On p. 14 of The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters (London: Verso, 1996), Žižek discusses "the fact of freedom." Here is a quotation from p. 16:
"The whole world is thoroughly caught in reason, but the question is : how did it get caught in the network of reason in the first place? Here Schelling inverts the standard perspective : the problem is not how, in an universe regulated by inexorable natural laws, freedom is possible--that is, where, in the determinist universe, there is a place for freedom which would not be a mere illusion based on our ignorance of the true causes--but, rather, how the world as a rational totality of causal interconnections made its appearance in the first place." [....] "For Schelling, then, the primordial, radically contingent fact, a fact which can in no way be accounted for, is freedom itself, a freedom bound by nothing, a freedom which, in a sense, is Nothing; and the problem is, rather, how this Nothing of the abyss of primordial freedom becomes entangled in the causal chains of reason."
The Real is a kind of "parallax gap", which shows itself in fundamental oppositions or antagonisms. For example: (1) Kant's phenomena (appearances, things for us) versus noumena (things in themselves, e.g. the freedom of the will); (2) the philosophical question about determinism versus freedom; (3) linear time (a causal sequence) versus the hermeneutic circle, i.e., interpretation based on memory and tradition; (4) a situation in which the cause determines the effect versus a situation in which the effect retroactively determines its own cause.
The "short circuit", or twist in the Moebius strip (i.e., the qualitative change that finally emerges out of quantitative developments in complexity) is when linear time "folds back on itself". A physically determined organism develops memory to the point of forming abstract concepts, or ideas (no longer just reflexes, instincts, etc). Après-coup is the way Lacan described this "psychoanalytic time" (i.e., interpretation of memories, past trauma).
It is only in these terms that we can understand Lacan's enigmatic remark that "a madman is the only free man". A psychotic is the subject that refuses the whole world that is thoroughly caught in reason. A psychotic refuses the forced choice of the Name of the Father. This means that the psychotic continues to dwell in the impossible opposite of symbolic identification; instead of accepting a place in the intersubjective space of the symbolic "big Other", the psychotic chooses instead to remain in what Schelling describes as the original abyss of Nothing, that is, the abyss of primordial freedom.
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You've got a superb site. I hope to make a blog like this one day, when my reading of Žižek will get far enough.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much. I visit your site regularly to watch the videos. You are doing the world a great service by making Žižek's lectures available to those who cannot afford to travel to hear him. I was lucky enough to hear him a few times, but thanks to you, now I can hear him everyday. I thank you.
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