Badiou & Žižek - Is Lacan An Anti-Philosopher? (Complete)
Debate · Ippolit Belinski ·
2010-05-28 · 2:49:38 · 18,302 words
with Alain Badiou
philosophy-generalpsychoanalysiscinema-art-cultureideologygeopolitics-warsubjectivitycommunism-socialismcapitalismrace-antisemitismfascism-populism
Žižek analyzes the BP oil spill and Ted Kennedy’s offshore drilling scandal as examples of the 'Irma’s injection' structure, where the Real (disaster) collapses into the ridiculous (symbolic blame-shifting). He then engages in a dialectical debate with Alain Badiou on 'anti-philosophy,' arguing that while Badiou’s four truth procedures map onto German Idealism, the core anti-philosophical gesture, opposing representation to productive presence, is flawed. Žižek posits that Lacan’s 'anti-philosophy' is distinct because it locates the crack in philosophy’s harmony in jouissance, and he concludes by reinterpreting art and language not as transparent disclosure (Heidegger) but as a necessary 'torture' of language to extract truth. Žižek engages in a dense theoretical debate with a interlocutor (likely Alain Badiou) regarding the nature of the subject, language, and philosophy. He argues for a 'non-anti-philosophical' reading of Lacan, positing that the subject is defined by being 'tortured by language' (the symbolic) rather than existing outside it, and that the Real is merely the deadlock of symbolization. He critiques Heidegger for missing this dimension, reinterprets the Cartesian cogito as an empty set, and distinguishes his own view of the death drive and anxiety from the interlocutor's 'truth event' and 'human animal' categories. Žižek engages in a dialectical exchange with an interlocutor (likely a mathematician or physicist) regarding ontology, the nature of the void, and the role of theory in political struggle. He critiques the 'beautiful soul' position of remaining outside the state, defends the necessity of university knowledge against neoliberal pragmatism, and analyzes the Greek crisis as a failure of leftist theory that risks leading to right-wing nationalism. He argues for international solidarity over national withdrawal and insists that theory is essential to guide political action. Žižek argues that capitalism is a 'meaningless formula' or neutral machine that functions independently of cultural meaning, rejecting Eurocentric and 'alternate modernity' narratives. He contends that anti-imperialist rhetoric often serves to obscure class struggle, using Zimbabwe and the caste system in India as examples of elites using racial or cultural identity to legitimize their power. He concludes by criticizing the 'harmonic capitalism' dream of non-Western nations and comparing contemporary political dynamics to the historical failure of fascism as an 'alternate modernity.'
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 34
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
A structural model derived from Freud’s dream of Irma’s injection, describing a movement from the traumatic Real (horror) to the ridiculous symbolic failure (faked arguments/blame-shifting).
Badiou’s four domains where truth events occur: science, politics, art, and love; Žižek maps these onto Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel respectively.
The core opposition in anti-philosophy: the desire to escape the 'closed circle of representation' (ideology/philosophy) to access a direct, unmediated 'productive presence' (real life, existence, will).
as “peuple (the non-representable)”
Hegel’s notion of the 'peuple' (people) as the non-representable element that escapes parliamentary representation, a precursor to the anti-philosophical critique of representation.
Lacan’s specific anti-philosophical insight: the crack in the pre-established harmony between Being and Logos (thinking/speaking) is not logical but affective, introduced by the excess of jouissance (death drive).
The question that all philosophy escapes: the relation between the emergence of the signifier and the way jouissance relates to being.
Žižek’s reinterpretation of Lacan: contrary to Heidegger’s 'house of being,' language is a traumatic discord where we are 'tortured' by the signifier; truth must be extracted by 'torturing' language (poetry/cinema) rather than trusting its transparency.
as “subject tortured by language”
The Lacanian subject is not a modern Cartesian master of the world, but one who suffers from the symbolic order; a dimension Heidegger misses.
as “position in between the two deaths”
The symbolic death (burial/exclusion) that defines Antigone, distinct from biological life, corresponding to Agamben's homo sacer.
Late Lacan's return to the identity of cogito and being, but as an empty set: pure thinking without content coinciding with pure being without content.
Violence that breaks through language to universality, contrasted with Heidegger's 'staatsbildend' (state-creating) violence of poetry.
as “object small a as fossil”
The 'fossil' or debt that breaks the transcendental correlation is not external reality, but objet petit a, which is 'here in me'.
as “women are purely within the symbolic order”
A paradoxical reading of Lacan's 'not-all': women are more fully in the symbolic order because there is no exception outside it, whereas men have a 'leg' outside.
as “Real as deadlock of symbolization”
The Real is not a Kantian 'in-itself' outside language, but literally the failure/deadlock within the symbolic order itself.
A necessary third domain between 'truth procedures' and 'animal life' (utilitarian existence), which must be 'de-imaginarized' into self-relating negativity.
A philosophical position that rejects the self-sufficiency of philosophy, seeking to break out of representation into a direct, productive presence or singular life (associated with Badiou, Kierkegaard, Marx, Schopenhauer).
as “incompleteness of reality”
The epistemological limitation of knowledge should be ontologized as the radical incompleteness of reality itself, not just finitude.
An ontology where things exist fully and positively outside our minds, which Žižek opposes, aligning instead with the lesson of quantum physics that things are not fully constituted.
The idea that reality exists fully out there and we gradually but never perfectly approach it, which Žižek rejects in favor of a materialist ontology where reality is not fully constituted.
A reading of multiplicity and void as phenomena against a zero primordial abyss, which Žižek rejects as 'oriental bullshit' in favor of a void defined by obstacle, failure, and catastrophe.
Žižek's conception of the void, not as a peaceful background, but as an obstacle and failure that generates the two (the dialectical split).
Observing reality through the lenses of an eternal idea (communism) to judge current events, which Žižek advocates as a necessary theoretical stance.
A Hegelian concept used to describe the position of remaining outside the state and its conflicts, which Žižek critiques as too comfortable and complicit with domination.
as “pseudo-emergency state”
The prevailing ideological discourse that creates a sense of guilt for intellectuals (e.g., 'people are starving in Africa') to delegitimize critical theory and enforce pragmatic action.
Politics that merely seeks to restore old privileges or the welfare state without a transformative theory, exemplified by the Greek protests.
The necessary counter-force to international capital, opposing the trap of withdrawing into the nation-state.
The romantic leftist desire for direct action without theory, which Žižek argues is dangerous and insufficient.
Capitalism is defined not by its cultural content (European, Jewish, etc.) but as a self-reproducing market mechanism that functions like a mathematical formula, resisting translation into everyday meaning or 'worldliness.'
as “the real of capitalism”
The irreducible gap between the functioning of the market mechanism and attempts to provide it with cultural or religious meaning; touching this 'real' means accepting capitalism's neutrality.
The political project of non-Western nations (China, India) to develop capitalism along their own cultural lines; Žižek identifies this as a dangerous illusion that masks class struggle, equating it historically with fascism.
as “capitalism without the price”
The desire, prevalent in 'alternate modernity' theories, to enjoy the benefits of capitalism (industrialization, growth) while avoiding its inherent social antagonisms and inequalities through cultural or religious buffers.
The contradictory ideal promoted by authoritarian regimes (like China's 'harmonious society') to combine capitalist efficiency with social stability, which Žižek dismisses as impossible bullshit.
as “polycentric world”
A geopolitical reality where the US is no longer the sole hegemon, allowing for 'new economic post-colonialism' by other powers (like China in Myanmar), complicating simple anti-imperialist narratives.
A strategic ideological move by new ruling elites (e.g., in Zimbabwe) to obfuscate internal class confrontation by blaming external Western imperialism, thereby maintaining power without addressing economic inequality.
Stories he reaches for 4
Žižek jokes about being called 'Fidel' because he talks too much, referencing Fidel Castro's famously long speeches in Cuba that caused panic among listeners about whether he was dying.
“this is why french call me fidel... when i was there, fidel gave a speech which lasted two hours, and everybody was in a panic”
Žižek compares film directors Eisenstein (cutting/montage) and Tarkovsky (slow stretching) to two torturers asking 'what's the better way to squeeze out the truth?' illustrating that all art is a mode of 'torturing' language.
“imagine a debate between eisenstein and tarkovsky. it's like two torturers. what's the better way to squeeze out the truth?”
Žižek argues fascism was the 20th century's 'alternate modernity': an attempt to have capitalism's industrial benefits without social antagonisms, achieved through anti-semitism (scapegoating) rather than systemic change.
“fascism was precisely alternate modernity. the idea basic idea of fascism is we can have. all good that capitalism brings... without paying the price for it”
A Republican senator jokes that Senator Kennedy, who opposed offshore drilling, changed his position after being caught in a love boat; the senator quips, 'the only offshore drilling that should be allowed is the one that Kennedy was involved in.'
“the only offshore drilling that should be allowed is the one that kennedy was involved in.”
Works invoked 12
Antigone play
Lacan's reading of Antigone is praised for emphasizing the 'position in between the two deaths,' a feature absent in Heidegger's readings.
The German Ideology book
Cited as 'the worst Marx,' representing a 'closed circle of representation' that Žižek thinks should be abandoned.
Being and Time book
Heidegger's work; criticized for describing 'Dasein' as 'good for neurotics' but failing to cover the psychotic position.
Logics of Worlds book
The interlocutor's (Badiou's) work; cited for the question of how the Word emerges from the 'stupidity of the real.'
New Left Review journal
Cited for its editorial board flirting with supporting Václav Klaus to oppose the EU, illustrating a catastrophic political error.
Lenin's work, which Popper admired; Žižek critiques its 'asymptotic notion of truth' but respects its materialist stance.
Encore (Seminar XX) book
One of Lacan's last seminars; Žižek views the period from 'Anxiety' to 'Encore' as Lacan's top, but later years as 'gradual disintegration.'
Levinas’s book, cited as 'one of the great books of anti-philosophy,' but Žižargues its critique of Hegel/Heidegger fails because it cannot escape the horizon of Being.
Freud’s dream, used by Žižek as a structural model for analyzing the transition from the Real (horror) to the symbolic (ridiculous blame-shifting).
Refers to the period of Lacan's seminars from 'Anxiety at the Heart of the Human Condition' to 'Encore,' which Žižek considers his peak.
Lacan's seminar; cited as the place where Lacan returns to the identity of cogito and being as an empty set.
Lacan’s 1966 seminar, cited for the quote challenging philosophers to account for the relation between the signifier and jouissance.
People invoked 43
Referenced in an anecdote about long speeches; Žižek implies a personal familiarity or nickname ('Fidel') derived from his own verbosity.
François Balmès positive
An ex-colleague of Badiou, cited for his studies on Lacan, emphasizing the 'great mystery' of why Lacan stuck to the notion of the subject.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte positive
Mapped to the condition of 'politics' (French Revolution) in Žižek’s four-condition schema.
Robert Mugabe negative
Žižek argues Mugabe's regime is a case of the new black elite 'playing the race card' to avoid class confrontation, despite giving him a chance initially.
Blaise Pascal positive
Cited as someone who 'clearly situated himself outside philosophy' and is a precursor to anti-philosophy.
Jacques Derrida positive
Žižek praises Derrida as a 'good anti-philosopher' when he critiques direct anti-philosophical breaks (Bataille, Foucault, Levinas), showing how they remain determined by the field they undermine.
Used in an anecdote/joke about being caught in a love boat, which a Republican senator uses to mock his opposition to offshore drilling.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Žižek expresses admiration for Lenin, specifically 'materialism and empirical criticism,' despite disagreeing with its asymptotic notion of truth.
Emmanuel Levinas negative
Cited as a major anti-philosopher ('Totality and Infinity'), but Žižek argues his critique of Hegel/Heidegger fails because it reduces Being to a naive positive reality and cannot escape the horizon of Being.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek presents Lacan as the key figure in anti-philosophy, specifically locating the 'anti-philosophical point' in Lacan’s concept of jouissance and the death drive, which introduces a crack in philosophy’s harmony.
Identified as Lacan's 'last official mistress' and object of affection, mentioned in the context of Miller's claims about Lacan's dying words.
Transcribed as 'hner or whatever'; mentioned as a BP subcontractor representative who blamed others.
Georges Bataille positive
Cited via Derrida’s reading as someone who tries to enact the anti-philosophical gesture (against Hegelian sovereignty) but remains determined by the field.
George H. W. Bush positive
Ironically praised for his 'wonderful job' of diminishing US hegemony, creating a polycentric world that complicates simple anti-imperialist narratives.
Alain Badiou positive
The person Žižek is debating; referred to as 'you', 'balalmesh', 'balalmmes'. Žižek agrees with his rejection of finitude and discourse analysis but disagrees on the 'truth event' vs 'death drive'.
Giorgio Agamben positive
Referenced for the concept of 'homo sacer' and the 'position in between the two deaths' (symbolic vs. biological death).
Mentioned as 'Spinoza' (transcribed as 'selling privilegesges art' or similar) in the context of philosophers who no longer want to be called philosophy.
Adrian Johnston positive
Cited for his reading of Badiou, emphasizing that philosophy cannot stand on its own but must attach itself to a condition.
Arthur Schopenhauer positive
Cited as part of the 'anti-hegelian turn' (young Schopenhauer), representing the 'primordial irrational pre-logical abyss of willing.'
Richard Feynman positive
Cited as the source of the quantum physics analogy regarding formulas working without understanding.
Michel Foucault positive
Cited via Derrida’s reading as someone who tries to enact the anti-philosophical gesture (against Cartesian cogito) but remains determined by the field.
Cited as taking over Levinas’s idea that even Heidegger remains within philosophy, insisting on breaking through to the 'infinite radical otherness of god' beyond Being.
Elfriede Jelinek positive
Žižek states 'I don't like Elfriede Jelinek. her style is too dirty for me' but agrees with her phrase that 'language should be tortured to tell the truth.'
Martin Heidegger negative
Žižek critiques Heidegger’s 'hermeneutic trust' in language as the 'house of being,' arguing instead for Lacan’s view of language as a 'torture house' and noting Heidegger remains too much within philosophy.
Jacques-Alain Miller negative
Criticized for a 'liberal reinterpretation' of Lacan as a 'wise man' and for the idea of a 'last wisdom' in Lacan's final years.
Bill Gates negative
Cited as an example of the discourse that justifies neglecting theory by claiming 'people are starving in Africa'.
Cited as part of the opposition to Eisenstein, representing a 'passive attitude of just filming.'
Václav Klaus negative
Identified as a 'pure neoliberaleral right winger' and President of the Czech Republic, used as an example of the trap of nationalism.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling positive
Mapped to the condition of 'art' in Žižek’s four-condition schema; also cited as part of the 'anti-hegelian turn' (late Schelling).
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited for his distinction between 'staatsbildend' (state-creating) and 'staatzerstörend' (state-destroying/divine) violence.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Cited as part of the 'anti-hegelian turn,' where philosophy is denounced for its abstract representation and replaced by the 'unique existence of religious individuals.'
Referred to as 'our good friend' who accused Žižek of inconsistency regarding political strategy (doing nothing vs. revolutionary act).
Barack Obama negative
Described as appearing 'a little bit of a clown' for claiming BP would pay every cent of the oil spill damage, which Žižek calls 'ridiculous.'
Sergei Eisenstein positive
Cited as a film director who 'tortures' language through cutting and montage.
Karl Popper negative
Described as a 'ferocious anti-communist' who nonetheless admired Lenin's 'Materialism and Empirical Criticism'; Žižek rejects Popper's asymptotic truth.
Hugo Chávez negative
Žižek expresses distrust, suggesting Chávez comes 'too close' to the dangerous idea of 'alternate modernity' (capitalism without social antagonisms).
Andrei Tarkovsky positive
Cited as a film director who 'tortures' language through slow stretching (passive filming).
Karl Marx positive
Cited as part of the 'anti-hegelian turn'; Žižek critiques the 'German Ideology' version of Marx for its 'masturbation' metaphor but agrees with the anti-philosophical critique of representation.
René Descartes negative
Used as a foil for the modern Cartesian subject; Lacan is said to be 'against Descartes' but also to return to the cogito in a negative way.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited as the source of the 'dream of Irma’s injection,' which Žižek uses as a structural model for analyzing the BP oil spill and symbolic failure.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek argues Hegel is the unique point 'no longer philosopher... but not yet anti-philosopher,' mapping him to 'love' and citing his notion of the 'peuple' as the non-representable.
Immanuel Kant positive
Used to map the 'four conditions of truth' onto German Idealism: Kant’s problem was science (Newtonian conditions).
Mentioned in the context of 'fashionable accusations' against Heidegger, though the name is mangled in the transcript ('fashionable one').
Transcript 112 turns
Alain Badiou
i began only parce j suis older than slavoy. and it's... and it's also why i have the best chair. so all that is perfectly good. i name anti-philosophy. antiphilosophie. en système of sort. and they're shrinking. if you want. that opposes. the singular of its act. to the philosophical category of truth. so on teaphilosophie. is that sort of thinking. which... la is on the contradiction. between philosophical discourse. on one side. and... aktivité or creative act of life. on the other side. we can also say that an antiphilosopher. uses some features. of his or her personal life. against. the universal abstraction. of the philosophical discourse. we know free great! classical anti-philosoph. pascal. against descartes. rousseau against voltaire and hume. and kirkegaard. against aid. and we know also trois great modern anti-philosophers. were against the entire. philosophical tradition. nzsche. wittgenstein. and... maybe. là. all that is clear. fororn. the most important modern thinker, in fact. for a large part of the philosophy during the last century. foreleuze, foucault, heidegger and many others. nietzsche is something like the horizon. we find a niche. the paradigmatic relation. between the act. and the destitution of two. in the crepuscule of idols. nietzsche describes his work in this term. i quote. we have abolished the world as true. this abolition of truth. is the negative condition. force dionysienne affirmée. and to explain this affirmation, nzsche. eng gauges is proper existence. as an historical act. a decisive rupture. nzsche, in fact, the life of nietzsche. so proper name of niche. n as a living body. is fund fundamental argument for nietzsche himself. for. the affirmation against the philosophical tradition. i quote. hai am, iam. n. i am something more. than the leading philosopher of our time. i am something decisive. and fatal. that springs up. between two millaries. beautiful beautiful. h. we have the pure form. of antphilosophie. an act. of a violent subjective nature. destroys the philosophical tradition. which uncloses the life. with the world. the antilosophie. with the radical potency of its act. opposes. to the philosophical discourse. a simple poem. a living boy. which is real. point. and... it is why vict. of antphilosophie. is a certainé. because... it's victor. of the real. against. it's a dead fall. of philosophical rhetoric. the discourse of the real. which is realized in a decisive act. cannot disappear. lacan himself. right. it is not i. we'll win out. it's the discourse that i serve. but this discourse. is the discourse of analyst. where the crucial point. is the epiphanic apparition. and disparition. of the real of the subject. so the victory of psychoanalysis. is. the victory of the real itself. forniche. wittgenstein. this victory is at price of a complete destitution of the philosophical category of truth. not that the anti-philosophical purpose. he to discredit. two. not to refute it. an anti-philosophie is not a critique. but therapeutics. man must be cured of the philosophic illness. forwing stein. philosophical truths. is linked. to the nonense. and so it is arm food. for wgenstein, the victory of the real. as an act. finally of aesthetic nature. realizes the complete elimination. of metaphysical non. for la camp. the problème is more complex. la camp does not distra. so category of true. truth is the word of the lacian saint. la camp refounded. the category of tools. and in this foundation, we find balls. the destitution of the philosophical category of truth. and the necessité. to cross through it. and get out of it. a long and tortuous. coquetry. with the category of tools. i will attempt... brieflet. that from 1970. a slow movement does proceed in lacant. towards the destitution of truth and it's dismissal. this is articulate. to two statements. in 19 73. in the semaire. 20. may... 15, 1973, i quote. there is... some rapport of being. that cannot be known. there is something of the real that cannot be known. and march 20, the same year. i quote. what is? spifique. to analysis. is that it can constitute for itself knowledge concerning the truth. what is specific to psychoanalysis is constitutes for itself knowledge. concerning the truth. these statements which are related, are about truth. precisely. and the tension is this. on the one hand, koos is superb. of an no. the truth of the subject. produce for the subject itself no knowledge of this truth. it is why truth is unconscious. on website. in the end, on the other hand, the aim of analysis. is to generate knowledge. about the unknown. so the paradoxical position of lacan concerning truth. is that there is no knowledge. of truth. but finally, there is a. psychoanalytic knowledge concerning this absence of knowledge. . that is the great paradox of the unconscious. the key. of this enigma. because it is an edigma. as for la camp un ne. a strange name, a greek name. which is the mati. what is a mati? to understand this name, we must return to the act. to the fundamental analytic act. for la con. subject can have an experience. of its proper real only in the form of an a. there is, if you want. no abstract knowledge. of the real. the real is a revelation. it's the form. off a knack. and this act. is like cut. in langage. and also a cut. in the ordinary representation of the world. representation which is imaginary. so the act. suddenly isolates the real. from its normal connection. to imaginer et and to symbolique ordre. it's very important this point. the act. generally speaking, it's not only in the field of psychoanalytic q. the very essence of the act. is to separate the real. from symbolic context and imaginary context. it is when something of the real is pure. and you face the real. not in the mediation of symbolic presentation or imaginary representation. but directly. you face the real world. but when you face the real, all is in the form of an act. and not in the form of a knowledge or in the form of an abstract language. it's why. that sort of... presentation. sudden presentation of the e. it is why the real appears always. not as a continuity. but... also a point. the real of a subject. is always a point of of a real point. so we have the question finally in all that. where is the knowledge? and where is the truth of the knowledge? or the knowledge of the unknown. to speak as luck. is. is there a knowledge? of the resolve. of this sudden apparitions. of a real port. est somewhere une connexion between knowledge. generally speaking, and the real point. oh avez a sort of mystique. of the real. which is an experience. but without an en. the answer of laord. is that there can exist a knowledge of the real. in some. at the price of rigorous formalisation. because formalization but it's a strict you. of some letters reproduces the operation of the real. and the separation of the real. from its common imaginary presentation. with formalization. with small letters. without any imaginary context. we can too. the experience. of the real and we can of a transmission. of that sort of experience. and that is precisely a matter. my team is formalization. of a local form of apparition of a real point. it is why lacan affirms that so. mathematical formalization it's our goal. our world ideal. it's the ideal. of a complete transmission. of something real. this ideal. is finally linked. not to true. but to knowledge. my team. is a form of transmission of a knowledge of the real. and not of a truth. the anti-philosophique movement of laant. during the 70s. is to go from tou. which is clearly a category of the first la. go from twos to knowledge concerning the truth. and finally, to knowledge alone. and it is. so goodbye to philosophy. from tous to. knowledge concerning truths and finally, to knowledge alone. and we can say something like that. philosophie from the very beginning. affirms the existence of a truth of the real. it's the goal of philosophy. find something. which we can name a truth. concerning the role. but lacan aff that there is a knowledge of truth. as, in fact. by zumuma team. a knowledge of the act. a transmission of the act. by which subject. faces. soohil. but that sort of experience. the subject faces the real. can be transmitted in the form of the matim. not as a tool. but as a knowledge. it's why. à the moment de la fond foundation de the freudian school, in 1970. la canaise. i quote. cool. can. not convince. knowledge becomes a strange and very dense formula, but clear in its effect. co. cannot convince. because... we don't know. if truth, a truth touch the reality. but knowledge becomes act. knowledge can have certain relation. to the real. by the mediation. of the matime of an act. and so... it's neither a philosophical position. nor a mystical position. that is the point. it's not a philosophical position because there is not for lacamp. butus. concerning the role. but it's not a mystical position. because the experience of the real can être transmitted. and can be transmitted by the means of formalization. and the way of flacon. concerning this point. which is an anti-philosophical way, is also an anti-mystical way. it's not the choice. between faith and rational knowledge. there is a way which for l is a rational way. which is not reducible to philosophy, but which is not reducible to religious faith or mystic experience. we can see. in other words, that philosophic supposition. is that there is such a thing. as a love of two. there is truth concerning the real. and we have love for that sort of experience of tools. but in addition, sim cl con. philosophie, c'est ça... there must be. love. of the two. you must love the truth. that is. for lacan. the philosophique imperatif. but...
i began only parce j suis older than slavoy. and it's... and it's also why i have the best chair. so all that is perfectly good. i name anti-philosophy. antiphilosophie. en système of sort. and they're shrinking. if you want. that opposes. the singular of its act. to the philosophical category of truth. so on teaphilosophie. is that sort of thinking. which... la is on the contradiction. between philosophical discourse. on one side. and... aktivité or creative act of life. on the other side. we can also say that an antiphilosopher. uses some features. of his or her personal life. against. the universal abstraction. of the philosophical discourse. we know free great! classical anti-philosoph. pascal. against descartes. rousseau against voltaire and hume. and kirkegaard. against aid. and we know also trois great modern anti-philosophers. were against the entire. philosophical tradition. nzsche. wittgenstein. and... maybe. là. all that is clear. fororn. the most important modern thinker, in fact. for a large part of the philosophy during the last century. foreleuze, foucault, heidegger and many others. nietzsche is something like the horizon. we find a niche. the paradigmatic relation. between the act. and the destitution of two. in the crepuscule of idols. nietzsche describes his work in this term. i quote. we have abolished the world as true. this abolition of truth. is the negative condition. force dionysienne affirmée. and to explain this affirmation, nzsche. eng gauges is proper existence. as an historical act. a decisive rupture. nzsche, in fact, the life of nietzsche. so proper name of niche. n as a living body. is fund fundamental argument for nietzsche himself. for. the affirmation against the philosophical tradition. i quote. hai am, iam. n. i am something more. than the leading philosopher of our time. i am something decisive. and fatal. that springs up. between two millaries. beautiful beautiful. h. we have the pure form. of antphilosophie. an act. of a violent subjective nature. destroys the philosophical tradition. which uncloses the life. with the world. the antilosophie. with the radical potency of its act. opposes. to the philosophical discourse. a simple poem. a living boy. which is real. point. and... it is why vict. of antphilosophie. is a certainé. because... it's victor. of the real. against. it's a dead fall. of philosophical rhetoric. the discourse of the real. which is realized in a decisive act. cannot disappear. lacan himself. right. it is not i. we'll win out. it's the discourse that i serve. but this discourse. is the discourse of analyst. where the crucial point. is the epiphanic apparition. and disparition. of the real of the subject. so the victory of psychoanalysis. is. the victory of the real itself. forniche. wittgenstein. this victory is at price of a complete destitution of the philosophical category of truth. not that the anti-philosophical purpose. he to discredit. two. not to refute it. an anti-philosophie is not a critique. but therapeutics. man must be cured of the philosophic illness. forwing stein. philosophical truths. is linked. to the nonense. and so it is arm food. for wgenstein, the victory of the real. as an act. finally of aesthetic nature. realizes the complete elimination. of metaphysical non. for la camp. the problème is more complex. la camp does not distra. so category of true. truth is the word of the lacian saint. la camp refounded. the category of tools. and in this foundation, we find balls. the destitution of the philosophical category of truth. and the necessité. to cross through it. and get out of it. a long and tortuous. coquetry. with the category of tools. i will attempt... brieflet. that from 1970. a slow movement does proceed in lacant. towards the destitution of truth and it's dismissal. this is articulate. to two statements. in 19 73. in the semaire. 20. may... 15, 1973, i quote. there is... some rapport of being. that cannot be known. there is something of the real that cannot be known. and march 20, the same year. i quote. what is? spifique. to analysis. is that it can constitute for itself knowledge concerning the truth. what is specific to psychoanalysis is constitutes for itself knowledge. concerning the truth. these statements which are related, are about truth. precisely. and the tension is this. on the one hand, koos is superb. of an no. the truth of the subject. produce for the subject itself no knowledge of this truth. it is why truth is unconscious. on website. in the end, on the other hand, the aim of analysis. is to generate knowledge. about the unknown. so the paradoxical position of lacan concerning truth. is that there is no knowledge. of truth. but finally, there is a. psychoanalytic knowledge concerning this absence of knowledge. . that is the great paradox of the unconscious. the key. of this enigma. because it is an edigma. as for la camp un ne. a strange name, a greek name. which is the mati. what is a mati? to understand this name, we must return to the act. to the fundamental analytic act. for la con. subject can have an experience. of its proper real only in the form of an a. there is, if you want. no abstract knowledge. of the real. the real is a revelation. it's the form. off a knack. and this act. is like cut. in langage. and also a cut. in the ordinary representation of the world. representation which is imaginary. so the act. suddenly isolates the real. from its normal connection. to imaginer et and to symbolique ordre. it's very important this point. the act. generally speaking, it's not only in the field of psychoanalytic q. the very essence of the act. is to separate the real. from symbolic context and imaginary context. it is when something of the real is pure. and you face the real. not in the mediation of symbolic presentation or imaginary representation. but directly. you face the real world. but when you face the real, all is in the form of an act. and not in the form of a knowledge or in the form of an abstract language. it's why. that sort of... presentation. sudden presentation of the e. it is why the real appears always. not as a continuity. but... also a point. the real of a subject. is always a point of of a real point. so we have the question finally in all that. where is the knowledge? and where is the truth of the knowledge? or the knowledge of the unknown. to speak as luck. is. is there a knowledge? of the resolve. of this sudden apparitions. of a real port. est somewhere une connexion between knowledge. generally speaking, and the real point. oh avez a sort of mystique. of the real. which is an experience. but without an en. the answer of laord. is that there can exist a knowledge of the real. in some. at the price of rigorous formalisation. because formalization but it's a strict you. of some letters reproduces the operation of the real. and the separation of the real. from its common imaginary presentation. with formalization. with small letters. without any imaginary context. we can too. the experience. of the real and we can of a transmission. of that sort of experience. and that is precisely a matter. my team is formalization. of a local form of apparition of a real point. it is why lacan affirms that so. mathematical formalization it's our goal. our world ideal. it's the ideal. of a complete transmission. of something real. this ideal. is finally linked. not to true. but to knowledge. my team. is a form of transmission of a knowledge of the real. and not of a truth. the anti-philosophique movement of laant. during the 70s. is to go from tou. which is clearly a category of the first la. go from twos to knowledge concerning the truth. and finally, to knowledge alone. and it is. so goodbye to philosophy. from tous to. knowledge concerning truths and finally, to knowledge alone. and we can say something like that. philosophie from the very beginning. affirms the existence of a truth of the real. it's the goal of philosophy. find something. which we can name a truth. concerning the role. but lacan aff that there is a knowledge of truth. as, in fact. by zumuma team. a knowledge of the act. a transmission of the act. by which subject. faces. soohil. but that sort of experience. the subject faces the real. can be transmitted in the form of the matim. not as a tool. but as a knowledge. it's why. à the moment de la fond foundation de the freudian school, in 1970. la canaise. i quote. cool. can. not convince. knowledge becomes a strange and very dense formula, but clear in its effect. co. cannot convince. because... we don't know. if truth, a truth touch the reality. but knowledge becomes act. knowledge can have certain relation. to the real. by the mediation. of the matime of an act. and so... it's neither a philosophical position. nor a mystical position. that is the point. it's not a philosophical position because there is not for lacamp. butus. concerning the role. but it's not a mystical position. because the experience of the real can être transmitted. and can be transmitted by the means of formalization. and the way of flacon. concerning this point. which is an anti-philosophical way, is also an anti-mystical way. it's not the choice. between faith and rational knowledge. there is a way which for l is a rational way. which is not reducible to philosophy, but which is not reducible to religious faith or mystic experience. we can see. in other words, that philosophic supposition. is that there is such a thing. as a love of two. there is truth concerning the real. and we have love for that sort of experience of tools. but in addition, sim cl con. philosophie, c'est ça... there must be. love. of the two. you must love the truth. that is. for lacan. the philosophique imperatif. but...
Audience Member 4
what
what
Alain Badiou
that is loved. in the love of truth. if there is no real truth of the real. what is this strange philosophical imperative? love the truth. is the poison. is not touching. the rol. and... so... thesw.
that is loved. in the love of truth. if there is no real truth of the real. what is this strange philosophical imperative? love the truth. is the poison. is not touching. the rol. and... so... thesw.
Slavoj Žižek
of flcon.
of flcon.
Alain Badiou
is a very complex and singular one. because... the question of the love of truth. can be posed. for la con. only is his love. that sort of love is a love of weakness. the love of truth is the love of this weakness, i quote the love of this weakness. that we have lifted the veil off. from what is hidden by the truth and that is called castration. explanation. tools. in it. philosophical fans. is not at all. for la con. as for le gueur. for example, like for heidegger, for example. the nv. the revelation. of the rio. the point we being. is two. it's much more truth. in its philosophical sense, the veil itself. the dissimulation, the fundamental dissimulation of something. the veil which hides a very essential fact. the fact that castration los imperfection. all the forms of weakness and impotency. are radical conditions to human existence and for human knowledge. in the philosophical form. the love of truth. is the dissimulation. of a love. for impotence and weakness. the love of what does not say everything. the love of what est impotent to say. force the analyse. it's useless. to love the truth. however, it is necessary to love knowledge. and to desire the mat. the love of tools. se la camp. is at the center. of philosophyie. but it pretends to love the truth as power. and not as impotency or weakness. and the philosophical illusion. resides in that. to say that the love of tools is... the origin of a new power. of knowledge and finally of human existence. the philosophic patient. wants to promote a love of truth as power. and that is... necessarily a complete failure. the veritable anti-philosophic thesis of flacon is... if we pretend. to love the truth as power. if we occurred the fact that any love of truth. is love of weakness. then... we will be impotent. with respect to knowledge. we will be exposed. to the patient of ignorance. and so you see at this point, the vision of philosophy by lacan. is a vision of an attempt of the love of tools. which is exposed in fact. as the patient. of ignorance. and so the road. the philosoph road to the truth. finally is a weakness in faith of the question of knowledge. into in of subjectivity. to place a limit. to the patient of ignorance. in terms of tools. it is absolutely necessary.
is a very complex and singular one. because... the question of the love of truth. can be posed. for la con. only is his love. that sort of love is a love of weakness. the love of truth is the love of this weakness, i quote the love of this weakness. that we have lifted the veil off. from what is hidden by the truth and that is called castration. explanation. tools. in it. philosophical fans. is not at all. for la con. as for le gueur. for example, like for heidegger, for example. the nv. the revelation. of the rio. the point we being. is two. it's much more truth. in its philosophical sense, the veil itself. the dissimulation, the fundamental dissimulation of something. the veil which hides a very essential fact. the fact that castration los imperfection. all the forms of weakness and impotency. are radical conditions to human existence and for human knowledge. in the philosophical form. the love of truth. is the dissimulation. of a love. for impotence and weakness. the love of what does not say everything. the love of what est impotent to say. force the analyse. it's useless. to love the truth. however, it is necessary to love knowledge. and to desire the mat. the love of tools. se la camp. is at the center. of philosophyie. but it pretends to love the truth as power. and not as impotency or weakness. and the philosophical illusion. resides in that. to say that the love of tools is... the origin of a new power. of knowledge and finally of human existence. the philosophic patient. wants to promote a love of truth as power. and that is... necessarily a complete failure. the veritable anti-philosophic thesis of flacon is... if we pretend. to love the truth as power. if we occurred the fact that any love of truth. is love of weakness. then... we will be impotent. with respect to knowledge. we will be exposed. to the patient of ignorance. and so you see at this point, the vision of philosophy by lacan. is a vision of an attempt of the love of tools. which is exposed in fact. as the patient. of ignorance. and so the road. the philosoph road to the truth. finally is a weakness in faith of the question of knowledge. into in of subjectivity. to place a limit. to the patient of ignorance. in terms of tools. it is absolutely necessary.
Slavoj Žižek
rate.
rate.
Alain Badiou
to love in the truth a weakness. the force of the love of truth. is being that of the love of a weakness. and that is finally the limited love of knowledge. philosophie is then a precarious disposition. with regard to the patient of ignorance. you know, finally, everything. in this vision depends on the triplet. knowledge who's leo. that is where the psychoanalytic act. just lacan's saying a rise up in arms against philosophy. it's because at the end of his career, he was thinking that philosophy is a sophisticated form of ignorance. ast pure. i stop here and i stay under the accusation.
to love in the truth a weakness. the force of the love of truth. is being that of the love of a weakness. and that is finally the limited love of knowledge. philosophie is then a precarious disposition. with regard to the patient of ignorance. you know, finally, everything. in this vision depends on the triplet. knowledge who's leo. that is where the psychoanalytic act. just lacan's saying a rise up in arms against philosophy. it's because at the end of his career, he was thinking that philosophy is a sophisticated form of ignorance. ast pure. i stop here and i stay under the accusation.
Slavoj Žižek
. difficult to follow. i hope you hear me. glad to be here. glad to be with alain. of course, in this 20-minute forum it's just a little bit too little time to really develop a line of thought all one can do is more just trace, define positions, oppositions, and so on. i would nonetheless like to begin with reference to what is going on recently in your territory, or just off your territory in louisiana, because i think it concerns precisely in a way, very oblique way, what alain was talking about, this gap, sorry, distance between the real. and the symbolic, i was thinking about, do you know how freud's dream of freudian dream of irma's injection is structured? first you have this look deep into irma's throat, the primal horror distorted flesh. then you have this sudden... pass from the real into the ridiculous. impotence of the symbolic, the three doctors. exchanging faked arguments. isn't this going on now in the united states public discourse? the look into the irma's throat would have been those camera shots that we get of the oil gushing out and then the three doctors literally exist, you remember in the congressional hearing, as the three representatives who were exactly in the same comical way putting the blame of each other. bp representative or ceo even said, no, it's not me, it's the subcontractor. that hner or whatever, i think it's the big big chinese company said, no we just made the plan, it's our own subcontractor who poured the concrete, who screwed it up. and finally the last one returned. the ball and said, no but we were just following the plans we got from the other two and so on. so it's clearly this same constellation but things are more tragic here. y. remember when i think unfortunately even president obama appeared a little bit of a clown here. for me, when he pathetically claimed we, i will make on behalf of american people, whatever, bp, british petroleum, play sorry, pay every cent of the damage and so on and so on. sorry, this is ridiculous. if the spilling will go on the way it goes, even if they so many environment ruined, lives ruined, etc., you simply cannot pay for it. it's ridiculous. it's a little bit, i exaggerate consciously, like to say germany will pay every cent for the holocaust and so on. i mean, when catastrophes are too big, it's meaningless to talk in these terms. so we have to rethink it. i remember. kirai. connected to. impossibility of sexual relationship. i remember some twenty years ago exactly in the same territory the waters. seawater south of louisiana. ted kennedy, a that senator was caught, was caught by a paparazzo in a lone boat. he thought he is alone, only sea around, making love to a lady. i mean, it's a blurred image, but very clear. her legs spread and so on. exactly at that point in the senate they were debating offshore drilling. and i loved how a republican senator here i liked it, referring to this said, oh, i noticed that recently senator kennedy, who was opposed to it, changed his position on offshore drilling. well, i'm here for kennedy. no? i think that the only offshore drilling that should be allowed is the one that kennedy was involved in. no? okay, but... not too much of this. ugh! uh. lacon and antiphilosoph. you know i will just try to again present state my case and not. just mark some differences allowing hopefully alain to strike. back because as i already developed once in paris, i think, or london, our relationship is that of a master and the hysteric. he's the master, i'm the hysteric provoking all the time and so on. it's sometimes difficult to provoke the master. uh. now, more seriously. ugh. i was deeply influenced by his insight into the whole concept of anti-philosophy. maybe i would just shift a little bit. orplace, expand, whatever my understanding of it. of course, i totally agree with kim, we can say already pascal and so on, but nonetheless, pascal clearly... situated himself outside. philosophy. for me, maybe i'm wrong. where do we have the first breakthrough of anti-philosophy is a philosophical position. maybe. risky hypothesis, kant, kantian ethics. il... the first time that you clearly have this position of, we have the domain of. knowledge or theoretical truth and then we have access to the real through the ethical act. which is again. the relationship to the impossible real of thinking itself outside truth. it's also interesting how speaking about anti-philosophy, did you notice that in the history of philosophy, from that point on, of kantian revolution, practically. practically, not totally of course. entire philosophy no longer wants to be called philosophy. kant is no longer metaphysics but transcendental critique of the conditions of metaphysics. fichte is wissenschaftlehhre. that is to say teaching on science not philosophy. selling privilegesges art. hegel also said no longer love of wisdom bat. wisdom itself, not to mention marx and so on and so on. so my first constatation when laccon says, je m'enurge contre la philosophie is well, welcome to the camp of philosophers. all philosophers from kant onwards are doing nothing but that. ins surging against philosophy. nobody wants to be a philosopher. me me. i agree with you. that's my point. yeah, that's precisely my point. because would you agree now i have a new proposal for you to try to convert you to my cause of the love of german idealism? you know your four domains of domains, okay, conditions, whatever of. of where a truth event can occur. let's enumerate them. science. politics, art, love. and i... deeply agree with adrian johnston's reading of you where he emphasized an aspect of this which is usually ignored ignored that. this... people usually dress emphasize your opposite point, which is this suture, not totally attach philosophy to one truth condition. but i think, on the other hand, you make a much nicer point, which is even close to some kind of engaged marxist thinking, which is nonetheless that philosophy cannot stand on its own. heroically, you have to attach, engage yourself, attach yourself to a condition. you cannot be philosopher just in the air. and would you agree or not? this came to me. that the same four goes for conditions of truth, goes for german idealism. look, kant's problem was science, was how to philosophize in the conditions of newtonian science. fichte is clearly politics, french revolution. schelling ist art. and i claim hegelislav. i mean, we have precisely the four guys there. but okay, now let me go on into anti-philosophy. where do i? maybe, maybe. shift the accent a little bit. for me. i would say that the great breakthrough of anti-philosophy occurs with the so-called anti-hegelian turn. we need three main forms. first. the late schelling and the young schopenhauer. then kierkegaard then marx. i think that all three in a way meet your condition. philosophy is in all three versions. uh. denounced as caught in its own circle of representation abstract contextual thinking and some kind of return to. not the real in the lacian sense, but some kind of a positive singular life foundation, which implies a critique of philosophy is enacted. for kierkegaard, this is the unique existence of religious individuals. which escapes philosophical conceptual mediation for late sel heidegger is the primordial irrational pre-logical abyss of willing outside philosophical truth and for marx is the actual life process of actual people and and so on and so on. al. what i claim. ich death. in all these here things probably will become, i'm asking you a question and not in this boring pseudo-pedagogical way where asking someone a question means that you already know what is the truth and just expect from you to confirm it's really an open question. i claim that what unites all the three and this is really what happened after hegel. is that. with all violence, a certain opposition became predominant. which i think maybe, i wonder if you would agree, defines the very coordinates for me of anti-philosophy. the opposition between productive presence and mere conceptual idealistic theater scene of representation. marx is here very brutal. marx, the worst marx, which i think should be abandoned, the marx of german ideology with all the stuff of philosophy. is with regard to real life like masturbation is with regard to sexual act and so on. so again, this idea that we are caught into a closed circle of representation. philosophy, ideology got into it, and the point is to. break out of this closed circle of representation into some more direct, productive. presence. and as my colleague alkapan developed in a very nice way, it's interesting how this same topic of denouncing representation became also actual throughout the 19th century. of course it was present before, but then it exploded as general problematizing of representation. for example, in the domain of love, all of a sudden the problem was can. love encounter be properly represented in the institution of marriage. with usual ambiguity on the one hand it was the bourgeois principle you know, the only legitimate marriage is marriage which should be founded in love. but then you always have this idea, but nonetheless the institution of marriage cannot fully recuperate love. there is an excess. this idea of an excess escaping representation. you have the same in politics. you have parliamentary representation but then you know, this topic of can parliamentary representation adequately represent social base isn't there something in social base which escapes representation. the first one to fully develop this was already none other than hegel in his wonderfully ambiguous notion of pebel. rebel is the non-representable element. now uh... here, i'm just asking you a question and trying to draw maybe a line of distinction. i think. this entire topic of productive presence. and then. uh. misrepresented in some scene of representation should be ultimately dropped. this is for me the core of anti. philosophy. and now comes the evil part. i don't have time to develop it. the stalinist part of me i think you remain here for my taste sometimes a little bit of too much of anti-philosopher. sometimes you also mobilize this representation versus the real of productive presence. with this topic. so this is again my first point and it would be very interesting here to play in a nice way, different philosophers one against the other. for example, although we both totally more or less disagree with derrida, i think that when bererrida, i wonder if you agree, is at his best, it's when he not in his critique of metaphysics, we know that, but in his critique of too fast, direct, anti-philosophical attempts to break out. theerrida i love is derrida reading foucault, bataille, levinas, where he takes someone who tries to enact the basic anti-philosophical gesture, like bataille against hegelian philosophy sovereignty, foucault against cartesian cogito madness, anti outside or. levinash against philosophical totality, infinity of relating to otherness. and i think here dererrida is a good anti--philosopher. in a wonderful detailed analysis, she shows how all these attempts to break out remain nonetheless in a hidden way determined by the field they want to undermine. so here again, we can learn something from derrida. you know, derrida is not just the one who wants to screw philosophy, break out of it, and so on and so on. he is a good philosopher, especially good in showing how it's not as easy as it may appear to break out of. out of philosophy. especially actual today, i think is for example theash and later developed by other critique of levinas. because i think that if there is one of the great books of anti-philosophy, it's levinas's totality and infinity. and i think it is easy to show how levinasi's critique of hegel and especially of heidegger, which was later taken over by jean-luc marion. this idea that even heidegger remains too much within philosophy, that even the ontological difference between being and entities still remains within the horizon of being, while we must break through towards this infinite radical otherness of god. beyond being. i think it can be shown in. convincing way every serious philosopher can show it that leina simply doesn't hold there. that the price is a very superficial reduction of the notion of being to some pretty naive positive reality and then you can say oh but god is outside it and so on and so on. a heidegarian who would have insisted here that even if god outside the beyond being still has to of course not exist as a determinate object, but has to be present, disclose itself in a certain way, would be fully justified. you cannot escape it as simple as that. so... again, i don't have time to develop it, but the reason i remain faithful to hegel. would have been that i insist that. hegel is absolutely unique here. he is on the... i mean... usually people perceive hegel in this shift from traditional metaphysics philosophy to anti-philosophy in the guise of the 19th century historicicism, life philosophy and so on, is somewhere in between, as they say, on the one hand, hegel remained absolute metaphysicsician system, everything. on the other hand, we already find in hegel good historical analysis and so on and so on. i think this image of hegel is deeply misleading. a little bit here, a little bit there. i think he was not a little bit here, a little bit there. he was neither here nor there. he was a unique point no longer. philosopher in the sense of metaphysical philosopher, but not yet. anti-philosopher. that's what makes hegel so... traumatic. so now let me go on. into just two more points. first, i'll try to be as brief as possible, into how i locate lacche's anti-philosophy. basically, i am... totally. in full agreement with alle. then maybe i would just formulate the ambiguity of lacon in a little bit different way. for me. first, one has to be pr in... where does lacon locate. that witch that. anti-philosophical point, if you would have put it, on behalf of which laconbe makes this pathetic claim je m'en i raise myself contre la philosophie against philosophy. this point is clearly a jouissance, the excess of enjoyment. for laccon, this excess of, for lac, let me be very precise, philosophy is that which begins with parmenides, you know, the same is being and logos, thinking, talking, this kind of a pre-established harmony between discourse and being. being can be logically apprehended said. for lacon, again, as you pointed out, this is the anti-philosophical core of lacon, there is something which introduces a crack here. here is a nice quote from lacan of 1966, his seminar on the object of psychoanalysis. quote. i challenge whichever philosopher to account now for the relation that is between the emergence of the signifier and the way jouissance relates to being. no philosophy, i say, meets us here today. the brexit aborted freaks of philosophy which we drag behind us from the beginning of the last 19th century, as the habits that are falling apart are nothing but a way to frisk rather than to confront this question which is the only question about truth and which is called and named by freud the death drive, the primordial masochism of jouissance. all philosophical speech escapes and withdraws here. uh... i will try here to be at the same time, critical but also positive towards lacon. first, i would say... what always fascinated me in la con est. what did he one enigma which an ex-colleague of alain, franancoçois balmes, in his very good studies on laccon emphasized. the great mystery and perhaps the best way to approach laccon is to ask a very simple, almost detective question. laccon obviously knew heidegger very well. why then did she stick to the notion of the subject? why didn't he drop subject? i mean, it's the name for. the core of inhhuman core of human being. uh... i think the reason is and here again, from a weird perspective, i approach one of the big topics of alain, where i agree with him, the relationship between language and truth. wer i support al fully, ich. in his, the way i understand it, anti-hermeneutic trust of not identifying. truth with. the one who developed this most radically was heidegger. arguably, this idea that truth is ultimately the historically destined horizon of being which dwells is inscribed into our language. and in this historicized transcendental mode, a heidegerarian would have said, this is the unsurpassable horizon of our. access to truth. the ultimate, the furthest you can go is to reflect on the horizon of how things appear to you of how being is disclosed. for example, you can make, i don't know how many speculative quantum physics discoveries, but in order to pursue them, you already have to. have a certain historically destined embodied in language pre-understanding of being so all we can do then is to. think the event, not in allen's sense, but as heideggerian ereignis of of new destinies of being this totally abyssal game of eventful occurrences of modes of disclosure is the ultimate horizon. uh. so, in this sense, for heidegger. uh frau heidegger... language is the house of being. what lacon does here? basically, i think it's just to add something, a dimension missing in what laconde is here missing in heidegger. to put it in cynical terms, for lacon. language is not just the house of being, it's a torture house of being. we are basically tortured by language. that's all the topic of castration, distortion and so on. we are never at home in the house of being. it's a traumatic discord. and again, the name of this discord is... je songs. and uh... so here i come to al. i don't like elfriede jelinek. her style is too dirty for me. but she said something that i deeply agree with, a wonderful phrase. she said, language should be tortured to tell the truth. i think that this would be the second counterpart that we should drop all this hermeneutic trust into, you know, the access to truth is open yourself to the message which is in language. no. we should torture language. and i think maybe we should even read poetry and art in this way, as different modes of torture. what is poetry? it's a great torture of language. imagine how you have to torture. language to write a simple sonnet for. cut words, squeeze them and so on. even in cinema as art, what was eisenstein doing? my god, all his words are already words of extreme violence and torture. cut, montage, stitch it together and so on. now you will say, yeah, yeah, this is eisenstein's manipulative approach. what about the great opposition to eisenstein, andré bazin, rossellini, av tarkovsky, where you have the passive attitude of just. filming, not intervening. well, i would say it's a different mode of torture. it's slow down, how do you call that instrument? where somebody is tortured so that you tie him up and then stretch it. yeah, yeah, that's tarkovsky. so i would say, imagine a debate between eisenstein and tarkovsky. it's like two torturers. what's the better way to squeeze out the truth? and i hear, i agree. wait. i, i think that we, of course, we think in language, but nonetheless, paradoxically, language is not our horizon. language in it, let's call it naively. mito poetic. poetic function language as you know poetry in the that sense of poetry as founding a nation and so on. i think that we can do more. truly great artists, poets do more. they torture the their language, they force it to go beyond. we can, within language, think, with language, against language to arrive at a true universality. this is a very radical thesis, but i think it's crucial. i'm not sure. lacon himself is clear here. if he were to be clear at this point he is ambiguous, he would no longer be anti-philosopher. but i think this is the crucial point. again, is the historicist transcendental attitude, language is our fate, the last thing we do, is this the last thing or can we and break out of the, to use frederick glelemson's term, the prison house of language and formulate universality outside it now a step further. i claim that. uh. i claim that all. this is why as balmesh demonstrates la con h. to the notion of subject. subject for lacon, as you pointed out when you emphasized this weakness and so on, subject for lacon is not in this modern way the excess of you this cartesian subject, not in descartes sense, but more in this heideggerian sense of modern subjectivity, dominate the world, mediate it, technologically master it, and so on. subject is the one who, as laccon puts it, who suffers from the symbolic. it's tortured. and design dich, la ich. this dimension of being tortured by language is missing in heidegger, which is why i'm so sad i don't have time to develop this, why i think lacconbe emphasizes a feature of antigone which is totally absent in heidegger. in his two great readings of antigone, heidegger never mentions this famous position in between the two deaths. that is to say, you know, you are still biologically alive ex because this is the pure position of what aambian later calls homo saker of subject tortured. and i am even tempted to say, to make a quick far-fetched reference to fashionable one to fashionable accusations against heidegger to concentration camps and so on. you know where you can see that heidegger misses this dimension? you know that famous passage from heidegger, which horrified many people, where he says that in concentration camps, they were just in an industrial way producing corpses. people were not really dying there. well, uh... of course this is true in a way. but... i would say it is true. ford. executioners if you were somebody dying in auschwitz, you didn't feel, oh my god, i'm just an object being technologically produced. precisely this. other side. is missing here. now we can go on. because of of this dimension missing i agree with what you developed as lacon from truth to knowledge about truth to knowledge. i would only say that. maybe desperately there is an alternate way to read this. as not anti-philosophical in what sense you know that strictly parallel to the movement that you described in these precise terms is and this is very nicely. incidentally, i love this naivety of balmesh, who makes a brutal clinical judgment on heidegger. i love it. it appears brutal nonsense, but where he says that the problem with heidegger's description of, for example, dasase sein being there in sein und zeit is that it's good for neurotics, but it doesn't cover psych. you know in what naive sense he was right. let's take what catherine malavou calls post-traumatic subject, or this, homo sacer and so on. they describe a subjective position of this suffering, being tortured by language and so on, which i think you know how heidegger describes being human in time and being as this from future through the past to present engaged existence and so on. you are out of debt. you are no longer. caught into this structure of care engaged existence, but nonetheless you are not outside animal. you are still human being deprived of it. this would be vaguely the psychotic position for this there is no. place in heidegger. so i find this a very nice thesis of how, again, laccon sticks to the notion of subject, not because he remains modern age faithful to modern age subjectivity, which is the cause of our crisis. he does, but for the opposite reason. and now i want just to supplement you. balalmesh shows in a triumphant way here how this movement from truth, knowledge of truth the is strictly correlative in lacon. two. the forceful reaffirmation of the cartesian cogita. when you have this late laccon's knowledge, always you should seek cogito. here! you should always bear in mind that when we think about lacon et cogito, it's not enough to recite those boring old poems, you know, of yeah la conette against descartes, i am not where i think. this can still be read in a purely anti-philosophical way. it simply means the truth of my being, the true lively productivity is not where i think. then lacon turns it around and says, uh. i... i think where i am not. this is more interesting, where the unconscious is not the fullness of my being outside my thought, but it's a pure thinking outside myself, not where i. feel myself existentially as the one i am. then there are other formulations, but as balalmmes points out very nicely, what lacomb does in his seminar, i think, on logique du fantasme, logical fantasy ist to. return to the identity of cogito and being, but as an empty set. for the last lacon, cogito, incito, being and thinking do coincide, but in a negative way. incito, i am pure thinking, but which is just a form of thinking without any content. at the same time, i am pure being, but deprived of any content. it's just as if the two empty the two so points overlap here. and again, as such, this cogito should be asserted-ish. universal non-historical. non-historical. historicity is, i think, not the ultimate horizon. weak why, as i tried to develop in one of my texts, i i think that one can in a very nice way refer here to walter benjamin, you know, when he talks about these two types of violence, staatsbildend and staatzerstörend, violence which creates state and violence which this divine violence. and i think that heidegger's problem is that when he does talk about violence and language, ph. the ocean of language as poet who grounds a police, a nation, is still staatsbildend. i would like in parallel to the relation of violence and state to assert also. not violence imminent in this, imposing a certain disclosure of being, what poets do for a nation, but... sprachzerstörend, violence. violence of torturing language breaking through two. universality. so here. i think that. uh. vi. maybe partially, things i haven't... yet thought them to the end. things are here very ambiguous for me but i would have said nonetheless that here maybe laconse anti-philosophy can nonetheless be maybe reinterpreted as precisely! because, you know, when lacont says anti-philosophy, one should always ask the obvious question, what is philosophy for him? and the quote. that i read you is very ambiguous here. la qualifies philosophy to which he opposes as wretched aborted freaks of philosophy which we drag behind us from the beginning of the 19th century. that is to say basically anti-philosophy. heated philosophy, this post post-hegelian philosophy. so again, what i would have said is that one should never forget that for lacan, philosophie ich r dich. h. hermeneutic hermeneutic harmony between being and thinking whichrich. historically specified and so on and so on i think that through the link of cogito and. knowledge and so on. one can maybe maybe. construct and out lacon against lacon of earth. totally crazy, like we want to do a kind of a return to pure cogito, matem knowledge and so on. outside this historicist hermeneutik. universal. but one crucial problem here. what about jouissance as nameless and so on? doesn't lacon nonetheless support, sustain his? critique of philosophy in this disturbing element of excess of jouissance. many things can be said here. i think one can even answer here in a very nice way kang measu when he insisted on the problem of fossil. fossil as debt. third element which breaks this transcendental correlation. i think that for laccon you don't have to go outside. the true fossil is object small a. it's here in me, not. for lacomb, would have been way way too leninist in the bad sense of materialism andiero criticism. mayu for me remains all too stuck in this typical, naive pre-hegelian problematic of we are caught in our representations. can we reach out of them to reality in itself or not? for me as a hegelian, this is a pseudo-problem. the problem is not can we reach in itself. the problem is but you's problem. how can in this stupid real something like thought emerge? the problem is not can we go beyond our appearances too? the real in itself. the problem is the one approached by you in his logics of the world. how can in the flex stupidity of the real something like the word emerged. hegel knew this very clearly. the problem is not breakout of appearance. the problem is how is appearance possible. okay, but to go on, so jouissance. here, i wonder if you would a clap clump pig. in one of your texts, you were totally right to characterize la référence to jouissance féminine as. a reference to some kind of a cultural unsayable. but i don't think it is necessary to read it in that way, although i admit this is a predominant way. you know in laccon's formula of succession. when lacon how does lacan describe this feminine position of? je change usually this is red ash. something in woman resist symbolic. order. not all of woman is caught into the symbolic order. but i think if we read this in the sense of there is something in woman, this excess of mystical enrapture which sounds which resist the symbolic. maybe we don't read lacon correctly. maybe we should nonetheless emphasize how the non-all of feminine rons also means that there is no exception. that is we should also say. there is nothing in woman which is outside. the symbolic order or whatever. so i think that instead of reading jouissance féminine as kind of a mystical enrapture and so on, we should so that, to put it bluntly in an almost sexist way, we men are purely within the symbolic order, women are with one leg in, with another part of them it exists, with some kind of rupture. i think women are paradoxically more fully in the symbolic order. this is why they are done all. they don't have any. in this sense i think that here is how i would try to save lacachenian jouissance and the real for philosophy. and you already indicate that path. i think that what i don't like is this anti-philosophical notion of jouissance as some terrifying access too strong for symbolization. but i am tempted to read lacan's famous formula, which you also quote on, that the real is only accessible through the deadlock lampasse of the symbolization. in a very strong literal way, the real is not some in itself, and laccon formally opposes the idea that the real is any kind of kantian in itself. which then we can only partially grasp now. i think that the real literally is nothing but the deadlock of symbolization. a totally immanent real, a real which is just yes, i stop catch of symbolism and so on and so on. so from here i would just like to mark, maybe one or two, this is a question to you, how you would react. differences. one big difference, i'm even not sure about it myself. we have this debate for 15 years, i think. is that in your logic of the world, i will just state the position. you seem to... implplied that what you call world. i think, i know i violently disagree with you and you with me here. i think there is no wealth without language to cut a long story short. and i think that the very categories you use, like the crucial category of the point. point is a signifying category. i agree with you with language is not, here i'm also a platonist, not a limitist, but i claim that, again, the category of world is is thinkable only within the human universe of. language well, you, if i got you correctly, you for you. there are worlds already. in to put it in very naive terms, in reality, outside man, once you even spoke of, ironically, i know, of your dialectic of nature. second point. uh. you are usually reproached with a very stupid criticism that you are secretly an idealist in the sense of human animal, but then out of nowhere event, grace, blah blah. and then the idea is we should nonetheless develop out of concrete history how the event can emerge. i intended to say the opposite, that my critique critique open question to you would have been the opposite one what i problemmatize is not event but human animal. i don't think there is something like human animal. i think that, of course there is empirically, but okay, to cut a long story short, i just will, and then i will finish, designate my position now, i claim that what you call animal life, this pursuit of servicing the good, service de bien, so on, this normal animal utilitarian existence end the truth event, the disp. duality doesn't cover the entire field. there is something which i am tempted to call with terms like anxiety, death drive and so on, which is neither the one nor the other. and i think that wit. humans, what you call animal life this ordinary. existence, utilitarian and so on, servicing the goods always comes. secondary in the sense of its attempt to stabilize some traumatic anxiety which is also a condition for a truth event you need. you need. anxiety, displacement and so on in order to open up the space for the truth. and i think, that's my final point, that this maybe can be read in a not anti-philosophical way. my whole wager is that all this topic of death drive and so on should be totally de-imaginarized. it's what was called in philosophy, in german idealism. self-relating negativity and so on. so again, i totally accept your tension between truth. the domain of truth procedures and... human animal i just think that we need a third domain death drive anxiety. and so on, which then allows us to properly locate this two. but i know i didn't prove anything here. but you see my desperate way totally agreeing with your anti-anti-philosophy. what i'm trying to do is consciously reading laccon against himself. because let's be clear. what jacqueline miller is doing now with his right liberal recription of laccon as some kind of a liberal, wise men and so on. this is the danger of this what you said, dismissing the truth. then you definitely, okay. just to finish, because the first thing one should say is that where i disagree with miller, i hope we agree, is this idea of looking in the last, last, last laccon for some point of last wisdom, you know, like just before he died, he saw something. which is why maybe you know it better than me, lacon's last official mistress, catherine not, i think, yeah, was the object of such affection. the idea was that she was there when lacon was dying and that just on the point of dying he told her something, you know this last, would singularity, encounter of the real. no, i claim agreeing with you that i claim that somewhere between in those 10 years or more seminars of from anxiety to to maybe encore. this was lacon at his top. and i, i think, frankly, all those attempts with not the last years, sorry to tell you, i'm more and more convinced they're gradual disintegration. i don't think, and you effectively have what you said, all this, you know, accommodate to the symptom, truth doesn't matter, a kind of almost mish right, rortian playfulness, which to us is old. i wouldn't say old followers of the follower of lenin, not to name the name. this i don't buy. so i'm sorry if i was too long, but you see my point. what i'm trying to do is desperately to nonetheless... save! la con in some sense for. for philosophy. i'm very sorry if i was too long and please strike back with all your force. thank you. you need it here or you go there? you can do it here. uh.
. difficult to follow. i hope you hear me. glad to be here. glad to be with alain. of course, in this 20-minute forum it's just a little bit too little time to really develop a line of thought all one can do is more just trace, define positions, oppositions, and so on. i would nonetheless like to begin with reference to what is going on recently in your territory, or just off your territory in louisiana, because i think it concerns precisely in a way, very oblique way, what alain was talking about, this gap, sorry, distance between the real. and the symbolic, i was thinking about, do you know how freud's dream of freudian dream of irma's injection is structured? first you have this look deep into irma's throat, the primal horror distorted flesh. then you have this sudden... pass from the real into the ridiculous. impotence of the symbolic, the three doctors. exchanging faked arguments. isn't this going on now in the united states public discourse? the look into the irma's throat would have been those camera shots that we get of the oil gushing out and then the three doctors literally exist, you remember in the congressional hearing, as the three representatives who were exactly in the same comical way putting the blame of each other. bp representative or ceo even said, no, it's not me, it's the subcontractor. that hner or whatever, i think it's the big big chinese company said, no we just made the plan, it's our own subcontractor who poured the concrete, who screwed it up. and finally the last one returned. the ball and said, no but we were just following the plans we got from the other two and so on. so it's clearly this same constellation but things are more tragic here. y. remember when i think unfortunately even president obama appeared a little bit of a clown here. for me, when he pathetically claimed we, i will make on behalf of american people, whatever, bp, british petroleum, play sorry, pay every cent of the damage and so on and so on. sorry, this is ridiculous. if the spilling will go on the way it goes, even if they so many environment ruined, lives ruined, etc., you simply cannot pay for it. it's ridiculous. it's a little bit, i exaggerate consciously, like to say germany will pay every cent for the holocaust and so on. i mean, when catastrophes are too big, it's meaningless to talk in these terms. so we have to rethink it. i remember. kirai. connected to. impossibility of sexual relationship. i remember some twenty years ago exactly in the same territory the waters. seawater south of louisiana. ted kennedy, a that senator was caught, was caught by a paparazzo in a lone boat. he thought he is alone, only sea around, making love to a lady. i mean, it's a blurred image, but very clear. her legs spread and so on. exactly at that point in the senate they were debating offshore drilling. and i loved how a republican senator here i liked it, referring to this said, oh, i noticed that recently senator kennedy, who was opposed to it, changed his position on offshore drilling. well, i'm here for kennedy. no? i think that the only offshore drilling that should be allowed is the one that kennedy was involved in. no? okay, but... not too much of this. ugh! uh. lacon and antiphilosoph. you know i will just try to again present state my case and not. just mark some differences allowing hopefully alain to strike. back because as i already developed once in paris, i think, or london, our relationship is that of a master and the hysteric. he's the master, i'm the hysteric provoking all the time and so on. it's sometimes difficult to provoke the master. uh. now, more seriously. ugh. i was deeply influenced by his insight into the whole concept of anti-philosophy. maybe i would just shift a little bit. orplace, expand, whatever my understanding of it. of course, i totally agree with kim, we can say already pascal and so on, but nonetheless, pascal clearly... situated himself outside. philosophy. for me, maybe i'm wrong. where do we have the first breakthrough of anti-philosophy is a philosophical position. maybe. risky hypothesis, kant, kantian ethics. il... the first time that you clearly have this position of, we have the domain of. knowledge or theoretical truth and then we have access to the real through the ethical act. which is again. the relationship to the impossible real of thinking itself outside truth. it's also interesting how speaking about anti-philosophy, did you notice that in the history of philosophy, from that point on, of kantian revolution, practically. practically, not totally of course. entire philosophy no longer wants to be called philosophy. kant is no longer metaphysics but transcendental critique of the conditions of metaphysics. fichte is wissenschaftlehhre. that is to say teaching on science not philosophy. selling privilegesges art. hegel also said no longer love of wisdom bat. wisdom itself, not to mention marx and so on and so on. so my first constatation when laccon says, je m'enurge contre la philosophie is well, welcome to the camp of philosophers. all philosophers from kant onwards are doing nothing but that. ins surging against philosophy. nobody wants to be a philosopher. me me. i agree with you. that's my point. yeah, that's precisely my point. because would you agree now i have a new proposal for you to try to convert you to my cause of the love of german idealism? you know your four domains of domains, okay, conditions, whatever of. of where a truth event can occur. let's enumerate them. science. politics, art, love. and i... deeply agree with adrian johnston's reading of you where he emphasized an aspect of this which is usually ignored ignored that. this... people usually dress emphasize your opposite point, which is this suture, not totally attach philosophy to one truth condition. but i think, on the other hand, you make a much nicer point, which is even close to some kind of engaged marxist thinking, which is nonetheless that philosophy cannot stand on its own. heroically, you have to attach, engage yourself, attach yourself to a condition. you cannot be philosopher just in the air. and would you agree or not? this came to me. that the same four goes for conditions of truth, goes for german idealism. look, kant's problem was science, was how to philosophize in the conditions of newtonian science. fichte is clearly politics, french revolution. schelling ist art. and i claim hegelislav. i mean, we have precisely the four guys there. but okay, now let me go on into anti-philosophy. where do i? maybe, maybe. shift the accent a little bit. for me. i would say that the great breakthrough of anti-philosophy occurs with the so-called anti-hegelian turn. we need three main forms. first. the late schelling and the young schopenhauer. then kierkegaard then marx. i think that all three in a way meet your condition. philosophy is in all three versions. uh. denounced as caught in its own circle of representation abstract contextual thinking and some kind of return to. not the real in the lacian sense, but some kind of a positive singular life foundation, which implies a critique of philosophy is enacted. for kierkegaard, this is the unique existence of religious individuals. which escapes philosophical conceptual mediation for late sel heidegger is the primordial irrational pre-logical abyss of willing outside philosophical truth and for marx is the actual life process of actual people and and so on and so on. al. what i claim. ich death. in all these here things probably will become, i'm asking you a question and not in this boring pseudo-pedagogical way where asking someone a question means that you already know what is the truth and just expect from you to confirm it's really an open question. i claim that what unites all the three and this is really what happened after hegel. is that. with all violence, a certain opposition became predominant. which i think maybe, i wonder if you would agree, defines the very coordinates for me of anti-philosophy. the opposition between productive presence and mere conceptual idealistic theater scene of representation. marx is here very brutal. marx, the worst marx, which i think should be abandoned, the marx of german ideology with all the stuff of philosophy. is with regard to real life like masturbation is with regard to sexual act and so on. so again, this idea that we are caught into a closed circle of representation. philosophy, ideology got into it, and the point is to. break out of this closed circle of representation into some more direct, productive. presence. and as my colleague alkapan developed in a very nice way, it's interesting how this same topic of denouncing representation became also actual throughout the 19th century. of course it was present before, but then it exploded as general problematizing of representation. for example, in the domain of love, all of a sudden the problem was can. love encounter be properly represented in the institution of marriage. with usual ambiguity on the one hand it was the bourgeois principle you know, the only legitimate marriage is marriage which should be founded in love. but then you always have this idea, but nonetheless the institution of marriage cannot fully recuperate love. there is an excess. this idea of an excess escaping representation. you have the same in politics. you have parliamentary representation but then you know, this topic of can parliamentary representation adequately represent social base isn't there something in social base which escapes representation. the first one to fully develop this was already none other than hegel in his wonderfully ambiguous notion of pebel. rebel is the non-representable element. now uh... here, i'm just asking you a question and trying to draw maybe a line of distinction. i think. this entire topic of productive presence. and then. uh. misrepresented in some scene of representation should be ultimately dropped. this is for me the core of anti. philosophy. and now comes the evil part. i don't have time to develop it. the stalinist part of me i think you remain here for my taste sometimes a little bit of too much of anti-philosopher. sometimes you also mobilize this representation versus the real of productive presence. with this topic. so this is again my first point and it would be very interesting here to play in a nice way, different philosophers one against the other. for example, although we both totally more or less disagree with derrida, i think that when bererrida, i wonder if you agree, is at his best, it's when he not in his critique of metaphysics, we know that, but in his critique of too fast, direct, anti-philosophical attempts to break out. theerrida i love is derrida reading foucault, bataille, levinas, where he takes someone who tries to enact the basic anti-philosophical gesture, like bataille against hegelian philosophy sovereignty, foucault against cartesian cogito madness, anti outside or. levinash against philosophical totality, infinity of relating to otherness. and i think here dererrida is a good anti--philosopher. in a wonderful detailed analysis, she shows how all these attempts to break out remain nonetheless in a hidden way determined by the field they want to undermine. so here again, we can learn something from derrida. you know, derrida is not just the one who wants to screw philosophy, break out of it, and so on and so on. he is a good philosopher, especially good in showing how it's not as easy as it may appear to break out of. out of philosophy. especially actual today, i think is for example theash and later developed by other critique of levinas. because i think that if there is one of the great books of anti-philosophy, it's levinas's totality and infinity. and i think it is easy to show how levinasi's critique of hegel and especially of heidegger, which was later taken over by jean-luc marion. this idea that even heidegger remains too much within philosophy, that even the ontological difference between being and entities still remains within the horizon of being, while we must break through towards this infinite radical otherness of god. beyond being. i think it can be shown in. convincing way every serious philosopher can show it that leina simply doesn't hold there. that the price is a very superficial reduction of the notion of being to some pretty naive positive reality and then you can say oh but god is outside it and so on and so on. a heidegarian who would have insisted here that even if god outside the beyond being still has to of course not exist as a determinate object, but has to be present, disclose itself in a certain way, would be fully justified. you cannot escape it as simple as that. so... again, i don't have time to develop it, but the reason i remain faithful to hegel. would have been that i insist that. hegel is absolutely unique here. he is on the... i mean... usually people perceive hegel in this shift from traditional metaphysics philosophy to anti-philosophy in the guise of the 19th century historicicism, life philosophy and so on, is somewhere in between, as they say, on the one hand, hegel remained absolute metaphysicsician system, everything. on the other hand, we already find in hegel good historical analysis and so on and so on. i think this image of hegel is deeply misleading. a little bit here, a little bit there. i think he was not a little bit here, a little bit there. he was neither here nor there. he was a unique point no longer. philosopher in the sense of metaphysical philosopher, but not yet. anti-philosopher. that's what makes hegel so... traumatic. so now let me go on. into just two more points. first, i'll try to be as brief as possible, into how i locate lacche's anti-philosophy. basically, i am... totally. in full agreement with alle. then maybe i would just formulate the ambiguity of lacon in a little bit different way. for me. first, one has to be pr in... where does lacon locate. that witch that. anti-philosophical point, if you would have put it, on behalf of which laconbe makes this pathetic claim je m'en i raise myself contre la philosophie against philosophy. this point is clearly a jouissance, the excess of enjoyment. for laccon, this excess of, for lac, let me be very precise, philosophy is that which begins with parmenides, you know, the same is being and logos, thinking, talking, this kind of a pre-established harmony between discourse and being. being can be logically apprehended said. for lacon, again, as you pointed out, this is the anti-philosophical core of lacon, there is something which introduces a crack here. here is a nice quote from lacan of 1966, his seminar on the object of psychoanalysis. quote. i challenge whichever philosopher to account now for the relation that is between the emergence of the signifier and the way jouissance relates to being. no philosophy, i say, meets us here today. the brexit aborted freaks of philosophy which we drag behind us from the beginning of the last 19th century, as the habits that are falling apart are nothing but a way to frisk rather than to confront this question which is the only question about truth and which is called and named by freud the death drive, the primordial masochism of jouissance. all philosophical speech escapes and withdraws here. uh... i will try here to be at the same time, critical but also positive towards lacon. first, i would say... what always fascinated me in la con est. what did he one enigma which an ex-colleague of alain, franancoçois balmes, in his very good studies on laccon emphasized. the great mystery and perhaps the best way to approach laccon is to ask a very simple, almost detective question. laccon obviously knew heidegger very well. why then did she stick to the notion of the subject? why didn't he drop subject? i mean, it's the name for. the core of inhhuman core of human being. uh... i think the reason is and here again, from a weird perspective, i approach one of the big topics of alain, where i agree with him, the relationship between language and truth. wer i support al fully, ich. in his, the way i understand it, anti-hermeneutic trust of not identifying. truth with. the one who developed this most radically was heidegger. arguably, this idea that truth is ultimately the historically destined horizon of being which dwells is inscribed into our language. and in this historicized transcendental mode, a heidegerarian would have said, this is the unsurpassable horizon of our. access to truth. the ultimate, the furthest you can go is to reflect on the horizon of how things appear to you of how being is disclosed. for example, you can make, i don't know how many speculative quantum physics discoveries, but in order to pursue them, you already have to. have a certain historically destined embodied in language pre-understanding of being so all we can do then is to. think the event, not in allen's sense, but as heideggerian ereignis of of new destinies of being this totally abyssal game of eventful occurrences of modes of disclosure is the ultimate horizon. uh. so, in this sense, for heidegger. uh frau heidegger... language is the house of being. what lacon does here? basically, i think it's just to add something, a dimension missing in what laconde is here missing in heidegger. to put it in cynical terms, for lacon. language is not just the house of being, it's a torture house of being. we are basically tortured by language. that's all the topic of castration, distortion and so on. we are never at home in the house of being. it's a traumatic discord. and again, the name of this discord is... je songs. and uh... so here i come to al. i don't like elfriede jelinek. her style is too dirty for me. but she said something that i deeply agree with, a wonderful phrase. she said, language should be tortured to tell the truth. i think that this would be the second counterpart that we should drop all this hermeneutic trust into, you know, the access to truth is open yourself to the message which is in language. no. we should torture language. and i think maybe we should even read poetry and art in this way, as different modes of torture. what is poetry? it's a great torture of language. imagine how you have to torture. language to write a simple sonnet for. cut words, squeeze them and so on. even in cinema as art, what was eisenstein doing? my god, all his words are already words of extreme violence and torture. cut, montage, stitch it together and so on. now you will say, yeah, yeah, this is eisenstein's manipulative approach. what about the great opposition to eisenstein, andré bazin, rossellini, av tarkovsky, where you have the passive attitude of just. filming, not intervening. well, i would say it's a different mode of torture. it's slow down, how do you call that instrument? where somebody is tortured so that you tie him up and then stretch it. yeah, yeah, that's tarkovsky. so i would say, imagine a debate between eisenstein and tarkovsky. it's like two torturers. what's the better way to squeeze out the truth? and i hear, i agree. wait. i, i think that we, of course, we think in language, but nonetheless, paradoxically, language is not our horizon. language in it, let's call it naively. mito poetic. poetic function language as you know poetry in the that sense of poetry as founding a nation and so on. i think that we can do more. truly great artists, poets do more. they torture the their language, they force it to go beyond. we can, within language, think, with language, against language to arrive at a true universality. this is a very radical thesis, but i think it's crucial. i'm not sure. lacon himself is clear here. if he were to be clear at this point he is ambiguous, he would no longer be anti-philosopher. but i think this is the crucial point. again, is the historicist transcendental attitude, language is our fate, the last thing we do, is this the last thing or can we and break out of the, to use frederick glelemson's term, the prison house of language and formulate universality outside it now a step further. i claim that. uh. i claim that all. this is why as balmesh demonstrates la con h. to the notion of subject. subject for lacon, as you pointed out when you emphasized this weakness and so on, subject for lacon is not in this modern way the excess of you this cartesian subject, not in descartes sense, but more in this heideggerian sense of modern subjectivity, dominate the world, mediate it, technologically master it, and so on. subject is the one who, as laccon puts it, who suffers from the symbolic. it's tortured. and design dich, la ich. this dimension of being tortured by language is missing in heidegger, which is why i'm so sad i don't have time to develop this, why i think lacconbe emphasizes a feature of antigone which is totally absent in heidegger. in his two great readings of antigone, heidegger never mentions this famous position in between the two deaths. that is to say, you know, you are still biologically alive ex because this is the pure position of what aambian later calls homo saker of subject tortured. and i am even tempted to say, to make a quick far-fetched reference to fashionable one to fashionable accusations against heidegger to concentration camps and so on. you know where you can see that heidegger misses this dimension? you know that famous passage from heidegger, which horrified many people, where he says that in concentration camps, they were just in an industrial way producing corpses. people were not really dying there. well, uh... of course this is true in a way. but... i would say it is true. ford. executioners if you were somebody dying in auschwitz, you didn't feel, oh my god, i'm just an object being technologically produced. precisely this. other side. is missing here. now we can go on. because of of this dimension missing i agree with what you developed as lacon from truth to knowledge about truth to knowledge. i would only say that. maybe desperately there is an alternate way to read this. as not anti-philosophical in what sense you know that strictly parallel to the movement that you described in these precise terms is and this is very nicely. incidentally, i love this naivety of balmesh, who makes a brutal clinical judgment on heidegger. i love it. it appears brutal nonsense, but where he says that the problem with heidegger's description of, for example, dasase sein being there in sein und zeit is that it's good for neurotics, but it doesn't cover psych. you know in what naive sense he was right. let's take what catherine malavou calls post-traumatic subject, or this, homo sacer and so on. they describe a subjective position of this suffering, being tortured by language and so on, which i think you know how heidegger describes being human in time and being as this from future through the past to present engaged existence and so on. you are out of debt. you are no longer. caught into this structure of care engaged existence, but nonetheless you are not outside animal. you are still human being deprived of it. this would be vaguely the psychotic position for this there is no. place in heidegger. so i find this a very nice thesis of how, again, laccon sticks to the notion of subject, not because he remains modern age faithful to modern age subjectivity, which is the cause of our crisis. he does, but for the opposite reason. and now i want just to supplement you. balalmesh shows in a triumphant way here how this movement from truth, knowledge of truth the is strictly correlative in lacon. two. the forceful reaffirmation of the cartesian cogita. when you have this late laccon's knowledge, always you should seek cogito. here! you should always bear in mind that when we think about lacon et cogito, it's not enough to recite those boring old poems, you know, of yeah la conette against descartes, i am not where i think. this can still be read in a purely anti-philosophical way. it simply means the truth of my being, the true lively productivity is not where i think. then lacon turns it around and says, uh. i... i think where i am not. this is more interesting, where the unconscious is not the fullness of my being outside my thought, but it's a pure thinking outside myself, not where i. feel myself existentially as the one i am. then there are other formulations, but as balalmmes points out very nicely, what lacomb does in his seminar, i think, on logique du fantasme, logical fantasy ist to. return to the identity of cogito and being, but as an empty set. for the last lacon, cogito, incito, being and thinking do coincide, but in a negative way. incito, i am pure thinking, but which is just a form of thinking without any content. at the same time, i am pure being, but deprived of any content. it's just as if the two empty the two so points overlap here. and again, as such, this cogito should be asserted-ish. universal non-historical. non-historical. historicity is, i think, not the ultimate horizon. weak why, as i tried to develop in one of my texts, i i think that one can in a very nice way refer here to walter benjamin, you know, when he talks about these two types of violence, staatsbildend and staatzerstörend, violence which creates state and violence which this divine violence. and i think that heidegger's problem is that when he does talk about violence and language, ph. the ocean of language as poet who grounds a police, a nation, is still staatsbildend. i would like in parallel to the relation of violence and state to assert also. not violence imminent in this, imposing a certain disclosure of being, what poets do for a nation, but... sprachzerstörend, violence. violence of torturing language breaking through two. universality. so here. i think that. uh. vi. maybe partially, things i haven't... yet thought them to the end. things are here very ambiguous for me but i would have said nonetheless that here maybe laconse anti-philosophy can nonetheless be maybe reinterpreted as precisely! because, you know, when lacont says anti-philosophy, one should always ask the obvious question, what is philosophy for him? and the quote. that i read you is very ambiguous here. la qualifies philosophy to which he opposes as wretched aborted freaks of philosophy which we drag behind us from the beginning of the 19th century. that is to say basically anti-philosophy. heated philosophy, this post post-hegelian philosophy. so again, what i would have said is that one should never forget that for lacan, philosophie ich r dich. h. hermeneutic hermeneutic harmony between being and thinking whichrich. historically specified and so on and so on i think that through the link of cogito and. knowledge and so on. one can maybe maybe. construct and out lacon against lacon of earth. totally crazy, like we want to do a kind of a return to pure cogito, matem knowledge and so on. outside this historicist hermeneutik. universal. but one crucial problem here. what about jouissance as nameless and so on? doesn't lacon nonetheless support, sustain his? critique of philosophy in this disturbing element of excess of jouissance. many things can be said here. i think one can even answer here in a very nice way kang measu when he insisted on the problem of fossil. fossil as debt. third element which breaks this transcendental correlation. i think that for laccon you don't have to go outside. the true fossil is object small a. it's here in me, not. for lacomb, would have been way way too leninist in the bad sense of materialism andiero criticism. mayu for me remains all too stuck in this typical, naive pre-hegelian problematic of we are caught in our representations. can we reach out of them to reality in itself or not? for me as a hegelian, this is a pseudo-problem. the problem is not can we reach in itself. the problem is but you's problem. how can in this stupid real something like thought emerge? the problem is not can we go beyond our appearances too? the real in itself. the problem is the one approached by you in his logics of the world. how can in the flex stupidity of the real something like the word emerged. hegel knew this very clearly. the problem is not breakout of appearance. the problem is how is appearance possible. okay, but to go on, so jouissance. here, i wonder if you would a clap clump pig. in one of your texts, you were totally right to characterize la référence to jouissance féminine as. a reference to some kind of a cultural unsayable. but i don't think it is necessary to read it in that way, although i admit this is a predominant way. you know in laccon's formula of succession. when lacon how does lacan describe this feminine position of? je change usually this is red ash. something in woman resist symbolic. order. not all of woman is caught into the symbolic order. but i think if we read this in the sense of there is something in woman, this excess of mystical enrapture which sounds which resist the symbolic. maybe we don't read lacon correctly. maybe we should nonetheless emphasize how the non-all of feminine rons also means that there is no exception. that is we should also say. there is nothing in woman which is outside. the symbolic order or whatever. so i think that instead of reading jouissance féminine as kind of a mystical enrapture and so on, we should so that, to put it bluntly in an almost sexist way, we men are purely within the symbolic order, women are with one leg in, with another part of them it exists, with some kind of rupture. i think women are paradoxically more fully in the symbolic order. this is why they are done all. they don't have any. in this sense i think that here is how i would try to save lacachenian jouissance and the real for philosophy. and you already indicate that path. i think that what i don't like is this anti-philosophical notion of jouissance as some terrifying access too strong for symbolization. but i am tempted to read lacan's famous formula, which you also quote on, that the real is only accessible through the deadlock lampasse of the symbolization. in a very strong literal way, the real is not some in itself, and laccon formally opposes the idea that the real is any kind of kantian in itself. which then we can only partially grasp now. i think that the real literally is nothing but the deadlock of symbolization. a totally immanent real, a real which is just yes, i stop catch of symbolism and so on and so on. so from here i would just like to mark, maybe one or two, this is a question to you, how you would react. differences. one big difference, i'm even not sure about it myself. we have this debate for 15 years, i think. is that in your logic of the world, i will just state the position. you seem to... implplied that what you call world. i think, i know i violently disagree with you and you with me here. i think there is no wealth without language to cut a long story short. and i think that the very categories you use, like the crucial category of the point. point is a signifying category. i agree with you with language is not, here i'm also a platonist, not a limitist, but i claim that, again, the category of world is is thinkable only within the human universe of. language well, you, if i got you correctly, you for you. there are worlds already. in to put it in very naive terms, in reality, outside man, once you even spoke of, ironically, i know, of your dialectic of nature. second point. uh. you are usually reproached with a very stupid criticism that you are secretly an idealist in the sense of human animal, but then out of nowhere event, grace, blah blah. and then the idea is we should nonetheless develop out of concrete history how the event can emerge. i intended to say the opposite, that my critique critique open question to you would have been the opposite one what i problemmatize is not event but human animal. i don't think there is something like human animal. i think that, of course there is empirically, but okay, to cut a long story short, i just will, and then i will finish, designate my position now, i claim that what you call animal life, this pursuit of servicing the good, service de bien, so on, this normal animal utilitarian existence end the truth event, the disp. duality doesn't cover the entire field. there is something which i am tempted to call with terms like anxiety, death drive and so on, which is neither the one nor the other. and i think that wit. humans, what you call animal life this ordinary. existence, utilitarian and so on, servicing the goods always comes. secondary in the sense of its attempt to stabilize some traumatic anxiety which is also a condition for a truth event you need. you need. anxiety, displacement and so on in order to open up the space for the truth. and i think, that's my final point, that this maybe can be read in a not anti-philosophical way. my whole wager is that all this topic of death drive and so on should be totally de-imaginarized. it's what was called in philosophy, in german idealism. self-relating negativity and so on. so again, i totally accept your tension between truth. the domain of truth procedures and... human animal i just think that we need a third domain death drive anxiety. and so on, which then allows us to properly locate this two. but i know i didn't prove anything here. but you see my desperate way totally agreeing with your anti-anti-philosophy. what i'm trying to do is consciously reading laccon against himself. because let's be clear. what jacqueline miller is doing now with his right liberal recription of laccon as some kind of a liberal, wise men and so on. this is the danger of this what you said, dismissing the truth. then you definitely, okay. just to finish, because the first thing one should say is that where i disagree with miller, i hope we agree, is this idea of looking in the last, last, last laccon for some point of last wisdom, you know, like just before he died, he saw something. which is why maybe you know it better than me, lacon's last official mistress, catherine not, i think, yeah, was the object of such affection. the idea was that she was there when lacon was dying and that just on the point of dying he told her something, you know this last, would singularity, encounter of the real. no, i claim agreeing with you that i claim that somewhere between in those 10 years or more seminars of from anxiety to to maybe encore. this was lacon at his top. and i, i think, frankly, all those attempts with not the last years, sorry to tell you, i'm more and more convinced they're gradual disintegration. i don't think, and you effectively have what you said, all this, you know, accommodate to the symptom, truth doesn't matter, a kind of almost mish right, rortian playfulness, which to us is old. i wouldn't say old followers of the follower of lenin, not to name the name. this i don't buy. so i'm sorry if i was too long, but you see my point. what i'm trying to do is desperately to nonetheless... save! la con in some sense for. for philosophy. i'm very sorry if i was too long and please strike back with all your force. thank you. you need it here or you go there? you can do it here. uh.
Alain Badiou
naturally, it's very difficult to say anything after that. because if i go on the ways... you open, we are here tomorrow.
naturally, it's very difficult to say anything after that. because if i go on the ways... you open, we are here tomorrow.
Slavoj Žižek
why not? the problem.
why not? the problem.
Alain Badiou
uh just some short points. first... when you say that the origin of anti-philosophy can be fine in kant and after.
uh just some short points. first... when you say that the origin of anti-philosophy can be fine in kant and after.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Alain Badiou
uh... there is a danger, i think. because uh you we can identify in this sort of vision. anti-philosophie. and critique. critical philosophy transcental critique. or in my conviction, it's not the same feeling, it's not the same subject, the same... and why? because la question de the anti-philosopher is pas the question de the limits de raison. of the limits of rational thinking and so on. which is a central question of current. it's more radical. it's the idea that there existe in our experience, a sort of distance without mesure. it's an ontological affirmation, in fact, which is at the very origin of anti-philosophy.. a distance that we must support. and which is a distance without measure. very often it's the distance. between finite and infinite or something like that, or between man and god. many great philosophers are in religieux context. we have to remark this point. it's the case of pascal. it's the case of rousseau, it's the case of kkegaard. and a lot. precisely, it's the case of wittgenstein. uh it's very important to note that wittgenstein has finally a mystical vision of the problem of the distance. and the case of lacan is evidently more complex, we have la question de the real status de the big autre. il lac. we cannot escape this question. and there is many pureé ! religious interpretation of laord. exist, absolutely. there is no. frontal contradictions, big contradiction between lacan and most of the christian interpretation of psychoanalysis and so on. and all that to say that the third question for anti-philosophy, that there is in our experience a distance without measure. and that to produce something. concerning this distance, we cannot use conceptual means, purely conceptual.
uh... there is a danger, i think. because uh you we can identify in this sort of vision. anti-philosophie. and critique. critical philosophy transcental critique. or in my conviction, it's not the same feeling, it's not the same subject, the same... and why? because la question de the anti-philosopher is pas the question de the limits de raison. of the limits of rational thinking and so on. which is a central question of current. it's more radical. it's the idea that there existe in our experience, a sort of distance without mesure. it's an ontological affirmation, in fact, which is at the very origin of anti-philosophy.. a distance that we must support. and which is a distance without measure. very often it's the distance. between finite and infinite or something like that, or between man and god. many great philosophers are in religieux context. we have to remark this point. it's the case of pascal. it's the case of rousseau, it's the case of kkegaard. and a lot. precisely, it's the case of wittgenstein. uh it's very important to note that wittgenstein has finally a mystical vision of the problem of the distance. and the case of lacan is evidently more complex, we have la question de the real status de the big autre. il lac. we cannot escape this question. and there is many pureé ! religious interpretation of laord. exist, absolutely. there is no. frontal contradictions, big contradiction between lacan and most of the christian interpretation of psychoanalysis and so on. and all that to say that the third question for anti-philosophy, that there is in our experience a distance without measure. and that to produce something. concerning this distance, we cannot use conceptual means, purely conceptual.
Slavoj Žižek
practical reason in canada.
practical reason in canada.
Alain Badiou
absolutely.
absolutely.
Slavoj Žižek
political is
political is
Alain Badiou
we. yes, but in the case of anti-philosophy, we must do the thing and not only show the thing. that is the difference. there is something which is inside philosophy in kant. because practical reason is the theory of the categor imperative, it's not a decision of kant himself.
we. yes, but in the case of anti-philosophy, we must do the thing and not only show the thing. that is the difference. there is something which is inside philosophy in kant. because practical reason is the theory of the categor imperative, it's not a decision of kant himself.
Slavoj Žižek
anyway.
anyway.
Alain Badiou
yeah.
yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Alain Badiou
it's very important. in anti-philosophy, we have the necessity of a testimony of the anti-philosopher himself. as singularité. it's a decision and the transmission oh the expérience de la distance without mesure. it's a personal transmission. the personal. et'est the case pour pascal, the memorial, the, the testimony of the faith. c'est naturelement the case pour rousseau. which evince the pure autobiography, the pure confession. and saint augustin before. and it's also the case for windchein and others. it is my first remark. so i think we must distinguish four. four type. uh. philosopher which is the conviction. that there is a possible connection between co. and z are. the philosopher don't say that this connection is of philosophical nature. maybe, but maybe not. it's not my conviction, for example. for me, there is a connection, a touch of the real in some form of truths which are artistic, scientific, and so on. but... the philosopher has the conviction that there existe some touch of the real under the name of truth. there is the soph. this is another type. the soph is the conviction que'il is rien like truth. and maybe nothing that knowledge. le sophistes a the conviction que what existe est rhetoric. and finally, some sort of uh of sort of war in the language. where? the stronger. is the better. and. and so the question of the soph is the question of a cause. but in a completely negative way. which is not the septic way. because the sceptic way is a philosophical conviction that we don't know the truth. it's not the conviction that there is no truth at all. so the skepticic, which has the conviction that there is truth, but we cannot know the truth, is inside philosophy. the sophist is not. because his conviction is that there is nothing. truth is a completely empty word, that there is nothing like that. and that is... there is no interest in truth. but there is. finally, what exists is the language. exclusively. that is the sophiste. leos, sophiste. self type i the critique. i the critique. it is not exactly... a philosopher. because the conviction of the critique is that we cannot really know the truth. and it's a figure of, i agree with you, it's a figure of the... of the two last centuries which begin at the 19th century. and which is also the vision of the deconstruction and so on, and which is also the idea of an historical end of philosophy as such, metaphysics and so on. and generally, the critique writes some essays. there is no big book, construction, systems and so on. and finally there is the anti-philosopher, which is different from the three others. and anti-philosopher is something which pays the price of it's proper life. is her proper life. also. the testimony for the distance, for the distance without measure. and it is why when we have an anti-philosopher, we have a narrative concerning his life inside the text. for example, the relationship of kierkegaard with a woman is a constitutive part of the development of the thinking of kierkegaard. and it really the singularity of one existence. which is finally the support of the vision of the anti-philosopher. and it's the same thing clearly for rousseau, and for. and sometimes
it's very important. in anti-philosophy, we have the necessity of a testimony of the anti-philosopher himself. as singularité. it's a decision and the transmission oh the expérience de la distance without mesure. it's a personal transmission. the personal. et'est the case pour pascal, the memorial, the, the testimony of the faith. c'est naturelement the case pour rousseau. which evince the pure autobiography, the pure confession. and saint augustin before. and it's also the case for windchein and others. it is my first remark. so i think we must distinguish four. four type. uh. philosopher which is the conviction. that there is a possible connection between co. and z are. the philosopher don't say that this connection is of philosophical nature. maybe, but maybe not. it's not my conviction, for example. for me, there is a connection, a touch of the real in some form of truths which are artistic, scientific, and so on. but... the philosopher has the conviction that there existe some touch of the real under the name of truth. there is the soph. this is another type. the soph is the conviction que'il is rien like truth. and maybe nothing that knowledge. le sophistes a the conviction que what existe est rhetoric. and finally, some sort of uh of sort of war in the language. where? the stronger. is the better. and. and so the question of the soph is the question of a cause. but in a completely negative way. which is not the septic way. because the sceptic way is a philosophical conviction that we don't know the truth. it's not the conviction that there is no truth at all. so the skepticic, which has the conviction that there is truth, but we cannot know the truth, is inside philosophy. the sophist is not. because his conviction is that there is nothing. truth is a completely empty word, that there is nothing like that. and that is... there is no interest in truth. but there is. finally, what exists is the language. exclusively. that is the sophiste. leos, sophiste. self type i the critique. i the critique. it is not exactly... a philosopher. because the conviction of the critique is that we cannot really know the truth. and it's a figure of, i agree with you, it's a figure of the... of the two last centuries which begin at the 19th century. and which is also the vision of the deconstruction and so on, and which is also the idea of an historical end of philosophy as such, metaphysics and so on. and generally, the critique writes some essays. there is no big book, construction, systems and so on. and finally there is the anti-philosopher, which is different from the three others. and anti-philosopher is something which pays the price of it's proper life. is her proper life. also. the testimony for the distance, for the distance without measure. and it is why when we have an anti-philosopher, we have a narrative concerning his life inside the text. for example, the relationship of kierkegaard with a woman is a constitutive part of the development of the thinking of kierkegaard. and it really the singularity of one existence. which is finally the support of the vision of the anti-philosopher. and it's the same thing clearly for rousseau, and for. and sometimes
Slavoj Žižek
times. c is the même thing pour la.
times. c is the même thing pour la.
Alain Badiou
qu lacan est saying « seul as j, always was, j declare la foundation of a new school, etc., c'est vraiment un existential gesture qui est pron as such. and there is... sure, but numerous and... very important passage sa la. which are. of. personal declarations. so... four types, it is my first remark, which is not at all a contradiction. with my favorite h. and the second remark, some short remark is... concerning la camp. uh i agree with you, if i analyze, there is a fundamental ambiguity. it's true. it's true. and there is a way. in direction of something like classical rationalism. knowledge, mat, and progressively, in fact, disparition of the subject in the sense of the subject in the first part of, something something else. and the substitution of the question of jouissance to the question of desire, is very important. and finally, is une ambigué because this way... can be said. uh... anti-philosophic nature, but can be said also of philosophic nature. absolutely, i agree with you on this point.... complement that if the way of l is finally of philosophic nature, it's in... in a way which is much more, in my opinion. of classical philosophical nature than hegelian philosophical nature. something like that. much more descartes or plato or aristotle than hegel. and we can note that hel was très important, it the first part of the work of lacamp. there was a constant discussion with a girl at the beginning of lord and not at the end. and to finish. uh... you know... i think that the simple the simple... conviction. that there is somewhere. a distance without measure is not by itself sufficient. to. give a definition of the anti-philosopher. because we must add. this distance cannot be proved or experimented. inside a conceptual framework. t seconde part. and it is why when... some says that i am an anti-philosopher. because on certain sands, i admit that there existe a distance without measure. a distance without measure which is finally the distance between individuals and subject. une immanent distance between individ and subject. which is without measure why? because to... becomes a subject. he or her. is able off. the individual must be transformed by something. which is not reducible to him or er. and the name of which is event. an event is really something which creates a new possibility and this new possibility is a possibility for the individual to become a subject. all this machinery. is a machinery which implies that there existe something like a distance without measure. but... it's not true that this distance without measure. implies by obligation that no conceptual means i've been... able to sink this distance. and so... i am not an anti-osopher in some sense, but... but a philosopher. oh. the distance itself.
qu lacan est saying « seul as j, always was, j declare la foundation of a new school, etc., c'est vraiment un existential gesture qui est pron as such. and there is... sure, but numerous and... very important passage sa la. which are. of. personal declarations. so... four types, it is my first remark, which is not at all a contradiction. with my favorite h. and the second remark, some short remark is... concerning la camp. uh i agree with you, if i analyze, there is a fundamental ambiguity. it's true. it's true. and there is a way. in direction of something like classical rationalism. knowledge, mat, and progressively, in fact, disparition of the subject in the sense of the subject in the first part of, something something else. and the substitution of the question of jouissance to the question of desire, is very important. and finally, is une ambigué because this way... can be said. uh... anti-philosophic nature, but can be said also of philosophic nature. absolutely, i agree with you on this point.... complement that if the way of l is finally of philosophic nature, it's in... in a way which is much more, in my opinion. of classical philosophical nature than hegelian philosophical nature. something like that. much more descartes or plato or aristotle than hegel. and we can note that hel was très important, it the first part of the work of lacamp. there was a constant discussion with a girl at the beginning of lord and not at the end. and to finish. uh... you know... i think that the simple the simple... conviction. that there is somewhere. a distance without measure is not by itself sufficient. to. give a definition of the anti-philosopher. because we must add. this distance cannot be proved or experimented. inside a conceptual framework. t seconde part. and it is why when... some says that i am an anti-philosopher. because on certain sands, i admit that there existe a distance without measure. a distance without measure which is finally the distance between individuals and subject. une immanent distance between individ and subject. which is without measure why? because to... becomes a subject. he or her. is able off. the individual must be transformed by something. which is not reducible to him or er. and the name of which is event. an event is really something which creates a new possibility and this new possibility is a possibility for the individual to become a subject. all this machinery. is a machinery which implies that there existe something like a distance without measure. but... it's not true that this distance without measure. implies by obligation that no conceptual means i've been... able to sink this distance. and so... i am not an anti-osopher in some sense, but... but a philosopher. oh. the distance itself.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Alain Badiou
the philosopher of the distance itself. and the philosoph, qui est très near the anti-phil. because he says, as the philosopher, that there exists that sort of distance. which in the common world is without measure between individual and subject, which is also the distance without measure, for example, between democracy and communism.
the philosopher of the distance itself. and the philosoph, qui est très near the anti-phil. because he says, as the philosopher, that there exists that sort of distance. which in the common world is without measure between individual and subject, which is also the distance without measure, for example, between democracy and communism.
Slavoj Žižek
listen, i hope, sorry. i propose that i will literally just reply in 20 seconds because i think it's the time to pretend that we are in democracy and so on. first, just literally two remarks. first, i deeply agree with you this wonderful formula. yes, absolute distance, but within philosophy. you, my friend, provided the best definition of what hegel wants here. okay, this is shegel.
listen, i hope, sorry. i propose that i will literally just reply in 20 seconds because i think it's the time to pretend that we are in democracy and so on. first, just literally two remarks. first, i deeply agree with you this wonderful formula. yes, absolute distance, but within philosophy. you, my friend, provided the best definition of what hegel wants here. okay, this is shegel.
Alain Badiou
right.
right.
Slavoj Žižek
second point, you know, it's nonetheless more, i see your wonderful point about the difference between kantian criticism and anti-philosophy. but you know, there is a path from kant. for example, when you say personal, but already fichte makes the step, you know, when he says what philosophy you choose is depends on what type of a man you are. there he is the first to directly refer to a non-conceptual. so as it may surprise you, but as i promised, i stop now. i know it's strange, but i stop. mer. it for..
second point, you know, it's nonetheless more, i see your wonderful point about the difference between kantian criticism and anti-philosophy. but you know, there is a path from kant. for example, when you say personal, but already fichte makes the step, you know, when he says what philosophy you choose is depends on what type of a man you are. there he is the first to directly refer to a non-conceptual. so as it may surprise you, but as i promised, i stop now. i know it's strange, but i stop. mer. it for..
Moderator
all right, i think we're open for some questions from the floor.
all right, i think we're open for some questions from the floor.
Slavoj Žižek
did you do a good communist job to undermine bourgeois democracy? you wrote them and distributed the question in advance.
did you do a good communist job to undermine bourgeois democracy? you wrote them and distributed the question in advance.
Alain Badiou
yeah.
yeah.
Moderator
yeah.
yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
i knew you, somehow i knew it would be you. uh do you need maybe... yes, you do. for the working classes back.
i knew you, somehow i knew it would be you. uh do you need maybe... yes, you do. for the working classes back.
Alain Badiou
c un force l proletariatariat.
c un force l proletariatariat.
Slavoj Žižek
. .
. .
Audience Member 1
an attempt to get the two of you to talk about the differences that are fundamental to your two approaches to ontology. despite there being a certain amount of overlap, nonetheless, i think there are some important discrepancies that more discussion here. and what's interesting is leahn in the 19th seminar, 1971 to 1972, just before he went downhill, according to us. he, in one of those sessions, is talking about two of his, for lack of a better word, what we could call axioms that are linked to one another. the first, le grand n'existe pas, the big other does not exist, and then y a, there is the one. and when he's talking about these, he makes a remark just a passing aside, where he says, somebody someday is going to make an ontology out of what i am talking about right now. and arguably both of you seem to be philosophers or for instance bruno bastiel calls you an ancient philosopher slightly but both of you are philosophers who clearly your projects in certain ways involve developing this. how do each of you see yourselves in terms of being able to say pass through lacon's maybe anti-philosophy, but it's a bit ambiguous? passing through lacon and developing an ontology, what do you see as the crucial differences between the two of you in terms of how, with those sorts of remarks lean is making when he predicts that someone is going to base an ontology off of this, how do you feel that the two of you fundamentally differ apro propos your, you might say, philosophical development or deployment of these resources of leianism?
an attempt to get the two of you to talk about the differences that are fundamental to your two approaches to ontology. despite there being a certain amount of overlap, nonetheless, i think there are some important discrepancies that more discussion here. and what's interesting is leahn in the 19th seminar, 1971 to 1972, just before he went downhill, according to us. he, in one of those sessions, is talking about two of his, for lack of a better word, what we could call axioms that are linked to one another. the first, le grand n'existe pas, the big other does not exist, and then y a, there is the one. and when he's talking about these, he makes a remark just a passing aside, where he says, somebody someday is going to make an ontology out of what i am talking about right now. and arguably both of you seem to be philosophers or for instance bruno bastiel calls you an ancient philosopher slightly but both of you are philosophers who clearly your projects in certain ways involve developing this. how do each of you see yourselves in terms of being able to say pass through lacon's maybe anti-philosophy, but it's a bit ambiguous? passing through lacon and developing an ontology, what do you see as the crucial differences between the two of you in terms of how, with those sorts of remarks lean is making when he predicts that someone is going to base an ontology off of this, how do you feel that the two of you fundamentally differ apro propos your, you might say, philosophical development or deployment of these resources of leianism?
Slavoj Žižek
je ne te passe la.
je ne te passe la.
Audience Member 1
which.
which.
Alain Badiou
je j n'ai pas compris la fin de la question.
je j n'ai pas compris la fin de la question.
Slavoj Žižek
i.
i.
Alain Badiou
you believe.
you believe.
Slavoj Žižek
non com dit que quelqu'un dans le futur va développer une anthologie de ce que je dis. donc font et est la différence entre nous ? c'est une question de semer la différence force du peuple de faire.
non com dit que quelqu'un dans le futur va développer une anthologie de ce que je dis. donc font et est la différence entre nous ? c'est une question de semer la différence force du peuple de faire.
Alain Badiou
yes, you know the question of the relationship between lacan and ontology is very... obscure question in fact, not simple. the book of françois balmès. is a book concerning in fact the question of the relationship. between lacan and the question of being.
yes, you know the question of the relationship between lacan and ontology is very... obscure question in fact, not simple. the book of françois balmès. is a book concerning in fact the question of the relationship. between lacan and the question of being.
Audience Member 1
.
.
Alain Badiou
i taioli. il find many, men suggestions de text flant, contradictories and so on. i think that the... uh... a very important point, i think, in lacan himself. is... the question of the forms of negativity. what is finally the theory of flan concerning nothingness? it's probably more important to be immediately. in face of the the conviction of la concerning being,, there is passages. which concerns the forms of neg, first the lack, but in some sense the excess to the rest and so on. all that. and i think that it is the reason. for which i affirm that all contemporary philosophers must be in discussion with la'accord. not because lacan is properly or exactly a philosopher. but because the question of what is a possible ontology today is transformed by the work of lacan. and so my answer is yes. i think that the common point, one of the common points between slavoy and me is the fact that for us, the learning of lacan, the lesson of lacan, is of fundamental importance. we can disagree and so on on the details.
i taioli. il find many, men suggestions de text flant, contradictories and so on. i think that the... uh... a very important point, i think, in lacan himself. is... the question of the forms of negativity. what is finally the theory of flan concerning nothingness? it's probably more important to be immediately. in face of the the conviction of la concerning being,, there is passages. which concerns the forms of neg, first the lack, but in some sense the excess to the rest and so on. all that. and i think that it is the reason. for which i affirm that all contemporary philosophers must be in discussion with la'accord. not because lacan is properly or exactly a philosopher. but because the question of what is a possible ontology today is transformed by the work of lacan. and so my answer is yes. i think that the common point, one of the common points between slavoy and me is the fact that for us, the learning of lacan, the lesson of lacan, is of fundamental importance. we can disagree and so on on the details.
Slavoj Žižek
they.
they.
Alain Badiou
and it's not so true in the contemporary context. because many philosophers in the contemporary context, are explicit against lord. doleuze first, but many others. and it's the first point. in fact, we have two common points. even if i am the master and sl is type, it's not completely true, maybe.
and it's not so true in the contemporary context. because many philosophers in the contemporary context, are explicit against lord. doleuze first, but many others. and it's the first point. in fact, we have two common points. even if i am the master and sl is type, it's not completely true, maybe.
Slavoj Žižek
now you sound a little... yeah.
now you sound a little... yeah.
Alain Badiou
yeah. but i recognize that you have the seduction of the historicaleric. now, but we have, i think, three points. first, the conviction that philosophy exists. but it's not the. common un id today. the conviction that the philosophy exist. and a variation concerning this point is that we have the conviction that a girl. is alive. he's not dead. we are not the same eagle maybe but.
yeah. but i recognize that you have the seduction of the historicaleric. now, but we have, i think, three points. first, the conviction that philosophy exists. but it's not the. common un id today. the conviction that the philosophy exist. and a variation concerning this point is that we have the conviction that a girl. is alive. he's not dead. we are not the same eagle maybe but.
Slavoj Žižek
uh.
uh.
Alain Badiou
we can see that in the text.. great importance for is the first point. philosophy exists. and as a consequence, a girl exists. second point, the question of revolution, communism and so on is not dead. so we don't affirm the death of the sequence of the two last centuries. we know problems, difficulties, impasses and so on. our subjective conviction is that there is here something to continue. something to continue. maybe in the dark. but to continue. to continue in the dark is not the same thing that to stop. yeah.
we can see that in the text.. great importance for is the first point. philosophy exists. and as a consequence, a girl exists. second point, the question of revolution, communism and so on is not dead. so we don't affirm the death of the sequence of the two last centuries. we know problems, difficulties, impasses and so on. our subjective conviction is that there is here something to continue. something to continue. maybe in the dark. but to continue. to continue in the dark is not the same thing that to stop. yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
it.
it.
Alain Badiou
no.
no.
Slavoj Žižek
sorry sorry.
sorry sorry.
Alain Badiou
yeah. not between the second and the third.
yeah. not between the second and the third.
Slavoj Žižek
boy.
boy.
Alain Badiou
and the third point is precisely, i think, that we think that the there is an... ontological or metaphysical or philosophical question. uh uh. which must be recognized and developed after lord. in the philosophical field. these three points are very important and it is why we are here today.
and the third point is precisely, i think, that we think that the there is an... ontological or metaphysical or philosophical question. uh uh. which must be recognized and developed after lord. in the philosophical field. these three points are very important and it is why we are here today.
Slavoj Žižek
i totally agree with you. i would just like to supplement it that maybe there is another... first i would like to emphasize this final point. we we both share the conviction that hopefully the era of so-called discourse analysis where every fundamental ontological, even metaphysical question can be reduced to the question of historical discursive conditions. for example, for a typical foucauldian, if you tell him, does a man have an immortal soul? he will immediately transform it into the question under what discursive regime can you even ask this. question. simply, in a naive sense, how it touches the real and so on becomes totally irrelevant. the question is under what discursive regime can you talk about this and so on and so on. this is one thing we share. another thing we both absolutely share. is that we reject the topic of finitude is the ultimate horizon. we notice both of us the strange reversal with regard to 19th century where usually infinity was the spiritual infinity idealism, finitude was concrete being, materialism, today it's almost the opposite. obscurantism and spiritualism today are supported by the topic of finitude.
i totally agree with you. i would just like to supplement it that maybe there is another... first i would like to emphasize this final point. we we both share the conviction that hopefully the era of so-called discourse analysis where every fundamental ontological, even metaphysical question can be reduced to the question of historical discursive conditions. for example, for a typical foucauldian, if you tell him, does a man have an immortal soul? he will immediately transform it into the question under what discursive regime can you even ask this. question. simply, in a naive sense, how it touches the real and so on becomes totally irrelevant. the question is under what discursive regime can you talk about this and so on and so on. this is one thing we share. another thing we both absolutely share. is that we reject the topic of finitude is the ultimate horizon. we notice both of us the strange reversal with regard to 19th century where usually infinity was the spiritual infinity idealism, finitude was concrete being, materialism, today it's almost the opposite. obscurantism and spiritualism today are supported by the topic of finitude.
Alain Badiou
mm-hmm.
mm-hmm.
Slavoj Žižek
it's by saying, no, we are finite, fragile and so on, that you open up an empty space where... all the ghosts of spiritualism can dwell and so on and so on. so that would be another feature. but to ask to answer you directly, yes, the question is... because, you know, lacon, of course, and this is the lacon that i read. hate i'm ready to admit. the lacon that i detect in what you quoted, it's the most arrogant lacon. it's like, i'm unique and great, but there will be in the future ordinary men who will try to drag me back into that's where i violently disagree with lacon. i think the true greatness is to accept it. and, you know, i remain here purely a philosopher, radically, in the sense of, you know, whenever somebody says, i leave behind ontology and so on and so on, if you read him closely, you discover traces of a non-reflected, usually very bad ontology. so what i would say, the fundamental category i'm struggling with here. ich dich idea. which unfortunately was elaborated even in some gnostic tradition, of course i don't want to do that. this idea of unfinished reality in the sense of in this sense, we should abandon ontology only in the sense if by ontology we think of pure positively constituted reality. and i think the way i read also your point about original multiplicity. it's precisely as you emphasize, it's not a multiplicity composed of ones. it's a multiplicity which is a radical multiplicity. you cannot come to the end and they say let's say so this idea of of and and here i follow even meu, although again, il. then immediately i take a different path.
it's by saying, no, we are finite, fragile and so on, that you open up an empty space where... all the ghosts of spiritualism can dwell and so on and so on. so that would be another feature. but to ask to answer you directly, yes, the question is... because, you know, lacon, of course, and this is the lacon that i read. hate i'm ready to admit. the lacon that i detect in what you quoted, it's the most arrogant lacon. it's like, i'm unique and great, but there will be in the future ordinary men who will try to drag me back into that's where i violently disagree with lacon. i think the true greatness is to accept it. and, you know, i remain here purely a philosopher, radically, in the sense of, you know, whenever somebody says, i leave behind ontology and so on and so on, if you read him closely, you discover traces of a non-reflected, usually very bad ontology. so what i would say, the fundamental category i'm struggling with here. ich dich idea. which unfortunately was elaborated even in some gnostic tradition, of course i don't want to do that. this idea of unfinished reality in the sense of in this sense, we should abandon ontology only in the sense if by ontology we think of pure positively constituted reality. and i think the way i read also your point about original multiplicity. it's precisely as you emphasize, it's not a multiplicity composed of ones. it's a multiplicity which is a radical multiplicity. you cannot come to the end and they say let's say so this idea of of and and here i follow even meu, although again, il. then immediately i take a different path.
Alain Badiou
h
h
Slavoj Žižek
this idea of how. what we misperceive as the limitation of our knowledge. not limitation in the sense of finitude, but incompleteness, should be immediately ontologized into incompleteness of reality itself.
this idea of how. what we misperceive as the limitation of our knowledge. not limitation in the sense of finitude, but incompleteness, should be immediately ontologized into incompleteness of reality itself.
Alain Badiou
mm-hmm
mm-hmm
Slavoj Žižek
this is how i would have read. i try to do it now in a materialist way, outside all the bullshit about how our mind creates reality, the lesson of quantum physics. this terrible lesson that really in itself, things are not fully. constituted in this sense i am against the ontology, this full positive ontology which i find, in spite of all my admiration for lenin, for example, in lenin's materialism and empirical criticism, where the problem becomes, you know, are there really things outside there fully existing? and this asymptotic, i think what we share is total opposition to this asymptotic notion of truth. there is full reality out there we gradually but never perfectly approach it where no wonder you know who admired deeply materialism and empirical criticism. a ferocious anti-communist if there ever was one, karl popper. you notice that in spite of all his criticism, he says, but material empirical criticism lenin is excellent there. no, i claim he is not. but were nonetheless to play the bad guy. i totally agree with you that the problem is with these different forms of negativity. now, playing a bad guy maybe h! there is some difference between the two of us. where you say multiplicity and void. i would try to read maybe more of some kind of negativity which i take from hegel into this void because i know you don't mean it in this way, but you know my primordial fear is that. i'm not saying you do, but... some people do namely is to reading this multiplicity and void into a kind of. orientalist buddhist position, you know, multiplicity of phenomena against the background of void as a kind of a zero primordial abyss and so on. that's not the void which is my void. my void is more of an obstacle, failure, catastrophe. it's a more violent, dynamic void. but these are absolutely fundamental questions. we cannot do it now.
this is how i would have read. i try to do it now in a materialist way, outside all the bullshit about how our mind creates reality, the lesson of quantum physics. this terrible lesson that really in itself, things are not fully. constituted in this sense i am against the ontology, this full positive ontology which i find, in spite of all my admiration for lenin, for example, in lenin's materialism and empirical criticism, where the problem becomes, you know, are there really things outside there fully existing? and this asymptotic, i think what we share is total opposition to this asymptotic notion of truth. there is full reality out there we gradually but never perfectly approach it where no wonder you know who admired deeply materialism and empirical criticism. a ferocious anti-communist if there ever was one, karl popper. you notice that in spite of all his criticism, he says, but material empirical criticism lenin is excellent there. no, i claim he is not. but were nonetheless to play the bad guy. i totally agree with you that the problem is with these different forms of negativity. now, playing a bad guy maybe h! there is some difference between the two of us. where you say multiplicity and void. i would try to read maybe more of some kind of negativity which i take from hegel into this void because i know you don't mean it in this way, but you know my primordial fear is that. i'm not saying you do, but... some people do namely is to reading this multiplicity and void into a kind of. orientalist buddhist position, you know, multiplicity of phenomena against the background of void as a kind of a zero primordial abyss and so on. that's not the void which is my void. my void is more of an obstacle, failure, catastrophe. it's a more violent, dynamic void. but these are absolutely fundamental questions. we cannot do it now.
Audience Member 1
iaine wants to respond.
iaine wants to respond.
Slavoj Žižek
no, no. yeah, you have it there.
no, no. yeah, you have it there.
Audience Member 1
i want to ask a further question about the link between ontology and freedom, which in this case, in the context of talking about lean's anti-philosophy, we could link to the act. now, i in your work, for instance, in your seminar on the anti philosophy of lecon from the mid-90s, you talked about the act and how lean treats it as quite central to marking him out as an anti-philosopher. but here, slavoy had his own way. of bringing you into proximity of anti-philosophy. i think on this issue it's possible to do so by pointing out that where one would least expect it, that is at the very start of being an event, your magnum opus, that there is this sort of what one could call an act as this radical decision where confronted with the platonic parmenideian question being one or many, which one could say for you in the terms of logics of worlds is a point that any and every philosopher must confront where there's a yes or no choice to be made and one has to commit. you wager in the form of the axiom the one is not. but that is a decision which, as you indicate there, cannot be grounded by appeal to some sort of guiding intuitions or some meta-level vouching for the choice one way or the other. and this might be sart chot still in the background in terms of him as one of your three masters in 20th century french thought. it seems as though it's that that justifies choosing the one particular branch of pure mathematics that you choose. now what justifies theo-frankel plus e axiom of choice amongst other axiomizations of set theory? and what even makes set theory privileged versus other branches of mathematics? it seems as though it's that zfc is the only mathematical discourse that is truly oneless or that tries to formalize an ontology. without wants. so it seems as though the choice comes first, the decision, the pure decision, the act of wagering. on the many in the form of the one is not versus the one that even gets your own ontology off the ground. and given that for you ontology, you know, although it's mathematical, this is very much the concern of philosophy as a kind of meta-ontology, it would seem as though you're once again back in proximity with anti-philosophy in terms of there being this radical, ungrounded gesture, this decision in the face of a kind of ontological point that's your act. that literally sets up the very architecture of being an event. and i'm wondering. how.
i want to ask a further question about the link between ontology and freedom, which in this case, in the context of talking about lean's anti-philosophy, we could link to the act. now, i in your work, for instance, in your seminar on the anti philosophy of lecon from the mid-90s, you talked about the act and how lean treats it as quite central to marking him out as an anti-philosopher. but here, slavoy had his own way. of bringing you into proximity of anti-philosophy. i think on this issue it's possible to do so by pointing out that where one would least expect it, that is at the very start of being an event, your magnum opus, that there is this sort of what one could call an act as this radical decision where confronted with the platonic parmenideian question being one or many, which one could say for you in the terms of logics of worlds is a point that any and every philosopher must confront where there's a yes or no choice to be made and one has to commit. you wager in the form of the axiom the one is not. but that is a decision which, as you indicate there, cannot be grounded by appeal to some sort of guiding intuitions or some meta-level vouching for the choice one way or the other. and this might be sart chot still in the background in terms of him as one of your three masters in 20th century french thought. it seems as though it's that that justifies choosing the one particular branch of pure mathematics that you choose. now what justifies theo-frankel plus e axiom of choice amongst other axiomizations of set theory? and what even makes set theory privileged versus other branches of mathematics? it seems as though it's that zfc is the only mathematical discourse that is truly oneless or that tries to formalize an ontology. without wants. so it seems as though the choice comes first, the decision, the pure decision, the act of wagering. on the many in the form of the one is not versus the one that even gets your own ontology off the ground. and given that for you ontology, you know, although it's mathematical, this is very much the concern of philosophy as a kind of meta-ontology, it would seem as though you're once again back in proximity with anti-philosophy in terms of there being this radical, ungrounded gesture, this decision in the face of a kind of ontological point that's your act. that literally sets up the very architecture of being an event. and i'm wondering. how.
Alain Badiou
à peu près oui, tu me redis quand même.
à peu près oui, tu me redis quand même.
Slavoj Žižek
non, l'idée c'est qu au début de l'.
non, l'idée c'est qu au début de l'.
Alain Badiou
oui.
oui.
Slavoj Žižek
com tu fais choix d'une certaine ontologie.
com tu fais choix d'une certaine ontologie.
Alain Badiou
. c. etc.
. c. etc.
Slavoj Žižek
est-ce que ce n'est pas comme même, comme dans laant philosophosophie, ton choix fondamental, existentiel, acte de liberté ? so...
est-ce que ce n'est pas comme même, comme dans laant philosophosophie, ton choix fondamental, existentiel, acte de liberté ? so...
Alain Badiou
the point is to return to my goal in philosophy. why philosophy is for me something interesting? finally, there is always something like that, a vrai biography of a philosopher. and... for me, the question of philosophy is the question of novelty of creation. of. ao, something new. is possible in the world. something which is not reducible to the repetition, in fact. i name repetition all the structure of the world as it is, all the inertia of the world. so is there something? which interrupts. repetition. and what are the general conditions of that sort of interruption? nature naturel... behind all that we have uh the condition of uh... the creation of new trend in artistic creation. political revolution. uh love encounter and so on, a new theory. or. all that are the concrete forms. of novelty. so you'd know. my problem is not the existence. of something new. because for me it's a fact. there has been and there exists something. ré existe, b. love, patience, artistic creations, scientific theory. political revolutions. so... my question is not the existence of novelty. but how something like that is possible? and how we can have a thinking of novelty. so it's a properly philosophical question. which comes? like a girl says. after the truth. the truth exists, the philosophical question comes. in the evening, in the evening of the day of truth. so i accept this demand. and to answer this question, how something new is possible. how. we are not. under the laws of repetition, are not absolutely under the laws of repetition. uh i must propose an ontological framework. because without an ontological framework, we cannot understand. what is new precisely? what he knew, we must construct an ontology of repetition, precisely, of the universe of being as it is.
the point is to return to my goal in philosophy. why philosophy is for me something interesting? finally, there is always something like that, a vrai biography of a philosopher. and... for me, the question of philosophy is the question of novelty of creation. of. ao, something new. is possible in the world. something which is not reducible to the repetition, in fact. i name repetition all the structure of the world as it is, all the inertia of the world. so is there something? which interrupts. repetition. and what are the general conditions of that sort of interruption? nature naturel... behind all that we have uh the condition of uh... the creation of new trend in artistic creation. political revolution. uh love encounter and so on, a new theory. or. all that are the concrete forms. of novelty. so you'd know. my problem is not the existence. of something new. because for me it's a fact. there has been and there exists something. ré existe, b. love, patience, artistic creations, scientific theory. political revolutions. so... my question is not the existence of novelty. but how something like that is possible? and how we can have a thinking of novelty. so it's a properly philosophical question. which comes? like a girl says. after the truth. the truth exists, the philosophical question comes. in the evening, in the evening of the day of truth. so i accept this demand. and to answer this question, how something new is possible. how. we are not. under the laws of repetition, are not absolutely under the laws of repetition. uh i must propose an ontological framework. because without an ontological framework, we cannot understand. what is new precisely? what he knew, we must construct an ontology of repetition, precisely, of the universe of being as it is.
Slavoj Žižek
oh.
oh.
Alain Badiou
and uh... it's... my decision concerning this ontology is not of it's not of the decision to take mathematics. the decision was... if is... that an ontology. which is not a theological ontology. which is not under the potency of the one. that's is my question. what is an ontology which is not under the potency of the one? i agree with heidegger on this point, in a text which you can find dans the big book concernage. that is, eidegger says that finally we can define metaphysics by the potency of the one. so it's not only forgetting, forgetting being and so on. it's more precise. the organisation of the potency of the one, that is metaphys. so if i love weakness and not potency, like lac i saying, i have to love multiplicity and not the one, and not the big potency of the one. so i propose an ontology of the pure multiplicity. and if... we have an ontology of the pure multiplicity. the difficulty is that we have without one. so multiplicité of what? not of elements. multiplicité of multiplicité, like sloy. and it's at this point that i search in the direction of mathematics, only at these points. when my conviction is that contemporary ontology. is by necessity an ontology of multiplicités. it's not mine only, it's also the conviction of del and many others. against the potency of the one. and radical, that is multiplicity is multiplicités of multiplicités. and so there is no stopping point in the analysis of multiplicity. if something stops, we are in the void. there is nothing at all. because if there is something, something is a multiplicity. so the connection between multiplicity and the void. is not a dualité, metaphysysical dualité. void is the immanent nothingness which is inside the multiplicity of the multiplicity of multiplicity. so that is my choice. and after that... the... in this framework. we have to understand the possibility of something new and so it's the theory of an event and so on. we cannot explain all that today. the point, the very important point. is. that the element of pure decision. the personal element. has been the conviction that in the contemporary situation. the context. to examine the possibilit of something new. is an ontology of multiplicities, of pure multiplicity. that is multiplicity without one. this point is very, very, very... biographical? naturel. when it says that... why is the question of novelty? it was certainly first by political education at the light of may 68. so something. prizing like very condition of true life. so the conviction that the true life cannot...
and uh... it's... my decision concerning this ontology is not of it's not of the decision to take mathematics. the decision was... if is... that an ontology. which is not a theological ontology. which is not under the potency of the one. that's is my question. what is an ontology which is not under the potency of the one? i agree with heidegger on this point, in a text which you can find dans the big book concernage. that is, eidegger says that finally we can define metaphysics by the potency of the one. so it's not only forgetting, forgetting being and so on. it's more precise. the organisation of the potency of the one, that is metaphys. so if i love weakness and not potency, like lac i saying, i have to love multiplicity and not the one, and not the big potency of the one. so i propose an ontology of the pure multiplicity. and if... we have an ontology of the pure multiplicity. the difficulty is that we have without one. so multiplicité of what? not of elements. multiplicité of multiplicité, like sloy. and it's at this point that i search in the direction of mathematics, only at these points. when my conviction is that contemporary ontology. is by necessity an ontology of multiplicités. it's not mine only, it's also the conviction of del and many others. against the potency of the one. and radical, that is multiplicity is multiplicités of multiplicités. and so there is no stopping point in the analysis of multiplicity. if something stops, we are in the void. there is nothing at all. because if there is something, something is a multiplicity. so the connection between multiplicity and the void. is not a dualité, metaphysysical dualité. void is the immanent nothingness which is inside the multiplicity of the multiplicity of multiplicity. so that is my choice. and after that... the... in this framework. we have to understand the possibility of something new and so it's the theory of an event and so on. we cannot explain all that today. the point, the very important point. is. that the element of pure decision. the personal element. has been the conviction that in the contemporary situation. the context. to examine the possibilit of something new. is an ontology of multiplicities, of pure multiplicity. that is multiplicity without one. this point is very, very, very... biographical? naturel. when it says that... why is the question of novelty? it was certainly first by political education at the light of may 68. so something. prizing like very condition of true life. so the conviction that the true life cannot...
Slavoj Žižek
be life inside repetition.
be life inside repetition.
Alain Badiou
but it's a very general biological point, i think. i think is it really... many subjects. the conviction of whom is that true life is repetition. it's the point of view of the state. it's a post view of the order itself. the power. law of repetition. t... a sinking king cannot be ordered by the power. is by necessityité of thinking of... disrupting the repetition.
but it's a very general biological point, i think. i think is it really... many subjects. the conviction of whom is that true life is repetition. it's the point of view of the state. it's a post view of the order itself. the power. law of repetition. t... a sinking king cannot be ordered by the power. is by necessityité of thinking of... disrupting the repetition.
Slavoj Žižek
can i just now put it? question so would you agree with him if i got you correctly erin point was the following one. so now, sorry if i speak as a police interrogator so now you admitted that you had first some kind of existential decision, how to think something new and so on and based on that you violently picked out one mathematical theory. among others. the reasons were not to be naive, you look around which theory is better or whatever. you simply picked out. of the multiplicity of mathematical theories, the one which fix this. his reproach, if i got it correctly is aren't you here close to some kind of anti-philosophical gesture and if i make just and then i give it to you very brief remark really brief. you know where maybe there is a difference between us. there is no one. we agree here. but for me this is not just a fact there is no one but this is a positive obstacle. the one always fails. the failure of one which gives us two, but not the two of this oriental bullshit in in balance. so my problem would be, i put it in very abstract terms. i would like to have in your. multiplicity already some form of the two. two is crucial. i agree here with you who often emphasize. i stop here.
can i just now put it? question so would you agree with him if i got you correctly erin point was the following one. so now, sorry if i speak as a police interrogator so now you admitted that you had first some kind of existential decision, how to think something new and so on and based on that you violently picked out one mathematical theory. among others. the reasons were not to be naive, you look around which theory is better or whatever. you simply picked out. of the multiplicity of mathematical theories, the one which fix this. his reproach, if i got it correctly is aren't you here close to some kind of anti-philosophical gesture and if i make just and then i give it to you very brief remark really brief. you know where maybe there is a difference between us. there is no one. we agree here. but for me this is not just a fact there is no one but this is a positive obstacle. the one always fails. the failure of one which gives us two, but not the two of this oriental bullshit in in balance. so my problem would be, i put it in very abstract terms. i would like to have in your. multiplicity already some form of the two. two is crucial. i agree here with you who often emphasize. i stop here.
Alain Badiou
it's a technical question. maybe it's a two technical questions. precisely, the form of the two. in the pure multiplicity, the distinction. between element and party, element and subset.
it's a technical question. maybe it's a two technical questions. precisely, the form of the two. in the pure multiplicity, the distinction. between element and party, element and subset.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Alain Badiou
and there's a distinction between how a subset in in the set. and how an element in the set. inscribed in the multiplicity itself, fondament dualité. and the development of this duality is of capital importance in being an event, naturally, because finally it's also the question of the state, the question of the excess, and also the question of what is a generic set, that is ontological form of a truth. but yes, i agree with the question. naturally, when i am in the question how can i think multiplicity, which is a multiplicity of multiplicities, and if... i do a choice. in different possibilit in cette theoryorie. my choice will be... uh zerermelo frankel. theory of sets and not a theory of sets with atoms. which exists too. so there exists some theory of sets where elements are atoms, so with one inside the multiplicity. so i take a theory of sets without atom, that-, without one. and so after that, we have that sort of dialectics, singular dialectics, between multiplicity and the void, and not between multiplicity and the one. that is certainly a technical choice because in fact it is possible to construct a theory of sets in the mathematical field with atoms. okay. because it's not the choice of of democrite or epicure. it's not multiplicity of atoms and the void. that is very important. immanent dialectic. of multiplicity and the void by the mediation of the fact that multiplicity is always multiplicity of multiplicities. but in the classical atomistic materialism, it's not the case. because in atomistic materialisme, multiplicité is multiplicité of one atoms. and the void is the general context in which we have atoms, precisely. so it's not that sort of atomistic materialism, it's something else, but naturally it's a choice. but it's a choice which is, i think, not really biographical, existential or tragic choice like the question for kierkegaard of marriage. it's not exactly the a question ofkegaard of marriage with regime. it's a more quiet question and more technical. it is why i don't think that this... it really a trace of antiphilosoph.
and there's a distinction between how a subset in in the set. and how an element in the set. inscribed in the multiplicity itself, fondament dualité. and the development of this duality is of capital importance in being an event, naturally, because finally it's also the question of the state, the question of the excess, and also the question of what is a generic set, that is ontological form of a truth. but yes, i agree with the question. naturally, when i am in the question how can i think multiplicity, which is a multiplicity of multiplicities, and if... i do a choice. in different possibilit in cette theoryorie. my choice will be... uh zerermelo frankel. theory of sets and not a theory of sets with atoms. which exists too. so there exists some theory of sets where elements are atoms, so with one inside the multiplicity. so i take a theory of sets without atom, that-, without one. and so after that, we have that sort of dialectics, singular dialectics, between multiplicity and the void, and not between multiplicity and the one. that is certainly a technical choice because in fact it is possible to construct a theory of sets in the mathematical field with atoms. okay. because it's not the choice of of democrite or epicure. it's not multiplicity of atoms and the void. that is very important. immanent dialectic. of multiplicity and the void by the mediation of the fact that multiplicity is always multiplicity of multiplicities. but in the classical atomistic materialism, it's not the case. because in atomistic materialisme, multiplicité is multiplicité of one atoms. and the void is the general context in which we have atoms, precisely. so it's not that sort of atomistic materialism, it's something else, but naturally it's a choice. but it's a choice which is, i think, not really biographical, existential or tragic choice like the question for kierkegaard of marriage. it's not exactly the a question ofkegaard of marriage with regime. it's a more quiet question and more technical. it is why i don't think that this... it really a trace of antiphilosoph.
Audience Member 3
how are you guys doing? you want any more questions?? .
how are you guys doing? you want any more questions?? .
Slavoj Žižek
there are two hands being raised there. maybe we can... two the two the two the.
there are two hands being raised there. maybe we can... two the two the two the.
Audience Member 3
we up and take.
we up and take.
Alain Badiou
yeah.
yeah.
Audience Member 3
ch your remarks, do you really think that class struggle must continue in the dark? i understand class struggle as real and the bartleby politics that mr. gff refers to not to. but is there not some way to... teach the act. i mean, maybe not in a university setting or as discourse, but in the mojave desert now we run workshops called the new everyday life. where we teach leatherworking and biodiesel mechanics and beer making and things like this. does this fall into neo-anarchism, like simon crley or something? must we seize the stake? can smart smart. .
ch your remarks, do you really think that class struggle must continue in the dark? i understand class struggle as real and the bartleby politics that mr. gff refers to not to. but is there not some way to... teach the act. i mean, maybe not in a university setting or as discourse, but in the mojave desert now we run workshops called the new everyday life. where we teach leatherworking and biodiesel mechanics and beer making and things like this. does this fall into neo-anarchism, like simon crley or something? must we seize the stake? can smart smart. .
Alain Badiou
tout.
tout.
Slavoj Žižek
now, you know, i was accused, among others by our good friend peter holward, who said that i'm inconsistent. sometimes i say, do nothing, wait. sometimes i wait for some big suicidal act. sometimes i propose pragmatic measures. can't i decide? well, i find this reproach totally nonsensical. it's like reproaching me, yesterday you ate a hamburger, today a pizza. can't you decide? no, fuck you, why should i decide? i mean, there are, i'm very precise here, there are situations where, and i quote you, that when doing something just contributes, even if it's critical to reproduction of the existing, where, the most violent thing, as i repeat, is to do nothing. there are obvious situations where a great collective act is needed and there are situations totally honorable why not when small patient work is needed? so my first reply here is quite an opportunistic one, not opportunistic in the sense of political opportunism, but i think you know, to try to press us on this choice, what do you advocate? doing nothing, preparing big revolution or patient everyday work? why impose a choice here? it's a strategic question. now, you mentioned a certain obscene name that i prefer not to enter. grli and so on, no? my my... my my... problem with that one is simply that what he describes is for me a way too comfortable position. you know, i don't think you have the right to sh. there is the state out there, but i want to remain outside. i mean, it's for me too close to the position of the beautiful soul and so on and so on. i think that we should nonetheless insist and this is the being faithful to the idea of communism that nonetheless we should. you know, as you say subspecie eternatis, that you observe reality through the lenses of the idea, an eternal idea, that communism should be the idea through which we judge what is going on today. and that's my basic here then i leave you all the opportunism. in a good sense, opportunism, improvise, teach in the deserts here, there, don't underestimate nonetheless universities. i think that what you suffer here now with all this financial crisis in europe, even worse, so-called bologna reform. more and more, you know. universities are becoming a bastion of something which threatens the predominant form of domination, which is why more and more they try to streamline to make universities. as they put it, you know, it's very popular in europe to say today, universities shouldn't be an ivory tower of knowledge which is of no use to anyone. they should serve concrete needs of, you know this to don't be ashamed of university knowledge. it's getting more and more precious. and i claim we need it more than ever today. university knowledge to know what is going on. on i don't believe in this oh why only teach, study, do something, but how do you know the truth precisely of what you are doing? it's more and more needed. we need theory more than ever. i don't believe this would be for me anti-philosophy in a bad sense. to think that... in order to decide. of a truth, of a theory, some kind of direct practical experience tells you. no, in order to decide if there is truth in what you are really doing, you need a theory more than ever. so don't feel guilty. you are here victim of the ruling ideology. i claim if you feel guilty in the sense of, oh my god, people are starving in africa and so on, and we are just spending time here philosophizing or what whatever bill gates talks like this today. this a whole argumentation of we are spending time here, blowing up, spending taxpayers' money while real suffering goes out there. this is the predominant discourse today. this kind of pseudo-emergency state in order to make us feel guilty because what you find beneath this is all the time this pragmatic call, people are starving in africa. so stop with your stupid critique of capitalism and so on. let's do something. stop thinking too much. let's all of us get together and, you know, no more than ever, not only with regard to this, but even... for example, in europe, you must have read in your newspapers the greek crisis. it's very sad, you know, some of our trokite friends are already in their pre- orgasmic state. you see, it's almost here, the revolution will happen. no, it is not. what depresses me most is that it's just a protest. but there is except of some vague calls to solidarity or return to welfare state, first, even what the greeks want, it is pure reactive politics. they basically want to keep the old privileges. and even here, you know, here even. this is horrible to say, my greek friends will probably lynch me. but you know, for example, in slovenia, you know, it sounds very nice, solidarity with greece. but wait a minute, in slovenia, trade unions opposed any help to greece. with a very russian... argumentation, which is also egotistic but interesting. they compared the price, sorry, not only the real purchase power but even, because this is even better for the greeks, but the average income of a greek worker even after all these austerity measures. and. they discovered it's still up. 40% higher will be after all these austerity measures than the income of an average slovene worker. so they are telling us, we, solidarity with greeks. so now we should give money to greeks. okay, what about other east european countries and so on and so on? in other words, now i will say something really horrible for which you will maybe even proclaim to be a secret right wingeringer or what. i think there is also an element of truth in the fact that... greeks were effectively living off european union donations and enjoying an extremely high level of protection and so on which you don't find in other european nations. in the west or in the east. for example, do you know that the average time a greek worker retires is 53 years of age. do you know that in many, now i sound like right w, but my point is not let's take from them. my point is that it's absolutely crucial here, that's my point, to... i'll put it this way. some people in europe, leftists, think that the lesson of this crisis is european union is bad, it's the organ of international. financial capital and that the solution for the left is strong nation state. like dealing from internet. i think it's more than ever necessary to counter international capital with forms also of solidarity. and here we should be international solidarity of the workers and so on and so on. this is absolutely crucial today to avoid this trap of nation state, this withdrawal to nation state. and then you get here an extremely obscene versions which shocked me, like some high-level british leftists, i will not name them, look at the editorial board of new left review. seriously flirt with the idea of supporting václav klaus, who is now the president of the czech republic, pure neoliberaleral right winger and from this right-wing position as a threat to liberty, she opposes european union. and they claim... no, the crucial thing of the left today is to oppose european union and have stronger nation state. what if klaus is really one of us and he just pretends to be a neo-market liberal to pass this basic progressive idea of undermining european union? i think this path is a catastrophe. i think that it's so important to insist that since capital is global. the only way to counter it, is not nation. if we. found resistance at nation-state levels. then this is the ideal field of the capital, which then can play one nation against the other outsourcing and all those games. everything will be decided at this level. and here again, we need theory. what they need in greece is theory. that is so depressing for me if you follow the greek events. absolutely. it's just, you know, popular theory, so what i am afraid is that when people will be disappointed by the impotence of leftist demands, you will get the right-wingers. you will get other types of nationalism. and this is the true catastrophe of the european left today, as i like to repeat, how my god. this old polarity of two main parties which address all the population, center right, center left, and then some fringe parties, is being replaced by another polarity. one big, let's call it liberal capitalist party. usually tolerant, pro-abortion, blah, blah. and then the only opposition, a violent anti-immigrant... openly racist party. it's happening, that's the catastrophe in eastern europe, syria, romania, hungary, even in the west, belgium, netherlands and so on and so on. and again, in this situation, i... again, theory is needed absolutely. so don't fall into this. romantic of some kind of how should put it, immediate authentic action and so on and so on. it's absolutely crucial today more than ever i claim to stick to theory. so don't be ashamed that you are here. you are privileged but then instead of in this typical petit bourgeois way feeling guilty of oh people are starving and i'm here spending, use your privilege to learn, to study and so on. and do something.
now, you know, i was accused, among others by our good friend peter holward, who said that i'm inconsistent. sometimes i say, do nothing, wait. sometimes i wait for some big suicidal act. sometimes i propose pragmatic measures. can't i decide? well, i find this reproach totally nonsensical. it's like reproaching me, yesterday you ate a hamburger, today a pizza. can't you decide? no, fuck you, why should i decide? i mean, there are, i'm very precise here, there are situations where, and i quote you, that when doing something just contributes, even if it's critical to reproduction of the existing, where, the most violent thing, as i repeat, is to do nothing. there are obvious situations where a great collective act is needed and there are situations totally honorable why not when small patient work is needed? so my first reply here is quite an opportunistic one, not opportunistic in the sense of political opportunism, but i think you know, to try to press us on this choice, what do you advocate? doing nothing, preparing big revolution or patient everyday work? why impose a choice here? it's a strategic question. now, you mentioned a certain obscene name that i prefer not to enter. grli and so on, no? my my... my my... problem with that one is simply that what he describes is for me a way too comfortable position. you know, i don't think you have the right to sh. there is the state out there, but i want to remain outside. i mean, it's for me too close to the position of the beautiful soul and so on and so on. i think that we should nonetheless insist and this is the being faithful to the idea of communism that nonetheless we should. you know, as you say subspecie eternatis, that you observe reality through the lenses of the idea, an eternal idea, that communism should be the idea through which we judge what is going on today. and that's my basic here then i leave you all the opportunism. in a good sense, opportunism, improvise, teach in the deserts here, there, don't underestimate nonetheless universities. i think that what you suffer here now with all this financial crisis in europe, even worse, so-called bologna reform. more and more, you know. universities are becoming a bastion of something which threatens the predominant form of domination, which is why more and more they try to streamline to make universities. as they put it, you know, it's very popular in europe to say today, universities shouldn't be an ivory tower of knowledge which is of no use to anyone. they should serve concrete needs of, you know this to don't be ashamed of university knowledge. it's getting more and more precious. and i claim we need it more than ever today. university knowledge to know what is going on. on i don't believe in this oh why only teach, study, do something, but how do you know the truth precisely of what you are doing? it's more and more needed. we need theory more than ever. i don't believe this would be for me anti-philosophy in a bad sense. to think that... in order to decide. of a truth, of a theory, some kind of direct practical experience tells you. no, in order to decide if there is truth in what you are really doing, you need a theory more than ever. so don't feel guilty. you are here victim of the ruling ideology. i claim if you feel guilty in the sense of, oh my god, people are starving in africa and so on, and we are just spending time here philosophizing or what whatever bill gates talks like this today. this a whole argumentation of we are spending time here, blowing up, spending taxpayers' money while real suffering goes out there. this is the predominant discourse today. this kind of pseudo-emergency state in order to make us feel guilty because what you find beneath this is all the time this pragmatic call, people are starving in africa. so stop with your stupid critique of capitalism and so on. let's do something. stop thinking too much. let's all of us get together and, you know, no more than ever, not only with regard to this, but even... for example, in europe, you must have read in your newspapers the greek crisis. it's very sad, you know, some of our trokite friends are already in their pre- orgasmic state. you see, it's almost here, the revolution will happen. no, it is not. what depresses me most is that it's just a protest. but there is except of some vague calls to solidarity or return to welfare state, first, even what the greeks want, it is pure reactive politics. they basically want to keep the old privileges. and even here, you know, here even. this is horrible to say, my greek friends will probably lynch me. but you know, for example, in slovenia, you know, it sounds very nice, solidarity with greece. but wait a minute, in slovenia, trade unions opposed any help to greece. with a very russian... argumentation, which is also egotistic but interesting. they compared the price, sorry, not only the real purchase power but even, because this is even better for the greeks, but the average income of a greek worker even after all these austerity measures. and. they discovered it's still up. 40% higher will be after all these austerity measures than the income of an average slovene worker. so they are telling us, we, solidarity with greeks. so now we should give money to greeks. okay, what about other east european countries and so on and so on? in other words, now i will say something really horrible for which you will maybe even proclaim to be a secret right wingeringer or what. i think there is also an element of truth in the fact that... greeks were effectively living off european union donations and enjoying an extremely high level of protection and so on which you don't find in other european nations. in the west or in the east. for example, do you know that the average time a greek worker retires is 53 years of age. do you know that in many, now i sound like right w, but my point is not let's take from them. my point is that it's absolutely crucial here, that's my point, to... i'll put it this way. some people in europe, leftists, think that the lesson of this crisis is european union is bad, it's the organ of international. financial capital and that the solution for the left is strong nation state. like dealing from internet. i think it's more than ever necessary to counter international capital with forms also of solidarity. and here we should be international solidarity of the workers and so on and so on. this is absolutely crucial today to avoid this trap of nation state, this withdrawal to nation state. and then you get here an extremely obscene versions which shocked me, like some high-level british leftists, i will not name them, look at the editorial board of new left review. seriously flirt with the idea of supporting václav klaus, who is now the president of the czech republic, pure neoliberaleral right winger and from this right-wing position as a threat to liberty, she opposes european union. and they claim... no, the crucial thing of the left today is to oppose european union and have stronger nation state. what if klaus is really one of us and he just pretends to be a neo-market liberal to pass this basic progressive idea of undermining european union? i think this path is a catastrophe. i think that it's so important to insist that since capital is global. the only way to counter it, is not nation. if we. found resistance at nation-state levels. then this is the ideal field of the capital, which then can play one nation against the other outsourcing and all those games. everything will be decided at this level. and here again, we need theory. what they need in greece is theory. that is so depressing for me if you follow the greek events. absolutely. it's just, you know, popular theory, so what i am afraid is that when people will be disappointed by the impotence of leftist demands, you will get the right-wingers. you will get other types of nationalism. and this is the true catastrophe of the european left today, as i like to repeat, how my god. this old polarity of two main parties which address all the population, center right, center left, and then some fringe parties, is being replaced by another polarity. one big, let's call it liberal capitalist party. usually tolerant, pro-abortion, blah, blah. and then the only opposition, a violent anti-immigrant... openly racist party. it's happening, that's the catastrophe in eastern europe, syria, romania, hungary, even in the west, belgium, netherlands and so on and so on. and again, in this situation, i... again, theory is needed absolutely. so don't fall into this. romantic of some kind of how should put it, immediate authentic action and so on and so on. it's absolutely crucial today more than ever i claim to stick to theory. so don't be ashamed that you are here. you are privileged but then instead of in this typical petit bourgeois way feeling guilty of oh people are starving and i'm here spending, use your privilege to learn, to study and so on. and do something.
Audience Member 4
i the audience about the middlesex.
i the audience about the middlesex.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah example, yes, middlesex university, philosophy department council. here you can see how real are these struggles. my god. definitely, it's incredible under what target all around europe is today this so-called useless higher education and so on and so on. so again, if you play this game of who needs useless academic knowledge, you are playing the game of those in power. but okay, let's not lose time.
yeah example, yes, middlesex university, philosophy department council. here you can see how real are these struggles. my god. definitely, it's incredible under what target all around europe is today this so-called useless higher education and so on and so on. so again, if you play this game of who needs useless academic knowledge, you are playing the game of those in power. but okay, let's not lose time.
Alain Badiou
yes, sir one word. you know... the global situation today. yeah. one remark you observe. how we pass from a very precise question, is lacan an anti-philosopher? to something very different. what is the planet earth situation today? it's a very interesting logic. the global situation today is a situation very near the situation in the middle of the 19th century. a situation... practically. the capital. is the future for everybody. there is no... hi d. in the strong sense of the word. of something else. and it was the case at the during the first part of the 19th century. so, the question of... of action. of what we must do and so on is a very difficult one. what is? the way in the 19th century. we find two different things. four. some revolt. some actions. some process of organizations. which are in the form of multiplicity for the case. there is no unity of all that, there is action of the class of workers in france. nationalist action in small countries and so on, on one side. and on the other side, we have v important ! intellectual production. we have marx and angels. oh. ou read hegel. and there is no contradiction. there is no contradiction. i agree completely with slavoy on this point. maybe. at another stage of the situation. we can understand what is exactly the unity of all that and to construct a form of unity of all that. foto mount the situation is z. all practical experiments. concerning a new possibility in the field of politics. are good things and we have to examine the sense, the orientation, the new invention of all local experimentation. okay. but on the other side, we have to do strong and new intellectual production to understand and unify the situation. and the most important point is to have a global idea. without a global id, the multiplicity is condemned at to failure. because we must oppose. to the global vision. of capitalism at the hand of human history and other vision. it's an obligation. it is in the context of a new idea. that we must examine and participate to all forms of rewards, innovation, new form of organization and so on.
yes, sir one word. you know... the global situation today. yeah. one remark you observe. how we pass from a very precise question, is lacan an anti-philosopher? to something very different. what is the planet earth situation today? it's a very interesting logic. the global situation today is a situation very near the situation in the middle of the 19th century. a situation... practically. the capital. is the future for everybody. there is no... hi d. in the strong sense of the word. of something else. and it was the case at the during the first part of the 19th century. so, the question of... of action. of what we must do and so on is a very difficult one. what is? the way in the 19th century. we find two different things. four. some revolt. some actions. some process of organizations. which are in the form of multiplicity for the case. there is no unity of all that, there is action of the class of workers in france. nationalist action in small countries and so on, on one side. and on the other side, we have v important ! intellectual production. we have marx and angels. oh. ou read hegel. and there is no contradiction. there is no contradiction. i agree completely with slavoy on this point. maybe. at another stage of the situation. we can understand what is exactly the unity of all that and to construct a form of unity of all that. foto mount the situation is z. all practical experiments. concerning a new possibility in the field of politics. are good things and we have to examine the sense, the orientation, the new invention of all local experimentation. okay. but on the other side, we have to do strong and new intellectual production to understand and unify the situation. and the most important point is to have a global idea. without a global id, the multiplicity is condemned at to failure. because we must oppose. to the global vision. of capitalism at the hand of human history and other vision. it's an obligation. it is in the context of a new idea. that we must examine and participate to all forms of rewards, innovation, new form of organization and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
that is the secret. today. and this is why i agree. the fact that... uh...
that is the secret. today. and this is why i agree. the fact that... uh...
Alain Badiou
philosophy, intellectual discussion, examination of very complex problems are a necessityité today. but a necessityité also to fight for the department of philosophy of middlesex, for the new rights of... immigrants and so on. you know. i am also an activist. i'm also an activist. something which is very common in france today. but between the local activism concerning, for example, the rights of the strangers, the new form of terrible nationalism and so on, again all that. and the great consideration concerning the ideas and the status of philosophy today, in my conviction, there is no contradiction at all.
philosophy, intellectual discussion, examination of very complex problems are a necessityité today. but a necessityité also to fight for the department of philosophy of middlesex, for the new rights of... immigrants and so on. you know. i am also an activist. i'm also an activist. something which is very common in france today. but between the local activism concerning, for example, the rights of the strangers, the new form of terrible nationalism and so on, again all that. and the great consideration concerning the ideas and the status of philosophy today, in my conviction, there is no contradiction at all.
Slavoj Žižek
can we nonetheless...
can we nonetheless...
Alain Badiou
second question.
second question.
Slavoj Žižek
so so that at least hypocritically we can say not only men were speaking, women were also allowed to speak.
so so that at least hypocritically we can say not only men were speaking, women were also allowed to speak.
Alain Badiou
the second and last question.
the second and last question.
Slavoj Žižek
yes, please..
yes, please..
Audience Member 2
faith. go your interest in st. paul. which i feel like faith is i'm kind of mapping as outside of the model. outside of the model i'm thinking of, i have this quote from jameson, i'm sorry, jameson from postmodernernism. his cultural logic on the capitalism. he says that insofar as the theorist wins by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is ever paralyzed and the impulses of negation social transformation, these radical politics that we're working towards, i think. are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model. itself. and so mathim, i just don't understand it. i see it as a formalism. you're saying that this knowledge of the real that is perhaps unknown can be transmitted in this anti-mystical way. an anti-mystical way. um... that i think then resurrects this dichotomy by this reliance on proof. because... all we can do is think the act is the act, is this not then a ceiling or horizon? the act itself? this anti-mystical then ascribes to this structural mythos, like informalizing another symbology, this mathematical symbology. this evening or dusk of truth. doesn't this... isnn't the asymptote itself that we're talking about, this ceiling that all we can do is think the? that theory still exists and is important. where then in this formalization of the math theme is this distance without measure? and is there then... an exclusion faith. is it separated from it? is math theme really... a formalism that denies some kind of unmappable. faith.
faith. go your interest in st. paul. which i feel like faith is i'm kind of mapping as outside of the model. outside of the model i'm thinking of, i have this quote from jameson, i'm sorry, jameson from postmodernernism. his cultural logic on the capitalism. he says that insofar as the theorist wins by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is ever paralyzed and the impulses of negation social transformation, these radical politics that we're working towards, i think. are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model. itself. and so mathim, i just don't understand it. i see it as a formalism. you're saying that this knowledge of the real that is perhaps unknown can be transmitted in this anti-mystical way. an anti-mystical way. um... that i think then resurrects this dichotomy by this reliance on proof. because... all we can do is think the act is the act, is this not then a ceiling or horizon? the act itself? this anti-mystical then ascribes to this structural mythos, like informalizing another symbology, this mathematical symbology. this evening or dusk of truth. doesn't this... isnn't the asymptote itself that we're talking about, this ceiling that all we can do is think the? that theory still exists and is important. where then in this formalization of the math theme is this distance without measure? and is there then... an exclusion faith. is it separated from it? is math theme really... a formalism that denies some kind of unmappable. faith.
Alain Badiou
alors il faut que tu me dises si tu ne comprends rien. je n'ai pas compris la question.
alors il faut que tu me dises si tu ne comprends rien. je n'ai pas compris la question.
Slavoj Žižek
elle a posé la question du rapport entre le métème et la foi. it ons.
elle a posé la question du rapport entre le métème et la foi. it ons.
Alain Badiou
the, the question of the mat team. is different from the question of decision. mat team is only a question of transmission. that's it formalization. to transmit to others. an act. which is without concept and without normal language. to transmit it. so my team is only a formalization of something with the goal to... transmit all that to others. the question of the decision is different and the question of decision is really the question of becoming a subject. yeah. the name faith in st paul, or what is the content of the word faith? the content is that we accept the event. for paul, there is nothing else in faith. only to accept the event. the event for paul is resurrection of the christ. but faith is acceptation of the event and so acceptation to participate to the consequences. of the event. uh. and if we are in the conviction. like all was is new. is finally the result of the consequences of an event. we have by nécessité. this form of subjectivity which can be named a face. there is no objection to this name. why not face? if face signifies only first, the acceptation of the existence of the event. which is neither something ob views. and second, acceptation to participate to the consequences of the event. to become an activist of the event, something like that. and so... uh... there is no contradiction. between three terms. first. ontology is something of mathematical nature. so being as being is not a question of faith, of miracle or of human existence. being qua being is a structure. that we can sing. across mathematical disposition. first point. secondconde. there is an event. and... acceptation of the event is the first form of subjectivation. for the individuals. we can say that face is the name of subjectivation. and third, the novelty is construct by the development in the situation of the consequences. of the event. and as a result of all that, we have the possibility of becoming a subject. in a context which is a context of repetition.
the, the question of the mat team. is different from the question of decision. mat team is only a question of transmission. that's it formalization. to transmit to others. an act. which is without concept and without normal language. to transmit it. so my team is only a formalization of something with the goal to... transmit all that to others. the question of the decision is different and the question of decision is really the question of becoming a subject. yeah. the name faith in st paul, or what is the content of the word faith? the content is that we accept the event. for paul, there is nothing else in faith. only to accept the event. the event for paul is resurrection of the christ. but faith is acceptation of the event and so acceptation to participate to the consequences. of the event. uh. and if we are in the conviction. like all was is new. is finally the result of the consequences of an event. we have by nécessité. this form of subjectivity which can be named a face. there is no objection to this name. why not face? if face signifies only first, the acceptation of the existence of the event. which is neither something ob views. and second, acceptation to participate to the consequences of the event. to become an activist of the event, something like that. and so... uh... there is no contradiction. between three terms. first. ontology is something of mathematical nature. so being as being is not a question of faith, of miracle or of human existence. being qua being is a structure. that we can sing. across mathematical disposition. first point. secondconde. there is an event. and... acceptation of the event is the first form of subjectivation. for the individuals. we can say that face is the name of subjectivation. and third, the novelty is construct by the development in the situation of the consequences. of the event. and as a result of all that, we have the possibility of becoming a subject. in a context which is a context of repetition.
Slavoj Žižek
i mean, i was deeply impressed by your question because i... feel i know. what is... maybethering you. maybe we should have explained more how matem functions. for example, if i ask myself i'm asked to give a clear simple idea of matem, i always tell people think about quantum physics. as everybody knows, richard feynman repeated this all the time. nobody can understand quantum physics and it doesn't mean we all black. it means these are certain formulas which work. if by understanding we mean, and this is ultimately what understanding means. translating this formula into our everyday experience of reality, you cannot do it. it resists translation into the universe of meaning. and if you want... political dimension to eat. i would have said that maybe, just maybe, capitalism is more and more working in this way as a... matim that is to say, more and more it works as some kind of a... global machinery. and the fact that it cannot be understood is what you said when you proposed a wonderful thesis that capitalism is the first worldless civilization. what all these paranoiac theories. right-wing or leftist cultural theorists try to do is to reduce capitalism to a certain world of meaning. it's european capitalism or it's the jewish plot or whatever. you want a concrete. what you cannot accept is just that it's a kind of a meaningless formula which works with all civilizations. you can have catholic capitalism, protestant, chinese capitalism talian confian very successful today as we know. and we have to... this would be to touch the real of capitalism, to visible this irreducible gap. between the real and all attempts to provide a meaning to it. like that's the seduction of catholic church today, basically they are telling you we know you experience capitalism as some horrible, meaningless expanded reproduction. follow us and we will allow you, as you put it, to have a cake and eat it. that is to say, you will have capitalism, but if you follow us and don't do it too radically, no stem cell research, not too much, whatever, if you keep it under certain limits, we will... enable you nonetheless to live in a meaningful universe and so on and so on. so this would be a very political. the first task of the left is to. abandon again. either in the right-wing predominant forum of we should keep our cultural national identity or in the left-wing forum, this is why i reject all this bullshit about capitalism, eurocentrism. no, the problem of capitalism today is precisely it's no longer eurocentric. it's truly is a neutral machine. and this is what gives a boost to western new nationalism. they finally got it that you know it can really work in singapore and china, maybe even better than it works here. so,, so, uh... you see, this would be again one example of, i think, very nice one of this gap that you mentioned, not to to she. capitalism is this real of a certain self-reproducing, again, market mechanism which for contingent reasons it was born in europe. there is no deeper truth in it. it's not that you we learn something deep about capitalism if we reduce it to its contingent historical origins. no, this precisely is not the truth. the truth is that it cut the links, that it's to date a universal. machine. so this would be again, for me, if you want, in a very naive way, almost a practical use of this distinction between a world horizon and... capital is worthless which is why i think. this is an old polemic. i tend to be opposed to what is very popular today everywhere in china today, in india. in all these places, they almost lynched me because i attacked this idea. they all dream about alternate modernity. like you in the west screwed it up, we will do it in our way. but you know, what they really want is to have capitalism without paying the price for it. with all the antagonisms and so on. i told the chinese, i told them, you know, you are the chinese, which means out of 1 billion six million to 100 students, okay? it wasn't that i was talking to the chinese nation. i told them, you may talk the bullshit about... about harmonious society but you will not get harmonious capitalism. and even in india, i discovered to my horror, to what extent? uh. uh date in a different way played the same game as in china. they desperately tried to keep alive their even most reactionary hindu. caste system and so on traditions. to serve as a kind of a screen of meaning. to enable you to confront capitalism and of course i think that this is a nice example of how even the critique of western imperialism, cultural imperialism, serves a very obscure role of justifying their own way to legitimize their capitalism and to cut the long story short why am i so opposed to so-called alternate modernity? because, you know, as i always repeat, in europe we had one big alternate modernity in the 20th century. it was called fascism. fascism was precisely alternate modernity. the idea was fascism, the idea basic idea of fascism is we can have. all good that capitalism brings industrialization and so on, without paying the price for it in social antagonisms. that's why you need anti-seemitism. the idea is it's not in the system and this is why now i will say something horrible. i even... a little bit distrustful about hugo chavez and so on. he comes often a little bit too close to it. namely, i don't have any big sympathy for american imperialism, but maybe the time has come to admit that thanks to the great efforts of your greatest president, george bush, united states is, i mean, he really did a wonderful job. in eight years, he succeeded in diminishing the role of united states to one in a polycentric world, to one. among other local powers. but what this means, i will tell you something horrible, but you should like it, is that you know, it's no longer always absolutely automatically that united states are the bad guy. that this also means a polycentric world, like with all my still admiration for china and so on. but you know. what the chinese are doing in myanmar, politically correct name for burma, is also a form of new economic post-colonialism and so on. so, you know, we should try to approach in a different way. i think the danger today is, this is what really worries me, if you ask me. that anti-imperialist rhetorics can function as a tool to obfuscate the basic class struggle. let me take the brutal example of zimbabwe and, i hope not, south africa. i have an extremely simple explanation, only the core explanation. what happened there is the following. i spoke with people in zimbabwe, i wasn't there, from zimbabwe, south african friends. what really happened after the end of apartheid? in south africa. it is that. the standard of living, experience of ordinary people, it is basically the same as under apartheid. maybe in some tiny circles a little bit better, but at the same time worse, because there is much more uncertainty, crime and so on. the only thing that really changed is that you have a new black rich class which joined the white class. now, to counter the disappointment of the ordinary people, the big temptation of and to obfuscate the class struggle, the big temptation of the new black ruling class is to play the race card. is to claim you are no better because we are really still enslaved to western imperialism, blah blah blah. no, sorry, i disagree here. i claim this is the worst attempt. this is why i tried to give mugabe a chance. i spoke with my friends there and they told me who are leftist radical and they told me no, unfortunately, critique of mugabe is not just western media attacking he did screw zimbabwe is the pure case of the the new black elite playing the race card in order to avoid precisely. the new class confrontation. and if this will be the future, this nationaliste. regimes and so on, then it's really said we really need what you said, confronting capitalism at its own level. outside this particular frames against this, against that and so on and so on. but maybe we talk too much.
i mean, i was deeply impressed by your question because i... feel i know. what is... maybethering you. maybe we should have explained more how matem functions. for example, if i ask myself i'm asked to give a clear simple idea of matem, i always tell people think about quantum physics. as everybody knows, richard feynman repeated this all the time. nobody can understand quantum physics and it doesn't mean we all black. it means these are certain formulas which work. if by understanding we mean, and this is ultimately what understanding means. translating this formula into our everyday experience of reality, you cannot do it. it resists translation into the universe of meaning. and if you want... political dimension to eat. i would have said that maybe, just maybe, capitalism is more and more working in this way as a... matim that is to say, more and more it works as some kind of a... global machinery. and the fact that it cannot be understood is what you said when you proposed a wonderful thesis that capitalism is the first worldless civilization. what all these paranoiac theories. right-wing or leftist cultural theorists try to do is to reduce capitalism to a certain world of meaning. it's european capitalism or it's the jewish plot or whatever. you want a concrete. what you cannot accept is just that it's a kind of a meaningless formula which works with all civilizations. you can have catholic capitalism, protestant, chinese capitalism talian confian very successful today as we know. and we have to... this would be to touch the real of capitalism, to visible this irreducible gap. between the real and all attempts to provide a meaning to it. like that's the seduction of catholic church today, basically they are telling you we know you experience capitalism as some horrible, meaningless expanded reproduction. follow us and we will allow you, as you put it, to have a cake and eat it. that is to say, you will have capitalism, but if you follow us and don't do it too radically, no stem cell research, not too much, whatever, if you keep it under certain limits, we will... enable you nonetheless to live in a meaningful universe and so on and so on. so this would be a very political. the first task of the left is to. abandon again. either in the right-wing predominant forum of we should keep our cultural national identity or in the left-wing forum, this is why i reject all this bullshit about capitalism, eurocentrism. no, the problem of capitalism today is precisely it's no longer eurocentric. it's truly is a neutral machine. and this is what gives a boost to western new nationalism. they finally got it that you know it can really work in singapore and china, maybe even better than it works here. so,, so, uh... you see, this would be again one example of, i think, very nice one of this gap that you mentioned, not to to she. capitalism is this real of a certain self-reproducing, again, market mechanism which for contingent reasons it was born in europe. there is no deeper truth in it. it's not that you we learn something deep about capitalism if we reduce it to its contingent historical origins. no, this precisely is not the truth. the truth is that it cut the links, that it's to date a universal. machine. so this would be again, for me, if you want, in a very naive way, almost a practical use of this distinction between a world horizon and... capital is worthless which is why i think. this is an old polemic. i tend to be opposed to what is very popular today everywhere in china today, in india. in all these places, they almost lynched me because i attacked this idea. they all dream about alternate modernity. like you in the west screwed it up, we will do it in our way. but you know, what they really want is to have capitalism without paying the price for it. with all the antagonisms and so on. i told the chinese, i told them, you know, you are the chinese, which means out of 1 billion six million to 100 students, okay? it wasn't that i was talking to the chinese nation. i told them, you may talk the bullshit about... about harmonious society but you will not get harmonious capitalism. and even in india, i discovered to my horror, to what extent? uh. uh date in a different way played the same game as in china. they desperately tried to keep alive their even most reactionary hindu. caste system and so on traditions. to serve as a kind of a screen of meaning. to enable you to confront capitalism and of course i think that this is a nice example of how even the critique of western imperialism, cultural imperialism, serves a very obscure role of justifying their own way to legitimize their capitalism and to cut the long story short why am i so opposed to so-called alternate modernity? because, you know, as i always repeat, in europe we had one big alternate modernity in the 20th century. it was called fascism. fascism was precisely alternate modernity. the idea was fascism, the idea basic idea of fascism is we can have. all good that capitalism brings industrialization and so on, without paying the price for it in social antagonisms. that's why you need anti-seemitism. the idea is it's not in the system and this is why now i will say something horrible. i even... a little bit distrustful about hugo chavez and so on. he comes often a little bit too close to it. namely, i don't have any big sympathy for american imperialism, but maybe the time has come to admit that thanks to the great efforts of your greatest president, george bush, united states is, i mean, he really did a wonderful job. in eight years, he succeeded in diminishing the role of united states to one in a polycentric world, to one. among other local powers. but what this means, i will tell you something horrible, but you should like it, is that you know, it's no longer always absolutely automatically that united states are the bad guy. that this also means a polycentric world, like with all my still admiration for china and so on. but you know. what the chinese are doing in myanmar, politically correct name for burma, is also a form of new economic post-colonialism and so on. so, you know, we should try to approach in a different way. i think the danger today is, this is what really worries me, if you ask me. that anti-imperialist rhetorics can function as a tool to obfuscate the basic class struggle. let me take the brutal example of zimbabwe and, i hope not, south africa. i have an extremely simple explanation, only the core explanation. what happened there is the following. i spoke with people in zimbabwe, i wasn't there, from zimbabwe, south african friends. what really happened after the end of apartheid? in south africa. it is that. the standard of living, experience of ordinary people, it is basically the same as under apartheid. maybe in some tiny circles a little bit better, but at the same time worse, because there is much more uncertainty, crime and so on. the only thing that really changed is that you have a new black rich class which joined the white class. now, to counter the disappointment of the ordinary people, the big temptation of and to obfuscate the class struggle, the big temptation of the new black ruling class is to play the race card. is to claim you are no better because we are really still enslaved to western imperialism, blah blah blah. no, sorry, i disagree here. i claim this is the worst attempt. this is why i tried to give mugabe a chance. i spoke with my friends there and they told me who are leftist radical and they told me no, unfortunately, critique of mugabe is not just western media attacking he did screw zimbabwe is the pure case of the the new black elite playing the race card in order to avoid precisely. the new class confrontation. and if this will be the future, this nationaliste. regimes and so on, then it's really said we really need what you said, confronting capitalism at its own level. outside this particular frames against this, against that and so on and so on. but maybe we talk too much.
Moderator
no.
no.
Slavoj Žižek
tu veux conclure avec un grondement non non. we were... is it five. we were three hours. we are approaching these long maoist sessions, you know, of self-criticism and so on.
tu veux conclure avec un grondement non non. we were... is it five. we were three hours. we are approaching these long maoist sessions, you know, of self-criticism and so on.
Moderator
i.
i.
Slavoj Žižek
sorry?
sorry?
Moderator
incub go all night.
incub go all night.
Slavoj Žižek
in cuba, it's even... but this is why french call me fidel, you know, like i talk too much, but in cuba, no, it's better there. when i was there, fidel gave a speech which lasted two hours, and everybody was in a panic, like, is he dying or what? you know? usually it's six seven hours.
in cuba, it's even... but this is why french call me fidel, you know, like i talk too much, but in cuba, no, it's better there. when i was there, fidel gave a speech which lasted two hours, and everybody was in a panic, like, is he dying or what? you know? usually it's six seven hours.
Moderator
i want to remind you all that slavoy and al and frederick jameson and a whole roster of other wonderful speakers will be at our wagner conference on june 1st and 2nd at the hammer museum. and please join us, come early. and once again, let's thank them for the great discussion.
i want to remind you all that slavoy and al and frederick jameson and a whole roster of other wonderful speakers will be at our wagner conference on june 1st and 2nd at the hammer museum. and please join us, come early. and once again, let's thank them for the great discussion.
Slavoj Žižek
f didn care.. thank.
f didn care.. thank.