Slavoj Zizek — Analytic VS Continental Philosophy

my position is here much more integrated complex first I must tell you I said there is much boring stuff going on in so-called analytic philosophy but there are many things which I fully admire going on there and also for example I don't know he now disappeared I don't know why philosophers like saul kripke some others and so on they did one or even cognitivists there are very intelligent cognitivists who raised the right questions and so on but nonetheless and also there is a lot of not taking scientific breath truth seriously going in so called continental philosophies the big problem for me today is what I call the gap between realism and transcendental approach on the one hand we have scientific or realist philosophical approach don't be afraid I will try to which simply pretends to describe reality the way it is to put it in very simplistic terms you forget about who you are from where you are speaking then we have transcendental reasoning which is not something mystical and so on but it's based on the simple fact that our argumentation is ultimately always circular for example their reproach for example to mention the guy that you brought Habermas his basic contribution is to claim that from the scientific perspective one thing you cannot explain is the normative discursive structures of this scientific procedure itself if you you can be very good at scientific explanations evolutionary and so on this stuff what goes on how the human intelligence arrives but in all this all this is possible because you approached nature in a certain way as a as a complex cobweb of causes effects and so on and so on this doesn't go by itself so the idea is that we all approach reality from a certain perspective and we cannot ever break out of this circle and now so that ultimately but on the other hand it's clear that somehow although we are always caught in our symbolic universe and so on and if some of you follow modern thought the ultimate in my sense of the term now not in the strict Kantian transcendental philosopher would have been for example somebody like Michel Foucault for him the ultimate horizon of our knowledge is what he calls a pitch them a the idea they in every epoch a certain it may be conflictual but opposite sides always shared some pretty opposition's the circle base for example the opposition between empiricism and rationalism but they share a whole set of presuppositions about reality and so on so the idea is this one that this is the ultimate thing so for example if you were to ask Michele Foucault do we have an immortal soul or not his answer would have been all I can do is to describe the epistle the set of implicit presuppositions within which this question has meaning at all and if you asked him do you believe in evolutionary account of humanity his answer would have been I can only tell you that this evolutionary account is part of a modern scientific paradigm and as such totally different from for example media paradism know within which meaning was something imminent to reality itself the universe is meaningful so what I'm saying is that on the other hand of course we all admit at least almost all of us that although this is the earth another point if there are some Marxist here Marxists at least so-called Western Marxists are also fully transcendental in what sense for radical Marxist the ultimate horizon is social practice and as look at in the ultimate Western Marxist work his first big book history and class consciousness he even says this is a classic statement nature is historical social category which means of course somehow we did humanity we did emerge out of nature but what we understand by nature is something which is always historically overdetermined and as part of our social practice nature means something totally different in modernity then in early then in early Renaissance and so on and so on so we have this ultimate Tanjung on the one hand naive scientific realism on the other hand this transcendental approach and what I'm obsessed with in my last works I am always writing the same book and so on is precisely is it possible to break out of this circle is it possible to move beyond this transcendental approach that we can just describe the historical horizon of meaning into which we were thrown without returning to naive realism here we should be creative for example who was that guy I forgot his name often here and that's for me the strength of continental approach some criticism even theological of science which can appear stupid and it is stupid at the level of direct scientific value can be extremely interesting if we read it in a slightly different way a theory of ideology for example do you know that I forgot the guy's name Darvin had a friend who was who knew his work Darwin's and was at the same time geologists yes the one who D his reply to Darwin was I forgot the name it's a Latin name I'm too stupid for navel you know it's the old problem Adam is depicted with a navel but wait a minute Adam was not born he was created by them does he have it so the idea is this one and its second in Linnaeus solution he said Darwin conclusively proved through fossils and so on that our earth or our universe was created at least million years ago if you take Bible literally it was four thousand and some years so where is the truth you know what is the answer of course Bible is true my god it cannot be not true so how do we explain fossils and so on the idea is this the same way when you paint a state you paint the background to create a false impression of depth that God directly created fossils and so on to give us a false opening of the past and this is the best definition of ideology I can imagine and so on aren't we all the time inventing traditions in this sense and so on and so on so again to answer you properly it may be too complex now but I try to first I have tremendous you know what one of my interests here maybe this Versa returns to the latest result insofar as I understand them I'm the first to admit my limitation now what is happening now in quantum physics I was told and I read some popular books but I try to track it with my friends who are quantum physicists like am I totally bluffing or does it have something that with this quantum gravity theory and so on there is a tremendous progress beyond string theory going on now and I think that some of the things that you find in quantum physics are I think of incredible significance to resolve this problem because the basic presupposition of quantum physics it's precisely that what we perceive as natural reality is not the ultimate reality that there is whatever we call it quantum oscillations and so on another level and I think that this is how and let's call it ontology at the level of today's world should function if I may go on for two three minutes you will like it I promise I'm sorry I hope you don't know this joke but I loved it a philosopher I'm very sorry I forgot his name you notice my senility that I forget maintenance used a wonderful example to explain quantum physics and my point is the basic paradox of quantum physics my point is to apply it to reality as such his idea is this one wonderful simple metaphor a parallel between quantum universe with lists as you know Heisenberg uncertainty principle although Bohr puts it in a slightly different way but the point is this one you know what everybody knows you cannot measure simultaneously the the position and the velocity movement of a particle ok now you can read this in epistemological way we just cannot measure it Niels Bohr when a step further and claimed it in itself that it's not determined in it is a wonderful visual of reality which is in itself ontologically incomplete and now comes the parallel with video games aren't they in the same similar very superficial analogous incomplete in what sense you remember I don't play them but I watch my son doing it and I envy him and so on when you play a video game let's say you see a house there but if it's not part of the game to enter that house then the interior of the house is not programmed you know this you know in the video universe it's all in the background there is the forest but it's meaningless to say let's go there and look in detail at the trees no because it's not part of the game that you can go there so in this book the idea is this one it's very cynical one but I loved it God did something similar he underestimated us humans a little bit he thought that we will never be intelligent enough to move beyond atoms to micro particles so he said suck it why should I lose time programming there everything so we as if their first dog with this tenth time you know but my point is we can how would it be to think reality as unfinished without this subjectivity god whatever come is it possible to think reality as unfinished and here I think utopian as it may appear only a kind of a collaboration between the best of continental tradition no those arrogant Europeans who despise analytic philosophy last and the best of analytical philosophers can do the drop sorry I'm too long

Channel: The Radical Revolution

Views: 264,379

Rating: 4.8977103 out of 5

Keywords: Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, analytic vs continental philosophy, Saul Kripke, Science, Mathematics, Logic, Linguistics, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche

Id: Jmq3imrHPMk

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 20 2019