Briefly examining some remarks contained in The Parallax View (2006) will help make sense of the conclusion Žižek draws in the final paragraphs of The Indivisible Remainder (the 1996 book that ends with the essay "Quantum Physics with Lacan") regarding the philosophical connection between his musings about quantum physics and German idealist conceptions of human freedom. Revisiting his 1996 reflections on this topic almost a decade later, he asks, "Is not the shift from substantial Reality to (different forms of) Event one of the defining features of modern sciences?" and, in response to this question, again emphasizes that "quantum physics posits as the ultimate reality not some primordial elements but, rather, a kind of string of 'vibrations,' entities which can only be described as desubstantialized processes" (Žižek 2006, 165)--or, as he reiterates this later in the same text, "the lesson of quantum physics" is that "solid material reality" isn't the most elementary and fundamental grounding layer of natural substance. Soon after repeating his insistence that quantum physics points to a matter deprived of any philosophically traditional image or notion of materiality, Žižek frames the contemporary difference between idealism and materialism thus:
It is here, in this terrain, that we should locate today's struggle between idealism and materialism: idealism posits an ideal Event which cannot be accounted for in the terms of its material (pre)conditions, while the materialist wager is that we can get "behind" the event and explore how Event explodes out of the gap in/of the order of Being (Žižek 2006, 166)
No comments:
Post a Comment