What Is Žižek For? A Response to Current Affairs article by Moller-Nielsen

okay so I wanted to in some sense come out of relative hiding to discuss this article that was recently published in current affairs and I'll leave a link in the description for anyone who hasn't come across it yet or who's interested in reading it it's a basically a hit piece on slovak jiseok which goes into the reasons why the left should decouple itself from any relationship to or the author suggests deification of slave logic and basically starts to suggest that he is a useless philosopher and i just want to go through point by point this article because i feel like it gives at least me an opportunity here to articulate a few misunderstandings about jiseok's work that can be useful for people who are interested in diving deeper into actually understanding Jaques philosophy of course this is gonna be my perspective and my emphasis and my expertise and my my bias is going to slant this analysis a little more into critique of this authors perspective on physics philosophical work because that's my that's that's the area I've concentrated most of my academic attention of course I'm doing a lecture series on less than nothing so if anyone's going to give a sort of a an explanation of what jiseok's trying to say in his in his seminal philosophical works I think I'm qualified to do that I'm going to comment a little less on this authors confusion about what he calls physics racism reactionary politics and basically academic malpractice I will comment on that a little bit but it will take up a little bit less of this video and I couldn't help while I was reading this article the the man's name here is Thomas møller Nielsen who I think is a philosopher of physics who may be a doctorate or a postdoc or professor I'm not quite sure but it was while I was researching this article I I mean I I couldn't help and I want to make sure I'm clear here although I disagree with the the author this is no way a hit piece on him or an attack on him if anything I would love a dialogue with him and I couldn't help but you know laughing a lot while I was reading the article because I couldn't help but sympathize with you know my in-person my impression is that there's a certain cognitive predisposition which is probably quite common in academia of people who would just be absolutely frustrated by reading slava logic but I don't think that this is because logic is you know academically you know a charlatan or or has nothing to say but rather that he is such a novel and chaotic thinker he is such a unique writer and such a I think dense conceptualize er and such a such a such a master of dialectical logic that a lot of people are not going to be familiar with how to approach this I think a lot of people are going to have us a lot of people upon reading music are gonna have a spontaneous negative reaction because it if if you shook has anything meaningful to say then that would I have a lot of work to do on my on my end to understand the system of conceptualization and some people are just not willing to go there and I'm here speaking from personal experience like I have spent many years diving deep into jiseok's conceptual territory in order to understand how I would make sense of this personally for my own philosophy so I hope I can bring that out in this in this video um so let me here start I'm going to spend some time here on the first opening of the article because he actually quotes a passage of jeddaks which is one of my personal favorites I'll leave a link in the description to a youtube video where jiseok is talking about love and the quantum void and and and Thomas Muller Neilson I'll just call them møller Nielsen from now on basically gives this quote and then says okay are you in the camp of thinking this is profound are you in the camp of thinking this is insane nonsense or are you in the camp of I have no idea what this is and I he is in the camp of thinking this is insane nonsense and I am in the camp of thinking this is actually quite profound it's one of my favorite jiseok quotes in fact and so let me explain here what jiseok is trying to say well one I I don't think that when you break this down logically that you can saying anything that is that controversial really the first thing is jiseok has a personal bias which in fact colors his whole philosophy and which in fact is one of the reasons why he is so fascinated with putting German idealism and psychoanalysis into conversation which is that he has a spontaneous negative view of the universe he has a dark view of the universe of course in psychology there have been many studies that have shown that people depending on their depending on many factors could be related to their development as a child could be related to many early childhood experiences could be related to other many personality metrics can have a spontaneously negative or a spontaneously positive view of the universe in fact I'm just reading now William James's varieties of religious experience and William James even goes into detail of different varieties of religious experience where some people have a more positive view or a negative view and comes to the conclusion actually that people who have a negative view of the universe in fact have in some sense a more complex view of the universe because they understand some of them more they integrate more of the dark objective facts of the universe we're all going to die that reality is suffering that people who have a spontaneous positive view of the universe can oftentimes come across a little bit naive about these things so anyway that's that's that's how he starts this quote and then goes in to basically saying there is literally nothing so and this is going to be a theme in this video because møller Nielsen seems to take extreme seems to take an extreme how would you say it an extremely critical view of either the way jiseok approaches the concept of nothing or an extremely critical view of even taking the concept of nothing and the relationship between something and nothing as a serious philosophical problem and if anyone has read jiseok or is anyone an expert in understanding jiseok knows one of UNIX central philosophical driving forces is flipping and reversing in some sense this modern problem framed by live Nets of why is there something rather than nothing and he flips it and basically grounds his philosophy in the question of why is there nothing rather than something and I really like this that this flipping right because and it clearly takes us away from a type of substantial esteem of the universe like a lightness or a Spinoza would would have us ground our understanding of the universe in in in substance and it does have a spontaneous affinity with modern quantum physics where substance or discrete particles sort of vanish into wave functions like for example physicist Sean Carroll will say it's not the particle is a wave or a particle of particles or there's not it's not the atoms or a particle or wave or both of the same times that they're waves and that the universe in some sense in at least in some some versions of quantum field theory and standard versions of quantum field theory literally disappears into into nothing or what it calls less than nothing and he has a quite sophisticated understanding of this relationship between something and nothing so so claims the universe is literally nothing that substance out there is is is nothing but then has a perspective on okay well why do things appear and then he grounds his his his view of the world out there as a type of you could say emergent voidism so it's you know you would say like before the evolutionary worldview and before the evolutionary world Roo really develops a sophisticated metaphysics which you could say is still developing and and and many philosophers like Daniel Dennett for example are developing a more sophisticated metaphysics of evolution are basically saying here emergent voidism is okay okay the foundation of reality isn't a substantial thing but things emerge and that's what basically is just is saying think think things things emerge from this void you know people like for example Lawrence Krauss that has said the universe emerge from nothing blah blah blah but my point here with this quote is in if you go through step by step what Rick is saying he's not saying anything that is is radically controversial in you know he's putting in a in a poetic philosophically engaging language things which are commonly being discussed in modern scientific philosophy here he's not stepping to me up into this point in the quote where he's talking about emergent voidism he's not talking about anything that is philosophically even controversial or or or nor you know against any normativity that you would see in scientific philosophy it's it's stuff you would see on your average scientific philosophical bookshelf in in a modern bookstore you know like you just pick up a Lawrence Krauss or pick up a Sean Carroll or pick up but a Daniel Dennett and they'll basically be talking about this type of stuff so up to this point anyway he's not saying anything radical you could say he starts to inject here more radical language when he's talking about cosmic imbalance and cosmic catastrophe that things exist by a mistake now I think you would have to understand Dziedzic on a more sophisticated level to understand why he's introducing this the way he is specifically like with Hegel's philosophy mistakes are a part of the becoming of the absolute and of course Spinoza can't incorporate this for Hegel failure and the mechanics of failure is essential for understanding truth and and and that that the universe is in a sort of cosmic imbalance is I think an important metaphysical point like because there's so much ideology today which would presuppose often unconsciously would presuppose that we're trying to get to some balance or some equilibrium that everything will be all right everything's gonna turn out fine but again jiseok has a darker view of the universe and this is inscribed in as metaphysics there's a cosmic imbalance meaning no not everything's gonna be all right everything is gonna fall to pieces and things are spontaneously in disequilibrium like we are in turbulence we are constantly in a contest a struggle a fight and and and you know I think you can easily when you have a metaphysical view that's informed by evolution I think the mean the most obvious thing to conclude is that yeah the universe is a catastrophe like we live in a universe that operates by natural selection like to me that's obviously a catastrophe like on the level of biology or on the level of culture like it's so it's so it's so like the mechanism the generation of new things the generation of of any progress or any any movement operates by principles of death and operates by principles of of producing variant informational copies of things and having 99.9% of them fail so it's it's yeah that I mean I think that having an existential view that that's catastrophic is totally reasonable I mean that's my spontaneous assumption about the universe anyway and it's difficult to cope with existentially and then ok so then he says ok well because of this how do we counteract this and I guess I guess I'm again spontaneously in agreement with Riddick like yeah we live in a stupid universe we live in a in a crappy universe how do we counteract this it's you know it's it's not a nice place to be you know we're constantly in competition we're constantly fighting for our survival um and he says that we have a name for counteracting this and it's called love and love is actually the the most real love and I mean I don't even I I pre suppose that I don't understand real love and I presuppose that I'm not capable of embodying real love I presuppose that love is the hardest thing for a human to do but I also think that love is the most important thing to do and the idea that love would be the principal mechanism to counteract the stupidity of the universe is I think also something that many religions would have unconsciously embodied in their structure like if you take Christianity as a good example of this is like love as the transcendental principle is at the foundation and that it inscribes and calls for our ability to love ourselves our neighbor as as as our essential tasks and duty on this planet so I don't again I don't see anything ridiculous here either and now the crucial notion where I agree with jiseok here is in regards to the form how he's articulating trying to articulate and this is where I think jiseok here does now up until this point he doesn't say anything necessarily that's against anything you would see in standard scientific philosophy today but then he does start to articulate something which i think is the precise important point of this whole passage is this distinction between this Universal love and a love which is more violent but I would say a love which is more [Music] selection astiz more I don't know how to how to say it but a love which is more exclusionary because what what what what is horrible about I would say naive notions of love is this precisely I love the world Universal love like the people who will say I love all of nature I love the planet I love all human beings and I think this is important actually for the left because you'll always hear leftist saying that they love immigrants or they love all people on the world or they love nature they want to save nature from from from ecological catastrophe and I never buy this I don't think this is serious like I don't think I don't think it's genuine like I think they're inauthentic when they say these things because I don't think that's real love and I might my spontaneous personal view is that what progressive left of ISM suffers from is narcissism like that what they call what many let not all leftist I'm just generalizing here massively but like a lot of I encounter and and also self-critical II you know like I'm not like I'm not I'm spontaneously leftist in my politics and I would say that what leftism often suffers from is this confusing love for the planet and other human beings with a type of narcissistic self projection and wanting to be perceived as a good person and wanting to be perceived as a morally virtuous person but I think that the way love really works is more like what Jake is saying here one I think it's very authentic I agreed to say I hate the world I'm indifferent to the world the world is stupid like that's that the reality is stupid I agree with this also it's just out there whatever it's it's it's this indifferent background and I think this is also what here's your it could be again something that someone who doesn't understand jiseok or doesn't understand Hegel wouldn't get is that nature is just a moment in the process of ideal sublation so once you've processed nature out there and you've gone through that motion it's just out there it's not even it like it's already lost it's just a moment of sublation so but the point is in physics point here and this is where I think he separates himself and makes an important distinction in relationship to modern scientific philosophy is love means I pick out something it's again the structure of imbalance even a small detail of fragile and a freshman I say I love you more than anything else this is the crucial point and I think møller Nielsen here doesn't really get this point because in he articulates some principles here of this statement down at the the SSA and you'll see he doesn't understand this point here of this structure of imbalance being embedded in in love counteracting this structural principle would love as the action it's not I love the whole planet or the earth but you just take out a small fragile person say I love you more than anything else and saying this is real love that's how actually love works like if you take for example like the love of my mother to me my mother doesn't love all children equally no she says this person here is special to me even if he's fragile even if he's ridiculous even if he makes stupid mistakes even if I know every gross detail about his becoming I still love him more than all the other children and this is also how we love in romantic love or sexual love you don't love you don't really love all human beings you pick out one person or a small group of people or your best friends you have a small group of people small fragile individual beauty you say I love you more than all the other people like that's how it was I mean and anything that is why it's evil but again it's tongue-in-cheek you know it's tongue-in-cheek because what if you understand your sixth philosophy deeper what you know is that there's York articulates that good comes out of evil that evil is primordial to good that's the structural imbalance so so yeah I mean so again in the camp I fought for them that this is this is this is a very interesting philosophical passage of course in order to understand it in its full depth you have to understand physics philosophy better than then I think møller Nielsen does although you know here I'll say that møller Nielsen does go into extreme depthless analysis here it's nada I mean and I disagree with a lot of it but so then he levels let me just say here before I go down to the section then he says basically that the reason why the left distance themselves from jiseok is it's safe over here you see racism is one of the charges racism is one of the charges reactionary ISM is another one and repetition and academic malpractice so I'm again I'm gonna focus more on ontology and jiseok's ontology and philosophical work towards the end of this article cuz that's my expertise and honestly I don't like really care as much about these topics I will but I am gonna say my quick version on each of these things because my view is that jiseok is so necessary for the left because precisely because he goes against like what I see anyway as the problem with the left which is there political correctness which is their emphasis on race and gender so much and not really getting at to the core I think we need to we need to better understand what race and gender are instead of I really believe that as soon as we start from the preset position of moralizing race and gender before actually understanding it it gets in the way of really understanding what race and gender are that's that's that's my view but it's not gonna be the focus of this video um but he will say by only I'll say about his critique of jiseok honestly on on the on the topic of racism is that the things he pulls out as racist and calls racist is another example of the problem of the left today because the things he's the things he's critiquing jiseok for mostly in in genetics book against the double black male in my view aren't racist it's if anything you could say he's xenophobic like maybe he's he's maybe he's like he specifically against Islam his critique is basically saying that jiseok generalizes Islam as against free speech and women's rights so he's saying basically that Islam and Islamic culture has something inherent to it which is incompatible or contradictory with Western notions of free speech and Western notions of women's rights and then he's calling that race but that's not racism like that's my thing with with a lot of modern leftist they they jump so quickly to calling things racist which aren't racist and well that's my view anyway and and maybe maybe you disagree with that and if you disagree I'd like to hear from you I mean I'm open to changing my mind about those things but that but it's basically saying you know that that that here there's a dynamic at work now I would probably phrase this relationship between Islam and the West a little differently but I do think that Islam does have at least some you can't deny that there are some variants of Islam some very vocal and some very I would say fundamental variants of Islam which have issues with free speech and which have issues with women's rights which you would see as pinnacles or principles of enlightenment Western civilization and and many of the civil rights movements that that that define the 20th century including first and second and now third wave feminism like and and and for me that's something like I would love to see a larger conversation about is how how can how can you both support third wave feminism and not be very critical of the way women can be treated or are treated on mass within certain Islamic cultures I just don't understand that so that's that's the the racism the racism but which is my main thing about what he says about jiseok on racism is is that it's really not racism and you know if anything he says some culturally insensitive things and says that there's a conflict between Western values and Islamic values which I think you know has some truth to it but I'm not gonna die on that on that hill I'm not gonna die on that hill I don't I don't care enough about that so in regards to reactionary ISM again these main things I'm not - I mostly care about jiseok's ontology but in regards to reactionary ism my stance on this so what what he says basically is that oh he supports he supports reactionary right-wing politics like he supports Donald Trump he's inconsistent also with not supporting marine lepen like and I agree with that actually like I think if jiseok supported Trump he should also supported lepen saying like okay well if the right if like the Inc like what-what Dziedzic saying here and I and I see the logic of what you're saying I think there's some some truth to it as well which is if if you support an extreme right-wing political figure that this would be a motivational drive to really think a new left to counteract that figure and that if we voted in the the the establishment candidate left-wing figure like a Hillary Clinton or a macro who's centrist really they're both centrist really in my view then that wouldn't be it would basically be a continuation of the status quo and that basically you create a right-wing chaos and that from this right-wing chaos potentially there could be a reinvention of the left and I see the logic there because like to me the left needs to rethink from first principles and they have to be willing to say okay we're like the very the very principles of our political philosophy are wrong and the very principles of our political philosophy need to be rethought and I think on the on the levels of identity personally the way the left mobilizes identity and talks about identity I think is part of the problem that's my view but and then so he's saying jiseok is reactionary but I think Jake is just dialectical like if like and I think that the the leftists who don't like jiseok's dialectics here of understanding the relationship between the outright and the progressive left are just being in my view being ideological you know like they're they're not really they're not really thinking through like and and it's not it's not that if you disagree with jiseok you're wrong or that you should agree with jiseok that oh he's that that like his dialectical analysis was so precise you can't disagree with it I don't not saying that either it's just saying like it's not grounds for saying leftist political organization should have nothing to do with because he's articulating a dialectic of the relationship between left and right saying that all right chaos could lead to an emergent new left from new principles I think that's totally reasonable so that's that's what I have to say with that and then repetition an academic malpractice so he basically says that just excites a lot of the same authors topics and he says he has lacks personal standards for academic practice that he cites Wikipedia or talks about things where he has low expertise or he recycles paragraphs like so he self plagiarizes so let's let's take that by one by one maybe so in terms of citing the same authors or topics in books like and here I'm gonna show here that he has a chart of the persons and topics that jiseok will reference a lot so one like you could technically do this with any philosopher like if I took like sex let's say I took every book by Daniel Dennett well let's say I took every book by Steven Pinker or say I took every book by whoever your favorite for law modern philosophers well George like Jordan Peterson for anyone really every author has a few figures or important influential people that structure they're thinking like like could I not take Daniel Dennett and say he's always referencing Charles Darwin like he really likes Charles Darwin or he really likes Richard Dawkins like he the number of times he says Darwin the number of times he says doc it's the number of times he says you know whatever other evolutionary that you know Huxley or you know whatever great evolutionary thinker you know Dennett will reference or or whatever or you know first for Pinker or for Pinker it might be you know whatever great linguists that Pinker's referencing over and over and over again you know there's gonna be a distribution and there's gonna every philosopher is gonna have the people that influence them more than others like for example if it was Peterson how many times does he referenced Jung how many times does he reference Nietzsche you know for example you know like you know so so saying that excites Hagel and Lacan and badou and Freud and Marx is like yeah you're understanding the structure of logic of jiseok's philosophy so in order to understand jiseok you have to understand Hegel you have to understand Lacan you have to understand by do you have to understand Freud yeah and if you don't so maybe you haven't read Hegel and Lacan um but doing Freud in marks or you're not aware of them deep enough to make a sophisticated academic comment on them or you know you or you're just too too lazy or to even bother to understand like oh I've got to read phenomenology of spirit now or I've got to read the ik Ritz or I've got to read you know theory of a subject you know in order to understand what the hell Jake is getting at you know but that's you know but and this isn't my central problem with this article is that people like what he's doing in my view and this is not a personal attack on him but it's just a structural that I'm I've you on what this the problem is here is that people read someone they don't understand and then they assume that the lack is in them as opposed to in yourself and I think that's again the problem with the left the left is always the modern left it's always assuming the lack is somewhere out there instead if it's in them it's you got to look closer at yourself like the lack is in you you know it's far more likely that the lock is in you than the lock is out there so anyway I just don't think this is the you can criticize you for having certain philosophers or having certain topics which but that doesn't G legitimate you as a theorist it just means you have a particular slant like for example my PhD supervisor will quote Ashby you know he'll quote Ashby he'll quote Bates and he'll quote you know there's a certain or for example a Herbert Simon right so like you know like that would be his triad right like you know I like Ross Ashby Norbert Wiener Herbert Simon Gregory Bates and these are the people I'm gonna reference most it's people I know most about you know I'm interested in cybernetics so I'm constantly talking about cybernetics and the cons talking about evolutionary theory it's not a critique against you as a as a theorist it just means that you have a certain particular theoretical perspective and that he has topics which will come up often like like yeah jiseok is a social theorist of capitalism and communism like one of the things he focuses on the most is the the conflict the divide between capitalism and communism and and thinking tension and antagonism and thinking that the relationship between our psyches and and and political economy that's one of the foundations of his philosophical work it's not a critique against him to be constantly thinking about those things like it's not a support like you know he like this author is particularly concerned that jiseok brings up sex a lot you know and and I think my view is that I'm particularly concerned about how academics don't talk about sex or don't take sex seriously as a topic I it's one of the things I appreciate the most about jiseok is that he talks about sex and sexuality and situation in a way that's incredibly original that's incredibly unique the way he intersects and of course that's derived that's an of course that's derived from Lacan because if you read Hegel there's no sex in Hegel you know where is their sex their sex and Lacan and so you have to read Lacan you have to and that's obviously comes from Freud because the Freud is a theory of the libido so if you don't understand those things and you don't understand what you did explain you're getting the lacks in in in in the author here in my opinion not in not in Zurich then he cites Wikipedia's okay like yes sometimes York has cited Wikipedia but I mean I've gone through less than nothing and I've gone through absolute recoil in insane detail and jiseok is always referencing the most cited literature on the topics he's talking about like he's citing you know he's citing can't directly or he's citing Heidegger directly or he's citing you know if he's talking about cognitive science he's he's citing Daniel Dennett directly or he's citing douglas hofstadter directly like like you know has he cited Wikipedia are there a few things in his enormous edifice of writing where you could say you know maybe you shouldn't have cited that that way yeah but okay you know it's certainly not grounds for saying the whole left should disconnect from Ridgid and then in regards self self plagiarism and recycling paragraphs I've seen that too it's not you know I personally don't care it's just something I don't take too seriously I guess see self plagiarizes yeah so here's he gives the examples here of all the times it's been self pleasure I mean I mean one thing I'll say is I'm impressed by the amount of research here like that and and and the attention to detail like he's he's certainly taken a lot of time with this and and I guess I just don't I mean I guess it's something where I would say it's not grounds for left distancing himself from jook but it's something like I would say there are some books that I just think are lower level jiseok like like jiseok will pop publish a lot of popular stuff that I do that I personally don't take too seriously and like sometimes probably he's just publishing things so quickly that he could have taken more time with it with them you know but they're not his major serious works so I mean I don't really care so here I'm not gonna again I'm not gonna die on that on that hill yeah I'm just not gonna die on that hill see charlatans ISM see what he says about Charlotte isn't all I wrote down in my notes when I was going to the charlatan ISM section was that again I couldn't stop laughing when I was when I was in the cafe reading it because the main thing I was laughing is is because in some sense I'm sympathetic with this this guy was møller Nielsen and I would like to have a conversation with him more than anything else like cuz again when I was reading it he's just he's here's a selection he's a select he just picks out selections of sentences from Jude Rick he's just like but this has nothing to do with the main thesis of the book and what is he talking about it I was just like laughing because it's like III can't put my finger on it but it's almost like like the meme of jiseok or the the comedic element of jiseok is being missed or or you know it's kind of like there's just something so comical so comical about it but yeah I mean when when you pull out these sentences one on one just out of like pulling out these random jiseok's and businesses and just reading them out of context it's like there is just hilarious I just couldn't stop laughing who then really deserves the Nobel Prize or the first one obvious Lacanian reading of law Ellen would be to see this plot as yet another variation on the theme of there is no sexual relationship which I agree it's just funny okay but then I come down to like less than nothing so this is like actually my area of expertise so like and I think this is like the funniest not the funniest actually the funniest was the Charlotte ISM thing I don't care about that but coming down to less than nothing because as you know I'm doing a video series on less than nothing and I'm one of my one of my main philosophical focuses is to try to understand both less than nothing and absolute recoil for as as as their modern philosophical moment what do these books mean in their at the modern philosophical moment I think it's extremely important so I can actually my attempt here is not to you know like møller Nielsen here just seems confused and he just doesn't understand these works and again like my problem is because he doesn't understand these works and then he's assuming therefore jerk must be a which he actually concludes towards the end of this article he says well because I don't understand these things it must be a it's just like no it's like no was like that's never the that's like as an intellectual that's never the root I I would ever go like if I read something and I don't understand it I I would never assume the problem is in in in in the thing I don't understand like if I understand something and I need to disagree with it then I would start critiquing it but if I read something I don't understand it well I say well I would go to try to go to someone who actually understands it that's to me the logical and then if you then if then if you go to someone who understands it and then you then you can actually critique it well then yeah well then you understood it and you can you can critique it them so that makes sense so again so that the thesis of less than nothing here he's so he brings this statement up from less than nothing and he doesn't he doesn't understand it so less than nothing endeavours to draw all the ontological consequences of this ever see muah they hmm here is the formula at its most elementary moving as the striving to reach the void namely things moved there are something instead of nothing not because reality is an excess in comparison with mere nothing but because reality is less than nothing so again he's flipping he's what he's trying to do here is flipping the standard modernist metaphysical question of why is there something rather than nothing and instead he's saying why is there nothing rather than something and he's saying this is an important question and his main what he's saying here what he says movement is striving to reach the void you can think about this as in any elementary activity that human beings do so whenever we try it whenever like for example whenever we eat or whenever we're looking for a sexual partner or whenever were whenever we're looking for a job or were or were bored and we're looking for something to do on the internet for example you could phrase this as we're trying to fill a void like there's something lacking there's something missing this is actually at this is this is a very simple but very important existential point and again in modern in modern scientific philosophy this is coming up as an important point so for example what I'll always reference is Terence Deakins in complete nature I would definitely recommend for this guy to read Terence didn't complete nature might Juke might make more sense after reading that book because what Deakin does is basically ground he says what's missing in science is that science doesn't understand absence and that's what it is just basically saying here science doesn't understand nothing or for and and and you know well philosophy and you you can ground jiseok's work in a long trajectory which is explicitly referencing like Hegel like Heidegger where they problematize nothingness like Hegel's dialectic is based on that so he's saying movement is to try to fill a void basically movement is striving to reach the void and that's also why he goes to Freud's death Drive for example and saying that all of this movement to fill the void always fales so so this is where he would situate his ultimately his critique of Hegel with sublation and idealization so and and and all of all of the Jaques very precise views on desire and what makes us happy and what makes us not unhappy all can be situated here so for example our failure to properly sub late or idealize this void is not recognizing that what we what we really want is the void itself we so it's it's it's just a perspectival shift on nothing or it's a perspective shift on absence you know like you don't want the thing you think you want like it could be food it could be a sexual partner could be a job it could be whatever that thing you're thinking will fill the void will is not gonna make you happy it's this it's a spurious infinity it's an endless endless search for the for the lacking object to use the Lacanian terminology so then he says the consequence there is something because reality is less than nothing so now this is this understanding this is so important to understand the rest of jiseok's most of this to get to philosophical work because what he's setting up is a precise dialectical triad between something nothing and less than nothing and less than nothing is a very difficult concept to understand but it's also yeah it's very sophisticated philosophy so you have to spend a lot of time thinking about it now my understanding of less than nothing is that it's kind of like images and fiction images in fiction are less than nothing if you think about images in fiction why are they less than nothing well images in fiction and not something you know and in some sense they're more than something like if you think about for example spider-man well spider-man isn't something and it's not nothing you know spider-man doesn't exist in my material reality there's not actual person spider-man who can climb up on the walls and and and and and and shoot webbing out of his wrists has spidey-sense spider-man doesn't exist spider-man's a fiction but spider-man's in some sense in excess of something so spider-man is a filler of the void here this is why spider-man's less than nothing so and less than nothing this filling of the void is mediating our reality like you can't his point is you can't take this away like the fact that reality is is is filled with fictions and images is you can't scrape it away it's it's and it's getting the very very sophisticated philosophy when you try to understand this like like and so his basic point is that religions science capitalism all of these things are less than nothing their images mediating the void there's you could say there's subtractions of the void or fillers of the void but what they're really doing and this is an important philosophical point is that they're exploiting or harnessing negativity depending on your particular view like if you hate capitalism you would say they're exploiting negativity if you like capitalism you say there are harnessing negativity they're using it but he's saying that that that that the reason why these exist is because reality has to conceal its emptiness that reality isn't doesn't have a full substance like reality basically like it's like I always give the example personally of like the difference between being a child like say five years old a child on Christmas morning you know you feel like there's a full substance there like Santa Claus a magical man goes around all breaks all space-time coordinates and has a total abundance of gifts to brings you and it's just like complete joy and ecstasy of like this moment and then you realize actually Santa Claus doesn't exist and there you just feel the emptiness of reality like shitty reality right um but then what the thing is is that there's this negation of negation so Hegelian philosophical tool and engagement which is you can't get rid of fiction or fantasy you can't say oh well Santa Claus doesn't exist so we shouldn't like we shouldn't have a Christmas tree and we shouldn't have presents and we shouldn't celebrate this with family and show love to each other noé they're necessary appearances its appearance qua appearance so you need fiction it reality needs to be supplemented by fiction that's his that's his point so it's so then he's as confused I certainly was well I hope you're not as confused anymore i I think I described that pretty pretty clearly so let me ask some some he always always asking these rhetorical questions which I just want to just ridiculous in my view so like so he says how can something exist and yet simultaneously nothing exists and so my answer would be something is mediated by nothing with less than nothing it's a dialectical triad that's his philosophical system I'll repeat something is mediated by nothing with less than nothing and again these are fundamental philosophical questions that many philosophers have tried to approach and this is just a unique approach to them I said he says who is supplementing reality by fiction if less than nothing exists so here this so his question here is so poorly structured here so he's saying who is supplementing reality by fiction if less than nothing exists that there is first and this is a ship game principle there is no who there no agent is supplementing reality by fiction so that's the first principle and this is the principle is there is no big other there is no other who is supplementing reality by fiction like God or something like that there is no who so the question is fundamentally wrong and then saying and fiction is less than nothing so he says if less than nothing exists is that no fiction is less than nothing so the question is really poorly worded and structured and he says are novels being written by things that don't exist so I have here answer for him novels are being written by some things humans in relation to nothing the void of their own recognition desires etc mediated by less than nothing images so again it's a dialectical triad you have to and if you're not willing to go into dialectical logic you're not going to understand it so I can't help I can't help you if you're not willing to go into dialectical logic you're just it's it would be it would be the equivalent of like if I was a quantum physicist and I was trying to explain to someone wave particle duality and someone was just like a particle list and saying I'm not willing to go into this quantum logic is like I can't help you I can't help you so if again if you're not willing to go into the dialectical logic I can't help you so again novels are being written by something humans in relation to nothing the void of their own recognition or desires and mediated by less than nothing images like whenever you write anything that's an image being translated into a symbolic medium it's again and you could understand that with the Lacanian try out of the symbolic imaginary and real and they says does jiseok exist no JIP does not exist so then now he goes on here and says what I think is important yeah ok so now moving on he says he says he explicitly says I don't understand what dialectical materialism is so here's the thing like you're writing this article critiquing jiseok and jake is an expert in dialectical materialism but you don't understand what dialectical materialism is so again you have to it's like you have to go like you have to take a class man it's like you like you don't understand what you're critiquing so it's very I mean like you were like for example later in the article he says that you jerk messes up his interpretation of quantum physics with with the Copenhagen interpretation um and he's frustrated about this he's saying jiseok is going outside of his topic he doesn't understand quantum physics he's going way outside of his topic and he's critiquing jiseok for this but that's so paradoxical because he's doing that like he's not a dialectical materialist and he's critiquing one of the most prestigious and knowledgeable dialectical materialists it's like is there no cognitive dissonance here like there I just I I'm not again it's not a personal attack on him it's more personal frustration with this type of arrogance it's like it's mind-boggling arrogance so and now he brings up relevant quotes about dialectical materialism I could go eat I could go through each of these quotes one by one and give you sophisticated responses because I've spent so much time thinking about this but it may be I frigging will but here like the first quote EEP and he's so critically this is so in my view mindlessly critical of these things but like he pulls the first quote he references is actually a direct reference to Parmenides it's like like you're so arrogant you're critiquing Parmenides and you don't even know what part I DS is saying I've got to pull up all my strength I've got him I've got a muster a new strength here to go into this you know like his madness so maybe I will go into this one by one so the minimal definition of dialectical materialism if there is no one just multiplicities and multiplicities then the ultimate reality is the void itself all determinate things are and are not so let me break this down what does this mean first dialectical materialism operates on the subtraction of the one or monism what this means is is that dialectical materialism does assume God or one reality that makes sense that's one of the fundamental principles but it's not just it's not like again in jiseok's language it's not like a Dawkins atheism where there's no God it's a subtraction of the absolute so God is less than nothing basically it's a subtraction of the one monism the second principle dielectric assumes from again from this passage here that he's quoting on Parmenides dialectical materials assumes there's just a multiplicity of multiplicity relations between things and this is actually consistent with another passage that he brings up in absolute recoil with you're you're confused about what's this guy's confused about so dialectical materialism there is just a multiplicity of multiplicity of relations between things what that means is okay there's no god there's no absolute reality there's just material relations and it goes into before these material relations are ideal that's the paradox that's the paradox these ideal relations are just material they're formal relations [Music] he says dialectal material and then dialectical materialism cludes that the ultimate reality is the void or you could say the ultimate reality is death so there's no absolute heaven or God or whatever Santa Claus there's just material ideal material relations and multiplicity of multiplicities that appear on the subtraction of the one and the ultimate reality is just death but this death here is internal to life and is being mediated by life and that's why says dialectical material and suggests that all things are and are not so you can again think about this I think in relationship if I'm going to turn this into a scientific philosophy you can think about this in relationship to either classical computation or quantum computation with ones and zeroes binary operators of 1 and 0 all things are and are not so you could say they're 1 and 0 or 1 or you say either either 1 and either either one or zero in the classical computation or in quantified as you say both one and zero um and why because we're we are we are relations material entities some things in a materially relating and the only ultimate reality is death void we're mediating our death so like for example absolute negativity and Hegel or being towards death in Heidegger and that's internal to life and that's why again places so much emphasis on death drive so that's that quote says all something so in this passage on Buddhism all something's exist from a subjective perspective all illusion so that means is all some things are mediated by void mediated by the void by images that's saying earlier with the dialectical triad all something's exist from subjective perspective illusions so there is no there is no subject which has an objective view on everything there is no one all there is no one all that's why you means that's another again and later says makes a critique about objective reality all of these require like a philosophic but this guy needs to take a philosophy course basically I don't know maybe he isn't I don't know I I actually don't know anything about his other than he's a philosopher of physics that's the only thing I know about him I tried to look up his papers I couldn't find any of his papers online but it's like all of these are very sophisticated philosophical statements he's going into so I mean it's like like I would want to sit down with him one by one and explained these to them or like if I had the time but it's like or just watch my lectures I guess it's like I try to explain all these things it's like but yeah but it's just like he goes into all the all these different things like I actually written down answers for all of these these these quotes that he has he has an issue with maybe I'll just go into what what what his conclusions are so he I almost don't have that I don't have the patience almost but there's just so many so many nuances again like I'd say the major critique I have here is just that is that he's not an expert in dialectical materialism and he's critiquing the leading dialect or one of the leading dialectical materialists on the planet it's just that but I did okay so if I do break I have broken down a response to his his almost his arrogant conclusions about what reject philosophy is so he makes fun of Judaic saying oh how can nothing exist and nothing does not exist well we've already went through that noting things both exist and don't exist it's a mediation of life and death the self repelling gap exists that is the self repelling gap would be the movement of this the the the the the self mediated by the void filling a lack constantly trying to fill a lack that's the self repelling gap which is a precise cognitive mechanisms weren't so important to understand that and then objective reality does not exist its objective reality is another form of less than nothing which is a useful historical fictional construct but it's useful it's useful but it's just not that it's just not like the a naive objective reality like a naive a naive scientific like a scientist who doesn't understand metaphysics or a scientist who doesn't understand ontology like basically saying then nothing is so my response to that is again nothing is being mediated by less than enough by the less than nothing of something's and it is a dialectical triad and it is a complex geometry of logic that's that's then he goes into he's any critiques absolute recoil let me just go into okay and he's very kind like this guy seems to suggest that that Thomas Miller seemed as it suggests that there's no consistency but there's again in this extreme cuz it just it requires an expertise and knowledge like any and and get on this whole article so ridiculous he's basing he's saying the left should disconnect and this is this is low-level philosophy because he doesn't understand it it's absurd so his dialectical materialism transposes back into nature not subjectivity as such but the gap that separates subjectivity from objective reality precisely so what he's saying is is that the focus should be on the way in which the subject is separated from objective reality subtraction of the negative one not this naive relationship between the subject and objective reality it's the very gap that we should be focused on the lack we try to fill in our self which is and that's my critique of this author that this author is projecting the gap so here I'll use jiseok's own philosophy against this guy saying like what dialectical material and does his transpose back into nature so in wrote me in relation to this guy not subjectivity as such but the very gap that separates subjectivity from objective reality so my thing is that this guy is not seeing his own gap he's not seeing that like his own gap is that he doesn't understand dialectical materialism and he's critique and then he's not reflective on this gap but that the proper response should be well maybe I should learn something about dialectical materialism before I write an entire article on current affairs about how the greatest dialectical materialist is a fraud and a charlatan and he's racist by the way it's like dude madness it's madness so for dialectical materialism the subject is I'll go through the shorter ones because I have time for that for dialectical materialism the subject is prior to the processes rejected ization the process fills and the void the empty form that is the pure subject so the pure subject has no content the pure subject is the absence itself it doesn't fill itself up with anything so food or sex or whatever it is your articles all of that's all ego like this article you've written is your ego that you've you filled up the emptiness of yourself with this symbolic structure so it's not the pure form of yourself this is this is this is the process of subjective ization which has done this blah blah blah so dialectical material and it just the original multiplicity of being for dialect or materialism one has to think to prior to multiplicity that's a important dialectical point again because in modern and accident and then again this is an important thing for the for modern leftist to think because most and again I was my argument is leftist have to think their philosophy from the philosophical ground up and I think one of the things that modern leftist do oftentimes is they think multiplicity prior to two so they always try to deconstruct binary opposition's but they just don't understand binary opposition's they don't understand the way bind because binary opposition's are operating in a very subtle complex asymmetrical form it takes but you have to think this too before you think the multiplicity so for take for example in regards to capitalism class antagonism or take for example in regards to sexual division or sexual sexual division between masculine and feminine you have to think the two before you think the multiplicity so it's not just this original multiplicity of being and that's always what progressive leftist will do they'll try to go back to the original multiplicity of being but that's imaginary it's you have to think the two first you have to think the antagonism within the process the position of dialectal material is there's no peace even in the void the reason there's no peace even in the void is because it's not just a simple nothing it's it's it's it's a nothing filled with less than nothing it's like the quantum void it's not it's like the difference between new Tony and void and quantum void Newtonian void is just like like a like an abstract nothingness and then in the quantum void you cannot think this anymore so again so I'm gonna end just by what he's saying here about physics intellectual honesty so and I just transpose it back into his own intellectual honesty here like because if this guy was being intellectually honest he would say you know what guys I just I don't understand why jiseok is popular like he usually honest you just say I don't and he has some honest statements in this article but he's saying what would be honest would be in saying look I don't understand jinuk I don't understand why he's so popular I have some some some some of my own speculations about why he's popular but why why people like him but I'm not sure and if I'm honest and if I if I if I look at the the the the theorist I would have to read in order to understand jiseok Hegel Lacan Freud Marx I don't really understand these people either and I don't have the time to read them and I don't know what dialectical materialism is like it would just be it would it would be transposing the game it would be just him looking at his own gap basically but of course he doesn't do that he basically says Jake isn't really that smart and it's like dude come on and then he of course he has to i think he's doing fake posturing with the quantum physics thing because of course in modern standard scientific philosophy like understanding quantum physics is like the the like you're smart if you understand modern quantum physics and you're dumb if you don't so he says jiseok isn't really smart because apparently according to this guy doesn't really understand quantum physics I don't have time to go into the the article the the chapters has written about quantum physics but basically saying that jiseok gives a unpopular version of the Copenhagen interpretation that he goes wildly off-topic talking about sexual about Hamlet talking about obscure philosophy of rape as year how does thought think the death of thought itself it's like you know it's just and then ultimately says that jiseok is nothing different than a postmodern essay generator so I mean this video has probably been really long but I really feel like I needed to get this off my chest because this article is you know I mean I'm happy it was written just because it gave me a chance to sort of see how a certain academic cognitive predisposition would encounters you can be frustrated by him but the main thesis of the the article that jiseok is a charlatan and the left should abandon him and jiseok is racist or his reaction like I would say like one the evidence you marshaled that jiseok is racist is like there's nothing there there's no substance there there's nothing about race specifically that jiseok is here you have nothing it's again one of the most ridiculous dimensions of the modern left where they'll just they'll call anyone racist like if there's anything a little culturally insensitive you're racist like and again it's all within the intersectional hierarchy dynamics that this operates which i think is the real theology here and then calling physic reactionary when he's just in my view he's just dialectical he's actually taking the time to dialect to size the left and right which is nothing wrong with that and he says Jake is an academic charlatan because of you know because he uses his he references Hagel and Lacan a lot and because he has cited Wikipedia a few times and because he's he's you he's recycled some of his own Pera grass is like but if anyone here is the academic charlatan it to this guy because he doesn't even understand and again I don't want to go to it's not a it's not a personal it's I would never I don't want to hear it's not a personal attack on him because it's like cuz I don't know his work like I would have to read his work and I I'd be interested in reading his work but I don't I can't find his work but I would be interested in reading his work but what I'm saying is about him being him being an academic so he's he doesn't understand this topic like the best thing to do would be to go to someone who's an expert in this topic and to learn about it from them so that's the end of the video I said I needed to comment on this and I hope this was useful as a response to this current affairs article thanks for watching if you're still with me

Channel: Cadell Last

Views: 4,822

Rating: 4.7551022 out of 5

Keywords: zizek 2019, slavoj zizek 2019, zizek, slavoj zizek, zizek ideology, zizek love, slavoj zizek ideology, slavoj zizek postmodernism, slavoj zizek marxism, slavoj zizek jordan peterson, zizek critical theory, zizek criticism, philosophy lecture, philosophy of science, philosophy crash course

Id: oDO-jMaFpY8

Length: 71min 10sec (4270 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 20 2019