Žižek Blames the US Government Shutdown on Ayn Rand’s Acolytes Who Caused the 2008 Collapse

Many ideas can be seen as wrong in sec­onds, if the essen­tial, wrong-head­ed, premise is evi­dent. Once evi­dent, one need only address that premise, as the essen­tial, with­out explor­ing every nook and cran­ny of it. That may be of inter­est to some­one else (See “Kan­t’s Gim­mick” by Adam Mossoff), but it was not as impor­tant to Rand. One of her prin­ci­ples was not to negate some­thing with­out replac­ing it with a pos­i­tive. nnRand would make a con­cise case, rather than rely on sim­ply smear­ing that with which she dis­agrees. She did call some things “dis­gust­ing”, but usu­al­ly in con­junc­tion with a few sen­tences that show why. Smear­ing (“arro­gant, dead­bone igno­rant and high-hand­ed”) by itself is very much the resort of a per­son who has failed to under­stand, thus reveal­ing their own prob­lems with arro­gance and igno­rance. It’s a shame, real­ly. nnBTW, “the philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tion” is why phi­los­o­phy seems so use­less to most peo­ple. Those ‘Philoso­phers’ epit­o­mize Ivory Tow­er detach­ment from the real world… a prob­lem Jonathan Swift lam­pooned near­ly 300 years ago. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his sto­ry had lit­tle effect. Those he lam­pooned even laud­ed his sto­ry, whilst con­tin­u­ing their ‘tra­di­tion’.

Pre­sum­ably, an “immor­tal refu­ta­tion” would con­sist of a coher­ent argu­ment that address­es the oppo­nen­t’s stat­ed posi­tions. Rand fails on both counts. The lat­ter part of her state­ment about Kant is of course noth­ing but anal­o­gy; if she had read her Aris­to­tle a lit­tle more care­ful­ly, she’d know that’s a fal­la­cy. Far more impor­tant­ly, Kant *nev­er* said, nor implied, “there­fore, [his] con­scious­ness is not valid.” That’s not even close to an accept­able para­phrase of the phenomenon/noumenon argu­ment, much less an argu­men­ta­tive refu­ta­tion. n The whole point of Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son is that our “con­scious­ness” IS “valid”–a crude and stu­pid word for it, in the con­text. Kant argues that we DO know “things in them­selves,” but we do not know them in them­selves. This is read­i­ly demon­stra­ble in ordi­nary, a pos­te­ri­ori exam­ples. Every­one who dri­ves a car per­force knows that a com­bus­tion engine pow­ers it; only the tech­ni­cal­ly trained know how. VERY crude­ly, that’s what Kant is on about. (And may I trust you to rec­og­nize that, like Rand, what I have offered here is NOT an argu­ment, but a descrip­tion?) n In short, the (admit­ted­ly over­com­plex) dis­tinc­tions Kant argues are exact­ly *not* an abrupt, either-or dis­tinc­tion of “real­i­ty” and “form of per­ceiv­ing it.” (And does Rand real­ly want to argue that human con­scious­ness and per­cep­tion are not delim­it­ing fac­tors in and of knowledge?)n Describ­ing Hegel as “Kant with­out the unknow­able noume­nal world” is a mis­state­ment so pre­pos­ter­ous that I can only rec­om­mend a seri­ous read­ing of the Pref­ace to the Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy. If anything–and not that this is any­thing like straight-for­ward­ly cor­rect, either–Hegel’s attack on Kant starts by deny­ing the phe­nom­e­nal world. (See the sense cer­tain­ty chapter.)n All I’m say­ing is that if Rand and her acolytes haven’t the patience to read these peo­ple with care and a com­pre­hend­ing ear, stop try­ing to pre­tend that what you’re offer­ing is phi­los­o­phy. You/she can kick stones, and dis­miss phi­los­o­phy and the philoso­phers all you want; but until you can come up with some­thing more sub­stan­tial than straw man and argu­ment from anal­o­gy, you ain’t in the game, folks.

My prin­ci­ple quib­ble was with the word “[not] valid” to describe Kan­t’s account of con­scious­ness. The phenomenal/noumenal dis­tinc­tion was fun­da­men­tal­ly an attempt to over­come Humean skep­ti­cism, and sec­on­dar­i­ly Leibnizian/Cartesian dog­mat­ic ratio­nal­ism. Again, Kant says we *do&* expe­ri­ence things in them­selves, just not in them­selves. That’s in tune with Cas­sir­er, Wolff, Paton, & trans­la­tor Kemp Smith. Most impor­tant­ly, it’s what Kant said. Any refu­ta­tion of any­thing else is pure straw man.n Of course I’m aware of Kan­t’s maudlin state­ments about faith and rea­son. Against this, I can only coun­ter­poise the lit­er­al­ly dar­ing “Reli­gion with the Bounds..,” which damn near got him arrest­ed. But, sure, state­ments like the one you quote are sil­ly. *But*: so you’re quote from Rand! You admit to not read­ing Hegel; did Rand? I just don’t see how you can dis­miss some­one you haven’t read. (And I have read, afaik, every­thing Rand pub­lished in her life­time after Fountainhead.)n But Rand’s atti­tude to the philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tion as a whole com­pares very uneasi­ly to L. Ron Hub­bard’s view of psy­chol­o­gy. Sure, every damn one of ’em from Aris­to­tle to Wittgen­stein starts by tri­umphant­ly show­ing how their pre­de­ces­sors were pop­py­cock. And Wittgen­stein was prob­a­bly even less well read in phi­los­o­phy than Rand. But the author of the Inves­ti­ga­tions, if not the Trac­ta­tus, is at poles apart from the mes­sian­ic self-con­grat­u­la­tion of Rand or Hub­bard. And from their defi­ant­ly nuance-less, ahis­tor­i­cal ver­sion of truth and human history.n I live by the damnable code that has made philoso­phers fig­ures of ridicule ever since Aristo­phanes. But it is also the code that has giv­en human­i­ty some of its most exalt­ed insights: it ain’t that sim­ple.

Dear Harry,nn No, I haven’t read the “Intro”–a posthu­mous pub­li­ca­tion, ja? I would do so, if not entire­ly glad­ly, if it address­es in any sense this cru­cial point: “sub­jec­tive” and “objec­tive” are not sim­ple, read­i­ly defin­able, once-and-for-all cat­e­gories of expe­ri­ence. Call­ing Kant, Hegel, or even Niet­zsche for that mat­ter “per­spec­ti­val­ists,” as if their philoso­phies enshrined some form of solip­sist arbi­trari­ness, is the oppo­site of the truth. All three attempt a ratio­nal cri­tique of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, attempt­ing to estab­lish what it is, how it works, and what it means. These are the true suc­ces­sors of Aris­to­tle, and the accu­sa­tion of “col­lec­tivism” against them is mean­ing­less. Far more than any­thing I have ever read by Rand, they take the trou­ble to address the com­plex­i­ties of one and many, of premise and example–and of sub­ject and object. “Blind because we have eyes” is a mod­est­ly clever bit of sar­casm; as a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Kant and Hegel, it’s entire­ly incor­rect.