Mad World: War, Movies, Sex by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Release Date: November 27, 2023 (Jan 11, 2024 in some markets)

I can see why Slavoj Žižek is one of the most successful popular philosophical authors out there today. For one thing, he deals in provocative topics straight from the headlines: politics, pop culture, war, and sex. Furthermore, like the authors of such books as Freakonomics, he picks cases that are fascinating, if inconsequential / frivolous (e.g. in the case of this book, the question of a proposed massive Ukrainian orgy to be carried out in response to a Russian nuclear strike.) For another thing, while philosophy tends to be nigh unreadable owing to the philosopher’s need to be defensively precise (which, in turn, leads to overuse of complex jargon and tedious qualifiers,) Žižek is quite readable owing to an ability to make clear and confident statements.

Of course, there is a downside to this confident clarity. Many a reader will find too many gratuitous statements for his or her taste. Žižek is often willing to say “clearly, x means y” about things for which there is no consensus, whatsoever. An example seen more than once in this book is in discussing what Žižek believes to be the unambiguous meaning of symbolism in artistic works. Of course, there is a name for the fallacy of believing one knows what an author or artist meant to convey, i.e. the intentional fallacy.

That said, the author provides many intriguing ways of thinking about the absurdity of the modern world. For example, to (deceased) former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s tripartite epistemological nomenclature (i.e. known-knowns, known-unknowns, and unknown-unknowns) Žižek asks us to consider a seemingly impossible fourth sector, unknown-knowns (i.e. we don’t know the question, but we have an “answer.”) Žižek’s self-described “pessimistic realism” appeals to the reader’s sense of martyrdom even as it frustrates, by-and-large telling us that the modern world is screwed and there’s little chance of saving it.

If you’re interested in popular philosophy, this book is worth giving a read. However, if you are used to scholarly philosophy, you may find it a bit sloppy and trivial.

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