Slavoj Žižek on philosophy today | The madness of reality

Summary

Podcast Summary: Slavoj Žižek on Philosophy Today | The Madness of Reality

Philosophy For Our Times | October 20, 2025
Host: IAI, Interviewer: Charlie Barnett
Guest: Slavoj Žižek

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Episode Overview

In this wide-ranging discussion, renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek tackles the contemporary relevance of philosophy amidst the rise of AI, the dominance of scientific narratives, and a rapidly shifting political landscape. The conversation explores philosophy's practical role in unpacking social crises, the pitfalls of 'progress', the nuances of rationality, and the strange “madness” of our present reality. Žižek brings his trademark humor and iconoclasm as he questions prevailing narratives, from gender politics to technology, and delivers a stirring defense of reasoned, critical inquiry—even in an age obsessed with optimization.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

The Practical Role of Philosophy Today

• Philosophy as a Critical Tool: Žižek dismisses the idea that philosophy provides “big answers”, instead highlighting its role in questioning frameworks and the ways we conceptualize our problems (e.g., in ecology and feminism).

  • "The task of philosophy is to raise the question, to what extent is the way we formulate a problem part of the problem?" (04:06)

• Confronting Real Crises: He critiques platitudes in ecological discourse and insists on analyzing concrete social arrangements—contrasting, for instance, state ecologists, conservative ecologists, and capitalist solutions (03:20–05:30).

  • "You never perceive a crisis in a general way. Let's see concretely." (03:47)

• On Feminism and Material Practice: Žižek stresses that ideology isn’t just abstract ideas but “daily material practices” such as labor divisions and real-life struggles of women, beyond the MeToo movement’s focus on elite cases (05:40–06:59).

Deconstructing Social Narratives and Exploitation

• Modern Work and False Freedom: Žižek highlights how gig economy platforms like Uber create “false freedom”—workers see one another as competitors rather than recognizing systemic exploitation (01:02, 11:03).

  • "If you are Uber driver, you own your means of production. You are given false freedom." (11:03)

• Shifting Forms of Exploitation: He argues that “exploitation” today often escapes Marxist definitions, citing unpaid care work and ecological destruction—problems not captured by traditional labor models (09:17–11:40).

  • "Unpaid work is crucial for the system. Without their unpaid work, the system wouldn’t function." (10:54)

• Concrete Universality in Crisis: Using the example of the stigmatized “young unmarried mother” in UK politics, Žižek demonstrates how particular cases are ideologically constructed to symbolize broader societal ills (11:59–12:25).

Philosophy and Science

• Philosophy Needed for Scientific Rationality: While noting his unsuccessful public debates with physicists, Žižek insists on philosophy’s role in challenging presuppositions in modern science—especially around quantum mechanics and materialism (12:30–15:00).

  • “To really account for human subjectivity, you cannot do it within the frame of this old notion of materialism..." (15:42)

• Quantum Models for Human Society: Žižek draws parallels between the openness and contingency of quantum physics (superpositions, collapse, retroactive narrative) and the unpredictability/history of society.

  • “We live in an open situation. It’s up to us. History is not predetermined.” (17:16)

Against the Dogma of Progress

• Progress is Not Linear or Global: Žižek critiques both left and right progress myths, noting that what appears as “progress” is constructed retroactively by those who prevail (17:48–20:20).

  • “Necessity is always a contingent category. What in a certain situation prevails as a necessity is contingent.” (19:55)

• Who Pays the Price?: He urges constant attention to hidden costs of “progress”, whether in AI, labor, or global crises (20:18–20:58).

The 'Madness' of Reality: Technology, Sex, and Academia

• AI, Academia, and Alienation: Žižek pokes fun at the increasingly self-referential nature of AI-driven academia—with submissions, reviews, and readings all automated (22:20–23:30).

  • “The whole machine is working. We are out now.”

• The Coming Post-Human Era: He warns of neurotechnologies (e.g., Neuralink) eroding the “basic presuppositions of being human,” such as mental privacy and the complexity of real human interaction (23:35–25:10).
• Dark Sex & Humor: His infamous “machine sex” anecdote lampoons both technological alienation and contemporary understandings of sexuality (21:46–22:59).

Rationality, Happiness, and Human Limitation

• Limits of Rationality: Žižek rebuts thinkers like Steven Pinker, arguing that scientific rationality often fails to interrogate its own concepts and that people are inherently self-sabotaging (25:32–28:25).

  • “If there is a definition of human being, it is we are beings who systematically self-sabotage their pursuit of happiness.” (27:03)

• Philosophy as Endless Questioning: He insists true rationality (and “Eurocentric” enlightenment) means constantly questioning presuppositions rather than assuming simple, linear solutions (29:45–31:10).

Humor and the Philosophy of the Absurd

• Dialectics as a Joke: Humor, for Žižek, particularly Hegelian humor, is crucial for coping with—and critiquing—the madness of contemporary reality (31:10–33:35).

  • "Especially Hegel... dialectics has the structure of a joke." (31:26)

• Dark Humor for a Dark Age: He points out how inversion and absurdity permeate both current events and philosophical understanding (32:35–33:38).

Personal Practice and the Fallacy of Self-Optimization

• Žižek's Productivity Secret: Despite his prodigious output, Žižek rejects the self-help industry’s pursuit of happiness, advocating for vocation and passion over deliberate self-optimization or happiness-seeking (33:38–36:05).

  • "If you strive directly for happiness, you ruin it. And I try to follow it... Are there moments when I feel somewhere close to happiness? Yes. When I finish a book..." (35:16)

• On Protestant Work Ethic: He self-deprecatingly notes his inability to rest if he hasn’t done substantial intellectual work each day (36:30).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Uber and Gig Economy:

  "You are given false freedom... you don't perceive the company as your competitor, but other drivers. This is the most ingenious invention of today's capitalism." (11:03)

• On Feminism Beyond Celebrity:

  “Isn’t it the true horror... for ordinary cleaning ladies, secretaries... You cannot leave children. This is the true horror for me." (05:48)

• On the Dangers of Progress and AI:

  “Machines are also including us... The one who controls the machine can up to a point literally control my thinking, implant it and so on. Our basic notion of freedom… this will no longer hold.” (24:20)

• On Rationality and Philosophy:

  “I am all for rationality... But you know, it's so typical that precisely people who refer to rationality are usually then in their private life, so full of superstitions, madness and so on..." (25:32)

• On Vocation & Happiness:

  “You should have a vocation. My God, I'm ready to die. I have to do this... If you strive directly for happiness, you ruin it.” (35:12)

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Timestamps for Key Sections

• Uber, New Capitalist 'Feudal' Structures: 00:02, 11:03
• Philosophy’s Concrete Role: 03:20–06:59, 09:17–12:25
• Debates with Scientists / Quantum Analogies: 12:30–17:16
• Against Progress, Retroactive Narrative: 17:34–21:00
• AI, Academia, and the Death of Engagement: 21:46–25:10
• Limits of Rationality / Pinker Critique: 25:25–31:10
• Role of Humor in Philosophy: 31:10–33:38
• Žižek on Personal Routine & Happiness: 33:38–36:30

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Conclusion

Žižek’s provocative, digressive style offers a spirited defense of philosophy's necessity in dissecting the ideological, technological, and existential challenges of our era. By refusing both nostalgic answers and naive faith in progress, he urges continuous critical inquiry—and the cathartic power of humor—amidst the “madness” of our contemporary moment.

Transcript

[Slavoj Žižek]

The new feudal agencies like Uber and so on. They claim we don't exploit anyone. If you are Uber driver, you own your means of production. You are given false freedom at the same time, I like this. You don't perceive the company as your competitor, but other drivers.

[Harry]

Hello and welcome to Philosophy for Our Times, bringing you the world's leading thinkers on today's biggest ideas. I'm Harry.

[Ali]

And I'm Ali.

[Slavoj Žižek]

And.

[Harry]

And today we have a wonderful interview with the acclaimed philosopher Slavoj Iek. So, Ali, can you tell us any more about it?

[Ali]

Well, it covers a lot of ground. As we all know Zizek's meandering style of conversation. He discusses AI, Sex, Hegel, Marx, the future, Trump and more.

[Harry]

All sound like interesting topics. So let's hand over to our interviewer, Charlie Barnett.

[Slavoj Žižek]

Foreign.

[Charlie Barnett]

Welcome to how the Light Gets In.

[Slavoj Žižek]

It's an honor for me to be.

[Charlie Barnett]

Here in an age where many say ChatGPT can now outsmart humans, where science is often worshipped as the basis of knowledge and an advancement in behavior is studied under psychology. What's the point of philosophy? And how should we think about the role of philosophy today?

[Slavoj Žižek]

As I always repeat, I don't think philosophy can provide big answers what philosophers can do. And I agree here, even with real scientists, like yesterday, Carlo Rovelli, who was here. You know, scientists often operate with a set of inherited traditional concepts. For example, precisely with quantum physics, what does it mean for our notion of time of movement, and so on. Here philosophy enters. Or in ecology, yeah, abstractly, we all admit we are in deep sheet blah blah with nature. But the task of philosophy is to raise the question, to what extent is the way we formulate a problem part of the problem? What for me, truly dialectical leftist. Whatever philosopher would say to ecology is, let's see, because you never perceive a crisis in a general way. Let's see concretely. And you immediately see with a conservative ecologist who think, let's return to old local communities and so on. We have state ecologists. They were very popular in East Germany, Soviet Union. We need a well organized, almost totalitarian planned state. It didn't work. We have capitalist ecologists, even some leftists, who claim you can simply regulate it by taxing more products and so on, all that. So as a philosopher, my point is not some divine Platonic ideas, but very practical orientation. Okay, you are saying this. What does it mean in practice? Here things may get me into trouble, but especially for example, with regard to feminism. I think I can say this honestly with all my bad jokes. Totally pro feminist. But I always suspected that what we vaguely identify as woke or cancel culture and so on, that there is something even upper middle class in it. And that the secret target are ordinary people. I know in United States, in a typical discourse at the university. Of course their secret target is. But you know, Hispanics, how they treat women? No, for me, struggle for. I always like to use this example. What I didn't like MeToo is. Do you remember when it began began to explode in public? It was focused usually on one scene at a party or in a pub. You men try to pick up a woman. And when do you exert pressure on here? When do you go too far? And my argument. And so many women accept it joyfully. This is. Listen, okay, okay. But for me the tragedy is not if you are a rising movie star and the producer tells you go to bed with me, otherwise you don't get the role. Okay? It can hurt your career. But isn't it the true horror? You know who said this once publicly, Your leftist actress, Kirsten Stewart. She said. But why just the two of them, producer and youngster? Look around. Imagine their ordinary cleaning ladies, secretaries and so on. Imagine a woman. That's my. You know, you are in early 30s. From a male chauvinist standpoint, you are. I'm sorry to say this, it's not my. I prefer older women, but in the dirty sense. But you are losing your attraction. You have a husband who doesn't hate you, but more and more ignores you. And then, of course, it's this silent agreement. You have to do a lot of job at home. And you don't love him, he doesn't love you. But since he earns at least more money, if you have two children, what hope is there for you? You cannot leave children. This is the true horror for me. You know this. Every day comes every day constellation. That's why, although they were fascists, I don't like Peronists in Argentina. But Evita Peron did one wonderful thing. Did you know this? In 1950, close to her death, it was the first country in the world. She introduced a law when women have period if they are employed two days free. You know, for me, ideology is not something abstract. Are you she they or what is this daily material practices where the true subordination and so on. And here we philosophers should enter. I think so.

[Charlie Barnett]

At the beginning you said that the role of philosophy, or part of the role is to deconstruct the way we think.

[Slavoj Žižek]

I don't like this term, but I get what you deconstruct. Not a deconstruct.

[Charlie Barnett]

No, you're not a deconstruct. I won't accuse you of that. But it's to find the problems with what we think. But you can keep finding problems that exist all the way down to. To the point at which you're not really saying anything or you can't say anything concrete. So how does your understanding of philosophy evolve?

[Slavoj Žižek]

Look like? Be more precise. What we have to do is like we all agree, not all. There are people like Trump and so on who deny ecological crisis. But most of us hypocritically even agree there is an ecological crisis. The role of a philosopher is not this reduction, because then you have to do the other way. Also these daily practices, how women are treated, do they do the homework and so on. It's again. And I will now hypocritically rely on a high authority, which will not be the guy who was here Corbett, but my good friend Alvaro Garcia Linera, the ex Morales vice president. The whole success of the rule of Morales was that they discovered that this standard Marxist focus on working class exploited no longer works in our countries. If you have a good position, they are disappearing permanent job as a factory, okay, formally you are exploited, blah, blah. But nonetheless you have a certain level of life, you know, you will be retired, you will get something elementary health care and so on. It's almost privileged to have this today. The big problem of working class today for me is not just Frederick Jameson, my just disease good friend had this that we should also talk about ecological exploitation, like what is happening with new forms of mining, where you don't exploit any person, you just ruin their environment. No, it happens with Inuits in Canada, in Peru and so on. So this form exploitation then the unpaid implicit women in the strict Marxist sense, who stays at home, does the work, they are not exploited in the formal sense. Exploitation mean the capitalist means the capitalist owns the Ministry of Production. But their unpaid work is crucial for the system. Without their unpaid work, the system wouldn't function. And my mega example is this is where I up to a point agree with the guy who is, I think already crawling around here. This means if I talk like this of him, that he is my friend Yanis Varoufakis. No, that precarious work and then this agencies the new feudal agencies like Uber and so on, who they claim we don't exploit anyone. If you are Uber driver, you own your means of production, you are given false freedom. At the same time, I like this, you don't perceive the Company as your competitor, but other drivers. So you know, it's as if there is a struggle among workers themselves. This is the most ingenious invention of today's capitalism. It's more brutal, uncertainty, exploitation, but in a form of freedom. Like as a guy who believes in this explained to me, let's say you have $5,000 and you can freely decide. Will you go to a holiday? Will you. Will you put it into education of your son? Will you. Whatever. You know, this ideology of. We are all small capitalists. So it's very. That's my lesson. It's very important in a complex social situation. Which forum do you put forward as the. Sorry for this ultrason almost salinist term as the typical one. You know where it was wonderful ideological operation. Here you are too young to remember when Tatler was followed by John Major. You remember all of a sudden when financial crisis, so called began, one specific figure was elevated into what I call in Hegelian terms, concrete universality. A particular case which embodied what conservatives. Young unmarried mother, woman. There is violence among the young people. Yeah, because she is not married, cannot control the child. People are on drugs. Yes, because she didn't control them and so on. All of a sudden this figure of a young unmarried mother became the symbol of all that is wrong. This. This is, I think most that philosophy can and should do.

[Charlie Barnett]

We've talked about the role of philosophy in politics, but I want to talk a little bit about the role of philosophy in science. So you've recently taken part in panels with people like Roger Penrose, Sean Carroll.

[Slavoj Žižek]

Roger Penrose was a total failure, unfortunately, because we simply. And it's my guilt. They by day I've been Sabine Hosentelder and Rosler Peyenrose. They were narrowly in their space and I like brutally attacked them with my generalities. But I agree. Sorry to interrupt you.

[Charlie Barnett]

No, but more recently, Carlo Ravelli.

[Slavoj Žižek]

I've just, as you can see, could see yesterday. There is a difference. There is instant love. You know that.

[Charlie Barnett]

What have you learned from those debates? Or what are you seeking to.

[Slavoj Žižek]

A lot.

[Charlie Barnett]

And what are you seeking maybe to teach people? If you are.

[Slavoj Žižek]

No, no, no. I'm not that arrogant philosopher who knows better than themselves what and so on up to a point. I can do what Rovelli himself admits. Rovelli knows with all his good colleagues. Lee his which is the political terms partner, lover, significant other. Francesca Vidotto and so on. They are aware that the time of Copenhagen orthodoxy is over. Copenhagen orthodoxy meant. Don't even think about ontological question Shut up and calculate, you know. But today it became necessary to raise the question, what is the status of wave function? What would. So. And at this point, the worst kind of philosophy enters many scientists. I don't criticize them for what they are doing, but for how often they adopt the worst vulgar philosophy. Like you have many quantum physicists who claim that was what Carlo was attacking yesterday. Observation only constitutes reality. So we are back in subject. That's one point. Second, much more important point is the basic philosophy, philosophical one. I try to remain a materialist, but I think that to really account for human subjectivity, you cannot do it within the frame of this old notion of materialism, which is very primitive. One empty space. And look, look, small balls of matter fly there. Here, I think quantum physics does it. And most important, I think that if you apply the model, basic model, I simplify to the utmost of quantum mechanics, which is this idea of superpositions of states and then collapse, which is a contingent collapse. And attached with this the notion of hologram, which means at every moment after we have a collapse, other alternatives don't simply disappear, but they are retroactively constructed as part of a new narrative. This idea of changing the past, not magically what happened happened, but part of a. This is what we should apply today to history. With all my respect for Marx, where I'm critical of Marx, is that there still is very strongly present a kind of progressive evolution or teleology. You know, like he is open. We may screw it up, but basically history is moving towards socialism, communism, whatever you say. No, and it's not even enough. What Rosa Luxembourg said, everybody relates to the future will be socialism or barbarism. No, Stalin proves that it can be both at the same time. No, sorry to go back. We are today in a situation where we precisely in a situation of superpositions. It's an open situation. Maybe a new barbarism will prevail where there will be islands of relative safety. And in other parts of the world. What happens now? I know very well the situation. It may surprise you. In Democratic Republic of Congo. Congo, and not so much Rwanda, but Sudan, not the South. Companies are. So society is in decay there. So I think that we cannot rely on any higher historical necessity. We live in an open situation. It's up to us. History is not predetermined.

[Charlie Barnett]

You're talking about the predetermination of history. In 1989 you said the ideology of progress is the greatest obstacle to truly progressing. And more recently you wrote a series of essays called Against Progress. What's the problem that you have with.

[Slavoj Žižek]

Progress at a couple of levels? First, I think progress is not a global notion. You absolutely should avoid this idea. You know, stones, minerals, crystals, plants, animals, then humans. No, I'm not saying these narratives are wrong. I'm saying that they are constructed always retroactively. When one orientation wins, it rewrites history. Marx is here ambiguous, but at some point in Grundrisse he is on the right track. You know when he said that this sounds very teleological, you know, that the anatomy of a man is key to the anatomy of the ape. No, this doesn't mean man was the natural goal of development. He meant, quite by chance, out of apes or whoever humans developed. And once we are humans, the past appears to us as progressive. Marx says the same about capitalism. It offers us a clue of all past history. But he is very clear. He says, but the fact that capitalism happened in Europe, et cetera, it could not have happened and you would have a totally different story and so on. I like this idea of how, and I, since I'm still a shitty male chauvinist romantic. My favorite example here is love. How it's a little bit like love. You know, you walk on the street, you sleep on a banana, a lady helps you, oh, maybe it's the love of your life. And then of course, you retroactively reconstructed everything was predestined all the life. I was waiting to meet you. Yes, you should say this once it happens. And that's for me also the deepest aspect of Hegelian dialectics. It's not that everything is necessary. It's that in a complex situation, when one tendency wins, it establishes itself as necessary. Necessity is always a contingent category. What in a certain situation prevails as a necessity is contingent. You know whom I like here? He is very quote close to quantum physics. You know, the guy who unfortunately died, David Greber, his famous analysis, for example, of Inca society, how they said it's not just this sacrificing children brutality. Now there was also a totally opposite, much more in our terms, democratic tendency. And this is my idea about going back nonetheless to your question about progress. Always we should be obsessed by this. Always raise the question, who paid the price of the progress. This brings me back even with your, I think you mentioned this before, artificial intelligence and so on. It's a mega great thing. But look what is already happening. And I'm not saying it's necessarily a catastrophe. Do you know that all around the world they are measuring iq and I don't Want to enter into this problem? I know it's real. Are there implicitly racist criteria? The point is just that they are measuring it all the time in the same way. Do you know that according to all data from India, South Africa, United States till 2010 the average IQ was slightly getting up after 2010 we are getting more and more stupid. Why? And here is my the danger that I see. It's at the same time an incredible plasticity and so on. But you know the joke, everybody knows it that I used. What would be ideal sex today? It would be a lady. Sorry, none of you. I don't want to insult you. We have a date, we say yes, we will do it. But what happens? I come, you come with your plastic electric dildo. I come with the plastic vagina. Both. And what we do is that's for me ideal sex. Today we sit down, you put your dildo into my vagina, we reconnect them and they are buzzing and we can say wonderful, the machine is doing sex. We can now have a nice chat, drink tea. Isn't something same doing today? It's horrible what is happening in academia you have all these free access journals, but you know how they function already some people suspect the majority of texts are written by CHAT GPT then many of these journals use chat. They fake reviewers use ChatGPT to review the text and then the so called readers, quite a lot of them use ChatGPT to read the review and give you a one page summary or whatever. So all the machine is working. We are out now. Does this simply mean maybe it's not bad? We can reflect, do nice things, listen to music? No, because the other side of this machines are doing is that machines are also including us. Like my real fear. I wrote a book on it is what Elon Musk calls neuralink. But Zuckerberg is also doing it. This frightens me. Maybe it will not be so bad. Just know this idea of a direct link between not just my brain, the flow of my thoughts and the digital machine. This means that the one who controls the machine can up to a point literally control my thinking, implant it and so on. And our basic notion of freedom is. And it's good. I am here in my thoughts. I am free. Reality is out there. This will no longer hold. And sorry for being a dirty old man, but this will be horrible for sex. You know, let's say I exchange glances with some potential partner. No flirting, no. Our brains are connected. Yes, yes, ok, we both want and so on. It will do something. I'm Too stupid to predict what. But I really think that those who claim we are entering into a post human era are right here. I'm not just a pessimist that we will be robots and so on. I don't know what. I only think that some of the basic presuppositions automatic of being a human being will have to be rethought.

[Charlie Barnett]

So you think Steven Pinker's notion that you can use rationality to achieve progress is just completely off the cards?

[Slavoj Žižek]

You know, I am all for rationality. I'm very even Eurocentric and so on. But you know, it's so typical that precisely people who refer to rationality are usually then in their private life, so full of superstitions, madness and so on and so on. For example, in Slovenia there was a group of people who tried to this Celtic mysticism, build some sacred sword which will. They were all quantum scientists, biologists and so on, you know. No, I think that precisely to maintain its rationality, science needs philosophy, otherwise it gets lost. The point is here, more generally, definition of rationality, what do you mean by rationality? It's just this instrumental rationality. I want this, for example, I want pleasure, eat, sex and so on. Here the philosophical aspect of psychoanalysis becomes very important. I think as a Freudian that the most stupid element in American Constitution is that famous, you know, pursuit of happiness. No, if there is a definition of human being is we are beings who systematically self sabotage their pursuit of happiness. So we have to ask what do you, if you are just a rationalist, you usually just presuppose that if you proceed in a rational way, problems will be so blah, blah, blah. But what does it mean to be rational? How do you as a rationalist answer the debate that I had yesterday with Lawson? No, like plurality of truth and so on and so on. What would you say as a rationalist? If you are an honest rationalist, you should accept the result that every rational logic has some implicit presuppositions. Like if you say only in a rational way we can reach peace and happiness. Oh, oh, oh. What do we mean by happiness? What do you mean by peace? Do we want peace at all? And so on. So in this sense I am even for more rationality. Rationality is authentically a dialectical notion. It has to not just in this common sense question itself, question its presuppositions. As a philosopher, and I always ask but what is already secretly implied in what you are saying? And an elementary philosophical approach tells you immediately that rationalists, for example, I will give an example because of which Steven Pinker himself, I know he doesn't like me. In one of my books I attacked him. When he tries to explain why we don't understand how our consciousness arrives, emerged. And he gives a simple evolutionary answer, which is maybe up to a point, correct that consciousness, the problems our mind is equipped to deal with are problems of survival. Like we have a good mind to flirt, to cheat, to lie in sexual seduction, or to collaborate with others. So that's what our mind can do. But sorry to know how our mind works is not part of our evolutionary program. We don't need it. And then he uses a totally wrong metaphor. He says in the same way that a rabbit cannot understand differential mathematics because it's not in the scope of its survival, you know, for the same reason we cannot understand our mind and so on my problem, yeah, but a rabbit also doesn't care about differential mathematics. Why in all the history of humanity we are obsessed with so called impossible metaphysical questions. And it turned out this to be very productive for science. Its what began as metaphysical speculation. You go down. That's why I celebrate quantum mechanics and relativity theory. They even speak in a very nice way of experimental metaphysics. Look, till 100 years ago the question like do we have a free will? Is the universe infinite or not? These were metaphysical questions. Now they are experimental question of quantum ontology and so on. So again I'm absolutely. I treat myself as a Eurocentrist proudly, but Eurocentrist in this reflective sense of doubting all the time, questioning your presuppositions.

[Charlie Barnett]

And to move on to something slightly different. You're well known for using humor, as you have done in this interview, to.

[Slavoj Žižek]

Express your thoughts getting darker and darker.

[Charlie Barnett]

Getting darker and darker. But what is the role of humor in philosophy?

[Slavoj Žižek]

First I will tell you that all philosophers are usually quite good of humor. I know, but I still think he's a serious guy in philosophy. I know some specialists who read all of Heidegger, Martin Heidegger letter. He is the only guy in whose letters not just big written books, you do not find not even one humorous remark. The only one that I found is after Heidegger met Jacques Lacan. And you know how he characterized Lacan. It's not a big joke, but an element. This is a psychiatrist who himself obviously needs a psychiatrist. So I think, I think that especially Hegel Hegelian dialectics has the structure of a joke. This is the joke I used yesterday. It's very Hegelian about, you know, Trump as got turns around and there is a moment of reflexive reversal, comical reversal, which is for me immanent to philosophy. And today I use it because what is happening today when terms are so misused? Did you know when was it? A week or two ago. When Trump United States accepted 59 bear refugees from South Africa and they claim it's Holocaust there. Sorry, 59 people took their luggage, flew to America. That's holocaust. And what? And Gaza is not holocaust or what? We live in such a crazy world where it's not simply the situation is serious crazy. So that we don't get crazy. Let's use dark humor. There is literally a humor dark humor in the sense of crazy reversals which is part of our reality today.

[Charlie Barnett]

My final question. With the rise of the self optimization and self improvement industry, it's a very fast growing market. You yourself have written dozens of books, hundreds of articles and attend hundreds events. Do you have a daily routine for productivity?

[Slavoj Žižek]

No. First I must tell you I have one rule. It's very traditional. That's why of the people here, apart from Jeremy Corbyn, you know who is my best friend, you will never guess. Rowan Williams. Because we deeply agree on this and I'm a materialist. He pretends to be not, but I think he is. You know, this idea that this will sound so horrible. I believe in a spiritual sense of life, but I don't think you should posit happiness as your direct goal. You should have a vocation. My God, I'm ready to die. I have to do this. And then did you? You should invite him. He hates me, but he's intelligent. A Norwegian theorist of action, John J O O N Elster. He developed a wonderful theory of states which are necessarily a byproduct. Like for example, if I want to act with dignity, it should be shown in how I act. If I say, don't you see, I have dignity. It's ridiculous. And so I think happiness is something like that. If you strive directly for happiness, you ruin it. And I try to follow it. I am a total workaholic. So if you ask me, are there. This is almost tragic, but it's literally true. Are there moments when I feel somewhere close to happiness? Yes. When I finish a book, which I think I may be wrong. It's good. The manuscript not then. Ah, ah, ah. Then I have to make a plan, some basic notes, what the next book will be. And at that point I can say for a week or two, let's go off and do something totally crazy. This sounds like crazy. With my son, we go to it's better not to say I was in, you know, that. That sail like Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai. I was there. I was in Singapore in the most expensive hotel. I just do it for a couple of days. This is as much as I tolerate. But already there in the last days, I tell my son, go and play video games. So my idea is that unfortunately, that's my big problem. I'm getting old and tired. And since I'm absolutely a Protestant, also at the level of sexuality, you know, we have a joke. I don't know where you British, whatever you are. Blistered feet. My idea is that both in Catholicism and Protestantism, everything is permitted. Just in Catholicism you should confess it at the end of the week. In Protestantism, you should feel guilty a little bit. What I want to say is that I'm absolutely a Protestant in the sense that I literally cannot fall asleep if the day was lost and I didn't do some work. By work, for me, of course I mean reading. I need minimum 1 hour and a half. If not, then in an 8 aged way. I think if God comes, what will I tell him? My existence is not justified.

[Charlie Barnett]

Slavoj Iek, thank you very much.

[Slavoj Žižek]

I was honored to be here. Thank you very much. We did this bullshit. Fuck you. Fuck off. Okay.

[Ali]

Thank you for listening to Philosophy for our times.

[Harry]

We hope you enjoyed this interview with Slavoj Zizek. I'm sure it was incredibly thought provoking as it was for us. And be sure to check in next week for more videos, debates, podcasts from the world's leading thinkers on today's biggest ideas on II tv.

[Ali]

And before the end of the year is out, we'll have a fresh new interview with Zizek. So stay tuned for that as well.

[Slavoj Žižek]

Bye.

[Harry]

Bye.

[Ali]

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