Tag Archives: truth

08/30/25

Looking at Slavoj Zizek’s Book (2024) “Christian Atheism” (Part 1 of 33)

0001 The book before me is a paperback, published in 2024 by Bloomsbury Academia (London, Dublin, New York) with the subtitle: How to Be a Real Materialist.  The author, Slavoj Zizek, is one of the most entertaining intellectuals on the circuit for the contemporary left.

The inner panel of the cover claims that this book is Zizek’s most extensive treatment of theology and religion to date.

This is enough to inspire me to test out Zizek’s analytic expertise.

Surely, Zizek offers food for thought.

0002 In order to pluck the… um… fruit from Zizek’s tree of knowledge, one should proceed to the final chapter, titled, “Conclusion: The Need for Psychoanalysis” (pages 235-266).  I know that that sounds like cheating, but a more extensive examination of the remainder of the book is promised.

0003 What does the label “Christian atheism” imply?

First, when the Son dies on the cross, the Father dies as well.

If I frame the relation of Father [and] Son as a hylomorphe, a dyad consisting of two contiguous real elements, the two real elements are Father and Son and the contiguity, placed in brackets for proper notation, should be something like [begets].  Here is the resulting hylomorphic structure.

0004 This actuality… er… hylomorphe… is typical for Peirce’s category of secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements, as discussed in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

Secondness is the dyadic realm of actuality.  Secondness prescinds from firstness, the monadic realm of possibility.  Thirdness, the triadic realm of normal contexts, signs, mediations, judgments and so on, channels this precission.  Thirdness brings secondness into relation with firstness.   Such is the nature of the category-based nested form.

0005 So what happens when the Father, the thesis of the Old Testament, begets His Son, Jesus, his antithesis in the New Testament?  Well, the good book tells the stories.  Jesus ends up dying on a cross after crying out, “Father, why have you abandoned me?”

Surely, this is a psychic trauma that Lacanian psychoanalysis might be interested in.  But above, there is only the divine actuality2.  Actuality2 is encountered, it is not understood.  In order to understand an encountered actuality2, one needs to figure out a normal context3 and potential1.  The category-based nested form has all the ingredients for understanding (that is, all three categories get labeled and constitute a single triadic relation).

0006 Zizek says that, when the Son dies, so does the Father.

Here is a picture of this actuality2, along with my guesses concerning the normal context3 and potential1.

0007 The normal context of the Holy Spirit3 brings the dyadic actuality of {the Father [dies with His] Son}2 into relation with the monadic possibility of ‘divine oneness’1, that some Christians want to call “Love”.  But, Muslims seem to call, “Allah”.

Even though Zizek is well-trained in Lacan’s psychoanalysis, he is also versed in Hegel’s philosophy and Marx’s materialism.  So, he notes that after Jesus dies… and the Father dies too… Christ becomes the Holy Spirit, as a new emancipatory collective (page 242).  Well, he calls the Holy Spirit, “the Holy Ghost”, so it makes sense that Jesus would be the Ghost instead of His Father, if that helps.

0008 So who or what is this emancipatory collective?

Uh oh, is it the so-called “bride of Christ”?

0009 The actuality of Father [begets] Son2 associates to an encounter in the Real.

How real?  

0010 On one hand, Protestants make the point that the Old and the New Testaments are more real than the Catholic church.  But, there is a distinction between an encounter (actuality2) and understanding (a complete category-based nested form).  Surely, the Old and New Testaments witness encounters.  I wonder whether the Protestants can pass to understanding. There are questions about the words.  What do the words in the text signify?

Zizek takes the words literally when he says that Jesus, the Christ, becomes the Holy Ghost.  But, there is a lacunae, because the Holy Spirit3 is the one who speaks from the cloud above the soon-to-be severed head of John the Baptist.  There, in the Jordan River, the king of kings is baptized.  The Holy Spirit3 is already present as a purely relational being, the normal context for the actuality of {Father [and] Son}2.

0011 The Catholic church, on the other hand, codifies one particular encounter, the Eucharistic sacrament (otherwise called “the Mass”).  Yes, Catholics can join in the potential of divine oneness1 through this sacrament2, which celebrates the simultaneous death of the Son and Father.

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” applies to the Father as well as all humanity.  Just as elites of Roman Guard and Second Temple are monsters for murdering Christ under the pretext of their laws, the Father is a monster for offering his own Son as a sacrifice.  During the Mass, we humans remind ourselves of our own culpabilities and the Father, too, reminds Himself of His own, by transubstantiating the consecrated bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.  Yes, the Father brings Jesus back to life, at the Resurrection and the consecration.

0012 The Mass is far more twisted than most theologians will admit.  But, a Lacanian can concede the deal.  The Father allows us into mystical union through the Son while saying, “If you eat of my monstrosity, I will accept your monstrosities.”

Of course, some qualifications apply.

That is what the sacrament of confession is for.

Here is a picture for the emancipated collective that associates to the Holy Ghost.

The triadic normal context of the church, as the Bride of Christ3, brings the dyadic actuality of {Jesus’ last supper [re-enacted in] the Mass}2 into relation with the potential of ‘my (human) mystical union with God’1.  The sacraments are mediators between human and divine.

0013 Well, this is not precisely what Zizek has in mind.

Zizek mentions the Holy Ghost in light of Freud’s death drive.  Freud uses the term, “death drive”, to label repetition disorders that basically say, “I am still alive.”  Or maybe, “If I keep doing this, I will not die.”

It’s like the fellow who loves fishing, encounters a massive illness that almost kills him, then returns to fishing.  I am still alive.  The death drive creatively sublimates the trauma.  Fishing becomes an obsession.  Fishing borders on the sublime.  The fish that struggles against the line is a symbol.  The life that the fish fights for is imaginary, because all of us are mortal.  But, one never knows until death arrives.  The death drive continues to repeat until we have reached the destination.

0014 So, what precisely does Zizek have in mind?

Well, I suppose that Zizek wants to capitalize on the idea of the Holy Spirit as an “emancipated collective” for his socialist theory.  Does Zizek buy into the hocus-pocus of the Catholic church as the Bride of Christ3?  Or, does he want to make Christ2, who belongs to the category of secondness, into a figure3, belonging to the category of thirdness, that operates on the potential of ‘truth’1?

0015 Zizek’s configuration is corroborated at the very end of the chapter (page 265) when he comments on a 1918 poem, titled “Twelve”, by Aleksandr Blok.  At the end of this poem, an apparition of Jesus walks before a team of twelve Red Guards, patrolling the snow-filled streets of revolutionary Petrograd.  Christ is not a leader2 (in the realm of actuality2), Christ3 is a shadow who contextualizes the actuality of a group of comrades2 who, in turn, both emerge from (and situate) their Cause1 (the potential of truth1).

So, I wonder, what type of king is this?

Does the kingdom of God dwell among us in such a strange and mysterious manner?

03/3/23

Looking at Michael Millerman’s Chapter (2020) “Rorty” (Part 1 of 3)

0001 This chapter appears in Michael Millerman’s Book (2020) Beginning with Heidegger: Strauss, Rorty, Derrida and Dugin and the Philosophical Constitution of the Political (Arktos Press).  The composition of the book sends a message.  A forty-nine page introduction is labeled as a preface, complete with Roman numerals.  The first chapter covers Heidegger and stands in the center of the book.  Then, chapters two through five covers the responses of four political philosophers to Heidegger’s academic labors (as well as his political affiliation).

Richard Rorty is discussed in the third chapter.  This chapter serves as a transition from the weighty chapters on Heidegger and Strauss to the surprising chapters on Derrida and Dugin.

0002 Rorty offers a change of style.  Rorty is an American philosopher.  This pleases me, since I write like an American, too.  I roll, roll, roll down the river of literary endeavors.  My paddles are purely relational structures, such as the category-based nested form and the Greimas square.

Consequently, Millerman refers to movies, rather than books.  And, if books must be mentioned, then novels come first.

0003 Oh, I should add, the first novel comes from the pen of Cervantes.  Don Quixote marks the start of the Age of Ideas.  In seventeenth-century Spain, two movements coincide.  On one hand, Baroque scholastics finally articulate the causality inherent in sign-relations.  On the other hand, Cervantes creates a new literary genre.

Perhaps, these two hands belong to a single entity.  The novelist represents the scholastic behind the mask of modernity.  Like the heroic character in V for Vendetta, there is no removing the mask.  The Spanish innovator spins away from truth (the scholastics were all about mind-independent being) and leaps towards happiness (the novelists are all about mind-dependent beings).

Is it any surprise that, in the next century, France produces a revolution with a similar attitude?  Then, two centuries later, today’s social democratic politics perform the same routine.

0003 Richard Rorty wrestles with a strange duality.  Politics is contextualized by two distinct masters, truth and reality.  Politics emerges from the potential of good (which goes with truth) and the potential of what can be done (which goes with reality).

Here is a picture of two nested forms.

Figure 01

0004 Of course, Rorty wants to step away from truth3 and find happiness in reality3.  But, one cannot take the mask without the face or the face without the mask.  One cannot say, “Look at the mask without thinking about the face.”

Here is where Rorty flounders.  His social democratic politics tell him that viable options are the only things that matter. But, as a philosopher, he must face the question as to which options are good.

0005 In short, politics is a single actuality that is composed of two distinct nested forms.  Neither nested form can situate the other.  So, the actualities for both nested forms fuse, creating one single contradiction-filled actuality, as described in the chapter on message in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define the Word “Religion”.

I call the following diagram, “an intersection”.

Figure 02

0006 Right away, I spy that the single actuality of politics2 veils two unspoken actualities that emerge from (and situate) the vertical and horizontal potentials.  These two actualites are overshone by politics2, in the same way that Mercury and Venus appear to disappear within the Sun in astrological conjunctions.  The technical term is “combustion”.

Here is a Greek parody of politics2.

Figure 03

0007 Yes, truth3V and reality3H exhibit different orbits around politics2.

According to Millerman, Rorty is a social democrat advocating for truthlessness and hopefulness.

0008 How does that statement mesh with the above intersection?  Rorty distains Heidegger’s romance with language and says that there is no such thing as a thing itself that can be put into language.  So forget esse_ces (beings substantiating) and essences (substantiated forms).  Indeed, forget righteousness.  The question is whether the thing is useful.  Or not.

At first, it seems that Rorty is only interested in the horizontal axis.

0009 But then, Rorty writes that there are three conceptions of the aim of philosophizing in the modern era.  These three are Husserl’s scientism, Heidegger’s poetics and Dewey’s pragmatism.  The latter two respond to the former.  Husserl idealizes scientists.  Heidegger extols poets.  Pragmatists, like Rorty, Dewey and James, prefer engineers.

Now, if I associate these embodiments into the above mystery, then I replace Mercury with the engineer and Venus with the poet, resulting the the following intersection.

Figure 04

0010 Once I diagram this, the contradictions become more apparent.  The Heideggerian venusian poet2V and the pragmatist mercurial engineer2H orbit an all encompassing solar politics2.  From the point of view of an astrologer, sometimes these inner planets run ahead of the solar presence, sometimes they lag behind the solar presence, and sometimes they are in conjunction with the solar presence.  Combustion!   The Sun’s transit through the constellations, plays this celestial drama over and over again, for those who watch the heavens.  For those who watch politics, the Earth orbits the sun.

03/1/23

Looking at Michael Millerman’s Chapter (2020) “Rorty” (Part 3 of 3)

0021 Of course, Heidegger would (if he could) return the insult, by calling Rorty a liberal propagandist.

After all, Rorty is not concerned with questions of truth3V, preferring issues concerning social consequences3H.

0022 Plus, Heidegger (if he could) would have regarded the imprisonment of Rorty and other social democratic philosophers as a matter of “petty details”.

Petty details?

In Heidegger’s view, the West has exhausted its options1H.  And, proof comes later in the title of Rorty’s book, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity.   Are these options?  Or, are they signs of exhaustion?  Compare that title to Being and Time.

0023 The squishiness of the former title is made worse when Rorty’s dichotomy of choice, private versus public, appears to align with the potentials of good1V and options1H, respectively.  Is truth3V private?  Is reality3V public?  If so, then I ask, “Are these affirmations the poisonous fruits of the Treaty of Westphalia?”  The Treaty of Westphalia marks the start of the modern era, almost four hundred years ago.

Perhaps, Rorty inadvertently testifies to Heidegger’s proposition.  The West has exhausted its options1H.  Politics2 is the intersection of the actualities of reality3H and truth3V, arising from the potential of viable options1H and good1V.  Without a good1V, there are no options1H.  So, politics2 is dead.  But, our love (philo-) of wisdom (-sophy) endures.  So, it is only a matter of time before politics2 rises again.

Shout it from the rooftops!

Politics2 is dead.  Long live politics2.

0024 My thanks to Michael Millerman for his excellent chapter into how Rorty views Heidegger, chapter three in Beginning with Heidegger: Strauss, Rorty, Derrida and Dugin and the Philosophical Constitution of the Political (2020, Arktos Press, London), pages 97-134.