1:21:47 I so appreciate this dialogue. Defining a religionless reading of Christianity as a fall, which then generates the fantasy of an original blessing and a desire for redemption whereby the salvatory act embraces the fall itself. That is such a succinct response, thanks!
I appreciate your reflection! Peter Rollins did a fantastic job identifying this structure of the fall itself and the consequences for the way our minds conceive of temporality as a fall from and a return to some positive harmony.
This was a lot of fun to watch, and I look forward to rewatching it later. A lot of thoughts to chew on and a wealth of practical perspective to tie it together.
Amazing! Yes, Peter Rollins is so much fun. Its a blast to host him, and I always get great value and lots to "chew on" from re-watching his seminars/sermons (from the mount of Belfast)!
The question has to be whether this lack is really a lack. As when it can be finally embraced it is something much greater than a lack. And the explanation of theory like Lacan or zizek then does become a positivist acheivement.
Hmm' well, I just looked up on Wikipedia what Das Ding means, and though that's the 50-cent version of something which is probably super complex, or something, I have to say that it merely sound like a restating of the God-shaped hole idea, and it also sounds like a symbolic representation of the general category of human needs. Being the case then, it seems fair to say that a proper understanding of the pursuit of all created and worldly things will always have only limited value in filling that existential hole, because that hole requires an overarching principle of meaning to fill it, and that sense of meaning will then direct and mitigate the smaller pursuits of life and track the reality of meaning across endeavors. I find that that meaning is the truth of the gospel, and the community and sacraments of the church, and that this meaning is something real, not just symbolic. I can appreciate bandying about a philosophical approach understanding God, but at a certain point it seems like an exercise in futility if it isn't grounded in the childlike faith. "For, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools". (also, hey, I took some online classes before and that was the guy in the videos explaining some philosophy stuff. I don't remember which philosophy stuff now, but hey. cool....)
Marx's 4 forms of alienated labor refer to a specific historically conditioned for of alienation. Regardless of one's opinion of Marx's concept, it should not be conflated with the kind of constitutive alienation Lacan describes. . In particular, expropriation of the worker's surplus, leaving them alienated from the means of their own subsistence, can't be subsumed under Lacanian concepts of alienation. I believe this is actually a fallacy of equivocation.
I think that we should reinterpret ontological lack as a "poverty of instincts" and the way human babies are born helpless and stupid, and also the way drives are flexible in terms of objects, in comparison to animal instincts. But this is only a "lack" from the point of view of animals--from OUR point of view, isn't lack an attribute of animals who cannot speak and write as we do?
Human drives in comparison to animal instincts, are not more flexible-quite the opposite I believe given the madness of the transition from biology to culture. Zizek tells a story sometimes about a research experiment which looked at the mating behaviors of monkeys. In the trials a monkey is presented with a "beautiful" mating partner and an "ugly" partner, but is barred from contact with the beautiful one. After a short time the monkey gives up on the ideal and settles on the pragmatic choice of the lesser mating partner. Humans in comparison tend to become obsessive and fixated when attaching themselves to objects, willing to suffer and even die for them. We are driven insane by fantasies and love-which can be both traumatic and romantic. Therefore, “the ultimate lesson of psychoanalysis is that human life is never ‘just life’: humans are not simply alive, they are possessed by the strange drive to enjoy life in excess, passionately attached to a surplus which sticks out and derails the ordinary run of things." - Zizek, Less Than Nothing, p.499
@@nightoftheworld Actually, I believe you are confusing desire with drive. As I understand it, drive refers to the real necessity of eating, shitting, and reproducing. I accept your account of being driven insane by fantasies and love, but in contemporary society, many of us face a different problem, which is the collapse of the possibility of desire and the symbolic as such. Here I am speaking from personal experience, as a former cocaine addict. The problem I had as a cocaine addicted was not getting caught up in a fantasy of desire. Instead, it was the problem of addiction as the SHORT-CIRCUITING of desire. The idea is that instead of the drives being mediated by desire and the symbolic order, instead, a direct feedback loop is created between the addict and the object of addiction, which leaves no space for symbolic representation. The problem this raises for the recovering addict is the following: because there is no investment of desire in the symbolic order, the removal of the object of addiction represents the catastrophe of a total collapse of meaning, which for me led to intense suicidal despair. I get this from Stiegler's book, "What Makes Life Worth Living," where he offers a reading of Winnicott's theory of transitional objects--the prototype being the baby's teddy bear. Stiegler argues that the mother must help the baby move through a series of transitional objects which starts with the Teddy Bear, and hopefully eventually ends with libidinal investment in the mature projects of human adults. Stiegler raises this problem, specifically, in relation to observed problems with infants who have become addicted to cell phones, and thus are unable to go through this process of moving through a series of lost objects. In my own life, it was only by learning to reinvestment my libido in a variety of people, things, and projects, and thus to participate again in the symbolic order by creating new LONG circuits of desire, that I was able to again inhabit a world that was meaning-full.
1:21:47 I so appreciate this dialogue. Defining a religionless reading of Christianity as a fall, which then generates the fantasy of an original blessing and a desire for redemption whereby the salvatory act embraces the fall itself. That is such a succinct response, thanks!
I appreciate your reflection! Peter Rollins did a fantastic job identifying this structure of the fall itself and the consequences for the way our minds conceive of temporality as a fall from and a return to some positive harmony.
All of this resonates so much. Thank you guys for doing these. I felt Emil Cioran's spirit in many points 😅
fantastic!!!
You are fantastic! Let's go!
Nice conversation
Big Sig with the Montano of 300 🔥 in the Q & A booth!
This was a lot of fun to watch, and I look forward to rewatching it later. A lot of thoughts to chew on and a wealth of practical perspective to tie it together.
Amazing! Yes, Peter Rollins is so much fun. Its a blast to host him, and I always get great value and lots to "chew on" from re-watching his seminars/sermons (from the mount of Belfast)!
D & G talk about a double-articulation, a double turning away(facility); lacan talks about a double negative to debar the S
Keep up the great work! Will be a future contributor when I can- as soon as I can
That means a lot! The real work is going on "behind the scenes" (so to speak) at Philosophy Portal in our courses. Hope you join us :)
The question has to be whether this lack is really a lack. As when it can be finally embraced it is something much greater than a lack. And the explanation of theory like Lacan or zizek then does become a positivist acheivement.
55:00 Spinoza
1:14:37 alienation in its different forms
Hmm' well, I just looked up on Wikipedia what Das Ding means, and though that's the 50-cent version of something which is probably super complex, or something, I have to say that it merely sound like a restating of the God-shaped hole idea, and it also sounds like a symbolic representation of the general category of human needs. Being the case then, it seems fair to say that a proper understanding of the pursuit of all created and worldly things will always have only limited value in filling that existential hole, because that hole requires an overarching principle of meaning to fill it, and that sense of meaning will then direct and mitigate the smaller pursuits of life and track the reality of meaning across endeavors. I find that that meaning is the truth of the gospel, and the community and sacraments of the church, and that this meaning is something real, not just symbolic. I can appreciate bandying about a philosophical approach understanding God, but at a certain point it seems like an exercise in futility if it isn't grounded in the childlike faith. "For, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools".
(also, hey, I took some online classes before and that was the guy in the videos explaining some philosophy stuff. I don't remember which philosophy stuff now, but hey. cool....)
Also. Fanon is a great point of eruption from eurocentric pysch-anal territories, a reterritorialization
The circle of the narcotics anonymous symbol is to show a universal program that has room within our for all manifestations of the addict
Marx's 4 forms of alienated labor refer to a specific historically conditioned for of alienation. Regardless of one's opinion of Marx's concept, it should not be conflated with the kind of constitutive alienation Lacan describes. . In particular, expropriation of the worker's surplus, leaving them alienated from the means of their own subsistence, can't be subsumed under Lacanian concepts of alienation. I believe this is actually a fallacy of equivocation.
I think that we should reinterpret ontological lack as a "poverty of instincts" and the way human babies are born helpless and stupid, and also the way drives are flexible in terms of objects, in comparison to animal instincts. But this is only a "lack" from the point of view of animals--from OUR point of view, isn't lack an attribute of animals who cannot speak and write as we do?
Human drives in comparison to animal instincts, are not more flexible-quite the opposite I believe given the madness of the transition from biology to culture.
Zizek tells a story sometimes about a research experiment which looked at the mating behaviors of monkeys. In the trials a monkey is presented with a "beautiful" mating partner and an "ugly" partner, but is barred from contact with the beautiful one. After a short time the monkey gives up on the ideal and settles on the pragmatic choice of the lesser mating partner.
Humans in comparison tend to become obsessive and fixated when attaching themselves to objects, willing to suffer and even die for them. We are driven insane by fantasies and love-which can be both traumatic and romantic.
Therefore, “the ultimate lesson of psychoanalysis is that human life is never ‘just life’: humans are not simply alive, they are possessed by the strange drive to enjoy life in excess, passionately attached to a surplus which sticks out and derails the ordinary run of things."
- Zizek, Less Than Nothing, p.499
@@nightoftheworld Actually, I believe you are confusing desire with drive. As I understand it, drive refers to the real necessity of eating, shitting, and reproducing. I accept your account of being driven insane by fantasies and love, but in contemporary society, many of us face a different problem, which is the collapse of the possibility of desire and the symbolic as such.
Here I am speaking from personal experience, as a former cocaine addict. The problem I had as a cocaine addicted was not getting caught up in a fantasy of desire. Instead, it was the problem of addiction as the SHORT-CIRCUITING of desire. The idea is that instead of the drives being mediated by desire and the symbolic order, instead, a direct feedback loop is created between the addict and the object of addiction, which leaves no space for symbolic representation. The problem this raises for the recovering addict is the following: because there is no investment of desire in the symbolic order, the removal of the object of addiction represents the catastrophe of a total collapse of meaning, which for me led to intense suicidal despair.
I get this from Stiegler's book, "What Makes Life Worth Living," where he offers a reading of Winnicott's theory of transitional objects--the prototype being the baby's teddy bear. Stiegler argues that the mother must help the baby move through a series of transitional objects which starts with the Teddy Bear, and hopefully eventually ends with libidinal investment in the mature projects of human adults. Stiegler raises this problem, specifically, in relation to observed problems with infants who have become addicted to cell phones, and thus are unable to go through this process of moving through a series of lost objects.
In my own life, it was only by learning to reinvestment my libido in a variety of people, things, and projects, and thus to participate again in the symbolic order by creating new LONG circuits of desire, that I was able to again inhabit a world that was meaning-full.