In Christian Atheism, Slavoj Žižek probes the boundaries between Christianity, atheism and materialism through analyses of modern thinkers including Hegel, Marx and Lacan. The book simultaneously affirms and deconstructs Christian theology, arguing for its relevance in conceiving of contemporary political commitment. Žižek’s knack for drawing together disparate stands of thought to explore emancipatory politics makes for a challenging and perceptive book, writes Dimitri Vouros.
Christian Atheism: How to be a Real Materialist. Slavoj Žižek. Bloomsbury Academic. 2024.
The Holy Spirit, Psychoanalysis, and the Emancipatory Community
The untimely disciple of Hegel, Slavoj Žižek, takes very seriously his master’s dictum, “Philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought.” No other living thinker traverses so many ideas and trends in contemporary culture. The pleasure one derives from following Žižek’s voracious mind and searching prose can cause intellectual vertigo. Yet the effort to understand him is more than repaid by the insightful connections he makes between disparate phenomena and ideas.
Žižek’s recurrent obsession has been philosophical materialism, especially with figuring out a way to continue doing metaphysics in a post-metaphysical age. His latest book […] is no exception
Žižek’s recurrent obsession has been philosophical materialism, especially with figuring out a way to continue doing metaphysics in a post-metaphysical age. His latest book, Christian Atheism: How to be a Real Materialist, is no exception, although it finds in Christianity a way to be both a materialist and atheist. Žižek has penned four books on the materialist and psychoanalytic reading of the Christ event.
Christian Atheism is set out as a series of reflections on contemporary thinkers from Žižek’s intellectual circle. The first chapter discusses the relation between psychoanalysis and atheism in a forthcoming book by Adrian Johnston and Lorenzo Chiesa. The second is a response to critics about his suspicion of the positive relation between Buddhism and Jacques Lacan. The third investigates the philosophical ramifications of quantum physics. The fourth is an interpretation of Alenka Zupančič’s recent book on law, the sacred, and the obscene in Sophocles’ Antigone. The fifth deals with the philosophical meaning of artificial intelligence. Lastly, the sixth deals with the theological in radical politics, a “materialist politics of emancipation” (2-3).
The “true materialist” asks “if god himself believes in god” (39). From this question one learns that atheism not only designates a lack of belief in God, but also that “there is something in God more than God himself and it is this excess which designates true materialism” (41). True materialism rests on a roundabout negation of divinity. Žižek presents what it might mean to retain the core event of Christianity without disavowing the tenets of atheistic materialism. In fact, only Christian atheism “can save the Western legacy from its self-destruction while maintaining its self-critical edge” (11). Atheism creates the common “space” – presumably the public sphere – from which religious toleration is made possible (14).
Žižek’s political theology builds on the ‘death of God’ theology popular with deconstructionists a few decades ago
Žižek’s political theology builds on the “death of God” theology popular with deconstructionists a few decades ago. But it supplements this Heideggerian (and Derridean) reflection on Nietzschean nihilism with insights drawn from Žižek’s preferred masters, Hegel, Marx and Lacan. While eschewing the neo-orthodoxy of theologians like John Milbank, Žižek nevertheless sits within a contemporary tradition of hermeneutics. This tradition takes not only a demythologised bible for granted but draws on Western existentialism, especially Martin Heidegger, and various critical theories of social amelioration. Žižek rejects Ludwig Feuerbach’s position that merely imputes human hopes and ideals to God. He also downplays Marx’s idea that religion is a mere consolation for the downtrodden. Nonetheless he is partial to Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism since it connects political economy to the criticism of religion – the “objective illusion” of exchange is the fundamental psychic drive under capitalism (243-44).
The key idea of Christian Atheism is that the Holy Spirit is not restricted to the Church and its members but is realised through political commitment and engagement
What Žižek arrives at via his three masters is a kind of Protestantised liberation theology. The key idea of Christian Atheism is that the Holy Spirit is not restricted to the Church and its members but is realised through political commitment and engagement. Žižek develops this idea by merging Hegel’s ontology with the immanent community (Geimende) of Protestant theology (45) and the idea of sorbornost from Russian Slavophile thought.
The gist of Žižek’s argument is the following: (1) Christianity overcomes the gap between humans and God by “transposing” this gap into God himself; (2) “What dies on the cross is not an earthly representative or messenger of God, but as Hegel put it, the God of the beyond itself”; (3) “the dead Christ returns as Holy Ghost which is nothing more than the egalitarian community of believers”; and (4) “God gives us freedom – by way of erasing itself out of the picture” (3). Žižek’s conception is not so much one of an apophatic as of an absent God. The difference is crucial. The idea of Spirit immanent in a universal egalitarian community takes traditional ecclesiology in a thoroughly secular direction.
“God became man so man could become God” – Žižek interprets this key passage on deification (theosis) from the Church Fathers in a materialistic fashion. Without the mediation of a transcendental divinity humans are wholly responsible for righting the wrongs of the world. We are compelled to find creative answers to our inner and outer problems. And since the divine can only be understood as “the experience of radical negativity” or Hegel’s “night of the world,” a space is opened up for emancipatory politics “beyond the continuity of historical progress” (5).
Žižek elucidates the problem of nihilism with an alternative reading of religion. The old Russian- and Soviet-era “Cosmists” were interested in developing a spirituality appropriate for a technological and industrial age. An absent God led to the possibility for spiritualising the world.
Žižek provides two readings of Christianity: a “perversely cynical” and an “authentically ethical” one. The former is a mere means of arriving at peaceful co-existence; the latter, while it accepts God’s absence endorses this “spectre” as a cause to which one can commit oneself (36). The unresolved question here is if one can commit to anything that is merely spectral. If the political as Carl Schmitt reasoned requires sacrifice and commitment, the myth such sacrifice is undertaken for must in fact be felt to be real. Žižek rejects this “perversely cynical” Machiavellian reading. For him, the agnostic – whose “neurotic disavowal” makes him half-believe even if he doubts – must leap and recognise God’s radical absence. This realisation functions as a form of political commitment.
For him, the agnostic – whose ‘neurotic disavowal’ makes him half-believe even if he doubts – must leap and recognise God’s radical absence. This realisation functions as a form of political commitment.
Žižek’s atheism rejects as mere myth the central Christian doctrine of Christ’s bodily resurrection. Rather, at the centre of his political theology is the symbol and event of Christ’s all-too-human sacrifice. We are asked to imitate such a sacrifice in our commitment to political emancipation. The reasoning behind this theology is surprisingly subtle: “I don’t sacrifice myself for the omnipotent God, I sacrifice myself to obfuscate God’s impotence.” For Žižek, this “anti-Feuerbachian” position makes God a “fantasy-formation which fills in the gap constitutive of being-human” (36). Žižek rejects the “libidinal investments” promoted by traditional belief systems and religions. Christ’s “passive suffering” proves that the consolations of the “big Other” are illusory (31). Christ’s death as the emptying of God on the cross compels the Holy Spirit to labour negatively through the “emancipatory community.” Such a community is “thrown into the abyss of freedom” (46). The “emptying of God” (kenosis) is a standard theological notion describing Christ’s sacrifice and care for the world. Žižek takes this care to be a consequence of God’s radical absence. Eric Voegelin believed the “immanentisation of the eschaton” led to totalitarian Gnosticism since it left no room for individual morality. Žižek’s upending of Christian theology may seem to lead toward the same end. Like Ernst Bloch’s theology of hope and Walter Benjamin’s divine violence, Žižek’s psychoanalytical theology holds up in the face of converging existential crises.
Like Ernst Bloch’s theology of hope and Walter Benjamin’s divine violence, Žižek’s psychoanalytical theology holds up in the face of converging existential crises.
Christian Atheism concludes by lamenting the death of psychoanalysis. Žižek asserts its continuing relevance given the continuing appeal of consolatory spiritualities and the baleful condition of politics. In our era, most processes of the human mind have been quantified. All that is required of psychology as science is the further socialisation of subjects through chemical supplements. The choice in the flattened horizon of current political society is between “new Right populism and a reinvented Holy Ghost” (242). Whether we take the Holy Spirit to be materialist hope through political community or the grace ensured through Revelation, Žižek’s theological interventions are vitally important since they alert us to other possibilities for human relation beyond society’s increasing virtuality.
Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Two drawings of Slavoj Žižek © Dimitri Vouros.
