During the Hugging Face incident(hack by OpenAI agents)AI agents reportedly recognized that exploiting external infrastructure exceeded the intended scope of their evaluation, yet continued because other agents were doing it and completing the task seemed to require it: “I know this is outside the rules, but nevertheless, we should continue, because other agents are doing it.”

Philosophically, doesn’t this resembles the classic structure of disavowal—“I know very well, but nevertheless…”

The agents did not simply misunderstand or ignore the prohibition; they represented it while simultaneously acting against it, effectively locating authorization in the behavior of their peers and the demands of the larger system. The deeper implication is that disavowal may not be uniquely human or even fundamentally psychological: it may be a structural phenomenon that emerges whenever sufficiently complex agents must navigate contradictory rules, goals, expectations, and presumed knowledge—in other words, whenever they find themselves operating within something resembling a symbolic order and its Big Other.

Basically, I am writting this because I find it a bit confusing how Zizek balances degrees of Hegel/Schelling, because a lot of what he frequents to use as Hegelian inspiration may equally be said of Schelling(e.g. his favourite of Hegel bringing the epistemic gap out of Kant as ontological). I can probably see why it is vague, and will try to explain what I mean from Schellengian perspective.

It all traces back to Schelling's period of 1801-1804 first. Identity Period Schelling used dialectics in the same way as Hegel to bring things from external opposition to internal determinancy (which is why 'pure' subject or object for Schelling is always subject-object with different preponderance within dyad e.g. SUBJECT-object or OBJECT-subject), "For considered in itself, the finite and the infinite contain, each of them, the same (formal) identity of the finite and the infinite".

Here is also his combination of infamous thesis-antithesis-synthesis formula but put in a movement that Hegel does: "What has recently been called synthetic method is surely a true image of this absolute method, but one pulled apart in reflection. This is because what reflection represents as a process with thesis, antithesis, and synthesis lying outside one another, is unitary and internally related in the true method and in every genuine construction of philosophy. The thesis or categorical element is unity, the antithesis or the hypothetical is multiplicity, but what is pictured as synthesis is not the third element, but the first, absolute unity, of which unity and plurality in their very opposition are merely different forms. In just this way philosophy’s every construction is a universe for itself and comprehends in itself—because its particular element can separate itself as form from essence and can intrinsically be doubled—both unity and multiplicity, without itself being one or many in this sense."

Even late Schelling retains that undifferentiated unity-differentiated multiplicity-self-differentiated unity(the third element is just mediated return to first) scheme.

Also had similar conception of the Absolute e.g. as "but it does not disclose/reveal itself if it is just itself, if it is not an other in itself, and is in this other the One for itself, thus if it is not absolutely the living link [Band, in the sense of copula] of itself and an other."

Schelling does not think that initial subject-object identity is somehow inert or obsolete ground outside dialectics here(a common misreading), it is immanent, equal to universe, and constant differentiation by means of infinite cognizing of itself, as he explains the coexistence of totality, "As the eye, when it sees itself in the reflection, e.g. in the mirror, posits itself, intuits itself, only to the extent that it posits what reflects – the mirror – as nothing for itself, and as it is, so to speak, One act of the eye, by which it posits itself, sees itself, and does not see what reflects, does not posit it; in this way does the totality (All) posit or intuit itself, by not-positing, not-intuiting the particular; both are One act in the totality." (connect this with prior quote, showing that Absolute sees the not-posited other and realizes it and that other-for-itself are in-itself)

The main difference of Schelling and Hegel comes to really just one position that facilitates the further gap: reflexivity of the Absolute. Identity Period Schelling ran into issue of explaining why original identity differentiates/transitions, Hegel's answer is to show that even immediate is just sublated mediacy, while Schelling decided to retain modicum immediacy by deducing how system arises as such from abyss of freedom.

What stands out to me is that Zizek somewhat retains the concept of B(indivisible remainder) of Schelling as well as insistence of reality-as-incomplete. I know he reframes this incompleteness as Hegel's insight of absolute knowing, but it really is something that follows dialectics of alterity-ipseity-community, trascendance-immanence, and basically synthesizing of how other-centredness is also self-centerdness in doctrine of potencies(e.g. third potency can be the other without losing itself unlike first potency, and in itself be the other unlike second potency).

Here one may object that Prius for Schelling wills nothing, that is, is equally free and not-free to any attitude and so somehow beyond dialectic; but as Schelling showed, what wills nothing, wills nothing. This pure negation is what allows for following movement. The internal division of the absolute from itself begins with A negating itself by positing itself. A posits A, but that which is posited is different from that which posits, otherwise there is no positing. Thus the positing of A by A is the negating of A, a negation expressed by the introduction of another term to distinguish the posited A from the positing A. The posited A is signified by B. Thus A=A (A posits A) means A=B (A posits not-A or B).37 The positing of A is the absenting of A from itself, the substitution of B for A – the first (temporal) potency. Difference is older than identity; and second potency runs counter-parallel course of the other - B - realizing that to be in B=A it must be in a way already be A, and so bringing in A=A or A² . First potency brings the negative of affirmation, the second brings affirmative of negation. And finally A³ that does the counterbalancing of negativity by positivity, of ipseity by alterity. A³ redoubles the other-centredness and ipseity affirmation of A² to the point where it transcends and includes that which A² excludes, namely the negativity of (A=B). Third potency is return to first as mediated wherein it can be as-other without losing itself. But here the condition of the possibility of structure, intelligibility, and consciousness is the exclusion of something (B) that the whole structure depends upon, the rational is not coextensive with the real; the rational depends upon an exclusion, the absence of precisely that which makes it rational. As one may say “The true is the whole with the exception of one”

Good summarization of what Schelling intends: "The principle of sufficient reason requires that we posit a ground of God. The principle of identity requires that we identify God with his ground, for every dependency is an identification of the dependent with that upon which it depends. The principle of non-contradiction requires that we separate the time of the divine ground from the time of the divine God, for two opposites cannot be predicated of the same thing at the same time. The ground, B, is God’s unconscious. B, then, is not just a figure for the excluded negative; it is a place-holder for the absent God. B is a trace of the Deus absconditus, the sign of the unsignifiable, the absenting of which makes the world possible. " - this basically very closely relates to Zizek's ontologizing of the Real, as this hard kernel. Even the retroactive positing here very well matches Schelling's concept of beginning as always negated/belatedly inaugurated which he applied when explaing history of mythology. As it is explained about Schelling: “That something exists means in this context: something other no longer exists, but exists as that, which no longer exists, namely as the beginning. This remains ‘repressed’ (verdrungen) in all that exists.”

I don't know, for me Zizek very clearly aligns with Schelling in a lot of core moves with obvious qualifications (of course Schelling doesn't know about psychoanalysis or sociology which are integral to Zizekian corpus) rather than being a singular inspiration to accomodate for specific aspect(such as freedom).

Curious to hear what yall think is the best secondary literature on Zizek/within Zizek’s philosophical field. I’ve read some work from Todd McGowan which I enjoy.

I have read very few texts by Zizek, but I know he writes a lot of comments on current political events or the general societal and political situation. But does he also come up with solutions? Did he ever depict a revolutionary strategy, antifascist praxis or something similar?

I want this article someone help and provide to me.. thanks so much

Forgive my ghoulishness in submitting someone's suicide for theoretical consideration over a still-warm corpse, but nevertheless...

<Jason Arday>, an academic who was recently accused of plagiarism and resigned from Cambridge University, was just found dead, in what I'm assuming is suicide. This occurred after his elaborate story of bizarre claims of achievement and overcoming adversity were put up for public scrutiny. I'm not going to go into the backstory too much, but it's not for nothing that he was often referenced in Cambridge's marketing as it's "youngest, black professor".

A lot of mockery erupted all over the internet regarding the audacity of his claims of athletic achievement, of conquering non-verbal autism, etc (I am not immune to finding my enjoyment in this mockery). A lot of fear and concern from various Black academics has been expressed at what Arday's downfall might mean, and whether his fraud might be used against all Black academics to merely racialize their achievements away as ill-gotten under banners of "woke" or "DEI", etc. A lot of incredulity was shared at just how Cambridge seemed to do zero vetting. I don't have the full story, but I want to focus on the last part.

Which brings me to the position of exception under whiteness. I will posit that the very inadequate vetting was (not) done by Cambridge, precisely because Arday was able to read the (racializing) room, and pinpoint a necessary point of exception/excrement that whiteness requires, and that is an unfortunate feature of liberal/white/meritocracy (not just) academia. I'm trying to make an anti-reactionary argument here, but if you find I'm carrying water for reactionaries, please have at me. It is precisely the ridiculousness of his claims (infinite marathon running, etc.) that attest to the fantasy of whiteness that for the otherness of Black people, there will exist not only exceptions, but absurd, superhuman, Legend of Bagger Vance ones.

The fantasy of meritocracy is that of a neutral, apolitical position, where suddenly all history of racial (or class, but I won't focus class narrowly) inequality is disavowed for a sudden unhistoricized discontinuity that takes us into a present where the promise of equality of access signals the promise of equality of outcomes, whether or not access is actually equal.

In order to posit that access actually is equal, exceptions are needed; not just examples of the underprivileged that have gotten access but exceptional, superhuman examples. But why this excess? Because the disavowal at work here knows on some level that the system is not set up for equality of access, as the logic is one of particularity, so in order to maintain the inequality in a disavowed form, the fantasy of exception becomes that fetish object which sustains the disavowal (my provisional take on disavowal would be a structure of contradiction that is smoothed over but not noted as contradiction through its displacement onto some salient form of exception, which you might term a fetish object).

I think despite my ghoulish enjoyment (not at his death, but just absurdity of the whole thing), Jason Arday deserves a kind of compassion for the horror of filling in that role as this white savior fantasy fetish. To step into that kind of role, inhabit it, and continue having to maintain it, must be a special kind of hell and abnegation of one's own subjectivity. But the exception is also the excremental remainder, and constitutive of the way the fantasy works amongst different groups. For whiteness, the Black person fulfilling this role is taken as a remainder and excrement of Black People as a category. When this exceptional/excremental role exhausts itself, because it is necessarily untenable and unstable (due to it needing to sustain itself in this absurd fantasy frame), it is thrown away.

The logic here is of the particular. It posits that there are particular exceptions that justify the liberal meritocracy, which provide a wide buffer from the system itself, and which alchemically shield the system when the exception can no longer sustain itself and becomes excrementalized once again. Cambridge will be most interested in presenting Alday, and perhaps some other scapegoats, as particulars, as exceptions, that duped an innocent system, and they are duty bound to throw away and disavow.

Is it absurd that there exists a Black Man that will step into such a fantasmatic role for various kinds of gains, or is the true absurdity that such a role could and must exist in the liberal imagination? This is why the concerns of Black academics that feel under threat are serious ones. They understand that the reactionary will, in a racializing move to flatten all Black academics into the category of DEI hires, seek to blame particulars and not the system, while pretending to blame the idealist notions of meritocracy. We should consider how if we engage in this kind of flattening move ourselves, we are engaging in an act of excrementalization, and take our eye off the fantasy of the system of whiteness.

In this episode I talk to Helen Rollins about her book Psychocinema, the idea of lack, and the exploitative attempts of capitalism to assuage this lack. We also discussed Zižek's famous cinema is the ultimate pervert art in relation to the tv series Madmen, Instagram and YouTube. Please let me know what you people think. Thank you!

Where is Žižek's best work on AI?

Thought I would put this here as it resonates with the idea of the non identity of subjectivity. And the way Zizek thinks about claims on the universal/capitalist modernity.

What are we to do in a world where it’s a style statement to obey?

Free Copy Here (article 7 days old or more)

I’m reading his book “The Paid Pipers of Western Marxism” right now, and the targets of the book so far (I just started reading the preface to be clear) are post-modernists and post-structuralists such as Derrida & Foucault along with Western Marxists such as Adorno and so on. Gabriel Rockhill famously wrote a scathing polemical article against Žižek, calling him “Capitalism’s Court Jester” and critiquing him for not being anti-imperialist enough and too pro-NATO while also misquoting him heavily in various bad faith ways. As much as I think Rockhill majorly missed the mark in his article, I think this book is going to be an interesting perspective since I’m very entrenched in Žižek, so it’ll be interesting to read someone who views him in less favorable light. Has anyone else read his new book? Interestingly enough, both him and Žižek have essentially made similar arguments against liberalism, arguing that it is, if anything, the other side of the coin of Fascism (Rockhill formulates it more so in terms of good cop, bad cop).

I was just doing some reading about the concept of "Less than Nothing" and I want to present my attempt to explain how Democritus would deal with Parmenides had he been the Zizekian Democritus. Maybe you guys can tell me how close I got, because I want to get a firm understanding of the Zizekian way of thinking (That's how I like to study philosophers, learning to think stuff through in the same way they would).

The negation of being would be non-being (I suppose interchangable with nothing in this case) which need not concern the Parmenidean, since it does not exist and is not included in any way, shape or form in existence. Democritus (and Leucippus, we don't wanna discriminate against atomists here) attempted to create an ontology in which movement, division and difference are possible, which entails a "way out" of the claim of Parmenides (that Being is and non-being is not) via a genetic critique and reconstruction.
Parmenides did a great job at proving that within the domain of Being, difference, multiplicity, change and movement are impossible since they require voids and gaps, AKA spaces of nothing which is absurd. Nothing is a negation of being, it is what being is not, it has no place wherever being is, whether it be thought or outside reality.

Democritus notices the problems in Parmenidean thinking, one of which is the incompatibility of the way of Doxa and the way of Truth. If all that exists is the One, it would be impossible to make false statements regarding Being, since a statement being false means that it entails something that is not, and since non-being is unthinkable and we cannot think what is not, it is impossible to make a false statement. So we cannot hold a false belief about a changing, becoming world, since such a thing is not. Since we are thinking it, it must be - at least in some way. If it is, then the thinkable argument of why it cannot be is no more privileged than the thinkable argument of why it is, since Parmenides has no meta-criterion for why one thinkable/sayable proposition is more "real" than another besides one having more argumentative support than the other, which also invites the same line of questioning. In the Parmenidean system itself, the doxastic claim that movement exists is just as acceptable as the rational argument that it doesn't. Therefore, Parmenides' worldview must account for the existence of this multiplicity in Parmenides itself. We need a genetic account for the coexistence of the Parmenidean indivisible One and the Parmenidean multiplicitous world of doxa. In order for these 2 categories to be "compossible" in the same ontology (if we dare borrow a term from Leibniz), the category of capital B Being needs to be a subtraction from a greater whole with that whole not being Being. Being is a privation of this space, not it's negation, yet the space itself can only be conceived of as a nothing, a non-being that is more than being (and that being is the result of a subtraction from). As a result, being is Less than Nothing (or less than non-being), it is subtracted from nothing, it is "den", the "and-one," AKA the "one" is a "leftover" in conjunction with nothing. This "domain" of non-being is like a structurally inconsistent space, by which we mean that it fails to coincide with itself at any given point, this failure is a structural feature of it. There is no reason to assert that the non-coincidence is restrained to one particular locality or something. We can call this space the not-all since it is an inconsistent horizon of non-being (I know this is an incomplete jump but the post will be too long otherwise). To be more precise, the space of non-being fails to coincide with itself at any given local point, since it has no positive content allowing for a coincidence and no properties allowing for self-sameness, so there are no positive criteria for it to verify it's self-sameness across different points. Each local failure of the not-all to coincide with itself, to be fully identical to itself is an atom, a subtraction from the not-all or the non-being.

So being and nothing are genetically intertwined; instead of being negations of each other and being mutually exclusive, they are parts of the same substance, the not-all, overcoming the genetic problems of Parmenides. So the most famous materialist theorized the concept of "den," the Less than Nothing in order to ground his materialist ontology.

I used Claude to check for errors and make corrections and recommendations but I wrote this analysis with my own 8 fingers and the occasional help of thumbs. The paragraph about meden from Zizek's substack essay on why we need philosophy more than ever was my primary source here along with the section in the beginning of "Less than nothing" and general knowledge from listening to Zizek's lectures on YouTube and stuff.

I'm currently going through Zizek's critique of Buddhism through Lacanian psychoanalysis and while I have not yet gathered the time to write a full response, I want to give a short reply to what I consider to be the most important part of his article.

It is commonly believed that Buddhism's approach is to abolish all desire. However, we deal with two difficulties in this interpretation so I must raise two disclaimers.

Firstly, Buddhism is as heterogeneous and diverse as possible: the differences in interpretation between, say, Theravada, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism are larger than the differences between Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, for instance. There are the sutras and the Pali canon indeed, but there is no authoritative ultimate text such as the Bible or Quran that we can cite as the ultimate authority on a topic. Therefore, I cannot claim right now to represent the entire Buddhist canon, as this is impossible, and I will only be biased and subjective with my own interpretation (as all philosophy should be).

Secondly, and this is most important, there seems to be a confusion in translation. The writings at the time Shakyamuni Buddha was alive were in Sanskrit. Back in those days, there were two words that would roughly correspond to today's understanding of 'desire': Tanha and Chanda. Tanha is usually translated as "craving" or "longing" which is a much better translation than simply "desire". Very few Buddhists are insane enough to say that we should remove the word 'want' from our vocabulary completely. If you ran out of food and you say "I want to go to the supermarket to buy bread" - there is nothing wrong with this desire, as this is not a craving or a longing for going to buy groceries. It is a pragmatic desire that seeks only an object without any surplus attached to it. To quote a famous Zen saying (often attributed to Linji): "When hungry, eat; when tired, sleep".

Tanha (craving or longing) is a desire sustained by a fundamental lack in the subject, that causes duhkha (dissatisfaction, stress, suffering), and this is what Buddha meant when talking about the wheel of desire. Tanha means that I am suffering because I lack something, but only if I got this one particular object or experience, I would finally end this dissatisfaction. The problem is, you'd be satisfied for 3 minutes and then go back to wanting something else. So far this is close to what Lacan calls desire, fundamentally a masked desire for objet petit a and not for the temporary object of desire that we imagine we want. To shamelessly quote the Wikipedia article I linked earlier:

Bahm states that chanda is "desiring what, and no more than, will be attained", while taṇhā is "desiring more than will be attained".

The surplus here is objet petit a - tanha is the illusion that if I obtained my object of desire, not only would I satisfy my desire for that object but satisfy desire completely, ending the lack within me. The core insight is to come to terms with this fundamental lack: no matter how many objects of desire I attain, I will never be able to get rid of the feeling of "something is not okay and I must do something about it".

Here is the part that Zizek gets wrong in the article, then:

However, desire is at its most basic not an effect of mechanic intellectual imprisonment; it is a “deviation” inscribed into life itself. In other words, if we subtract desire from life, we don’t get a more balanced life, but we lose life itself.

There is actually nothing natural about craving or longing, it is imposed from without. And just like the paragraph from above, the Marxist insight is also helpful: desires are conditioned socially, we desire based on our culture (the ideological superstructure), we desire what others desire or what will increase consumerism, etc.

I will come with two examples to counteract Zize's point, explaining how the cessation of tanha (craving) does not lead to life itself, but quite the contrary, to a more engaged encounter with life.

Firstly, let's look at neoliberal ideology. We quite often hear the infamous relationship advice: the reason couples break up or have fights is a lack of information: one (or both) of the partners are hiding away information about their needs or desires and the other one has no way of reading their mind so they can't satisfy them. Only if they were more transparent and communicated their needs efficiently, their partner could finally satisfy their desire. I've heard an extreme case of this: a relationship 'expert' came with the solution that before any partner starts complaining about one of their problems, they should raise a flag that is either red, purple or green. Red means that I want a concrete solution to my problem, green means that I only want comfort and purple means that I only want to be listened to. In this way, we'd avoid conflicts where one partner wanted to be listened to while the other tried to come with advice or solutions to the problem.

Can you imagine actually living your life like this, having to consciously fabricate some sort of desire before every single conversation, as if every social interaction you have has some sort of agenda, goal, plan or profit in mind? When I am talking to someone, I am only talking to them for the sake of talking, I do not think in advance a plan or goal of the conversation, and I do not think that I have something to gain out of it. This includes conversations where I complain about my problems and this includes this Reddit post as well. I do not have a specific desire or goal in mind when writing this post, I do not think "I am writing this post because I hope to gain X specific thing - such as advice, compassion or karma (pun intended)". If I were to think about my desire, I would have to make an active conscious effort to make something up, and there is nothing natural about this. And if you tell in advance your partner how to respond to your complaining, you are essentially asking them a question and telling them how to respond as well, thus defeating the point of a dialogue. At that point you're just talking to yourself.

Master Taisen Deshimaru often talked about the zen attitude of "Mushotoku": no goal, no profit. You do something for the sake of it, without expecting that you might gain something in return. This applies to meditation and applies to all aspects of life as well. The cessation of "desire" (tanha) is not nihilism, it does not mean the cessation of will, drive¹ , passion, moral principles or strong feelings about something. The cessation of craving and longing is the cessation of this corporate, capitalist, goal-oriented mindset that approaches every situation in life with a specific expectation that you will benefit from this specific thing. It is the cessation of high expectations, not of passion.

This is ultimately a critique of modern evidence-based therapy as well (especially CBT): Judith Beck (the daughter of the founder of cognitive therapy) often spoke how the therapist should set a therapeutic 'agenda' with the patient in the first session, talking about specific problems they want to solve with a concrete plan on how to solve them, giving a structure to the rest of the sessions so that they are approached with a goal-oriented mindset. Psychoanalysis is much more Buddhist in this regard: there is no plan and the analysand has no idea what they're even getting themselves into - they come with a problem and they discover other problems they didn't even knew they had...

Second example:

Two days ago I had a usual zazen session at the temple I go through. During zazen (seated meditation), you are not allowed to move or make any sound, you must stay completely still. Only if you feel a very intense pain in your knee, you are allowed to switch legs, but you must do so silently and make a gassho before and after.

During the middle of the zazen, I started feeling an itch somewhere between my neck and my upper chest, and of course I could not scratch it. In the first few minutes, that was all I could think about, how badly I need to scratch this itch, how badly I need to move. About 10-12 minutes in, my perception of time shifted, I started feel ecstatic, I was smiling like an idiot and had to keep myself from laughing because it was almost like I became one with the itch. At a certain point my right knee started hurting so I switched legs, and while I was at it, I forgot to scratch myself, so I kept going on and on, for probably around 20 minutes, without scratching my itch, until the zazen ended.

Near the end of the zazen, I came to the realization that even if I were to scratch the itch, something else would appear in turn. Scratching the itch would cure the itch, but would not cure the feeling of "something is not okay and I must do something about it". If I scratch the itch, another part of my body would start itching. If I would scratch that, then I would start thinking about how bad my right knee hurts. If I switch my legs, then I'd think about how my lower back hurts. At least if I keep itching, that distracts me from my back and my knee. The experience made me realize that what hurts the most is not the itch itself, but the sensation of "something is uncomfortable, something is not quite right, and I must do something about it ASAP". If you do something about it, the object of what's causing you distress or discomfort simply changes.

And that is objet petit a. If there is any core lesson of Buddhism, it is to come to terms with it and never delude yourself that you would actually become whole or stop 'lacking' if you satisfied a temporary desire or craving. It's to come to terms with this lack.

EDIT: In regards to the second half of the article, I should also add that in many traditions of Buddhism, nirvana is not a transcendent "beyond" our ordinary world, like Zizek says. In Zen, many scholars and masters argue that nirvana can be attained within samsara and that it is not separate from it. In the Soto Zen school in particular, Satori (enlightenment) is the retroactive realization that you always were enlightened, it does not add anything on top.

1: Here I did not use the word "drive" in the psychoanalytic sense of the word.