Get the book: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo230169826.html Read the supplementary text on Zizek and Buddism: voices.uchicago.edu/ziporyn/zizek-on-buddhism-and-christian-atheism-a-fans-notes/
You must be a masochistic person. Just to think of listening Zizek's annoying spitting sounding voice more than 5 seconds makes me wanna scream. Not to mention his arguments are utterly incoherent and stupid.
Zizek's point here is clearly Hegelian, which is that a thing both is, or at least has within it, and is defined by its negation. To a Hegelian it matters to a Atheist from a Christian context what their Atheism is a negation of, in this case Christianity. It reminds me of an old joke about an American visiting Belfast. The American is looking at some of the famous sectarian murals and an old man asks him, "So are you a Protestant or a Catholic then." The American answers, "neither, I'm an atheist." The old man replies, "Oh, that doesn't matter. Which god is it you're not believing in then? The Protestant or the Catholic one."
Wasn't the true atheism when you have only(!) Imaginary Friends ( that you found along the way ), and ideally more than just One, anyways? 😝 - Sorry for the gibberish. 😉 Also: " The night where all cows are grey? Maybe.
I think that Zizek's point is not to arrive at anything in itself and be done with it. I think the point is to open the abyss and take a plunge into it. Also, I think he does a very good job at not fetishizing either Christianity, Protestantism, Buddhism, Marxism, or Stalinism, etc. I think his point about the death of God the Father is still misunderstood. There is something in it...
I've really been getting into "infinite now" You might like it a much as me... Different than this channel, but still very much one of the best philosophy and science presentations I've come across
This is such an underrated channel. It's incredible to have access to a conversation of this depth outside of an "official" academic or university setting. Thank you for this Dr. Moeller!
This is funny. Watching my Catholic country be taken by American Protestantism I feel the exact opposite as Zizek. More and more I come to consider me some sort of "secular Catholic". Catholicism is able to have humanism without going into a berserk form of individualism Watching my society become completely contaminated by Calvinist values is something that disgusts me.
Protestants imagine that God predestined them to rule this world. According to the Roman and Orthodox Catholics, predestination is a heretical doctrine, fit only for fools. @williampan29
Ironically, this life of pure purpose and the critique that it is not possible to know if one’s purpose is truly the right one, is precisely the same crisis in the Bhagavad Gita which Žižek disregards as ‘oriental despotism’
The Gita has the advantage of the literal God himself, Krishna, telling Arjuna what to do tho. Seems like a copout to me tbh. The rest of us aren't so lucky to have God as our literal charioteer.
Referring to 7:28 of the interview, isn't Zizek then talking about material results of metaphysical belief. Isn't he talking about what historian Fernandez-Armesto speaks about when he says religion changes the way humans think? I am impressed with the way Zizek (and Ziporyn in his summary) sort of omit the possibility that the soldiers and workers are doing a job for pay. Some of those computer techs may just be stuck there to pay the rent. It is a curious idealism that assigns a motive that may not be present, though it supports Zizek's contention about the transformation from god-become-human to holy spirit. A lot to think about.
Zizek's arguments on the Book of Job of G_d f'ing up the beasts/leviathans and admitting His "reasonlessness"... as the world's 1st critique of ideology.
I'd like to thank professor Moeller for this video. I'd been slowly drifting philosophically towards your position of amoralism, albeit mostly through self-reflection and not very methodically. After hearing you and professor Ziporyn, and now reading The Moral Fool, I feel that I can start giving structure to these intuitions of mine. Thanks again for your hard work!
This was an interesting interview, though a lot of it I found hard to parse, meaning there is some material for me to learn in this area and I look forward to that. Thank you!
I believe there is so much room within monotheism for this view of decentralization of purpose and acceptance of ambiguity. God is utterly free of need for anything in the world, he has not created the world with any single purpose. A monotheistic God who created purpose as a contingent creature within the world, but who himself is not bound to any purpose. There is a link in the words of the speaker between a creator God and purpose, but that link is not necessary (though it is common). Instead of explaining phenomena in the natural world in terms of why God created them, which is time-bound. We can see them as reflections of the attributes of God such as mercy, beauty, justice, power, subtlety etc.
What is the "purpose" of having to conceptualize God at all? Beauty and the other things you list can simply exist without it. No creator is needed to recognize that we as conscious beings can build our own interpretations of the world as it is. It's perfectly reasonable to think things just are and appreciate that. You don't have to give credit to some being that none of us can see or ever even know if he actually exists
@@MattAngiono Or in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, 'Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?'
I will say it is the criticisms of buddhism Zizek lobs are especially ironic considering they all apply most dramatically to american evangelicalism, a birth child of his beloved protestantism.
Preach; reeked of the parallel reality I have to enter when I try to communicate with my dad about the imperial atrocity our taxes go to.. reality warps and words disseminate into taunting paradoxical ironies blackmailed into abandoning it's definition and joining the landmines littering our communication.
Even from a biblical perspective, Zizek is completely incoherent in his analysis of Christ's final words on the cross, as it clearly is a quote from Psalms 22.
I suppose it must hurt to know that being a basement dweller redditor pseudosopher is your ultimate destiny and purpose. Nobody said it was a grand purpose for everyone though, some animals live short and crude lives but yet are necessary for the greater part, like gnats, or worms, or bugs.
Why do you attribute Zizek’s quote about slavery 14:30 to Protestantism alone? That’s not his position. And btw the abolishment of slavery was absolutely a subjective political battle! You fall back on the reliable mechanical dead history when you say that capitalism made slavery obsolete
It seems like you’re deliberately misreading his book to say that atheism is Christian as such when he’s talking about a specific kind of atheism. I really don’t think you can engage with Zizek in any sort of intelligent way if you’re not very familiar with Hegel, are you?
I think you would really enjoy and it would kinda fit into the list of topics and discussions last few videos to read "Krise des Absoluten"(Crisis of the absolute) or "Vom Geäude zum Gerüst" von DP Zorn
Stating that „From a scientific perspective it is completely evident that there is no free will“ makes it completely evident that there is a fundamental missunderstanding of results of scientific neurological experiments that supposedly prove that there is no free will!
I really don't understand the general idea of "free" will. It seems obvious our will is dependent, conditioned and often influenced by outside forces. The word "free" is practically meaningless. If I had "free will" I would be nearly omnipotent. And I don't buy the argument that 'free will" is euphemistic or a turn of phrase. I take it it at face value. A better question is do we have "will"? in some cases we do have options in how we react and we need to exercise those qualities that enhance our control of our selves and lives.
I would argue that a purely philosophical explanation of free will is enough to demonstrate its absurdity, the scientific experiments just support the theory.
If free means there are no restrictions, thats obviously absurd, having no options at all in a deterministic sense, to me thats absurd as well, and if you take a closer look there is not really any kind of scientific proof (despite stated otherwise) or even convincing theories (well, they dont convince me to be honest) supporting the deterministic view.
@volkerneumann8812 I'm not sure what definitions you're working with, but I find the best way to approach the convo is with Laplace's demon. The demon is a hypothetical entity that has complete knowledge over the physical state of the universe. Every subatomic particle, its position, its spin, everything. The big question: Can this demon predict everything you will do with 100% certainty? Or if not, is the deviance entirely accounted by randomness on the quantum level? If yes, then determinist free will is not real. If you claim that no, the demon predicts something wrong which is not due to randomness, that automatically implies that there is a discontinuity somewhere in the chain of causation. A physical law must have been broken. If there is free will, then by necessity, there are no laws of physics either. It's nonsensical
@@resir9807 if you are assuming that the only way to avoid a deterministic process is a deviation due to randomness then of course there is no room for anything else, I am sure you see the Tautology. To be fair I am not capable to explain HOW a free will concept would work on a subatomic particle level, does that mean free will doesnt exist? I think that would be a premature conclusion.
A dialogue with Zizek-related Hegelians or even scholars of monotheism may be appropriate to achieve more clarity at this point. Much of this conversation talks past its subject of critique, albeit understandably, considering the very real folly in monotheistic thought traditions. But collapsing all the numerous tendencies within monotheism into a single one creates illusions about what the necessary components of monotheist thought are. A lot of what is discussed and grilled here are strawmen in the same way that Zizek takes primarily "western" manifestations of Buddhism as representing the core problems with the overall Buddhist standpoint. Similarly, Nietzsche was both right and wrong about Christianity, taking the tendencies of widespread but specific institutions and acolytes as the singular representatives of what it is and must be. There is so much ambiguity (the notion of God being "beyond good and evil," the confounding conceptual interplay of free will and determinism) that many monotheist mystics and thinkers hold up, which is completely obscured in this conversation between two who seem to share a Nietzschean 'resentement' of specific Western coded doctrines. I'm not at all suggesting we locate the 'true Scotsmen.' Quite contrarily, I think we are missing an opportunity for some clarifying synthesis and fresh ambiguities.
11:15 Zizek claims that protestantism was the greatest EVENT ever. You misrepresent him if when you say he thinks it is the greatest religion. What arrizes with Protestantism? What does it mean that it should appear at such a time within such conditions as it did. This makes me think that you are missing his entire point with christian atheism. For example when he talks about the death of christ he is talking about it as an event. My catholic pastor used to also remind me that the key event was the death of christ, not his birth or resurrection, but this does not mean that Zizek is endorsing the catholic church.
check out Pyrrhonian skepticism which argues that both sides of any argument are just as relevant as the other, and that things in themselves are neither big or small, light or dark, good or bad, but our thinking makes it so
Both sides of an argument could certainly be equally relevant, but that wouldn't make them both equally correct or valuable. The reason they are both relevant is that understanding the contradicting perspective can strengthen your own
I think that it's actually exaggerated to find in Zizek's attitude this urgency of purpose they are speaking about, since Zizek himself opposes all of this. I think the writer interviewed in this video has just realized that Zizek tries to "save" christianity and so he concluded that Zizek is trying to defend monotheism, but it is not really the case. Zizek is actually trying to open up to traditionalists and conservatives to create bridges, connections, and make clearer his point as a leftist whose claims actually are very distant from onthologically fixated structures and monotheism. He always do that, building bridges between "opposites", he does that in person too, as in the interviews and debates with people like Jordan Peterson. A reason why he can't be the person depicted in this video is traceable in his critique of The book of Job, for example, that is very indicative: Job's friends, that almost desperately try to find a logical structure in Job's pain, are critiqued by Zizek for what he calls the "pressure of meaning". God, at the end of the book, just tells Job "don't try to find a logical reason in my creation and in my will", and Job just subjugates and shuts up. I think that this discourse, at least as it is put in this video, could somehow be used to critique almost anyone who tries to speak about something. Speaking is somehow always "purposeful", it's a way of creating order, and when we start to speak we disambiguate, inevitably. So in my opinion this discussion is not so different from God shutting up Job for basically trying to speak.
You find God abandoning himself in the Dashaavathaar of Vishnu. Vishnu appears as Krishna, claiming he is the supreme way, absolute unity, etc. only to disavow all this as Buddha in the next avatar and make the claim that it doesn’t matter if a god exists or not.
@@ReflectiveJourney Buddha was canonised into the Dashaavathaar by Adishankara, that cunning monist from India. To be clear, this is largely not part of most Buddhist practices, but it’s still interesting from within the Vedic framework. It’s particularly interesting to me as I was raised Hindu, and now consider myself Buddhist. It’s also very dialectical in a Hegelian sense, which is also interesting to me.
@@mapleandsteel dialectics is fine if you understand it but it seems lazy in this case. Adi Shankara was almost 1000 years later and cannonizing an opposing tradition is the oldest trick in the book to assert soft supremacy. Btw i still couldn't find a source. Shankara was influenced by buddism but not sure about canonizing. I don't even know if that is possible since vedas are supposed to be eternal and this would be pretty big change. Hegel is also guilty of this since he makes all eastern religions as a oriental/primitive form of consciousness so i wouldn't be too quick to appropriate him.
@@ReflectiveJourney well there is no formal authority in Hinduism. Here’s a source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha_in_Hinduism And yes, Adishankara is a mangy casteist cunt. He absolutely ret-conned Buddhism into Hinduism to subsume it.
Excited to see a new video on the channel, Prof. Moeller @carefreewandering. I have started watching, and it appears your signature brilliant analysis is also woven throughout this gem, consistent with your other videos. Thank you for your efforts to bring this intellectual content to TH-cam!
As usual great contend! I especially like you avoid these cliche tropes auf atheism. My main criticism of Mr. P. is, that you can find this biblical wisdom in all stories humans saw worthy of repeating. And he's cherry picking the nice stuff and ignoring the vile and evil. But in his recent content he seems to become less dogmatic about Christianity. Also we should differentiate between faith and religion. We need faith, that the sun will rise again tomorrow. In essence that our experience has validity. Religion doesn't add anything while negating the value of your existence. Only in death will you find value.
Atheism is a western outlook. Religion is too. And Christianity, what is that? Borrowed ideas from Greek myth and philosophy but comes from Judean theism.
14:35 "Slavery was abolished because it made less and less sense for capitalist production and the industrialising world..." This is an interesting interpretation. There could be some truth here, although surely there would have to be more proof than this one simple sentence. You would also have to address why it was Christians and not Jews or Muslims or Buddhist or Hindus (who all have slavery more or less in built into them as a moral good) who were the ones who abolished slavery. Saying that Capitalism abolished slavery is a joke. Ask anyone who works for a living.
This would require pretty precise historiographical work probably beyond the purview of the immediate knowledge of a professional philosopher and theologian. That said this is the classic Marxian point that probably has its clearest statement in the William's Thesis, which is also rather empirically flawed. On the purely theoretical side, to explain why Capitalism is supposed to have abolished slavery, you need to see Marx as a dialectical thinker. Capitalism turns works into what the Germans call "Vogelfrei," literally bird-free in English, where they are doubly free. They are both free *from* direct compulsion to work, but also free of any sort of connections that would allow them to do anything but sell the only thing they have, their "labor power," to capitalists. This is a kind of freedom, but for dialectical thinkers like Marx, and interestingly enough Smith in his way, it is undeveloped and self-contradictory. Capitalism's negation of classical slavery and feudal corvee/serfdom must, for dialectical thinkers like the Marxians who make this claim, itself be negated to arrive at a higher form of freedom.
It happened in christian societies because obviously they happened to be the ones first to capitalism and the most developed economies. More importantly, you seem to be upset that this is a defense of capitalism, but it's not necessarily a moral claim, just an observation. There is a mountain of evidence of this, not just his "one sentence". For example, early Dutch economic studies came to the conclusion that incentivizing workers with something to obtain better results was more productive than slavery in their colonies in the east.
@@flagpole974 While true, it's notoriously very difficult to separate out early Capitalism, early Liberalism, Bourgeois Society, and Protestantism, especially radical Calvinist leaning tendencies, including the jansenism of France, anticlericism, antiepiscopalianism, and antinomianism, until they more seriously diverge in the 20th century. Relatedly, the radical Liberalism and Civic-Republicanism that would morph into early socialism is also closely connected, for this, most famously, just see the Diggers and American utopians. For thinkers like Hegel, Marx, and Zizek these are all immanently connected, and so it doesn't make much sense to critique Zizek, as the video, for being insufficiently materialist to holding to this understanding.
@@flagpole974 That seems like an illogical statement. There is no connection between capitalism and the abolition of slavery in any sense, since capitalism is not a moral system in any sense. A Jewish country could have developed capitalims but kept the cultural and religious norms of slavery in place. Why wouldn't they? If it is important to them religiously? Same goes with Islam. "Incentivising workers" don't you mean "incentivising slaves". It is easy to incentivise a slave" btw.
This is like listening to a talk about water by people who have no experience of it. You don't need Christianity to explain atheism. Just accept that your faith is materialism and scientism. Christianity begins at the point of admitting our deep not-knowing, at accepting mystery.
Question that never can be answer, Who made god and who made that god. we might find out man made the gods story in our own image to control the people
The moral lens is nothing else than the proclamation of the principle of subjugation under a political system whether it's by free will or by enforcement of a criminal code. Assange is such a case. His crime was nothing else than acting against the interest of nations. People who are discussing moral don't want a free society where people are discussing matters of importance. They want a political power reigning over people. This discussion had already started with John Locke, when he sees the Catholic Church as a problem for the state's interests. Religion as well as moral are not that different, when both want to move the mind away from its own interests. This discussion reminds me on attempts to impose values on people in the clothes of a dead religion. Some philosophers are outdated. It doesn't need a common cause, what is needed is reason.
With is purposive anti-purposing and moralistic anti-moralizing, this discussion admirably sublates Zikek's Christian Atheism while taking it to even more subtle and rarefied heights of purpose, meaning, and control. Or something like that : )
so this is about 2 hr. of saying ´round about..."we as hardocre atheists and we don´t know the answer to all the tough questions philosophy asks such as, why are we here, and we like to keep it that way, hence Sam Harris attempts to put a fundament to his morality is wrong or, would you say "not having. the correct lack of purpose". Take the freaking beam out of your own eye! Sam´s insufferable for trying to solve that...posh tosh honestly! Is dualism all the way down! You just don´t see yours.
@@zerotwo7319 You mean I made the wrong presuposition? We make dualistic assertions, not because they are true but because they are necessary, by virtue of the language. In order to operate in any meaninful way in the world, we need to use adjectives..sort of thing ..analogy
@@PlumpClump You can assume whatever, but I never said you are wrong. You can decide to work forever... that is your niche and I see you are defending it. Language is not dualistic, but if you want to assume it is, it will be. You are choosing that. Language as a protocol it depends on a interpret to judge it. Language by itself it is nothing, we make it dualistc of not. But if the other decides to not play this game..
I always state that I don't believe in gods and their sidekicks, i.e. angels, devils etc. I think the usage of "God" was a fantastic marketing coup. Great thinkers are fooled by the trick of monolising the generic term for a divine macho figure.
Nous as Logos, telelogical, one particular meaning (of order and control). Someone in control means we also should act with purpose and control, as value judgement of copying god. Doing everything with reason, and then writ large onto the universe. Heidegger sovereignty - idea of enlightenment period, gaining more control (again from God). Act like god or act not like god (renounce own will, live without why) Create meaning or dont create meaning (sarte/Voltaire/progressives as they agree on purpose as important, daoism/mystical atheism, don't cling to purpose as most important, non unity as great matrix of being, valueless as source for values) Metaphysics of the hangman - there is dichotomisation with purpose, which means you should follow it. And not following it is bad. Remove ambiguity, complexity. The sting of conscience teaches how to sting (self distance oneself, can then project onto others wow) His argument is to put ultimate purposeless first (but still allows for purpose, many purposes). Free will/determinism coming from purposeful god idea. Free will not a big deal for non-monotheistic religions Water interacting with water, water with water as opposed two separate beings Not master of our own fate (different influences)/god as man made
Have you even read any of his major works besides this book? Like Sublime Ideology? It is not hard at ALL to pin down Zizek's position, as he does it regularly himself, if you read his books.
Sublime Object of Ideology isn't considered one of his best books intellectually. And when you say "pinpoint Zizek's position", who is doing the job? There is Zizek's position presented by "Zizek Studies" and "the real" Zizek's position presented by himself. Zizek has distanced himself from Zizek studies and doesn't agree with them
@@stevesmith4901 And overall, Zizek doesn't care if he is clipped or taken out of context. Zizek is a drama queen and nevertheless I'm glad Carefree Wandering and others are taking him seriously
@@Siroitin This is all nonsense. Why are you talking about "Zizek Studies" and "the real" position? He quite literally is engaging with people who call themselves "Young Zizekians" and have discussed this very idea with him. Why are you making up things?
The entire debate about “free will” and determinism in science, philosophy and religion is just too fucking stupid for me to pay any attention to it. Almost all the arguments both for and against “free will” make no sense at all. I seriously have no clue what the entire debate is about.
If God is nothing then anything in place of it is a false idol to be destroyed.. Christ as in the finite sensuality of the flesh in its dualistic determining is idolatry
The role of action is being evaded throughout the discussion, at best, referred to abstractly. If faith means action and not mere belief - a suspect notion itself - the complex of motives related to childhood experiences of “god” should receive attention.
Any thoughts on the ethics of kitsch? I picked up on this concept in reading Stanislaw Lem's efforts to understand the Holocaust. The ethics of kitsch: the tendency of modernity to imitate the outward forms of Christian ethics in the service of a crime. For instance, the similarity between the Nazi tableaux of extermination and the Christian iconography of the Last Judgment was of course no accident The point of kitsch is to parody its original while ostensibly paying homage to it. So genocide is a kitsch parody of ultimate justice. I don't usually resort to the type of argument that goes : this is exactly how Nazi Germany started! But weren't the Nazis Christian atheists?
The Nazis had different religions. Germany was mostly a Christian country of course so Christianity was obviously a big thing for that reason, but the kind of religion that the Nazis were more interested in creating was a kind of Germanic neo-paganism called Wotanism. So the real Nazi religion is, I would claim, Wotanism, a type of neo-paganism (Wotan is Odin). I don’t believe atheism was particularly prevalent among them.
So you guys, unlike Zizek, when facing the death of God, don't create your own cause, rather self reflect, and question the need for a cause in the name of Truth, control your western biases. Nice.
8:25 I think to understand how Zizek differentiates between what you call "approved groups" and "false ones" you need to understand his aesthetic theory a little more. Zizek believes that we should rediscover an appreciation of art as hard work. If the good life is one which approaches the qualities of a work of art, then a good person is one who works as hard as he can. The assertion is that to work as hard as one can, one will appear to have devoted their actions to a cause "purely" as you would say, and to have developed a "Manichean" ethics around it. I think, despite the terribleness of it, there is something which most people would agree is quite obviously beautiful about a group of soldiers who have dedicated all their actions, waking and sleeping, to each other and to their nation. I think this beauty is there to some degree in all the examples Zizek used, and I believe this comes from what is obvious to the outside observer as hard work; purity of believe is only one appearance of hard work. I think most people would also agree that this beauty is simply not there in the case of the woke movement or the Jan 7th protests. There is nothing very hard about reading conspiracy theories online and then having one single carnival day where you cause a riot about it. Also what Zizek, and most anti-woke leftists tend to criticize the woke left for is the laziness and hypocrisy of their practices. The movements for socialism in the early 20th century were beautiful, but flawed. The woke movement is simply ugly. Edit: There is no need for a church of christian atheism, but yes it is the old God again.
Enjoying this discussion...BUT am getting really annoyed only 30 minutes in by the unnecessary cartoonish bits of the video in progress. Just ruins the conversation. Now I guess I need to go back and suffer for the rest of the session.
What else would he be, a gay transhumanist Afrocentrist worshipping negroids and Landian future-capital devouring the present? Well, fair point, he is the face of the Judeo-American regime and their intellectual Easter-European arm so he should drop the Ostalgia act.
When you talk about "God", in capitals, as a particular entity, you have already ceded the entire ground to the Christian Tradition. It is surely more ---- agnostic --- to talk about "the history of imagining of gods and the communities thereby controlled"?
Love your channel Dr Moeller, but you seem to fall into the same bad faith criticisms of Zizek, that more have to do with presentation then form or content. But perhaps im bias, as im heavily influenced by Zizek myself. Tho I absolutely think that Zizeks takes on Buddhism are a little shaky at best and down right insulting at worst, I don't think dispite his claims, that he really does not have a strong understanding of Buddhism. Is not Buddhism already an Atheism to Hinduism, Buddhists reject the Vedas and authority of the Brahman Priests. The concept of Christian Atheism tho, is not really about advocating for an Atheism, (especially not New Atheism), nor is it about a return to God and how good Christianity is, the secret of Christian Atheism, is that the truth lived and reviled is God's Suicide, that the core of Christianity is more Atheistic then the classic Atheists, and that Atheists still have a disavowed God (Lacanian Big Other).
@@ComradeCyber-bm4cn I wouldn't call it bad faith, but it doesn't really deeply engage with Zizek. For a video that mentions Hegel within the first two minutes it does not appear to grasp the obviously Hegelian framework of "Christian Atheism" for Zizek, and also that Zizek isn't trying to define Atheism as an abstract universal [and they seem to totally miss this in the Protestant Exceptionalism section], but Atheism as it actually appears in the majority, if not totality, of the Western world. You can of course disagree with Hegel quite a bit, but the form of the argument would have to appear differently to actually address his point, Zizek's understanding of his point [which for the record is of course not beyond debate], or Zizek's own stance. I will grant that Zizek seems to also have a polemical angle, and that is mostly what the video addresses. But, for an instance of the problem of conflating it with analysis, it seems weird to critique Zizek's point because it doesn't move past "the old judgemental father god" when the Lacanian big other is a pretty obvious point of Zizek's framework and something he would accept as a core presupposition.
@@Cuthloch Yeah, I’d say your criticism applies fairly well to the video. I would recommend reading the article in the description. The criticism you have towards Moeller is the same kind of criticism I have with Zizek in Buddhism. It’s very polemical and never very well researched at all. Just surface level toe dipping on the subject. Also, do you have any good intros into Hegel? Hegel rubs me the wrong way but I’d like to have a good faith criticism or a basic understanding of him at the very least.
@@ComradeCyber-bm4cn Hegel is very hard to get into, there really is no way around it. For me, I really only seriously approached Hegel after thinking about other works that address similar problems and then returning to him for a more serious read after I decided what I understood about how he addressed those problems was interesting. I think a problem based approach where you approach him with a specific issue you're trying to think about, probably in some sort of Kantian/Neokantian/Phenomonological vein, is more fruitful than just trying to "learn Hegel." Ultimately what Hegel is doing is trying to use the very existence of the problem that Hume identified and Kant took up to move past the problem, which is what reason identifies as the limitation of reason, itself. Dealing with that problem on your own before hand will at least help you understand why Hegel is doing what he's doing in a broad sense.
@@Cuthloch Thank you for the advice. My thoughts on Hegel are so scatterbrained. I see his influence everywhere and it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I might approach Hegel from a historical perspective and his relation to eastern religions. I know the Kyoto School worked somewhat with his thought and Hegel interpreted the Bhagavad Gita. I work with eastern philosophy, since I’m familiar with eastern texts, maybe my unorthodox approach could prime me for some of Hegel. I know of Hypolite’s introduction and how Deleuze felt about Hegel. I might investigate the French interpretation of Hegel as well since I have a familiar background with Deleuze. I’m not sure though, given my philosophical interests if Hegel is even relevant to anything I do.
Anyone familiar with Max Stirner, the Egoist deconstructionist of philosophy. > "Take notice how a moral man behaves, who now often thinks he's through with God, and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him if he's ever doubted that the copulation brother and sister is incest or that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that phyllial piety is a sacred duty, then a moral shutter will come over him at the idea of once being allowed to touch his sister as wife also." -Max Stirner Their point here is that ostensibly secular moralists are still effectively Christian/religious when it comes to the content of their moral sentiments. 'God' was replaced with 'Humanity', and Christian moralists largely carried on as before. And some of the evidence of this is in the continuity of Christian moralist prohibitions and commandments. Most Western atheists are Christian atheists. They reject god but not necessarily christian morality.
Thanks for adding the word 'most' because there are exceptions, such as me. I am a Western atheist, but I am by no means a Christian atheist. A lot of the things I find right or wrong conflict with Christianity.
regarding incest forbiddence and monogamy, when I was young, I never think they are Christian value but Confucius value (I'm a Taiwanese), so I don't see how this guy thought we are influenced by Christian value. Seems to me he lacks input of people from different culture.
Moderns are all cringe, Zizek in particular though, he's the other face of global capital, the man on the 'right' being Jordan Peterstein co-opting a pseudo-Christianity and Zio-Liberal values that are slightly mouldy and from the 90's or so, with some Jung thrown in. Zizek is equally psychologising and disarming, turning radicals into happy compliant goons for the American imperial regime. It's all totally devoid of any real weight or even thought.
What is materialism again? I always forget if it's phenomenological or if it's the mathematical models of physics. Chauvinism always seems to creep into value systems. Plato points out the purity/contamination problem in the education of guardians for the sake of the community. In-group/out-group boundaries determine Thrasymachus' friend/enemy distinction. Wasn't Plato's Republic actually a story about not allowing the addictions to appetites and competition rule the rational faculty? That's the very thing that leads to a domineering and censorious psyche and politics. To be 'rational' in a platonic sense is to be psychologically harmonious.
No one has any clue what materialism is. It could mean anything. I think Noam Chomsky has some interesting thoughts on materialism - you could look up what he has to say about it. But I would say that it’s not phenomenological but ontological, so a question about the constitution of the universe or the world. Mathematics I would say is non-material and non-physical.
@ludviglidstrom6924 Yep. That's my point, actually. People too often conflate the phenomena of experience with materiality, or the abstract theoretical models built from sense experience. I'm very sympathetic to Marxist analysis of political economy but there's a huge problem in the approach of so-called 'materialist' philosophy. Too often it's a way to dismiss anyone with an idea that doesn't agree with them. At best, it's a respect for careful historical analysis of agreed upon facts and good-faith discussion of contextual causes. But Aristotle's '4 causes' are a pretty good foundation for describing what a Marxist means by historical materialism.
Get the book: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo230169826.html
Read the supplementary text on Zizek and Buddism: voices.uchicago.edu/ziporyn/zizek-on-buddhism-and-christian-atheism-a-fans-notes/
This feels like Zizek would agree with a lot of this
and then say "but..."
Please invite Zizek and make an Interview with him in German! You can charge me anything for that.
Slavic and german talking continental philosophy and the frenchs, 😮i love it
You must be a masochistic person. Just to think of listening Zizek's annoying spitting sounding voice more than 5 seconds makes me wanna scream. Not to mention his arguments are utterly incoherent and stupid.
I’d watch it a hundred times, German learners would love it I think
$36.74
@@Wingedmagician Done deal
37:07 i love how Georg always references jordan peterson as “our friend”😂
Well our "friend" JP is a postmodern icon
I certainly hope it is meant ironically. Not that I am going to bother watching this crap.
He prefers to be called "Georg"
@@opinion3742 Of course it is, lmao.
@@opinion3742 Username checks out.
Brook Ziporyn's discussions are always great, thanks for having him on. I'm getting his book as soon as possible.
"Words, words, words, I eat the air promise crammed,
You can not feed capons so."
[Hamlet]...
12:20 Zizek argues other atheisms exist in Islam and Judaism, and that those atheisms just aren’t his focus; not that they’re invalid.
Zizek's point here is clearly Hegelian, which is that a thing both is, or at least has within it, and is defined by its negation. To a Hegelian it matters to a Atheist from a Christian context what their Atheism is a negation of, in this case Christianity.
It reminds me of an old joke about an American visiting Belfast. The American is looking at some of the famous sectarian murals and an old man asks him, "So are you a Protestant or a Catholic then." The American answers, "neither, I'm an atheist." The old man replies, "Oh, that doesn't matter. Which god is it you're not believing in then? The Protestant or the Catholic one."
@@Cuthlochlove that 😂
@@eliane9916 is not Buddhism already an Atheism to Hinduism?
Buddhists reject the authority of the Vedas and Brahman priests.
amazing zizek impression
Wasn't the true atheism when you have only(!) Imaginary Friends ( that you found along the way ), and ideally more than just One, anyways? 😝 - Sorry for the gibberish. 😉 Also: " The night where all cows are grey? Maybe.
man how nice to see another upload
Hooray a 2 hour long video!
Carefree Wandering: The Movie
I think that Zizek's point is not to arrive at anything in itself and be done with it. I think the point is to open the abyss and take a plunge into it. Also, I think he does a very good job at not fetishizing either Christianity, Protestantism, Buddhism, Marxism, or Stalinism, etc. I think his point about the death of God the Father is still misunderstood. There is something in it...
The dialogue was rich in content. The time stamps are appreciated, as they are useful for repeated listening.
fuck yes it's back so much love for the best channel on social theory on youtube
I've really been getting into "infinite now"
You might like it a much as me...
Different than this channel, but still very much one of the best philosophy and science presentations I've come across
Wow! I was just thinking, "Hmm, I haven't watched a video from Carefree Wandering for a while. I wonder what he is doing."
This is such an underrated channel. It's incredible to have access to a conversation of this depth outside of an "official" academic or university setting. Thank you for this Dr. Moeller!
This is funny. Watching my Catholic country be taken by American Protestantism I feel the exact opposite as Zizek.
More and more I come to consider me some sort of "secular Catholic".
Catholicism is able to have humanism without going into a berserk form of individualism
Watching my society become completely contaminated by Calvinist values is something that disgusts me.
could you elaborate on that?
Thinking Weber vs Zizek would be interesting
Protestants imagine that God predestined them to rule this world. According to the Roman and Orthodox Catholics, predestination is a heretical doctrine, fit only for fools. @williampan29
what country?
@@williampan29 watch wes cecil he made a series of videos on this.
Ironically, this life of pure purpose and the critique that it is not possible to know if one’s purpose is truly the right one, is precisely the same crisis in the Bhagavad Gita which Žižek disregards as ‘oriental despotism’
The Gita has the advantage of the literal God himself, Krishna, telling Arjuna what to do tho. Seems like a copout to me tbh. The rest of us aren't so lucky to have God as our literal charioteer.
Referring to 7:28 of the interview, isn't Zizek then talking about material results of metaphysical belief. Isn't he talking about what historian Fernandez-Armesto speaks about when he says religion changes the way humans think? I am impressed with the way Zizek (and Ziporyn in his summary) sort of omit the possibility that the soldiers and workers are doing a job for pay. Some of those computer techs may just be stuck there to pay the rent. It is a curious idealism that assigns a motive that may not be present, though it supports Zizek's contention about the transformation from god-become-human to holy spirit. A lot to think about.
A two-hour long video?! Damn!
This has been enlightening about the idea of purpose itself. Thank you.
Zizek's arguments on the Book of Job of G_d f'ing up the beasts/leviathans and admitting His "reasonlessness"... as the world's 1st critique of ideology.
I'd like to thank professor Moeller for this video. I'd been slowly drifting philosophically towards your position of amoralism, albeit mostly through self-reflection and not very methodically. After hearing you and professor Ziporyn, and now reading The Moral Fool, I feel that I can start giving structure to these intuitions of mine. Thanks again for your hard work!
Great discussion. I would like to read Brook’s book. I would like to be an oceanic atheist.
This was an interesting interview, though a lot of it I found hard to parse, meaning there is some material for me to learn in this area and I look forward to that. Thank you!
I believe there is so much room within monotheism for this view of decentralization of purpose and acceptance of ambiguity.
God is utterly free of need for anything in the world, he has not created the world with any single purpose. A monotheistic God who created purpose as a contingent creature within the world, but who himself is not bound to any purpose.
There is a link in the words of the speaker between a creator God and purpose, but that link is not necessary (though it is common).
Instead of explaining phenomena in the natural world in terms of why God created them, which is time-bound. We can see them as reflections of the attributes of God such as mercy, beauty, justice, power, subtlety etc.
What is the "purpose" of having to conceptualize God at all?
Beauty and the other things you list can simply exist without it.
No creator is needed to recognize that we as conscious beings can build our own interpretations of the world as it is.
It's perfectly reasonable to think things just are and appreciate that.
You don't have to give credit to some being that none of us can see or ever even know if he actually exists
@@MattAngiono Or in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, 'Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?'
I will say it is the criticisms of buddhism Zizek lobs are especially ironic considering they all apply most dramatically to american evangelicalism, a birth child of his beloved protestantism.
Preach; reeked of the parallel reality I have to enter when I try to communicate with my dad about the imperial atrocity our taxes go to.. reality warps and words disseminate into taunting paradoxical ironies blackmailed into abandoning it's definition and joining the landmines littering our communication.
Wonderful! A very provocative and stimulating conversation!
Interesting video. I believe in God but I do look up other philosophies to understand their stances and moral reasoning
Praise to Dr. Hans-Georg Moeller and Dr. Brook Ziporyn!
Tyson and Spinks
Kendrick and Drake
Chomsky and Foucault
Mueller and Zizek
Let's go.
Even from a biblical perspective, Zizek is completely incoherent in his analysis of Christ's final words on the cross, as it clearly is a quote from Psalms 22.
I wonder what both of you, or for that matter Zizek, would think of Carvaka, the atheist / materialist school of Hinduism. 🙂
nobody cause Indians are not significant
I can affirm that Brook is not the only one that feels disgust at the idea of an "ultimate purpose".
I suppose it must hurt to know that being a basement dweller redditor pseudosopher is your ultimate destiny and purpose. Nobody said it was a grand purpose for everyone though, some animals live short and crude lives but yet are necessary for the greater part, like gnats, or worms, or bugs.
@@kennethruskin2710 jesus man relax
Loved ur videos on Moral Nihilism
Based. Only actual Atheism, please.
idk if it's the camera angle or something else but the guest reminds me of Mike Stokalasa from Red Letter Media LOL
"Embrace chaos and purposelessness". Shades of Discordianism.
Why do you attribute Zizek’s quote about slavery 14:30 to Protestantism alone? That’s not his position. And btw the abolishment of slavery was absolutely a subjective political battle! You fall back on the reliable mechanical dead history when you say that capitalism made slavery obsolete
It seems like you’re deliberately misreading his book to say that atheism is Christian as such when he’s talking about a specific kind of atheism. I really don’t think you can engage with Zizek in any sort of intelligent way if you’re not very familiar with Hegel, are you?
Oh boy 😂😂😂
I think you would really enjoy and it would kinda fit into the list of topics and discussions last few videos to read "Krise des Absoluten"(Crisis of the absolute) or "Vom Geäude zum Gerüst" von DP Zorn
Stating that „From a scientific perspective it is completely evident that there is no free will“ makes it completely evident that there is a fundamental missunderstanding of results of scientific neurological experiments that supposedly prove that there is no free will!
I really don't understand the general idea of "free" will. It seems obvious our will is dependent, conditioned and often influenced by outside forces. The word "free" is practically meaningless. If I had "free will" I would be nearly omnipotent. And I don't buy the argument that 'free will" is euphemistic or a turn of phrase. I take it it at face value. A better question is do we have "will"? in some cases we do have options in how we react and we need to exercise those qualities that enhance our control of our selves and lives.
I would argue that a purely philosophical explanation of free will is enough to demonstrate its absurdity, the scientific experiments just support the theory.
If free means there are no restrictions, thats obviously absurd, having no options at all in a deterministic sense, to me thats absurd as well, and if you take a closer look there is not really any kind of scientific proof (despite stated otherwise) or even convincing theories (well, they dont convince me to be honest) supporting the deterministic view.
@volkerneumann8812 I'm not sure what definitions you're working with, but I find the best way to approach the convo is with Laplace's demon. The demon is a hypothetical entity that has complete knowledge over the physical state of the universe. Every subatomic particle, its position, its spin, everything. The big question: Can this demon predict everything you will do with 100% certainty? Or if not, is the deviance entirely accounted by randomness on the quantum level? If yes, then determinist free will is not real.
If you claim that no, the demon predicts something wrong which is not due to randomness, that automatically implies that there is a discontinuity somewhere in the chain of causation. A physical law must have been broken. If there is free will, then by necessity, there are no laws of physics either. It's nonsensical
@@resir9807 if you are assuming that the only way to avoid a deterministic process is a deviation due to randomness then of course there is no room for anything else, I am sure you see the Tautology. To be fair I am not capable to explain HOW a free will concept would work on a subatomic particle level, does that mean free will doesnt exist? I think that would be a premature conclusion.
Holy crap, are all those cokes for *him* @3:10 . Or is that some bizarre attempt at product placement.
It’s probably an ironic joke
Zizek often talks about how caffeine free diet cokes perfectly embodies some of his Ideas about Ideology, so this is probably a reference to that
A dialogue with Zizek-related Hegelians or even scholars of monotheism may be appropriate to achieve more clarity at this point. Much of this conversation talks past its subject of critique, albeit understandably, considering the very real folly in monotheistic thought traditions. But collapsing all the numerous tendencies within monotheism into a single one creates illusions about what the necessary components of monotheist thought are. A lot of what is discussed and grilled here are strawmen in the same way that Zizek takes primarily "western" manifestations of Buddhism as representing the core problems with the overall Buddhist standpoint. Similarly, Nietzsche was both right and wrong about Christianity, taking the tendencies of widespread but specific institutions and acolytes as the singular representatives of what it is and must be. There is so much ambiguity (the notion of God being "beyond good and evil," the confounding conceptual interplay of free will and determinism) that many monotheist mystics and thinkers hold up, which is completely obscured in this conversation between two who seem to share a Nietzschean 'resentement' of specific Western coded doctrines. I'm not at all suggesting we locate the 'true Scotsmen.' Quite contrarily, I think we are missing an opportunity for some clarifying synthesis and fresh ambiguities.
All of my intuitions shout Zizek was right all along and no amount of critique can change my mind.
11:15 Zizek claims that protestantism was the greatest EVENT ever. You misrepresent him if when you say he thinks it is the greatest religion. What arrizes with Protestantism? What does it mean that it should appear at such a time within such conditions as it did.
This makes me think that you are missing his entire point with christian atheism. For example when he talks about the death of christ he is talking about it as an event. My catholic pastor used to also remind me that the key event was the death of christ, not his birth or resurrection, but this does not mean that Zizek is endorsing the catholic church.
Brook has a great voice!
check out Pyrrhonian skepticism which argues that both sides of any argument are just as relevant as the other, and that things in themselves are neither big or small, light or dark, good or bad, but our thinking makes it so
Both sides of an argument could certainly be equally relevant, but that wouldn't make them both equally correct or valuable.
The reason they are both relevant is that understanding the contradicting perspective can strengthen your own
This is true, but humans live at the moment, and judge other things with themselves as reference. I don't think this also can be overlooked.
BEST DAY EVER
Hi Hans, you're using the wrong definition of free will, this is why you believe it doesn't exist.
Ziproyn is brilliant
I think that it's actually exaggerated to find in Zizek's attitude this urgency of purpose they are speaking about, since Zizek himself opposes all of this. I think the writer interviewed in this video has just realized that Zizek tries to "save" christianity and so he concluded that Zizek is trying to defend monotheism, but it is not really the case. Zizek is actually trying to open up to traditionalists and conservatives to create bridges, connections, and make clearer his point as a leftist whose claims actually are very distant from onthologically fixated structures and monotheism. He always do that, building bridges between "opposites", he does that in person too, as in the interviews and debates with people like Jordan Peterson. A reason why he can't be the person depicted in this video is traceable in his critique of The book of Job, for example, that is very indicative: Job's friends, that almost desperately try to find a logical structure in Job's pain, are critiqued by Zizek for what he calls the "pressure of meaning". God, at the end of the book, just tells Job "don't try to find a logical reason in my creation and in my will", and Job just subjugates and shuts up. I think that this discourse, at least as it is put in this video, could somehow be used to critique almost anyone who tries to speak about something. Speaking is somehow always "purposeful", it's a way of creating order, and when we start to speak we disambiguate, inevitably. So in my opinion this discussion is not so different from God shutting up Job for basically trying to speak.
You find God abandoning himself in the Dashaavathaar of Vishnu.
Vishnu appears as Krishna, claiming he is the supreme way, absolute unity, etc. only to disavow all this as Buddha in the next avatar and make the claim that it doesn’t matter if a god exists or not.
We can't point to it or say it anyway, no? 🙏
Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu?. I would need a source for that. I thought buddha was opposed to the vedic revelation.
@@ReflectiveJourney Buddha was canonised into the Dashaavathaar by Adishankara, that cunning monist from India.
To be clear, this is largely not part of most Buddhist practices, but it’s still interesting from within the Vedic framework.
It’s particularly interesting to me as I was raised Hindu, and now consider myself Buddhist. It’s also very dialectical in a Hegelian sense, which is also interesting to me.
@@mapleandsteel dialectics is fine if you understand it but it seems lazy in this case. Adi Shankara was almost 1000 years later and cannonizing an opposing tradition is the oldest trick in the book to assert soft supremacy. Btw i still couldn't find a source. Shankara was influenced by buddism but not sure about canonizing. I don't even know if that is possible since vedas are supposed to be eternal and this would be pretty big change.
Hegel is also guilty of this since he makes all eastern religions as a oriental/primitive form of consciousness so i wouldn't be too quick to appropriate him.
@@ReflectiveJourney well there is no formal authority in Hinduism.
Here’s a source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha_in_Hinduism
And yes, Adishankara is a mangy casteist cunt. He absolutely ret-conned Buddhism into Hinduism to subsume it.
Babe wake up
Excited to see a new video on the channel, Prof. Moeller @carefreewandering. I have started watching, and it appears your signature brilliant analysis is also woven throughout this gem, consistent with your other videos. Thank you for your efforts to bring this intellectual content to TH-cam!
1:36:24 who edited these? Has hans read the unfinished odyssey of our times?
As usual great contend! I especially like you avoid these cliche tropes auf atheism. My main criticism of Mr. P. is, that you can find this biblical wisdom in all stories humans saw worthy of repeating. And he's cherry picking the nice stuff and ignoring the vile and evil. But in his recent content he seems to become less dogmatic about Christianity. Also we should differentiate between faith and religion. We need faith, that the sun will rise again tomorrow. In essence that our experience has validity. Religion doesn't add anything while negating the value of your existence. Only in death will you find value.
Atheism is a western outlook. Religion is too. And Christianity, what is that? Borrowed ideas from Greek myth and philosophy but comes from Judean theism.
What do you propose instead?
14:35 "Slavery was abolished because it made less and less sense for capitalist production and the industrialising world..." This is an interesting interpretation. There could be some truth here, although surely there would have to be more proof than this one simple sentence. You would also have to address why it was Christians and not Jews or Muslims or Buddhist or Hindus (who all have slavery more or less in built into them as a moral good) who were the ones who abolished slavery. Saying that Capitalism abolished slavery is a joke. Ask anyone who works for a living.
This would require pretty precise historiographical work probably beyond the purview of the immediate knowledge of a professional philosopher and theologian.
That said this is the classic Marxian point that probably has its clearest statement in the William's Thesis, which is also rather empirically flawed. On the purely theoretical side, to explain why Capitalism is supposed to have abolished slavery, you need to see Marx as a dialectical thinker. Capitalism turns works into what the Germans call "Vogelfrei," literally bird-free in English, where they are doubly free. They are both free *from* direct compulsion to work, but also free of any sort of connections that would allow them to do anything but sell the only thing they have, their "labor power," to capitalists. This is a kind of freedom, but for dialectical thinkers like Marx, and interestingly enough Smith in his way, it is undeveloped and self-contradictory. Capitalism's negation of classical slavery and feudal corvee/serfdom must, for dialectical thinkers like the Marxians who make this claim, itself be negated to arrive at a higher form of freedom.
@@Cuthlochvery interesting
It happened in christian societies because obviously they happened to be the ones first to capitalism and the most developed economies.
More importantly, you seem to be upset that this is a defense of capitalism, but it's not necessarily a moral claim, just an observation.
There is a mountain of evidence of this, not just his "one sentence". For example, early Dutch economic studies came to the conclusion that incentivizing workers with something to obtain better results was more productive than slavery in their colonies in the east.
@@flagpole974 While true, it's notoriously very difficult to separate out early Capitalism, early Liberalism, Bourgeois Society, and Protestantism, especially radical Calvinist leaning tendencies, including the jansenism of France, anticlericism, antiepiscopalianism, and antinomianism, until they more seriously diverge in the 20th century. Relatedly, the radical Liberalism and Civic-Republicanism that would morph into early socialism is also closely connected, for this, most famously, just see the Diggers and American utopians.
For thinkers like Hegel, Marx, and Zizek these are all immanently connected, and so it doesn't make much sense to critique Zizek, as the video, for being insufficiently materialist to holding to this understanding.
@@flagpole974 That seems like an illogical statement. There is no connection between capitalism and the abolition of slavery in any sense, since capitalism is not a moral system in any sense. A Jewish country could have developed capitalims but kept the cultural and religious norms of slavery in place. Why wouldn't they? If it is important to them religiously? Same goes with Islam. "Incentivising workers" don't you mean "incentivising slaves". It is easy to incentivise a slave" btw.
This is like listening to a talk about water by people who have no experience of it. You don't need Christianity to explain atheism. Just accept that your faith is materialism and scientism.
Christianity begins at the point of admitting our deep not-knowing, at accepting mystery.
3 criqiues of christian atheism - still good/bad, savior problem, exclusive protestantism
2hr cw video 👍
doesnt autopoiesis necessitate "control"? like it doesnt have to be conscious
Interesting that the most atheistic areas in Europe are not the favorite for most atheists...
Having a concept of good and evil doesnt make anything manichean yet. Why do you use that term?
Ehm... I mean... right???
Stuff you know?
Question that never can be answer, Who made god and who made that god. we might find out man made the gods story in our own image to control the people
The moral lens is nothing else than the proclamation of the principle of subjugation under a political system whether it's by free will or by enforcement of a criminal code. Assange is such a case. His crime was nothing else than acting against the interest of nations.
People who are discussing moral don't want a free society where people are discussing matters of importance. They want a political power reigning over people. This discussion had already started with John Locke, when he sees the Catholic Church as a problem for the state's interests. Religion as well as moral are not that different, when both want to move the mind away from its own interests. This discussion reminds me on attempts to impose values on people in the clothes of a dead religion. Some philosophers are outdated.
It doesn't need a common cause, what is needed is reason.
With is purposive anti-purposing and moralistic anti-moralizing, this discussion admirably sublates Zikek's Christian Atheism while taking it to even more subtle and rarefied heights of purpose, meaning, and control. Or something like that : )
so this is about 2 hr. of saying ´round about..."we as hardocre atheists and we don´t know the answer to all the tough questions philosophy asks such as, why are we here, and we like to keep it that way, hence Sam Harris attempts to put a fundament to his morality is wrong or, would you say "not having. the correct lack of purpose". Take the freaking beam out of your own eye!
Sam´s insufferable for trying to solve that...posh tosh honestly! Is dualism all the way down! You just don´t see yours.
There is no dualism if we don't value the same things. Dualism is perpetual work. The only beneficiary is your employer.
@@zerotwo7319 You mean I made the wrong presuposition? We make dualistic assertions, not because they are true but because they are necessary, by virtue of the language. In order to operate in any meaninful way in the world, we need to use adjectives..sort of thing ..analogy
@@PlumpClump You can assume whatever, but I never said you are wrong. You can decide to work forever... that is your niche and I see you are defending it.
Language is not dualistic, but if you want to assume it is, it will be. You are choosing that.
Language as a protocol it depends on a interpret to judge it. Language by itself it is nothing, we make it dualistc of not.
But if the other decides to not play this game..
I always state that I don't believe in gods and their sidekicks, i.e. angels, devils etc.
I think the usage of "God" was a fantastic marketing coup. Great thinkers are fooled by the trick of monolising the generic term for a divine macho figure.
Pseud detected.
Nous as Logos, telelogical, one particular meaning (of order and control). Someone in control means we also should act with purpose and control, as value judgement of copying god.
Doing everything with reason, and then writ large onto the universe.
Heidegger sovereignty - idea of enlightenment period, gaining more control (again from God).
Act like god or act not like god (renounce own will, live without why)
Create meaning or dont create meaning (sarte/Voltaire/progressives as they agree on purpose as important, daoism/mystical atheism, don't cling to purpose as most important, non unity as great matrix of being, valueless as source for values)
Metaphysics of the hangman - there is dichotomisation with purpose, which means you should follow it. And not following it is bad. Remove ambiguity, complexity.
The sting of conscience teaches how to sting (self distance oneself, can then project onto others wow)
His argument is to put ultimate purposeless first (but still allows for purpose, many purposes).
Free will/determinism coming from purposeful god idea. Free will not a big deal for non-monotheistic religions
Water interacting with water, water with water as opposed two separate beings
Not master of our own fate (different influences)/god as man made
Wu wei as purposeless action
Have you even read any of his major works besides this book? Like Sublime Ideology? It is not hard at ALL to pin down Zizek's position, as he does it regularly himself, if you read his books.
Sublime Object of Ideology isn't considered one of his best books intellectually. And when you say "pinpoint Zizek's position", who is doing the job? There is Zizek's position presented by "Zizek Studies" and "the real" Zizek's position presented by himself.
Zizek has distanced himself from Zizek studies and doesn't agree with them
So what you're saying is, Zizek cannot be judged on the book you read, but the books you haven't read. Interesting stance.
@@stevesmith4901 And overall, Zizek doesn't care if he is clipped or taken out of context. Zizek is a drama queen and nevertheless I'm glad Carefree Wandering and others are taking him seriously
@@Siroitin This is all nonsense. Why are you talking about "Zizek Studies" and "the real" position? He quite literally is engaging with people who call themselves "Young Zizekians" and have discussed this very idea with him.
Why are you making up things?
@@jodawgsup You can read his interview from new statesman
How could an immoral Jesus die on the cross? Impossible.
Encarnation.
3 horsemen? Aren’t there 4 horsemen? Dawkins, Harris, Dennet and Hitchens.
16:51 i do agree all of those exist in christiainity, but i dont think its a projection to recognize them at least in the bhagavad gita
The entire debate about “free will” and determinism in science, philosophy and religion is just too fucking stupid for me to pay any attention to it. Almost all the arguments both for and against “free will” make no sense at all. I seriously have no clue what the entire debate is about.
cool story bro
Philosophers defending free will because if lose it lose philosohy/everything (as again core purpose/value/higher ordsr value determinjnv us).
It opens and closes many doors.
Empiricism requires an independent observer. If the observer's evaluation is determined, say goodbye to science.
No wonder Zizec is so mainstream/popular.
Yugen? A Purposeless Purpose?
Massimo Pigliucci
The problem with Zizek's Christian athiesm is that it isn't Christian. And it isn't atheism.
Apparently the Ukrainian Nazis are part of the Holy Spirit according to Zizek!😂
If God is nothing then anything in place of it is a false idol to be destroyed..
Christ as in the finite sensuality of the flesh in its dualistic determining is idolatry
The role of action is being evaded throughout the discussion, at best, referred to abstractly. If faith means action and not mere belief - a suspect notion itself - the complex of motives related to childhood experiences of “god” should receive attention.
Any thoughts on the ethics of kitsch? I picked up on this concept in reading Stanislaw Lem's efforts to understand the Holocaust. The ethics of kitsch: the tendency of modernity to imitate the outward forms of Christian ethics in the service of a crime. For instance, the similarity between the Nazi tableaux of extermination and the Christian iconography of the Last Judgment was of course no accident The point of kitsch is to parody its original while ostensibly paying homage to it. So genocide is a kitsch parody of ultimate justice. I don't usually resort to the type of argument that goes : this is exactly how Nazi Germany started! But weren't the Nazis Christian atheists?
The Nazis had different religions. Germany was mostly a Christian country of course so Christianity was obviously a big thing for that reason, but the kind of religion that the Nazis were more interested in creating was a kind of Germanic neo-paganism called Wotanism. So the real Nazi religion is, I would claim, Wotanism, a type of neo-paganism (Wotan is Odin). I don’t believe atheism was particularly prevalent among them.
I’m tired of all these atheist couching it in ‘cultural Christianity’
So you guys, unlike Zizek, when facing the death of God, don't create your own cause, rather self reflect, and question the need for a cause in the name of Truth, control your western biases. Nice.
We assume an answer exists the moment we ask a question.
1:29:55
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8:25 I think to understand how Zizek differentiates between what you call "approved groups" and "false ones" you need to understand his aesthetic theory a little more. Zizek believes that we should rediscover an appreciation of art as hard work. If the good life is one which approaches the qualities of a work of art, then a good person is one who works as hard as he can. The assertion is that to work as hard as one can, one will appear to have devoted their actions to a cause "purely" as you would say, and to have developed a "Manichean" ethics around it.
I think, despite the terribleness of it, there is something which most people would agree is quite obviously beautiful about a group of soldiers who have dedicated all their actions, waking and sleeping, to each other and to their nation. I think this beauty is there to some degree in all the examples Zizek used, and I believe this comes from what is obvious to the outside observer as hard work; purity of believe is only one appearance of hard work.
I think most people would also agree that this beauty is simply not there in the case of the woke movement or the Jan 7th protests. There is nothing very hard about reading conspiracy theories online and then having one single carnival day where you cause a riot about it. Also what Zizek, and most anti-woke leftists tend to criticize the woke left for is the laziness and hypocrisy of their practices. The movements for socialism in the early 20th century were beautiful, but flawed. The woke movement is simply ugly.
Edit: There is no need for a church of christian atheism, but yes it is the old God again.
Zizek is court jester of capitalism
Zizek a jester? Sure. Of capitalism? Yeah I don't know about that...
That's pretty much any Marxist or French philosopher also, both being capitalism affirming.
Enjoying this discussion...BUT am getting really annoyed only 30 minutes in by the unnecessary cartoonish bits of the video in progress. Just ruins the conversation. Now I guess I need to go back and suffer for the rest of the session.
What your video exposes is that Žižek is a Eurocentric reactionary nostalgic for the pre-Stalin USSR.
What else would he be, a gay transhumanist Afrocentrist worshipping negroids and Landian future-capital devouring the present? Well, fair point, he is the face of the Judeo-American regime and their intellectual Easter-European arm so he should drop the Ostalgia act.
I am sorry but Sapolsky's book is terrible...
When you talk about "God", in capitals, as a particular entity, you have already ceded the entire ground to the Christian Tradition. It is surely more ---- agnostic --- to talk about "the history of imagining of gods and the communities thereby controlled"?
Love your channel Dr Moeller, but you seem to fall into the same bad faith criticisms of Zizek, that more have to do with presentation then form or content.
But perhaps im bias, as im heavily influenced by Zizek myself.
Tho I absolutely think that Zizeks takes on Buddhism are a little shaky at best and down right insulting at worst, I don't think dispite his claims, that he really does not have a strong understanding of Buddhism.
Is not Buddhism already an Atheism to Hinduism, Buddhists reject the Vedas and authority of the Brahman Priests.
The concept of Christian Atheism tho, is not really about advocating for an Atheism, (especially not New Atheism), nor is it about a return to God and how good Christianity is, the secret of Christian Atheism, is that the truth lived and reviled is God's Suicide, that the core of Christianity is more Atheistic then the classic Atheists, and that Atheists still have a disavowed God (Lacanian Big Other).
How does he have a bad faith criticism of Zizek?
@@ComradeCyber-bm4cn I wouldn't call it bad faith, but it doesn't really deeply engage with Zizek. For a video that mentions Hegel within the first two minutes it does not appear to grasp the obviously Hegelian framework of "Christian Atheism" for Zizek, and also that Zizek isn't trying to define Atheism as an abstract universal [and they seem to totally miss this in the Protestant Exceptionalism section], but Atheism as it actually appears in the majority, if not totality, of the Western world.
You can of course disagree with Hegel quite a bit, but the form of the argument would have to appear differently to actually address his point, Zizek's understanding of his point [which for the record is of course not beyond debate], or Zizek's own stance.
I will grant that Zizek seems to also have a polemical angle, and that is mostly what the video addresses. But, for an instance of the problem of conflating it with analysis, it seems weird to critique Zizek's point because it doesn't move past "the old judgemental father god" when the Lacanian big other is a pretty obvious point of Zizek's framework and something he would accept as a core presupposition.
@@Cuthloch Yeah, I’d say your criticism applies fairly well to the video. I would recommend reading the article in the description.
The criticism you have towards Moeller is the same kind of criticism I have with Zizek in Buddhism. It’s very polemical and never very well researched at all. Just surface level toe dipping on the subject.
Also, do you have any good intros into Hegel? Hegel rubs me the wrong way but I’d like to have a good faith criticism or a basic understanding of him at the very least.
@@ComradeCyber-bm4cn Hegel is very hard to get into, there really is no way around it.
For me, I really only seriously approached Hegel after thinking about other works that address similar problems and then returning to him for a more serious read after I decided what I understood about how he addressed those problems was interesting. I think a problem based approach where you approach him with a specific issue you're trying to think about, probably in some sort of Kantian/Neokantian/Phenomonological vein, is more fruitful than just trying to "learn Hegel." Ultimately what Hegel is doing is trying to use the very existence of the problem that Hume identified and Kant took up to move past the problem, which is what reason identifies as the limitation of reason, itself. Dealing with that problem on your own before hand will at least help you understand why Hegel is doing what he's doing in a broad sense.
@@Cuthloch Thank you for the advice. My thoughts on Hegel are so scatterbrained. I see his influence everywhere and it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I might approach Hegel from a historical perspective and his relation to eastern religions. I know the Kyoto School worked somewhat with his thought and Hegel interpreted the Bhagavad Gita. I work with eastern philosophy, since I’m familiar with eastern texts, maybe my unorthodox approach could prime me for some of Hegel. I know of Hypolite’s introduction and how Deleuze felt about Hegel. I might investigate the French interpretation of Hegel as well since I have a familiar background with Deleuze. I’m not sure though, given my philosophical interests if Hegel is even relevant to anything I do.
Anyone familiar with Max Stirner, the Egoist deconstructionist of philosophy.
> "Take notice how a moral man behaves, who now often thinks he's through with God, and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him if he's ever doubted that the copulation brother and sister is incest or that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that phyllial piety is a sacred duty, then a moral shutter will come over him at the idea of once being allowed to touch his sister as wife also."
-Max Stirner
Their point here is that ostensibly secular moralists are still effectively Christian/religious when it comes to the content of their moral sentiments. 'God' was replaced with 'Humanity', and Christian moralists largely carried on as before. And some of the evidence of this is in the continuity of Christian moralist prohibitions and commandments.
Most Western atheists are Christian atheists. They reject god but not necessarily christian morality.
My Christian godmother is a market Libertarian and white supremacist. 'Christianity' meaningless.
Thanks for adding the word 'most' because there are exceptions, such as me. I am a Western atheist, but I am by no means a Christian atheist. A lot of the things I find right or wrong conflict with Christianity.
regarding incest forbiddence and monogamy, when I was young, I never think they are Christian value but Confucius value (I'm a Taiwanese), so I don't see how this guy thought we are influenced by Christian value. Seems to me he lacks input of people from different culture.
I love Zizek, but he clearly has latent Western European chauvinistic tendencies in him.
You are cringe though.
When we accept that we are cringe we can become free.
@@derpchief9614 How Buddhist of you
@@georgepantzikis7988 Golden chains are still chains?
Moderns are all cringe, Zizek in particular though, he's the other face of global capital, the man on the 'right' being Jordan Peterstein co-opting a pseudo-Christianity and Zio-Liberal values that are slightly mouldy and from the 90's or so, with some Jung thrown in. Zizek is equally psychologising and disarming, turning radicals into happy compliant goons for the American imperial regime. It's all totally devoid of any real weight or even thought.
@@kennethruskin2710 bro just say you hate the Jews and you don't think Hitler was that bad lmao
What is materialism again? I always forget if it's phenomenological or if it's the mathematical models of physics.
Chauvinism always seems to creep into value systems. Plato points out the purity/contamination problem in the education of guardians for the sake of the community. In-group/out-group boundaries determine Thrasymachus' friend/enemy distinction.
Wasn't Plato's Republic actually a story about not allowing the addictions to appetites and competition rule the rational faculty? That's the very thing that leads to a domineering and censorious psyche and politics. To be 'rational' in a platonic sense is to be psychologically harmonious.
No one has any clue what materialism is. It could mean anything. I think Noam Chomsky has some interesting thoughts on materialism - you could look up what he has to say about it. But I would say that it’s not phenomenological but ontological, so a question about the constitution of the universe or the world. Mathematics I would say is non-material and non-physical.
@ludviglidstrom6924 Yep. That's my point, actually. People too often conflate the phenomena of experience with materiality, or the abstract theoretical models built from sense experience. I'm very sympathetic to Marxist analysis of political economy but there's a huge problem in the approach of so-called 'materialist' philosophy. Too often it's a way to dismiss anyone with an idea that doesn't agree with them. At best, it's a respect for careful historical analysis of agreed upon facts and good-faith discussion of contextual causes. But Aristotle's '4 causes' are a pretty good foundation for describing what a Marxist means by historical materialism.
Cringey? Lol