Embracing the Void with Richard Boothby

Richard Boothby and Todd McGowan discuss the psychoanalytic theory of religion formulated in Rick's book Embracing the Void. They trace the philosophical bases for the religious experience and then focus especially on Christianity.

[@Parsons4Geist]

Richard is a beautiful human being. Giving birth to a spirituality working through Lacan. ❤ almost Todd could we say and type of emancipation 😊

[@nah8845]

Wow, Rick's story is so heartbreaking and powerful. Thanks for putting this together and I'm so glad to have encountered Boothby.

[@rawkvox]

Freud as philosopher!!!!!!!!!!!!! soooooooooooooo gooooooood. cant wait to read Void. its a void, lord.

[@nightoftheworld]

21:03 *the Christian Thing* “Christianity is exceptional in the _degree,_ not in doing it at all, but in the degree to which the relationship that is drawn up is _deeply symptomatic._ That is to say Christianity most is of all the monotheisms, and I argue of all the religions (we can explain why this is in a minute), but it is the most directly in confrontation with/in insistence upon centering the whole religious experience on the Real of the unknown Thing-but for that _exact_ reason Christianity is also the most deeply symptomatic religious formation which counters it’s own so direct and insistent approach to das ding that it almost cannot resist the temptation to symptomatically deny the very thing it’s opened up and protect itself, you might say, from its exposure to this traumatic, anxiety producing Thing.”

[@ivannegri7724]

I found this talk very engaging and the entire series, I was thinking of it as Lacan 101, & now I know what Slavo was talking about. Also, I was trying to think of why Christians have the capacity to be so violent, and I was like, Wow, they have situated the Big Other in an abstract beyond place, and therefore can be murderous to "human others", because they're not ascribing this quality of radical unknown Black Box type thing to the humans around them, but are reserving all Sacredness to the unknowability of Adonai. Sorry I went on so long, I think you are a good teacher.

[@torquemaddertorquemadder2080]

It might just be worth clarifying that in the Parable of Good Samaritan, the question is not 'who was neighbour from the point of view of the Samaritan', but 'who was a neighbour from the point of view of the man fallen on misfortune'. And the answer is not 'anyone' or 'everyone', but specifically, only, the one of the three who helped him. And a side note: The Latin Vulgate usually translated as 'neighbour', is 'proximus', which can also, more strictly, be translated as simply 'the next' - giving the story a broader dialectical complexion.

[@psychepodcast]

Love both of you guys! Wonderful conversation. Would love to host a conversation on existentialism and Christianity one day ❤

[@mcosu1]

Love your podcast!

[@nightoftheworld]

“The Kingdom of God is on Mainstreet” …best Todd/Hegel quote

[@TheDangerousMaybe]

Hey Todd, great discussion! Question: in 'Embracing the Void', does Richard explain how he understands the difference between das Ding and objet petit a?

[@pystalcrepsi]

I'm curious about this too. I've seen a couple great talks with Richard online now and I wanna read him, but I'm especially interested in his thoughts on Das Ding, because I know he gives it more prominence than most readers of Lacan.

[@toddmcgowan8233]

In the first part of the book, there is a discussion of the relationship between das Ding and objet a, yes.

[@TheDangerousMaybe]

@@toddmcgowan8233 Good to hear! I’m ordering a copy today!

[@georg5475]

His unknown reminds me very much of the secrecy central to derridas ethics

[@nightoftheworld]

37:15 *transactional salvation* Zizek’s Jokes: “There is an old Jewish joke, loved by Derrida, about a group of Jews in a synagogue publicly admitting their nullity in the eyes of God. First, a rabbi stands up and says: _’O God, I know I am worthless. I am nothing!’_ After he has finished, a rich businessman stands up and says, beating himself on the chest: _’O God, I am also worthless, obsessed with material wealth. I am nothing!’_ After this spectacle, a poor ordinary Jew also stands up and also proclaims: _’O God, I am nothing.’_ The rich businessman kicks the rabbi and whispers in his ear with scorn: _’What insolence! Who is that guy who dares to claim that he is nothing too!’”_

[@cleo8128]

I am all over this book re my current project on the engagement of postmodern philosophy with the Abrahamic scriptures. But I am wondering if this line of though ever engages with Bracha Ettinger's work on Lacan, which deeply refigures the Lacanian desire of the mother. Any takers?

[@nightoftheworld]

44:49 *Lacanian anxiety-being held out into the nothing of the other* “[T]his absolutely crucial point has to be remembered-anxiety for Heidegger is anxiety in the face of my own freedom. Therefore it’s dasein’s own radical openness that is dizzying, that is anxiety producing. By the way, in this regard Freud and Sartre, where they otherwise have some differences, on this they’re speaking with one voice-that it’s my very freedom that is vertiginous and therefore the fundamental origin of anxiety. _Not so_ for Lacan. For Lacan it is the relation to the other, and it’s in relation to das ding, or so I’m reading that one liner from the seminar on anxiety. […] The unconscious is being beholden where human desire is the desire of the other. There’s this kind of detour, this haunting, undermining detour through the other as the only path to myself. That’s the kind of precariousness of an existentialism you might almost say _raised to another power-circuited through the other.”

[@Jack-in-the-country]

Thanks for the excellently chosen timestamp.

[@neebomb2511]

Hi Todd and Richard, Have you come across that book, The Enchantments of Mammon?

[@benjamintaylor1080]

32:40 The Samaritan was the ethnic and religious enemy of the Judeans. The parable of the Good Samaritan was making that exact point

[@jeanlamontfilms5586]

Funny, I feel like Hegel helped me better make sense of my psychedelic experience

[@EliaMarc]

Could you please name one example? This sounds extremely interesting to me.

[@georg5475]

His unknown reminds me very much of the secrecy central to derridas ethics