Mariborchan

“According to a well-known anecdote, anthropologists studying “primitives” who supposedly held certain superstitious beliefs (that they descend from a fish or from a bird, for example) asked them directly whether they “really” believed such things. They answered: “Of course not—we ‘re not stupid! But I was told that some of our ancestors actually did believe that.” In short, they transferred their belief onto another.” – from the article

So can there be no real and direct belief for Zizek? Or if there can be such a belief, can there be no one who asserts their knowledge of the subject and his/her acumen.

“Of course not—we ‘re not stupid! But I was told that some of our ancestors actually did believe that.” – Sounds more like the subject supposed to think like Zizek then a genuine utterance (the utterance supposed to be genuine, but there can be no such utterance, it is only a displacement, for this is how consciousness functions.)

Or am I just an unique idiot who can't understand, not ever? Is this not the way to understand the point?

“Concerned fundamentally with the nature and presence of ‘belief in contemporary Western culture, Zizek is arguably, and paradoxically, one of the few genuinely Christian theologians writing today” – David Jasper

“”He smiled contemptuously at mental speculation, for he remembered seeing philosophers fighting over garbage in the camps” – Czesław Miłosz, The Captive Mind

On Collating the Zizek or My Half Step Towards Devil

I’m a junior member of the Zizek Zealots, that being said, it is incumbent that I critically investigate him (In order to do some, what, Hegelian negating resulting in sublation of the master mind’s theory into my own underprivileged (for lack of formal training) and convoluted (for lack of a Zizek forum?) ” thinking”?).

My sense (my naive view?) is that for Zizek Religion/Belief mainly exist in order to describe (or as a stumbling block for a true method of reforming the social order?) the functioning of ideology and History (even Marx was not such a materialist in my view, Lenin-Stalin perhaps.). Isn’t this description of the ideological functioning (similar to Marx-commodity fetish etc. ?) the special point of the “chicken joke”? Belief is only a concept (one might nearly say a conceit in their (Lacan/Zizek’s) theory, a symptom (?) that the ones who can’t get it are suffering from, a thorn in the side of the materialist elite (uber-minds) with or a tool of rabble rousing demagogues?) used to describe the functioning of Ideology within the narrative (so religion and ideology are self identical for the true materialist?).

“The modern atheist thinks he knows that God is dead; what he doesn’t know is that, unconsciously, he continues to believe in God.” -Zizek, and then “If God doesn’t exist everything is forbidden” – Lacan

I am wondering what is the proposed solution (if any) to this problem of God in the for front or in the unconscious question (if that is indeed the problem described?)? Here though it seems that God for Zizek/Lacan must mean something quit different (moral philosophy/socio-ideological?) then for the believer. God seems to mean precisely Morals (or moral norms?).

As a Zizekian style Lacanian he (Zizek) claims that the ideal end point of an analysis is in an “objective solipsism” an I (my consciousness?) do not exist (,but the particles do?). Is this the emancipatory solution of the materialist’s (i.e. existence without existence.)?

We know Zizek often quotes Pascal (as paraphrased in Alcoholics Anonymous) “fake it tell you make it”. This along with Zizek’s , what, soviet materialist, Lenin’s version of Hegel’s logic (or what should one say are his theoretical roots?) leads me to the vague sense of dealing with a completely naive Materialist Zealot.

"Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists." – Wikipedia on pascal's Wager – A "bit of business" known (by Zizek) for rhetorical purposes? Does it even resemble a possibility that Zizek flirted with God/Belief with "living in Christ" with the transcendent morality of belief or what have you? He knows the arguments since they are part a parcel of contemporary discourse (and he needs a cudgel to beat back the barbarians who live by them or use them in politics.)

I claim that for Zizek there is no direct belief and no spirit. For Andrei Tarkovsky there was, and Zizek was fascinated (by the standard law "the only good philosopher is a dead one" so we speak here as if.) by the strangeness of Tarkovsky's vision (of course he explains to us and himself Tarkovsky's flaws…a disavowal?). It is important to recognize that Tarkovsky made no Pasacalian wager, he could not have even understood it, Dostoevsky could have understood it, for he grappled with belief as a problem.

Isn't Zizek twice disavowing/removed (in the guise of a materialist, who doesn't believe in belief, discussing the believers in belief) , in his unreasonable denial (term:fetishistic disavowal?) distanced from authentic belief, if belief indeed exists for him in some distant dank corner of the materialist mind?

I suppose all this talk about ‘god’ (small g) will end up with the political as a topic, where ‘rule of man’ somehow is supposed to be a goal in itself, for merely political purposes, and not at all to do with philosophy, be it of ideological or ontological concerns?

I am plowing through the XI seminar notes of Lacan currently (what a fun read) and I must add that I have not yet read all the books of Zizek that I purchased up till now, so I haven’t really any notion at all about Zizek and politics.

I just sense some opportunity here (when talking about ‘god’ as a subject for philosophical matters) for thinking of a perspective on what is usually known as something strictly about politics among people and its purported purpose. Something tautological, like rule of law/state, for the sake of political business.

“For Lacan God is the big Other in which we all believe, theist or atheist” – Mariborchan

I find this very odd, the understanding I have formed, piece meal, is that “the big Other” means almost precisely society (the symbolic order created by laws and ideology?) and something like an externalized super ego (The above, then, makes sense only secondarily in the case where the supposed existence of God gives rise to the desire to follow moral norms.).

‘the big Other doesn’t exist’ – I read this ‘The artificial personification of the social order does not exist’ yet none the less “les-non-dupes-errent” (the one who see what is there and not the symbolic fiction is wrong because he disregards the Power/Effectiveness of that specter that does not exist.) So it seems that a really problematic paradox is depicted.

The terms “theThing” (das Ding?) and “the Real”, to my mind, seem to have more to do with God i.e. a Numinous (in the sense used by Rudolf Otto) mysterium tremendum, fascinating, wholly other etc.

“he is a dogmatic Hegelian” – My understanding is that the greatest difference between Hegel and Marx/LeninStalin i.e. between the dialectal method of dual negation sublation (Aufhebung) and the logic of so called Historical/Dialectical Materialism is the change from the idealism of Hegel to the materialism of the later thinkers i.e. the movement of spirit(God) to the movement of History. It is hard for me to see how a Materialist can be a dogmatic Hegelian though he dogmatically study the logic and thinking of Hegel. perhaps I am wrong in this?

“I suppose all this talk about ‘god’ (small g) … ” – Dag

There is some frustrating (for me) problem with the contemporary discourse, I can’t get straight, in my mind, all the different levels people are speaking on when they use the word god/God.

Maybe the small g god is what I was missing in the equation ( small g god = moral norms?)

Adding on to what Mariborchan has said, my interpretation of Das Ding is that it is the gap between the Real Other and the Symbolic (Big) Other, that is, the horrible radical alterity that resists symbolization. An example might be a normal gentle and caring friend or relative that you think you know, who all of a sudden behaves in an utterly unexpected way, thereby transforming into a (monstrous) stranger.

…so I guess it *may* be taken as “God”, but as Zizek himself noted with any theistic discussion of Lacan you run the risk of ridiculous things like “the other night I had a mystical experience where God revealed himself as the Symbolic Order”.

@Mariborchan
I based my interpretation primarily on this passage in In Defense of Lost Causes (p16):

… the monstrosity of the Neighbor, the monstrosity on account of which Lacan applied to the neighbor the term Thing (das Ding) … One should hear in this term all the connotations of horror fiction: the Neighbor is the (Evil) Thing which potentially lurks beneath every homely human face …

So while Neighbor and the Thing are not strictly homologous, nevertheless the Neighbor is an instance of the Thing.

Also elsewhere Zizek talked about the Father-Thing, where the father suddenly turned into this monstrous Thing that thinks his children somehow owe him to their existence.

Also keep in mind that Lacan stopped using the term in his later works, in favour of objet petit-a which is a more precise term than the slightly melodramatic das Ding.

Oh a further clarification: I was not trying to equate the Neighbor with the Other, merely stating that the Neighbor is the gap between the Real and Symbolic aspects of the Other, ie. when the Other turns out not to be the benign symbolic entity you had thought but rather this alien Thing you can’t understand.

Title : the path to Elsewhere / Notes and Notes

“The big Other designates a radical alterity, an otherness transcending the illusory otherness of the Imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification. Lacan equates this radical alterity with language and the law: the big Other is inscribed in The Symbolic order, being in fact the Symbolic insofar as it is particularized for each subject. The Other is then another subject and also the Symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject.” – wikipedia

“Language and the Law” – Man made, Consciously made, Artificially made (This could be argued, although seemingly sound reasoning, I am, anyway, acting as if this were correct (using this as a justification for) the following statements/arguments.)

Although I wasn’t aiming at a formal statement, none the less, I think a good point about the Hegelian origins (of allot of this theory, or all of it? Q:How much was Lacan a Hegelian?) can be fished out of this statement:

“The artificial personification of the social order does not exist” – The assumption is that the the “symbolic order” and the “big Other” are the same thing and that “personification of the social order” carries a similar meaning.

We can get rid of the word “artificial” so long as we continue to be aware that “the social order” is already, innately artificial, when artificial means the product of human work. My reasoning for this is out of Hegel and his conception of history, beginning with questions about the initial types of consciousness, being, existential standpoints etc. Ending in absolute knowledge (and Being for Itself?):

“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” – Hegel, Philosophy of Right (i.e. only when history is ended can we take it all in and get the complete understanding.)

This is just to give a ruff picture, I don’t know Hegel well enough to be precise with the terms.

Raw/Natural is contrasted to made by Human(self-conscious being) work/ Artificial :

Hegel (in Phänomenologie des Geistes / The Phenomenology of Spirit) makes a distinction between “Nature” (the raw world, the natural world) and the Human world (i.e. the world made through work or more precisely the work of conscious human agents as distinct from animal (emotional/sentiment) awareness of being.) He suffers allot over the minutia of many points and terms so that, my understanding is, many readings (by sophisticated theorists) can arises from the text, but it is clear that for Hegel what is under discussion is precisely the movement of Geist (Spirit) and not as for Marx/LeninStalin the movement of matter.

One of the basic ideas put forward by Hegel is that we can’t have real i.e. objective self knowledge or better still “Being for Itself” without the interaction with a second human consciousness – thus is born the Master Slave dialectic and a picture of total (absolute?) history (human history?) that depicts the conditions of an end of times (end of history) when one can have absolute knowledge (because everything is over with and can be studied, all standpoints considered etc.) This final is given it terms of the time of Napoleon for various reasons concerning awareness (Socrates is given as early awareness making rabble rouser, a populist hero in the history of political awareness?) -Just attempting a broad vague picture of some of the ideas in Hegel.

“And is the supreme example here not (again) that of Christ himself: in him, the difference between God and man is transposed into man himself? Of course the first point would be that God represents a master signifier whose meaning is not fixed in a single concept, but can function in totally different ways” – Mariborchan text chunk

God also has a function in Hegel’s Dialectic which Zizek probably draws from which is an “instead of a Master” function in the Master slave dialectic (Something to reflect off of instead of another human consciousness) but, here too it is a matter of terminology.

The Paradox of the Symbolic Order and the Human Agent?
We ourselves (Self Conscious Beings) have created the symbolic order (“an order which is minimally “reified,” externalized”) A.K.A. the big Other. The Big Other does not exist, (but is “reified”). We have made that which does not exist. We struggle with the thing that does not exist that we have made ourselves.

For Zizek the paradox is a different one described here bellow, he seems to insist that the symbolic order does exist sic. and that as he says in his commentary on the matrix “I want a third pill!” (the one that shows the reality in the illusion, where the symbolic order is the illusion?.)

“This paradox is what Lacan aims at with his les non-dupes errent: those who do not let themselves be caught in the symbolic deception/fiction and continue to believe their eyes are the ones who err most.” -http://www.lacan.com/zizpassion.htm

but then why does the symbolic order “not exist”?

Prologue: An Indistinctness Continued:

“The big Other is somewhat the same as God according to Lacan (God is not dead today He was dead from the very beginning, except He didn’t know it…):” – Zizek, The Big Other Doesn’t Exist

It seems to me that so called materialist use “God” (or many terms) as “inconsistently” as the so called believers.

My impression is that Lacan has drawn on Nietzsche i.e. the one who lived at the dawn of the “Experimental Age” (Scientific Age) and his usage of the word God and the concept. Lacan uses Dostoevsky, apparently simply reducing the concept of God to the question of ’shall we choose Nihilism (in the form of soviet Dialectal Materialism where man is not man, but so called “Human Material”?) or Morals/Moral Universe of Dostoevsky’s Alyosha Karamazov?’.

For me it is important to note that God transcends the sphere of these uses within other discourses, but the Liberal Capitalist, University Discourse is the Hegemonic monster of our times.

@Zog Kadare

I’m no academic and I am believe I have just started to get past my bad habit of forgetting initial impressions in matters of philosophy. I think I somehow learn the various contexts and variations as time go by, but I know I am not mastering the use of the various terms, as if I understood them easily. Being somewhat of a minimalist, I cling to some basic ideas I believe I have, which makes the stuff I read more accessible for me when I read stuff I can’t really say I understand in passing.

I think I read somewhere locally how a philosopher should at the very least try to understand what others are trying to communicate, and you guys are good at this I think. For me, however, it will have to come later. I say this because I believe I have a habit of not caring for what others think.

I want to make a point and offer two options to sketch out any possible misunderstanding if we can call it that.

I believe I understand this which was mentioned above by Zog Kadare; “The artificial personification of the social order does not exist”. And I agree with Zog Kadare when he explain how ‘personification’ makes characteristics like ‘artificial’ redundant. Making a difference between the words ‘individual’ and ‘person’ seem to be suitable for when adding an existential dimension, e.g when talking about a human being. And by ‘personification’, it sort of make sense that ’something’ somehow is meant to ironically be held as an understanding of sometihing expressed or inferred, yet being prone to accusations of it really being something quite absurd. Somehow ‘absurd’ doesn’t quite cut it.

And here I want to make the point, about how one should not forget the quite absurd reality we live with. So it makes sense to me, to try find out if there is a point in time where we forget this illusion (my claim ofc.) of something ‘personified’, occur precisely when we are discussing matters of philosopy and psychoanalytic theory. (I have just recently become interested, I find the various terms still confusing to me.)

When Zog Kadere write about Hegel, specifically about this aspect of the ‘absolute’, I claim I sense a misunderstanding here. As if ‘the absolute’ is something that ever have existed or could ever have existed, or could ever exist in any way at all, or something that could ever be, have been or become a matter of personification in any way. Pheu I sensed for a moment that I had become stupefied, as my mind probably had inclined towards preconceptualizing my older ideas. This explained in a metaphorical way so to speak.

It might be me being the one misunderstanding something here, as I have suspected that there is a so called absurd (I have to try find a new word for ‘absurd’) dimension that have been omitted from Hegel and Lacan (I’m by far no expert on the subject matter).

Of course when I read above what Zog wrote “I’m absolutely sure that (…)”, I get confused myself, maybe I am simply in error in thinking that Zog was misunderstanding that which I believed to be a hardwired limitation in how we can even imagine (damnit I have to try find a new word for ‘imagine’ as well) things.

What I lack from reading Zog text just above, I suppose, is a single bold statement which would not rely in referring to more than a single quote from Hegel, Lacan or Zizek. :) I just am just not sure if you would say, that you would rely on ‘das ding an sich’ or not, as if ‘das ding an sich’ was or could be something/anything real in any way at all.

I guess that Zizek with his third pill, he want to be able to see also what what he knows to be wrong, already. Seems like this would offer him way of going places. Somehow the word ‘choice’ did not seem apropriate here.

Ah, I now read at the bottom when Zog wrote “But then why does the symbolic order “not exist”?”, and I think I might have found a lack in misunderstanding here, so to speak.

Would you say that you believe in ‘God’ (large g) Zog? Did I understand this correctly?

If the post is not disingenuous, although it absolutely appears to be, here is the answer anyway.

“When Zog Kadere write about Hegel, specifically about this aspect of the ‘absolute’, I claim I sense a misunderstanding here.”

Absolute Knowledge in Hegel, is a term that is formerly defined by Hegel.

Would you say that you believe in ‘God’ (large g) Zog? Did I understand this correctly? This is the wrong question, but the answer is given anyway. A: My studied opinion is that the term is corrupted; overly misused. Therefor it can only have a secular meaning today. One should instead talk of Spirit or Being as Hegel did or more to the point as Eckhart Tolle does. One can also see the spiritual standpoint profitably (correctly in relation to the ‘modern’ discourse) expressed in Tarkovsky.

An interesting question would be does one believe in human beings or human material? The logical extension of Materialism is the latter and the one embraced by the Soviets.

P.S.

You can erase the first post (#12) it had a typo in it :P

Oh Zog, surely you’re not suggesting a metaphysical (God) realm that exists separately from the physical material realm? ;)

In all seriousness, I would have to respectively disagree with your interpretation and use of Lacan (and maybe Hegel, if I’m reading you correctly), in that it veers toward the kind of fuzzy New Age post-modernism that permeates North American academia (although not as bad here in Canada as I imagine it is in the US), which prompted me to start reading Zizek in the first place. What I like about Zizek is his unabashed materalist reading of Hegel and Lacan that, while rehabilitating the kernels of both, nonetheless affirms the Enlightenment legacy of modernity.

To sum it up I leave you with a quote from Tarrying with the Negative, where Zizek defends a non-postmodern, normative reading of Lacan:

… That is to say, the “postmodern theory” which predominates today is a mixture of neopragmatism and deconstruction best epitomized by names such as Rorty or Lyotard; their works emphasize the “antiessentialist” refusal of universal Foundation, the dissolving of “truth” into an effect of plural language-games, the relativization of its scope to historically specified intersubjective community, etc., etc. Isolated desperate endeavors of a “postmodern” return to the Sacred are quickly reduced to just another language game, to another way we “tell stories about ourselves.” Lacan, however, is not part of this “postmodern theory”: in this respect, his position is homologous to that of Plato or Kant. The perception of Lacan as an “anti-essentialist” or “deconstructionist” falls prey to the same illusion as that of perceiving Plato as just one among the sophists. Plato accepts from the sophists their logic of discursive argumentation, but uses it to affirm his commitment to Truth; Kant accepts the breakdown of the traditional metaphysics, but uses it to perform his transcendental turn; along the same lines, Lacan accepts the “deconstructionist” motif of radical contingency, but turns this motif against itself, using it to assert his commitment to Truth as contingent. For that very reason, deconstructionists and neopragmatists, in dealing with Lacan, are always bothered by what they perceive as some remainder of “essentialism” (in the guise of “phallogocentrism,” etc.) — as if Lacan were uncannily close to them, but somehow not”one of them.”

Hold Back Future (We still wait)

This post disregards nearly everything said and is essentially unanswerable, but we answer it after a fashion. The sense, received from your comments, is of a complete ignorance of Hegel and German Idealism coupled with a general lack of scientific disposition (i.e. possessed of extreme, blinding prejudice).

“Hegel’s philosophy has been labeled by some critics as obscurantist, with some going so far as to refer to it as pseudo-philosophy. His contemporary Schopenhauer was particularly critical, and wrote of Hegel’s philosophy as:

… a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage…

– On the Basis of Morality

The charge of obscurantism has been echoed by modern analytical and positivistic philosophers.[citation needed] Scientist Ludwig Boltzmann also criticized the obscure complexity of Hegel’s works, referring to Hegel’s writing as an “unclear thoughtless flow of words” – wikipedia

“Oh Zog, surely you’re not suggesting a metaphysical (God) realm that exists separately from the physical material realm? ;)”

“Metaphysical (God)” The answer is already given above, but lets reprint it, i.e. :

” A: My studied opinion is that the term (God) is corrupted; overly misused. Therefor it can only have a secular meaning today (as in Lacan). One should instead talk of Spirit or Being as Hegel (Hegel who was a did or more to the point as Eckhart Tolle does. One can also see the spiritual standpoint profitably (correctly in relation to the ‘modern’ discourse) expressed in Tarkovsky.”

“In all seriousness, I would have to respectively disagree with your interpretation and use of Lacan (and maybe Hegel, if I’m reading you correctly), in that it veers toward the kind of fuzzy New Age post-modernism that permeates North American academi”

The impression here is an obvious one. The name of a perceived “New Age” figure has been mentioned, namely Eckart Tolle, therefore “New Age” logic is in use. If Hitler is mentioned in a text the text is fascist propaganda, if Stalin we must be prepared to go the way of the Soviet dialectician’s masses of human material i.e. quickly and silently out o this world.

1.The term “fuzzy” if replaced with “obscurantism” as applied to so called new age(ism) has caught my attention in Zizek more then once. What is this obscurantism? If the meaning is that the subject is obscure (to the non expert), then surely the same can be said of any field of specialization.

2.Apparently the meaning is the creation of deliberate mystification, however the material in question is quite clear to those who are able to grasp it. It should be noted that Chomsky levels more or less the same charge against Zizek’ s use of Lacan.

3.Or is some kind of formal meaning to be found in this term?

P.S.

To all this I would have preferred an examination of the question posed above :

“An interesting question would be does one believe in human beings or human material?”

One could start by asking is cheap moral blackmail at play and if so does the question have a meaning beyond this?

@Zog Kadare

… Did Lacan not emphasize again and again the radically antiphilosophical character of his teaching, up to the pathetic “Je m’insurge contre la philosophie” from the last years of his life? However, things get complicated the moment we recall that it is already the post-Hegelian philosophy itself which, in its three main branches (analytical philosophy, phenomenology, Marxism), conceives of itself as “antiphilosophy,” “notanymore-philosophy.” In his German Ideology, Marx mockingly observes that philosophy relates to “actual life” as masturbation to sexual act; the positivist tradition claims to replace philosophy (metaphysics) with the scientific analysis of concepts; the Heideggerian phenomenologists endeavor to “pass through philosophy” toward the post-philosophical “thought.” In short, what is today practiced as “philosophy” are precisely different attempts to “deconstruct” something referred to as the classical philosophical corpus (“metaphysics,” “logocentrism,” etc.). One is therefore tempted to risk the hypothesis that what Lacan’s “antiphilosophy” opposes is this very philosophy qua antiphilosophy: what if Lacan’s own theoretical practice involves a kind of return to philosophy?

From Tarrying with the Negative.

Oooh this is fun, “quoting” in lieu of a reply.

By the way, I find it slightly amusing that you’re deferring to positivist schools and then in the same breath talking about Spirit and Being. That’s okay though, because as we all know (I’m using the royal we here) positivism and post-modernism are two sides of the same coin, ie. they are both generate within the context of a global liberal-democratic-capitalist hegemony.

This is my final “reply”:

The question is then: how do things stand with psychoanalysis? Although Freud presented his discovery as a Copernican revolution, the fundamental premise of the cognitive sciences is that psychoanalysis remains a ‘Ptolemization’ of classical psychology, failing to abandon its most basic premises. (Post-classical economists, incidentally, make the same claim about Marx: his critique of Smith and Ricardo amounts to a Ptolemization.) The Sublime Object of Ideology tries to answer this question by way of rehabilitating psychoanalysis in its philosophical core – as a theory indebted to Hegel’s dialectics and readable only against this background. This cannot but appear, perhaps, as the worst possible move to have made: trying to save psychoanalysis, a discredited theory (and practice), by reference to an even more discredited theory, the worst kind of speculative philosophy rendered irrelevant by the progress of modern science.

However, as Lacan taught us, when we are confronted with an apparently clear choice, sometimes the correct thing to do is choose the worst option. Thus my wager was (and is) that, through their interaction (reading Hegel through Lacan and vice versa), psychoanalysis and Hegelian dialectics may simultaneously redeem themselves, shedding their old skins and emerging in a new unexpected shape.

From the Preface of The Sublime Object of Ideology (2nd Edition).

antithesis of dialouge = block of mind

Lacan’s theory, for me, functions on the level of the political and as Zizek says it is a very good “Privileged tool” for understanding societies functioning.

Derrida I am told, considered Lacan’s theory to be intrinsically idealist. In any case I think you should not trouble your head to much about commenting on anything “spiritual” or what not, since your practical ignorance coupled with insecurity/arrogance (unwillingness to go beyond ego failings) precludes useful, empirical, independent study on these subjects that stand beyond the limit of your indoctrination.

I am thinking that, by recognizing a certain limitation to our simple notion of knowing stuff and to our understanding of reason (elaborate thought processes), it would seem obvious that any specific and true knowledge of unconcious processes is not even remotely possible, given that we cannot directly see the matter, elements or the workings of the uncounscious as something intelligible, and that we cannot even know the ahistoric events leading up to any point (being outside history). At the very least there would have to be an interpretation in the way we come to understand the unconscious if it somehow was said to be observed (if at all), which would render any claims or theory of incontestable knowledge quite dubious. Scientific knowledge in this respect goes out the window with this.

And it is fair to say that this limitation is merely about how we effortlessly can reason, that we cannot have any direct link to the uncounscious, which I understand is not the human brain as such, but it is the unconscious as an unknown capacity (unknown for me at least) of the brain to constitute our conscious perception. I mean its not like thoughts as such are transferred between people or inserted in them otherwise, thoughts are primarily resulting from the activity of the brain- matter.

And oddly enough, I would say that a similar limitation is of the greatest importance for when attempting to gain knowledge about our conscious mind. It is really this simple. Likewise, claims and theories of incontestable scientific knowledge as such goes out the window with this, as the lucid thought processes should be deemed dubious when trying to interpret or reinterpret them. Mere intuition surely is doubtful just the same. The flow of thoughts stop for nobody, or rather that it doesn’t stop not for very long.

That is not to say that scientific knowledge is useless, just quite dubious. Fictional knowledge, something necessarily man-made. And I suspect that this obvious limitation for which I have explained in two cases, this matter of the quite dubious, is a fundamental aspect in understanding Hegel, Lacan and even yourself, as one ponder about the possible meaning of things and going beyond the initial impression. Point being, that to search and to find scientific knowledge as such inside or around something, is as futile as looking at the mirror towards your own reflection expecting to have a conversation with yourself. I wrote ‘as such’ here, so obviously I am not imagining that there is not scientific knowledge to be made. Though the fact that we relate to that, or to the way we do that, seem to be up for discussion.

Perhaps mathematics enticingly stand out, as verifiable true. I read that when people “find” longer pi numbers (billions of numbers), the record is not granted unless it is verified by others later on with some other algorithm. I hold some vague view that mathematics is all about patterns and repetition, with no guarantee of truth outside this. It is perhaps tempting to think of mathematics as a sure thing, both consciously and dare I say unconsciously.

Whatever ethical concern one might have about philosophy or psychoanalytic theory, it seems to me that communication should be viewed as more important than meaning, as we try to relate to things.

With ‘political’, I understand it as something pertaining to, and limited to, a self-interest-group, basicly void of a concern for wanting to communicate sincerely with others. Having but little or no real knowledge about Lacanian psychoanalytic theory/practice (is there a practice?) I have to leave any speculation about any meaning of ‘political level’ about Lacan for later.

To sum up. Perhaps one could say that one ultimately doesn’t know anything. Nor consciously or unconsciously. Yet in knowing this, there is this paradox which ought to open up for a common understanding.

Emanation of Research:

My exploratory divagations have paid out! Just why it is that for ‘Lacan the big Other is God’ is precisely delineated in Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes from which the theory originates.

Interestingly Francis Fukuyama’s old thesis about the end of history has the same provenance.

P.S.
In the universities they refrain from asking personal questions in philo discussion. I believe the direct question “do you believe in God” was = catastrophe! :) ha ha

@zog kadare
Didn’t see the “dag” comment before posting. Hence #22 is not a response. :O

Dag is my first name. It simply means ‘day’ in english. What a boring name.

@zog kadare
But I did not ask if you believed in ‘God’, I asked “Would you say that you believe in ‘God’?. There is a distinct difference with this imo. A little more room to work with.

A not so Amusing new Strain of Barbarism

The problem is, ‘for the man of average intelligence’, whose consciousness is more or less identical to the contents of late capitalist popular culture, an inevitable break out of the most violent attack on anything remotely resembling religion is inevitable. This is one of the the new ‘places of barbarism’ and is very unfortunate (the lack of consciousness that adds to its grip on the simple minded.) partly do to the importance of the continuity (of the great discussion) between theological thought and philosophy from Heraclitus to Hegel so to speak, and beyond, we must know the whole of these matters to see them properly. True, with Hegel, Christ is flipped on his head, so to speak, but the continuity remains unbroken, binding and of first order importance to (so called) Western thought and culture.

I notice above, a certain post that sadly invoked both “subject supposed to employ new age reason” and the standard rhetoric (misused here) that runs “you use positivism to discuss religion, hehe! ” , but this bit of business, if ever evoked, should be applied to those who deny scientific work such as that of Darwin.

There is also this ‘Cratylus’ problem of flux in language and this too is woefully underestimated/ disavowed by pop-culture (late capitalist) identical minds, but again their very program tells them to disdain the content of their own qusi-conscious minds in a Wizard of Oz remix “pay full attention to the clown behind the curtain”

The interpretation of all this is easy enough. The present hegemonic (dominant) discourse wants to do away with all mention of its forefathers (Und Mothers) and so with even more efficacy then found in soviet tactics of doing Orwellian disappearances and photo removals the Late Capitalists, as Zizek reveals, play the Groucho Marx game of spectacle (et circus) totalitarianism by simply making the fugitive antecedents a point of derisive humor and yet is the past not yet still alive in the present and are we not part of a connected and discursive series of historical steps and not as our poor pop-culture infused Religion hating bigot would have it the product of one intuitive leap into Scientific Truth?

Part II

About last “dag” post = this is of course an irrefutable position for someone who holds it i.e. who has already ruled out the possibility of being convinced by “objectivity” so to speak. However I wonder if you are aware of Nero science and it brain mapping, free will (debunking?) occupation/ potentialities?

Mathematics as standout – the standard argument to this is that only physics, as seen through the ’space time’ lens, can be posited as ‘objective’ knowledge as such (pure mathematics being only music so to speak.)

By political I mean to say human life in Hegel that needs by social because it (the human) requires recognition in order to be at all (for Hegel) and the implication is the question concerning the fight between individual and the pressures of society or as in Hegel particular/Universal.