Professor Slavoj Žižek | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union

I am really very grateful for this invitation and you may be surprised, but I even like the weather. Hell to me is a stupid Mediterranean beach with all the sun and everything. Oh, this is the weather I like. Well, so I am. I'm a little afraid of which direction to take because most of you are not philosophers, so I will try in this introduction of a quarter of an hour at most, maybe I will do it like this to start, to start with more things not purely philosophical, but some things with philosophical consequences and then conclude with some political comments let me be a little, I will be associating and so on.

I don't want to bore you. I would like to start with two Jewish jokes that have a deep metaphysical meaning. that is, one that I have already used in my old books, I hope you don't know it. The other one is new only now that I found out. The first is the classic that you know on Shabbat on Saturday. Jewish believers gather in a synagogue and each one of them says something so first a great rabbi said oh my God, I know friend, I am NOT worthy of your attention, God, then a rich Jewish merchant comes and says, oh God mine, I'm no one either, don't even consider me, I'm not worthy of your attention, so I hope you know the joke, a poor Jew stands up and says God, I'm a nobody too and then the rich merchant kicks the rabbi and says who is this guy, you think he can also tell he's there.

There is a profound truth in this every time someone apparently humiliates themselves and others adopts this attitude of contempt my name my identity blah blah be very careful about seeking secret privileges what is the Lacanian I would have called surplus enjoyment that I will give an example that It can even be provocative to some of you and has been written about extensively in the United States. In these politically correct islands, there is a very simple basic rule, other than that you are from a Protestant white man, whatever the elite, the more you are allowed to affirm your particular ethnic religious identity.

Like the so-called Native Americans, Indians hate this term. I prefer to call them, you know, my watch, which actually happened in Missoula Montana, an Indian referred to him as an Indian and was immediately interrupted by a well-meaning white liberal. If you don't know them, you are humiliating yourself and the Indian gave a perfect answer. He says no, sorry, Native Americans. To me, much more racist, it means I'm Native American, part of nature, and what's your American culture? He said I prefer to be called. Indian this way at least my name is a UPD sign of white men, you know they thought there in India got it right?

No, I'm sorry, let's go, so the Native Americans are okay, black people, okay, then the Chinese suspicions begin. Italians may be Germans from Scandinavia, but if the target was Anglo-Saxon or whatever, if you simply say I also want to affirm my identity, you are a fascist, they criticize you as a fascist, etc., now I know well that the reasoning behind this, because this is effectively the hegemonic position, it is not the same. for you or a poor Native American to say I want to assert my identities, but ultimately something else, what underneath and now talking about these typical multicultural leftist liberals underneath this self-humiliating conference, oh we are guilty of everything, colonizers imperialists, right? having the right to renounce all your particular figures always comes accompanied by a discreet way of affirming your position of universality all these seemingly modest self-denigrating white people at the same time I noticed that they have no problem behaving in a very condescending way towards others, correcting them, telling them when they when they make a mistake or whatever, clearly the secret benefit is this moral authority that is given to them in this way.

I think there is some of the same in Europe and I have every sympathy for them, but nevertheless, in Europe the leftists The left liberals behaved towards immigrants, of course, we should be my God. My position is that they should not be much less afraid this year. I just know this crowd in their understanding of immigrants, how they always patronize them, like immigrants do it and like all the people they are. a mixed crowd there are criminals among them and if they do something horrible, rape and so on, white liberals are always looking for an excuse, oh this is just general human nature, we are all like this or were so victimized by us that we should understand this. and so on and so on and one of my immigrant friends exploded and told me that this is a beautiful philosophical peridot, he said my God, my basic human right is to at least be recognized as a responsible adult person, which practically means being able to do something horrible, what?

They are aware that by treating me almost like a child like this they are humiliating me and so on, so I think again, okay, I won't go into political consequences here, just keep in mind how also with political correctness everything is often , the victim position can be used as a good instrument to justify your practice in the American academic world. It is typical abroad that victims are actually victims, but in academia playing with victimhood if you are a privileged victim gives you incredible de facto power. that would be my first point, let's go to the second point, so I mentioned the lotion, this surplus of enjoyment, benefit that is obtained by apparently denigrating oneself, humiliating oneself and this is my Regalian Lacanian view that each subject position, Every subject, even the emptiest Cartesian subject, has to rely on this kind of little surplus filter of enjoyment that sustains their subjectivity.

I will give you here another example of a brief philosophical idea. Although I was accused, I don't know what really, for theoretical reasons, I read the last chapter in my last book where I explained it, but I really believe in the subversive potential, not in the descriptions that cause disorder, but in some deep ideas in which This LGBTQ trans bigism is based, but since we are here also among some of your list of philosophers, I would like to draw Pay attention, you already know that the official term now is LGBT plus or LGBTQ, whichever is plus now common.

I am sorry to be critical of at least part of your tradition, but generally this plus is understood in an empiricist way. A British empiricism is this, it is not just the binary male or female sexuality blah blah there are dozens of multiplicity of gender or sexual positions and since no classification can be really exhausting what is it another guy comes and says I read your classification but I am not even by gender not for boobs or for death or for sex and something else, so it's the simple worry, what happens if we lose some position anyway?

So let's leave the space open I guess, and it's not me, I just forgot her name, but she's a really good lgbtq+ theorist from Australia who did a proper galleon move and said no, what if we have LGBT? What if we define this plus in itself as a specific position? I can be a plus and this is it. I think that even the best definition of a subject, a subject, is not simply something that a subject is always in. excess of what is and is for that reason and very quickly here if you want to know more read my books or whatever that is why not only is psychoanalysis not sexist but it is eminently feminist in the sense that the subject as such is ultimately feminine why because this ultimately defines femininity for me, this attitude of self-questioning that can be discerned in even some of the most superficial and annoying traits.

You know that you are in love with the woman and she, sooner or later, will ask you: tell me why you love me, but it is a very deep question, you know why because of course it has no answer, that is, at the moment you know it at the moment you you can say by your eyes by your legs by your laughter it is not love to laugh it must be that more It is an order, and the ology, if it is more basic, what society tells you that you are, you are a man, a Muslim, an atheist Christian worker, a democrat, whatever.

It works but the most basic question is why I am what you say I earn this by not accepting any objective position as yours and here again the function of the plus is crucial that is why intelligent psychoanalysis always prefers hysteria to perversion perversion is a statement even in clinical terms always perversely conformist simply the hidden aspect of a power structure but hey, let's not waste time my second my second joke and then some political comments that go further because I am an atheist but the Christian idea is that this is not green What does this mean?

What does this mean for theology? A Jewish friend told me this and at least for me this joke is new. I didn't hear it before. It's a wonderful story. I warn you. No warning is needed. There is nothing dirty going on, but it is a very cruel joke and I discovered with amazement and respect how you know that there is a whole tradition of Jewish jokes about Auschwitz that do not make fun three times but rather bring out the paradoxes and there is something in which we do not have time to enter now very Deep down, I affirm that for a tragedy to occur, what happens within certain limits where the victim retains their dignity must happen, you know, tragic victim, when things get really scary, a amount of comedy that is not a comedy where you just laugh, but horrible comedies, okay, so the joke is this in paradise, some Jews who were massacred in Auschwitz, a nice life there, they sit on the bend and talk about their memories of how they were killed, making fun of it, as one tells another, remembers Drake. about how when you are headed to the gas chamber you slipped on something and hit your head and died before even entering the gas chamber in the area that was so fun and so on now comes the deep part then God too taking a rest God himself passes they listen to these drugs and say sorry guys, I don't understand it now.

I'm sorry too. For you to understand the point of this joke, you must know that this whole theological tradition of claiming that God died in Auschwitz, the things that happened there are so horrible that they cannot be combined in any way with the idea of ​​divinity as the hidden master of the universe goddess of the lake God as they say, that is crucial as many theologies say God was not there, then God comes there and says sorry guys, no I don't understand it so one of the truths goes to God accept the scheme in the petraju great says don't worry our lord you weren't there so of course you can't understand it you know, but you know what the beauty is that isn't in this version it's not that God can't understand the horror, he can be all powerful, she can't understand how it is possible to make a joke with that.

God doesn't get the joke in this sense. I won't go into that now. I think that's what I call. Materialist theology has retained God not as a real, old God, but as a kind of presupposed agency that records things that you know and we all trust in it, as Jacques Lacan said, the moment we speak, we believe in God, why because we believe that? When something has been registered, it exists in another way, to give an extremely simple example, it did not happen to you, unfortunately, with my bad manners. If it happens to me, Toffler, you are with a couple of friends and some of you, in that case, it was me who did something horrible and faithful, you know that everyone else knows it and everyone knows that everyone else knows it but still everything claimed rests on the moment one says this publicly at the time of registration but what I want to say is that I like this theological idea that God is like a benevolent teacher who allows you little leafless places where you can violate even his prohibitions, you know, nowadays, in our post-patriarchal era, they became like a stern and old-fashioned father, I almost like them because no matter how severe the dates are.

I pretend to be this is how traditional authority works the idea is to always violate my prohibitions but discreetly I don't want to know anything about that and according to some good geologists this is even what you have in the 10 commandments you know that the commandment not to celebrate other gods is not is the correct transition, there is a much more ambiguous statement in the Old Testament of the Bible that basically means don't press other gods in my presence as you know, do it, but discreetly and that's okay, I won't get lost here. I'm talking too much for us to continue the debate, if you like, about modes of authority today.

I would just like to conclude with a very simple joke that is abused in some of my texts, but that were not published in the mainstream media, probably not. I don't know, where are we today? I am still some kind of critic of ideology and what is happening, I claim, is that the ideology is now alive, but in the new modes there are two, I think the main modes, one a week, two, you probably know the old formula from Marx's religion is the opium of the people. I think now we have to change this formula that we have now.

I hope you understand the joke. I use it often in conversations, but not here. Today we have two new opium people. You can guess which one. those who are literally opium andpeople are literally opium, if you read statistics at least in generated spaces like academia, etc., you know that literally in the United States, about 80 percent of teachers and students are already in pro-second, all those things like us, literally. I need support in chemistry, etc., only two functions with relative normality and at all levels, from this simple antidepressant to suitable medications. What is so interesting is the circular nature of this support.

First, if you're too excited, you take a Kuhlman to calm down. down, but then you lose the desire, you take another drug to decrease it, so this is a very important thing, how for our daily cycle to work our life, we have to depend more and more on different drugs in this metaphorical sense, opium people ii I think that precisely the great opiate today is popular populism and for reasons that we can discuss later I don't want to go into it now, that's why I have doubts about it. bodies are becoming popular now among some left-wing populism European in the sense of oh if the right can do it success

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y right-wing populism is something like I ironically call it perverted me too why not me too why will we know I think populism is always like that A gesture of simplification creates an image of the enemy and it may work in the short term, but not really, for example in the United States today, of course the seal is the enemy, but my God, if you want to be a smart political analyst, an agent, you should do it too .

Ask the obvious question where the big drum comes from, what were we with this? I mean the liberal Democrat hegemony by atom, what were we doing wrong to open space for Trump? I won't list his time here, just end with some conclusive conclusions. make the point to conclude first I already mentioned talking to some of you before people say that communism has failed, but at the same time and that's bad news for me, look at what's happening in China now, I mean, remains a communist power in this combination. communism with capitalism, are you aware of what the Chinese communists achieved?

Something absolutely unique ever in the history of humanity. I think you had such tremendous economic development in just a couple of decades and do you know what they did to simplify it? Very leftist rate two things, on the one hand, this savage market of capitalist competition, on the other hand, a strong authoritarian state that controls and regulates everything. The Chinese have combined the two worst in an extremely successful way. So what to do here. It is a very difficult question. What if our future? be and this is not good news I do not sympathize with them what if this type of authoritarian capitalism is our future?

Second reason for my pessimism Marxism at least the traditional one was based on a certain pre-established harmony of hosta Khalid that we when we are just before the Revolution or in modern times we face a unique situation in which the highest theory within communism that breaks with capitalist blah blah can somehow be rooted in the concrete life experience of the majority of us pale Aryan people who need it. radical tendency, etc., etc. I think that with the problems we face today, ecology, biogenetics, etc. I am more pessimistic. I doubt that the problems we really face today can be applied in this way or connect the truth, mobilize people, for example, and I will be very brutal in the last sentence, I promise, for example, here I do not agree with my good friend , I support Yanis Varoufakis politically, who says that we need more democracy in Europe and I always wonder and believe that.

At least he didn't give me a good answer, okay, but do you know that, for example, with the immigrant refugees entering Europe, if we had truly democratic elections, the result would have been much more than a phobia than the predominant reaction in practically all the countries? European countries would have said enough, enough, that's what I also learned from my diplomatic friends when they were dealing with this problem when the crisis was at least exaggerated at its peak two years ago urban, for example, politicians from my country. I learned that it is a terrible irony. They were relatively fair in saying that, nevertheless, we are co-responsible, we are among the causes of this crisis in the Middle East, etc., in publicly closed sessions they were much more anti-immigrant because they knew that they would lose votes in their own country. country and so on, so I think we live in a very dangerous situation where perhaps the gap between what needs to be done and the simple opinion of many inclusive and inclusive intellectuals.

I'm not saying that ordinary people are stupid intellectuals, right? They are too and what I want to say is that I am blessed, I am just a pessimist, miracles happen here, but we can no longer have this Marxist trust in history, you know, to conclude with another line, do not be afraid, work that I quote . in my book you know when my friends on the left remain optimistic and say: don't worry, the situation may be dark but there is light at the end of the tunnel. You know what my answer is, of course, it's another train, thank you very much for your kindness.

Oh my god, I feel like I'm on the set of a movie where you know they're changing the scene now. I hope you did it in a proper Stalinist cinematic way when we will have a question and answer session with people. I hope you have distributed the questions and the yes, please, I'm sorry, I talk too much now I am your slave, please, my first question is in the opening chapter of the new book, you talk about philosophers who become philosophers of the States and They deny the radical potential of their philosophies to the subordination of the existing. sort out how you think philosophers can still be part of radical movements and what distinguishes people like you, who have energized and radical politics, from those like you say, like Hamas, who simply support state structures.

Oh wait a minute, maybe I wasn't there fairly. Enough, I'll be very honest and as simple as possible. I am NOT dismissing state philosophers. Wait a moment. Our institutions, the way we think politically, etc., imply a certain vision not philosophical in a technical sense, but a certain basic vision. I would even agree with Abram that his great opponent Peter massacred Ike, the right-winger, but my good friend, the intelligent right-winger, says that and although his right-winger means it is positively that the greatest thing in our Western Europe to the extent that there are still fewer. and less a welfare state is that we not only have what he calls subjective social democracy, socialism, but we have something that he very well calls objective social democracy, that is, social democratic values, human rights, social justice, etc., inscribed in political institutions. themselves or accepted even more quietly as shared by everyone, you know, which was the great example of this.

I remember that you are too young. I think it was in the mid-seventies or a little later when the social democrats lost power for the first time in Sweden, but then that coalition of what when I was young we called bourgeois, liberal, conservative parties, nothing changed, they still nationalized more and continued because this basic social pact, not so much written rules but unwritten rules, was there and this is where I have a certain respect, it is almost a heroic role. to have said more I know that they will despise me for being a conformist but ok I will play the idiot who is this but for me if you remember then I will continue and say that today the situation is getting more complex and I really think so - called well especially in the United States and some other countries change the rules because the book by that Irish girl who now lives in New York is popular here in the UK.

I met her there in Brooklyn, even Angela Nagler or what he wrote in a book. should have it to kill all the norms, his idea is that what half a century ago was a typical subversive attitude of the left, you know, institutional power is severe, strict, speaks with decent terms, we should provoke, tell dirty jokes, use words with f, all this subversive marginal culture. tradition but what is happening now is not a symmetrical inversion but almost an inversion, now it behaves as formally as the new counterculture and the horror is that the left, what is left of it, takes refuge in political correctness, in helpless moralism, etc., etc. in I don't think so, this complicated thing and that's why I'm a Leninist is a joke, but you don't know in what sense, you know, it's very interesting to read Lenin's last writings when he was totally desperate, he didn't see socialism, what can we do?

He does it and he knows it, what made him obsessed with learning in the last two years of his life with good manners, civility and so on, he already knows everything if he knows the history of politics and so on. Know that famous short testament that his apprenticeship dictated to him, proposing to him to the politburo to depose Stalin, but did you notice our Lenin's arguments about Stalin? It is not a wrong economic policy, a wrong policy, it is simply that Stalin does not have good manners, he is too harsh and so on now with Trump and so on and many other Trumps like that borscht anuraga in Brazil and so on, wouldn't that be my secret dream?

Now you'll say this is a joke because I'm obscene, no, but I'm trying to be obscene in a non-offensive way. It would be wonderful for me if the left said no. we are the true force of the Moral Majority we are the true force of decency you are the dirty subversive the rightists and others I love this strategy of changing the cards I will give other examples in Germany one of my friends his friends wrote a wonderful comment where he says that we should change this perception, although ideally I don't swear that Angela Merkel is too weak, she allowed too many immigrants, like an elderly mother, to lose power and then nationalist immigrants present themselves as you know, brave, we fight for our nation.

My friend's point was: shouldn't we say that Angela Merkel is the latter in the good sense of the term, a great German patriot and strong nationalist? Because saying that two million refugees can come means that you have a big task in your nation. she will be able to integrate them and so on and the point is that we should treat all those who have proven themselves anti-immigrant as weak people who do not trust her nation and so on. You know, I think it's very good to mix carts like this into the political struggle, so I didn't adequately answer his question, but you see the direction I'm going, no.

I want to ask about Christian materialism and the importance of the church, what has he written about? Whether the theological, the philosophical, the normative tools that Christianity finds useful are going to survive if the church continues to decline or believes that the institution of the church and adherence to the church have no relationship to those surviving materialistic aspects, is a question. open. especially the Catholic Church, I don't believe in it, it may be Francis or not. I have doubts, but you know okay, I'll tell you very briefly the way I read Christianity, if you take it very seriously, it's really a religion of atheism. what sense and Hegel knew this, he says that the big problem is what died on the cross.

Hegel says it's not just that you read Christianity in a pagan way if you believe that God is up there, he sent him as a messenger and then the messenger died and he cried and God says. Father God, he is fine, my son, come back to me, it didn't work out next time, better luck, etc., no. Hagel says that God dies on the cross, he is the same God from beyond this idea that there is a higher power up there, you know what? Paradoxical of Christianity for me again in all other religions more or less, the way we are here we leave, we leave a fallen life and the only way to regain contact with God is to do good work, purify yourself through mystical exercise to do good works, etc. to go up again I entered Christianity, people don't realize that something totally different happens and the glass curtain my go to Catholic theology snoo he says that at that moment he lama him sabachthani God why have you abandoned me means This, how can I identify with God?

Let's say I feel abandoned. God has left me. I am in a world without God. The Christian response again is not right. Let me pray a lot. Do good things. Maybe I will reestablish contact. That is to say, but at that very moment when I I feel abandoned by God I identify with Christ on the cross who felt the same, that is to say a struggle, he says it very precisely, I overcome the division of God by transposing it into God himself, this idea that my distance from God is inscribed in God himself, the consequences of this They are quite radical, for example, I think it is totally incorrect to read the common phrase that what will be the second coming in some way Christ will return now Christ is dead, he is already here in holy spirit, what is holy spirit or ghost?

I don't know, robbery, it's a lot of simplifications, it's the community of believers and as Christ my God says in the gospel, when one of his people asks him how we will know that you are still alive that you will come, he always says that there is love between two of you. I am there. And I take this totally literally.Second Coming means that you discover that what you are waiting for oh my God God left alone maybe he will come again if he is already here in the community of believers you don't need God like an old man up there a secret guarantee and a throne and other intelligent theologies naked like even a conservative like Claudell paul claudel the great poet said that the ultimate mystery of Christianity is not that we are important without God but that God is important without us, okay, it gets more complex, but in this sense I mean it literally about be an atheist Christian.

Specifically I'm not referring to all those simplistic ideas that Christianity can be realized in a new communist society or whatever, all those drinks, no. I think that again the secret core of Christianity is precisely this acceptance of being alone as a precisely divine gift. You know what the Christian response is when you feel alone, abandoned by God, simply depending on yourself, on the messy trees, but this is God's gift to you. This is the freedom that God gave us. It is a much more complex situation. I don't want to waste time now. I just want to tell you not to think that this is some crazy obscenity that many geologists today are moving on this.

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let's ask some questions for the audience now that we have democratic faith Democratic career only very occasionally watches my latest work before giving you the floor you know I'm an old platonic I'm already repeating the joke that I already used there, so I'm all for a dialogue with you , but you know, as a lover of Plato, you know he's my favorite.

Look, you read Plato's late dialogues. You know how they are written. One guy talks all the time and the other says every 10 minutes for Hughes. so it's Socrates and so on, so let's start this dialogue now, please wait for the microphone to arrive, let's go to the hand at the end of the oil there in the dark blue cave, yes, actually, that can ask you to do this this is An anxious moment This is one of the three things I can do He said yes, yes, yes, but how did you know this is politically correct? And then someone will say: What did he do?

Did he ignore that woman and walk away? Okay, sorry, please, Professor Dziedzic. fan of yours from South Africa, yes, I wanted to ask you in Oxford now and I'm sorry, ask me, ask yourself, yes, we are in Oxford now and the analytic school of philosophy is big, yes, and it seems that the burden always falls on the continent. philosophers to justify their existence and I wanted you to talk about this point about the value of continental philosophy in the 21st century. Thanks, my position here is much more complex and integrated first. I gotta tell you, I said there's a lot of boring stuff going on. in so-called analytical philosophy, but there are many things that I

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y admire that happen there and also, for example, I don't know, now it's gone.

I don't know why philosophers like Saul Kripke, some others, etc., did one or even the cognitivists. There are very intelligent cognitivists who asked the right questions and so on, but still there are many who do not take scientific truth seriously in the so-called continental philosophy, the big problem for me today is what I call the gap between realism and transcendental approach by On the one hand we have a scientific or realist philosophical approach, don't be afraid, I'll try, which simply aims to describe reality as it is, to put it in very simplistic terms, you forget who you are, where you are talking about. then we have transcendental reasoning that is not something mystical and so on, but is based on the simple fact that our argument is ultimately always circular, for example, his reproach, for example, of mentioning the guy you brought in Habermas.

Its basic contribution is to affirm that from the scientific perspective one thing that cannot be explained are the normative discursive structures of this scientific procedure itself. If you can be very good at scientific, evolutionary and other explanations, what happens and how human intelligence arises, but in all this, all this is possible. because you approached nature in a certain way as a complex web of causes, effects and so on, this doesn't happen on its own, so the idea is that we all approach reality from a certain perspective and we can never get out of it. this circle and now so that ultimately, but on the other hand it is clear that somehow, although we are always trapped in our symbolic universe and so on, and if some of you follow modern thinking, the ultimate in my sense of the term now not in the strict Kantian The transcendental philosopher would have been, for example, someone like Michel Foucault.

For him, the ultimate horizon of our knowledge is what he calls an idea that in each era a certain period may be conflictive, but the opposing sides always share some presuppositions about a certain basis for For example, the opposition between empiricism and irrationality, but they share a whole set of propositions about reality, etc., so the idea is that this is the latter. For example, if you were to ask Michelle Foucault if we have an immortal soul or not. her answer would have been all I can do is describe the epistle, the set of implicit presuppositions contained in this question has some meaning and if you had asked her if you believe in the evolutionary explanation of humanity, her answer would have been I can only tell you . that this evolutionary explanation is part of a modern scientific paradigm and a... totally different from, for example, the medieval paradigm, within which meaning was something imminent to reality itself, the universe is meaningful, so what I'm saying is that, on the other hand, Of course, we all admit, at least almost all, that although this is the earth, another point, if there are some Marxists here, the Marxists at least the so-called Western Marxists are also completely transcendental in what sense for For radical Marxists, the ultimate horizon is social practice and as you can see in the latest Western Marxist work, their first great book on history and class consciousness, they even say that this is a classic statement: nature is a historical social category, which which means, of course, in some way we made humanity, we emerged from nature, but what we understand by nature is something that is always historically overdetermined and as part of our social practice nature means something totally different in modernity than it did in the early 19th century.

Renaissance and so on. I want us to have this definitive Tanjung on the one hand, naïve scientific realism on the other. This transcendental approach and what I am obsessed with in my latest works, I am always writing the same book, etc., is precisely whether it is possible to get out of this circle, is it possible to go beyond this transcendental approach that we can simply describe? the historical horizon of meaning into which we were thrown without returning to naïve realism here we must be creative, for example, who was that guy? I often forget his name here and that is for me the strength of the continental approach, some even theological criticism of science that can appear stupid and is stupid on the level of direct scientific value can be extremely interesting if we read it in a slightly different way as a theory of ideology, for example, you know I forgot the guy's name?

Darwin had a friend who knew his work. Darwin and at the same time it was theology, yes, the one who responded to Darwin was: I forgot the name, it is a Latin name. I'm too stupid for the navel. You know, it's the old problem. Adam is depicted with a navel, but he waits a moment, Adam. He was not born, he was created by them, does he have it? So the idea is this and its second in green. It's the solution. He said it has been conclusively proven through fossils and that our Earth or our universe was created at least millions of years ago.

If you take the Bible literally, it was 4000 and some years, so where is the truth? You know what the answer is, of course the Bible is true, my goodness it can't be that it's not true, so how do we explain fossils etc? The idea is the same when you paint a state, you paint the background to create a false impression of depth that God directly created the fossils etc., to give us a false openness of the past and this is the best definition of ideology I can imagine, etc., isn't it? all the time inventing traditions in this sense and so on to answer you correctly, it may be too complex now, but I will try it first.

I have tremendous, you know what one of my interests is here, maybe this Versa will return to the last result. As far as I understand them, I am the first to admit my limitation now, what is happening now in quantum physics. I was told and read some popular books, but I try to follow it with my friends who are quantum physicists, like totally. boast or have something that with this theory of quantum gravity and so on there is tremendous progress beyond string theory now and I think some of the things that are found in quantum physics I think are incredibly important in solving this problem. because the basic presupposition of quantum physics is precisely that what we perceive as natural reality is not the ultimate reality, that there exists what we call quantum oscillations and so on at another level and I think this is empty and let's call it ontology at the level of the world of today it should work if I can continue for two three minutes you will like it I promise I'm sorry and I hope you don't know this joke but I love a philosopher I'm so sorry I forgot his name look at my senility I forget about youth a wonderful example for explain quantum physics and my point is the basic paradox of quantum physics.

My point is to apply it to reality as such. The idea of ​​it is this wonderful simple metaphor, a parallel between the quantum universe with lists like You know Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, although Bohr puts it in a slightly different way, but the point is this. You know what everyone knows. You cannot simultaneously measure the position and speed of motion of a particle. Well, now you can read this in decimal logical form. we simply cannot measure it Niels Bohr went a step further and stated that it is itself that is not determined in this is a wonderful vision of reality that is itself ontologically incomplete and now comes the parallel with video games, right?

They are the same? very superficial similarities and an incomplete lottery in what sense do you remember I don't play them but I see my son do it and I envy him and so when you play a video game let's say you see a house there but if it is not part of the game to enter that house then the inside the house is not programmed you know this you know in the universe of the video there is or in the background there is the forest but it makes no sense to say let's go there and look in detail at the trees no because it is not part of the game that you can go there, so In this book the idea is this, it is very cynical but I love it.

God did something similar, he underestimated us humans a little bit, he thought we'll never be smart enough to go beyond atoms to microparticles, so he said, suck it, why should I waste time programming everything so that at the At least let's make your first point with this pencil, you know, but my point is that we can, what would it be like to think of reality as unfinished without this subjectivity, God? Whatever happens, it is possible to think of reality as something unfinished and here I think that, as utopian as it may seem, only a kind of collaboration between the best of the continental tradition, those arrogant Europeans who despise analytical philosophy, alone and the best philosophers Analytical can make the drop.

Sorry, it took too long. Can I wait? Let's take another question. Yeah, let's go hand in hand here. Okay, you're a politician. I know you're moving to the left. No, I was afraid of the centrist. Yes, behind with the red shirt. Yes, there we are. prophecies come another fan of yours and here yes yes my Nazi instinct is your Spanish I am not Indian and from India I am very sorry I am not very sorry I am only I am You choose, you know it is not racism, yes, yes, so I'm studying a course here on environmental change and management and we hear this word like Anthropocene from time to time, oak species become extinct when the layers melt, you know, forests, tropical forests. deforestation yes and we Club this thing Anthropocene always and always as a plus what do you think of this word?

Sometimes I find it very uncomfortable. I find it funny. It seems very serious to me. What is this word Anthropocene? The word between body pashya. What is it? your opinion on this - Club about this young Maria, well, I'm not qualified enough to try hard scientifically, but I like the paradox is that this word implies, that is, there is an idea in it that is correct: all this modern progress, ISM, humanity should develop. add further that unfortunately he finds it as an unquestionable and unquestionable basis even in Marx presupposes that we can count on nature as that vast weak background as they say, however, we will ruin it, we will destroy ourselves and so on the sun will rise, there will be another season and so on that nature is an inexhaustible background, I think that what we are discovering little by little and that is for me the first step to correct a three of colors is not that we should go one step further and not only admit our responsibility with humans, it screwed up in It's niceThe irony is that precisely when we become incredibly powerful, we face our limit, we can destroy the material conditions of our lives, but what I like is this, what if we change our perspective and ask ourselves if this whole perspective of arrogance human is not enough?

I know that nature is a kind of balance circle, but we men were too aggressive and exploitative and then you have the idea of ​​returning to our proper place and so on. I think the real horror at stake is that, if I may say so, in these terms, we cannot trust that Mother Nature is a kind entity and we should not provoke her too much by doing violent intervals. What if nature is itself a rather cruel mother, not a good mother? And I always evoke these simple examples, you know when we talk about human catastrophes and so on caused by humanity, let's not forget that, for example, our own sources of energy, oil, coal, can we even imagine what kind of megacatastrophes must have occurred in the prehistory of the earth with respect to the human history we have?

I have all these reservations so my position here is even more tragic I am totally in favor of ecology but without illusions I believe that there is no natural balance that we can simply return to it is open it is full of risks and so on the situation is much more Second hand, what interests me is that we talk about the danger of the Anthropocene, humanity blah blah blah, and here maybe psychoanalysis, why don't we do something more? I think that's the best term. Some of my friends have even now published a book where they develop this notion. that this is what psychoanalysts call the denial mechanism, it is not simply denial, you admit, but in an isolated forum you reflect to draw the consequences, like the French term for this denial, the phalloidine kiss, the German term is just a good Mecca mem I know very well that it is like that, but I still don't believe in it, so I ignore it.

I think there's some of this mechanism at work, as we all know, yes, global warming is there, but then you know you go. Well, not in Oxford now, but in general the sun is shining etc, and you just can't accept it. All of these could really be threatened. Now the problem is how to truly wake up. I want to avoid the conclusion that many of my friends on the left are attracted to the fact that we need a big mega catastrophe that only this will awaken humanity, you know, while I am afraid of this because, again, it is this typical traditional marxist lord.

How do they know that the result of this catastrophe will be a society of solidarity socialism and whether it will be a much more authoritarian society and so on? But my point is that maybe I, if I had your question correctly, where I share your interest is that, although ecology is the topic today, we should look more carefully at all the ideological threats that exist and in this way now, very briefly , I will return to Libya to your question. I forgot it. What can philosophers do? I don't think philosophers can answer. They can ask the right question.

They can. This is philosophy at its best when with ecology, racism, etc., it shows how the very way we frame a problem is part of the problem. the problem, etc., my classic example is fierce harassment, harassment, okay, real harassment, sexual harassment, nothing against it, but the term harassment, even tolerance, has limited use even in the fight against racism, because I always do this experiment and, on the right, go to the web and download Martin Luther King's speeches and look for tolerance in them practically non-existent terms when you face racism as a problem of tolerance it is already a certain reduction to the cultural tolerance we should tolerate each other and so on with bullying it is the same bullying that has always been looked down upon so to speak, a narcissistic undertone in the sense of you know, keep your distance, don't get too close to me.

I think the bullying, the fear of bullying, isn't just Beth's fear of bullying, it's always also the fear of just too much proximity. of the real other and you find this against even leftists who like immigrants, but then if you look closely at their immigrant issuer, you see that's my bad word, it's like you know, in today's society I always use this example, we like it. obtain a product but in its clean form like beer yes but without alcohol chocolate yes but without fatty coffee yes but without coffee and I maintain that what we call sex is precisely sex with hot sex and what we claim as standard bourgeois multiculturalism is precisely culturalism without the real other, you know, there is nothing more racist to me than this, for example, the American liberal image of the so-called Native Americans who are holistic, not only exploit nature, but are in a dialogue with nature, etc so I can't imagine anything more implicitly racist than this false respect for the other.

I know it again. I didn't answer your question, but that's life, thank you one more, we take yes, just one more last question, come on, this can be a room. Oh my god I'm feeling learning woman do you want to ask a question if there's a woman in the back I think I don't see anything very condescending but I want to save my or as I like to say ironically precisely because in private I'm not a good feminist I have to cover it up okay then in your talk you define populism not as an active cult of personality surrounding a leader or even a leader promoted through things like an internet culture, but as an active creation of enemies, would you say? that even, for example, the British like the left at the moment because you said that this was a problem on both the left and the right, specifically in Britain, that perhaps, like Jeremy Corbyn and the Labor Party in Right now, they have created an enemy and, if so, what do you say no, I really sympathize with Corbin although I am not an economist and I don't know what would have happened, but it's not that they are economically stupid, you know that our economic reality is not a objective fact as markets do.

Reacting is full of prejudices, fears etc, and what all my friends fear is that let's say Corbin's Labor Party comes to power and then there is some kind of panic reaction in the market etc, and you can say it's irrational. but the effects can be very real but another point I wonder if you would agree. I follow the debate a bit and precisely what perhaps I am relatively wrong about Corbin is that whatever he is, people usually even reproach him for that, but I am not a demagogic charismatic populist, if there is almost an effort of a dull person, it is not him. and I thought I don't think it can be compared to the real European police although not all of them are bad but look we can is for me what I have in mind while they played this game of and when I said in my introductory five minutes that lasted 25 minutes when I said that how We cannot count on this harmony in advance, that is why the populist formula, at least of Iglesias in Spain, was to forget that he even used virgin words, all the shitty ideologies, socialism, communism, they turn to the common people, they listen to their real demand problems. , etc., unfortunately, I don't believe in this, of course, to some extent, we should, but look where it brought.

We can get their 15 percent or whatever and you know I've always been fascinated that it's easy to be a protest party, you register the people's protest and so on, but then you look at their electoral program in the last elections, it wasn't even a very radical social democracy and people were disappointed because all the big rhetoric that they heard from real people and so on ended up in very, very modest proposals, to raise taxes here a little bit and so on, from top to bottom, that's another problem that I have with a The very notion of populism is that for me this will be a general reflection.

It depends too much on an idea of ​​a state of emergency. The populist moment is not normal. It is antagonism. Tanjung and so on. But I think here it is radical left but very earthy. Be careful, I think the really crucial moment of every revolution is when things sooner or later stabilize when life returns to normal. How do ordinary people feel the difference at that point? I hate this big track, 1 million people in the square, yes, so what. It happens then like in the Arab Spring, you have 1 million people in Tahrir Square and then you have the Muslim Brotherhood and now you have a military regiment and so on in Greece it was a tragedy, I blame them, but you had the largest popular mobilization of Syriza in In the end, are we aware of the crazy things that happened there?

Syriza, which built its reputation on the rejection of austerity, became the most faithful enforcer of austerity, so, you see, there are many hints of populism. I don't think it

address

es or answers the real question as I am very naive, old fashioned, nor do I believe in traditional Marxist answers. Marxist here, the big issue is, and everything else, whether we have a serious and feasible alternative to global capitalism or are we all enlightened leftists on Fukuyama's lists, meaning that Fujiyama was basically a right-wing democracy. capitalism in a hurry, let's move it a little to the left and so on and I don't see that any communist party or whatever will save us.

I am a pessimistic communist in the sense that I believe that with respect to the problems that we have that we face today ecology immigrants or this not only immigrants this global world disorder mega issue biogenetics all experiments today perspectives of direct wiring or brain connection who will control this which will be the result of all this I do not believe that the way our societies are now structured economically and politically, it is appropriate to even adequately confront these issues and I am pessimistic because I am the first to admit that what we knew until now as communism was, in In any case, even worse.

I'm just a communist again. Out of desperation I see the need for a radical trend but there is no predetermination maybe it won't happen maybe Hollywood is right Hollywood is right I mean, it's amazing how even Hollywood sees this dark perspective in all this in all this hunger for post-catastrophic movies game and so on and so forth, in a certain sense they are right, we are approaching a new divided society. I mean, are we even aware of what Trump means? Any functioning democracy has to depend on a set of shared presuppositions, you can have the whole combination of Poly, etc. but in the context of not only procedural but even more substantial presuppositions about the foundations of the economic order, about the bases of democratic and turbulent decisions, and that is what is happening now in the United States, it is literally already a war ideological civil, this shared ground that was still very operational now between Republicans and Democrats is disintegrating and my belief is that what Trump did, I will not say its great result but he did something, he ruined this liberal democratic consensus shared by all and maybe we should be brave enough to admit that the solution is not simply to reestablish that consensus but that we should propose another consensus a little further to the left, which was fluttering.

I called objective social democracy because I think again that it is a tremendous tension that today not only Trump is part of the global movement, what is happening in China and so on, where a new authoritarian capitalism is emerging and again it is a very dangerous situation, it is correct to conclude. I do not agree with those who claim fascism, fascism, this is the worst way of the old leftists, they are too lazy. to think it's when something comes up that no one likes instead of thinking about it seriously they just reduce it to some old stuff that already happened and we don't like trump fascism no sorry trump isn't just a fascist omg , even this far-right populism. now it's not just it's not just fascism.

I think we really live in a dangerous situation, but again my hope is that often, although I am very aware of the horrors of Maoism, the Great Leap Forward, up to 50 million dead, etc., but I still admire that saying of Mao, There is disorder under the sky, so the situation is excellent, we should not be afraid to act in this situation, I stop, thank you very much, thank you very much.