16 EUR

Mediakcije Collection, book no. 19
Original title: Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism
Translation: Jernej Županič
Collection editor: Gregor Moder
Preface: Simon Hajdini
12 × 19 cm, 226 pages
© Maska, Ljubljana, 2020

This book was published in Slovenian.

The Mediakcije Collection

Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism

16 EUR

What if it is not always sensible to stand for “freedom”? And what if sometimes it is the
standing for “freedom” that treacherously leads into a justification of suppression and nobility? And lastly, what if this situation makes a fatalist position not only sensible but the only one to enable true freedom? Wouldn’t that be funny? Abolishing Freedom begins with a trivial yet seldom heard remark: the great freedom thinkers (e.g. Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Freud) also advocated predestination.

The book reconstructs the history of modern rationalism (and its predecessor in Martin Luther) by discussing how exactly can fatalism be used to criticise the ideology directed against the dominant ideologies of the freedom of choice. Ideologies begin with the presupposition that freedom is something that we have (and own). How do we get rid of this presupposition? The answer of rational fatalism is that we must think the worst, the worst that has always already happened, that we are not always free, that freedom is not possession; that it has not always been in our possession.

Abolishing Freedom shows that this fatalist rejection of freedom (of choice) as the precondition to freedom is neither a tragic nor an existentialist argument, much less a passive nihilist one. The book shows that in modern rationalism, this argument was again ang again perceived as comical. The first stem in the comedy of fatalism is to lose what we do not have (freedom) so that, in the next step, we may do what seems impossible. The wit of fatalism lies in that it confronts us with the abyss of unfreedom and makes us realize that it is (through the) impossible (possible) to go on.

Mediakcije Collection, book no. 19
Original title: Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism
Translation: Jernej Županič
Collection editor: Gregor Moder
Preface: Simon Hajdini
12 × 19 cm, 226 pages
© Maska, Ljubljana, 2020

This book was published in Slovenian.

Freedom as A Marker of Oppression

“Today freedom has become a signifier of oppression. In this historical situation fatalism is
the only possible stance that allows us to think freedom without being indifferent. We must
affirm the position of a comic fatalism, whose slogans are:

Start by expecting the worst!
Act as if you did not exist!
Act as if you were not free!
Act in such a way that you accept the struggle you cannot flee from!
Act in such a way that you never forget to imagine the end of all things!
Act as if the apocalypse has already happened!
Act as if everything were always already lost!
Act as if you were dead!
Act as if you were an inexistent woman!”

Frank Ruda, Ukinimo svobodo

About the Author

Frank Ruda is an associate professor at the University of Dundee and an author of numerous books, the most recent ones being Indifferenz und Wiederholung. Freiheit in der Moderne (Konstanz UP 2018), The Dash – The Other Side of Absolute Knowing (with Rebecca Comay, MIT Press 2018) and Reading Marx (with Agon Hamza and Slavoj Žižek, Polity 2018). In Slovenian, he is often published in the Problemi journal. Also available is his ground-breaking Heglova drhal: raziskava Orisa Heglove filozofije pravice (Hegel’s Rabble: An Investigation into Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Continuum, 2011; Slovenian translation: Sophia 2015).

Table Of Contents

UVOD
Fatalizem v času univerzalizirane oslovskosti

PROTESTANTSKI FATALIZEM
Predestinacija kot emancipacija

FATALIST RENÉ
Ukinjanje (aristotelske) svobode

OD KANTA DO SCHMIDA (IN NAZAJ)
Konec vseh stvari

KONČATI Z NAJSLABŠIM
Hegel in absolutni fatalizem

PO KONCU
Freud proti iluziji duševne svobode

ZADNJE BESEDE

Bibliografija

Spremna beseda
Simon Hajdini: PREPOZNO ZA PRIHODNOST

Abolishing Freedom with Frank Ruda and Alenka Zupančič

Pogovor o knjigi / 17. 1. 2020 / Nova pošta

Reception in Public

Frank Ruda: Ukinimo svobodo!
TV Slovenija / Kultura /  201. 1. 2020

Frank Ruda: »To čemur pravimo svoboda, je označevalec zatiranja«
Mladina / 24. 1. 2020
“A sense of freedom, I say, is nothing metaphysical but a forgotten everyday experience. Let’s say that we feel freedom in love. Or in great breakthroughs in art and science. For a while, we composed this way, now there is a new music and now we compose completely differently. This is how completely new spaces are being born for free thinking, new possibilities. I would say that these things have not always been present but have appeared. New spaces appear. Freedom is something that appears. And something with which I do something that appears. Key here is fatalism. It is not in my hands how freedom appears” /…/ “If there is a philosophical moment anywhere in the world, then it is in Slovenia, in the Ljubljana School. The thought cultivated in Slovenia by Alenka Zupančič, Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, Rado Riha, Jelica Šumič, or Zdravko Kobe is something truly new. The Ljubljana Philosophical School managed to harness philosophy and psychoanalysis, it found a new recipe that is key for the understanding of German philosophy and psychoanalysis. And, yes, today, for a philosopher the fact that they are published in a Slovenian translation is one of the their highlights.”

Janez Markeš: Duševno življenje je pač scela determinirano / Zatiralska dimenzija svobode (spletni naslov)
Delo / 7. 4. 2020
Becoming aware of the truth causes the person to free from illusion and is brought to the truth
– to accepting the fact that they are determined. On this point, limited space (again
determinism) will make us stop and leave the readership to analyse the problem in greater
detail. Including the extremely interesting discussion on the fate of the genitalia as fate that is
anatomy. /…/ This is a good book, read it.

Frank Ruda: Virus nima političnega pomena. Ni ne reakcionaren ne emancipatoren
Delo / Sobotna priloga / 18. 7. 2020
“If freedom is something people are born with, it is something really natural, and yet nature is the kingdom of necessity. Physical laws rule nature, there is no room for freedom. If we believe freedom to be a natural given, we immediately come upon trouble. If we try to solve this trouble systematically – the way Hegel does – we discover that freedom is something that we absolutely cannot believe to be a natural given.”

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