Nietzsche: To breed an animal which is able to make promises – is that not precisely the paradoxical task which nature has set herself with regard to humankind? Is it not the real problem of mankind?
Zizek: This distinction between essence and its hypostases is crucial for the Orthodox notion of the human person, because it takes place also in the created/fallen universe. Person is not the same as individual: as an “individual”, I am defined by my particular nature, by my natural properties, my physical and psychic qualities. I am here as part of substantial reality, and what I am I am at the expense of others, demanding my share of reality. But this is not what makes me a unique person, the unfathomable abyss of “myself”. No matter how much I look into my own properties, even the most spiritual ones, I will never find a feature that makes me a person:
Lossky (“In the Image and Likeness of God”): “person” signifies the irreducibility of man to his nature – “irreducibility” and not “something irreducible” or “something which makes man irreducible to his nature” precisely because it cannot be a question here of “something” distinct from “another nature” but of someone who is distinct from his own nature”.
The key question here is: how does the distinction between essence and its manifestation (energy, economy) relate to the distinction between essence (qua substantial nature) and person, between ousia and hypostasis (in Hegelese, to the distinction between substance and subject)?
Theology via negativa: approaching God through negating all predicates accessible to us, and thus asserting his absolute transcendence.
Zizek: Jewish joke loved by Derrida: There is an old Jewish joke, loved by Derrida, about a group of Jews in a synagogue, publicly admitting their nullity in the eyes of God. First, a rabbi stands up and says: “O God, I know I am worthless, I am nothing!” After he has finished, a rich businessman stands up and says, beating himself on the chest: “O God, I am also worthless, obsessed with material wealth, I am nothing!” After this spectacle, a poor ordinary Jew also stands up and also proclaims: “O God, I am nothing. . . .” The rich businessman kicks the rabbi and whispers in his ear with scorn: “What insolence! Who is that guy who dares to claim that he is nothing too!”
Zizek: Peter Sloterdijk was right to notice how every atheism bears the mark of the religion out of which it grew through its negation: there is a specifically Jewish Enlightenment atheism practiced by great Jewish figures from Spinoza to Freud; there is the protestant atheism of authentic responsibility and assuming one´s fate through anxious awareness that there is no eternal guarantee of success (from Frederick the Great to Heidegger in Sein und Zeit); there is a Catholic atheism á la Maurras, there is a Muslim atheism (Muslims have a wonderful word for atheists: it means “those who believe in nothing”), and so on. Insofar as religions remain religions, there is no ecumenical peace between then – such a peace can develop only through their atheist doubles. Christianity, however, is an exception here: it enacts the reflexive reversal of atheist doubt into God himself.
Hegel (Faith & Knowledge): After its battle with religion the best reason could manage was to take a look at itself and come to self-awareness. Reason, having in this way become mere intellect, acknowledges its own nothing by placing that which is better than it in a faith outside and above itself, as a Beyond to be believed in. This is what has happened in the philosophies of Kant, Jacobi and Fichte. Philosophy has made itself the handmaiden of a faith once more.
Zizek: It is the very excessive-possessive nature of male desire, which makes it destructive of its object – (male) love is murder, as Otto Weininger knew long ago.
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