Alenka Zupančič

Slavoj Žižek: the persona, the philosophy and the gap between them

He is the most visible living philosopher in the world and among the most routinely dismissed, and the same habits explain both. Underneath the jokes there is a theory of belief, a reconstructed Lacan and a Hegel who never reaches reconciliation — and a record of political misjudgement that his defenders too often skip.

Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Noam Chomsky, Alenka Zupančič, Peter Sloterdijk

This Day in Philosophy — 9 September: Benhabib, Lacan, and what makes a person

Seyla Benhabib was born on 9 September 1950 and this year takes both the Johan Skytte Prize and the Karl Jaspers Prize. Jacques Lacan died on the date in 1981, John Passmore was born on it in 1914 and Paul Goodman in 1911 — four thinkers on what a person is made into.