description: The paradoxical figure of the individual who stands for the big Other. One should not think primarily of the leader-figures who directly embody/personify their community (king, president, master), but, rather, of the more mysterious figures of protectors of appearances. Today, it seems that appearances no longer have to be protected. We all know the innocent child from Andersen's "The Emperors New Clothes" who publicly proclaims the fact that the emperor is naked today, in our cynical era, such a strategy no longer works, it lost its disturbing power, since everyone is publicly saying all the time that the emperor is naked (that Western democracies are torturing terrorist suspects, that wars are fought for profit, etc.), and nothing happens, nobody seems to mind, the system just goes on functioning as if the emperor had his clothes on... Slavoj Zizek - The Inexistence of the Big Other. All of this indicates why we cannot agree with a philosophy of mortality and finitude. There is no ontological status of death. Of no existent we can say that it is a being-for-death. Because existence is a transcendental degree and nothing else, we must ask with Saint Paul: Death, where is thy victory?. Dying, exactly like existing, is a mode of being-there, and therefore a purely logical correlation. The philosophy of death is included in one sentence: Do not be afraid by the logic of a world, or by the games of existence. We are living and dying in many different world. Alain Badiou - Towards a New Concept of Existence.
title: Lacanian Ink 29   Otherness
titlecomplete: Lacanian Ink 29   Otherness
ratings_count: 8