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Liberal attitudes towards the other are characterized both by respect for otherness, openness to it, and an obsessive fear of harassment. In short, the other is welcomed insofar as its presence is not intrusive, insofar as it is not really the other.
Tolerance thus coincides with its opposite. My duty to be tolerant towards the other effectively means that I should not get too close to him or her, not intrude into his space—in short, that I should respect his intolerance towards my over-proximity.
This is increasingly emerging as the central human right of advanced capitalist society: the right not to be ‘harassed’, that is, to be kept at a safe distance from others.
- (Against Human Rights)
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Precisely because the universe in which we live is somehow a universe of dead conventions and artificiality, the only authentic real experience must be some extremely violent, shattering experience. And this we experience as a sense that now we are back in real life.
- Zizek, Slavoj and Sabine Reul and Thomas Deichmann (Interviewers). " 'The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other' The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek talks about subjectivity, multiculturalism, sex and terrorism." in: Spiked Culture. November 15, 2001.
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Ethical would be, as Kierkegaard puts it (in a wonderful way apropos Abraham) the ethical is sheer interpretation itself. To act ethically, as opposed to religiously . . . from a religious perspective ethics is not something you should stick to against temptation. The ethical, as such, is the temptation.
- Zizek, Slavoj and Joshua Delpech-Ramey (Interviewer)."On Divine Self-Limitation and Revolutionary Love" in: Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, Villanova University. Fall 2004.
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But for me - though I never liked Friedrich Nietzsche - if there is a definition that really fits, it is Nietzsche's old opposition between active and passive nihilism.
Active nihilism, in the sense of wanting nothing itself, is this active self-destruction which would be precisely the passion of the real - the idea that, in order to live fully and authentically, you must engage in self-destruction.
On the other hand, there is passive nihilism, what Nietzsche called 'The last man' - just living a stupid, self-satisfied life without great passions.
- Zizek, Slavoj and Sabine Reul and Thomas Deichmann (Interviewers). " 'The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other' The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek talks about subjectivity, multiculturalism, sex and terrorism." in: Spiked Culture. November 15, 2001.
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Say I am passionately attached, in love, or whatever, to another human being and I declare my love, my passion for him or her. There is always something shocking, violent in it. This may sound like a joke, but it isn't - you cannot do the game of erotic seduction in politically correct terms.
There is a moment of violence, when you say: 'I love you, I want you.' In no way can you bypass this violent aspect. So I even think that the fear of sexual harassment in a way includes this aspect, a fear of a too violent, too open encounter with another human being.
- Zizek, Slavoj and Sabine Reul and Thomas Deichmann (Interviewers). " 'The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other' The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek talks about subjectivity, multiculturalism, sex and terrorism." in: Spiked Culture. November 15, 2001
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Here it can be said also why Christianity is the religion of love. It's a positive ontological constituent of love: you only love someone who is an abyss, whom you don't know. Love always means this. . . In order to love someone, it should be an abyss . . . it should be a lacking in perfect being, but at the same time a being with an impenetrable excess.
There is no love without this. You have all that mystical stuff where you say yes to the universe, but that's not what is uniquely Christian love.
- Zizek, Slavoj and Joshua Delpech-Ramey (Interviewer)."On Divine Self-Limitation and Revolutionary Love" in: Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, Villanova University. Fall 2004.
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The central point of Lévi-Strauss is that this example should in no way entice us into cultural relativism, according to which the perception of social space depends on the observer's group-belonging: the very splitting into the two "relative" perceptions implies a hidden reference to a constant - not the objective, "actual" disposition of buildings but a traumatic kernel, a fundamental antagonism the inhabitants of the village were unable to symbolize, to account for, to "internalize", to come to terms with, an imbalance in social relations that prevented the community from stabilizing itself into a harmonious whole.
The two perceptions of the ground-plan are simply two mutually exclusive endeavors to cope with this traumatic antagonism, to heal its wound via the imposition of a balanced symbolic structure.
- Zizek, Slavoj. "Deleuze and the Lacanian Real." in: Lacan.com. 2007.
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With Lenin it was always a substantial commitment. I always have a certain admiration for people who are aware that somebody has to do the job. What I hate about these liberal, pseudo-left, beautiful soul academics is that they are doing what they are doing fully aware that somebody else will do the job for them.
- Slavoj Zizek. "Conversations with Zizek by Slavoj Zizek and Glyn Daly." in: Polity Press. 2004, p. 42.
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http://hoovesontheturf.com/200910/slavoj-zizek-brecht-forum-cooper-union
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