Zizek Philosopher Quotes

I have to conclude, after fifteen years of philosophical inquiry, soaking up the finest minds in history, from Aristotle to Plato to Nietzsche to Zizek, after months spent pondering the most vexing conundrums ever devised by humankind, I have to conclude, that in the final analysis, life ain’t nuttin but money an’ fuck a bitch.

According to Žižek’s dialectical materialism, there is no “how things really are.” It is not just our knowledge of reality that is incomplete; reality itself is incomplete. Moreover, my existence as a subject is characterized by the difference between how things seem to me, as opposed to how things really seem to me. Again, Žižek’s philosophical elaboration of Lacan shows why I can never access the way things really seem to me: I have no access to my most intimate subjective experience. I can never consciously experience the fundamental fantasy that forms and sustains the core of my existence.

The philosophical consequences of this Kantian parallax are fully explored in thenotion of ontological difference, the focus of Heidegger’s entire thought, which canbe properly grasped only against the background of the theme of finitude. There is adouble doxaon Heidegger’s ontological difference: it is a difference between the What-ness, the essence of beings, and the mere That-ness of their being—it liberates beingsfrom subordination to any ground/arche/goal; furthermore, it is a difference notmerely between (different levels of) beings, of reality, but between the All of realityand something else which, with regard to reality, cannot but appear as “Nothing.”. . .This doxais deeply misleading.With regard to the notion of ontological difference as the difference between whatthings are and the fact that they are, the doxasays that the mistake of metaphysics is tosubordinate being to some presupposed essence (sense, goal,arche...) embodied inthe highest entity, while ontological difference “de-essentializes” beings, setting them free from their enslavement to Essence, letting-them-be in their an-archic freedom—prior to any “what-for? why?”, and so on, things simply are,they just occur....If,how-ever, this were Heidegger’s thesis, then Sartre, in Nausea,would also outline ontologicaldifference at its most radical—does he not describe there the experience of the stupidand meaningless inertia of being at its most disgusting, indifferent to all our (human)meanings and projects? For Heidegger, in contrast to Sartre, “ontological difference”is, rather, the difference between the entities’ stupid being-there, their senseless real-ity, and their horizon of meaning.

However, in giving up the idea of transcendence, Foucault also gives up the hope of ever uncovering the roots of power. This is why Joan Copjec sees Foucault’s refusal of transcendence as the fundamental stumbling block within his thought. Foucault aims at conceiving how power arises, but his studies consistently stop short of arriving at this. Copjec claims, “despite the fact that [Foucault] realizes the necessity of conceiving the mode of a regime of power’s institution, he cannot avail himself of the means of doing so and thus, by default, ends up limiting that regime to the relations that obtain within it.” This limitation stems from his refusal of any notion of transcendence, “his disallowance of any reference to a principle or a subject that ‘transcends’ the regime of power he analyzes.” Without the moment of transcendence, one cannot grasp the regime of power in its incipience, and hence Foucault necessarily posits the regime of power as always already existing, which makes any attempt to counter it fundamentally impossible. The result of this rejection of transcendence is Foucault’s historicism—a mode of analysis that eschews the search for truth in favor of uncovering the presuppositions of regimes of truth, in favor of “pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest.” This type of uncovering of historical presuppositions is one of Foucault’s chief legacies today, and it indicates the extent to which any idea of transcendence has become an anathema. In the wake of Foucault, contemporary cultural criticism has largely taken up this contextualizing mode. Today, the predominant response to any articulation of truth claims is a demand for the historicization of these claims: one must reveal the cultural context out of which they emerge. This has become the fundamental operation of contemporary cultural studies. In The Ticklish Subject, Slavoj Zizek describes this intellectual situation: “the basic feature of cultural studies is that they are no longer able or ready to confront religious, scientific or philosophical works in terms of their own inherent Truth, but reduce them to a product of historical circumstances, to an object of anthropologico-psychoanalytic interpretation.” This reduction of every truth claim to the circumstances of its enunciation represents the ultimate rejection of transcendence: nothing escapes the immanence of history itself. According to this prevailing historicism, no truth claim ever touches the Real; instead, the very pretension to truth is itself imaginary. The popularity of this kind of historicism today indicates the extent to which transcendence has become theoretically untenable. It also highlights the link between contemporary theory and the command to enjoy: the operations of both work to reduce what appears as transcendence to conditions of immanence.

Many movements find it extremely difficult to help others imagine and create alternatives to any existing system, especially alternatives that would appeal to a broad coalition-and that becomes more difficult when the system is complex and self-reinforcing. As Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has said regarding the global economic system in particular, 'It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Many movements find it extremely difficult to help others imagine and create alternatives to any existing system, especially alternatives that would appeal to a broad coalition-and that becomes more difficult when the system is complex and self-reinforcing. As Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has said regarding the global economic system in particular, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.