In trying to think about divine violence lately I disovered Slavoj Zizek's latest offering, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections.
As always, it is a brilliant roller-coaster ride of a book. Zizerk skewers all kinds of lazy thinking in Western culture. He has a severe critique of religion and theism, but he also says this:
Science and religion have changed places: today, science provides the security religion once guaranteed. In a curious inversion, religion is one of the possible place fro which one can deploy critical doubts about today's society. It has become one of the sites of resistance. p. 70
Possibly, but Zizek also argues that only atheists can be truly ethical, because only an atheist will do something because it is right, rather than because it pleases the deity, or to earn a reward. This is an old critique which actually has its basis within the Christian tradition itself (see the 17th century Quietists, for example).
5 comments:
Zizek seems to be either totally screwed up, or just another lefty poseur who likes playing provocateur.
Oh, probably both. He is still more interesting than most.
Interesting perhaps. But is he worthwhile? I know he is the current flavour of the month, I'm not always sure why (although it amuses me sometimes how people like to be tickled with the "new" - which usually turns out to be old crap recycled. Not saying it's you but...) , but sometimes I think life's too short to engage with the unhinged.
Seriously.
I mean there's a journal of Zizek studies for crying out loud and we still can't get some of the greats translated.
Zizek, who claims himself to be not christian, knows that this critizism comes from christianity itself. But he is right: It doesn't matter. It's well thought so it would be stupid to just refuse it because it's of religious origin.
Zizek is most definitely not a poseur, nor screwed up (any more than the rest of us) and he is most def. worth reading. He has made an important defence of the christian tradition and he is theologically 'literate' (unlike R Dawkins or Anne Atkins, if you know what i mean).
He work is clearly written but quite strenuous to read, if you want to grasp his ideas. And: he tells jokes a lot in his books; some think he shouldn't - I like it!
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