Digressions&Impressions

On Being Pleasantly Surprised, Even Moved By Badiou

We have to get away from the obsession with language. Speech is of vital importance, but is is caught up in its multiform correlation with the integrality of affirmative experience, and has no constituent syntactic power. To confuse philosophy with grammar or with an inventory of rules is aberrational. Let us abandon, like an old corpse, the idea that natural form of thought is judgment. And above all, do not judge: that is a good axiom for thought.--Alain Badiou on "Gilles Deleuze" (ca 2005) in Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy. Translated by David Macey (2009), p. 117.

As regular readers know, I have a soft-spot for some of the thinkers (e.g., Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze) most reviled by the opinion-leaders of the school in which I learned the toolbox of my profession. But I have never grown fond of Badiou; I find his Maoism abhorrent; his use of set-theory mostly comical. I dislike his writing style (see the first sentence above). But I have a grudging respect for his reading of Spinoza, yet it does not teach you anything you wouldn't know if you read the Ethics carefully. In addition, he once embarrassed friends by not honoring a commitment to headline a conference, too. 

In other words, I don't know what madness possessed me to shell out five British pounds for Pocket Pantheon when Verso had a fire sale. Once I opened the book, I saw he had entertained the thought to call the collection "Funeral Orations,"* but was (luckily) discouraged from using it. The book is a series of "tributes" that jointly function as an introduction to the amazing flowering of  what we may call an affirmative philosophy in Paris from the 1930s to the 1980s.+ A philosophy that was clearly haunted by the heroism, courage, and austerity of Jean Cavaillès, and, in the context of military defeat, the strife of decolonization, and the surprising period of economic growth, adopted Nietzsche as the starting points to overcome Heidegger and Schmitt and the baleful choices they made on behalf of philosophy. And, yet...

I really expected to dislike Badiou's essays--I was expecting him to insert himself into the narrative, becoming the magnetic center of the stars he describes. But Badiou is capable, in fact, of removing himself from the scene of thought, of ignoring his own aspirations; he turns out to be generous and insightful readers of others, capable of (ahh) expressing those he describes and revealing their individuality. All of his essays are invitations to re-readings of the works in light of the lives. 

The quote above is the fourth lesson he ascribes to Deleuze. How to prevent thought from becoming judgment is no easy matter, especially because so much philosophy one encounters casually is about finding justifications for divisive judgment (as the conclusion of an irrefutable argument, a decisive thought experiment, a norm of assertion, etc.).

All writing and reading runs the risk of leading the thought of another.

In Badiou's hands this -- this avoidance of ruling over others, and being ruled by others -- is, in part, the significance of Derrida's method.  The (2005) tribute to Derrida is a virtuoso, touching performance in which he shows the political significance of Derrida's method. Derrida's (metaphysical and methodological) obsession with the non-existent, with the outer edge of vanishing points, where texts show slippage, is revealed as being about the nature of true peace, which is "based upon an agreement" about "that which non-exists," (138). 

Rather than defend Derrida and this reading of Derrida here, I'll just encourage you to reflect on that highest thought; and if you glimpse its potential to go locate Badiou's Pantheon of fourteen lives.

And with that, I wish you a lovely Summer break. I hope  these digressions return in August.

 

 

 

Historicizing the Collapse of Kantianism; on Speculative Realism and Knee-Jerk Realism

In 2007 or so, Continental philosophy caught up with the knee-jerk-realist-mood of Analytical metaphysics (recall here), when the four horsemen (Meillasoux, Harman, Brassier, and Hamilton Grant) of Speculative Realism were united in order to reject the Kantian heritage (or correlationism) which had constrained and informed the tradition through phenomenology and its critics. (I learned about this movement from Cogburn here and here.) If we telescope away from the inner logic of technical arguments and rhetorical gestures that led to such rejection, we can still ask the question what might such rejection signify given that it occurs on both sides of the analytical/continental divide?

Kant and Kantianizing tendencies made the intellectual world safe for science while respecting our human craving for the existence of normativity, human freedom, and a mindful God worth having. At bottom Kant's project respects cognitive limits by pleasing our ego's vanity; Kantianism reconciles the individual to being law-governed. Its demise marks the assertion of two opposing tendencies: a self-confident theism -- one that does not hide itself in fideism -- and a self-confident scientism. Obviously, these two tendencies need not be opposed which is why they can act so much in concert.

The theists take heart from the fact that secularization is not inevitable. It exposes the inner contradiction at heart of narratives of modernity, which purport to reject providence and final causes while embracing a myth of progress. Religion is, in fact, not dying off with the aged brought up in fading traditions. In fact, in a world in which capitalism and modern technologies make old linkages and boundaries seem obsolete, transnational, theistic religions, which offer the promise of transcendent justice and order are manifestly attractive to many young.  That is to say, while most Christian Metaphysicians are happy to focus on Christianizing metaphysics, they benefit from the renewed vitality of a sincere, political Islam in the face of centuries of colonialism and political defeats.  

The scientistic or technocratic double down on accelerating technological change fueled by both an open-ended scientific process as well as the massive stream of data and the availability of cheap computing power that can handle it.* They are exhilarated by the universal acids lurking in the sciences which respect no imposed limits. The scientistic embrace meritocracy and are at home with the selection procedures and the implicit cultural superiority or genetic hierarchies that accompanies it. Massive economic and educational inequality is, then, both the material and ideological source of their confidence as well as a feature that demands technocratic amelioration.

That is to say, both streams are at bottom not liberal (but not necessarily illiberal), which is about the individual's submission to impartial law which, in turn, recognizes the individual, even though they are the consequence of the victory of liberalism marked by 1989. Each stream can be reconciled with liberalism, but their tendencies ultimately strive toward the absolute (not just understood as God or the PSR, but also absolute contingency, etc.). This is undoubtedly apt for an age of unfolding man-made environmental catastrophes. 

On a Joke, in an Educated Age

The world needs philosophy more than philosophy thinks. Philosophy is ill, it might be dying, but I am sure that the world (the world, neither a God nor a prophet, but the world) is saying to philosophy: ‘Get up and walk!’ (Alain Badiou 2003a)

I must purify myself. Now for those whose offense lies in telling false stories about matters divine, there is an ancient rite of purification--Homer did not know it, but Stesichorus did. When he lost his sight for speaking ill of Helen, he did not, like Homer, remain in the dark about the reason why. On the contrary, true follower of  the Muses that he was, he understood it and immediately composed these lines:

There is no truth to that story,

You never sailed that lovely ship,

You never reached the tower of Troy

As soon as he completed the poem we call the Palinode ["the recantation,"] he immediately regained his sight. Now I will prove to be wiser than Homer and Stesichorus to this small extent.--Plato, Phaedrus (243a-b). [Translated by Nehemas & Woodruff as reprinted in the Cooper (ed) Plato: Complete Works.]

There is a medical condition, informally known as 'hysterical blindness;'* somebody's physiology and neurology works well, but the patient reports blindness. The syndrome is often induced by stress or an accident (see here on Wikipedia). It's a tricky syndrome to treat for the attending physician because, as Wikipedia,puts it, "attributing physical symptoms to a psychological cause is not accepted by many educated people in western cultures."