Tag: Philosophy

Slavoj Žižek – Ibi Rhodus, Ibi Saltus! Quote

“True freedom is not a freedom of choice made from a safe distance, like choosing between a strawberry cake or a chocolate cake; true freedom overlaps with necessity. One makes a truly free choice when one’s choice puts at stake one’s very existence—one does it because one simply ‘cannot do otherwise.’ When one’s country is under a foreign occupation and one is called by a resistance leader to join the fight against the occupiers, the reason given is not ‘you are free to choose,’ but: ‘Can’t you see that this is the only thing you can do if you want to retain your dignity?’

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“[Martin] Luther saw clearly how the (Catholic) idea that our redemption depends on our acts introduces a dimension of bargaining into ethics: good deeds are not done out of duty but in order to gain salvation. If, however, my salvation is predestined, this means that my fate is already decided and my doing good deeds does not serve anything—so if I do them, it is out of pure duty, a really altruistic act . . . .

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“What Protestantism prohibits is the very thought that a believer can, as it were, take a position outside/above itself and look upon itself as a small particle in the vast reality.”

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“What this also implies is that the access to ‘reality in itself’ does not demand from us that we overcome our ‘partiality’ and arrive at a neutral vision elevated above our particular struggles—we are ‘universal beings’ only in our full partial engagements. *** [W]e should assert the radically exclusive love for the singular One, a love which throws out of joint the smooth flow of our lives.

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“the true ethical universality never resides in the quasi-neutral distance that tries to do justice to all concerned factions. So, if, against fundamentalisms which ground ethical commitment in one’s particular ethnic or religious identity, excluding others, one should insist on ethical universalism, one should also unconditionally insist on how every authentic ethical position by definition paradoxically combines universalism with taking sides in the ongoing struggle.  Today, more than ever, one should emphasize that a true ethical position combines the assertion of Universalism with a militant, divisive position of one engaged in a struggle: true universalists are not those who preach global tolerance of differences and all-encompassing unity, but those who engage in a passionate fight for the assertion of the Truth that engages them.”

Slavoj Žižek,“Ibi Rhodus, Ibi Saltus!” PROBLEMI INTERNATIONAL, vol. 2, no. 2, 2018

See also Sex and the Failed Absolute and Less Than Nothing (“every ethical and/or moral edifice has to be grounded in an abyssal act which is, in the most radical sense imaginable, political, . . . [as] the very space in which, without any external guarantee, ethical decisions are made and negotiated”) and “Ágota Kristóf’s The Notebook Awoke in Me a Cold and Cruel Passion” and The Fragile Absolute and Critique of Cynical Reason

For the exact opposite view, based on a program of depoliticalization/disavowal, see Milton Friedman Capitalism and Freedom (“each man can vote for the color of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what color the majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit.”) — for that matter, Friedman’s view is completely at odds with the understanding of desire and fantasy that psychoanalysis has established, by neglecting to consider that the color of tie a given man wants is an effort to take on the identity of the sort of man who likes a certain color of tie in order to fulfill the desire of a social group (~majority) for such an identity.  See also “Panel #6 – Todd McGowan – Capitalist Subjectivity and Unconscious Freedom”

Daniel Zamora – Should We Care About Inequality?

Link to an article by Daniel Zamora:

“Should We Care About Inequality?”

 

This is really an article about historical battles for ideological hegemony.

Bonus links: Slavoj Žižek On Political Struggle and Trouble in Paradise and Making Money and The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives and The Lie of Global Prosperity: How Neoliberals Distort Data to Mask Poverty and Exploitation

Landon Frim & Harrison Fluss – Steven Pinker: False Friend of the Enlightenment

Link to a review by Landon Frim & Harrison Fluss of Steven Pinker‘s book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018):

“Steven Pinker: False Friend of the Enlightenment”

 

This is a great tear-down of Pinker’s thinking, which is problematic because of how basically insipid it is as mere status quo boosterism.

Bonus links: Review of The Great Leveler and Review of Domenico Losurdo’s Liberalism: A Counter-History and Slavoj Žižek On Political Struggle and Review of Making Money

Bonus quote:

“in the analysis of ideology, it is not simply a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the ‘facts’, with the one that is closest being the least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already — whether we know it or not — made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on.”

Rex Butler, “What Is a Master-Signifier”

Haydar Khan – Set Theory of the Left

Link to an article by Haydar Khan:

“Set Theory of the Left”

 

Bonus links: “Intersectionalism, the Highest Stage of Western Stalinism?” and “The Politics of Identity” and The Trouble With Diversity and “What’s Wrong With Identity Politics (and Intersectionality Theory)? A Response to Mark Fisher’s “Exiting the Vampire Castle” (And Its Critics)” and Liberalism: A Counter-History (“Liberalism has always pivoted, Losurdo argues, on drawing a dividing line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ – those who are worthy or capable (morally, intellectually, biologically/racially) of the gamut of rights and liberties we associate with liberalism and those who are not.”); see also “Remarks on Gender”

Slavoj Žižek – Three Variations on Trump Quote

“There is an even greater problem with the underlying premise of those who proclaim the ‘death of truth’: they talk as if before (say, until the 1980s), in spite of all the manipulations and distortions, truth did somehow prevail, and that the ‘death of truth’ is a relatively recent phenomenon. Already a quick overview tells us that this was not the case. How many violations of human rights and humanitarian catastrophes remained invisible, from the Vietnam War to the invasion of Iraq? Just remember the times of Reagan, Nixon, Bush… The difference was not that the past was more ‘truthful’ but that ideological hegemony was much stronger, so that, instead of today’s greater melee of local ‘truths,’ one ‘truth’ (or, rather, one big Lie) basically prevailed. In the West, this was the liberal-democratic Truth (with a Leftist or Rightist twist). What is happening today is that, with the populist wave which unsettled the political establishment, the Truth/Lie that has served as an ideological foundation for this establishment is also falling apart. And the ultimate reason for this disintegration is not the rise of postmodern relativism but the failure of the ruling establishment, which is no longer able to maintain its ideological hegemony.”

Slavoj Žižek, “Three Variations on Trump: Chaos, Europe, and Fake News”

 

Bonus links: “Fake News: How to Watch the News, Episode 03” and “The World Is Returning to Pluralism After American Hegemony, Says German Philosopher” and “Why the Democratic and Republican Establishments Can’t Stop Insurgents” and “Centrists Are Pining for a Golden Age that Never Was”

Nancy Fraser – Feminism and Marxism

Link to a video of comments by Nancy Fraser:

“Feminism and Marxism”

 

Bonus links: The Trouble With Diversity and “The Feminism of the 1 Percent Has Associated Our Cause With Elitism” (“Today, we are told that we really have only two options — either right-wing authoritarian populisms, which are racist and xenophobic, or else go back to our liberal protectors and progressive neoliberalism. But this is a false choice — we need to refuse both options.”) and “The Politics of Identity”

Kalundi Serumaga – On Reinventing Europe: An Open Letter to Mr George Soros

Link to an article/letter by Kalundi Serumaga:

“On Reinventing Europe: An Open Letter to Mr George Soros”

 

This pieces raises many excellent points.  But it is also worth pointing out some questionable aspects of its theoretical framework and recommendations.  First, while the article characterizes the essence of Europe as Bonapartism, it does so by applying philosophical standards that originated in Europe, or at least drew from European precedents.  While it may well be fair to call the current hegemonic ideology of Europe (and elsewhere) Bonapartist, to treat all of Europe as monolithic and without counter-currents seems rather reductionist.  Second, the “tasks for EU civil society” include “2. Find out what your countries truly owe, and make them pay it back”  This is basically both a politics of victimhood and an expression of ressentiment.  Frantz Fanon once wrote, “The colonized man is an envious man.”  That seems accurate in this context, but as a statement of limitation of vision.  The last chapter of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks explicitly rejected Serumaga’s approach, and that is a big part of why Fanon is a stronger theoretical reference point than what is expressed in Serumaga’s article.  Lastly, the article concludes by saying, “It is time for the North to (once again, after Ancient Egypt) learn from the South.”  This is a dubious offhand assertion of identity politics, yet again in the service of the valorization of victimhood status and ressentiment.  It is problematic mainly because, in a cynical way, “[w]e thus enter a cruel world of brutal power games masked as a noble struggle of victims against oppression.”