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

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Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The gov­ern­ment shut­down and the rais­ing of the debt ceil­ing — such things are not usu­al­ly grist for our cul­tur­al mill. But all of that changes when a cul­tur­al the­o­rist pins the blame for Wash­ing­ton’s dys­func­tion on the acolytes of a pseu­do-philoso­pher. Writ­ing in The Guardian last Fri­day, in sim­ple, straight­for­ward prose, Slove­ni­a’s favorite the­o­rist Slavoj Žižek asks and answers a ques­tion in the title of his op-ed: “Who is respon­si­ble for the US shut­down? The same idiots respon­si­ble for the 2008 melt­down”. And who are those “idiots,” you might won­der? Let me spare you the sus­pense and jump you down to the last two para­graphs of his piece:

One of the weird con­se­quences of the 2008 finan­cial melt­down and the mea­sures tak­en to coun­ter­act it (enor­mous sums of mon­ey to help banks) was the revival of the work of Ayn Rand, the clos­est one can get to an ide­ol­o­gist of the “greed is good” rad­i­cal cap­i­tal­ism. The sales of her opus Atlas Shrugged explod­ed. Accord­ing to some reports, there are already signs that the sce­nario described in Atlas Shrugged – the cre­ative cap­i­tal­ists them­selves going on strike – is com­ing to pass in the form of a pop­ulist right. How­ev­er, this mis­reads the sit­u­a­tion: what is effec­tive­ly tak­ing place today is almost the exact oppo­site. Most of the bailout mon­ey is going pre­cise­ly to the Ran­di­an “titans”, the bankers who failed in their “cre­ative” schemes and there­by brought about the finan­cial melt­down. It is not the “cre­ative genius­es” who are now help­ing ordi­nary peo­ple, it is the ordi­nary peo­ple who are help­ing the failed “cre­ative genius­es”.

John Galt, the cen­tral char­ac­ter in Atlas Shrugged, is not named until near the end of the nov­el. Before his iden­ti­ty is revealed, the ques­tion is repeat­ed­ly asked, “Who is John Galt”. Now we know pre­cise­ly who he is: John Galt is the idiot respon­si­ble for the 2008 finan­cial melt­down, and for the ongo­ing fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down in the US.

We’re not say­ing it’s the most tren­chant analy­sis, but we do like to take note of intel­lec­tu­al dus­tups. Speak­ing of, did you miss the Chom­sky-Žižek spat from the sum­mer? It went four rounds. Round 1. Round 2. Round 3. Round 4. And end­ed in a draw.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

William F. Buck­ley Flogged Him­self to Get Through Atlas Shrugged

Mike Wal­lace Inter­views Ayn Rand (1959)

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Famous Philosophers Imagined as Action Figures: Plunderous Plato, Dangerous Descartes & More

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Amer­i­cans do not live in a cul­ture that val­ues phi­los­o­phy. I could go on about the deep veins of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism that run under the coun­try like fault lines or nat­ur­al gas deposits, but I won’t. Let’s just say that we favor more obvi­ous dis­plays of prowess: feats of strength, agili­ty, and phys­i­cal vio­lence, for exam­ple, of the super­hero vari­ety. With this fact in mind, first-year grad­u­ate stu­dent Ian Van­de­walk­er decid­ed he “want­ed to do some­thing that would bring a dis­ci­pline that is often seen as dif­fi­cult, eso­teric, and even irrel­e­vant, into new light—especially in the eyes of young peo­ple.” Remem­ber­ing a poster he once saw of “an action fig­ure of Adam Smith with Invis­i­ble Hand action,” Van­de­walk­er decid­ed he would com­bine his own love of toys and phi­los­o­phy into a philoso­pher action fig­ure series he called “Philo­soph­i­cal Pow­ers!” Here are just a few of Vandewalker’s cre­ations, designed some­what like pro­fes­sion­al wrestlers, with their var­i­ous leagues and range of epi­thets.

He begins at the tra­di­tion­al begin­ning, with fig­ures of “Plun­der­ous Pla­to” and “Arro­gant Aris­to­tle” (above), “The Angry Ancients.” Aris­to­tle, known as the “peri­patet­ic” philoso­pher, has only one pow­er: “walk­ing.” His qual­i­ty is attest­ed by a rather cir­cu­lar syl­lo­gism: “All Philo­soph­i­cal Pow­ers fig­ures are total­ly awe­some. This toy is a Philo­soph­i­cal Pow­ers fig­ure. There­fore, this toy is total­ly awe­some.” Like much of Aristotle’s deduc­tive rea­son­ing, the argu­ment is air­tight, pro­vid­ed one accept the truth of its premis­es.

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In the cat­e­go­ry of “Con­tu­me­lious Con­ti­nen­tal Ratio­nal­ists,” who began the revolt against those Aris­totelian “Mer­ci­less Medievals,” we have “Dan­ger­ous Descartes.” René Decartes may have claimed to doubt everything—every prin­ci­ple that Aris­to­tle took for granted—but he fell prey to his own errors, hence his action figure’s weak­ness, the “Carte­sian cir­cle.” Decartes’ method of doubt pro­duced its own brand of dual­is­tic cer­tain­ty about his own exis­tence as a “think­ing thing,” and the exis­tence of God, hence “cer­tain­ty” is one of his action figure’s strengths.

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Skip­ping ahead over a cen­tu­ry, we have the lone fig­ure in “The Abom­inable Absolute Ide­al­ist” series, “Hate­ful Hegel.” Hegel is the ulti­mate sys­tem­atiz­er whose embrace of con­tra­dic­tion can seem mad­den­ing­ly inco­her­ent, unless we believe his meta­physic of “Absolute Spir­it.” Giv­en his dialec­tic of every­thing, Hegel’s pow­er is that “he is infi­nite.” His weak­ness? “He is finite,” of course. Giv­en Hegel’s tele­o­log­i­cal the­o­ry of his­to­ry, peo­ple who pur­chase his action fig­ure “can expect them to become more and more valu­able as time pass­es.”

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The most amus­ing of “The Antag­o­nis­tic Ana­lyt­ic Philoso­phers” is Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, who was him­self an amus­ing­ly eccen­tric indi­vid­ual. Known for his ter­ri­ble tem­per, which would often dri­ve him to ver­bal­ly abuse and strike those poor stu­dents who couldn’t grasp his abstruse con­cepts, “Vin­dic­tive Wittgen­stein” has the pow­er of “pok­er wield­ing abil­i­ty.” His weak­ness, nat­u­ral­ly, is his “teach­ing abil­i­ty.” I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the “notes” sec­tion of the fig­ure’s descrip­tion:

Wittgen­stein fig­ures come in two vari­a­tions: the ear­ly mod­el’s record­ed mes­sages include non­sense about lan­guage being a “pic­ture” of the world, while the lat­er mod­el’s mes­sages include non­sense about games and their “fam­i­ly resem­blances” to one anoth­er. It’s fun to com­mu­ni­cate! (Doll does not actu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate. Chil­dren who claim that Wittgen­stein fig­ures talk to them with their own “pri­vate lan­guage” are mis­tak­en or lying and should be severe­ly beat­en by their teach­ers.)

You can see the whole set at the Philo­soph­i­cal Pow­ers site. It is prob­lem­at­ic that we only get dead white men rep­re­sent­ed, but this is not sole­ly the fault of Van­de­walk­er but also a prob­lem of his­to­ry and the tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ry of ideas. One would hope that the con­cept is clever enough that it might make phi­los­o­phy appeal­ing to peo­ple who find it dull or unap­proach­able. That may be too lofty a goal, but these fig­ures are sure to amuse the already philo­soph­i­cal­ly-inclined, and per­haps spur them on to learn more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10th Graders Draw Pic­tures Imag­in­ing Philoso­phers at Work

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

What Do Most Philoso­phers Believe? A Wide-Rang­ing Sur­vey Project Gives Us Some Idea

Philoso­pher Por­traits: Famous Philoso­phers Paint­ed in the Style of Influ­en­tial Artists

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Albert Camus Writes a Friendly Letter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Personal and Philosophical Rift

Camus letter to Sartre

As maître of the mid-cen­tu­ry French philo­soph­i­cal scene, Jean-Paul Sartre wield­ed some con­sid­er­able influ­ence in his home coun­try and abroad. His celebri­ty did not pre­vent him from work­ing under the edi­tor­ship of his friend and fel­low nov­el­ist, Albert Camus, how­ev­er. Camus, the younger of the two and the more rest­less and unset­tled, edit­ed the French resis­tance news­pa­per Com­bat; Sartre wrote for the paper, and even served as its post­war cor­re­spon­dent in New York (where he met Her­bert Hoover) in 1945. Accord­ing to Simone de Beau­voir, the two became acquaint­ed two years ear­li­er at a pro­duc­tion of Sartre’s The Flies. They were already mutu­al admir­ers from afar, Camus hav­ing reviewed Sartre’s work and Sartre hav­ing writ­ten glow­ing­ly of Camus’ The Stranger. Ronald Aron­son, a schol­ar and biog­ra­ph­er of the philoso­phers’ rela­tion­ship, describes their first meet­ing below, quot­ing from de Beauvoir’s mem­oir The Prime of Life:

“[A] dark-skinned young man came up and intro­duced him­self: it was Albert Camus.” His nov­el The Stranger, pub­lished a year ear­li­er, was a lit­er­ary sen­sa­tion, and his philo­soph­i­cal essay The Myth of Sisy­phus had appeared six months pre­vi­ous­ly. [Camus] want­ed to meet the increas­ing­ly well-known nov­el­ist and philosopher—and now playwright—whose fic­tion he had reviewed years ear­li­er and who had just pub­lished a long arti­cle on Camus’s own books. It was a brief encounter. “I’m Camus,” he said. Sartre imme­di­ate­ly “found him a most like­able per­son­al­i­ty.”

As the recent­ly dis­cov­ered let­ter above shows—from Camus to Sartre—the two were inti­mate friends as well as col­lab­o­ra­tors. Thought to have been writ­ten some­time between 1943 and 1948, the let­ter is famil­iar and can­did. Camus opens with “My dear Sartre, I hope you and Cas­tor [“the beaver,” Sartre’s nick­name for de Beau­voir] are work­ing a lot… let me know when you return and we will have a relaxed evening.” Aron­son com­ments that the let­ter “shows that despite what some writ­ers have said, Sartre and Camus had a close friend­ship.”

Aronson’s com­ment is under­stat­ed. The queru­lous falling out of Sartre and Camus has acquired almost leg­endary sta­tus, with the two some­times stand­ing in for two diver­gent paths of French post-war phi­los­o­phy. Where Sartre grav­i­tat­ed toward ortho­dox Marx­ism, and aligned his views with Stalin’s even in the face of the Sovi­et camps, Camus repu­di­at­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary vio­lence and val­orized the trag­ic strug­gle of the indi­vid­ual in 1951’s The Rebel, the work that alleged­ly incit­ed their philo­soph­i­cal split. Andy Mar­tin at the New York Times’ “The Stone” blog writes a con­cise sum­ma­ry of their intel­lec­tu­al and tem­pera­men­tal dif­fer­ences:

While Sartre after the war was more than ever a self-pro­fessed “writ­ing machine,” Camus was increas­ing­ly grapho­pho­bic, haunt­ed by a “dis­gust for all forms of pub­lic expres­sion.” Sartre’s phi­los­o­phy becomes soci­o­log­i­cal and struc­tural­ist in its bina­ry empha­sis. Camus, all alone, in the night, between con­ti­nents, far away from every­thing, is already less the solemn “moral­ist” of leg­end (“the Saint,” Sartre called him), more a (pre-)post-structuralist in his greater con­cern and anx­i­ety about lan­guage, his empha­sis on dif­fer­ence and refusal to artic­u­late a clear-cut the­o­ry: “I am too young to have a sys­tem,” he told one audi­ence [in New York].

While Camus’ polit­i­cal dis­en­gage­ment and cri­tique of Com­mu­nist prax­is in The Rebel may have pre­cip­i­tat­ed the increas­ing­ly frac­tious rela­tion­ship between the two men, there may have also been a per­son­al dis­agree­ment over a mutu­al love inter­est named Wan­da Kosakiewicz, whom both men pur­sued long before their split over ideas. Mar­tin also tells that story—one per­haps more inter­est­ing in a dra­mat­ic sense than the abstract sum­ma­ry above—at The Tele­graph. The short doc­u­men­tary clip below also dra­ma­tizes their dis­agree­ment with inter­views, rare pho­tos, news­reel footage, and read­ings from The Rebel. There is no men­tion, how­ev­er, of Wan­da.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view

Albert Camus Talks About Adapt­ing Dos­toyevsky for the The­atre, 1959

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

Free Online Cours­es in Phi­los­o­phy from Great Uni­ver­si­ties 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Daily Habits of Highly Productive Philosophers: Nietzsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

Ever won­der how famous philoso­phers from the past spent their many hours of tedi­um between par­a­digm-smash­ing epipha­nies? I do. And I have learned much from the bio­graph­i­cal morsels on “Dai­ly Rou­tines,” a blog about “How writ­ers, artists, and oth­er inter­est­ing peo­ple orga­nize their days.” (The blog has also now yield­ed a bookDai­ly Rit­u­als: How Artists Work.) While there is much fas­ci­nat­ing vari­ety to be found among these descrip­tions of the quo­tid­i­an habits of celebri­ty human­ists, one quote found on the site from V.S. Pritch­ett stands out: “Soon­er or lat­er, the great men turn out to be all alike. They nev­er stop work­ing. They nev­er lose a minute. It is very depress­ing.” But I urge you, be not depressed. In these pré­cis of the mun­dane lives of philoso­phers and artists, we find no small amount of med­i­ta­tive leisure occu­py­ing every day. Read these tiny biogra­phies and be edi­fied. The con­tem­pla­tive life requires dis­ci­pline and hard work, for sure. But it also seems to require some time indulging car­nal plea­sures and much more time lost in thought.

Let’s take Friedrich Niet­zsche (above). While most of us couldn’t pos­si­bly reach the great heights of icon­o­clas­tic soli­tude he scaled—and I’m not sure that we would want to—we might find his dai­ly bal­ance of the kinet­ic, aes­thet­ic, gus­ta­to­ry, and con­tem­pla­tive worth aim­ing at. Though not fea­tured on Dai­ly Rou­tines, an excerpt from Cur­tis Cate’s epony­mous Niet­zsche biog­ra­phy shows us the curi­ous habits of this most curi­ous man:

With a Spar­tan rigour which nev­er ceased to amaze his land­lord-gro­cer, Niet­zsche would get up every morn­ing when the faint­ly dawn­ing sky was still grey, and, after wash­ing him­self with cold water from the pitch­er and chi­na basin in his bed­room and drink­ing some warm milk, he would, when not felled by headaches and vom­it­ing, work unin­ter­rupt­ed­ly until eleven in the morn­ing. He then went for a brisk, two-hour walk through the near­by for­est or along the edge of Lake Sil­va­plana (to the north-east) or of Lake Sils (to the south-west), stop­ping every now and then to jot down his lat­est thoughts in the note­book he always car­ried with him. Return­ing for a late lun­cheon at the Hôtel Alpen­rose, Niet­zsche, who detest­ed promis­cu­ity, avoid­ed the mid­day crush of the table d’hôte in the large din­ing-room and ate a more or less ‘pri­vate’ lunch, usu­al­ly con­sist­ing of a beef­steak and an ‘unbe­liev­able’ quan­ti­ty of fruit, which was, the hotel man­ag­er was per­suad­ed, the chief cause of his fre­quent stom­ach upsets. After lun­cheon, usu­al­ly dressed in a long and some­what thread­bare brown jack­et, and armed as usu­al with note­book, pen­cil, and a large grey-green para­sol to shade his eyes, he would stride off again on an even longer walk, which some­times took him up the Fex­tal as far as its majes­tic glac­i­er. Return­ing ‘home’ between four and five o’clock, he would imme­di­ate­ly get back to work, sus­tain­ing him­self on bis­cuits, peas­ant bread, hon­ey (sent from Naum­burg), fruit and pots of tea he brewed for him­self in the lit­tle upstairs ‘din­ing-room’ next to his bed­room, until, worn out, he snuffed out the can­dle and went to bed around 11 p.m.

This comes to us via A Piece of Mono­logue, who also pro­vide some pho­tographs of Nietzsche’s favorite Swiss vis­tas and his aus­tere accom­mo­da­tions. No doubt this life, how­ev­er lone­ly, led to the pro­duc­tion of some of the most world-shak­ing philo­soph­i­cal texts ever pro­duced, per­haps rivaled in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry only by the work of the prodi­gious Karl Marx.

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So how did Marx’s dai­ly life com­pare to the morose and monk­ish Niet­zsche? Accord­ing to Isa­iah Berlin, Marx also had his dai­ly habits, though not quite so well-bal­anced.

His mode of liv­ing con­sist­ed of dai­ly vis­its to the British Muse­um read­ing-room, where he nor­mal­ly remained from nine in the morn­ing until it closed at sev­en; this was fol­lowed by long hours of work at night, accom­pa­nied by cease­less smok­ing, which from a lux­u­ry had become an indis­pens­able ano­dyne; this affect­ed his health per­ma­nent­ly and he became liable to fre­quent attacks of a dis­ease of the liv­er some­times accom­pa­nied by boils and an inflam­ma­tion of the eyes, which inter­fered with his work, exhaust­ed and irri­tat­ed him, and inter­rupt­ed his nev­er cer­tain means of liveli­hood. “I am plagued like Job, though not so God-fear­ing,” he wrote in 1858.

Marx’s mon­ey wor­ries con­tributed to his phys­i­cal com­plaints, sure­ly, as much as Nietzsche’s social anx­i­ety did to his. Not all philoso­phers have had such dra­mat­ic emo­tion­al lives, how­ev­er.

immanuel-kantSmok­ing plays a sig­nif­i­cant role as a dai­ly aid, for good or ill, in the dai­ly lives of many philoso­phers, such as that of giant of 18th cen­tu­ry thought, Immanuel Kant. But Kant suf­fered from nei­ther penury nor some severe case of unre­quit­ed love. He seems, indeed, to have been a rather dull per­son, at least in the bio­graph­i­cal sketch below by Man­fred Kuehn.

His dai­ly sched­ule then looked some­thing like this. He got up at 5:00 A.M. His ser­vant Mar­tin Lampe, who worked for him from at least 1762 until 1802, would wake him. The old sol­dier was under orders to be per­sis­tent, so that Kant would not sleep longer. Kant was proud that he nev­er got up even half an hour late, even though he found it hard to get up ear­ly. It appears that dur­ing his ear­ly years, he did sleep in at times. After get­ting up, Kant would drink one or two cups of tea — weak tea. With that, he smoked a pipe of tobac­co. The time he need­ed for smok­ing it “was devot­ed to med­i­ta­tion.” Appar­ent­ly, Kant had for­mu­lat­ed the max­im for him­self that he would smoke only one pipe, but it is report­ed that the bowls of his pipes increased con­sid­er­ably in size as the years went on. He then pre­pared his lec­tures and worked on his books until 7:00. His lec­tures began at 7:00, and they would last until 11:00. With the lec­tures fin­ished, he worked again on his writ­ings until lunch. Go out to lunch, take a walk, and spend the rest of the after­noon with his friend Green. After going home, he would do some more light work and read.

For all of their var­i­ous com­plaints and ail­ments, through­out their most pro­duc­tive years these high­ly pro­duc­tive writ­ers embraced Gus­tave Flaubert’s max­im, “Be reg­u­lar and order­ly in your life, so that you may be vio­lent and orig­i­nal in your work.” I have always believed that these are words to live and work by, with the addi­tion of a lit­tle vice or two to spice things up.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Updike’s Advice to Young Writ­ers: ‘Reserve an Hour a Day’

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Course)

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Slavoj Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Ideology Decodes The Dark Knight and They Live

Do we have a more ener­getic com­men­ta­tor on pop­u­lar cul­ture than Slavoj Žižek, the Sloven­ian phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor who has risen to the role the Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion calls “the Elvis of cul­tur­al the­o­ry”? In the 2006 essay film The Per­vert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma, Žižek offered psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic read­ings of such pic­tures as The Red ShoesAlien, and The Matrix. (See him take on Ver­ti­go in a clip fea­tured here before.) Now he returns with a sequel, The Per­vert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy. At the top, you can see him expound upon the role of ide­ol­o­gy in They Live, John Car­pen­ter’s 1988 sci­ence-fic­tion semi-com­e­dy in which wrestler “Row­dy” Rod­dy Piper hap­pens upon a pair of sun­glass­es that, when worn, reveal a host of sin­is­ter alien com­mand­ments behind adver­tis­ing and the media. “These glass­es func­tion like cri­tique-of-ide­ol­o­gy glass­es,” Žižek asserts.“We live, so we are told, in a post-ide­o­log­i­cal soci­ety. We are addressed by social author­i­ty not as sub­jects who should do their duty, but sub­jects of plea­sures: ‘Real­ize your true poten­tial,’ ‘Be your­self,’ ‘Lead a sat­is­fy­ing life.’ When you put the glass­es on, you see dic­ta­tor­ship in democ­ra­cy.”


Just above, Žižek looks into the ide­ol­o­gy of The Dark Knight, Christo­pher Nolan’s sec­ond Bat­man movie. “Who is Jok­er?” he asks. “Which is the lie he is oppos­ing? The tru­ly dis­turb­ing thing about The Dark Knight is that it ele­vates a lie into a gen­er­al social prin­ci­ple: the prin­ci­ple of orga­ni­za­tion of our social, polit­i­cal life, as if our soci­eties can remain sta­ble, can func­tion, only if based on a lie, as if the truth — and this telling the truth is embod­ied in Jok­er — means destruc­tion.” Last year at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film fes­ti­val, Žižek par­tic­i­pat­ed in an on-stage con­ver­sa­tion about the project (intro­duc­tion, part one, two), “explain­ing” in his inim­itably round­about fash­ion some of the think­ing behind these cin­e­mat­ic cul­tur­al analy­ses. The Per­vert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy also uses oth­er big-name movies like Taxi Dri­ver, Titan­icWest Side Sto­ry (and Jaws, some of which you can see him com­ment briefly upon in the trail­er) as jump­ing off points for extend­ed mono­logues on the unseen forces that he finds shape our beliefs and behav­ior. Unseen, of course, unless you’ve got those super­pow­ered sun­glass­es — or unless, even more uncon­ven­tion­al­ly, you’ve got a mind like Slavoj Žižek’s.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Žižek!: 2005 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the “Aca­d­e­m­ic Rock Star” and “Mon­ster” of a Man

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

Slavoj Žižek: How the Marx Broth­ers Embody Freud’s Id, Ego & Super-Ego

A Shirt­less Slavoj Žižek Explains the Pur­pose of Phi­los­o­phy from the Com­fort of His Bed

After a Tour of Slavoj Žižek’s Pad, You’ll Nev­er See Inte­ri­or Design in the Same Way

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­lesA Los Ange­les PrimerFol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Man Shot in Fight Over Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy in Russia

Immanuel_Kant_(painted_portrait)

In the Russ­ian port city of Ros­tov-on-Don two men were hav­ing a beer this week­end and talk­ing about the phi­los­o­phy of Immanuel Kant (of course), when some­thing went ter­ri­bly wrong. An argu­ment broke out, crit­i­cal rea­son went out the win­dow, and one man end­ed get­ting shot with rub­ber bul­lets. He’s in the hos­pi­tal with non life-threat­en­ing injuries. The shoot­er now faces up to 10 years in jail, where he’ll have lots of time to pon­der Kan­t’s the­o­ries.

If you would like to con­tem­plate Kant in a more serene man­ner, we would invite you to check out his texts list­ed in our Free eBook col­lec­tion:

And see cours­es deal­ing with Kant in our col­lec­tion of 750 Free Online Cours­es:

  • Kant — Web Site — Leo Strauss, U Chica­go
  • Kant: Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy – Web Site — Leo Strauss, U Chica­go
  • Kant’s Cri­tique of Judg­ment – Web Site – JM Bern­stein, New School
  • Kant’s Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son – iTunes Video – iTunes AudioVideo/Audio on Web – Dan Robin­son, Oxford
  • Kant’s Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son – Web Site – Richard Dien Win­field, Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia
  • Kant’s Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son – Web Site – JM Bern­stein, New School
  • Kant’s Epis­te­mol­o­gy – iTunes – Dr Susan Stu­arts, Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow

via The Inde­pen­dent

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Radical Thinkers: 5 Videos Profile Max Horkheimer, Alain Badiou & Other Radical Theorists

If you’ve ever con­sid­ered draw­ing up a list of the most debased words, allow me to nom­i­nate rad­i­cal. If you call some­one a “rad­i­cal thinker,” for instance, a great many lis­ten­ers might assume you mean some­thing along the lines of “cool thinker.” While we do tend to find thinkers cool here at Open Cul­ture, more inter­est­ing usages exist. Some inter­pret the mean­ing of “rad­i­cal thinker” as clos­er to “thinker of very dif­fer­ent thoughts than every­one else,” and hit clos­er to the mark though they may, you can bet that some­one else near­by has read­ied them­selves to denounce the thinker in ques­tion as not near­ly rad­i­cal enough to qual­i­fy for the label. Like any com­plex word, phrase, or oth­er ele­ment of lan­guage, we may have to define rad­i­cal by look­ing at exam­ples. Luck­i­ly, the Guardian and Ver­so Books have put togeth­er Rad­i­cal Thinkers, a series of three-minute videos pro­fil­ing exact­ly those.

In each video, a mod­ern aca­d­e­m­ic deliv­ers a three-minute lec­ture on a rad­i­cal thinker of choice, draw­ing on a book in Ver­so’s Rad­i­cal Thinkers edi­tions. “Ordi­nar­i­ly, we are more or less resigned to the world as it is,” says Peter Hall­ward of Kingston Uni­ver­si­ty, stand­ing in Lon­don’s Hous­mans (“Rad­i­cal Book­sellers Since 1945”), sum­ma­riz­ing Alan Badiou’s Ethics. “We adapt as best we can to the exist­ing log­ic of the sys­tem, of the estab­lished order of things. We get a job, we go through life as best we can, we get by. What Badiou calls ethics is essen­tial­ly the dis­ci­pline and resources you need in order to resist those temp­ta­tions to aban­don or betray or give up on some­thing.” Stel­la Stan­ford, also of Kingston, takes on Wil­helm Reich’s Sex-Pol in the Freud Muse­um. This rad­i­cal thinker, she says, “argued against Freud’s view that sex­u­al repres­sion was the con­di­tion of pos­si­bil­i­ty for all civ­i­liza­tion. He used the same kind of anthro­po­log­i­cal work that Freud him­self used to argue that sex­u­al free­dom and civ­i­liza­tion were com­pat­i­ble.”

The Rad­i­cal Thinkers series has three more videos: Esther Leslie in Cam­den Mar­ket on Max Horkheimer’s Cri­tique of Instru­men­tal Rea­son (above), an indict­ment of the Enlight­en­men­t’s fail­ure to deliv­er a ratio­nal soci­ety.

Fed­eri­co Cam­pagna in his kitchen on Simon Critch­ley’s Infi­nite­ly Demand­ing, a look into the inevitably dis­ap­point­ed heart of mod­ern lib­er­al democ­ra­cy.

And Nina Pow­er on Lud­wig Feuer­bach’s Chris­tian­i­ty-crit­i­ciz­ing col­lec­tion of writ­ings The Fiery Brook.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Theodor Adorno’s Avant-Garde Musi­cal Com­po­si­tions

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­lesA Los Ange­les PrimerFol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Philosopher Portraits: Famous Philosophers Painted in the Style of Influential Artists

Lud­wig Wittgenstein/Piet Mon­dri­an:

Ludwig Wittgenstein & Piet Mondrian

What do the Aus­tri­an-British philoso­pher Lud­wig Wittgen­stein and the Dutch painter Piet Mon­dri­an have in com­mon? For philoso­pher and artist Renée Jor­gensen Bolinger, the two have sim­i­lar beliefs about the log­ic of space.

“Many of Mon­dri­an’s pieces explore the rela­tion­ships between adja­cent spaces,” says Bolinger “and in par­tic­u­lar the for­ma­tive role of each on the bound­aries and pos­si­bil­i­ties of the oth­er. I based this paint­ing [see above] off of Wittgen­stein’s Trac­ta­tus, in which he devel­ops a the­o­ry of mean­ing ground­ed in the idea that propo­si­tions have mean­ing only inso­far as they con­strain the ways the world could be; a mean­ing­ful propo­si­tion is thus very like one of Mon­dri­an’s col­or squares, form­ing a bound­ary and lim­it­ing the pos­si­ble con­fig­u­ra­tions of the adja­cent spaces.”

A sec­ond-year PhD stu­dent in the phi­los­o­phy pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Bolinger stud­ied paint­ing a Bio­la Uni­ver­si­ty before mak­ing phi­los­o­phy her sec­ond major. “I actu­al­ly came to phi­los­o­phy quite late in my col­lege career,” Bolinger says, “only adding the major in my junior year. I was for­tu­nate to have two par­tic­u­lar­ly excel­lent and philo­soph­ic art teach­ers, Jonathan Puls and Jonathan Ander­son, who con­vinced me that my two pas­sions were not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, and encour­aged me to pur­sue both as I began my grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion.”

Bolinger now works pri­mar­i­ly on the phi­los­o­phy of lan­guage, with side inter­ests in log­ic, epis­te­mol­o­gy, mind and polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. She con­tin­ues to paint. We asked her how she rec­on­ciles her two pas­sions, which seem to occu­py oppo­site sides of the mind. “I do work in ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy,” she says, “but it’s only half true that phi­los­o­phy and paint­ing engage oppo­site sides of the mind. The sort of real­ist draw­ing and paint­ing that I do is all about ana­lyz­ing the rela­tion­ships between the lines, shapes and col­or tones, and so still very left-brain. Nev­er­the­less, it engages the mind in a dif­fer­ent way than do the syl­lo­gisms of ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy. I find that the two types of men­tal exer­tion com­ple­ment each oth­er well, each serv­ing as a pro­duc­tive break from the oth­er.”

Bolinger has cre­at­ed a series of philoso­pher por­traits, each one pair­ing a philoso­pher with an artist, or art style, in an intrigu­ing way. In addi­tion to Wittgen­stein, she paint­ed ten philoso­phers in her first series, many of them by request. They can all be seen on her Web site, where high qual­i­ty prints can be ordered.

G.E.M. Anscombe/Jackson Pol­lock:

G.E.M. Anscombe & Jackson Pollock

Bolinger says she paired the British ana­lyt­ic philoso­pher Eliz­a­beth Anscombe with the Amer­i­can abstract painter Jack­son Pol­lock for two rea­sons: “First, the loose style of Pol­lock­’s action paint­ing fits the argu­men­ta­tive (and orga­ni­za­tion­al) style of Wittgen­stein’s Philo­soph­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions, which Anscombe helped to edit and was instru­men­tal in pub­lish­ing. Sec­ond, her pri­ma­ry field of work, in which she wrote a sem­i­nal text, is phi­los­o­phy of action, which has obvi­ous con­nec­tions to the themes present in any of Pol­lock­’s action paint­ings.”

Got­t­lob Frege/Vincent Van Gogh:

Gottlob Frege & Van Gogh

Bolinger paired the Ger­man logi­cian, math­e­mati­cian and philoso­pher Got­t­lob Frege with the Dutch painter Vin­cent Van Gogh as a tongue-in-cheek ref­er­ence to Van Gogh’s famous paint­ing The Star­ry Night and Frege’s puz­zle con­cern­ing iden­ti­ty state­ments such as “Hes­pe­rus is Phos­pho­rus,” or “the evening star is iden­ti­cal to the morn­ing star.”

Bertrand Russell/Art Deco:

Bertrand Russell & Art Deco

Bolinger paint­ed the British logi­cian and philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell in the Art Deco style. “This pair­ing is a bit more about the gestalt, and a bit hard­er to artic­u­late,” says Bolinger. “The sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of form and reduc­tion to angled planes that takes place in the back­ground of this Art Deco piece are meant to cohere with Rus­sel­l’s locial atom­ism (the reduc­tion of com­plex log­i­cal propo­si­tions to their fun­da­men­tal log­i­cal ‘atoms’).”

Kurt Gödel/Art Nou­veau:

Kurt Godel & Art Nouveau

Bolinger paired the Aus­tri­an logi­cian Kurt Gödel with Art Nou­veau. “The Art Nou­veau move­ment devel­oped around the theme of mech­a­niza­tion and the rep­e­ti­tion of forms,” says Bolinger, “and cen­tral­ly involves a del­i­cate bal­ance between organ­ic shapes — typ­i­cal­ly a fig­ure that dom­i­nates the por­trait — and schema­tized or abstract­ed pat­terns, often derived from organ­ic shapes, but made uni­form and repet­i­tive (often seen in the flower motifs that orna­ment most Art Nou­veau por­traits). I paired this style with Kurt Gödel because his work was ded­i­cat­ed to defin­ing com­putabil­i­ty in terms of recur­sive func­tions, and using the notion to prove the Com­plete­ness and Incom­plete­ness the­o­rems.”

To see more of Renée Jor­gensen Bolinger’s philoso­pher por­traits, click here to vis­it her site. And if you like them all, the PhilPor­traits Cal­en­dar might be per­fect for you.

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Famous Philoso­phers in Words and Images

Pho­tog­ra­phy of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein Released by Archives at Cam­bridge

Phi­los­o­phy: Free Cours­es

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