<\/p>
According to Slavoj Zizek, German idealism is characterized by the combination of two insights that appear contradictory: \u201c(1) subject is the power of \u2018spontaneous\u2019 (i.e., autonomous, starting-in-itself, irreducible to preceding causality) synthetic activity, the force of unification, of bringing together, linking, the manifold of sensual data we are bombarded with into a unified representations of objects; (2) subject is the power of negativity, of introducing a gap\/cut into the given-immediate substantial unity, the power of differentiating, of \u2018abstracting,\u2019 of tearing apart and treating as self-standing what in reality is part of an organic unity.\u201d <\/p>\n
To Zizek, Idealism doesn\u2019t attempt to balance or simply link these features, but to identify them: \u201cIn order truly to understand German Idealism, it is crucial to think these two features not only together (as the two aspects of one and the same activity \u2013 like claiming that the subject first tears apart natural unity and then brings these membra disjecta together into a new, his own (\u2018subjective\u2019), unity), but as stricto sensu identical: the very synthetic activity introduces a gap\/difference into substantial reality, and\/or the very differentiation consists in imposing a unity.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHow, exactly,\u201d he asks, \u201care we to understand this?\u201d \u00a0Good question. <\/p>\n
Zizek\u2019s answer is: \u201cThe subject\u2019s spontaneity emerges as a disturbing CUT into the substantial reality, since the unity the transcendental synthesis imposes onto the natural manifold is precisely what this word means in everyday use, not in Kant: \u2018synthetic,\u2019 artificial, \u2018unnatural.\u2019 To evoke a common political experience: all great unifiers started with a divisive gesture \u2013 de Gaulle unified the Frenchmen by way of introducing an irrreconciliable difference between those who wanted peace with Germany and those who did not recognize capitulation and wanted to go on fighting.\u201d \u00a0That appears to mean this: The subject\u2019s unification reality is not part of the natural world, but an \u201cunnatural\u201d imposition on nature. \u00a0As such, it is a \u201ccut\u201d into the natural world, a domination and dissection of it. \u00a0But that unnatural imposition is precisely what unifies the world, so the Idealists say. <\/p>\n
Zizek finds the same pattern, the identity of cutting and unification, in Christianity: \u201cwe are not FIRST separated from God and THEN miraculously united with him; the point of Christianity is that the very separation unites us \u2013 it is in this separation that we are \u2018like God,\u2019 like Christ on the cross, i.e., the separation of us from God is transposed into God himself.\u201d \u00a0And ethics: \u201cradical act of Good HAS to appear first as \u2018evil,\u2019 as disturbing the substantial stability of traditional mores.\u201d \u00a0Hence too the disturbing life of Jesus. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to Slavoj Zizek, German idealism is characterized by the combination of two insights that appear contradictory: \u201c(1) subject is the power of \u2018spontaneous\u2019 (i.e., autonomous, starting-in-itself, irreducible to preceding causality) synthetic activity, the force of unification, of bringing together, linking, the manifold of sensual data we are bombarded with into a unified representations of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\n