yeah? How will you attempt to dispprove me when neither of us have any real factual insight into the future?

    Ayn Rand, while not infallible herself, has proved herself to be far stronger than Zizek when it comes to sticking up to your principles and beliefs. What virtues does Zizek hold dear, hm? This guy is a fossil, a Marxist remnant from a lost world. Old leftist evil, easy to interpret, easy to combat.

  • Easy to interpret? I don't know about all that - that's not to say there's deeply hidden profundity in his stuff, I don't know Zizek all that well, but to imply that you find his stuff crystal-clear seems like PR or a sales pitch. Why try so hard?

    As far as Rand goes: 1. philosophy kept happening after Aristotle - some of it's quite good, 2. is it really all that hard to stick to your guns when all you're morally committed to is being a sociopathic, egomaniacal, hate-filled, evil cunt?

  • Zizek is not profound. That's like calling the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland an interesting thinker. He's just pulling you around to his tune, man. Wake up.

    And I have no intension of selling you anything. Except my DVD collection, which I've been dying to get off my hands for years. Zizek plays no factor in this though.

    1. Yeah. *looks for a point but finds none*

    2. Sociopathic; wrong. Hate-filled; hardly. Evil; preposterous. Egomaniacal; you bet your white ass.

  • I didn't claim Zizek was profound, in fact, I said "that's NOT to say that there's deeply hidden profundity in his stuff..."

    You appear to be overstating your philosophical acumen quite a bit, so a back-and-forth won't be interesting for me, but 1. Rand as just rehashing Aristotle is one of the standard criticisms of her "technical" stuff, and 2. you'd be doing yourself a favor by getting familiar with what thoughtful people have to say about her ethics.

  • actually seeing your love for ayn rand just about settles it. you want people to hear your boring, didactic, greedy nonsense as if its some sort of great Ideal not thoroughly rebuked since the dawn of humanity. i suppose you don't understand the needs of others, it's all virtue of selfishness.

    let them be bored! i wanna be hurd! Durr

  • And for your information, Zizek is actually a big admirer of Ayn Rand himself. See the full documentary and you'll discover that one of his favorite movies of all time is The Fountainhead. So yeah, do your fucking research before you spew your Zizekian venom.

  • I have seen Zizek! and if you think he is an admirer of Rand then you have some mighty fine cognitive dissonance to take care of. If you actually read Zizek instead of indulging in easy introductory documentaries, you;d know he wrote:

  • "However, although it is easy to dismiss the very mention of Rand in a "serious" theoretical article as an obscene extravaganza — artistically, she is of course, worthless — the properly subversive dimension of her ideological procedure is not to be underestimated: Rand fits into the line of over-conformist authors who undermine the ruling ideological edifice by their very excessive identification with it."

  • What a strange critique. Rand considered herself a philosopher before a novelist, so even if she was a bad artist qua artist (which I believe she was, along with Zizek), if only in a stylistic manner, that would hardly say anything whatsoever regarding her validity as a philosopher. I do prefer her non-fiction to her fiction, but if you really think Zizek dislikes Rand as a philisopher, why would one of his favorite movies be The Fountainhead?

  • well to be clear he also talked about a nazi mystic type of film as also being one of his favorite, i dont recall the name because it's in german. but i think he demonstrates you can like a movie very much and not consider it to be true or its philosophy commendable (which is how i feel about tarkovsky's solyaris so i can understand it).

    and as far as rand goes, i read her, but her idea of selfishness as individualist liberation is wrong particularly since she wants a radicalized status quo.

  • plus as far as science goes she misinterprets humans completely, but instead interprets the Austrian School of economics quasi-Christian model of humans as Rational Actors able to be sociopaths. philosophically, she misreads the kantian idea of universality as this particular individual. i;m no kantian, but there is alot of literature on her misreading of kant, and i think its crucial to understanding whats wrong with Objectivism outside obvious scientific conflicts

  • If you see the movie you'll also discover that another of Zizek's all-time favorite movies is "Opfergang", by the nazi director Veit Harlan. Should we therefore conclude that Zizek is an admirer of nazism? Despite all your rudeness and your "fucking research", you know nothing about Zizek. You haven't understood anything about his ironic, dialectical view of ultra-ideological films such as The Fountainhead, Opfergang or Ivan the Terrible.

  • Well, have you? Just because he names a nazi film as one of his favorites, who are you to declare that he views it as ironic and ultra-ideological? You're merely resorting to drastical conclusions, typical of postmodernists. Give me a link where he actually expresses his opinion about these films and until then, you are free to speculate about his reasons for liking these films as wildly as any madman.

  • Zizek, a radical Marxist, is a fan of Rand? Oh man. Only on the youtube comments page.

  • I don't think anyone will ever understand Zizek other than Zizek himself. I don't choose his favorite movies for him, he does. I merely comment on his choises. He would do the same with me.

  • You should spend more of your time reading. I have a feeling you don't understand Zizek whatsoever. If you think only Zizek can understand Zizek, then why do you speak of him as though you are writing a book review? Keep reading.

  • "You should spend more of your time reading."

    Condescending, aren't we? =D

    But no, I'm done with this bozo's books. There is no understanding Zizek because you're not supposed to. What you're supposed to is adopt his jargon, use his terminology and drop his name whenever you can. Rinse and repeat. No sir, I'm not buying into that BS.

    If you want sound and practical philosophy, read Aristotelian philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. Do not read Slavoj Zizek, it's pseudo-philosophy.

  • "What you're supposed to is adopt his jargon, use his terminology and drop his name whenever you can. Rinse and repeat. No sir, I'm not buying into that BS."

    You don't know who Hegel and Kant is? What is wrong with you, softhead?

  • Yeah, I know of Kant and Hegel. What's your point?

    Honestly, all I've gotten from my posts on this board is just plain and lame question marks with no arguments or substance included whatsoever. You disappoint me, postmodernists.

  • ahhahaha you know "of" kant and hegel. Well maybe if you actually read them you'd understand most of what Zizek says, including this video.

    And do you even know what a postmodernist is? Do you know what postmodernism is? Because it seems like you have no idea what it is, since you confuse Zizek as a postmodernist. That's okay, at least we graduated from grammar school taunts of "pseudointellectual" to the inept discourse of "everything that I am too ignorant to understand is postmodernism"

  • You asked me if I knew who Hegel and Kant was: I answered yes, I do, and you berate me for answering your question. Fuck you.

  • "ahhahaha"

    Like everyone else who've tried to counter my criticism of Zizek, you do nothing but fling insults at me and ask me rhetorical questions. Typically postmodernist. If you don't have the balls to debate me like a man, shut up. If you do wanna prove yourself to me, then answer me this: what do you believe in? Better yet, what do you think Zizek can teach future scholars?

  • hahah rhetorical questions, the postmodern invention!

    you haven't even brought up any logical points, just inane prattling. you're out of your league

  • Did I say postmodernism invented the rhetorical question? I did not!

    And you have yet to defend Zizek in any coherent manner. Instead you resort to critizising Ayn Rand yet again, a tactic that didn't work the previous time either. You see, this is EXCACTLY what I'm talking about when I'm critizising postmodernism. All this phenomenon is good for is berating previous ideologies, yet when it is critizised itself, it becomes defensive, or passive agressive, like you are right now.

  • KajiC, don't blame us. You're just seeing the conversational effects of jumping in and dismissing a whole school of thought with a broad stroke. You've already made up your mind, ideologically & philosophically, content & method, so why take you seriously?

    It also speaks volumes that Rand is marginal and dismissed vis-a-vis "real" philosophy, and that you've arrived to attack continental thinkers (also marginal in N. America). Zizek's thought is good for seeing this for what it is: projection.

  • not quite. He writes, in "The Lesbian Session", Rands advocacy of a capitalism "without its communitarian, collectivist, welfare etc, sugar-coating", he argues, actually serves only to make the inherent ridiculousness of capitalism ever more plain.

  • he's doing both, that's why it's so genuine.

  • sus lan yarraaam aynı dayımın oğlu ismete benziyon

  • one of the few people i would follow in revolution

  • People i love you all

  • like a muppet :D

  • Thumb up, lol

  • Chris Farley playing an existentialist with an accent...done.

  • thats not love thats preference

  • Ha, ha! Brilliant! In a little more than two minutes of ramblings he comes to a conclusion that "love is evil". And you can't argue against it. I love this guy! LOL

  • he's talking about a human conception of universal love that is violent; because humans are not omniscient the idea of universal love cannot be fully comprehended by humans and so its reflective of only a small part of each individual person's fragment of understanding universal love. universal love is a conception of God for example, so when an act is purportedly in the name of a universal love, it can be violent, an extreme case being holy wars

  • Miss you Ray R I P

  • u make it look easy i wanna get 99 and do that but i dont wanna lose void lol

  • pk vid? dont u mean noob pj and rush vid?

  • they all look retarded.

    and drugged. o0'

  • Lol...some of that hatemail is funny...but kelly don't look like meatloaf with tits and steven, you're not a girl...i hope. You guys are really good, keep it up :)

    Check Out My Videos If You Like SteAndKel

    ChickifiedDazzle (16 hours ago) Show Hide 0 Marked as spam Reply | Spam lol wow thats rediculous, somebody said kel was meatloaf with tits xD.... i had to laugh to.

  • mpfw, pfdsfdsfsd you need to wake up yourself. to say "love is evil" is puzzling to say the leasdfst. itrue, whadsfsdfdsfdste? this gsdfdspelling a freak show as he is, with his affectations anfdsfdsfworthy of a tv interview let alone a documentary. down is up, a square circle, meaningless meaning. oooh how neat! if anyone is curious about continental philosophy readfsdfdsd freud, marx, nietzsche, husserl, heidegger, sartre and merleau-ponty. forget the profiteering sociologists like this guy.

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  • This man think too much, ITS CAUSED HIM TO GO MAD! Wow, next time I will know not to think too hard when I have to:) But then again, we all have our own opinion, I respect his, but some how, and I dont know why, I highly doubt he would respect mine.

  • I can't really think of anything more boring than the anti-intellectualism of the two previous responses to this video. Zizek really isn't that difficult to understand though his thought does require one to deal with certain paradoxes that we often chose to avoid dealing with. Basically, if archstan and hugopal don't understand something they have to call it moronic in order to massage their damaged egos. Okay, so if that's how you feel, just stop thinking and go to sleep.

  • Agreed. Zizek has become a popular intellectual (good for him!) and that makes him a target for people who can't wrap their minds around continental thought. His cultural criticism actually examines the phenomenon of his popularity. I found it interesting in the Zizek documentary where he spoke of committing career suicide so that his work could be taken seriously.

  • mpfw, perhaps you need to wake up yourself. to say "love is evil" is puzzling to say the least. if true, what's hate? this guy, as compelling a freak show as he is, with his affectations and tics, is not worthy of a tv interview let alone a documentary. down is up, a square circle, meaningless meaning. oooh how neat! if anyone is curious about continental philosophy read freud, marx, nietzsche, husserl, heidegger, sartre and merleau-ponty. forget the profiteering sociologists like this guy.

  • Well, see my other comments for my interpretation of what Zizek means by "love is evil." I find the lineage you outline here rather curious. It must be quite comforting to limit your reading to the safest, most centrally canonical thinkers of the Western tradition. So, I'm just wondering if there is a DATE at which you think philosophy became useless? Yes, love is evil is a paradox, but paradoxes are central to the Hegelian and psychoanalytic tradition.

  • i did read your comments and got nothing from them. stop psychologizing. i do not have a "damaged ego" nor do i find it "comforting" to list the best thinkers of the past. if you want to read saussure, gasche et al. go ahead. i read them in grad school and found them quite small compared to plato and aristotle and kant and nietzsche et al. i'll take the canon and you take the refuse. yes, not only is the paradox central to the psychoanalytic tradition but is a feature of philosophy itself.

  • Moreover, if you find being "puzzled" to be a problem, then I'm wondering how you can even deal with the very philosophers you've canvassed here. It seems to me that Freud and Nietzsche make similar claims regarding love, and if anyone who reiterates Nietzsche or Freud are "worth reading" then wither philosophy? Finally, labeling Zizek a "sociologist" seems to imply that philosophy has no social consequence -a very conservative gesture sort of like your attack on women's studies.

  • um...i can "deal" with it. anyone can say anything. fine. but in philosophy a claim has to stand up to logical rigor. otherwise, we don't get anywhere. if one reads nietzsche he will find him difficult. so be it. he is difficult. but he makes sense strictly speaking. yes i am prejudiced against sociologists venturing into philosophical territory because they haven't read philosophy or have an ideological axe to grind. if zizek loved reagan and wore a suit he wouldn't be given the time of day.

  • Again, it's curious that you're demanding philosophy "make sense" or "stand up to logical rigor," and yet the philosopher you appeal to is Nietzsche. Isn't the point of Nietzschian critical philosophy that sense and logic are effects of power relationships? Thus, in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche explains that concepts of good and eveil can, and often are, contradictory and nonsensical because they're based on perspectives of power. (Deleuze picks this up in Logic of Sense.)

  • As I read him, Zizek is critical of the fantasies undergriding neoliberal projects like Reaganism. In fact, he might very well "love" Reagan to the extent that Reagan's entire feel-good, up-wit-America campaign demanded a populist love that was actually quite hostile to various populations. Reagan is a wonderful example of the function of enjoyment in ideological projects. But, of course, Reaganites don't like this to be pointed out.

  • zizek is a goddamned idiot. he's right up there with derrida and lacan, they are so goddamned intelligent that the rest of us "special olympians," in Dear Leaders words, can't begin to comprehend the idiotic bullshit that this crackhead spews out. I can't believe you take this con artist seriously. The only reason "philosophers" like zizek are included in the English departments is that there is no other place for them. They have been kicked out of everyplace else, because they are morons.

  • ha. agreed. too true. you forgot "womyn's" studies and cultural studies and comparative "literature". i heard him on cspan yesterday. he was a stumblin' and bumblin' away not saying a thing worth listening to. i'm sure the audience didn't understand a word of it. but then again no one does. who cares? HE IS ZIZEK. not too long ago he would have been pelted with rotten fruit at a carnival.

  • I know this man, I've read his works, his essence is that he can't give up attempting the impossible: symbolizing the Real. You read his "philosophy" and think "Why am I not getting this" when the problem is he doesn't get it himself. As he says, the problem itself is the solution lol!

  • He seems hyper cerebral, jaded, and unhappy. A lifetime in academia combined with an upbringing in a rough country/culture would lead anyone to the types of hypotheses he is proporting. I do like a lot of what he is saying, but I just don't fully agree.

  • Žižek kinda explains himself in this video:

    /watch?v=4Y5N1pOhWYs

    (in the second half, after 7min..)

  • "Love is a violent act" just seems like a backwards way of explaining what is immediately recognizable. You hate something because it's the opposite of what you love. That doesn't make it more dangerous than hate, they are just intrinsically linked. And if he thinks love is an imbalance and destructive, yet he believes creation to be due to an imbalance, then what in his mind is creative? If he's saying creation is the destruction of nothingness, why is he so passionate? He believes in nothing.

  • It's basically Nietzschian. Love would be a radical affirmation of the imbalance of existence, an affirmation that humanism, pedestrian Christianity, liberalism and other capitalist ethos repress. Hatred, on the other hand, is a reactive force. Thus, most of what passes for love amongst humans is actually ambivalence and hostility. Hatred always attempts to project this ambivalence onto some other (person, nation, monster). Love affirms the imbalance.

  • Love, as Zizek is describing it then is, for example, the messianic act itself rather than the religion that springs up around this act. Christ on the cross but precisely NOT Christianity. Actually, this is the only way to truly believe in anything. Believing in "nothing" as you call it could also be interpreted as staking your belief on a groundless future, a future that isn't determined by dogma, ideology and/or political economy.

  • I think our notions of love have been so cheapened by organized religion, capitalism and heterosexist liberal romance that this more revolutionary and robust concept of love seems alien to us. Ultimately, humanism has turned love into a possession of the self, whereas love as it's figured here is the ecstatic shattering of the self -properly revolutionary.

  • well, it reminds me of an old Physics joke:

    The Universe according to Physists:

    "In the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded!"

  • This idea reminds me of the gnostic view of creation.

  • Amazing! Finally someone dares to confront the lame intuition of a world which exists solely for our own convenience. And it is also logical: if in the "beginning" there "was" only nothing, then something must have had happened to the nothing in order to something appear, because clearly the something violates the unity of the pure nothing, from the point of view of the void a violation of the rule must have been taken place. I know that speaking of nothing as something in language is nonsense.

  • wat

  • If I were the last man on the planet I bet I could find a monkey attractive and in that sense I like the world. As far as love, love is just some illogical thing that helps us more successfullly spread our genes.

  • you eat alone most of the time don't you.

  • brilliant

  • I love this guy

  • Legend!

  • things exist by inbalance - genius

  • uy yo que hago leyendo estos locos no joda..

  • Very interesting :) He has a lot of controversial and different views. You don't have to believe exzactly what he says but it is nice to just listen to his views. It does make you think!! :)

  • The building at the back is the Argentinian national library in Buenos Aires! What is he doing there!!!!????

  • Si

    chapero1, hasta donde yo se estaba en pareja con una estudiante de Letras.