Slavoj Zizek: “Buddhism Can’t Explain This”
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What does Slavoj Žižek mean by “radical freedom” and how does it differ from ordinary choice?
I like you very much. You know why? Why? You did the first what I always... You did this that I'm doing all the time. What do you mean? This. Scratch your nose for a second. Because I am the one people laugh at me all the time. Like, he cannot go five minutes without scratching. So you began. Okay. Okay.
What would it mean for a stone to have freedom? that
to answer you properly i would have to explain why for me socrates is the first philosopher for me nonetheless because you know instead of going directly at the topic no probably not for freedom you need awareness or and so on and so on i would go back to what do you mean by freedom? Because freedom is not simply opposed to necessity. It's even problematic if freedom needs really a free choice. Let's say you personally fall in love. Usually you don't make a choice. There is no moment when you tell yourself, look, there are, if I'm heterosexual, there are nice ladies here and there. Let me pick that one. No. All of a sudden, you realize that you already were in love. That's for me freedom at its most radical.
And here we come back to Schelling. Schelling saw this clearly. that freedom in this sense is more radical. It's not free choice. Why? I can put it in more existentialist terms, although I'm not that, because for me, true act of freedom is not I go to a... to a store and, oh my God, should I pick, I don't know, chocolate cake or cheesecake, and then I choose freely. No. True freedom is, as it were, when you choose yourself. When you decide Not only what to have, what to use, but when you decide or choose what you are. These are the true choices for me, the choices which affect your identity. In this sense, no. Stone, I think... definitely doesn't have freedom. Do you think, is there a theory which claims that stone does have freedom?
To go a step further, then you can immediately interrupt me. I think that the quantum theory of indeterminacy and so on, I know it's not simply non-determinism, Schrodinger equation and so on, there are rules, but Within this scope, you cannot predict it. There are chances and so on, but this has nothing to do with freedom. Freedom is a self-chosen form of necessity. If I throw something like a coin into the air and set on which side it will fall down, I decide this is not freedom. I just leave it to what appears to me as contingency, although probably it's not. Freedom is a decision which establishes a new necessity. In this sense, now I can make a jump for which I will be hated by people who think I confuse anything.
You know what? I had a debate, brief one, with Carlo Rovelli. Yes. And very strangely... I tried to catch him on that. He used the term freedom. His idea is this one, precisely to take, you can immediately counterattack that I simplify it or what, I know. But let's say wave particle. what I will perceive as reality and I will not go now into this do my choice does my choice what to focus on my observation does it create that or not but the point is that this is for him the moment of freedom freedom in the sense that when I do a quantum observation I choose what aspect to measure. We observe an entity as a particle or as a wave, and we know all the paradoxes and so on and so on. I would even be afraid to use the term freedom here, because if we say this is freedom, I'm free to choose what I will measure in a quantum experiment, isn't it that then
If I say only this, am I not caught into a very strong ontological duality? In the sense that we have the quantum domain, which is contingent but not in any meaningful sense free, and then it's me. But how do I fit the quantum domain? What am I? For example, most of the quantum physicists reject the notion of freedom of the will. You know? Yes. So I would say, you see, now I know. You never will get this from me. I shouldn't talk too much. I didn't answer your question, but I confused it in the right way so that you see in what direction my mind works. It was a simple, precise question, and that's where I enjoy theory. Theory should, in the first step... bring out all the hidden presuppositions.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does Slavoj Žižek mean by “radical freedom” and how does it differ from ordinary choice?
0:00–10:24
2
How does Žižek connect quantum indeterminacy with the possibility of genuine freedom?
10:24–21:19
3
What is the ontological significance of the quantum collapse paradox for Žižek’s philosophy?
21:19–31:34
4
How do Adorno’s social antinomies influence Žižek’s view of freedom in modern society?
31:34–41:03
5
Why does Žižek claim that the “fall” precedes paradise and what does that imply for human existence?
41:03–52:32
6
What role does the death drive play in Žižek’s hierarchy of freedom, from everyday to existential?
52:32–1:04:21
7
How does Žižek reconcile Hegelian retroactive necessity with contemporary quantum mechanics?
1:04:21–1:14:49
8
What are Žižek’s predictions about AI, neural‑link technology, and the future of human self‑awareness?
1:14:49–1:30:19
Speakers
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