An ethics grounded in health rather than prohibition terminates the Father function.

Evidence

In Tarrying with the Negative, Žižek famously argues that a certain Spinozism is the ideology of late capitalism. Žižek believes that Spinoza’s rejection of deontology for an ethics based around the concept of health is allegedly flat with capitalism’s amoral affective engineering. The famous example here is Spinoza’s reading of the myth of the Fall and the foundation of Law. On Spinoza’s account, God does not condemn Adam for eating the apple because the action is wrong; he tells him that he should not consume the apple because it will poison him. For Žižek, this dramatizes the termination of the Father function. An act is wrong not because Daddy says so; Daddy only says it is ā€˜wrong’ because performing the act will be harmful to us. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 149

Categorization

  • DEFINE: Introduces ā€˜the termination of the Father function’ — Žižek’s claim that Spinozist health-ethics replaces Law grounded in prohibition with pragmatics of harm.
  • XREF: connects to: Health-based ethics replace prohibition with harm-diagnosis — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 149