December 30, 2012

Patient's symptoms are answers in search of questions

Sri Aurobindo Devotees: Prayers, Sasibalika Vidya Mandir, R.S. Puram, 9.30 a.m.; Annai Meditation Centre, Kovaipudur, 4 p.m.

The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page 257 - V. P. Varma - 1990 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo is critical of a world state and favours a world union. There are three possible institutional means to effectuate the scheme of the unity of mankind. There can be a centralized unitarian world state but Aurobindo rejects this suggestion ...

Comment on Sravana Manana and Nidhidhyasana by Sandeep Dec 29, 2012
In the book “Consciousness, Indian Psychology and Yoga”, there is a chapter where Matthijs Cornelissen says the hard problem arises because Western psychology is inverted in its thinking. It sees this world as real and hence has to figure why the brain works; whereas Indian psychology which sees this world as a projection can explain better why the brain creates images. Comment on Sravana Manana and Nidhidhyasana Here is the excerpt from the article by Matthijs
(David) Chalmers' formulation of the hard problem-and of the correlation between the brain and consciousness are typical examples of our unwarranted, and often unconscious collective tendency to think that even if consciousness is irreducible, it is somehow still “less fundamental” than matter. The recent philosophical debate on the nature of consciousness is to a considerable degree dominated by such materialist presuppositions…. (Kireet Joshi, Matthijs Cornelissen (ed). Consciousness, Indian Psychology and Yoga , New Delhi, Motilal Banarsidas, 2004. pp 16-17)

From Less Than Nothing, pp. 1007-1009 (yes, I’ve finished the thing):

Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that the prohibition of incest is not a question, an enigma, but an answer to a question that we do not know. We should treat the demands of the Wall Street protests in a similar way: intellectuals should not primarily take them as demands, questions, for which they should produce clear answers, programs about what to do. They are answers, and intellectuals should propose the questions to which they are answers. The situation is like that in psychoanalysis, where the patient knows the answer (his symptoms are such answers) but does not know what they are the answers to, and the analyst has to formulate the questions. Only through such patient work will a program emerge.” 

Slavoj Zizek and the role of the philosopher Santiago Zabala Al Jazeera, 25 Dec 2012
In order to respond, as Edward Said once said, the intellectual has to be "an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society", that is, free from academic, religious and political establishments; otherwise, he or she will simply submit to the inevitability of events.
If Slavoj Zizek perfectly fits Said's description, it is not because he is unemployed, in exile, and at the margins of society, but rather because he writes as if he were. His theoretical books, political positions and public appearances are a disruption not only of the common academic style, but also of the idea of the philosopher or intellectual as someone to be idealised and deferred to…
While many believe that globalisation made the Slovenian philosopher more popular than John Dewey, Herbert Marcuse, or Jurgen Habermas, it was actually his ability to disrupt our neoliberal democratic surety through the same events that characterise it…
Today, whether we like him or not, Zizek is, as the Observer points out, "what Jacques Derrida was to the 80s", that is, the thinker of our age. While Derrida's intellectual operation focused on "deconstructing" our linguistic frames of reference, Zizek instead "disrupts" our ideological structures, the underside of acceptable philosophical, religious and political discourses. 1:57 PM

Slavoj Zizek: I am not the world's hippest philosopher! Salon - SUNDAY, DEC 30, 2012 01:30 AM IST ‎The coolest and most influential leftist in Europe tells Salon he battles depression -- and those who worship him BY KATIE ENGELHART
Almost 25 years ago, philosopher Slavoj Žižek broke through the intellectual cul-de-sac of Slovenian academia — making his mark on the English-speaking world with “The Sublime Object of Ideology” (1989), a wily fusing of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Frankfurt School idealism, and reflections on the 1979 blockbuster horror flick “Alien.”
Today, he’s everywhere. The notoriously unkempt “radical leftist” philosophe has become the unlikeliest of celebrities: a cult icon and spiritual guide for Europe’s lethargic left…
Žižek: I really hate all of this politically correct, cultural studies bullshit. If you mention the phrase “postcolonialism,” I say, “Fuck it!” Postcolonialism is the invention of some rich guys from India who saw that they could make a good career in top Western universities by playing on the guilt of white liberals… I also have a bit of megalomania. I almost conceive of myself as a Christ figure.

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