Abstract

Why do most positions in philosophy tend toward just two basic ideas? For the last 100 years philosophers have either been fanatic supporters of science even to the point of arguing philosophy away, or obliquely associating sciences complicity with the horrors of the twentieth century . Even Alain Badiou, who promotes the philosophical benefits of mathematics, draws a line at endorsing the natural sciences. Very few philosophers manage to do serious philosophical reflection on the sciences while avoiding unnecessary and uninspired reductive and or accusatory work. Slavoj Zizek is the rare exception for those who desire to escape the current thought crippling dichotomy that seems to run rampant. The forthcoming paper will discuss Badiou in order to understand how his anti-naturalism is unproductive and counter to his revolutionary project. Badiou provides a useful focal point for understanding a long held bias towards the sciences. Zizek however overcomes the problems correlated with anti-naturalism by reading science through the lens of a psychoanalytic inspired collaboration of German Idealism. For Zizek, the natural sciences confirm the insights of Kant, Schelling and Hegel instead of foregoing them as “armchair thinking.” Our reading of Zizek will show that these ideas are far from being relics of an unenlightened era, represent a serious and provocative answer to facile distinctions that seek to support one discipline at the expense of the other