Symposium

Interview

Ethics of Real

Ethics of Real
Interview with Alenka ZupanCic
Indigo Global Humanities Project Team

Alenka ZupanCic
Researcher at the Institute

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Indigo: The title of this project is "Toward the Common Good." And what we are attempting reinterpret, to do in this project journey is to explore, or perhaps the true meaning of "the common" and "the good" in our time. Yet here arises the very first wonder: Is there such a thing as the common good? To what extent is it useful to speak of thela common good? Alenka Zupancic: I think first of all we

make it common or shared by anyone. I rather think that one should perhaps turn the perspective around and say it is "what is shared" and "common" that is good. I think the 'good' here appears on two levels: we can speak of some good that exist in society from food to

social care, which of course are very real and

necessary for living, but they are not good in moral or emphatic sense. What is good is precisely when they are part of this general and universal sharing. This also means that they are part of it as also a kind of idea, not simply about having these things but also about thinking in an emancipatory way about sharing them. I think the good in this sense is precisely on the side of the more common and universal paradigm as well as its own belonging to some kind of emancipatory that nothing is good if it happens politics or only for something like this. So one could say indeed some. It could be very good in tale but in certain sense it's not good in this way of having this potential precisely of further opening up and perhaps exploding some kind of a space

should not try to define it in some way. It

can mean many things and sometimes nothing. It's definitely a very complicated notion. The very notion of 'good' in philosophy is not something that's simply defined. But I think what really needs to be defined perhaps can be found precisely along the lines that you've indicated in your question. 1 think the first thing to do is to tum this syntax around and say that it is not that we start from some fully established good or goods and then we try to make them common or try to find out ways to

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that feels unable to change or inaccessible for this kind of common practice or communal practice and so on. I think that this is also, to a certain degree, a Kantian way of defining the good, not starting with some fully established good that one should then try to apply universally, but to try to figure out how there is some kind of universal movement that is good in itself. Then good is also, of course, what comes from it, or what could come from it. We can try to think of these two levels of the question or project. As a perspective on an actual event now, I was just thinking on my way here how it's really not simply about having access to something that is common good. What is going on in Egypt now is a sequence of the common good in itself. In striving towards some kind of politically organized common good, there is some kind of common, universalIy shared articulation between people in justice that has already taken place there. I think there's something to be learned from this in how one of the problems today is that we've lost this capacity to rejoice or to have some kind of enthusiasm to recognize something that is really happening outside about of all the spectacles that are put up here and there. I do not mean to be moralizing these people, it's simply the way ideological segregation works these days. People are content with what they have; they have their common good, but, at the same time, they don't know precisely what is most essential in this common good, which is the very principle of being sensitive to such events which are much more important and impacting than

anything else.

Indigo: One question that popped up in my head is this universality. Egypt is just a case of pursuing the common good in their Own society. How can we define this word universality? AZ: I think there are two ways of thinking, perhaps more than two, but two that are quite different. One, that I would call the "bad" one that doesn't really lead anywhere, is to consider it as a sect, totality or some kind minimal common denominator. We could also start from the bottom and say, "This is the only thing that we have in common." Then you have this more relative idea of universal as a head that can unite different things. But the real universal or the concrete universal, using the Hegelian term, is the immanent process of becoming universal. It's always related to some kind of antagonism in society. It's not simply neutral. Jt is something that is very sensitive to the unjust points of SOciety;it is being dose to the crucial divides of a society, to the crucial antagonism that defines them and trying to find some kind of realistic relation that is the principle that opens up and tries to address everybody, that, from the beginning, does not exclude anybody, that has the kind of potential to mobilize and activate further thinking. So it is a different term of universal than a static, accomplished, or totalistic one in the sense that although it is addressed to all, it's not about all. It's not simply making the

final part of it okay because now that we are all in this train, we are all satisfied. It's always

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something that is built from an event because the antagonisms exclude some people, but not on the basis of one's own exclusion because they don't want to share in this. There will be some kind of a priori rejection of it. This also means that there are always some concrete forms that one can then find from one example to another as to how this universality is articulated in particular cases or in societies or struggles. But it is at the same time a kind of special opening that is not neutral but a lift off of pre-established parameters that usually divide or structure the symbolic places in society as such. It is a kind of empty place and at the same time an exposed place because it cannot be automatically integrated in one of these movements or parts precisely because it's not so easily assignable to some particular horizon that it remains exposed. Again we could see this in Egypt. They try to say, "Oh, no, it's the mask of authority." But it's not reducible to any of these options. It is also the pure space of politics emerging and it can end in different ways but one cannot deny that it's something of this sort. In this sense, this is universal. It's not just for them or better jobs or better government, but it's also some kind of policy emerging and opening spaces so that something can indeed happen. Indigo: In the context of this universality, I think of the notion of universal love as the practice of the common good or the practice of universal revolution. Che Guevara also commented about this strange feeling that love can be related to a revolution. I wonder

how this love or compassion or ethical approach to people, which can be interpreted as a new ethics of this time, can practically work in this age of war, terrorism and ecological disasters? AZ: Although I did a lot of work on the topic of ethics, I would be careful in this general discourse of turning away from politics to ethics. I would not want to play one against the other and say that politics is bad or produces are bad things, so we should now investigate the field of ethics more as a replacement. I really think that if we are speaking about common good in society they both need to be extremely related and interconnected. It's also political. One cannot simply say that in this perspective "ethics can save us." I don't think it can save us without politics as a participatory practice. It is not the same thing as ethics, but it can be related. Now we must work out how they are related. One of the relations is the notion of practice that you mentioned. Actually, practicing is something that one can do because practicing concretely exists in the world and keeping faithful to this and trying to expand in this practice which can definitely be a kind of political act. It also needs to be seen as such because one dimension that makes it political is that one needs to be ready to accept the consequences that follow from this. One cannot wash one's hands and say, "I am doing my own good in the world." At some point one needs to also hear, live and think on two levels: what am I doing, and what is to become of this. Not that one can control, of course not, but there could be some kinds of

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political will in trying to organize the society in the way that these kinds of engagements are possible. There are at least their fruits are preserved or built into the society and are not simply vanishing as a kind of personal act. The other thing that definitely makes this

AZ: A crucial notion in the discussion of ethics was precisely the notion of "the Real" that I took mostly in the sense which allows us, first of aiL to distinguish the Real from reality. We can find it more or less ideologically transformed but which is not simply a position to relating the terms of realties always discursively or ideologically mediated perceive the real as the contradiction found somewhere corrupted towards point of some kind of pure reality. I think one should reality itself. It's not some kind of a substance else. There is a more or less reality but it is or misperceived

shift from simply ethical to political is the notion of the cailective, which is not the priority of an ethical notion. Ethics is perceived as something very individual and solitary but there a point also could be a course or some passage to the collective from ethics. It's definitely where these practices exist as practice. Not simply that it exists because we are directing it towards the other but also because we are constantly challenging our own standing in this. It is not simply about the helping others, it's also about changing some things in the way we act in our societies that are necessarily involved in this other beings such as cities. It's not simply helping them. It very often means putting to question some of the principles we take for granted and will remain as such if it is not for this practical engagement. It can be real and not simply some kind of feeling-good practice and say, "I am doing this act and now I've done something." So it's kind of a transformation that is at the same time ethical and political. It has both dimensions. Indigo: One very interesting sponsibility notion

precisely to be seen as the very point of contradiction or antagonism of the reality itself. It is what reality needs to constantly cover up in order to function more or less smoothly. It's not something else out there; it is its own inherent contradiction. So perhaps even more clearly than it is in my book, I would define the Real in this sense. So ethics of the Real is attentiveness to these points because they are the points in society that are not finished yet. There are points that can be 'neurological points': the points that are simply not done with but some kind of potential ing something of generatdifferent or new is still pos-

sible. So the first order is to locate these points and then step into the process of trying to do something with them. This could be defined as the ethics of the Real. Not simply the ethics in the sense of going forward in a Real beyond all imaginable political or cultural organizations but precisely as this is possible in reality itself. It is the point of the infinite precisely because, at this point, no society is simply closed in upon itself. Some things could be reactivat-

of ethics in your work is about the refor this infinite supplement of others. Would you please tell us a bit more about your approach to ethics which can be a related to the notion of supplement or a surplus of joy?

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ed perhaps very surprisingly. This is the other problem, the eternal question: How do we go around to find these points and work with them? Sometimes something simply needs to happen for them to become visible, and then we know what to do. I think one should really not ask this question of what to do too much because usually it's quite clear. Because when things come to the point of the knife, you know what to do. One of the things where I think ethics is misused or very much used in the negative way in the contemporary discourse is to produce all kinds of dilemmas and to raise fear, to say that we should first tally all the consequences, to say we cannot know exactly if this is it. So, instead of this, first certitude that comes to mind in certain situation is usually good that says this is absolutely wrong, then this method makes you think, 'Perhaps, if I look at the other way then it will be okay ... ' It only serves the purpose that nothing really happens at this point where something could happen. based

Kantian philosophy. You are fundamentally responsible for the rule. It is not simply something that can guarantee ethics for me. It's not something that can guarantee ethics. More or less it's a politically correct ground on which you are safe to move because you know that some things are already established and they are good or are generally supposed to be good. But look for the point where this is in no way clear, and try to make something there. Usually, these things are already established and, for some, it's really relevant, but I don't think much can be gained from further insisting on this. Indigo: How can a person or a collective gathering of people be transformed as ethical subjects? AZ: One should not look for a recipe where one could try to define the mechanism or how this thing could work. One should not take this and say, "Let's produce ethical subjects." One could even put this more radically that it only produces elitist subjectivity as such. There is some kind of leap that can never be fully accounted for by the history or the life of the individuals. So I think one should look at this not in terms of some kind of evolution or moving towards the ethical, but in a more synchronized way. It's something that existed all the time-the not be gradually way in which I can

In this sense, that is the exact the opposite of ethical questioning and re-questioning on a certain recognition, will and readiness to assume this action, to be responsible for this. Of course, nobody can guarantee that your reflex or decision was right, to say, "Here, I recognize this and I will fight for it." You decide it, and then you are also responsible for this decision. In this respect this is the whole discussion of Kantian moral rule. Could it and, as the could we just claim that exempt us from responsibility famous Eichmann,

act as an ethical subject is something that candeduced from my being in the world. So it's not simply that I will then once become subject to a certain extent; everybody already is the subject. It's the other way

we did something because law commanded it? Of course not. This is the very paradox of

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around. If you practice or are involved in practice, this is the one point that actually explores this part and makes it alive in the world-or not. This is another question. Somehow this is also why you have also various kinds of criticism on how we are enormously guilty, but it's

me and you that can be a figure of a space of something different, something that cannot simply be reduced to this immediate interest, which forces you only to see the immediate. Indigo: When does this activism or movement take place? When people become secure enough to take risks? Or when the capital of rage is high enough to make change? AZ: About people feeling secure, I don't think this is any case fundamental. Itis true in a certain context where the minimum of activism can cost your life and there is not much space for it to exist because you could get imprisoned or killed immediately. So in this sense, if you have a space of security that can make this moment a little bigger and more productive/ this is not bad. But at the same time, if security itself is the condition, then this kind of activism has obvious limits. Activism for others without wanting to reflect our own position in societies involves introducing the others whom we want to help. To a certain extent, security should not be the ultimate ground on which activism can expand. Activism is about strongly believing in something and making it concrete in the world, and then I think being able and ready to take risks for it. Before asking, "What can I do to improve?" one should always look at the present situation and look at the places where something is happening. I don't think one should wait for the event. For example, Peter Hallward are all places around always says there is the world-Europe

not about guilt. It's simply about the present position that on a certain level we are always more than what we think. We can be made just by combining our nature with culture and our surroundings. There's a leap to something that is not a direct result of all these natural and cultural processes but can exist for itself. It's not important as part of the subject but as the part of the subject that is most alive. It's not about trying. Even ethics sometimes has to start on the outside not simply by trying to find out our innermost ethical parties and trying to force it to become more apparent but by changing the newspapers and the way the things are articulated. This is how things are influenced and also how the whole ethical configuration can change. These are related, to a certain extent, to your previous project in the question of values. Values are also about those certain things that certain societies acknowledge as available. In some societies, mere survival is not such an achievement as it is perhaps in ours. So it's not simply because they are suicidal that people can think about risking their life for freedom. It is not because they are ideologically deluded, but because it is a certain set of values that are different. It can also be ideological. Not all ideologies are the same. There are certain ideologies accompanying a resistance and there is one that one could be promoting this distance between

not the center of the world. That it is only bor-

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ing here or there are bad politics doesn't mean it's like that everywhere. Things are happening differently and this should be the starting point of every ethical or political examination or questioning. Not simply wondering what to do for ourselves, happening but to forget ourselves

much related to certain political decisions. It's not simply recognizing evil as such; it's not simply obvious. It could be true but it could be selfish to say this or that terrorist attack is evi I. The time of red brigade where there was a possibility of saying say there was a doubt in denouncing it as evil. Nevertheless it's possible recognize some potential of a simple evil. But of course I am not saying this is what we seek today in most cases of terrorism. At the same time the notion of evil or the axis of evil exists as a game where the use of reactionary politics uses ethics or ethical fear as a pretext. One could say that is evil politics. I think, in an empirical perspective, the whole question of what is good and evil is something There is a certain transcendental where this kind of designation to be constantly, not only reinvented but fought for.

perhaps and to see where something is really and then building more on that. I think this is much surer way for improvement to take place. Indigo: People start activism toward something good and it also takes place when they think there are something evil. How could we define this word 'evil' in the 21'1 century? AZ: I think the very useful way of doing this here is via Kant because he has this very interesting notion of evil which is not at all related, and perhaps it has some short comings on this account, to any empirical bigger or lesser evil. But it is a way of functioning, which abandons all striving for ethical or political emancipation. For him the radical evil is the act of giving up, or accepting to be reduced to just nature in thyself. It's the resignation of saying we are just people and we have our faults and so on. Of course this is true, but one should not perceive it as something else that exists in this world. So it's one way of approaching this very difficult question it remains a little bit of an abstract but nevertheless on a philosophical the whole question level or ethical level. At the same time, one should not forget that of how evil is defined in present society is, of course, always very

level to this needs to be a and fight,

question and there is also this empirical level part of some kinds of antagonism

and needs to be seen as such. How to define it is always a very difficult question. There's something about this question that could be reduced to a very banal level. Indigo: There's an interesting point

from your book about fear. How can this notion of fear be related to make ethics more constructive? Or does fear kill ethics somehow? AZ: No, I think definitely the second one.

Fear is simply a fact of life. Although Kantian ethics is often seen as some kind of going beyond all human endurance and capacity and living some kind of impossible war. But this

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is not what I read in Kant. Fear is definitely part of the subjective composition of an ethicalor political subject. So it does not necessarily block ethics because it's not about ethics, it's not simply about heroic deeds. Here I would very much agree with you but ethics is often simply about very common work, and labor. It's not simply going and accomplishing something extraordinary. It could be this, but it also could be certain ethics of fidelity to a certain practice of persisting in it although you risk, not necessarily your life, but perhaps you risk losing or respect or having a certain position. There are often risks, but at the same time what is good in Kant is that he tries to make us see how, in what he would call ethi-

forms. What we lose is no longer perceived as a loss when it happens. I think this is the good ethical mobile, not this track or will to go and accomplish something even if it means the ultimate sacrifice. I think this is a little bit too Hollywood-like. ethics means. Indigo: Can we be optimistic about It's not the most productive way towards thinking of what real politics or

Kant's notion of perpetual peace which can be related to global justice in 21" century, which is quite different from his own notion of perpetua 1 peace? How could this notion of perpetual peace be translated global capitalism? AZ: It's a difficult question. I would say this is not possible today. But that does not mean that it's impossible. There's something really impossible from the constellalion that's that into this time of

cal constitution of the subject, this kind of risk is

not necessarily perceived as such. In this way, I think we get bad Kantian, but I think what his perspective enables us to say and conceptualize is why what you perceive as great loss changes with an act of this kind of praclical engagement on a set of values. It's not that it's always in looking ahead, this fear is much bigger or much more paralyzing if put in this kind of way. In some sense one should think of ethics as acting through which one changes as in respect to what one was before. This is how Kant's statement, "Through an ethical act one is no longer the same person." happens. Of course this is not some kind of mystical transformation but there's something. We are not simply some kind of foolish, subjective entities that affect the world around us, but that what we do also changes us and the way we look at things. So it could be simply said that the great fear of losing something trans-

we are living now, but something can happen where the whole background, the whole point of the departure changes, and then something absolutely beyond imagination today can become real option. I don't think one should use psychoanalysis change-but here to prove how people they will never will never change-perhaps

nowadays they can change as a

species perhaps, I don't know. This is not the ultimate horizon of what we know about humanity. But perhaps one way to answer your question discussion would be to relate it to the initial of the common good because I

think perhaps one should act in a way that it

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is not good unless it happens

to everybody.

any wars but there could be real violence and suffering on other level. It's not only the war that is violent. So something would have to change in the very way that this antagonism is organized now. In this respect I am not so optimistic immediately. But I would not say that this is the general demotion that nothing could ever happen otherwise. Indigo: What is the most urgent theoretical question you would like to bring about? AZ: I think perhaps the question of what is a collective and how does it function? I mean, what is more, it's not something to ask to people, but it's actually should exist there in people. At the same time this is relating to this strange thing that is collective which is not simply a sum of all the individuals that are gathered there, but this satiated body, which is more than all these and what one could do starting from this. I don't think one can go beyond this familiar founding that one always starts when everything is over. At certain level philosophy is not a collective moment in this immediate sense. But this does not mean that it doesn't recognize one or can't say something about it. It is a solitary practice that at the same time can concern everybody. It can play some part in also some kind of collective organization of course. But it's not immediately already it. So my urgent question would be" what is a collective capable of?"

This can actually be read on two levels: one is empirical (to say we already have the good and now we need to share with everybody) and other is the question of inequality and uncommon (this is necessary for these goods to be produced, the very system to function). Relating the two huge questions, in a system where the only production parts of humanity of more or less common good always depends also on some being excluded, not only from sharing in it but in the very production, the problem is bigger. It's not only excluding some people from using, it's also exploiting some people in order to produce this good. So, part of that, if a system needs this kind of inequality and exploitation in order to function, something could eventually be used for common good, then I think we could never enter any possible discussion of a perpetual peace. Because of course wars are also mostly politico-economic systematically categories. In this kind of a system, when the question of sharing is asked on the level of what we already have, perhaps we should redistribute it so that people in Africa will have more. But I think this is not enough if the very system of producing whatever surplus we have is constructed in such a way that it needs to deplete for its own perpetuation. Systematic exclusions of some part of the world or in layers of society or classes could never become a ground for a perpetual peace. I think this is god and there is also the question, "Peace is good, but at what price?" If this means a systemic violence of this kind, perhaps we can have another several centuries without

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