Tag: Zizek

The New Philosophy

The Moment of Decisive Significance took more than 4 years to write and publish, and it still needs edits. The Philosophical Hack the first and second parts took a little less time, partly because of how Nathaniel approached it.  Actually, The Philosophical Hack is not yet complete, so all and all, for all 6 parts, will probably take even longer than 4 years — and being that Nathaniel undertakes other projects, the last 4 parts will probably come out perhaps in 2030. 🙂

This is true philosophy to me.  Yes, philosophy can be understood as a commodity, a product, a piece of consumer good, but that is not what I think good philosophy does and is in truth.  In reality maybe it appears as something different…

Philosophy takes time, it is out of time, and it is thus timeless. 

It arises in time and out of time, but through arising in this manner, it is essentially of two ontological natures.

One of the points the Kierkegaard makes in his book “Fear and Trembling” is that Abraham had a faith that is beyond him; Kierkegaard says that he could never make the move of Abraham and, basically, this is why a person is in despair, sinful, as he says, in despair to will to be oneself.  Kierkegaard thus uses the literary figure of the Biblical Abraham to show the irony involved of Being a Knight of Faith.

His point is that when one is willing to be oneself never does she have the faith of Abraham, and thus, for those who might be so inclined (but not everyone), the best someone who is willing can do is live as a knight of infinite resignation. His point is so long as one is willing, that is, is open to the possibility of being oneself, as opposed to actually being oneself, then that person lives in despair.

Indeed this is the modern dilemma of the individual.

Time Spiral

 

My point is that so long as one is in time, they have faith in themselves and are working towards an end which is always ethically compromised: They have faith (hope) that the world holds a place for them to Be, but they never are quite sure how they are supposed to be (how am I proposed in context is the quandary of modern mental health).  The irony, though, is that one must indeed live in time and be ethical (in the sense of Being involved with ethics), but that that this is not all that one is and does.  One does not live in a condition where she must always choose upon ethics.  This is the point that Kierkegaard makes of Abraham.

Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical? 

We find the answer through his books, and the answer is yes.  The reason for this is that Abraham’s activity was not for his time, and yet in that he was indeed there, a human being doing actions, his actions were not ethical. Indeed, the point that Kierkegaard makes is that the ethics of Abraham were vested in God, and that God thus makes the world ethical by virtue of the absurdity that is not acting in time: Abraham has faith by virtue of the absurd.

Ironically, Slavoj Zizek, a contemporary social critic and philosopher, makes the same point when he says that the subject always acts too late, that by the very ontological nature of the modern subject of ideology, action is always reactionary.  Similarly Alain Badiou says the best political move is to not act politically, to abstain from politics. The revolutionary move is thus to move out of time, and to bring Kierkegaard back in, to act by virtue of the absurd such that what is ethical arises out of the act, as opposed to the ontological act Being involved with an attempt to act ethically.

The condition which evidences this ontological contradiction is what Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as well, call angst, which was first translated into English, by Walter Lawrie, I think, as dread, but then later authors (Hong and Hong, May) call anxiety.  The philosopher who arises out of time to act finds herself in a state of anxiety because she still appears on the scene within the ethical universe, albeit, one that is being manifested by the absurd situation of her being out of time. This is particularly salient in our 21st century because we find that this is a condition of knowledge, and not a condition of every human being who thinks thoughts.

  • The question that I have been grappling with is how does one who is so out of time do the work of art (or of love, Heidegger, Kierkegaard) which is motivated through the state of anxiety? (Also see Harman’s Dante’s Broken Hammer.)
  • How does one arise in time out of time?

My next project will thus be to produce a work of philosophy which covers the whole breadth of philosophical knowledge while at once mentioning neither a known philosopher or author, nor conceptual philosophical tropes, that is, terms which have assumed (privileged) dense philosophical definition.

That is what I am going to attempt, anyways.  🙂

Good luck!

 

The Simplicity of Substance and the Lengthy Post

I have been re-approaching philosophical ideas that have long held a deep significance for me. Because my life has been basically informed by an incessant and consistent questioning of what I am coming up on, I am finding that I am merely continuing to be what I am, which is, for a term, in motion.

I think this last round of doubting comes about because I am realizing that I am more concerned with actual people than I am with my ability to think great thoughts.

Now, what is strange about this is I am intensely antisocial in general while at the same time at ease with being social in a certain context or a certain framework. I generally hate people (groups) but I love and am very concerned with people (individuals). 🌏

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This is very Zizekian, from the Zizekian standpoint of media/ideological primacy:

“I do not love the world….I pick and choose who and what I love.”

So far as “the world” might be an ideological fantasy established through magical symbols, Zizek, the critical theorist/media critic-turn-philosopher states unequivocally that “love is evil.”

What he means by this is that we are persuaded by an existential anxiety which pervades the maintenance of the fantasy– that is, due to our investment in the truth-value of the fantasy (the value is gained because it prevents us from having to encounter that which we are most of afraid of: the dissolution of the fantasy, or death) — to love the world, to extend an ideological hand out into the grandiose narcissist world because the idealism inherent of the fantasy is we are ‘in this together’, so to speak, individually yet identically.

The modern individual is ethically bound to, at least, trying to love the world. But in the whole, he doesn’t have a clue how to actually love his sisters and brothers around him. The imaginary world establishes intuitive subjective barriers which serve to maintain the ideological modern identity at all costs against his neighbors, while extending out ideals to the “universe” or “the world” where we all must try to get along.

So; yet in truth he denies what is really occurring; which is, we are all being selfish and choosing certain universal things and people to love, and not really loving the world.

It is this tension of modern subjectivity we deny through the institutionally normalized and sanctioned “state of” anxiety which then in relief shows our ultimately ‘sinful’ nature: “In despair to will to be oneself” (as Kierkegaard puts it) is the condition of the modern man concept of love which avoids its true nature: hence, it is evil because it is an ideologically sanctioned “global” love that misses the intimacy that we generally misconstrue in the notion of agape, or man’s love for God. Since, God in this modern sense, is indeed a “usurper” god which takes the place of brotherly love to which agape would otherwise return to reflect in God itself, that is, in the world.

Zizek is, of course, referring to the modern ideal of love by which humanity defers itself and by which humanity is regulated to its conceptual ability.

Beyond the ideological love, by reflection, any love of a transcendent world is a narcissism, a pathological version of the human being. While within the fantasy, the narcissism is justified through the fantasy erected by trauma and told or narrated as “just human” , the “all too human” who takes on little responsibility for his actions, while erecting layers of intellectual and ideological facades in grandiose defense of them. Hence, the love that is evil is indeed, on one hand, a carnal love based in the libidinal control of the ego which then moves to impose or identify itself with the super-ego material norms: the subjective ideological identity.

Yet on the other, love is evil from the transcendent standpoint because the love I would have for the world that is my sisters and brothers, that is, not put off to a mere grand idea, is an evil and absurd activity.

So ironically, items that I pick and choose to love are in or of the reality that I cannot but be involved with– this is an evil manner of doing things. Hence, I do not love the world from Zizek’s standpoint of an ideological (media critique) analysis.

But indeed. I should not love the world in this way, so I don’t. Instead, I pick and choose to thus remain consistent and cohered to that which is the fantastic manner by which I must apprehend the ideological world.

The true love I profess is not modern, thus from the modern ideological standpoint, it is evil.

I won’t go on.

(Please don’t) 👨🏽‍🚀

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Use the corona-lockdown to see yourself in the world

HERE reposted : actually wanted to post this in 7 weeks, but because I see the population getting nervous and impatient amongst lockdowns and because it is my …

Use the corona-lockdown to change your life forever within 6 weeks

——————The re-post here starts out good; I like the introduction. The “solution”in the meditation practice, on the other hand, is up to the reader.

“Take what you need and leave the rest.”

Personally, I am not in a place Where I am able to understand and apply such practices as framed in a way such as this re-post does.

There is no argument that can be made to me, and I feel if we are honest with ourselves then there is no argument that needs to be made to me because If such practices were valuable and vital to my existence and being then they would make sense to me and I would practice them.

Ok.

However;

The beginning of that repost talks about how so few people see that the world is their own reflection. And then it gives a meditation that can help people to see the truth of the situation, or be free or whatever.

For me, it just reminded me of the philosopher/psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

In particular, if I am not completely misinterpreting his ideas, yet accompanying them with the sensible extrapolations of time:

The modern world of individual identity is based in the state of alienation. Alienation can be said to be brought about through an identification with the image. In Lacan’s idea, The child sees its reflection in the mirror and identifies with the reflection. It is called “the mirror stage”. The modern world, the modern social world, can be said to be caught in the mirror stage.

Identifying one’s Self with the image, is itself the ontological state of alienation. This, in a way, disembodied Self thus looks back into the Real world with anxiety, or angst, for it is unable to overcome the trauma which has occurred in the formation of ego around the image as it views its originating body. The non-Self (image) thus erects a fantasy to help relieve the trauma. It there by does not see its actual Being in the “non-image” but indeed sees a world that is not itself, which is in Lacan’s terms, the imagined world, ie the (modern) fantasy.

Symbols thereby become a sort of fetishized substance, a magical device, which are understood by the alienated identity to be able to bring the world into communion or coordination with its non-Self. This situation develops as a Marxist dialectic called ideology, but is what Lacan calls a “mistake” or “misunderstanding” of, what I call, the Truth.

The Truth is that the ideological world is ultimately the Self occupied with a mistaken identification, and this alienated state thus reflects the world as not the Self. Which, ironically, is the Truth.

Hence we have a segue into the meaning of Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel: The irony of the “either/or” ontological question is that the question (as method for coming upon the world) itself is based in a mistake. As well, the imaginary “truth” which reveals itself at once as ideological as well as a way to overcome or get outside of it (revolution) arises in the encounter with the symbol because the symbolic world and the imaginary world are indeed what allows for the dialectical and thus ideological world to appear and function truthfully. So it is the Real world is that which actually is “absurd” with reference to the symbolic-imagined fantasy which arises through trauma as post-traumatized identity (modernity), which replays the originating trauma through disembodiment (reason, idea, etc…).

The issue thus is less how to overcome the fantasy, and more how to deal with the originary mistake which manifests through shame as trauma, that is, the inherent vacillation of guilt, shame, and anxiety that arise through the basic ideological default of existential choice, what Kierkegaard calls sin or despair to will to be oneself. Which is then the basic offense that The West in general knows colloquially as original sin.

Today, though, often enough, this kind of discussion is discredited outright in the move toward an ideological importance of reality. This is due, then, to the basic denial that arises when individuals (but the world, society) find the symbolic way through the trauma is closed off. Hence the fantasy routes modern individuals back more firmly into the fantasy, such that the questioning itself becomes blocked (PTSD) as, now, an ideological mandate: A true religious commandment (again, see Kierkegaard): Thou Shalt Not…

The alienation is thus overcome through a new religious devotion to the truth of the fantasy. The dialectic which then will arise is de facto a continuance we know as PTSD.

There is much more to be said here, but we can get much of it through Slavoj Zizek’s Philosophy.

Secularism vs. Pluralism; a comment

I had the opportunity to participate in a live podcast episode with InkleDeux for the third time. Our topic was“Secularism vs. Pluralism.”We had a …

Live Podcast Episode: #3 Secularism vs. Pluralism

I didn’t listen to this whole podcast. But I listen long enough to have something to comment upon. I couldn’t really listen much longer than I think around seven minutes, because it had already brought up so many philosophical problems just in the introduction that I already knew pretty much what they were going to talk about, what vector they were taking.

I don’t mean that so much as a condemnation as I do really as an indication that there is a discrepancy involved with the use of the word “philosophy” that is not regularly recognized and in fact is assumed to be nonexistent in what I call a conventional philosophical Orientation upon things.

Anyways…

The point at which I stopped in the podcast was when they introduced the idea of secularism with reference to the US Constitution which guarantees a separation from church and state. Their comment upon that establishes philosophical ground as though it is common, and I’m not sure that we can assume the route that they took, even though they speak as if it is indeed a common ground, as it is indeed something that is “common sense”. And, I’m not arguing that it is something that I don’t understand or is incorrect as a line of reason; I’m not arguing against their further arguments. I’m arguing against the assumption that they make from which they build the rest of their discussion.

Nonetheless; the discrepancy that I am indicating could be located exactly at that point where I stopped listening to the podcast. The discrepancy arises where we understand the difference between extrinsic mythology and intrinsic mythology. That is, what actually occurs in the establishment of A government which runs according to our along or in correspondence to a separation of church and state, is a government which understands its own theology as implicit to what is common.

And this is to say that by that amendment we suddenly are able to point to something else as if we are not the embodiment of what we are pointing to. To me this is the significance of secularism: it is a faith which does not recognize its theological grounds. In a way, exactly the psychoanalytical “mirror stage” which leads to alienation as identity (Lacan/Zizek).

 The reader can find various comments about how I develop this philosophical theme further back in my posts on this blog.

But in short, America, if I can generalize, establishes its self as a global religion through the missdirection of calling religion as identified with something else. This goes to an evolution of the human being as indeed humans are evolving not separately from the universe, as opposed to the human being that has pretty much been the same for thousands of years and is evolving Only in some intangible manner. Indeed, the issue that they in the podcast argue as foundational to a secularism is is a foreclosure of bringing transcendence into what we can talk about. Again, with that motion it is actually bringing the transcendent into imminent conversation, or communion, as the case may be. The amendment there by establishes its own religion in distinction to other things that are basically “false religion”, basically believing in “false gods”.

It is not difficult to trace this kind of thinking back through Protestantism, but I am not arguing that America or capitalism is based in Protestant thinking. But indeed has been at least one author, weber, who argued Protestantism as a basis of a proper secular society. But that point is nearly moot.

I’ll stop there.

Perhaps some of your readers wanna listen to the whole podcast and see if they entertain or see if they’ve gone kind of the long way around to get to the same conclusion. Then maybe you could let me know.

Or perhaps you could see where their discussion comes nowhere near what I’m talking about.

I don’t know. Let me know either way OK?

Or you could tell me that what I’m saying makes no sense. If you cannot understand what I’m saying, please ask, and I’ll try to say it more clearly.

I’m sure the podcast is a good discussion because I enjoy listening to her philosophical things, even as I might disagree with them fundamentally.

But I’m short for time right now.



Orientation and Meaninglessness

An event is a mark of where meaning takes the place. ‘The place’ can be anything, from a positive known-unknown, such as ignorance, to a negative unknown-unknown, such as a thing in-itself. These instances correspond to Badiou’s event as well as Zizek’s, respectively.

An event is a lacuna begun on one side of the sentence waiting for the other side; an event is the erasure of the lacuna, what Hegel could call a negation of negation.

Meaninglessness could likewise be understood in the same way as a lacuna. Namely, is it the substance that is supposed in the “…”, or is it more in line with Rudolf Otto’s version where the meaning is already gleaned from what came before and after?

Similarly we have our orientations:

Given an event which erupts into and or disrupts meaning: it is the difference between a sense which finds itself through presentations of words and the sorting out of what sense could be (is possible) made from the words and clauses already established — where there is a possibility of a meaning or sense which conveys to the person their own lack, incompletion, failure or stupidity, upon which then, toward either asset or deficit, one can build meaning– but then there is the case of already total sensibility that attempts to use words to convey “what already has meaning”.

The difference is in how discourse is used and is the issue more significantly than what is meant by any particular discourse. It is not about whether one is coming to conclusions prematurely or assuming what is meant compared to a thorough reading or consideration of the text — because even the deepest and most studied reading is still based in an assumed estimation; rather, it is more about the nature of the discourse in-itself, which is to say, how one is viewing the terms of the discussion that is at issue, and less what meaning one is making necessarily.

It is the difference between viewing and dealing with what is right there in front of us, and what is supposed to be lurking behind the scenes of any situation. The object itself is right in front of us; the lack is the assumption/ presumption of a deeper truth. The approach is evidenced in the difference between a science and a religion.

THE SECOND PART * crossing your mind near you.

thephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophcialhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackTHESECONDPARTthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackthephilosophicalhackOUT SOON

The Epitome Of Empty POP Intellectualism: Meg Hanson. Yes

“The recycled jokes, pop psychology, and telegenics at play in Toronto’s Sony Centre created what Žižek would call the ultimate postmodern debate: it was an injection of pure antagonism into modern life. With no purpose other than disruption and discontent, it was a performance of online celebrity and turning thought into a commodity. It was painful, but perfectly representative of our time.”

Wow. Read Meg Hanson’s review of the Zizek/Peterson debate HERE.

It is obvious from Meg’s article that intelligence is meaning something different now days. Meg is reporting pop intelligence to a group of people who — well — people who are not philosophers. As she is not a philosopher. She is reporting a mistaken reading of a mistaken comprehension of what occurred. And yet, her review comes up prominently when one searches for the Z/P debate.

Huh. How interesting. I wonder what exactly is being commodified here?

Hmm. What Postmodernism is where??

The perfect example of the dilemma (that Meg seems totally oblivious to) is that quote above taken from her report. A perpetuation of falsity posed as legitimate. The sign of our times: another unknowing repetition of “false news”. Ignorance posed as knowledge.

There is nothing to say to dispute it — not because she is correct about the debate, but Becuase she is correct about her own reporting of the event.

And if we want to get really philosophical (sorry pop smarties): The Leadership is exactly occurring beyond the scope of those who would think they would recognize it, and – this is the really good part — despite what those people would want.

She is unable to comprehend that, at least Zizek, knows that he cannot escape the commodification, and thus misinterpretation, of his presentation. This is the dilemma that he poses in the debate!

But Meg does not acknowledge this mistake about her informed and intelligent opinion. She is unable to comprehend what is actually occurring. So what happens is the content of her report turns out to be really about her reporting. She is talking about what she does and for a living. Meg: you are representing our time, of people who do not think nevertheless thinking that they do. 😆. This is the main inescapable feature of our (post-) modern capitalism.

Dig that irony, baby.

FLASHBACK!!

Perhaps if Meg actually read any of Zizek‘s stuff instead of the capitalist‘s Cliff’s notes she might have understood the situation. Maybe she should delve into some Heidegger, or Ortega de Gasset. But she’s got a career to uphold; don’t have time to actually think.

In short:

Sweetheart; maybe take a few hours out of your gentrified Brooklyn hipster scene and actually invest some time into learning how to think.

It is less a tragedy of the youth, than it is indeed the tragedy that some people recognize, and others are unable to know of.

Hence the topic of the Z/P debate.

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Whoa! Philosophy is a trip dude. Hey, is pot legal in my state yet? 😄.

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* “If it’s popular, it’s probably not very important — I mean, unless your into that kind of heroin.”

Embodiment and reality.

Body Theology?

https://thenotsosolidearth.wordpress.com/2019/04/22/body-theology/
— Read on thenotsosolidearth.wordpress.com/2019/04/22/body-theology/

By the way, “the not so solid earth” guy I totally love his posts so my comments are an addition to his essays, rather than a condemnation.

I am not sure I like the term “theology”. Let’s just be honest: there is no theology without religion. Theology seems to me a way to have religious faith without having to admit it, as though if I have theology then I am better than those ignorant people who foolishly believe in religion.

That’s just me, though.

It is interesting to me how Philosophy means different things to different people. Personally I think philosophy is something that does that it is. But I get a sense that there are many people that view philosophy only as a particular way of reasoning within thought, that there are all sorts of types of reasonings that can be accomplished philosophically.

Anyways…

The first comment I have, the first thing that I notice stuck in my mind, is the idea that modernity is associated with no transcendental horizon. Granted, many people would like to talk about all sorts of logico-historico-traditional discursive manifestations, and indeed these develop ‘layers’ as “not so solid earth” guy has talked about in a post long ago, in a galaxy far far away, as a sort of sediment.

On the other hand, if I’m really trying to talk about what is actually occurring over being-involved with what we are actually doing, as when what I’m able to do coincides or otherwise occurs within “thinking”, then I think we must enter into the contradiction that much of everyone wants to avoid in our human commonality of metaphysical being. And this is to say that so long as we entertain ideas within “thought”, so much as thought is the ubiquitous and impenetrable ground of existence that human beings can be involved with, there have we found the modern transcendental horizon, for anything that is known is known within possibility. And I say this because anything anyone would put into discourse automatically depends upon this transcendental horizon; every idea is an idea of something that is not the idea. If there is an idea that is only an idea, then it is nothing; we begin to get an inkling of what modern being is about then: limit and exploitation that come about through the effort invested of believing the contents of ideas.

So what we are really talking about when we are talking about what is actually occurring is not so much the either/or ideal, and actually more what is absurd in the Kierkegaardian sense. Contrary to what (post-) modern religions want to posit of Kierkegaard, he is talking less about an “either/or” rational human existence, and more about what is rational outside of the either/or correlation. And so I say that what is absurd is what does not lie within the entirety of ontological ubiquity called “thought”, but is likewise not “irrational”. And again this is not an either or proposition; it is an “and” proposal.

And (lol) coincidently I think this is exactly what the Peterson/Zizek debate handled dialectically, what so many commentators completely missed. See my posts just before this one; not the one on Kant , but you could check that one out also.

We are involved with what we are able to do. The better manner of getting outside the modern correlation is thus to look at what people are doing, rather than what their argument is trying to prove. Find the view upon things while understanding the content as well; that is, not merely retain focus on the content as though it is all of everything.

The next comment I have has to do with technology. I think often people have a very narrow sense of what technology is. Whenever I see the word technology I always read it in context. If I’m reading Newsweek or Wired or something Then I know to expect that the authors are talking about a very narrow idea, a very specific and practical idea of what technology is. It is curious to me that people extend this narrow idea of technology into philosophy, and claim that narrowness as philosophy as opposed to thinking philosophically about everything that is in the world. To me it seems kind of reverse of what is supposed to happen with philosophy. Indeed; was it Badiou who said that philosophy is not something that is ever put down?

Personally, Philosophy is not something that I do at times, like watching TV or reading a book, like going swimming or walking my dog. I don’t understand philosophy in the context of various things that I do in my day. I mean, I am able to understand how philosophy can fit into that kind of approach towards life, but I am not really one that naturally segregates my life into various activities such that the most basic thing that I am is a thinking human being. I am a philosopher; thinking is part of philosophy. In fact it is difficult for me to segregate the idea of a human being from philosophy. And I suppose that’s why I problematize thought as the significant feature of being, both the human being as well as the object of philosophy.

So for me philosophy is primary, inseparable, identifying. And so when I am in the context of philosophy and people mention technology I already understand Technology as something that I cannot escape, as something that is innate and inherent to thinking philosophically about the human being. In other words, I think the human being, philosophy and technology are foundational aspects of existence. To not include these three aspects in activity — somehow it makes me think of something else, something that is, to be honest, quite postmodern and significantly religious.

If someone is making an argument about the human beings’relationship to technology I generally understand them as viewing the world through the eyes of the central thinker, which then moves towards privilege by segregating existence.

In other words, the people that are thinking of technology as something that the central thinking human being uses, which is to say, something that is essentially segregate from being — such people are probably involved with understanding what I’m saying as a critique, which is to say, that I’m pointing out something that is incorrect in the way that people might be understanding things. And this is where I get into contradiction, absurdity. As I say; if we are to find truth we have to look into the contradiction and inhabit that space. More than a few people of intelligence and with knowledge — and I don’t mean like a Buddhist saint or “authentic Christian” necessarily or some sort of enlightened spiritual being or some Big idea like that — actual real people who live very regular and significant lives, call this kind of in-habitation of contradiction as embodiment.

What this means is I am simultaneously calling out a certain kind of approach to viewing the world, while also showing that such a view is not incorrect: it is both correct and incorrect. Lol. It is correct in that people indeed are thinking that way, i.e. viewing the world through the either/or condition of the transcendental horizon, and are indeed validated in that view. But as well, the adherence to that view as the singular truth under which or against which everything else in the universe, which all human beings are part of that universe, must be included, I submit is an incorrect understanding of what is occurring. As well, what I need to address to the either/or condition is that I’m not excluding myself from the indictment that I am making; this is to say that I’m not accusing people of something that I am not involved with.

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I wonder if anyone will go back and listen to the Zizek/Peterson debate in mind if this post.

?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=78BFFq_8XvM#dialog

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Btw: Here is another example of complete ignorance posing as knowledge:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.popdust.com/jordan-peterson-slavoj-zizek-debate-2635106896.amp.html

Meg Hanson doesn’t know what she is even speaking of. She is regurgitating poop 💩 I mean pop retorhic without even a hint that her opinion has been fed to her. She is absolutely to epitome of Zizek’s argument, and she is utterly unable to see it.

–In truth, each man is a caricature of a public intellectual—entertainers rather than leaders. They both excel in provoking strong reactions from their detractors. To many, Peterson is nothing more than an anti-PC muppet come to life (imagine if Kermit got really into race science), while Žižek reminds some of a “raccoon who lived in a dumpster behind a university’s library who was transformed into a human by a witch” (and thanks to his film career, you can watch him drown in Titanic).

oh wow.I gotta make a post about this one.

Is this a New Idea?

The psychologogist who shall not be named just pops up on my You Tube “you might like”.

Listen to it; its only 10 minutes.

Though it sounds like Peterson is making a significant contribution to the discussion, but is her really?

Let me see if I can parse this out, kind of stream of my thinking here…

I have not seem the whole discussion so I can’t really know, but if you listen the the response from the other philosopher, the “yessss” that we hear right at the end, the part that the You tuber who posted this thinks is a slam dunk (I think) — or he was making fun of Peterson?  I don’t really know.

…if one is philosophical informed or at least interrogative of her world, then we might hear this “yesss” less as a “you got me there Peterson” and more as a “yesss, but we already know this, and Im not sure why you are sounding like its new news.”

What I mean is, I think Peterson definitely thinks that he is making a point that sticks it to the other dude.

But, the point that Peterson is making everyone already knows, or should know if they have thought about the history of religion at all.

The point he is making is that the very idea of goodness, even without all the God metaphysics and such, without all the “religion”, argues that there must be a sort of messianic essence or foundation to the being of human.

Now. I am not a very smart dude.  I mean, I am smart, I think, but Im no scholar.  But I have been very interested in religion for most of my life, and it did not really take me very long to realize the coincidence of ethics and the appearance of religion in history. As well, when one begins to read philosophy — Hegel, in particular, I think, but I could be wrong — people have already noted that Christianity is the pinnacle of the practical ethical reasoning of humanity.  The on-the-ground of Reason in relation to ethics (goodness), in a dialectical relation with the natural world, whatever that is, produces a certain sensibility of religious reckoning that, basically, culminates in Christianity.  Somehow, I feel it has to do with Adorno ? Who was it? I can’t think right now, but Zizek has mentioned it, Im sure: The merger of Athens and Jerusalem, one author put it.

I feel like I even described this somewhere in this blog, but maybe not. Yet, one merely has to look at the history of religion, its development through time, civilizations as such –it really doesn’t take much — to see that the rationale of reasoned “God-things” cannot go anywhere else once Christianity is come upon.  We can definitely go back or sidewards, or round and round, but there is simply no other manner of discerning the relationship given God(s)- Goddess(es)-Man (woman)-world once we reach Christianity. This is to say, that every type of belief about the relational triad for knowledge has already been done.

The thing is, this “end” of Christianity does not mean that it is the best or that it must be true. In my opinion, it only means that we have found one parameter toward the finding out what the human being is by what it does.

In any case, it is difficult for me to imagine that those other philosophers did not already know this. I find it difficult to believe that Peterson’s argument had any real effect for the discussion, I mean, in opening up some significance. I would be interesting to hear more of the talk.

OK. So what does this mean?

Consider who Peterson’s audience is.

Consider it.

In general, it is medium educated but probably skillful, white Christians. People, in general, who’s thinking is…simple, shall we say.

Now, what is Peterson arguing?

He is setting up an argument for the ethical substance of the truth of Christianity.

So, why does he act like his argument is new? Like he just slammed the other dude?

Because his audience doesn’t know that we have known this for a long time. He is presenting this argument in the debate as though it is a new thing.

Why?

Well. I can’t really know if Peterson is being honest in his belief of his own wit and intelligence. But…

Isn’t it obvious?

check this out and then read the comments .

Peterson’s point is valid, but where he takes it (as we see everywhere) is just positing of a proper Order over everything and everyone. It is a “going backward and imposing” kind of reasoning as opposed to a “drawing back and applying” kind of reasoning, a “dictating by the Father” effort over a “understanding by the Son”, if we want to stay in that realm.