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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Badiou and Zizek's Agreement, April 1, 2010
This review is from: Philosophy in the Present (Paperback)
I found this little book fascinating. It it two very different thinkers clearly agree about how philosophy intervenes in contemporary political situations. For both Badiou and Zizek philosophy does not answer the questions posed in contemporary debates (whom to vote for), rather it radically challenges the questions themselves by posing new questions (Is Democracy itself the real problem?) Some familiarity with their pointed disagreements on other questions is probably necessary to get the most out of this little book... if only to appreciate how interesting it is that here they so pointedly agree.
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Categories and universals, May 3, 2010
This review is from: Philosophy in the Present (Paperback)
A book of 100 pages, lacking any list of references or index, this is an interesting, readable discussion (Vienna in 2004) between two academics have not been discouraged by "post-modern" cultural relativism. Alain Badiou is former Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris; and Slavoj Zizek is Professor of Sociology, Ljubjana. They discuss philosophy in the post-modern era. The post-modern era is the era of Kant, who turned intelllectuals away from both physical and metaphysical absolutism. Without absolutes, everybody is today supposedly left in the position of today's academic establishment: hopeless cultural relativists, who expect science to create utopia, find all values transient, and rejoice (or lament) that religion and philosophy are "fading away." In contrast to this academic discouragement, Badiou says that philosophy, far from fading away, defines universals. Universals are defined when we confront incommensurable events, like the confrontation of freedom and politics that resulted in the death of Socrates. Every universal is an "evental," a decision that originates about an undecidable. An example of such an "evental" is `illegal immigrant.' Every universal is an implication, "univocal," and incomplete or open. For instance, `revolution' became a universal in the French Revolution in the subject-thought of the acts. Because universals are incomplete or open, they are "infinite generic multiples." Badiou offers a distinction between religion as grounded in the problem of life and philosophy as grounded in the problem of death. He offers an example: "The latent violence, the presumptuous arrogance inherent in the currently prevalent conception of human rights derives from the fact that these are actually the rights of finitude and ultimately -- as the insistent theme of democratic euthanasia indicates -- the rights of death. By way of contrast, the evental concept of universal singularities...requires that human rights be thought of as the rights of the infinite." (46) This distinction is not developed, yet it portrays rather nicely how philosophy is grounded in identifying contradiction. Zizek agrees the assertion that "we have lost belief" is a pseudo-debate because today we believe more than ever. Science is not merely a language game -- it deals with the "unschematized real." For instance, the first post-Communist Slovenian currency had no name -- just denominations. Issuing a currency composed solely of denominations reveals belief. Philosophy is not critique but affirmation. For example, war is to be supported not for the destruction but for the affirmation of putting an end to evil. (Badiou) Both philosophers are unembarrassed by their ideological positions and explore quite clearly the cybernetic control that philosophy exerts over ideology in a bright, interesting discussion.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Philosophy as incommensurable universality..., November 14, 2010
This review is from: Philosophy in the Present (Paperback)
Has philosophy become irrelevant in public debate? Was it ever relevant? Who now looks to philosophers for advice in times of trouble? Once upon a time the thoughts of John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, or AJ Ayer would grace newspapers, television shows or films. Especially in America, the appearance of a philosopher in almost any mainstream event is cause for celebration. Even Steven Hawking's latest book boldly claims (though somewhat disingenuously) that "philosophy is dead." So whence philosophy? Does the love of wisdom's ancient whale lay dessicated on the shoreline? Has our age seen the passing of the once deemed grandest of all subjects? Strange that two figures that sometimes loom prominently in the European media would face off to tackle such issues. Slavov Zizek (sometimes called "the Elvis of critical theory") has appeared on television,cable and voluminous YouTube clips (seeing that YouTube has indubitably entered the realm of mass media). To a lesser degree, one can find Alain Badiou's image on talk shows, news shows and YouTube. Not only that, both often seem to field questions about current events. This seems to belie the basic message of this short volume, "Philosophy in the Present." Though neither seems to feel that "philosophy is dead," they nonetheless place limits on philosophy's scope and authority. The speakers take turns and end with a discussion. Both apologize profusely about their constant agreement on the subject matter. No debate really ensues. Badiou begins and delineates his idea of the role philosophy should play in the present. Using three intriguing examples, Callicles versus Socrates in Plato's "Gorgias," the death of Archimedes and a 1954 Japanese film translated as "the Crucified Lovers." Badiou locates philosophy in the paradoxical or the incommensurable, exemplified by each example. First, when two sides cannot meet. Callicles and Socrates represent polar opposites. Agreeing with both or finding a compromise seems impossible. Second, authority and creative thought have no common measure. Archimedes gets struck down by a Roman soldier who attempts to summon the great mathematician to his superiors to no avail. Lastly, like the two lovers in the Japanese film, love and the bounds of society also have a "relationless relation." Badiou does not make (much) room for politics in the philosophical space he delineates. Politics, to him - and he gives an example of parlimentarianism - does not imbue incommensurability. One side (today's winner) will eventually give way to the other (tomorrow's winner), so a "philosophical situation" does not arise. Curiously, he categorizes the American Iraq war (then occurring) as a philosophical situation, but the war of 1914-18 war between France and Germany as not one. The former involves a superpower versus a third world country (no common measure and the issue of choice), the latter involved two superpowers. Badiou also adds a theory of universality to his notion of the incommensurable philosophical situation. He outlines it in eight theses that comprise the most difficult part of the book. Anyone not familiar with the Badiouian lexicon may find themselves lost in these some 22 pages. By comparison, Zizek's talk meanders, though not in a pejorative sense. Where Badiou lays out his arguments in a fairly straightforward linear fashion, Zizek jumps from place to place but nonetheless gives a provocative presentation. He agrees that not (much) room exists for politics in philosophy. One function he claims for philosophy is changing the concepts of a debate when a choice presents false alternatives (or a Deleuzian "disjunctive synthesis"). For example, Badiou, Zizek claims, has helped change the concepts of a debate on communication between Derrida and Habermas: "Otherness is not the problem, but rather, the Same." Then on to virtual reality. Against postmodernists who flit from reality to reality, and more conservative types who bemoan virtual reality's "inauthenticity," Zizek claims that the real interest in the "debate" lies not in virtual reality, but in the "reality of the virtual." Other examples follow, such as hedonism, which branches off into an excoriation of New Age reactions. Then totalitarianism and its sources upon which Zizek decries the ban on analyzing horrors such as the Holocaust: "we are only allowed to witness them, any explanation would be a betrayal of the victims..." Habermasian "state philosophy" then receives a pummeling for allegedly interfering in the biogenetic debate. Such a philosophy, to Zizek, celebrates science while keeping the traditional moral balance in order. Nothing changes while everything changes. Next, after adumbrating the various ways philosophy has melded with politics (in revolutions, literature, etc.), Zizek claims that perhaps philosophy "is abnormality par excellence." Philosophy, then, embodies a certain foreignness or displacement. Citing Kant, Zizek's final point involves universality, a la Badiou, in embracing the idea that "you can be a human without first being German, French, English, etc." The singular universal. Zizek sees this as Kant's most enduring legacy. The discussion builds on these themes while both speakers continue to bemoan their agreements. "God, it's becoming boring," Zizek fulminates at one point. Kant reappears and receives praise for his idea of juxtaposing the limits of reason with an excess of humanity in practical reason (not in delimiting the bounds of reason itself). The undead, political correctness, the fallout from Zizek's book on Lenin and the meaning of democracy today also receive attention. Following a few questions from the audience, Zizek aptly concludes by saying that with Badiou he feels "as Ribbentrop said to Molotov during his trip to Moscow in 1939 - 'amongst comrades.'" This book provides a decent introduction to both Badiou and Zizek, despite the difficulty of a few sections. The demarcations of philosophy's boundaries may echo with anathema to some (particularly to those not of the "Continental" persuasion), but they nonetheless provide additional arguments for the perennial question "what is philosophy?" It may seem paradoxical, but both of these dominant figures in contemporary philosophy posit a limited role for their field. But their machinations only represent one perspective on the role of the now ancient practice of loving wisdom. In any case, they present a framework that needs to be dealt with when delineating one's own philosophical boundaries.
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