Nexus Conference 2011. Debate about Mahler seeking God

Second debate: Faust or Percival? Part I: Mahler Seeking God
http://www.nexus-instituut.nl/

With Constantin Floros, Adam Zagajewski, George Klein, Slavoj Zizek, Allan Janik and Lewis Wolpert at the Muziektheater in Amsterdam.

All speakers will write for the Dutch essayist journal Nexus, volume 59.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• 'Nexus
• Institute'
• Instituut'
• 'Constantin
• Floros'
• 'Adam
• Zagajewski'
• 'George
• Klein'
• 'Slavoj
• Zizek'
• 'Allan
• Janik'
• 'Lewis
• Wolpert'
• 'Rob
• Riemen'

[almanacofsleep]

Lewis Wolpert: ideologue of the dominator culture.

[TheGerogero]

... Why does Slavoy dress like that? He looks so out of place :P

[ThewildRageofGordon]

@HardHouseMusic4Me Yes, getting over man, as Valerie Solanas would have it, requires the birth of a new species. The random mutations that nature gives us produce offspring we pick and choose from. When Plato, a dog breeder or a farmer (the examples given in the Republic) selects to breed only what each judge the superior specimen they create the kind of dog or grain or after-human they want. This is how we got the chiwawa, which as Manuel de Landa says, is our cruel joke on the canine family.

[LoveWisdomHarmony]

human is a label that inaccurately labels us beings of this form, at least the general idea of what humanity is, or that we are the ideals or ideas derived since birth in the form of a mutated monkey... but in truth this is an illusion, for in truth we are the awareness, the ideas/ideals can be changed and our physical form has continued to evolve, yet the chimps have not turned into hairless monkeys or humans :P many equate feelings with humanity but animals have feelings too.

love and light

[HardHouseMusic4Me]

@ThewildRageofGordon I'm just a layman, but none the less: isn't the very notion of the Übermensch a sort of purging from humanity all that precisely makes us human? The second you want to play with this idea of transcendence of flaws, refining until the end point, a sort of ultimate being, you end up with something which is fundamentally non human. As a second point, even through selective breeding you still have random genetic mutations which render the whole idea meaningless. Maybe I'm wrong.

[BoStevoD]

Everyone who is on this stage while not occupying the same exact space as Zizek seems to be suffering from the effects of some sort of senility ray. Must be all that rapid gesturing. Hard target.

[chrish12345]

re the rudeness from 8.07 - I'm sorry but are scientists so devoid of any imagination that they can't even stomach a colourful metaphor? Are they so dull, miserable and removed from their own feelings that any leeway which moves from the dry,strict and so-called logic of science is out of bounds?

[chrish12345]

4.01 'you know, like in Annie Hall' - as if that old dolt in the right has ever done anything remotely fun like watching a film

[ThewildRageofGordon]

Probably science is the work of art, par excellence, since it requires our understanding and appreciation else it would not be done. How can the overman be absurd, unless we don't believe in evolution? Even Plato understood selective breeding perfectly well. It has a bad name, so what. The greatest artist can be nobody but the one that creates human life, "creates it the most". Does one object, oh but evolution is over long time span. Explosion of proficiency obviates this.