“Schelling’s thesis here is much more subtle: both Good and Evil are modes of the unity of Ground and Existence; in the case of Evil, this unity is false, inverted -how? Suffice it to recall today’s ecological crisis: its possibility is opened up by man’s split nature -by the fact that man is simultaneously a living organism (and, as such, part of nature) and a spiritual entity (and, as such, elevated above nature). If man were only one of the two, the crisis could not occur; as part of nature, man would be an organism living in symbiosis with his environment, a predator exploiting other animals and plants yet, for that very reason, included in nature’s circuit and unable to pose a fundamental threat to it; as a spiritual being, man would entertain towards nature a relationship of contemplative comprehensive with no need to intervene actively in it for the purpose of material exploitation. What renders man’s existence so explosive is the combination of the two features: in man’s striving to dominate nature, to put it to work for his purposes, ‘normal’ animal egoism –the attitude of a natural-living organism engaged in the struggle for survival in a hostile environment –is ‘self illuminated’, posited as such, raised to the power of Spirit, and thereby exacerbated, universalized into a propensity for absolute domination which no longer serves the end of survival but turns into an end-in-itself. This is the true ‘perversion’ of Evil: in it, ‘normal’ animal egoism is ‘spiritualized’, it expresses itself in the medium of Word –we are no longer dealing with an obscure drive but with a Will which, finally, ‘found’ itself.” –from the section “Evil as the perverted unity of Existence and Ground” in Zizek’s The Indivisible Remainder….
I would first point out (and I think Zizek would appreciate this (as exhausting as it was to type this quote out word by word (that is as compared to the copy and paste advantage you have with e-books (there is something to be said for doing so. You get the opportunity to get to know the writer in ways that you wouldn’t otherwise. And now that the work is done, I will get to break this quote down and use it as a source for enough rhizomes to finish this present immersion.
I would start by noting the overlap between this point and both Rorty’s and Deleuze’s issue with the subject/object model of consciousness and the environment it is working in. By distinguishing the activities of the brain from the environment it is acting in, we set ourselves up for the old platonic hierarchy in which the mind, in its god-like nature, floats above the objects that occupies its space and passes judgment upon them. And we only need go back to Sartre’s issue with solipsism to recognize the real problem here: the fact (and may the wrath of Professor Strunk rest in its grave (that the other is always an object occupying our space. The assumption that they have a perceiving thing, much like ours, requires a leap of faith.
As I work in the overlaps, the antidote I keep seeing in my studies is for us, as individuals, to simply think of ourselves as objects acting in space with other objects acting in space: interacting.