On Belief

by Slavoj Žižek

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion, Psychoanalysis, Theory, Psychology, Ebooks

182 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.

He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).

Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."

Reviews

[withdrawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay. I finished this a while back and kept trying to come up with a good review. What it comes down to for me is that Mr. Zizek doesn't put forward ideas for consideration, he seems to be shouting at his readers. He is opinionated to a pig-headed degree and I'm sure really doesn't care what anyone else has to say, except for his hero Lacan and of course Freud. Strangely enough, he is also quite reactionary. He wants to hold on to an idea of the world which has long since passed on. Freudian analysis of literature, art, culture, or whatever lost its appeal long ago when it was seen to be simply circular reasoning which could prove whatever it set out to prove.

And this is definitely not one of my better reviews. Perhaps I should simply have said, "I DON'T like it!" in my best Slavoj voice imitation.

Mr. Zizek is definitely a Freudian (of the Lacan school), a Marxist (of the Leninist school) and the worst kind of dualist. He doesn't know what a non-dualist position would look like. In his world, even a disembodied mind would still have a body. (Perhaps it's rather that a disemminded body would still have a suprabody. I'm not sure, but then, neither is he.) In any event, he seems to be quite upset with talk of our existing outside our bodies in cyberspace through technology. I have no idea as to why unless it goes with being a dualist. Definitely Zizek relates it to Freud:

"One is tempted to risk the hypothesis that it is precisely the psychoanalytic theory which was the first to touch on this key question [on bodily self-experience or the body phenomenon]: is not the Freudian eroticized body, sustained by libido, organized around erogenous zones, precisely the non-animalistic, non-biological body?"

He really can't conceive of the idea that the animalistic, biological body is all that we've got and therefore need not fear the evil cyberspace cadets.

And then he writes sentences like:

"Envy is grounded in what one is tempted to call the 'transcendental illusion' of desire, strictly correlative to the Kantian transcendental illusion: a natural 'propensity' in the human being to (mis)perceive the object which gives body to the primordial lack as the object which is lacking, which was lost (and, consequently, possessed prior to this loss); this illusion sustains the longing to regain the lost object, as if this object has a positive substantial identity independently of its being lost."

He's kidding, eh?

Which brings me back to my last post on this book. Why am I reading this? Obviously just for cocktail party chatter purposes.

Has anyone read this far in my comment?

I can't read on. I must read on.

[Katja · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having watched "The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema" I became curious about Zizek and wanted to learn more about his philosophical views so I picked this book (more or less randomly). The introduction made me wonder whether the whole thing is just a joke as it praised Lenin as a philosopher but never mind. I've got through about one third and could not read any more as most sentences ceased making any sense to me. Phrases like "libidinal foundation of capitalism" or "the proto-transcendental structural a priori of the symbolic Order" made me cry in desperation or laugh in disdain, depending on the overall mood. The reason behind such strong emotions was the same: I could not understand those phrases. Even sadder, all at once some sentences did make perfect sense and I appreciated the ideas but suddenly I was off the track again wondering what Zizek was talking about. While reading "On Belief" I felt like tuning a radio receiver when the signal is very weak; a frustrating experience so I stopped.

[Sencer Turunç · Rating 4 out of 5]

I -kinda- liked this book, so here just a few quotations from this book :)

"Structures do not walk on the streets!"

"...libidinal economy of today's postmodern, post-revolutionary, 'society of consumption.' ...the society of non-rapport in which all stable forms of social cohesion disintegrate, in which the idiotic 'jouissance' of individuals is socialized only in the mode of fragile and shifting pragmatic inventions and newly negotiated customs...

"...little bit of juoissance (which) set the tone for a lifestyle,"

"...post-modern political thought tells us that we are entering post-industrial societies, in which the old categories of labor, collectivity, class, etc., are theoretical zombies, no longer applicable to the dynamics of modernization."

"we need new prohibitions so that a new Tristan and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet will appear..."

And so on... Shortly, the society is just nuts...

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

By the rock star of contemporary philosophy. Nearly everything he says is an insight—when he speaks Lacanese, however, it's tough going. To get all of Zizek you have to go to his free online How to Read Lacan.

[Kym]

Some say he's a quack but I find him refreshingly fun.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of ho-hum, compared to his best works, but of course he brings enough rhetorical flourishes and insights to keep it interesting throughout.

[Diether · Rating 2 out of 5]

My rating corresponds with the manner in which I was able to understand the material.
Might read again.

[Celluloid Doll]

kinda too zizek by half even for me. It oscillates between ideas and concepts with such rapidity that you feel as though you're only really grasping at the concepts he's trying to put forth. Which may be intentional but nevertheless its a choice that makes for a rather jarring read that only really evokes any grander conceptualisation. Maybe I just don't understand lacan enough tbh.

[Armando Bravo salcido · Rating 2 out of 5]

Claro Zizek, siguiendo a Hegel en su tesis de la literalidad de la muerte de Dios en la cruz podemos argumentar que mientras el judaismo era la religión del encuentro traúmatico con el otro como lo "real real" lacaniano, el cristianismo se plantea el verdadero problema de la libertad en tanto comunidad universal plenamente abierta.

Y es claro que la tendencia actual hacia el budismo occidental resulta sintomatica de la conformaciòn de un espacio ideológico ascetico espiritual de lo desmaterializado que sirve de condiciòn de posibilidad para la reproducciòn de las nuevas formas de capital global...

También resulta obvio que la problematica del multiculturalismo reside en la apertura universal dialogica como ultima frontera ideológica que jamas toca sus propias premisas y funda un espacio polìtico donde la trasgresiòn (inherente) se presenta como norma y hace díficil explicar el poder actual en terminos de opresión y también es fácil ver que el verdadero meollo del asunto en la preocupaciòn de la perdida absoluta del cuerpo en es espacio etereo de la realidad virtual es que nos hace darnos cuenta que el cuerpo siempre fue un ente extraño que no nos pertencia, cuerpo erotizado teorizado por Freud.

Ademas el socialismo estalinista fracaso por ser demasiado realista y la teoría lebniziana de las monadas es el mejor camino para entender los atomos funcionales pero solipsistas que coexistin en la comunidad global del ciberespacio, etc, etc, and so on and so on.

Después de leer alrededor de veinticinco libros del viejo Slavoj me he convencido de que existen obras fundamentales que expresan en conjunto más o menos de manera sistematica la totalidad de su teoría (por supuesto El sublime objeto de la ideología, pero también El espinoso sujeto, El mas sublime de los histéricos, Menos que nada, Como leer a Lacan, Objeto de paralaje etc). Y luego existen un monton de libros que son pastiche de fragmentos y extrapolaciones poco cohesionadas de estos textos fundamentales.

Los libros de este segundo tipo pueden ser valiosos por tres razones, a veces contienen una reflexión expecialmente mas elaborada sobre un concepto en partícular (ej, Acontecimiento), a veces explicitan un concepto a traves de un analisis a un fenomeno extremadamente partícular (ej, primero como tragedia, el desierto de lo real), aveces simplemente (en un giro curiosamente psicoanalìtico) dan pistas curiosas sobre ciertos concepts o problemáticas cuando al repetir por enesima vez un argumento ya narrado en otros libros, algo cambia, (ej. ¿Qué era la filosofìa a la que se referia Lacan cuando dijo ser antifilosofo?). Y sin embargo estas tres razones solo apelan a alguien ya muy interesado en la obra de Zizek. Como adivinaran este libro es del segundo tipo, es adémas uno no partícularmente bueno del segundo tipo. Lectores iniciado en el autor deberiàn leer otros como los mencionados arriba y para lectores asiduos, es un libro que pueden dejar pasar.

Si a alguien le interesa una perspectiva mas "ordenada" de la teoría teología de Zizek recomiendo "El dolor de dios...." de él y Gunjevic.

[Irwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notes:
p.143
What is perceived here as the problem is precisely the Christian universalism: what this all-inclusive attitude (recall St Paul's famous: "There are no men or women, no Jews or Greeks") involves is a thorough exclusion of those who do not accept inclusion into the Christian community. In other "particularistic" religions (and even in Islam, in spite of its global expansionism), there is a place for others, they are tolerated, even if there are condescendingly looked upon. The Christian motto "All men are brothers", however, mens ALSO that "Those who are not my brothers ARE NOT MEN."

p.148
Kierkegaard was right: the ultimate choice is the one between the Socratic recollection and the Christian repetition: Christianity enjoins us to REPEAT the founding gesture of the primordial choice.

[Kev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished it last week. Had a profoundly unsatisfying group discussion about it last night. Why can't people just read the material before them and discusss the MATERIAL, instead of thier internal monologue and fear provoked by the material? I kind of think this is part and parcel with reading this one. It is provocative. It is confronting. I like that very much. Many other people? Not so much. Say what one might, Zizek is a genius and I know what that word means and I don't throw it around lightly.

One of the group thinks he's a genius and dominates a discussion to ram this home. I don't think I'm a genius. I do think I'm pretty smart and widely read. I hightly recommend this book but one needs a good grounding in Lacan, phychoanalysis and Heidegger. It helps to know math and geometry too. It'll blow your mind in an awful way -- but this is good for all of us!

[Jake McCrary · Rating 2 out of 5]

About three quarters of the way into this book Žižek includes a quote from Kafka's "The Trial": "The right perception of any matter and the misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other."

This quote stood out to me because I think it would take an extreme number of readings of "On Belief" for me to both achieve the right perception of whatever Žižek is trying to convince me of and at the same time I'd probably grossly misunderstand.

I read this book and could barely answer the question as to what the the author's arguments and points were. That isn't an ideal spot for a reader to be at the end of a book. If I were to try to really get this book I think I'd need to to extensive other reading.

This book probably got an extra star out of me simply because I'm having a hard time giving one star to a book that I understood so little.

[Dariusz Płochocki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Żiżek...Żiżek...Lacan...Żiżek tłumaczący nam Lacana. Jak zawsze ogrom przykładów popartych obrazami filmów, które oglądał tylko Lenin przełomu XX i XXI wieku z Bałkanów.
A tak całkiem serio, niezły zbiór składający się z trzech/czterech esejów, próbujący urzeczywistnić nam miałkość pewnych idei, czasem autor się zagalopowuje, porównując ofiarę Chrystusa do ofiary stalinowskich kadr, które w latach 3o musiały zginąć, by pojednać komunizm z masami. Jedno trzeba przyznać Slavojowi, pisze jasno, pewnie demagogicznie, tworząc swoje "astralne" formy, czerpiąc z Freuda, nurzając się w rozdziale "Wypróżnij się!", próbując zrozumieć odejście chrześcijaństwa od judaizmu, tyle razy już poruszane. Radzę ugryźć.
Wart przeczytania szczególnie rozdział\esej "Przeciw cyfrowej herezji".

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A continual problem with being surrounded by smartpants PhD students is that everytime I express my interest in virtual reality, quantum physics or awesome non-Oscar worthy blockbusters, I am told "you should so read Žižek" but no one ever mentions which of his voluminous tomes to start with so On Belief it is. Not bad, I suppose, or could've been worse but not really keen to find out how much worse it might have been. It was a peek at a much simpler millennium, I mean, who else philosophizes on Jim Carrey and the Wachowski brothers today even though they represented the peak of human existence? Not a rhetorical question, please leave comments below.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say that I thought this book lacked clarity. I've read The Sublime Object of Ideology and Looking Awry, and both of those are much easier to understand than this one. I got the feeling that there was really loose oversight during the editing process because it seemed that the chapters jumped around a lot (almost as if cut-and-paste commands were responsible, in part because I'd read similar passages in his other books). Still, I'd re-read it, especially now that I have a slightly better grasp of his Hegelian and Lacanian influences.

[Katrinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't met a work by Zizek that I didn't like. That said, this book sometimes seemed confusing in its organization-- but never short on insight, especially into money (and) fetishism. Zizek's use of language is often a fantastically entertaining journey in itself.

[Ingeborg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confusing and messy to read. There are some very good points here, but sometimes one feels like the sentences have been cut apart and then randomly put together again! I expected much, much, much more.

[Aimee Wilson]

soon to read..

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

my first Zizek...

[gieb]

hambat kotis bukune zizek. nuwus nawak, irwan syahrir.

[Big]

In the Larry King debate between a rabbi, a Catholic priest and a southern baptist, ...

[Polly]

complicated but brilliant.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 3 out of 5]

A playful book I won't pretend to understand half of. For all the calls that Zizek is a charlatan, there are some fascinating insights in here. For instance, Zizek rails against what he calls Western Buddhism. Europeans and Americans have adopted Buddhism in their corporate-managerial cultures, which function to reinforce the idea that they can do nothing about the poor social-economic conditions their cultures create. Buddhism says the world is full of suffering and this is caused by a desire for things, even a desire for things to be different than they are in this world of impermanent things. In order to gain wisdom and peace of mind, we must learn to live with the suffering and tend our own gardens, get our own minds right, and then everything will be fine. You can see how this leads to doing nothing about major issues. There's a gap between rich and poor, people born poor are unlikely to escape their social-economic conditions. We must learn to deal with the suffering, manage it perhaps, but most important is that we manage our attitudes about it.

Zizek also has some interesting insights onto Christianity and how things that we might normally regard as imaginary and symbolic play a huge role in our lives. Modern developed economies thrive because huge financial institutions trade in packaged loans, packages of debt. Two hundred years ago nobody would have imagined we could trade something as abstract as money, let alone trade in the idea of the receipt of lending money. Our economies function because of imaginary and symbolic objects.

Zizek, channeling psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, would say that these imaginary and symbolic objects have always been a part of culture. Take love, for instance. To love someone is not only to love who they are but who they were, who they could be, and also the idea of the person they are, not having access to how they may feel inside. To love someone is always to idealize them, but this idealization is just as real to us as who is right in front of us. And this idealization we have of our loved ones alter how our loved ones perceive themselves, in some instancing leading them to feel and act in accordance with how we perceive them.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, you might like this book. One thing you'll quickly discover is that after you've read one Zizek book, you've read them all. He returns to the same topics throughout his books.

[Sebastião · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gostei muito: achei genial, na sua globalidade, não obstante algumas passagens imperscrutáveis que decidi ignorar em favor de tudo o resto. Há muito de discutível sobre as teses apresentadas. Muitas vezes, parece que o autor trilha um caminho perfeitamente autista ao desenvolver as suas interpretações. A questão é que são interpretações que valem muito a pena ser tidas, ser consideradas. Que importa que não sejam as mais fieis sob esta ou aquela perspetiva ou historicidade? É um exercício que nos enobrece e é sobretudo um trabalho exemplar de um verdadeiro filósofo que possui um genuíno interesse em pensar o seu mundo e em nos abrir espaços de reflexão e perspetivação sobre o que poderá vir a ser.

[Tej · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a teacher who once said that if you use a lot of exclamation marks you lose the impact. I would add that if you constantly put WORDS in ALL CAPITALS for emphasis you aren't using the right words. Writers should not feel the need to write using the same voice with which they speak. I might let it slide with a self-published memoir or fiction, but this is an academic book that is used in universities. Where was the editor? Sadly, there were a few important things in here, but I was too distracted by the writing style that I didn't give it the thought that I otherwise might have done.

[Gwiezdzisteniebo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zizka zawsze czyta się bardzo przyjemnie, chociaż żeby robić to nie tylko z przyjemnością, ale i z pożytkiem, to - nie przeczę - trzeba mieć pewne przygotowanie z zakresu psychoanalizy. Zizek jest absolutnym mistrzem metafor i błyskotliwych odniesień kulturowych; tego nie odbierze mu nikt. Jakkolwiek bez znajomości specyficznej siatki pojęciowej, którą posługują się "specjaliści z dziedziny", sens książki może zostać bardzo łatwo zagubiony (bo czyż to tylko mnie w samym środku lektury zdarzyło się zapomnieć, że wątkiem przewodnim miała być wiara?).

[Benja Calderon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Žižek se pasea por diversos temas en este texto, pero el cristianismo va siendo el eje de ellos
El gnosticismo y el mundo virtual, y como estos dialogan, se asemejan y se diferencian; la necesida de ocultar nuestra interioridad, contraposiciones del liberalismo y el totalitarismo en cuanto a la libertad, comparaciones entre judaísmo y cristiano. Todo siempre visto bajo enfoques kantianos, freudiamos y lacanianos

[allie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buckle in and come prepared. Read your Lacan, read your Freud, your Jung, your Heidegger, and probably your William James too.

This was dense and so, so enjoyable to read. I started it almost immediately after Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, and was delighted to see that Žižek had dedicated a generous page to the novel.

Did I understand all of this? Absolutely not.
Was the dialogue between Judaism and Christianity fascinating? Of course.

[Arsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant exposition on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Ennunciates the importance of paying attention to the gap between the contents and the position of enunciation, this being the space in which the torsion of the subject are experienced. The dialectical reflections on the paradoxes of guilt and redemption are breath-taking. Zizek at his best. A must read.

[Drew Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first foray into Zizek. I will have to read more of his work before I can make an honest assessment, hut my initial reaction is that he likes to make references as opposed to straight philosophy. Not a problem in an of itself, but one must be certain that the reader understands the reference.