Phenomenology and Religion: New Frontiers

the future of emancipation

Comparing Buddhism and Christianity, Žižek notes that love, in
Christianity, always implies a certain degree of betrayal. The Christian
community is founded upon a division between the community of
believers on the one hand and non-believers on the other hand — even
if this border is by no means static and fixed, but rather essentially
expandable (and, presumably, retractable as well). Christianity, thus,
is a religion of difference, whereas Buddhism, on the other hand, is a
doctrine of indifference, or, as Žižek, referring to the Buddhist doc-
trine of the fleeting character of (what most of us call) reality, quite
poignantly puts it: “if external reality is ultimately just an ephemeral
appearance, then even the most horrifying crimes eventually do not
matter.” (32) By contrast, “Christian love is a violent passion to
in troduce a Difference, a gap in the order of being, to privilege and
elevate some object at the expense of others” (33). In other words,
Christianity revolts against the leveling-out of reality and, con-
sequently, against the homogeneity of time, introducing, instead, a
rupture, a cut, or a separation into the order of being — an order which,
however, always seems to have a tendency to fold in on itself and strive
to close the gap. As a matter of fact, Christianity itself, no more than
any other product of the human spirit, has not escaped the regime of
such tendencies. Žižek criticizes such “perversions” of the original and
real essence of the legacy of Christ, inviting us instead to follow
Lacan’s one and only ethical maxim on striving not to compromise
one’s desire even if that may seem impossible — if not the impossible
as such — in modern consumerist society:

for Lacan, the status of desire is inherently ethical: “not to compromise

one’s desire” ultimately equals “do your duty.” And this is what the

perverse version of Christianity entices us to do: betray your desire,

[...] and you are welcome to have all the trivial pleasures you are

dreaming about deep in your heart! (49)

Against such a “perverse” reading, Žižek wants to propound, as we
have seen, a notion of love as difference which clearly resonates with
Benjamin’s concept of historical materialism. In a world abounding in
“special offers” to betray the cause, to give up the messianic stance
towards temporality, we should strive to keep alive the call of justice,
the awareness of the incompleteness of the present situation inspired