Slavoj Zizek. Materialism and Theology. 2007 6/8

[suredoloveya]

Does anyone know the 'American Scientist' Z refers to at 0:11 and what is the 'ecological book'?

[MsJunglebird]

Interesting point on 0-multiplicity as an alternative to the 0-1 binary schema. You've gotta love Zizek, but it still sounds like his discourse limited to static concepts - kinda still stuck in Platonic forms/realism. Seems the essential question in materialist discourse, quantum physics, etc. is whether energy has telos. Whether energy has a logic or purpose (or simply random chaos) other than eternal existence/being.

[fahznab]

Job didn't lose his wife...

[wall0645]

Did he just argue that Christ is a good theological argument for atheism?

[tyrbolo]

LOL Ben Jeshua was a loud mouthed communist agitator who the religious

community asked their fascist overlords to execute. Once he was safely dead

the priests of Serapis could hang their trappings on him and call him the Christ.

The instigator of this transformation had a nasty habit of making off with the

collections taken for the poor. Of course this was supernatural in origin.

[edris47]

He criticizes liberals for analysis the failures of the past regimes like communism and so on but he does the same. I think he is involved in a intellectual masturbating he is getting high from expressing his accumulated knowledge which can not solve any problem, he is another entertainer but he makes one tired with his nervousness.

[shurednichso]

i lol'd ,edris47.

[francopalombo]

when zizek rules the world: will be Gulag for you!

[InfectedDaemon]

Very nice analysis by Slavoj, I was wondering where he was going with the Bible analogies and so on. At the end we conclude with a very 'realist' point of view.

[gr1ffable]

To Zizek--- a late lacanian advocate of the stain of the real on the symbolic--- "realism" doesn't mean anything. At any rate--- to reduce theistic religion's apotheosis to materialism is not, as you term it "realistic" or unrealistic (if Z is successful, that is). Rather---it shows that the most countermaterialist tradition is grounded in the materialism that it purports to deny.

[mabutaleb]

Zizek talk is great. Who is that idiot in the end?

[RationalEmotive]

Just some smarmy small-mind from the EGS faculty. Don't speak up too loud though, the webmaster of egs is reading the comments, which is actually pretty impressive.

[egsvideo]

smiling. actually its the program director of the program, the mind who set the whole thing up. his comments must be understood within the context of a class lecture, where we always engage our students and move them out of their intellectual comfort zones. that also applies for faculty members - such debates are actually the strength of egs.

as for the webmaster or cio: he believes, that some comments are best judged by the vocabulary of their authors. (and there is still the delete button.)

[Krelianx]

Part 3:

... which is already inscribed at the very heart of set theory, quantum mechanics, among others. This is a reaction both to constructivist positivism, and traditional metaphysics (including the so-called 'post-modern' thinkers). I don't see where you find the 'theology' in this.

[Krelianx]

To 0neironaut (part 2):

... which means that a materialist ontology must account for the ontological incompleteness in reality itself (Badiou's own Being and Event is the formal deployment of this ontology), and not pressupose its closed reference to elements (which is of course the 'democratic' idea behind multiculturalism; there are no universal platitudes only contingent individual formations, etc). The leap to an ontology on the background of multiplicity and void IS materialism.

[honestkaos]

awesome interpretation of Christianity, i enjoyed it.

[airparis05]

THIS MAN IS A NUT!

[phadang]

holy shit zizek PAUSED for one second at 1:32

[iwpoe]

No no, I think that was breathing.

[TheParrhesiast]

Why does that German guy always try to belittle all these great philosophers like Zizek, Badiou, etc. Who does he think he is?

[richidpraah]

he sounds like a clown for sure.. i mean, i see his obviousness of caricaturing zizek, which he also deserves, but boy.. can't this understand a philosophical position if it isn't 200 years old with clearly defined counterpositions? i actually thought that zizek and schopenhauer sounds pretty close to eachother sometimes, and i'm liking zizek more and more... would love to write him!

[iwpoe]

I like him. It's much better than the bullshit niceties and silence you get at the end of most university talks in America.

[luxOculta]

great Zizek.

What about that guy at the end of the video? seems like a fashion designer...is he a philosopher aswell?

You know what guys?,i'm happy for you that study there,greetings from Argentina.

[egsvideo]

thank you for the comment - please read the other answer below. the person you are referring to is wolfgang schirmacher, the program director of the media and communication studies department at european graduate school egs, a schopenhauer expert.

as for egs, while we refrain from active marketing ;) - there shall be no barrier stopping you from sharing the learning experience here.

[composerlafave]

This is brilliant, and not at all "materialist" in any meaningful sense of he word. The idea of an ontologically unfinished universe in which "God trusts US" and feels very much like Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, anti-materialists both. Regarding this idea, listen to Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 3, "Kaddish," in which a narrator speaks of God and man "forever recreating each other" -- i.e., an ontologically unfinished universe.

[0neironaut]

ahha, so many people are having problems with this..."its not materialism!" and youre all partly right. Its a materialist-theology.

[camipco]

He states clearly at the beginning that the "crude" materialism he's talking about is that of Dawkins, Dennet and Hitchens i.e. there are only phenomena observable by science. Obviously, the philosophical tradition of materialism has much more to say than this, but that isn't Zizek's topic here.

[Krelianx]

Your idea pressuposes the distinction between objective reality which gives us facts (science and materialism) and groundless/subjective/relative belief (theology). What Zizek is arguing is precisely that distinction is to be called into question by the materialist in order to end with vulgar materialism or New-Age idealism (modern theories of representation, noumenal reality, subject-object, ontological differance, metaphysical vs. non-metaphysical thinking...).

[brh8660]

Does anyone know which American scientist Zizek is referring to, when he is talking about his 'favourite ecological book'?

Oddly Zizek doesn't remember his name..

[PessimisticHumanist]

"There is freedom only in an ontologically unfinished universe."

[MrBloody32]

I wanna kill the guy in the grey suit.

[egsvideo]

i truly hope that you do not mean that. actually i am convinced, that you did not really think it through: the person you are referring to is the founder of the media and communications department. without him - no department, no zizek, no open lectures at youtube - and no chance to add ironic comments.

[PessimisticHumanist]

He is a very simple minded fellow! Extremely simple-minded. That's what makes him annoying -he comes with his remarks right after Zizek.

[camipco]

He's kidding. I thought his remarks were pretty funny. Zizek the born-again Christian communist.

[Neurotrash1982]

@PessimisticHumanist really, not everyone is such a good public speaker. Do you really believe someone is simple-minded because they happen to fail to compell people to consider their ideas by speaking in public? Do you really think there could be no other reason for this? that kind of position is what really merits being suspect as "simple-minded", if you ask me... Ok so maybe he was being annoying. Do you really not see the superficiality of such a thing?

[agniky]

@egsvideo (he's annoying and should still be cut out of thee video - wonderful hegelian dialectics, we have to give him thanks though)

[runi8]

@MrBloody32 totally with you on that one...

[hi0u91e9]

whoa

what happened there with the compere at the end?

[dexterfox]

Oh no, what a lapsus: Žižek says "as God knew...", but he really means "as Hegel knew..."! I love this one!!