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Philosophy in the Present

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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.

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.

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.

A dialogue between two eminent stars of Philosophy: Badiou and Zizek, which took place in Vienna, is largely a throwaway text. With the exception of Badiou's talk, "Thinking the Event," this discussion was largely a reiteration of so many agreements and generalizations. Yet Badiou's paper is truly excellent; he succinctly his 8 theses on philosophy and is able to situate his political commitments in relation to what he calls "the event." Badiou has emerged as a major thinker over the course of the last 20 years, and this brief paper can be read as a fine introduction to his work. Unfortunately, Zizek's talk, "Philosophy is Not a Dialogue," is an embarrassing sequence of tangents and barely half-boiled cultural observations. Moreover, the conversations between the two is lukewarm-they affirm their major agreements, but fail to really ignite any meaningful dialogue.

This little book was published in German in 2005, and then translated into English and published in 2009 by Polity Press. As anyone who has read much of Zizek is well aware, Badiou is a name that he often cites and indeed, in the present book, he reveals that he reads every single one of Badiou's books and that "every new work of his leaves a trace in mine." This short book is a perfectly designed introduction to the basic ideas of Badiou, which center around a philosophy of the Event.

The book opens with a lecture by Badiou entitled "Thinking the Event," and there we learn just what the term means for Badiou: that an Event in his sense constitutes a rupture within an existing state of things in which novelty is announced. The Event is that which, when it appears within a situation of what Badiou terms 'encyclopedic knowledge,' comes down decisively on what is generally regarded as undecidable. Within current encyclopedic knowledge, for existence, the idea of God is undecidable: that he exists or does not exist cannot be stated with certainty either way. But a Truth Event would represent a singularity in which a decisive position on this stance, or upon any other undecidable, would be taken.

The Event constitutes and creates a subjectivity in which and through which the event is manifested as a universal singularity. The subject then demonstrates a 'fidelity' to this event which actualizes it through the performance of acts which have the effect of stabilizing and establishing the event as a new cultural horizon (although this can also occur in the spheres of love, science, politics, or art). The French Revolution would be an example of such an event; or October 1917, or May '68. Indeed, any cultural novelty which manifests and has a fundamental historical significance for the shaping of a culture would seem to be implied here.

Badiou's theory could cover, for instance, the birth of a new religion: with the advent of Islam, for instance, all the parameters would seem to be met. He is talking, in short, about not just any sort of event, but those events, specifically, which inaugurate new historical, social or cultural epochs, or the equivalent of such epochs in the life of an individual (a love encounter would be included in this, for instance). They are events which change the entire subsequent course of the system.

Badiou's philosophy is brilliant and ingenious; he provides us with nothing less than a philosophical accounting for paradigm shifts.

Zizek then responds to Badiou with a talk on how "Philosophy is Not a Dialogue," and indeed, proceeds to demonstrate this by the fact that little of what Zizek actually says in his talk seems to have any relation to Badiou's lecture. Zizek discusses the nature and role of philosophy in the world, and whether and how it should intervene in socio-political affairs. The contrast between the styles of the two thinkers is instructive, for whereas Badiou is very specific and linear, developing his argument in classical Gutenbergian first-one-point-then-another style, Zizek is all over the map, as is usually the case with him. He is completely incapable of developing a thesis, for his attention is scattershot, and he articulates himself in an everything-all-at-once barrage. His logic is not always easy to follow, but this is both his strength and his weakness, for he is never boring as a result: the reader never knows where he's going next, and is usually delightfully surprised by the result. This book is no exception.

The two conclude with a brief back and forth discussion in which they agree that the content of philosophy is not humanistic but deals with the inhuman. The capacity for the infinite--and therefore with the inhuman--is ultimately, they insist, what philosophy is concerned with.

At 104 pages, the book is short and can be read in an hour. I highly recommend that the reader acquire the book, read it, review it, write about it, digest it, or at the very least, throw it against the wall.

SEE ALSO MY YOUTUBE VIDEO "ALAIN BADIOU'S ETHICS DISCUSSED BY JOHN DAVID EBERT"

--John David Ebert, author of "The New Media Invasion" (McFarland 2011)