"What Nietzsche and Freud share is the idea that justice as equality is founded on envy--on the envy of the Other who has what we do not have, and who enjoys it. The demand for justice is thus ultimately the demand that the excessive enjoyment of the Other should be curtailed so that everyone's access to enjoyment is equal."
Žižek, Violence (Picador, 2008), p. 89
"An evil person is thus not an egotist, 'thinking only about his own interests.' A true egotist is too busy taking care of his own good to have time to cause misfortune to others. The primary vice of a bad person is precisely that he is more preoccupied with others than with himself."
Žižek, Violence (Picador, 2008), p. 92
"Here is why egalitarianism itself should never be accepted at its face value: the notion (and practice) of egalitarian justice, insofar as it is sustained by envy, relies on the inversion of the standard renunciation accomplished to benefit others: 'I am ready to renounce it, so that others will (also) NOT be able to have it!' Far from being opposed to the spirit of sacrifice, evil here emerges as the very spirit of sacrifice, ready to ignore one's own well being--if, through my sacrifice, I can deprive the Other of his enjoyment..."
Žižek, Violence (Picador, 2008), p. 92
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Even if it is fictional this scene evokes truth--the scene from the film "Arsenal" when Tsar Nicholas constantly ignored the suffering of his people and meanwhile scribbles egotistic trivia in his diary like: "Today I shot a crow." Egotism like this that ignores suffering is evil. Zizek himself acknowledges this elsewhere. Sometimes Zizek's writing style is too much like Nietzsche's style for my taste. I am referring to the numerous half-truths and exaggerations written basically just for shock value alone.
ReplyDeleteHere Žižek seems to overlook the so-called "sins of omission".
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