Incontinence of the Void by &Ži&žek Slavoj;

Author:&Ži&žek, Slavoj; [Žižek, Slavoj]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: philosophy; critical theory; psychoanalysis; Lacan; psychology; criticism; economics; political economy; ontology; quantum physics; reality; human sexuality; Alenka Zupančič; what is sex; Marx; communism; culture
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2017-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Much more interesting than the obvious point of this story (a philosopher can earn money—if he is interested in it, which he is not insofar as he is a true philosopher) is the fact that, already at the very beginning of philosophy, a link between philosophical speculation (about stars, about the ultimate reality) and financial speculation is established, a link which culminates in Marx’s claim that Hegelian speculation (the self-movement of the Concept) provides the clue to financial speculation (in which money seems to engender more money). (One should note that, in Aristotle’s anecdote, Thales is not “practical” in a direct sense—for example, inventing a new, better olive press—but “practical” in the sense of profiting in a totally non-productive way from a clever speculation.) And, perhaps, the couple of Plato and Aristotle that appears here is relevant for the topic we are dealing with—recall Raphael’s famous fresco The School of Athens: in the center stand Plato on the left and Aristotle on the right. In a wonderful anachronism, each of the two holds a modern (of Raphael’s time) bound copy of a work of his in his left hand, while gesturing with his right (Plato holds Timaeus and Aristotle his NicomacheanEthics). The two figures “gesture along different dimensions: Plato vertically, upward along the picture-plane, into the beautiful vault above; Aristotle on the horizontal plane at right-angles to the picture-plane (hence in strong foreshortening), initiating a powerful flow of space toward viewers. It is popularly thought that their gestures indicate central aspects of their philosophies, for Plato, his TheoryofForms, and for Aristotle, his empiricist views, with an emphasis on concrete particulars. Many interpret the painting to show a divergence of the two philosophical schools. Plato argues a sense of timelessness whilst Aristotle looks into the physicality of life and the present realm.”45

Is the couple of Plato and Aristotle, then, implicitly sexualized: is Plato presented as masculine and Aristotle as feminine? In short, is Aristotle himself Plato’s Thracian servant girl? But is not this notion of women as bearers of ordinary pragmatic common sense, bringing men down to earth from their heaven of pure thinking, all too simple? Our tradition is full of similar notional couples aimed at capturing one aspect of the difference between men and women, and even Badiou is not providing a strict theory of sexual difference; he is simply mobilizing the predominant ideological coordinates that fix the traditional meaning of sexual difference. At this level, one should perhaps supplement him: it is not so much that man and woman are opposed as One and between-the-Two; there is a split that characterizes the ideological coordinates of each of the two sexes. Men are supposed to be subjects of a (given) Word, sticking to principles, while women are prone to empty chatter and lying; plus men are supposed to be adventurous, venturing outside their narrow home domain, while women are more conservative, confined to this domain. A man is thus simultaneously principled and more adventurous, while a woman is more fluid/flirtatious and more stable/conservative … this inconsistent list goes on and on.

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