With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. And Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as a part of your everyday routine, without needing to set aside extra time. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their ever-growing catalog. Be inspired to explore your inner creativity with Viola Davis' memoir Finding Me. Find what peaks your imagination with Audible. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com/imagine or text-imagine to 500-500. That's audible.com/imagine or text-imagine to 500-500. [Music] Hello and welcome to Philosophy for Our Times, bringing you the world's leading thinkers on today's biggest ideas. I'm Alisa, back with Dan. And today we have Surplus Happiness, a fascinating talk by Slavoj Jijek from our London 2023 festival. Jijek is a globally renowned philosopher and cultural critic. He is the international director of the Berkbank Institute and visiting professor at the New York University, as well as a senior researcher at the University of the Biana's Department of Philosophy. And he'll be joining us again in London this September for our festival. So head to howthelightgetsin.org for more information on that. In this talk, however, Jijek examines the role of happiness in modern life. Looking at Lacan's concept, Surplus Joy Sontz and asks whether an individual's pursuit of happiness against all odds and shape meaning as the experience. Great. Now let's hand over to Slavoj Jijek. [Applause] [Indistinct speech] Extermination of the Jews, Goebbels in the sports palace. He wanted public approval for a total war on the home front as well. The pinnacle of his speeches painstakingly rehearsed. How to bring a people to the point of madness. [Indistinct speech] That night, Goebbels said, "If I had ordered them to jump from the roof of a tall building, they'd have done it." [Applause] Goebbels, after the Stalingrad defeat, he did something very masterful. You notice it's one step more than that Winston Churchill's famous, all I promise you, blood and tears and so on. Goebbels used a precise, almost philosophical expression of, it close to what Kant defines as sublime. He says at the culmination you saw how it will be so total and radical that you can't even imagine how radical. That's the definition of the sublime beyond what Kant calls for Stalingrad representations, your imagination. But what I'm saying is that I kept other, I didn't want to borrow, clips focusing on his face that perverse expression on his face and the public. That's surplus enjoyment. Forget about surplus happiness, this was a mean translation. Happiness is for me, as you will see bad enough. If some of you saw that happiness is for me, a symptom that something is wrong. Did you, some of you saw that Dr. Howe's series, in one of them, you know, she gathers his group and they, when they have a patient and he lists, he has this problem, that problem, and then one of his colleague, Dr. Seth, but he is happy. Ah, says Dr. Howe's happiness, another dangerous symptom, you know. I, so I'm definitely not for happiness. At the end, I will go into it. Now, let me begin. Years ago, I was reading a text about how the Nazi storchard prisoners in the concentration camps. It affected me quite dramatically when I found that they used industrially made testicle crashes, like two correct nuts. They made them industrially to torture prisoners in concentration camps. Now, I did something, I didn't want to be caught lying again, so I simply went to Google or whatever and put a testicle pressure or ball pressure to get the data. I was extremely surprised when I got an answer immediately, but not about the Nazis. I got a couple of websites advertising where they say, pick your poison for pleasure from this ball torture group. Then you said, stainless steel ball crusher, stainless ball claimed torture device, brutal coke, vice torture toy, and so on and so on. I think that this passage from the ball crusher used to torture prisoners in Nazi concentration camps to the ball crusher that you can buy. They're very nicely done even with some small diamonds for 500 pounds. This will undoubtedly be celebrated as a sign of historical progress. The same progress which brings us classic works of art, purified of the content that may hurt somebody, so that's where we are. You shouldn't use a wrong word like he or she when it should be day, but you get all the pain that you want from a ball crusher. The question that bothers me today is, I'm not against this. I think that these ball crushing machines and so on are not a pathological phenomenon. That they indicate something that is imminent to our sexuality. So why does the permissive stance towards sexual pleasures entail impotence and fragility? Why, when pleasure is enjoyed by a super ego figure, are we deprived of it? Why, in these conditions, the only way is to enjoy through pain? I'm raising here, of course, the old Freudian question. Why do we enjoy oppression itself? That is to say, power edifice asserts its hope over us, not simply by oppression or repression. They are not the same, but which are sustained by a fear of punishment. Power asserts itself by bribing us for our obedience and forced renunciations. What we get, get in exchange for our obedience and renunciation, is the perverted pleasure in renunciation itself, in loss itself. Here comes very nice ambiguity of Lacan's term for surplus enjoyment. Plut de zweir, if you know minimally French, you know that plut de can mean a surplus, but it can also mean negative, no longer enjoyment. So Lacan formulated this term with a reference, of course, to Marx, Merweart, surplus value. Lacan added surplus enjoyment, and Freud already doesn't have a term, but called this Luftgevin, a gain of pleasure, which does not designate a simple stepping up of pleasure, more pleasure, but the additional pleasure provided by the very formal detours in the subject's effort to attain pleasure. Another figure of this Luftgevin is the reversal that characterizes hysteria. Renunciation to pleasure reverts into pleasure of renunciation. Repression of desire reverts into desire for repression. And I think I'm here, although we are animistically but personally normal relations here, I refer her to Judith Butler, where she develops in one of her texts about psychoanalysis very nicely. This point of how, yes, enjoyment is impossible, direct, pure enjoyment. But at the same time, you cannot get rid of enjoyment. For example, if you are a fanatic, purist, you prohibit yourselves to enjoy. But then, all of a sudden, you discover yourselves enjoying the very rituals of prohibition. And Lacan's point is that there is no zero-level, pure enjoyment, non-oppressed enjoyment, which would then be repressed and so on. No, enjoyment is as such an excess. This brings me now to this gable's speech again. I think that this speech, as already said, stands for pure sublime. In the sense of his messages, you think you've already seen enough suffering, no way, you will suffer immediately more. And the result is a quite open, obscene enjoyment. Now comes my trick. Maybe you will say, but wait a minute, wasn't this all staged? My point, it doesn't matter. The way the olive reworks today, and already in the Nazi time, is that the most dangerous false distance is when you tell yourself, oh, but I'm not taking it seriously. No, it is serious, and you are not aware how serious it is. Or Freud has a very nice formula for this when he says, we are not only more immoral than we think. Our id, yes, is also more moral than we think. So again, where is here the surplus enjoyment? In gable's speech, it is produced by the very renunciations he imposes on the people. A look at his distorted face when he shouts his challenges to the public is enjoyment at its purest. And now I come to the pessimist said, conclusion is in killing the Jews. The surplus is produced by the very fact that brutal murder is presented as the highest duty. So that while I enjoy, I can tell myself that I'm doing my duty. For me, the most depressing, horrible thing is that not only the Nazis, but also in a different way, I don't confuse them, the Stalin is terror in Gulak. You know, the really depressing thing is that we all have some sense of common decency. But to present you to you as the highest ethical challenge that you are ready to sacrifice your common decency for the good of the nation, for the high cost, and so on and so on. For example, Henry Himmler, the really bad guy, the chief of SS and so on, he put this at its purest in his message to SS officers killing the Jews. He said, when you are confronted with a Jewish lady and her small son, both of her already covered by blood, crying, totally helpless, there comes the greatest ethical temptation that if you feel sympathy for them. The highest ethical stance is to ignore this common decency and to do it. And even Himmler comes close to saying this that every idiot can be seduced, like he did it here, by giving his life for his country. And Himmler, no, the highest ethical act is to sell your soul to the devil, to do the most horrible things as the highest ethical duty. And I found again, in some Stalinist notes in the early 30s when they did de-collectivization, it was the same when they were preparing people to go to the villages and forced farmers into collectivization. And they said, you will do the most horrible things. You will have to ignore small, starving children and families. But he says, there is the temptation. They call this temptation, of course, bourgeois sentimentalism, liberalism and so on. That and now you will say that this is an exaggeration. No, I don't have time now to go into this in detail. But I found traces of this today clearly and also in Russian, but especially American alternative rights. The scientists, Trump and all of them are mostly giving the same message. They say, Trump openly says a couple of months ago that our sense of justice, that he won really the elections and so on, allows us to ignore even the constitution. You see, and here things get, but I will not go into it by my next book if you're literally very sad. For example, so many friends of mine were depressed when you remember two years ago, when was it, yes, when the Trumpian crowd entered Congress, occupies it. You know that many of my leftist friends were crying. They said, my God, we should have been doing it, the people. And this is the same thing today. Even the Leninist violent upheaval topic is taken over by the alt-right. So did this liberal left? Did you notice how all they can do is they call for police, like all my leftist liberal friends were saying, where was the national guard there, a shame, where was the police and so on and so on. And not to mention guys really disgusting, like Steve Bannon, the maybe most intelligent theorist, ideologies of Trump, Trumpism, he proclaimed himself openly a Leninist. He said, I'm the only serious Leninist today, because like for Lenin, my task is to destroy the state apparatus so that the people take it over. Now, I know what you will say. This is only a mask of the privileged, big capital and so on. But my point is, it doesn't matter. This engenders an incredible surplus enjoyment. Let me give you another example, detailed, but I find it really disgusting. Something occurred in 2012 already in the United States. Representative Todd Ecken, conservative Republican, provoked ire across the political spectrum by saying that in instances of what he called legitimate rape, women's bodies somehow blocked an unwanted pregnancy. And then Ecken claimed that he was misspoken. He really wanted to say that there are legitimate cases of rape, where penetration was really enforced. But that is so disgusting, I'm ashamed to mention it, that if the victim shows signs of consent, and for him, a consent is simply that the woman gets wet or somehow excited, then it's no longer a legitimate case of rape. I think that this confusion, what does it mean, legitimate rape? This, the way Ecken has misspoken himself tells the truth. His message is, in some cases, rape is legitimate, since the victim showed signs of participation, which means it really wasn't rape. We encounter here a clear case of surplus enjoyment. Far from being a mere neutral mistake, Ecken's misspoken formulation. You got it, what was misspoken? He wanted to say with, officially, with legitimate rapes, that there are rapes which are really rapes. But typically, it was taken, and I think the misreading was correct, in the sense of, there are rapes which are legitimate. And precisely, this formulation brings out the obscene enjoyment of humiliating rape women, enjoyment which sustains Ecken's entire line of argumentation. You know, the truth is in his mistake. So I would like to say why then, to return to my beginning, why then am I opposed to happiness? And not just in this clip sense, we want to be happy. I think with all my respect for Buddhism, that this is maybe the limit of Buddhism. Dalai Lama even repeats all the time. The purpose of our lives is to be happy. He just defines this term differently. Here are a couple of quotes from Dalai Lama. Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. We don't need more money. We don't need greater success or fame. We don't need the perfect body or even the perfect mate. Right now, at this very moment, we have a mind which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness and so on. Following Freud, Lacan on the contrary, asserts death drives as the basic component of our lives. Death drives which operates precisely beyond the pleasure principle. What Lacan calls enjoyment, Jewish songs, emerges out of a self-sabotage of pleasure. It is an enjoyment in this pleasure itself and even more of a pessimist here in the sense that do we really want what we think that we want? Quite often, what appears as an obstacle to getting what we want is really what sustains our desire. For example, I read years ago, I remember this biography of T.S. Eliot. You know, while his wife was-- it's not clear that he put her there. Was it really in a psychiatric hospital? He had a distant affair. It's only letters. It seems with another lady. And all the letters were, their letters were, oh, let's just wait for the moment when my wife will die. Then we will be able to be together. You know what happened? When the wife died, they split also. And I think this is a general structure of our desire. Did you see maybe the Francois 3/4 film-- oh, you are too young to see it. Day for night, the new American. There is a wonderful marginal scene there that I love. A guy, one of the cast, wants to seduce another. Script girl, whatever I don't know. So their car breaks down. They go to a lake close to the road. And then the guy tells her, listen, I'm dreaming of having sex with you for days all the time here. Now we are alone. Nobody knows that we are here. Why don't we quickly do it? You know what the woman does? She said, OK, why not? And started to pull his trousers down, her trousers down. And he is totally shocked. What do you mean, just like that or whatever, and so on? So I think that this logic of detour and so on is part of our sexual games. You cannot go directly for it. It's very difficult. That's why Lacan characterizes the ethical position in type analysis as do not betray your desire. Usually we do betray it. For example, it happened to me, a dirty detail, not problematic, don't be afraid. When I was young, I was in love with a girl. The link was that the girl had a father who was a philosopher. And the ritual was to arrive at her apartment. First, to have a talk with her father, and then let's go out to her. But at a certain point, she dropped me. Because she said, I got it. What you really want is the surplus enjoyment. It was the other way around from what it looked. It was not, Father is just the detour. She told me, I was a detour for you. What you really enjoy is this. Let's call it intellectual foreplay, talking with her father. Or he has a wonderful-- sorry, Darian leader, your great Lacanian who also writes good books. He has a wonderful example in one of his early books, where he mentions case that allegedly happened to him. A patient came to him and said, yesterday I invited the lady out, and I wanted to-- of course, we went to a hotel with a good restaurant. The idea was, we have a nice meal. And then I take her up to a room. But he said he made a terrifying slip of tongue. When entering the restaurant, he said to the waiter a bet for two, please, instead of a table for two. And Darian leader, that's something wonderful. He said, how to read this slip, slip of tongue. It's not as you would have thought. He was already thinking about sex later. It's quite the opposite. He was afraid that he will enjoy eating there too much, and he will lose the will to even go upstairs later. So it was a reminder to himself, don't enjoy this too much. So again, what I am saying here is that the lesson of all these reversals and so on is a very simple one. It's that we enjoy-- there is no enjoyment in directly attaining the goal. It's already mediated. You must know the story. I used it a couple of times in my books. It's perfect example. Some commentator, a lady called-- I'm not sure to pronounce it correctly, if or ever, wise men-- reported, shocked of this-- maybe you know it, I'm sorry if I repeat myself-- incident. How? She was working something that is very interesting towards. Not direct hardcore porn, but documentary porn where the camera moves back and shows the entire scene, how actors get prepared, and so on. And she saw something which was horror for her in such a movie. A guy was doing it, closely filmed, penetrating, screwing the lady. Then in the middle of it, what she did is that he stepped back and said, sorry, I'm losing correction. Can somebody pass me my iPhone so that I go to porn, have to get excited again? Now you see the paradox. You have there the naked lady, blah, blah, blah. No, that's not enough. You need a fantasy to sustain it. Which is why this goes, I think, for both sexes and for trunks and so on, I'm not going to eat. This is why the lesson of Freud, which is a consequence of this surplus enjoyment, blah, blah, is that even if you are alone with your lover in bed, you are really never alone. It's if not a real third. This is not, as the lady, commentator from Guardian thinks, a pathological detour. No, our sexuality is structured like that. You never directly enjoy the other's body. Your desire has to be sustained by certain fantasies. And that, what happened to the poor hardcore actor? He was losing the fantasy support. I will, just two points to conclude this, and you expect this from me, very moderate. I think even pro-feminist because the woman wins triumphant to each dirty joke, but don't be afraid. No tasteless stuff. I loved it. I recently found it, because I looked for some dirty jokes. And then you know, algorithms, snow, everything. Now when I go to Google, I get, you know, all these sides, dirty jokes, three, whatever. OK, but one was theoretically correct, wonderful. A wife is in bed with her lover. And they thought they had the whole night, because her husband went out drinking. But then all of a sudden, around midnight, they hear some steps and banks, and the husband is back. And it's trying to get up the stairs. So the lover gets into a panic. My God, what do I do? Do I hide there behind the bed in the nearby room? Or do I jump through the window down? The wife says, no problem. She's so drunk, he will not notice anything. Let's stay here. OK, and effectively, the husband comes up, just drops on the bed, and begins snoring immediately. And all fall asleep. Then, now comes the sublime moment. A minute-- no, sorry, one hour or so later, the husband awakens a little bit. He is still drunk, but kind of looks around, and awakens his wife and says, darling, am I so drunk that I cannot see it correctly? Usually, when we are in bed, there are four legs. But if I look down, I see six legs. What's this? The wife, a trulicanian, gives a wonderful answer. She tells him, yes, you are still drunk. You cannot think clearly. Step out of the bed, go to the door, and look again. He does this and says, yes, darling, you are right, there are only four legs, so the time. This is the mistake-- it's very Hegelian joke-- that we usually make. When we get out, we act as if we are excluded. And the mistake is not only that we do not see how we are inscribed into the scene. But the stupidity of the husband is that he thinks, automatically, have the wrong state, that the two legs that he sees there are his own legs, no. And I think that, far from being just a stupid joke, in Buddhism, we are thought to sacrifice desire in order to attain this inner piece of enlightenment in which sacrifice cancels itself. For the count on the contrary, the true sacrifice is desire itself. Desire is an intrusion which throws off the rails the rhythm of your life. It compels you to forfeit everyday pleasures and comfort for discipline and hard work in the pursuit of the object of your desire, be it love, a political course, or whatever. So I want to conclude with a quote from your writer, Neil Guiman, and it's a wonderful passage. I often quote it about what catastrophe love is. Quote, have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart. And it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole suite of armor so that nothing can hurt you. Then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life. You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb, one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out, blah, blah, blah, and so on. I think this is a totally correct description. Maybe I'm a crazy guy, but I remember when I was younger, you have your daily life. It's nice. You go out drink with friends, you chat, maybe superficially, a one-night stand here and there, and then you passionately fall in love. So this is the ultimate choice. Do we play the Buddhist game? Get rid of the excess, this piece of happiness? Buddhism correctly teaches us how to relieve us of this soul hurt. But psychoanalysis compels us to fully embrace it. Love is extremely pathological. Love is not that Buddhist love, you know. I smile at all humanity. I love even the worms. No, love means I love you, and I don't care if the world falls apart. And I'm sorry that I don't have time, but I have now a whole re-dink. It's also indicated by Alenka Zupanke in her book, Let Them Roth. Here is where I disagree even with my beloved Judith Butler and other. I call them libertarian universalists. They read Antigone as advocate of universality. Everybody deserves proper funeral. Why not my brother? After you die, it doesn't depend what you did in your life, blah, blah. Alenka Zupanke said that you should ignore those big lines that duty comes from God. It's immortal eternal. No, 10 pages later in the printed version. She defines precisely why she is ready to put everything on for Paulineka's burial. She says, be careful. She says, if it were my father-- sorry, my children, my husband. I can get another husband, blah, blah. I would let them rot. I don't care. It's only for my brother, which is an extremely egotist choice. But I claim ethical choices are like that. So against this universal ethics, I am absolutely for this ethics of exception. Ethics is not. It applies to all. Ethics means I've chosen something. I don't care if the whole world falls apart. Thank you very much. And now you can-- [APPLAUSE] Thanks for listening to Philosophy for Our Times. Make sure to join us for next week's episode, featuring the debate on the nature of evil. Examining the role of good and evil across philosophy and art. If you enjoy our content, don't get to subscribe. Be reviewing your platform of choice. Visit ii.tv for hundreds more podcasts, videos, and articles from the world's leading thinkers. Thank you, and see you next time. (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
