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Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Public Intellectuals”: Several Philosophers Make the List

Brian Leiter

Foreign Policy‘s annual game of identifying what they deem the world’s top "public intellectuals" is here.  Noam Chomsky has won in the past, and correctly so given the criteria:  "Candidates must be living and still active in public life. They must have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence wider debate, often far beyond the borders of their own country."  (Of course, being an "intellectual" is obviously not a criterion for being a "public intellectual" in this exercise, given the presence of poseurs like Christopher Hitchens and Francis Fukuyama on the list of 100!)

Several philosophers make the finalist list of 100:  Anthony Appiah (Princeton), Daniel Dennett (Tufts), Jurgen Habermas (Frankfurt), Martha Nussbaum (Chicago), Peter Singer (Princeton/Monash), and Charles Taylor (McGill/Northwestern).  (Some others are listed as being, among other things, "philosophers," though I doubt some of them would be so classified by most philosophers.)  There are also several candidates who work in cognate fields and whose work is well-known to philosophers, such as Daniel Kahneman (Princeton), Steven Pinker (Harvard), Amartya Sen (Harvard), and Michael Walzer (Institute for Advanced Study)–as well as, of course, Chomsky.

Are there other philosophers who should be on the list given the criteria?  If so, why? Anonymous comments are unlikely to appear.  Note that you may submit write-in candidates in the poll.

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44 responses to “Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Public Intellectuals”: Several Philosophers Make the List”

  1. Norm Jones

    I don't know what "most philosophers" would say, but for my money Slavoj Zizek, who is called a philosopher on FP's list, deserves the appellation. Anyway, who are the "philosophers" "most" of whom Professor Leiter implies would deny Zizek that classification? Are they just a set of people who are recognized as philosophers by those whom they recognize as philosophers? In the absence of an accepted set of necessary and sufficient conditions for philosopherhood, perhaps a bit of pluralism is in order.

    Reply
  2. holyoke

    Is Hitchens a "poseur" because he's a magazine writer and not an academic? I wouldn't buy that line.

    I might buy the suggestion that he doesn't back up his arguments all that well (and that he wrote a book on religion without, you know, actually reading any current writing on the subject).

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  3. ravi

    At the risk of pandering, may I suggest your name — if not for this year, but for one in the near future that takes into consideration the role that Internet publishing plays in shaping public thought. You have been a valuable (and enlightening) contributor, especially for those in the left who are in search of analytical heft.

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  4. Erik E.

    Maybe because I'm writing from New York and the NY legal community, but I think Jeremy Waldron qualifies as a philosopher whose influence extends beyond the philosophical community. His positions against American style judicial review and against torture seem influential and timely.

    And what about Robert George? If actual influence is a criterion, he was one of the principal drafters of the FMA and sits on GWB's bioethics committee. And he's got the philosophical pedigree (D.Phil Oxford). But if being on the wrong side of every issue counts, then this would probably exclude him.

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  5. A.P. Taylor

    I find it bizarre that they would include Pope Benedict but leave out His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I definitely think the latter deserves to be called a philosopher as well.

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  6. Chris Bell

    Funny that someone questioned your inclusion of Hitchens on the "poseur" list, but no one said a word about naming Fukuyama.

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  7. Brian Leiter

    Hitchens is a 'poseur' because he has no intellectual content or judgment at all: he's amusing, smart-mouthed, occasionally sharp, but nothing more. Most academics aren't even amusing, so he at least has that going for him!

    Zizek strikes me as someone "famous for being famous," and not a lot more.

    Waldron has done very good work lately in public fora, it would be fine to seem him on the list. He has more claim to it than Walzer, who has become a disgrace, and whose Chair he was invited to take at IAS.

    Robbie George is not a very good legal philosopher, and his writing is too obviously in the service of religious dogma–which explains, entirely, his "influence"–to really qualify in my view. On the other hand, as someone else notes, when the list include the Pope, it's hard to know what the criteria really are.

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  8. Derek Pierson

    I find it hard to believe that Brian didn't take the time to slam Thomas Friedman's inclusion on the list before going after Hitchens and Fukuyama.

    For philosophers, I'd consider nominating Simon Blackburn, mainly because of his many attempts to popularize philosophy in a respectable and intelligent manner (e.g. his books such as Think, Being Good, and Truth: A Guide). Now, I'm not sure how much of an impact those books have had on the general public, but his work strikes me as among the best efforts at consistently trying to get non-philosophers to confront some of the problems of the discipline.

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  9. Brian Leiter

    Derek is, of course, right: I failed to notice the inclusion of Karl Kraus's favorite journalist on the 'top 100' list: "No ideas and the ability to express them:" that's Thomas Friedman.

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  10. Eric

    It's hard to tell exactly what it takes to be a 'public intellectual', considering that much of this country shuns intellectuals like they were lepers (and they'd rather worry about which Presidential candidate would be fun to drink a beer with), but I would offer up a few who seem to be at least close to crossing over from the strictly academic to the 'public' sphere:

    1. Simon Blackburn (seconding Derek's vote)

    2. Harry Frankfurt (merely for appearing on The Daily Show he's upped philosophy's credibility for some folks, and his bullshit-calling is pretty useful in today's political climate)

    3. David Luban (whose academic papers on the "War on Terror" and human rights should be more widely known than they are)

    4. Cass Sunstein (maybe not a philosopher, per se, but he writes popular books and his paper on moral heuristics is quite interesting)

    5. Tom Pogge (his paper on the responsibilities of the wealthy nations and poverty should be read, along with Singer and Hardin, in all intro classes)

    6. Leon Kass (I disagree with most of what he says, but he at least TRIES to articulate an argument from disgust against cloning in a philosophical way)

    7. R. Edward Freeman (Who deserves inclusion if only for making the term 'stakeholder' a part of the business lexicon)

    And, outside of philosophers, if we want to include shit-stirrers like Hitchens, I would think both Jon Stewart and Bill Maher should get a place on this list. They're just as well-argued as Hitchens (usually more) and funnier. Just because they are/were stand-up comics doesn't mean they don't have apt philsophical minds.

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  11. K J Norlock

    In her philosophical way, Vandana Shiva has satisfied all the criteria for public intellectualism far beyond her borders, and achieved both scholarly and general-readership fame in ecological activism. And now that I've suggested someone in a cognate field, I get to indulge my own surprise: Gen. Petraeus? Really? (I'm actually asking, not necessarily objecting; I'm a reasonably humble gal and maybe there's depths to the man I haven't seen.)

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  12. Bill Edmundson

    Ronald Dworkin has a better claim than more than a few that made the list, given Foreign Policy's criteria ("Candidates must be living and still active in public life. They must have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence wider debate, often far beyond the borders of their own country.")

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  13. Jason

    Leon Kass is a fraud.

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  14. Brian Leiter

    Bill, I have it on good authority that the Foreign Policy editors realized they had to rule out Dworkin after reading this,

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=598265

    But seriously, writing about the US Supreme Court in the NY Review of Books is not the same as influencing debate across borders! It is always striking to me that, to the extent Dworkin's view of the role of judges is "influential" in other legal systems it is almost entirely severed from his actual theoretical reasons for assigning judges that role, and typically predicated on stereotypes about legal positivism that bear no relationship to the actual views of scholars like Hart and Raz.

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  15. Richard Moore

    Perhaps Waldron aside, I can't see that any of the suggestions in this forum has done enough to be considered one of the world's top 100 'public intellectuals'. Some of them are barely public. Surely in addition to the criteria listed above, to be a public intellectual one also needs to be known for one's intellectual contributions to public debates or intellectual movements? I don't think Simon Blackburn's books (or A.C. Grayling's, for that matter) are well known in the requisite sense.

    I had thought about suggesting Michael Dummett, given his work on racism and immigration. But in terms of prominence, he is nowhere near as recognisable Zizek or Hitchens – even if his work is vastly superior. Bernard Williams would surely have merited a place were he still alive.

    In virtue to his contribution to public debates, I think Hitchens has some claim to be on the list. But maybe that's just becase I like him for sticking it to Bill O'Reilly.

    What about Rodney Brooks?

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  16. Eric Schliesser

    Leon Kass is no fraud. I disagree with everything he says, but he is learned and attempts to offer genuine arguments. He is also a terrific class-room teacher of Aristotle. (In my view it would have been better for him to have kept to that.)
    I don't get the animus against Fukuyama; the end of history stuff captured the Zeitgeist and was an attempt to bring certain Hegelian/Nietzschean views (well known among academics) to the public. Isn't that what public intellectuals do?

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  17. Brian Leiter

    "Public intellectuals"–if there are any–don't bring cartoon versions of philosophical ideas to the public in order to provide silly rationalizations for the "zeitgeist" of the right-wing of the ruling class. That's what Fukuyama did. And I think I'm being generous here!

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  18. matt

    How about Alasdair MacIntyre?

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  19. Richard Moore

    I just read the list and noticed – sadly only after I'd voted – that Oliver Sacks was missing. He's not a philosopher but his work is very germane to much philosophy of mind.

    Surely his claim to greatness in the sphere of public intellectuals is as great as almost anyone's.

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  20. Christopher Pynes

    A bit off topic, but philosophy needs something like this: "The Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science," which is held by Richard Dawkins.

    Now I think an "APA Chair for the Public Understanding of Philosophy," would be great. The person(s) that hold this/these special chair(s) would be charged with the task of fostering a public understanding of philosophy and why it matters. A few good philosophers writing, talking, informing public issues all over would be great for the profession. But they have to be clear thinkers and writers and ideally be good on TV. I would toss in a few hundred bucks to help fund one of these kinds of chairs to help the profession.

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  21. Jon Cogburn

    I think Camille Paglia deserves inclusion. She's done as much as anybody to undermine lazy cultural determinism/relativism and bad American English department colonialist appropriation 1968 Parisian thinkers. She really was the first volley in the "theory wars" that have now been lost by the theorists. She is also arguably the first of the "third wave" academic feminists. And she is a tremendously entertaining writer (check out her edited poetry anthology).

    Yes, Christopher Hitchens was unhinged by the horrific fate of many of his Kurdish friends in the past. But it must be said that if nothing else he beautifully fulfills one of Russell's desiderata for philosophy, which is vividly showing possibilities unimagined by the complacent (e.g. Henry Kissenger is a war criminal, Mother Theresa is horrible, God is not great). Kingsley Amis wrote with more fervor and sometimes less rationality, but he was equally thought provoking and entertaining and would surely belong on such a list in his day. Perhaps Martin does today.

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  22. Anthony Mohen

    I was also curious to see who FP gave the label "philosopher" but didn't make the list in this post. I have to say, although I don't know the work of either Sari Nusseibeh or Fernando Savater, it's unclear to me why they are incorrectly listed as philosophers. Judging by his listed publications, Nusseibeh clearly devotes more energy to being an activist, but he is a Professor of Philosophy and does have journal publications. Savater also appears to have long held a position as Professor of Ethics, and now also holds one as Professor of Philosophy. Of course, titles can be deceiving, depending on who confers them, but as far as I can tell the primary reason Savater has not been on my radar is that most of his books haven't been translated into English. Can anyone better informed make a better appraisal?

    Also, I second the noticeable absence of Oliver Sacks, especially given the appearance of Ramachandran (who I would have thought was less clearly a public figure).

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  23. Charles Russell

    I second Alasdair MacIntyre.

    And, come on, Zizek counts as a philosopher. He's obviously working in a very different tradition than, say, Brian Leiter… and there's plenty of room to disagree with him and his style. But he's clearly a very smart guy, working with important ideas and figures in the philosophical tradition in a way that appeals to a mass audience. I think philosophy would be a healthier discipline if we stopped trying to exclude those authors we disagree with. Derrida–I disagree with him and can't stand reading him, but let's be happy to call someone so influential a philosopher before we disagree.

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  24. Brian Leiter

    MacIntyre has no influence on the public that I'm aware of, which would presumably rule him out.

    What philosophical 'tradition' exactly is Zizek working in? (What philosophical 'tradition' am I working in? I'd be curious to know!) What important ideas or theories has he contributed? Can someone articulate them?

    My objection to Derrida is not that he is sometimes called a 'philosopher,' but that he was a charlatan. But a really bad philosopher can still be a philosopher, of course.

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  25. Derek Pierson

    Richard,

    Your point about the influence of Blackburn's books is well-heeded. As I say in my previous post, I'm just not sure how many readers Blackburn has reached with his books outside of the profession. However, Blackburn is also a/the VP of the British Humanist Association, writes for publications like Prospect and the New Statesman, and makes semi-regular appearances on BBC radio, so he does have a presence in British public life beyond his introductory philosophy books, though I'm sure that presence is not to the degree of, say, Richard Dawkins.

    And although I'm sure many would be hesitant to call him an academic philosopher as such, I will say I'm rather surprised that Cornel West did not make a list of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world. If I had to name the top 5 living public intellectuals just in America, I'd be hard-pressed to keep West off such a short list.

    Finally, as long as Jon Stewart and Bill Maher have gotten votes, I might as well go ahead and nominate — albeit tongue-in-cheek — Stephen Colbert
    (though does one nominate the character "Stephen Colbert" or the real-life Stephen Colbert?). Plus, Stephen was a philosophy major for a few years before switching to theater!

    Reply
  26. Charles

    Whether Zizek and you are really working in different "traditions" obviously depends on what account we give of a "tradition." But I bet we can both agree that the way you and Zizek do philosophy is very different, and that the sort of philosophy practiced in 1960s/70s Slovenia when Zizek came of age was quite different from the sort of philosophy practiced at Michigan in the 1980s. Whether or not it's appropriate to talk about these differences as different "traditions," I think both sides deserve to be called "philosophy," mainly since both sides call themselves philosophy, and I'm not sure who should be setting the rules. But I'm an undergrad, so, if we were to get into a substantial argument over metaphilosophy, I'd hope you could make me look bad.

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  27. Richard Moore

    Derek,

    Point taken; I hadn't known that about Blackburn. As you suggest though, it's not clear that that's enough to make him a candidate for the list.

    Incidentally, he's not a philosopher, but Simon Schama's absence is also noticeable. As is Roger Penrose's. Steven Hawking's too.

    As a slight aside, it would be interesting to hear sometime (either here or in a different post) about what other philosophers make of those whom many would describe as philosophers, and who are perhaps the public face of philosophy (in the UK at least), but who work outside academia – not just Zizek, but Alain de Botton, Julian Baggini and Michael Frayn, for example.

    All of these have some claim to being public intellectuals – Frayn and de Botton would probably make a UK top 100 list, if not a world list – and if Malcolm Gladwell can get on the list, there's no reason they shouldn't. But are they philosophers or just journalists with philosophical interests?

    Perhaps this isn't the place to meditate on the criteria of category membership for the set of philosophers (although the Zizek discussion suggests this concern is already implicit). However, given the relative absence of philosophers in the public sphere and, it strikes me, a public who are largely ignorant about what philosophers actually do, it's interesting to think about how we view the 'philosophers' who do work there.

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  28. Matthew

    Roger Scruton is certainly someone who fulfills the criterion for being a public intellectual. His influence is as broad as both Martha Nussbaum and Charles Taylor.

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  29. Paul Gowder

    Another totally unwarranted non-philosopher omission: Henry Louis Gates.

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  30. Richard

    And another missing non-philosopher: Rowan Williams.

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  31. db

    Onora O'Neill – philosopher, President of the British Academy, BBC Reith Lecturer, chair of Nuffield Council on Bioethics, chair of the Human Genetics Advisory Cttee, and various other British public bodies. She hasn't sold as many books as Blackburn, but she is certainly more influential.

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  32. Franz Leopold

    I'd be grateful if BL could link to his argument re Derrida's charlatanism, in all good faith. I know BL has offered kind words re Foucault so this is not a 'philo cold war' request. Apologies if this is a tired request.

    On another point: I think Zizek has only been described as a 'philosopher' in the last year or two, since the para-doodah book. Before that I think he never claimed that mantle, if he does now. I suspect this rebranding has more to do with publishers, and dreams of sales and market delusions about the marketability of symbolic authority, than anything else.

    As for the list: Isn't the problem Foreign Policy as such rather than their choices?

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  33. Thom Brooks

    I am surprised to find no mention of Bhikhu Parekh. He is a member of the House of Lords, a member of the British Academy, winner of the Political Studies Association's Sir Isaiah Berlin Prize for lifetime contribution to political thought, and he has held a number of influential positions. Even more importantly, his work is absolutely first class.

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  34. C. Michael Russo

    Before anyone gets too huffy about who deserves to be called a philosopher, or which public figures are or should be recognized as philosophers, let’s try to remember something: Ninety-nine percent of the American public has probably never even heard of these so-called public intellectuals like Slavoj Zizek, never mind the fact that most Americans consider philosophy to be “the way you approach something,” as in “my personal philosophy is that you shouldn’t let a pregnant woman stay standing on the T if you’ve got a seat to give her.”

    It seems that we might want to start by addressing the rampant anti-intellectualism that obtains in this country and that renders arguments over whether Zizek is a “real” philosopher or Derrida a “charlatan” a moot point. I doubt that academic philosophers are ignored by the public because philosophy is being given a bad public face by Derrida and Zizek (although maybe that can’t help); I expect rather that philosophers are being ignored because half of the American public is composed of frighteningly barbaric morons who find “thinking” and other intellectual practices indulgent, wasteful, and perhaps vaguely effeminate, and the other half is made up of desperate, harried working folks who might sort of appreciate the general point of academic pursuits if they weren’t too busy working three jobs to give it any thought.

    Put some average Americans in a room together—people from the upper echelons of corporate America and people from the local Wal-Mart—and about the only thing they will all agree on is that reading a book is a massive waste of time when you can now buy a high definition television set for under a grand. Maybe that is of slightly more concern than whether Francis Fukuyama deserves to be on a list of public intellectuals more than Simon Blackburn (which, by the way, he doesn’t).

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  35. Brian

    I must say I enjoyed Mr. Russo's rant, but I'm afraid that it is a non-sequitur to say whether Derrida is a 'charlatan' is moot because the bulk of the public is ignorant of philosophy, indeed, of serious thought generally. On the other hand, this fact about the American public (which is only one of many publics internationally, though especially ignorant compared to many countries of comparable development) does raise a question about whether the category "public intellectual" is one to which intellectuals should aspire. Perhaps Fukuyama and Friedman and Hitchens are the 'intellectuals' the American public deserves? Of course, 'Foreign Policy' presents the exercise as international in scope, a factor which would rule out many of those suggested above.

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  36. Landon

    Camille Paglia? An agitator, possibly, but not an intellectual. I've had the misfortune to read her work, and there's no arguments to be found – merely bald assertion, phrased in what passes (or passed?) for a hip rhetorical style. Paglia's pseudo-intellectual posturing doesn't advance public understanding, it derails it by obfuscating the actual issues and positions.

    Reply
  37. Chris Bell

    Eric,

    Your view that Kass is not a fraud was obliterated by Steven Pinker earlier this morning.

    http://richarddawkins.net/article,2567,n,n

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  38. Jason

    Exactly, Chris! Anyone familiar with his shocking behavior on the President's Council could hardly conclude otherwise. He browbeat the other members of the Council when preparing their final report, and eventually pushed many scientists off who refused to sign off on its recommendations. And on and on it goes. Whatever you think of his philosophical writings, his political behavior and the use to which he put his arguments and his academic stature on the Council should shame any member of the academy (even those who accept virtue ethics, neoliberal economics, and all the rest).

    Reply
  39. Mandel Cabrera

    The label of 'philosopher' applied to Zizek is not recent. He has a doctorate in philosophy, is a professor of philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, has written a number of books dedicated in great measure to the work of philosophers (let's not quibble about Lacan – I mean Kant, Hegel and Heidegger), his books are shelved in philosophy sections and he is called a philosopher at most venues at which he speaks.

    The debate over whether someone is a philosopher is either absurd (as when you ask whether Madonna is a philosopher) or utterly uninteresting (as when you ask whether Derrida, Deleuze, Zizek, etc. are philosophers when they're called philosophers by so many). The latter sort of debate strikes me as being as uninteresting as the debate over whether something which is in a gallery and treated by the art world as a work of art is in fact a work of art. When faced with such debates, I'm often inclined to say: "Forget what it is we want to *call* the damn thing – what's more fruitful to ask is whether it's interesting or illuminating or insightful."

    I'd go so far as to say that the tendency to get interested in such debates is itself a sign of philistinism. This sentiment, however, portrays no one in so bad a light as myself, someone who finds witnessing and reading about them (if not participating in them) irresistible, if only because I enjoy getting fumed up at how much they go awry. In principle, though, I prefer to leave the folks who want to argue over whether Duchamp's "Fountain" was art or whether Zizek's "Tarrying with the Negative" is philosophy far behind: the folks who simply want to argue with me over whether the latter is *good* or *interesting* art or over whether the latter is *good* or *interesting* philosophy are far less boring…

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  40. Brian Leiter

    Philosophy surely isn't a natural kind, but it may be an artifactual kind, just like art. Even if it's not an artifactual kind, it's probably still true that debates about whether X is 'really bad' philosophy quickly become indistinguishable from debates about whether X is even an instance of philosophy.

    In any case, I'm not really interested in that debate either, and I certainly don't think it's resolved by what someone in Slovenia is hired to teach or whom they write books on. I did pose a fairly straightforward question, earlier: namely, what philosophical tradition, if any, is he working in and what are his philosophcial ideas or contributions? There may be some. My familiarity with Zizek is very limited, but my main impression to date is that he's famous for being famous. I would be delighted to stand corrected by someone who has an informed answer to offer.

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  41. ML

    Manuel,

    Interesting post. But it would seem to me that you can easily spice up any such "uninteresting conversation" by asking the philistine in question what criteria they are using to rule out, say, Derrida as a philosopher, or Ad Reinhardt's blank canvas as a work of art. This may reveal that there is actually interesting territory underneath the seemingly (sometimes truly) too quick dismissal to be explored; this has been my experience with many non-philistines who nonetheless deny that some thinkers, painters, etc. ought to/deserve to be called philosophers, artists, what have you.

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  42. Mandel Cabrera

    Of course, the fact that I find some conversations uninteresting isn't any reliable metric for determining whether they are. It's probably a very poor metric, since there are lots of conversations I don't find interesting that others are passionate about.

    As far as the question of what tradition Zizek works in, I don't feel I have enough of a grip on what a tradition is or what it is to belong to it to give one answer or another. I'm someone who, in the past, read quite a bit of Zizek and was somewhat entranced by this or that line of thought, but never found anything like a systematic picture of anything in his writing. He has some interesting things to say about film, politics, and assorted bits and pieces of popular culture that I find illuminating (mixed in with a lot of stuff about Lacan I can never make any sense of). His style seems always to be aimed at presenting himself as offering theories of this or that, but at frustrating any grip on what those theories really are at every turn – he meanders rapidly from one topic to another in a never-ending succession. What results is a grand parody of so called 'theory' (as used among folks who have tried to use this word specifically for what *they* do). Whether this is for good or ill is another matter; smart critics like Terry Eagleton know that this is in part what he's aiming at, and in part what comes out of someone with his particular (self-desribed) obsessional neuroses. Ultimately, I decided his work – while I'll still read essays he publishes in magazines and newspapers aimed at a non-academic audience – is, for me, non-productive brain candy.

    As for whether he ought to be considered a great public intellectual, I have no idea. I think his particular brand of intellectual tricksterism provides a useful critique (in the form of parody, done to serious ends) of the ill-equipped omniverousness and disjointed confusion you get in the worst sectors of the theory crowd. Besides that, he's particularly smart in his way of criticizing the militantly relativistic frame of mind of many would-be academic leftists – especially since he does so in the idiom of the very sort of theorizing that he parodies. I don't know how much of an effect this has had. The theory crowd seems to me to have cooled down a bit in the last few years, and there's been a wonderful increase of good work in continental philosophy: even in folks who talk about Lacan, like Jonathan Lear. I don't know if this has one bit to do with Zizek, although I think that at least he's part of these positive trends (even though he cavorts with folks I find suspect like Badiou and Agamben).

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  43. Kevin Schutte

    Jerry Fodor and John Searle would both be likely candidates for "top public intellectual", wouldn't they?

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  44. Joe Clement

    Mr. Leiter,

    To answer your question about what tradition Zizek works in we can ask him himself: "the core of my entire work is the endeavour to use Lacan as a privileged intellectual tool to reactualize German idealism" (http://www.lacan.com/zizekchro1.htm). However, he is more interested in the materialist and ultimately political deviation Marx took from Hegel. He also locates in Schelling a turn towards this materialist potentiality in the German idealist tradition too. Adrian Johnston released a book recently called "Zizek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity." If you want to get to the core of Zizek's philosophical concerns in a hurry, this book is key.

    As far as theories he's contributed, the easiest one to explain in the short amount of time I have is that pace Marx's "false consciousness" or "they do not know it, but they still do it," Zizek argues that at least for the least few generations, (Capitalist) ideology does not function on the side of "knowing," but rather "doing." He makes use of the psychoanalytic idea of "disavowal," which functions in perversion where repression does in neurosis, to reformulate Marx: "they know very well what they are doing, and they still do it."

    Reply

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