By Stuart Henderson

Let’s just get this first bit out of the way: this is not a “movie” in any conventional sense. It is, and should be approached as, a joint lecture by two eminent philosophers given to a room full of undergrads. It was shot on two digital cameras and edited together fairly arbitrarily. It is like a You Tube video that lasts for the better part of two hours, replete with fuzzy visual and unpredictable audio quality, and lacking any real production values.

Indeed, there are times when people walk in front of the camera, when the camera cannot seem to get a good shot of the man speaking, when the microphone crackles and pops and generally fails to pick up the sound, and (most unfortunately) when members of the audience yawn, fan themselves, and/or appear to be thinking about anything other than the subject at hand. Moreover, it suffers from consistently weird lighting, a static and uninteresting set, and the (let’s face it) very basic problem that it consists of an inherently unfilmworthy thing.

Now, moving on from the this-is-a-weird-film-to-watch-on-DVD-for-almost-two-hours issue, an issue which I have to underline is fairly fundamental considering that this is a movie and not a book-on-tape (which it surely should have been), it must be said that the content of the discussion is consistently fascinating. While utterly stultifying to watch, it is profoundly interesting to listen to this “conversation” between Simon Critchley and Alain Badiou, two of the more prominent contemporary philosophers.

Critchley, whose lovely British accent and enviable articulateness, is in direct contrast with the elder Badiou’s obfuscatory accent, opens the discussion with a rather provocative talk on nihilism in the post-9/11 scene. He reminds us that there are in operation two key forms of nihilism – passive and active, as established by Nietzsche – and that the passive form begets a kind of empty resistance to hegemonic power. People give up, relent, despair, conform, or worse, they pretend to resist. Indeed, it is in the active form of nihilism that we have seen various expressions of counterhegemonic resistance, often with spectacular, and lasting, effects.

However, it is also in this active form of nihilism – and he includes in this category Lenin’s Bolshevism, Marinetti’s Futurism, Guy Debord’s Situationism, and Al Qaeda – that violence is made central to the enterprise. In this activity, the world’s meaningless is structural – it must be torn down. As such, violence is either venerated or pursued. Critchley, who famously crossed swords with Slavoj Zizek this past year over the idea of active versus passive resistance, is not here arguing for violence, but rather against passivity. This is confusing, but important. His lecture is an incisive and brief (at 35 minutes) distillation of the key arguments in his recent book Infinitely Demanding (2007).

For his part, Badiou offers a difficult, somewhat rambling discussion of Critchley’s arguments vis-à-vis resistance. However, his thick French accent obscures much of what he has to say to the untrained ear. Still, the key point to be taken from Badiou’s lecture is that Truth needs to re-emerge as a viable philosophical category. His anti-postmodernist approach is predicated on the view that without a re-appreciation of the possibility for truth (as opposed to Meaning, which is subjective), a politics of resistance cannot cohere into anything beyond ineffectual and small-scale affronts. He makes wide reference to the role of the event in all of this, and also to interruptions. Indeed, his lecture is a combination of a response to Critchley and a précis of his 2004 work Infinite Truth. 

Ultimately, this is an interesting and informative lecture that, through this DVD, we can all sort of attend. So, for the 20-or-so of you for whom that doesn’t sound like a horrific way to spend a couple hours: enjoy. Everyone else: read their books.

Democracy and Disappointment features a conversation between Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley addressing the politics of resistance in DVD video format, with a brochure featuring their recent philosophical writings about politics, heroism, and poetics. During the 2007-2008 academic year, students in the RBSL Bergman Foundation Curatorial Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania collaboratively engaged in research spanning disciplines such as literature, visual culture, urbanism, geo-politics, and technology. One residue of these endeavors was this publication that attempts to construct an archive of the temporal—in particular, this site-specific conversation on November 15, 2007 at Slought Foundation in Philadelphia.

Alain Badiou (1937) taught philosophy at the University of Paris VIII from 1969 until 1999, and then at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS). Much of Badiou's life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of events of May 1968. Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses communistes de France (marxistes-léninistes), he remains with Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel at the center of L'Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works. In the 1980s, Badiou published a series of technical and abstract philosophical works such as Théorie du sujet (1982), and his magnum opus, Being and Event (1988). In the last decade, an increasing number of Badiou's works have been translated into English, such as Ethics, Deleuze, Manifesto for Philosophy, and Metapolitics.

Simon Critchley (1960) is Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York, since 2004. Like many of his generation, defined by punk, generalized nihilism, and the disappointments that followed 1968, he was politicized by the Miners’ Strike in 1984-85 and worked as a local activist throughout the 1980s and early 1990s before becoming disaffected with mainstream party politics. He is the author of many books, including Very Little... Almost Nothing (Routledge, 1997), Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity (Verso, 1999), On Humour (Routledge, 2002), and Things Merely Are (Routledge, 2005). Infinitely Demanding (Verso, 2007), the topic of the conversation featured in this publication, extends into political theory and political analysis by way of an extended engagement with Marx and an argument for an ethically committed political anarchism.

Further Information:

"In disoriented times, we cannot accept the return of the old, deadly figure of religious sacrifice; but neither can we accept the complete lack of any figure, and the complete disappearance of any idea of heroism. In both cases, the consequences will be the end of any dialectical relationship between humanity and its element of inhumanity, in a creative mode. So the result will be the sad success of what Nietzsche named 'the last man.' 'The last man' is the exhausted figure of a man devoid of any figure. It is the nihilistic image of the fixed nature of the human animal, devoid of all creative possibility. Our task is: How can we find a new heroic figure, which is neither the return of the old figure of religious or national sacrifice, nor the nihilistic figure of the last man? Is there a place, in a disoriented world, for a new style of heroism?" -- Alain Badiou

"The sense of something lacking or failing arises from the realization that we inhabit a violently unjust world, a world defined by the horror of war, a world where, as Dostoevsky says, blood is being spilt in the merriest way, as if it were champagne. Such an experience of disappointment is acutely tangible at the present time, with the corrosion of established political structures and an unending war on terror where the moods of Western populations are controlled through a politics of fear managed by the constant threat of external attack. This situation is far from novel and might be said to be definitional of politics from antiquity to early and considerably later modernity. My point is that if the present time is defined by a state of war, then this experience of political disappointment provokes the question of justice: what might justice be in a violently unjust world? It is this question that provokes the need for an ethics or what others might call normative principles that might enable us to face and face down the present political situation. Our main task is to respond to that need by offering a theory of ethical experience and subjectivity th

Continuing on with my monotonous, but oddly rewarding Badiou kick (well over 100 pages into Being and Event, I fear I may be wasting my time…see Alexei’s (Now Times) cogent response to Badiou here).

From the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia a few weeks ago: a public conversation between Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley called “Democracy and Dissapointment: Alain Badiou/Simon Critchley on the Politics of Resistance.” This event features a 30 minute presentation by Simon Critchley about his recent quasi-Levinasian/Badiouan/Lacanian/Kantian, but somehow readable Infinitely Demanding, followed by remarks and public conversation with Alain Badiou on metapolitics and the politics of resistance and dissensus. You can hear the audio here. And now for some quotes and bonus material:

“In disoriented times, we cannot accept the return of the old, deadly figure of religious sacrifice; but neither can we accept the complete lack of any figure, and the complete disappearance of any idea of heroism. In both cases, the consequences will be the end of any dialectical relationship between humanity and its element of inhumanity, in a creative mode. So the result will be the sad success of what Nietzsche named ‘the last man.’ ‘The last man’ is the exhausted figure of a man devoid of any figure. It is the nihilistic image of the fixed nature of the human animal, devoid of all creative possibility. Our task is: How can we find a new heroic figure, which is neither the return of the old figure of religious or national sacrifice, nor the nihilistic figure of the last man? Is there a place, in a disoriented world, for a new style of heroism?” – Alain Badiou, “The Contemporary Figure of the Soldier in Politics and Poetry” (UCLA, 2007)

Caption: Jeremy Deller, Still from The Battle of Orgreave, 2001 / © Jeremy Deller

“The sense of something lacking or failing arises from the realization that we inhabit a violently unjust world, a world defined by the horror of war, a world where, as Dostoevsky says, blood is being spilt in the merriest way, as if it were champagne. Such an experience of disappointment is acutely tangible at the present time, with the corrosion of established political structures and an unending war on terror where the moods of Western populations are controlled through a politics of fear managed by the constant threat of external attack. This situation is far from novel and might be said to be definitional of politics from antiquity to early and considerably later modernity. My point is that if the present time is defined by a state of war, then this experience of political disappointment provokes the question of justice: what might justice be in a violently unjust world? It is this question that provokes the need for an ethics or what others might call normative principles that might enable us to face and face down the present political situation. Our main task is to respond to that need by offering a theory of ethical experience and subjectivity that will lead to an infinitely demanding ethics of commitment and politics of resistance.” – Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (Verso, 2007)

Also, for a bonus, here is a transcript of ‘Ours is not a terrible situation,’ an earlier conversation between Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley at Labyrinth Books, NY, in March 6, 2006; a printed version is forthcoming from Philosophy Today. badcritchlab.pdf (PDF)

French philosophy Contemporary philosophy
Name	Alain Badiou
Birth	1937 Rabat, Morocco
School/tradition	Continental philosophy, Maoism
Main interests	Set Theory, Mathematics, Metapolitics,
Influenced by	Plato, Marx, Cantor, Albert Lautman, Mao Zedong, Lacan, Althusser, Paul Cohen, Sartre, Deleuze, Hegel
Influenced	Slavoj Žižek, Bruno Bosteels, Peter Hallward, Simon Critchley, Ray Brassier,

Alain Badiou (born 1937, Rabat, Morocco) is a prominent French Marxist philosopher, formerly chair of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS). Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy. Particularly through a creative appropriation of set theory from his early interest in mathematics, Badiou seeks to recover the concepts of being, truth and the subject in a way that is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 399 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (533 × 800 pixel, file size: 48 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... Year 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Mausoleum of Mohammed V through mosque ruins NASA image of Rabat Rabat (Arabic الرباط, transliterated ar-RabÄ�á¹­ or ar-RibÄ�á¹­), population 1. ... Set theory is the mathematical theory of sets, which represent collections of abstract objects. ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... Metapolitics is the study of theories regarding the structure of which political ideologies are built upon. ... For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a 19th century philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (March 3, 1845[1] – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician. ... Mao redirects here. ... Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French pronounced ) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor, who made prominent contributions to the psychoanalytic movement. ... Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation: altuË¡seÊ�) (October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. ... Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007[1]) was an American mathematician. ... Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980), normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre (pronounced: ), was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. ... Gilles Deleuze (January 18, 1925 - November 4, 1995) was a major French philosopher of the late 20th century. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Slavoj Žižek (pronounced: ) (born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian sociologist, postmodern philosopher, and cultural critic. ... Simon Critchley is a British philosopher, working in Continental philosophy and related fields. ... Year 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Mausoleum of Mohammed V through mosque ruins NASA image of Rabat Rabat (Arabic الرباط, transliterated ar-RabÄ�á¹­ or ar-RibÄ�á¹­), population 1. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... The École normale supérieure (also known as Normale Sup, Normale, ENS, ENS-Paris, ENS-Ulm or Ulm) is a prestigious French grande école, possibly the most prestigious. ... Giorgio Agamben (born 1942) is an Italian philosopher who teaches at the Università IUAV di Venezia. ... Slavoj Žižek. ... Postmodernity (also called post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is a term used by philosophers, social scientists, art critics and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary art, culture, economics and social conditions that are the result of the unique features of late 20th century and early 21st century... Continental philosophy is a term used in philosophy to designate one of two major traditions of modern Western philosophy. ... Set theory is the mathematical theory of sets, which represent collections of abstract objects. ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... This article is about ontology in philosophy. ... Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy, François Lemoyne, 1737 For other uses, see Truth (disambiguation). ... Subject (philosophy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... The Age of Enlightenment (French: ; Italian: ; German: ; Spanish: ; Swedish: ) was an eighteenth-century movement in Western philosophy. ...

Biography

Badiou was trained formally as a philosopher as a student at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) from 1956 to 1961, a period during which he took courses at the Sorbonne. He had a lively and constant interest in mathematics. He was politically active very early on, and was one of the founding members of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU). The PSU was particularly active in the struggle for the decolonization of Algeria. He wrote his first novel, Almagestes, in 1964. In 1967 he joined a study group organized by Louis Althusser and grew increasingly influenced by Jacques Lacan. A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... The École normale supérieure (also known as Normale Sup, Normale, ENS, ENS-Paris, ENS-Ulm or Ulm) is a prestigious French grande école, possibly the most prestigious. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: ) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganised as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... The Unified Socialist Party (French: Parti Socialiste Unifié, PSU) was a socialist political party in France, founded on April 3, 1960. ... Colonialism in 1945 Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the establishment of governance or authority through the creation of settlements by another country or jurisdiction. ... Also Nintendo emulator: 1964 (emulator). ... Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation: altuË¡seÊ�) (October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. ... Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French pronounced ) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor, who made prominent contributions to the psychoanalytic movement. ...

The student uprisings of May 1968 reinforced Badiou's commitment to the far Left, and he participated in increasingly radical communist and Maoist groups, such as the UCFML. In 1969 he joined the faculty of University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis), which was a bastion of counter-cultural thought. There he engaged in fierce intellectual debates with fellow professors Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard, whose philosophical works he considered unhealthy deviations from the Althusserian program of a scientific Marxism. A May 1968 poster: Be young and shut up, with stereotypical silhouette of General de Gaulle. ... The term far left refers to the relative position a person or group occupies within the political spectrum. ... This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ... Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought (Chinese: 毛澤東思想, pinyin: Máo Zédōng Sīxiǎng), also called Marxism-Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM), is a variant of communism derived from the teachings of Mao Zedong (1893–1976). ... Also: 1969 (number) 1969 (movie) 1969 (Stargate SG-1) episode. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: ) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganised as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... Gilles Deleuze (IPA: ), (January 18, 1925 – November 4, 1995) was a French philosopher of the late 20th century. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Marxism is both the theory and the political practice (that is, the praxis) derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

In the 1980s, as both Althusserian Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis went into decline (with Lacan dead and Althusser in an asylum), Badiou published more technical and abstract philosophical works, such as Théorie du sujet (1982), and his magnum opus, Being and Event (1988). Nonetheless, Badiou has never renounced Althusser or Lacan, and sympathetic references to Marxism and psychoanalysis are not uncommon in his more recent works.

He took up his current position at the ENS in 1999. He is also associated with a number of other institutions, such as the Collège International de Philosophie. He is now a member of "L'Organisation Politique" which he founded with some comrades from the Maoist UCFML in 1985. Badiou has also enjoyed success as a dramatist with plays such as Ahmed le Subtil. Events of 2008: (EMILY) Me Lesley and MIley are going to China! This article is about the year. ... The Collège International de Philosophie (Ciph), located in Paris Ve arrondissement, is an open university co-founded in 1983 by Jacques Derrida, François Châtelet, Jean-Pierre Faye and Dominique Lecourt in an attempt to re-think the teaching of philosophy in France, and to liberate it from...

In the last decade, an increasing number of Badiou's works have been translated into English, such as Ethics, Deleuze, Manifesto for Philosophy, Metapolitics, and Being and Event. Short pieces by Badiou have likewise appeared in American and English periodicals, such as Lacanian Ink, New Left Review, Radical philosophy, Cosmos and History [1] and Parrhesia. Unusually for a contemporary European philosopher his work is increasingly being taken up by militants in movements of the poor in countries like India, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa where he is often read together with Frantz Fanon. Lacanian Ink is a cultural journal based in New York City and founded in the Autumn of 1990 by Josefina Ayerza to provide the American intellectual scene with the theoretical perspective of European post-structuralism. ... In 1960 in the UK, the editors of the New Reasoner and the Universities and Left Review merged their boards and formed the New Left Review. ... Radical Philosophy is a UK-based journal of critical theory and continental philosophy, appearing 6 times a year. ... Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was an author from Martinique, essayist, psychoanalyst, and revolutionary. ...

Lately Badiou got into a fierce controversy within the confines of Parisian intellectual life. It started in 2005 with the publication of his "Circonstances 3: Portées du mot 'juif'" - The Uses of the Word "Jew" [2]. This book generated a strong response with calls of Badiou being labelled Anti-Semitic. The wrangling became a cause célèbre with articles going back and forth in the French newspaper Le Monde and in the cultural journal "Les temps modernes." Another philosopher Jean-Claude Milner identified him with Maoism and has accused Badiou of Anti-Semitism.^[1] Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... For the song by the Thievery Corporation, see Le Monde (song). ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster. ...

Key concepts

Badiou makes repeated use of several concepts throughout his philosophy. One of the aims of his thought is to show that his categories of truth are useful for any type of philosophical critique. Therefore, he uses them to interrogate art and history as well as ontology and scientific discovery.

Four discourses

According to Badiou, philosophy takes place under four conditions (Art, Love, Politics, and Science), which he maintains are truth procedures, in the sense that they produce philosophical truths. Badiou consistently maintains throughout his work that philosophy must avoid the temptation to attach its own truth to that of any of the discourses, a process he terms a philosophical "disaster". Badiou often attempts to find 'points of suture', or places of exceptional connection between the truths produced by the various discourses. It should be noted that Badiou's concept of truth procedure does not imply a denial of external reality. Badiou, following Lacan, uses 'the real' to designate the space of existing but unsymbolizable reality that can only be thought retroactively through the truth procedures. Thus, while a truth procedure is required to access the real, the real also serves as an external limit on the possibility of its production of truth.

Inaesthetic

In "the Handbook of Inaesthetics" Badiou coins the phrase 'inaesthetic' to refer to a concept of artistic creation that denies "the reflection/object relation". Reacting against the idea of mimesis, or poetic reflection of 'nature', Badiou claims that art is 'immanent' and 'singular'. Immanent, in the sense that its truth is given in its immediacy in a given work of art, and singular in that its truth is found in art and art alone. His view of the link between philosophy and art is tied into the motif of pedagogy, which he claims functions so as to "arrange the forms of knowledge in a way that some truth may come to pierce a hole in them." He develops these ideas with examples from the prose of Samuel Beckett and the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and Fernando Pessoa (who he argues has developed a body of work that philosophy is currently incapable of incorporating), among others. Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish dramatist, novelist and poet. ... Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé by Édouard Manet. ... Fernando Pessoa Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa (pron. ...

Introduction to Being and Event

Drawing from March 8, 2006 "Art's Imperative" lecture

The major propositions of Badiou's philosophy all find their basis in Being and Event, in which he continues his attempt (which he began in Théorie du sujet) to reconcile a notion of the subject with ontology, and in particular post-structuralist and constructivist ontologies.^[2] A frequent criticism of post structuralist work is that it prohibits, through its fixation on semiotics and language, any notion of a subject. Badiou's work is, by his own admission,^[3] an attempt to break out of contemporary philosophy's fixation upon language, which he sees almost as a straitjacket. This effort leads him, in Being and Event, to combine rigourous mathematical formulae with his readings of poets and religious thinkers such as Mallarmé, Hölderlin and Pascal. His philosophy draws equally upon 'analytical' and 'continental' traditions. In Badiou's own opinion, this combination places him awkwardly relative to his contemporaries, meaning that his work had been only slowly taken up.^[4] Being and Event offers an example of this slow uptake, in fact: it was translated into English only in 2005, a full seventeen years after its French publication. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (552x729, 30 KB)Alain Badiou, scan of a drawing on paper given to the audience of the lecture titled Arts Imperative: Speaking the Unspeakable March 8, 2006 at Drawing Center, NYC Presented by LACANIAN INK File history Legend: (cur) = this... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (552x729, 30 KB)Alain Badiou, scan of a drawing on paper given to the audience of the lecture titled Arts Imperative: Speaking the Unspeakable March 8, 2006 at Drawing Center, NYC Presented by LACANIAN INK File history Legend: (cur) = this... This article is about ontology in philosophy. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Constructivism is a perspective in philosophy that views all of our knowledge as constructed, under the assumption that it does not necessarily reflect any external transcendent realities; it is contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. ... Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. ... Mallarmé can refer to: Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), French poet and critic. ... Friedrich Hölderlin Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin [] (March 20, 1770 – June 6, 1843) was a major German lyric poet. ... Blaise Pascal (pronounced ), (June 20 [[1624 // ]] – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. ...

As is implied in the title of the book, two elements mark the thesis of Being and Event: the place of ontology, or 'the science of being qua being' (being in itself), and the place of the event — which is seen as a rupture in ontology — through which the subject finds his or her realization and reconciliation with truth. This situation of being and the rupture which characterizes the event are thought in terms of set theory, and specifically Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (with the axiom of choice), to which Badiou accords a fundamental role in a manner quite distinct from the majority of either mathematicians or philosophers. Set theory is the mathematical theory of sets, which represent collections of abstract objects. ... Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, with the axiom of choice, commonly abbreviated ZFC, is the most common form of axiomatic set theory, and as such is the most common foundation of mathematics. ...

Mathematics as ontology

For Badiou the problem which the Greek tradition of philosophy has faced and never satisfactorily dealt with is the problem that while beings themselves are plural, and thought in terms of multiplicity, being itself is thought to be singular; that is, it is thought in terms of the one. He proposes as the solution to this impasse the following declaration: that the one is not. This is why Badiou accords set theory (the axioms of which he refers to as the Ideas of the multiple) such stature, and refers to mathematics as the very place of ontology: Only set theory allows one to conceive a 'pure doctrine of the multiple'. Set theory does not operate in terms of definite individual elements in groupings but only functions insofar as what belongs to a set is of the same relation as that set (that is, another set too). What separates sets out therefore is not an existential positive proposition, but other multiples whose properties validate its presentation; which is to say their structural relation. The structure of being thus secures the regime of the count-as-one. So if one is to think of a set — for instance, the set of people, or humanity — as counting as one the elements which belong to that set, it can then secure the multiple (the multiplicities of humans) as one consistent concept (humanity), but only in terms of what does not belong to that set. What is, in following, crucial for Badiou is that the structural form of the count-as-one, which makes multiplicities thinkable, implies that the proper name of being does not belong to an element as such (an original 'one'), but rather the void set (written Ø), the set to which nothing (not even the void set itself) belongs. It may help to understand the concept 'count-as-one' if it is associated with the concept of 'terming': a multiple is not one, but it is referred to with 'multiple': one word. To count a set as one is to mention that set. How the being of terms such as 'multiple' does not contradict the non-being of the one can be understood by considering the multiple nature of terminology: there being a term 'existing' without there also being a system of terminology within which there is difference between terms as context impleting any one term with meaning does not coincide with what is understood by 'terminology', which is precisely difference (thus multiplicity) conditioning meaning. Since the idea of conceiving of a term without meaning does not compute, the count-as-one is a structural effect or a situational operation and not an event of truth. Multiples which are 'composed' or 'consistent' are count-effects; inconsistent multiplicity is the presentation of presentation.

Badiou's use of set theory in this manner is not just illustrative or heuristic. Badiou uses the axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory to identify the relationship of being to history, Nature, the State, and God. Most significantly this use means that (as with set theory) there is a strict prohibition on self-belonging; a set cannot contain or belong to itself. Russell's paradox famously ruled that possibility out of formal logic. (This paradox can be thought through in terms of a 'list of lists that do not contain themselves': if such a list does not write itself on the list the property is incomplete, as there will be one missing; if it does, it is no longer a list that does not contain itself.) So too does the axiom of foundation — or to give an alternative name the axiom of regularity — enact such a prohibition (cf. p. 190 in Being and Event). (This axiom states that all sets contain an element for which only the void [empty] set names what is common to both the set and its element.) Badiou's philosophy draws two major implications from this prohibition. Firstly, it secures the inexistence of the 'one': there cannot be a grand overarching set, and thus it is fallacious to conceive of a grand cosmos, a whole Nature, or a Being of God. Badiou is therefore — against Cantor, from whom he draws heavily — staunchly atheist. However, secondly, this prohibition prompts him to introduce the event. Because, according to Badiou, the axiom of foundation 'founds' all sets in the void, it ties all being to the historico-social situation of the multiplicities of de-centred sets — thereby effacing the positivity of subjective action, or an entirely 'new' occurrence. And whilst this is acceptable ontologically (the axiom of foundation is not regarded as particularly useful in set theory), it is unacceptable, Badiou holds, philosophically. Set theory mathematics has consequently 'pragmatically abandoned' an area which philosophy cannot. And so, Badiou argues, there is therefore only one possibility remaining: that ontology can say nothing about the event. For other uses, see Heuristic (disambiguation). ... This article is about a logical statement. ... Part of the foundation of mathematics, Russells paradox (also known as Russells antinomy), discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory of Frege leads to a contradiction. ... The axiom of regularity (also known as the axiom of foundation) is one of the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. ... Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (March 3, 1845[1] – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician. ... Atheist redirects here. ...

The event and the subject

Drawing from November 18, 2006 "Truth procedure in politics" lecture

The principle of the event is where Badiou diverges from the majority of late twentieth century philosophy and social thought, and in particular the likes of Foucault, Butler, Lacan and Deleuze, among others. In short, it represents that which cannot be discerned in ontology. Badiou's problem here is, unsurprisingly, the question of how to 'make use' of that which cannot be discerned. But it is a problem he views as vital, because if one constructs the world only from that which can be discerned and therefore given a name, it results in either the destitution of subjectivity and the removal of the subject from ontology (the criticism continually leveled at Foucault's discursive universe), or the Panglossian solution of Leibniz: that God is language in its supposed completion. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1522x1189, 68 KB)a drawing by Alain Badiou, handed out during his Nov 18, 2006 lecture entitled Truth procedure in politics, with some original drawings held at the Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York City. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1522x1189, 68 KB)a drawing by Alain Badiou, handed out during his Nov 18, 2006 lecture entitled Truth procedure in politics, with some original drawings held at the Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York City. ... Michel Foucault (pronounced ) (October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher, historian and sociologist. ... Image:J Butler. ... Jacques Lacan Jacques Lacan (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was an influential French psychoanalyst as well as a structuralist who based much of his theories on Ferdinand de Saussures theories on language. ... Gilles Deleuze (January 18, 1925 - November 4, 1995) was a major French philosopher of the late 20th century. ... Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (July 1, 1646 in Leipzig - November 14, 1716 in Hannover) was a German philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat, librarian, and lawyer of Sorb descent. ...

Badiou again turns here to mathematics and set theory — Badiou's language of ontology — to study the possibility of an indiscernible element existing extrinsically to the situation of ontology. He employs the strategy of the mathematician Paul J. Cohen, using what are called the conditions of sets. These conditions are thought of in terms of domination, a domination being that which defines a set. (If one takes, in binary language, the set with the condition 'items marked only with ones', any item marked with zero negates the property of the set. The condition which has only ones is thus dominated by any condition which has zeros in it [cf. p. 367-71 in Being and Event].) Badiou reasons using these conditions that every discernible (nameable or constructible) set is dominated by the conditions which don't possess the property that makes it discernible as a set. (The property 'one' is always dominated by 'not one'.) These sets are, in line with constructible ontology, relative to one's being-in-the-world and one's being in language (where sets and concepts, such as the concept 'humanity', get their names). However, he continues, the dominations themselves are, whilst being relative concepts, not necessarily intrinsic to language and constructible thought; rather one can axiomatically define a domination — in the terms of mathematical ontology — as a set of conditions such that any condition outside the domination is dominated by at least one term inside the domination. One does not necessarily need to refer to constructible language to conceive of a 'set of dominations', which he refers to as the indiscernible set, or the generic set. It is therefore, he continues, possible to think beyond the strictures of the relativistic constructible universe of language, by a process Cohen calls forcing. And he concludes in following that while ontology can mark out a space for an inhabitant of the constructible situation to decide upon the indiscernible, it falls to the subject — about which the ontological situation cannot comment — to nominate this indiscernible, this generic point; and thus nominate, and give name to, the undecidable event. Badiou thereby marks out a philosophy by which to refute the apparent relativism or apoliticism in post-structuralist thought. Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007[1]) was an American mathematician. ... In axiomatic set theory, forcing is a technique, invented by Paul Cohen, for proving consistency and independence results with respect to the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms. ...

Badiou's ultimate ethical maxim is therefore one of: 'decide upon the undecidable'. It is to name the indiscernible, the generic set, and thus name the event that re-casts ontology in a new light. He identifies four domains by which a subject (who, it is important to note, becomes a subject through this process) nominates and maintains fidelity to an event: love, science, politics and art. By enacting fidelity to the event within these four domains one performs a 'generic procedure', which in its undecideability is necessarily experimental, and one potentially recasts the situation in which being takes place.

In line with his concept of the event, Badiou maintains, politics is not about politicians, but activism based on the present situation and the 'evental' (his translators' neologism) rupture. So too does love have this characteristic of becoming anew. Even in science the guesswork that marks the event is prominent. He vigorously rejects the tag of 'decisionist' (the idea that once something is decided it 'becomes true'), but rather argues that the recasting of a truth comes prior to its veracity or verifiability. As he says of Galileo (p. 401): Galileo can refer to: Galileo Galilei, astronomer, philosopher, and physicist (1564 - 1642) the Galileo spacecraft, a NASA space probe that visited Jupiter and its moons the Galileo positioning system Life of Galileo, a play by Bertolt Brecht Galileo (1975) - screen adaptation of the play Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht...

When Galileo announced the principle of inertia, he was still separated from the truth of the new physics by all the chance encounters that are named in subjects such as Descartes or Newton. How could he, with the names he fabricated and displaced (because they were at hand — ‘movement’, ‘equal proportion’, etc.), have supposed the veracity of his principle for the situation to-come that was the establishment of modern science; that is, the supplementation of his situation with the indiscernible and unfinishable part that one has to name ‘rational physics’?

Badiou, whilst keen to stress the non-equivalence between politics and philosophy, thus finds his political approach — one of activism, militancy, and scepticism of parliamentary-democratic process — backed up by his philosophy based around singular, situated truths, and potential revolutions.

Simon Critchley on ethics
Politics of Resistance in the Contemporary World

At a time of widespread economic crisis and growing social instability, critical thought and practice can work to address the political nihilism that results in an apparent poverty of alternatives. What figures, relationships, and models of praxis still have relevance and possibility within our situation? Drawing on current attempts to rethink convergences between cultural practices, political agency and philosophy around matters of concern to us all, and motivated more broadly by an examination of correspondences between philosophy and culture, the Event Research Group will stage an afternoon of presentations and discussion that takes as its point of departure philosopher Simon Critchley’s important contributions to contemporary problems concerning ethics and political resistance.

Participants include: Simon Critchley (Keynote); Sinead Hogan; Aislinn O’Donnell; Shane Cullen and Declan Clarke.