Zizek on Duty, Pleasure, & Freedom

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Ken:
>> Zizek's mistake here is severalfold: (1) he locates
>freedom (or freedom that matters in ethics) in the noumenal
>ethical person/transcendental ignorance (or 'impossibility
>of knowledge of Things in themselves') -- a wrong
>conception of freedom that erects a figment of ideology as a
>vehicle of morality and that deforms freedom into a 'free
>will'<<
>
>Zizek is guarding against a positive definition of freedom,
>a freedom defined once and for all - which he regards as
>tyranny (because, by implication, the subject who is free
>acts as if they *know* what freedom is - in other words -
>the "free" subject takes themself to be a living
>embodiment of substance - and is then "free" to do whatever
>they wish.  This would (metaphysically and
>dualistically) divorce freedom from any possible notion of
>responsibility, guilt, ethics, or morality.
<snip>
>Let's go back to basics.  What do you understand morality,
>freedom, or ethics to be?  So far you have put your
>critique completely in the negative, which appears, to me,
>to be hiding a positive conception of "good will" or "the
>good" or "the right" or something.

For your reading pleasure, here's a fragment on negative/positive,
absence/presence, emptiness/fullness, form/substance, etc.....

*****
...Great Negative, how vainly would the wise
Inquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise,
Didst thou not stand to point their blind philosophies!

Is or Is Not, the two great ends of Fate,
And True or False, the subject of debate,
That perfect or destroy the vast designs of state --

When they have racked the politician's breast,
Within thy bosom most securely rest,
And when reduced to thee, are least unsafe and best.

But Nothing, why does Something still permit
That sacred monarchs should in council sit
With persons highly thought at best for nothing fit,

While weighty Something modestly abstains
>From princes' coffers, and from statesmen's brains,
And nothing there like stately Nothing reigns?...

Earl of Rochester, "Upon Nothing"   *****


>So we find ourselves with an
>obligation but without the knowledge of what we are obliged
>to do.  This is why, in the translation, we find ourselves
>feeling both responsible and guilty.  We do our duty but we
>don't know what our duty is.  Hence, ethics is a viewpoint
>from the perspective of radical evil - and the highest good
>and diabolical evil are taken to be identical.

*****
...But thoughts are given for action's government;
Where action ceases, thought's impertinent.
Our sphere of action is life's happiness,
And he who thinks beyond, thinks like an ass....
Your reason hinders, mine helps to enjoy,
Renewing appetites, yours is a cheat;
Hunger calls out, my reason bid me eat;
Perversely, yours your appetite does mock:
This asks for food, that answers, "What's o'clock?"...

Earl of Rochester, "A Satyr against Reason and Mankind"
*****

Yoshie