I thought that Zizek's point about quantum physics is that it was interesting to see how science, in its attempt to remove the subject, continues running into contradiction. Physics see this as a problem to be solved but from a Hegelian perspective this is an encounter with reason rather than understanding. Very interesting interview, thanks!
I just happen to be reading Zizek’s The Ticklish Subject (1999). See p 98--this is a quote: The same problem [i.e., "the unresolved tension that ends Hegel's Logic, the tension between Life and Knowledge as the two paradigms of the absolute Idea .... the opposition between the 'expressivist'/productive aspect of the Absolute ... and its 'cognitive' aspect--how are we to resolve the two?"] confronts us in the guise of the opposition between 'positing' and 'external' reflection from the beginning of Book II of Hegel's Logic. Positing reflection is 'ontological', it conceptualizes the Essence as the productive/generative power that 'posits' the wealth of appearances; external reflection, in contrast, is ‘epistemological’, it stands for the subject’s reflexive penetration of the object of knowledge-for his effort to discern, behind the veil of phenomena, the contours of their underlying rational structure (their Essence). The fundamental deadlock of the entire ‘logic of Essence’ is that these two aspects, the ‘ontological’ and the ‘epistemological’, can never be fully synchronized: no solution can resolve the oscillation between the two poles-either the appearance is reduced to something that is ‘merely subjective’ (‘the Essences of things is an inaccessible In Itself, what I can contemplate is merely their illusive appearance’), or the Essence itself becomes subjectivized (‘the hidden Essence is ultimately the subject’s rational construct, the result of his conceptual work’-just think of contemporary subparticle physics, in which the last constituents of reality have the status of a highly abstract hypothesis-of a pure rational presupposition that we shall never encounter outside the theoretical network, in our everyday experience). Again, this tension is resolved not by the inclusion of external reflection into the overall structure of the Absolute’s self-positing activity, as a mediating moment of split and externality, but by the opposite assertion of the direct ‘ontological’ status of the ‘externality’ of reflection itself-every positive and determinate ontological entity can emerge ‘as such’ only in so far as the Absolute is ‘external to itself’, in so far as a gap prevents its full ontological actualization. [Then comes footnote 20, which says:] This point is also crucial for the proper understanding of the difference that separates Hegel from Schelling: as long as Hegel remained committed to Schelling’s critique of Kantian-Fichtian subjectivism, he-as it were-backed insemination against urination, that is, the direct choice of the concrete totality against the abstract subjective division. Hegel ‘became Hegel’ the moment he became aware that every choice between Totality and abstract subjectivity which disbands Totality’s concrete organic link is ultimately a forced choice in which the subject is compelled to choose himself-that is, the ‘unilateral’ disruptive violence which ‘is’ the subject.
One thing that actually shows that Johnston has engaged with Hegel is that he is very clear in asserting, at the end of the interview, that it is the Speculative moment, rather than the Dialectical One, that which ends the Dialectics (sic) of Hegel. Staying at the level of the Dialectical is staying at the level of the aporias of Trascendental Reason of Kant - whereas the Speculative transcends by locating the concrete determinations which concretely resolve the contradictions arising from the Dialectical opposition.
Sorry, one more quote (relevant to the discussion at the end of the video) from The Ticklish Subject (1999): For Hegel, Reason is not another, ‘higher’ capacity than that of ‘abstract’ Understanding; what defines Understanding is the very illusion that, beyond, there is another domain (either the ineffable Mystical or Reason) which eludes its discursive grasp. In short, to get from Understanding to Reason, one does not have to add anything, but, on the contrary, to subtract something: what Hegel calls ‘Reason’ is Understanding itself, bereft of the illusion that there is something Beyond it. This is why, in the direct choice between Understanding and Reason, one has first to choose Understanding: not in order to play the stupid game of self-blinding (the absolute subject first has to alienate itself, to posit external reality as independent of itself, in order to supersede/sublate this alienation by way of recognizing in it its own product …), but for the simple reason that there is nothing outside or beyond Understanding. First, we choose Understanding; then, in the second move, we choose Understanding again, only without anything in addition to it (i.e. without the illusion that there is another, ‘higher’ capacity beyond or beneath it, even if this ‘higher’ capacity is called Reason)-and this Understanding, deprived of the illusion that there is something beyond, is Reason. [pp. 85-86]
Wow, I just found this video recently and I am very glad! I am finishing my bachelor's thesis right now and I am writing it on Zizek's Political Theology and I used Adrian's writings to write some things about Zizek's ontology. I am also glad to hear about Adrian's new book. Amazing job, guys!
5:00 How committed is Zizek to his quantum-connections actually? Doug responds with this, it is an 'analogy' 8:30. if you are interested in some of what Adrian is talking about, check out Ritual Traces 6/7: Sublime Imminence of Messianic time
Zizek puts such a central role to the QM arguments in his books now, especially those avowed by him to be the most representative of his work, like Less than nothing, that it feels dismissive of what he is saying to treat the "QM" idea as a mere analogy for him. Basing oneself on the texts -and again: Doug knows him whereas I don't, so he might be right- ontological incompleteness and the way in which a Lacanian account of subjectivity combine there feels like Zizek actual ontology, the one he is committed to. I was a supporter of the "analogy" idea prior to reading that book: one important observation is that when you see Zizek in the 2005 Zizek! film, directed by Astra Taylor, I do feel that the "love is evil" mental experiment is delivered as if the reference to QM were an analogy
Starting from the older interview, Johnston's statement that "there is no shortcut" somehow reminded me of protestantism's dark inclinations: The adulation of suffering and repetition; and the tendency to proliferate rather limiting stage theories of history...
Ya it's kind of funny physicists philosopise about what they are measuring and philosophers take there interpretations as a basis for an entirely different ontology.
It is extremely unlikely that a determinist interpretation of QM wins in the long run. For that you need non locality in hidden variables -because of Bell's Theorem- and that would have to contradict special relativity, which would add problems epistemologically, not reduce them.
@@TheYoungtrust The issue is that QM has decided to label different "ontologies" -in the form of different research programmes- as different "interpretations". The point of view there would be that what is experienced in QM experiments is the same for all - the only exception being objective collapse theories (which are not favored by experiments). However, it is easy to see that the standard Copenhagen interpretation, with its "operational", "axiomatic" definition of observer vs observed -the so called "shifty split"- and the positing of a "collapse", after which the system has changed discretely, is more of a mathematical formulation than a "self consistent theory". Bohr was already intuitive enough to see that some sort of irreversible process might be happening there. We now know that quantum decoherence is brought about by the contact of a system with its environment, thermodynamically. In this sense, the real debate is only between a consistent histories approach to QM (my horse in the race), and a properly formal many worlds ontology.
@@felooosailing957 Thanks for the explanation. Do you know why I don't normally hear it being called it an ontology? Is it just contempt for philosophy?
44:10min Cut and dry logic of motion. Systematically committed to infantilize and asphyxiate others within the bandwith of lalangueing. Policing and enforcing the destruction of humanity itself: its mental development.
31:03min. Up until this point the unambiguious identification (existntial in the sense of mortal duty committment type) with ideology is impecably unquestionable. Haunted by Kant, and the severing of the specific pathological object of regression: exploitation.
Didn't there used to be something called Zero Books, and some comforting words that used to recur saying "Hello Zero Books Viewers"? What did I miss? Is this why these videos stopped appearing? All that is solid melts into air!
damn....you supposedly devote your life towards pursuing gnosis and you end up with empty sophistry. Imagine bothering to take the time to shit on Zizek while also clearly not even understanding Lacan. Hope the student loan debt was worth it. Very sad.
It seems to me that Johnston is simply too fetishistic to see how Zizek has it right. As soon as one admits the overlapping of two lacks (the double kenosis in Christian theology), i.e., as soon as one doesn’t feel compelled to obfuscate these lacks with a fetish, reflexivity can generalize itself to cover quantum physics, brain science and critical social theory.
![ภาพนี้ก็ฮาเหมือนกันนะเนี้ย #7 SS9 [ พากย์นรก MEME.EXE ] | easy boy](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/MFDRhuT4RAg/mqdefault.jpg)
I thought that Zizek's point about quantum physics is that it was interesting to see how science, in its attempt to remove the subject, continues running into contradiction. Physics see this as a problem to be solved but from a Hegelian perspective this is an encounter with reason rather than understanding. Very interesting interview, thanks!
I just happen to be reading Zizek’s The Ticklish Subject (1999). See p 98--this is a quote: The same problem [i.e., "the unresolved tension that ends Hegel's Logic, the tension between Life and Knowledge as the two paradigms of the absolute Idea .... the opposition between the 'expressivist'/productive aspect of the Absolute ... and its 'cognitive' aspect--how are we to resolve the two?"] confronts us in the guise of the opposition between 'positing' and 'external' reflection from the beginning of Book II of Hegel's Logic. Positing reflection is 'ontological', it conceptualizes the Essence as the productive/generative power that 'posits' the wealth of appearances; external reflection, in contrast, is ‘epistemological’, it stands for the subject’s reflexive penetration of the object of knowledge-for his effort to discern, behind the veil of phenomena, the contours of their underlying rational structure (their Essence). The fundamental deadlock of the entire ‘logic of Essence’ is that these two aspects, the ‘ontological’ and the ‘epistemological’, can never be fully synchronized: no solution can resolve the oscillation between the two poles-either the appearance is reduced to something that is ‘merely subjective’ (‘the Essences of things is an inaccessible In Itself, what I can contemplate is merely their illusive appearance’), or the Essence itself becomes subjectivized (‘the hidden Essence is ultimately the subject’s rational construct, the result of his conceptual work’-just think of contemporary subparticle physics, in which the last constituents of reality have the status of a highly abstract hypothesis-of a pure rational presupposition that we shall never encounter outside the theoretical network, in our everyday experience). Again, this tension is resolved not by the inclusion of external reflection into the overall structure of the Absolute’s self-positing activity, as a mediating moment of split and externality, but by the opposite assertion of the direct ‘ontological’ status of the ‘externality’ of reflection itself-every positive and determinate ontological entity can emerge ‘as such’ only in so far as the Absolute is ‘external to itself’, in so far as a gap prevents its full ontological actualization. [Then comes footnote 20, which says:] This point is also crucial for the proper understanding of the difference that separates Hegel from Schelling: as long as Hegel remained committed to Schelling’s critique of Kantian-Fichtian subjectivism, he-as it were-backed insemination against urination, that is, the direct choice of the concrete totality against the abstract subjective division. Hegel ‘became Hegel’ the moment he became aware that every choice between Totality and abstract subjectivity which disbands Totality’s concrete organic link is ultimately a forced choice in which the subject is compelled to choose himself-that is, the ‘unilateral’ disruptive violence which ‘is’ the subject.
This is very appropriate.
One thing that actually shows that Johnston has engaged with Hegel is that he is very clear in asserting, at the end of the interview, that it is the Speculative moment, rather than the Dialectical One, that which ends the Dialectics (sic) of Hegel. Staying at the level of the Dialectical is staying at the level of the aporias of Trascendental Reason of Kant - whereas the Speculative transcends by locating the concrete determinations which concretely resolve the contradictions arising from the Dialectical opposition.
Sorry, one more quote (relevant to the discussion at the end of the video) from The Ticklish Subject (1999): For Hegel, Reason is not another, ‘higher’ capacity than that of ‘abstract’ Understanding; what defines Understanding is the very illusion that, beyond, there is another domain (either the ineffable Mystical or Reason) which eludes its discursive grasp. In short, to get from Understanding to Reason, one does not have to add anything, but, on the contrary, to subtract something: what Hegel calls ‘Reason’ is Understanding itself, bereft of the illusion that there is something Beyond it. This is why, in the direct choice between Understanding and Reason, one has first to choose Understanding: not in order to play the stupid game of self-blinding (the absolute subject first has to alienate itself, to posit external reality as independent of itself, in order to supersede/sublate this alienation by way of recognizing in it its own product …), but for the simple reason that there is nothing outside or beyond Understanding. First, we choose Understanding; then, in the second move, we choose Understanding again, only without anything in addition to it (i.e. without the illusion that there is another, ‘higher’ capacity beyond or beneath it, even if this ‘higher’ capacity is called Reason)-and this Understanding, deprived of the illusion that there is something beyond, is Reason. [pp. 85-86]
Wow, I just found this video recently and I am very glad! I am finishing my bachelor's thesis right now and I am writing it on Zizek's Political Theology and I used Adrian's writings to write some things about Zizek's ontology. I am also glad to hear about Adrian's new book. Amazing job, guys!
Incredible. Thanks for this discussion.
Glad you enjoyed it!
fascinating discussion. thank you.
5:00 How committed is Zizek to his quantum-connections actually? Doug responds with this, it is an 'analogy' 8:30.
if you are interested in some of what Adrian is talking about, check out Ritual Traces 6/7: Sublime Imminence of Messianic time
39:10 wonderful glorious question and pur gold insight.
Thanks Doug!
"Less Than Nothing" is crucial in the work by Zizek.....
darn the patrons
🎶🐶😆🤠🥳🤡👽 We're all just havin' a natch'l BALL over in the Parrot 🦜 Club!! Scuse me I need a drink 🍷 Cheers 🥂
Zizek puts such a central role to the QM arguments in his books now, especially those avowed by him to be the most representative of his work, like Less than nothing, that it feels dismissive of what he is saying to treat the "QM" idea as a mere analogy for him. Basing oneself on the texts -and again: Doug knows him whereas I don't, so he might be right- ontological incompleteness and the way in which a Lacanian account of subjectivity combine there feels like Zizek actual ontology, the one he is committed to. I was a supporter of the "analogy" idea prior to reading that book: one important observation is that when you see Zizek in the 2005 Zizek! film, directed by Astra Taylor, I do feel that the "love is evil" mental experiment is delivered as if the reference to QM were an analogy
Starting from the older interview, Johnston's statement that "there is no shortcut" somehow reminded me of protestantism's dark inclinations: The adulation of suffering and repetition; and the tendency to proliferate rather limiting stage theories of history...
I keep trying to find info on Adrian Johnston the film composer and this guy is all that comes up, lol
Incredible video
Awesome.
Quantum Physicists don't even agree on the interpretations of quantum physics.
Who knows maybe predeterminism will pan out.
Ya it's kind of funny physicists philosopise about what they are measuring and philosophers take there interpretations as a basis for an entirely different ontology.
It is extremely unlikely that a determinist interpretation of QM wins in the long run. For that you need non locality in hidden variables -because of Bell's Theorem- and that would have to contradict special relativity, which would add problems epistemologically, not reduce them.
@@felooosailing957 But douse making more problems necessarily mean it is less likely to map on to reality?
@@TheYoungtrust The issue is that QM has decided to label different "ontologies" -in the form of different research programmes- as different "interpretations". The point of view there would be that what is experienced in QM experiments is the same for all - the only exception being objective collapse theories (which are not favored by experiments). However, it is easy to see that the standard Copenhagen interpretation, with its "operational", "axiomatic" definition of observer vs observed -the so called "shifty split"- and the positing of a "collapse", after which the system has changed discretely, is more of a mathematical formulation than a "self consistent theory". Bohr was already intuitive enough to see that some sort of irreversible process might be happening there. We now know that quantum decoherence is brought about by the contact of a system with its environment, thermodynamically. In this sense, the real debate is only between a consistent histories approach to QM (my horse in the race), and a properly formal many worlds ontology.
@@felooosailing957 Thanks for the explanation. Do you know why I don't normally hear it being called it an ontology? Is it just contempt for philosophy?
44:10min Cut and dry logic of motion. Systematically committed to infantilize and asphyxiate others within the bandwith of lalangueing. Policing and enforcing the destruction of humanity itself: its mental development.
31:03min. Up until this point the unambiguious identification (existntial in the sense of mortal duty committment type) with ideology is impecably unquestionable. Haunted by Kant, and the severing of the specific pathological object of regression: exploitation.
Didn't there used to be something called Zero Books, and some comforting words that used to recur saying "Hello Zero Books Viewers"? What did I miss? Is this why these videos stopped appearing? All that is solid melts into air!
Hello Sublation Media viewers and future readers.
Philosophers discussing the psychoanalysis of quantum physics, thats the dumbest thing i ever seem
wow you're so tacheles
damn....you supposedly devote your life towards pursuing gnosis and you end up with empty sophistry. Imagine bothering to take the time to shit on Zizek while also clearly not even understanding Lacan. Hope the student loan debt was worth it. Very sad.
This reaction is bizarre. I am sorry you are so unhappy.
It seems to me that Johnston is simply too fetishistic to see how Zizek has it right. As soon as one admits the overlapping of two lacks (the double kenosis in Christian theology), i.e., as soon as one doesn’t feel compelled to obfuscate these lacks with a fetish, reflexivity can generalize itself to cover quantum physics, brain science and critical social theory.