Slavoj Zizek. Materialism and Theology. 2007 8/8

[@N0113999]

What I think hes saying is that 'natural' materialism comes from theology, in the sense that the concept of a god gives 'sufficient' meaning to everything. Due to this early mistake humans have moved through history with that understanding, and so have facilitated a materialist world, in which possessions dictate the human relationship to the world around us.

[@egsvideo]

Thank you for your comment. You are very welcome. More lectures are in the pipeline.

[@egsvideo]

i believe, that the person you are asking about is wolfgang schirmacher, the dean of the media and communications department of the european graduate school. he wrote and edited several books, you can find some of them on amazon.

[@Krelianx]

Just in passing, I want to give a general comment to people who are not familiar with these thinkers. When Zizek expresses something that appears to speak against science or for religion, he is usually attacking the philosophical account of scientific practices, not the scientific practices themselves. Zizek does not speak against quantum physics, but about how we mistakenly draw philosophical conclusions from them. Great science does not entail having great philosophical accounts of science.

[@ToroAzzurro]

So basically the matter is that both theology and materialism create a 'semantic authority' by the category of 'one' (god, o the athom, wich is a way to simplify reality by creating some othernesses which are kind of epistemological dogmas, am I right?

[@chambly111]

An inspiring meal for the brain. Thank you.

[@t0kt0k]

Very, very interesting. I'm slowling becoming quite a Zizek fan.

[@theriomorphous]

The return of Heidegger's infamous broken hammer?

[@miznarik]

Thank you egsvideo.

[@Krelianx]

No, since what we're after is not really a set of existentiales grounded in Dasein's transparent coping (to use Dreyfus' term) within the nexus of purposeful activity. Consciousness of failure should be rather read as the Hegelian 'cunning of reason'.

[@iwpoe]

I do wonder whether or not the Heideggerian hasn't come back to us when Žižek says, "consciousness is originally consciousness of failure".

[@rajasmasala]

similar to harraway?

[@somor98]

I cannot keep up with this guy's equivocations.

[@Krelianx]

Zizek is a materialist; he is rejecting a particular brand of materialism which rests on a transcendental dualism of subject (opinion, belief and object (fact, truth). Such a simplified picture is of course vulgar, since it is ideologically naive in its ontological foundations (at the philosophical level they are quite pathetic).