traptunderice wrote:
Define Infinity wrote:
Hey trapt, do you think Žižek's ideas are worthwhile? I personally think it's rather easy and unoriginal to make "cogito" as the symbolic that exists outside of itself. The fundamental grasp of him thinking to interpret German Idealism, that the thing-in-itself, is rather outside of itself rather than within it and the thought that the nature of an object is an inter-connection and in relevance with the "other" or the reflection of the thing-in-itself is rather ambiguous to me.
Holy shit, when you put it that was it does seem rather ambiguous. The notion that the cogito rests on the symbolic Other is straight up Kantian apperception as the logical correlate to the transcendental object. Kantian subjectivity rests on objectivity. That's actually what my paper is about, i.e., a summation/re-exegesizing of Kant in order to present Adorno's reading of Kant.
Don't quote me on this but his thought on the thing in itself has to do with Freudian fetishism and the commodity, possibly? The thing in itself is a fetishization of Kantian resignation, a rejection of immediacy in the world, Marxian situatedness or Heideggerian being in the world. The commodity presents itself as the fetishistic object which is imbued with sacred powers for all of the Marxian reasons but also for the anti-Freudian psychoanalytic reading in that it embodies a contradiction in social meaning, the injustices which Marx pointed to. This Othering, in my understanding of Zizek's argument there, I would read more as Marxist/Hegelian alienation than psychoanalytic othering. Although that more reflects my theoretical leanings than perhaps Zizek's argument. To be wholly honest, I haven't delved into much of the early Zizek but I think this is what he is arguing. My knowledge of psychoanalysis is rather new, having read Freud, and Kant for that matter, after I read Zizek so I could be just way off base.
However, my conclusion on Zizek's relevance rests on his later works since after Welcome to the Desert of the Real up till now where he engages heavily in contemporary politics on the communism wave which Badiou and him started. I love his political writings and need to get into his metaphysical/ontological early works. Maybe start Sublime Object of Ideology over break. I think he's an awesome theorist who weaves together a lot, from philosophy to pop culture and presents it in a fun, informative, thought-provoking manner. Is he a great philosopher? I don't have the knowledge to say. Is he like everybody else in philosophy since for fucking ever? Yes. Hannah Arendt rehashed Kant. Hard. Kant rehashed a scholastic whose name I forget in writing the antinomies. Foucault rehashed Nietzsche, making him contemporaneous and arguing within the confines of a critique of capitalism, i.e., discipline creates and regiments bodies for capitalist labor. Read Zizek for fun. Be skeptical of his work but I think in the future, he will be looked back as an important figure as THE Marxist who made Marxism valid after its being cast aside. The problem will be if he does that through spouting off tons of nonsense, but hey that's what Derrida did.
At this point, I'm just writing to avoid writing my Kant paper.
First: I agree that Zizek’s philosophy is fundamentally based on Kant and Freudian Psychoanalysis; it rather on the “objective” knowing that Kant finds in subjectivity, although, as you very well know Kant’s subjectivity is in roots different from other typical subjective “perception.” Kant does think the thing-in-itself cannot be known but it is rather a transcendental knowing of the object at hand but Schopenhauer took the thing-in-itself to be the will, the prime mover (Aristotle anyone?)
Second: I only take a few ideas from Freud to be valid and worthwhile in one which is the "Oceanic" feeling. It can be directly (or indirectly) connected to Kierkegaard “subjectivity is truth” truth is passion, etc...
Third: As to the term of “the other” as Levinas’s critique of Heidegger’s hermeneutics, I would say I am with Heidegger in terms that there really isn’t the “other” and it basically is a unification of the past, future, and present and the inter-connected and the matter-in-motion of the self (objects, being-in-the-world, throwness) is rather the mystical meaning of all humans in disposedness, and the interpretation of Descartes's “I” that Zizek merely likes to reinterpret otherwise and make an ontological claim. Heidegger’s fundamental question of what does it mean to merely “be-there” as to the translation of “Da-sein” is originally taken from Aristotle.
Fourth: I couldn’t agree more with you in terms of how each and every philosophy has become the derivative and the thing that came before it. I mean Plato and Aristotle laid eternal foundations for the tradition of philosophy. I think post-modern philosophy is rather concerned with the critique of philosophy rather than philosophising an original world-view. I rather like the critique of Derrida's philosophy of the possibility, impossibility, absence, presence. It is rather mind opening and nihilistic at same time. Foucault admittedly said the he was indeed a Nietzschean. I think if I had to choose between style and elegance vs ideas systematic philosophy, I would choose, elegance and style. Nietzsche is eternal for that, I believe no one will ever touch his superiority of language and power.
Last: As time goes by I am much more attracted to Esotericism and Mysticism.
