Non-philoso­phers some­times charge philoso­phers with talk­ing and writ­ing volu­mi­nous­ly to no par­tic­u­lar end, get­ting noth­ing done, solv­ing no prob­lems. But Slavoj Žižek, clown prince of aca­d­e­m­ic super­star­dom, has a response: “Phi­los­o­phy does not solve prob­lems,” he claims in the clip above. “The duty of phi­los­o­phy is not to solve prob­lems, but to rede­fine prob­lems, to show how what we expe­ri­ence as a prob­lem is a false prob­lem. If what we expe­ri­ence as a prob­lem is a true prob­lem, then you don’t need phi­los­o­phy.” He uses the hypo­thet­i­cal exam­ples of dead­ly comets and virus­es from space. Against such clear, present, and direct threats, he argues, we have no use for phi­los­o­phy, just “good sci­ence.” Žižek con­tin­ues the argu­ment from his bed: “I don’t think philoso­phers ever pro­vid­ed answers, but I think this was the great­ness of phi­los­o­phy.”

To Žižek’s mind, the pur­suit of phi­los­o­phy involves ask­ing as many ques­tions as pos­si­ble, but not broad ones about absolute truths. “Phi­los­o­phy is not what some peo­ple think,” he says, ges­tic­u­lat­ing while propped up by pil­lows. “It just asks, when we use cer­tain notions, when we do cer­tain acts, and so on, what is the implic­it hori­zon of under­stand­ing? It does­n’t ask these stu­pid ide­al ques­tions: ‘Is there truth?’ The ques­tion is, ‘What do you mean when you say this is true?’ ” He con­ceives of phi­los­o­phy as a mod­est dis­ci­pline, not a grand one. This clip comes by way of the invalu­able Bib­liok­lept.

Relat­ed con­tent:

After a Tour of Slavoj Žižek’s Pad, You’ll Nev­er See Inte­ri­or Design in the Same Way

Philoso­pher Slavoj Zizek Inter­prets Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go in The Pervert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma (2006)

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

Slavoj Žižek Demys­ti­fies the Gang­nam Style Phe­nom­e­non

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Today, we’re revis­it­ing the clash of two intel­lec­tu­al titans, Noam Chom­sky and Michel Fou­cault. In 1971, at the height of the Viet­nam War, the Amer­i­can lin­guist and the French theorist/historian of ideas appeared on Dutch TV to debate a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Is there such a thing as innate human nature? Or are we shaped by expe­ri­ences and the pow­er of cul­tur­al and social insti­tu­tions around us? The thinkers answered these ques­tions rather dif­fer­ent­ly, giv­ing view­ers a fair­ly suc­cinct intro­duc­tion to their basic the­o­ries of lan­guage, knowl­edge, pow­er and beyond.

42 years lat­er, you can watch the debate on YouTube in parts or in its entire­ty. Above you will find two excerpts that show you the high­lights, com­plete with sub­ti­tles. Below you can watch the entire debate online, from start to fin­ish. Sub­ti­tles should be pro­vid­ed, but if you have any prob­lems, you can read a full tran­script of the debate online (it’s entire­ly in Eng­lish), or pur­chase a copy in book for­mat.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self (UC Berke­ley, 1980–1983)

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Michel Fou­cault, “Philoso­pher of Pow­er”

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Jacques Lacan Speaks; Zizek Pro­vides Free Cliffs Notes

Down­load 130 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es: Tools for Think­ing About Life, Death & Every­thing Between

Read Chez Fou­cault, the 1978 Fanzine That Intro­duced Stu­dents to the Rad­i­cal French Philoso­pher

Today, Jason Sil­va serves up anoth­er philo­soph­i­cal espres­so shot with The Mir­ror­ing Mind, a two-minute video inspired by the ideas explored in Dou­glas Hof­s­tadter’s influ­en­tial book, Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: An Eter­nal Gold­en Braid. The film — which you may need to watch twice, ide­al­ly after you’ve had your own stiff cup of cof­fee  — offers Sil­va’s “inter­pre­ta­tion of Strange Loops of Self Ref­er­ence, recur­sion, and the emer­gence of con­scious­ness and self-aware­ness.” Once you’ve got a han­dle on things, you can watch Sil­va’s pre­vi­ous films on The Immer­sive Pow­er of Cin­e­ma, The Bio­log­i­cal Advan­tage of Being Awestruck, and The Gospel of Rad­i­cal Open­ness.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Even if you cul­ti­vate only a casu­al appre­ci­a­tion for phi­los­o­phy, you’ll have real­ized that pro­fes­sion­al opin­ions dif­fer about Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, and stark­ly. Philoso­phers don’t just argue about his work; they also seem to argue about his atti­tude, his con­duct, his very per­son. Above, you can hear Betrand Rus­sell, a some­what less con­tro­ver­sial philo­soph­i­cal per­son­age, briefly give his impres­sions of the lad who would write the Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus. (Find a copy in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion.) You see, before land­ing in the phi­los­o­phy track—or, in any case, his own crooked ver­sion of the phi­los­o­phy track—Wittgenstein stud­ied aero­dy­nam­ics at Eng­land’s Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter. An assign­ment in pro­peller design got him fas­ci­nat­ed with math­e­mat­ics, which led him to phi­los­o­phy at Cam­bridge. There, in 1912 and 1913, he stud­ied under Rus­sell.

“He was queer, and his notions seemed to me odd,” Rus­sell says, sure­ly using queer in its archa­ic sense. (Though oth­ers do apply; in 1993, Derek Jar­man made a gay-themed bio­graph­i­cal film about the philoso­pher.) “For a whole term, I could not make up my mind whether he was a man of genius or mere­ly an eccen­tric.” But at the end of this term, the young Wittgen­stein brought to his instruc­tor a press­ing ques­tion: “Will you please tell me whether I am a com­plete idiot or not? If I am a com­plete idiot, I shall become an aero­naut; but, if not, I shall become a philoso­pher.” Rus­sell issued a chal­lenge to write about a philo­soph­i­cal sub­ject over the school break, and Wittgen­stein hand­ed him the result as soon as the next term began. “After read­ing only one sen­tence,” recalls Rus­sell, “I said to him, “No, you must not become an aero­naut.” And he did­n’t.” One imag­ines his unre­al­ized career in aero­nau­tics would­n’t have giv­en us quite so much to debate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­tog­ra­phy of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein Released by Archives at Cam­bridge

Lis­ten to ‘Why I Am Not a Chris­t­ian,’ Bertrand Russell’s Pow­er­ful Cri­tique of Reli­gion (1927)

Bryan Magee’s In-Depth, Uncut TV Con­ver­sa­tions With Famous Philoso­phers (1978–87)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.