- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (Jun 26 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0415255325
- ISBN-13: 978-0415255325
- Product Dimensions: 19.7 x 12.9 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 200 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #253,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
'An honest and admirable meditation on what belief may mean today.' - Times Literary Supplement
'The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in Europe for some decades.' - - Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books
'...The content is of the highest quality and an example of the prospective revival of the encounter between philosophy and theology... I would highly recommend (both books) as stimulating and thought-provoking reformulations of religion.' - Modern Believing on On Belief and On Religion
'The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in Europe for some decades.' - - Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books
'...The content is of the highest quality and an example of the prospective revival of the encounter between philosophy and theology... I would highly recommend (both books) as stimulating and thought-provoking reformulations of religion.' - Modern Believing on On Belief and On Religion
Product Description
What is the basis of belief in an era when globalization, multiculturalism and big business are the new religion? Slavoj Zizek, renowned philosopher and irrepressible cultural critic takes on all comers in this compelling and breathless new book.
From 'cyberspace reason' to the paradox that is 'Western Buddhism', On Belief gets behind the contours of the way we normally think about belief, in particular Judaism and Christianity. Holding up the so-called authenticity of religious belief to critical light, Zizek draws on psychoanalysis, film and philosophy to reveal in startling fashion that nothing could be worse for believers than their beliefs turning out to be true.
From 'cyberspace reason' to the paradox that is 'Western Buddhism', On Belief gets behind the contours of the way we normally think about belief, in particular Judaism and Christianity. Holding up the so-called authenticity of religious belief to critical light, Zizek draws on psychoanalysis, film and philosophy to reveal in startling fashion that nothing could be worse for believers than their beliefs turning out to be true.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
These, then, are the minimal coordinates of Gnosticism: each human being has deep in himself a divine spark which unites him with the Supreme Good; in our daily existence, we are unaware of this spark, since we are kept ignorant by being caught in the inertia of the material reality. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
These, then, are the minimal coordinates of Gnosticism: each human being has deep in himself a divine spark which unites him with the Supreme Good; in our daily existence, we are unaware of this spark, since we are kept ignorant by being caught in the inertia of the material reality. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
bizarre: one of the best as well as the worst,
By A Customer
This review is from: On Belief (Paperback)
Zizek argues in this book along with Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling) that there should be a "teleological suspension of the ethical category" in favor of the religious. In Kierkegaard's book he says that Abraham is asked by God to suspend the ethical in order to kill his son Isaac. Of course God stops the killing before it takes place, but first he wants to test whether Abraham is willing to suspend the ethical in order to give primacy of place to the religious. Zizek uses this paradigm to argue that Leninists had the right to suspend the ethical in order to put their religious fervor to the test by slaughtering liberal Mensheviks, and millions of others, after the October revolution. This is a strange book played out with fantastic verve and bizarre humor. One isn't sure how seriously Zizek takes his "belief" in Leninism. This is one of the worst books on an ethical basis I've ever read, but aesthetically it's one of the best efforts in contemporary theory -- fun to read, whacky "beyond belief," and filled with a real fun for sentence making. The sentencing of the Marxists, both their own in terms of Solzhenitsyn and others, as well as the sentence that the liberal west has laid on them in order to lay them down to rest, is replayed as if it was a trauma that needs to be relived. The result is a species of madness: a great book with a seemingly bizarre ethical message: kill all liberals to prove your religious fervor for a secular religion that is widely discredited for asking for such mass murder. God never asks Abraham to go through on his killing of his son. Zizek appears to condone the killing of millions by communists in the twentieth century through using Kierkegaard's paradigm for understanding Abraham and Isaac. Zizek has a lot of fun with this comparison. I suffered, and I think most Christians would suffer because the comparison seems so grotesque and so completely out of control, but Marxists will delight in this religious rationale for their peculiarly bloody heritage.
5.0 out of 5 stars
a small treasure,
This review is from: On Belief (Paperback)
I have recently began reading Zizek after picking up this short essay that he wrote for Routledge's Thinking in Action Series. His idiosyncratic writing style has its quirks which I could imagine some people despising, but I enjoyed it myself. He has an incredible talent for looking abstruse concepts and philosophical debates in a fresh perspective that definitely could be described as 'thinking outside of the box'. He writes with a ad hoc mixture of pop culture, hitchcock, philosophy, theology, doxology, and Lacanian psychology. And his message is a powerful one--reaffirming the human and the real against what he terms 'the digital heresy'. By the end of his essay, he has you wanting to believe once again--or maybe just to admit to yourself that you've believed all along.
5.0 out of 5 stars
a small treasure,
This review is from: On Belief (Paperback)
I have recently began reading Zizek after picking up this short essay that he wrote for Routledge's Thinking in Action Series. His idiosyncratic writing style has its quirks which I could imagine some people despising, but I enjoyed it myself. He has an incredible talent for looking abstruse concepts and philosophical debates in a fresh perspective that definitely could be described as 'thinking outside of the box'. He writes with a ad hoc mixture of pop culture, hitchcock, philosophy, theology, doxology, and Lacanian psychology. And his message is a powerful one--reaffirming the human and the real against what he terms 'the digital heresy'. By the end of his essay, he has you wanting to believe once again--or maybe just to admit to yourself that you've believed all along.
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