In a recent post, I made the claim– apparently to the ire and astonishment of some –that Peter Hallward’s critique of Meillassoux’s After Finitude applies equally to Badiou’s ontology. In the course of further remarks I also suggested that, despite his self-descriptions of his own position, Badiou’s position leads to an a prioristic idealism. This wasn’t meant as an insult to Badiou, nor is it a wholesale rejection of his thought (which has influenced and inspired me deeply), but is premised on honest disagreements and perplexities I have about his ontology. The implication seems to be that one can only appreciate or endorse Badiou by dogmatically adopting his philosophy in toto, having no point of contention with it. Knowing a thing or two about Badiou the person, I suspect this is not something he would much admire or desire. Given the apparent surprise in response to this offhand observation, it is worthwhile to explain just why I think this is the case.
In his first charge against Meillassoux, Hallward contends that he equivocates between thinking and being. This charge, applies equally, I believe, and perhaps even moreso, to Badiou, and would also be one of the reasons I’ve been led to describe Badiou’s position as idealist rather than materialist. To claim that a thinker equivocates between thinking and being is to charge them with treating being as thinking and thinking as being. When Badiou equates ontology with maths, claiming that maths says all that can be said of being qua being, he essentially is committed to the thesis that thinking and being are identical. In doing so, his position necessarily collapses into an idealism regardless of whether he wishes to describe it as a materialism. [NOTE: Of course, it’s worth noting that Badiou asserts his position is a materialism premised on the claim that all we can say about matter is mathematical. Here Badiou is referring to a long history of thought pertaining to form and matter, where form exhausts matter and we are unable to say anything about matter as such because whatever we say about matter already pertains to form. For example, we try to discuss the material qualities of silver independent of what form that silver takes (a chalice, a ring, a fork, etc), only to discover that we can only articulate the formal structure of silver, e.g., it’s atomic structure.]
Now, there are good reasons pertaining to the history of philosophy that motivate him to equate being with maths. The epistemological debates of the 17th century premised on representation, culminating in Kant, had shown that there is always a dis-adequation between thought and reality (existence), such that we can never know whether or not our representations of the world match up with the world itself. Later Heidegger formalizes this conclusion, showing how as finite beings we only ever encounter being in terms of our access to being not being as it is in-itself. This opened the door to a variety of different constructivist orientations in philosophy positing a variety of different incommensurate worlds or language games, abolishing any sort of truth. In equating being with maths, Badiou’s strategy is to subtract ontology from questions of representation or knowledge (he distinguishes, as did Kant before him, between what is known and what is thinkable, such that God and the noumenal cannot be known but can be thought), instead placing being in the domain of the thinkable. Questions of representation or knowledge do not arise within mathematics because mathematical entities are not representations of things or objects. In other words, math does not refer to anything outside of itself in the way a proposition like “the cat is on the mat” refers to a state-of-affairs and a signified”. Thus we are able to know mathematical truths a priori (independent of experience through reason or thought alone), with certainty, and as a matter of deductive necessity, such that mathematical propositions are not subject to infinite dissemination, free play, or pragmatico-contextual variation as is the case with signifiers. In this respect, maths need not broach the questions of access, nor does it fall prey to the endless slippage of language that so fascinated both Anglo-American and French Continental philosophers during the twentieth century. Maths, as it were, is a language of the real in the sense of “that which always returns to its place” (Badiou, of course, would object to my reference to language here).
If maths say all that can be said of being, then we attain, at last, the identity of thought and being sought first by Parmenides. Of course, Badiou’s major innovation here is to show not that being is one and self-identical, without difference, as Parminedes had argued, but that being is pure multiplicity without one or infinite dissemination. Badiou, in short, chose the “bad option” in Plato’s dialogue Parmenides, choosing pure heterogeneity over identity. The beauty of Badiou’s move is that by equating being with maths he is able to sidestep all the debates about knowledge and representation, that lead to the reign of the sophists in the twentieth century, by showing how questions of ontology are not questions of representation at all, but investigations into pure being qua being or what is thinkable of infinite dissemination alone. Moreover, Badiou “out-differences” the philosophers and sophists of difference showing that far from spelling the ruin of thought or ontology (Derrida, Lyotard), difference, pure multiplicity qua multiplicity without one is thinkable. In a certain respect, Badiou’s thought can thus be seen as that slight “twist” he describes so well in Manifesto for Philosophy, where he shows how the Platonic gesture consisted in fully embracing the arguments of the sophist with the caveat that they produce a truth.
The problem is that Badiou’s understanding of being leaves out the signification of being involved in existence. Certainly maths cannot exhaust all that can be said of being, for there is a fundamental difference between essence and existence. When I think, for example, the properties of a triangle I can deduce many properties of that triangle. For example, I can deduce that if the other two angles of the triangle are each 45 degree, the third angle of the triangle must necessarily be 90 degrees. This belongs to the essence or form of the triangle. I know it with certainty and I can know it through thought alone. However, what I cannot know through thought alone is whether or not this triangle exists in the world. In other words, mathematical truths do not yet tell me anything about existing things in the world. With the possible exception of God, we cannot deduce existence from essence. Mathematical truths, whether set-theoretical or otherwise, are truths of essence. Whether they apply to existence is another question (which is why we can have forms of mathematics that discuss 11 dimensional topologies without yet knowing whether or not anything exists in the world corresponding to these topologies).
My point here is very simple. Clearly when we say that something exists, we are saying that something is. In other words, we are not talking about the what of being (form/essence/structure), but the that or “es gibt” of being. But if I cannot deduce existence from essence or maths, then this entails that there is something other of being than maths. This entails that maths do not say all that there is to be said of being. Just as Lacan paradoxically says “there is something of the One”, there is “something of being that is not exhausted by essence, maths, or form” that is missing in Badiou’s ontology. Let us call this element that eludes formalization or that cannot be deduced, the real. Here the real is not to be understood in the signification of that which always returns to its place, but in the signification of tuche or the “missed encounter” outlined by Lacan in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Put otherwise, my position is that there is something of being that eludes the thinkable (the mathematically deducible). I would argue that any and all materialist positions are committed to this thesis: Namely, to the thesis that it is the world, existence, that calls the shot, not thought. Two points then: First, I argue that Badiou is led to an a prioristic idealism because he equates being and the thinkable, where the thinkable is the mathematically deductive. In contrast to this, I argue that there is always something of being that escapes deduction, that is missing from the deductable, namely existence. This does not entail that maths is unimportant or that it is wrong to claim that science is only science insofar as it mathematical (as Kant had already claimed), but only that math does not exhaust what belongs to being. Second, I worry that should we endorse Badiou’s ontology wholesale– and make no mistake, I believe he has made a profound contribution to ontology –we will be led to ignore that which eludes essence or maths (as so often happens with rationalist orienations of thought) because we believe that we already have all that we need in maths. Contrary to Badiou’s Platonist orientation of thought, I cannot help but adopt– at least at this point –an Aristotlean orientation of thought… That is, an orientation premised on things, objects, substances, rather than maths.
More to come.
November 21, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Is there a point where Badiou actually contends that maths say all that can be said of being qua being? He may very well have and I am just not able to recall where, but I was under the impression that his use of mathematics as an ontology was more for the purpose of thinking truths – or providing an adequate concept>/em> of truths as ‘generic multiplicity subtracted from the constructibility of knowledge’.
Consequently, I am not sure whether Badiou is reducing ontology to mathematics, as you say, rather than elevating mathematics to ontology (the ‘grand style’). Supposing there’s a difference…
If mathematics could say everything, would there be a need for any meta-ontological discourse? I am not endorsing the wholesale endorsement of Badiou’s ontology, either – yet were one to do this, I do not think that it would result in being “led to ignore that which eludes essence or maths” as you say. I actually think that the benefit of Badiou’s philosophy is precisely that it leads us to not be ignorant of this. Great post, by the way. Looking forward to the next three.
November 21, 2008 at 7:20 pm
oh my, that was some terrible html in the above. I think I was attempting to emphasize the words concept and elevating for some reason.
November 22, 2008 at 12:35 am
Keith, he says it directly in Being and Event as well as a number of other places. One of Badiou’s central moves is to argue that ontology falls outside of philosophy and belongs to the domain of mathematics. This would be part of his critique of Heidegger insofar as he is attempting to show that the question of being is not the fundamental question of philosophy (but mathematics) and that far from this question not having an answer, the question of being finds a continuing and elaborate treatment in maths. Recall, in this connection that Heidegger never answers the question of being but is always engaging in the preparatory work which would allow the question to be asked. The answer always remains in a state of deferral. Badiou hopes to head off this move by shifting ontology to the domain of maths. In addition to this, Badiou’s assertion that maths is ontology is designed to undercut the hegemony of the poem in contemporary philosophy as that which speaks being (Heidegger’s perpetual emphasis on the primacy of the poet and the poem as oracle of being).
In order for Badiou’s argument to be successful, he needs to undercut any reference to finitude as the finitude of the subject (beginning with Kant) has been the lynchpin of all arguments surrounding the Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian turn, whereby there’s always an element of the unspeakable (or in the context of Heidegger, that which perpetually veils itself). This is one of the reasons Badiou places so much emphasis on the infinite, insisting that all multiplicities are infinite (thereby destroying the distinction between the finite and the infinite that belongs to these discourses). However, Badiou can only accomplish this move by asserting an identity between being and thought, and shifting from the knowable to the thinkable (Kant had allowed that the noumanal, while beyond knowledge, is nonetheless thinkable) and a distinction between being and truth. Maths, in Badiou’s estimation accomplishes precisely this.
I do think Badiou is up to a good deal more in his engagement with maths than simply thinking truth. Recall that for Badiou the event and truth is not being but that which is other than being being. Badiou is developing a robust ontology in addition to an account of the event and truth. In my own view, I don’t think Badiou’s ontology and the relationship between inconsistent multiplicities and consistent multiplicites has received nearly enough attention (people seem dazzled with all the talk of events and truths). I also think that Badiou’s account of structured situations or what he now calls “worlds” has largely been passed over as well.
November 22, 2008 at 12:59 am
I should also add that this is one of the central reasons behind Badiou’s “axiomatic method”. Twentieth century philosophy was dominated by questions of access or givenness. Heidegger– at least the middle Heidegger –had contended that we first had to engage in a hermeneutic of Dasein and an analysis of the history of philosophy prior to even being able to pose the question of being. This was because we only encounter being through these structures. Likewise, under the influence of Wittgenstein, the questions of philosophy were to be dissolved through an analysis of ordinary language, showing how they only arise when “language goes on holiday”. At both poles there was the assumption that we must pass through that by which the given is given or that the given is given through a certain “transcendental” (whether historical, linguistic, or cognitive). Badiou’s move is to shift away from questions of access altogether to decision and what follows through a series of entailments from that decision. An axiom is a decision, something performed, not a given that is received. With this he introduces something entirely new into the history of philosophy– at least, to my knowledge –that only Spencer-Brown approaches in his theory of distinctions (i.e., distinctions not as something that are already there in the world, but rather as something drawn thereby allowing a world to come into being).
November 22, 2008 at 2:34 am
LS,
I am curious about a very small portion of your argument, that Parmenides, because he equated thought and Being, was an Idealist (and by implication Badiou thus is an Idealist). I find this attribution a bit odd. Would you not consider it a better description to say that Parmenides was a Panpsychist, that is, all things think, which follows from his notion that all being (a verb) is thinking (a verb). Would you consider all panpsychists Idealists? How so?
Your proviso for what makes a materialist reads:
“I would argue that any and all materialist positions are committed to this thesis: Namely, to the thesis that it is the world, existence, that calls the shot, not thought.”
What is such a litnus test to do when thought and world (for which you substitute for Being) are identical? For such a one to say that the world and not thought calls the shots is ludicrous, since the dichtomy does not exist. Does materialism base itself in the acceptance of the dichotomy of thought and being?
If one starts from the assumption of the identity of thought and being, how can one read your determination of the a triangle:
“For example, I can deduce that if the other two angles of the triangle are each 45 degree, the third angle of the triangle must necessarily be 90 degrees. This belongs to the essence or form of the triangle. I know it with certainty and I can know it through thought alone.”
If thought and being are identical, what would it mean to do something “through thought alone”? It would be the same thing as saying “through being alone”.
And if the world is bound with the “chains of Necessity” and Being produces existence (accepting your Spinoza sounding distinction between essence and existence), in what sense is knowing the essence of something (and conceivably all other things) being barred from knowing whether this or that triangle exists?
Or, if I were to ask you, Is Spinoza in your mind a materialist?
November 22, 2008 at 2:56 am
I think there are a variety of different types of idealism, so this is a fair question. I tend to use the term rather broadly, following the Marxist use of the term (with some bells and whistles). Parmenides certainly isn’t an idealist in the sense that Kant or Berkeley are idealists. Parmenides is rather an idealist in the sense that Leibniz is an idealist. By this I do not mean that Parmenides and Leibniz share the same metaphysics. Rather, I mean that both share the position that being is ideality. The monads for Leibniz, for example, are ideal entities, though not in the mind of a person or subject. Likewise, for Parmenides, being is ideality. Hopefully that makes some sense.
Now, I would disagree that it is absurd to suggest that for Parmenides the world does not call the shots. Parmenides begins from the premise that being is and non-being is not. Consequently, anything involving determination or difference must necessarily, for Parmenides, be not because distinction involves negation, negativity, or reference to what something is not (Deleuze, it might be said, is attempting to form an ontology that would both be consistent with the thesis that being is and that avoids this trap). As a result, Parmenides concludes that the differentiated world is an illusion:
Consequently, because non-being is not and being is, we are led to the conclusion that we are wasting our time by attending to the world as it is only a surface appearance of this homogenous and undifferentiated oneness. The behavior of hydrogen in laboratory conditions is not here calling the shots.
More broadly, I would refer to any position that asserts the existence of invariant forms over and above those individuals that come-to-be and pass-away within the world as “idealist”, in the sense that it treats ideal forms as more real than the messy material world within which this exists. Clearly this causes all sorts of problems for me as I do think there’s something real about mathematics, something objective, that can’t be reduced to material objects. At any rate, we can distinguish between “objective idealists” like Parmenides, Plato, and Leibniz where ideality is being, subjective idealists like Berkeley, transcendental idealists like Kant (the latter two positions attaching ideality to subjects), and speculative idealists.
I have a difficult time answering your question about Spinoza because his ontology is so wild and wooly. He really doesn’t fit any category. Certainly his position is perfectly consistent with a materialist ontology such as we find in Lucretius. Yet Spinoza deduces that God or substance must have infinite attributes by virtue of God’s infinity, and argues that each attribute must exist or be conceived in and through itself. Where Lucretius reduces everything to extension (the atoms in the void), Spinoza asserts a parallelism of the attributes without a reduction of one attribute to another (ideas can only cause ideas, bodies can only cause bodies, and ideas cannot cause bodies nor bodies ideas). Of course, he also asserts that the order and connection is the same for each attribute (his parallelism). I think this line of thought and his willingness to follow it through despite all its strange consequences is a testament to his logical rigor and intellectual honesty (and he does need to maintain this point since almost everything he develops about God or substance relies on Prop. 5 in Part I holding up). I don’t know if that responds to your question or not.
November 22, 2008 at 3:42 am
LS,
Hmmm. Thank you for the length and considered response. A few points.
1. If you are to say that for Parmenides being IS thought, and you mean, being really is reducible to, or REALLY is thought, I might disagree.
2. As to whether the “world” (and this category does not really exist in Parmenides) calls the shots or not is very hard to determine. But the “chains of Necessity” (read Fate), suggest that what is calling the shots is Determination. I am unsure how one can separate out Determination from “the world”:
As P. speaks of Being: “Remaining the same, in the same place, it lies in itself, and thus firmly remains there. For mighty Necessity holds it fast in the bonds of a limit, which fences it about, since it is not right for what-is to be incomplete. For it lacks nothing. If it lacked anything, it would lack everything.”
3. As to your idea: “More broadly, I would refer to any position that asserts the existence of invariant forms over and above those individuals that come-to-be and pass-away within the world as “idealist”
Interestingly, this very dichotomy of yours, which helps you define Idealist strikes me as Idealist. Is it that you see only two positions, Platonism, and Upside-down Platonism? You seem here to favor the Upside-down variety, making an admittedly odd exception for the objectivity of mathematics (the very thing that compulses Right-Side Up Platonists to be what they are). Perhaps the Dichotomy itself does not serve.
LS: “I have a difficult time answering your question about Spinoza because his ontology is so wild and wooly. He really doesn’t fit any category.”
kvond: That is why I asked it, for your distinction seemed far too neat and tidy, loaded with assumptions of reducibility (I believe there are many thinkers which would defy it).
I would just ask, Do you think that the World calls the shots, as you say, in Spinoza? Clearly Substance calls the shots (since it is the only thing that entirely is its own cause), but do you not see that the very category of “world” is problematized by Spinoza? If so, isn’t materialism?
p.s. I might say that I do agree with you that Badiou in his ontology of maths resembles an Idealist. In fact he position of count-as-one is reflective of the Arch-Idealist, Plotinus, who posited the Hen (the one) which did not even have Being, and after that, the Nous, which begins the structuring of Being. At least I see a strong comparison.
November 22, 2008 at 4:24 am
LS,
Let me add this, so as to make myself more clear where I am heading in terms of materialism and Spinoza. I have not read the full width of your weblog, but there are very significant parallels to be drawn between Spinoza and the analytical philosopher Donald Davidson. Floris van der Burg writes of how each thinker can help illuminate the other. Davidson can inform Spinoza as a post-linguistic turn thinker of substance, and Spinoza and correct the underlying assumption of Davidson’s materialistic metaphysics. This is how it is put:
[Davidson’s conceptual Dualism, as evidenced in his Anomalous Monism]: “Any effort at increasing the accuracy and powerof a theory of behavior forces us to bring more and more of the whole system of the agent’s beliefs and motives directly into account. But in inferring this system from the evidence, we necessarily impose conditions of coherence, rationality, and consistency. These considerations have not echo in physical theory”.
Now it is clear that Davidson’s version of substance monism and conceptual dualism is a materialistic view. That is, there is only one substance and that substance is matter. But this is not the case for Spinoza. He is a substance monist and a conceptual pluralist, but his monism is not materialistic. He does not equate substance with matter.
This implies that for Spinoza it comes to no surprise that considerations that are of concern in the mental have no echo in physical theory. Spinoza might say the exact same thing here as Davidson would, but the interpretation would be different: instead of anti-naturalistic Spinoza would understand the above passage as anti-materialistic. And we should take care not to make the mistake to think that there is any principled reason why anti-materialism should imply anti-naturalism. The only reason we might jump to that conclusion is that we have already resigned ourselves to the conclusion that a non-materialistic explanation for any phenomena MUST also be a non-naturalistic explanation. We tend, in our era of natural sciencism, to think of naturalism as the movement that gives us explanation in terms of physical theory. But this is only a reasonable expectation if we are already materialists about substance. And Spinoza is not (80).
Davidson and Spinoza, Floris van der Burg: http://books.google.com/books?id=fqNzUe82D6YC&dq=Davidson+Spinoza&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0
I don’t know if you have any love for Davidson, but I find his Anti-Representational epistemology to be an insightful bridge between Continental and Analytic schools, one that operates with some of the force of Spinoza’s thinking. The problem with materialism for me is that it is swept up in a perpetual binary of thought/world, subject/object, self/world, scheme/content, etc. etc. Producing unhelpful tail-chasing. There is a full affirmation of being, of Naturalism, which need not involve the repeated and endless binaries of past contemplations.
I think to a great degree, Spinoza as a path not taken on the great Cartesian Road to western progress, helps relieve these dichotomies.
November 22, 2008 at 4:36 am
You make a good point about my distinction between idealisms and materialisms (i.e., that it itself is an invariant and therefore falls under the axe of my own sorting). My distinction, at any rate, is not intended to be a pure and precise philosophical distinction but a pointer. “The world calling the shots”, of course, is a throw away line not meant to be a developed philosophical statement. I’m not entirely sure what you mean when you claim that the world is problematized by Spinoza (which isn’t to say I disagree, just that I’m unclear as to what you’re getting at). The first thing that comes to mind is that where, for Leibniz, God chooses the best of all possible worlds among others, for Spinoza, loosely speaking, God or substance produces everything that can be produced without preference. In that respect, we can’t talk about the world… Or at least that’s how it seems.
I honestly have a difficult time reconcile Parmenides’ claims with one another. As you point out, he makes claims about fate and necessity, yet his reasoning about truth seems to contradict all that. I do not hold that being is reducible to thought in Parmenides, but that thought and being are identical to one another.
The issue of the count-as-one is where I plan to go in the next post on this topic. I’m surprised no one– that I know of –has really pointed out just how problematic the count-as-one thesis is. While I don’t know that I would go in the direction of suggesting that Badiou is akin to Plotinus, there is the vexed question of precisely what operates the count-as-one and the quasi-transcendental question of just how it is possible to make a selection from inconsistent multiplicities to form consistent multiplicities. Often, when discussing consistent multiplicities or structured situations, Badiou seems to suggest that it is what he calls the “encyclopedia” or “knowledge” that presides over the operations of the count-as-one (e.g. something like Foucault’s epistemes or Levi-Strauss’s social structures… Badiou explicitly refers to Foucault as the philosopher of the encyclopedia somewhere or other). This suggests to me that for Badiou there are only consistent multiplicities within the realm of the human or culture, not in nature as such. What we thus get is, following Ricouer’s quip about structuralism, is a Kantianism without a transcendental subject, with the qualification that inconsistent multiplicities and what maths describe as being qua being are not cultural or social in nature, and that truth is that which departs from knowledge governing situations. This point seems further confirmed by his new work on onto-logic in Logiques des mondes where “the transcendental” is responsible for appearing (a transcendental without a transcendental subject). Still, just how we move from these inconsistent multiplicities to consistent multiplicities via the operation of the count-as-one is deeply mysterious to me. In a number of respects, Badiou seems to encounter problems similar to those that motivated Kant to posit the schematism to account for the relation between concepts and the manifold of intuition, and, perhaps, to arrive at similar incoherence.
Here I think Deleuze is able to skirt this problem in two ways: First, unlike Badiou, Deleuze’s thought does not operate with a form/matter distinction, but rather gives an account of how form is generated from within matter. This is why he’s so keen on Simondon. Simondon demonstrate how the form/matter distinction arises from a spectator’s perspective on the finished product of the craftsmen, ignoring the manner in which form and matter work together as a process in generating the final individuated entity where the forces at work in the matter reach a point of stable equilibrium(here I’m not expressing myself very well). That is, the Aristotlean, occupying the position of passive observer, sees the brick, notices that the brick has a form and is made of something, notes that this something could have been many things, and thus is led to the conclusion that it is the form that shapes matter in a purely passive fashion. What’s ignored is the whole process the brick-maker has to go through in preparing the clay, the interaction of the clay with the mould, the heating and cooling process, etc (viz, all sorts of dynamisms of force). This model of passive matter versus active form then gets generalized to all beings. Something similar occurs in Plato, but in such a way that the matter can be ignored all together, and we can attend to the form alone. What is glossed over altogether (since the form/matter distinction is drawn from handiwork, not nature) is the material processes undergoing by non-technological natural beings– for example, rock formations –where there is no mould presiding over the production of the rock, but rather a set of forces at work in the matter and with its milieu leading to the final actualized outcome.
Second, Deleuze’s account of singularities or virtual potentials responds to the question of how being is actualized in a unique way in a way that Badiou, I think, cannot with his operations of the count-as-one. That is, it is impossible (for me, at least) to see how a selection could ever be made from inconsistent multiplicities or pure dissemination, because where there is absolute chaos there is no reason to select one multiplicity over another. Singularities give us the means for thinking this process of actualization without having to presuppose an individuated entity doing the operation.
November 22, 2008 at 5:18 am
Yes, yes. I’m not sure I needed the entire recapitulation of what Badiou was up to. I am aware that for Badiou ontology belongs to the domain of mathematics. What I am questioning, rather, is whether or not Badiou would insist that maths end up saying ‘all there is to say’ regarding being. This is just a point where I happen to disagree, as you disagree with the idea that he is a materialist – in spite of what he may say.
November 22, 2008 at 5:20 am
I too favor Deleuze as a way out of (ex-) traditional dichotomies, and agree with many of your points here. (You too understand pretty much what I meant by Spinoza problematizing the world).
As to Badiou and Plotinus, I happened to run into an old copy I had of the text that was in my mind, about 15 minutes ago (such are the strikings of happenstance, I was looking for a chapter on Guattari’s “Four Functors” and the Enneads pops out), I present the Plotinian thinking of the Hen (One) that is not Being, perhaps others will agree:
“The One is all things and not a single one of them: it is the principle of all things, not all things, but all things have that other kinds of transcendent existence; for in a way they do not occur in the One; or rather they are not there yet, but they will be. How then do all things come from the One, which is simple and has in it no diverse variety, or any sort of doubleness? It is because there is nothing in it that all things come from it: in order that being may exist, the One is not being, but the generator of being. This, we may say, is the first act of generation: the One, perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, and needs nothing, overflows, as it were, and its superabundance makes something other than itself. This, when it has come into being, turns back upon the One and is filled, and becomes Intellect (Nous) by looking towards it. Its halt and turning towards the One constitutes being, its gaze upon the One, Intellect. Since it halts and turns towards the One that it may see, it becomes at once Intellect and being. Resembling the One thus, Intellect produces in the same way, pouring forth a mulitiple power…”
Enneads V. 2. “On the Origin and Order of the Beings Which Come After the First
For brevity’s sake, I sight from Wikipedia “Badiou: Mathematics as Ontology”:
“The structure of being thus secures the regime of the count-as-one. So if one is to think of a set — for instance, the set of people, or humanity — as counting as one the elements which belong to that set, it can then secure the multiple (the multiplicities of humans) as one consistent concept (humanity), but only in terms of what does not belong to that set. What is, in following, crucial for Badiou is that the structural form of the count-as-one, which makes multiplicities thinkable, implies that the proper name of being does not belong to an element as such (an original ‘one’), but rather the void set (written Ø), the set to which nothing (not even the void set itself) belongs. It may help to understand the concept ‘count-as-one’ if it is associated with the concept of ‘terming': a multiple is not one, but it is referred to with ‘multiple': one word. To count a set as one is to mention that set. How the being of terms such as ‘multiple’ does not contradict the non-being of the one can be understood by considering the multiple nature of terminology: for there to be a term without there also being a system of terminology, within which the difference between terms gives context and meaning to any one term, does not coincide with what is understood by ‘terminology’, which is precisely difference (thus multiplicity) conditioning meaning. Since the idea of conceiving of a term without meaning does not compute, the count-as-one is a structural effect or a situational operation and not an event of truth. Multiples which are ‘composed’ or ‘consistent’ are count-effects; inconsistent multiplicity is the presentation of presentation.”
By my reading, the null-set which structures multipicities as multiple strictly follows Plotinus'”It is because there is nothing in it that all things come from it”. The operational effect of count-as-one can be seen to parallel Plotinus’ “Since it halts and turns towards the One that it may see, it becomes at once Intellect and being.”
I believe this not to be a superficial correspondence.
As to how inconsistent multiplicities becoming consistent one’s Wittgenstein “family resemblance” and what flows form it deals something of a death blow to this.
I might add that I did not mean to diminish your “the world calls the shots” phrasing. I actually liked it quite a bit.
November 22, 2008 at 5:29 am
Sorry Keith, it wasn’t my intention to give the sense that I was lecturing. Once I get started I tend to develop everything that comes to mind. Doesn’t Badiou make the claim that maths says all that can be said of being qua being? Of course, math is itself open ended and always subject to new inventions, so it doesn’t exhaust itself. Maybe one way of responding to my charge would lie in focusing on the “qua” in the expression being qua being. The case could be made that what I’m asking after is not being qua being but questions that belong properly to regional ontologies.
November 22, 2008 at 5:32 am
That’s a startling parallel, kvod. I’ll have to think on it a bit.
November 22, 2008 at 8:21 am
Badiou does make the claim that mathematics is always a turn toward the object, that it cannot be separated from Thought, and that it provides everything we know, or can know, of being – though as far as saying, I’m not sure…His critique of Wittgenstein comes to mind. Apologies for being, well, confrontational I suppose.
November 22, 2008 at 6:17 pm
I would just add that I think this point is crucial within Badiou’s ontology. Obviously you do not agree with the idea that mathematics says all there is to say about being and I do not agree with it either. But I also think that Badiou does not agree with this. What he insist on is that mathematics is the infinite, unfinishable, silent and blind development of what can be said of being qua being. Strictly speaking, this does not say that mathematics says all there is to say. At least, this is my reading.
Of course, philosophy for Badiou does not think the same thing as mathematics – which is Romanticism – but instead thinks their compossibility by stating that mathematics (against Wittgenstein) actually thinks.
November 22, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I don’t have the opportunity to give a full response at the moment, but here’s an excerpt from an interview with Badiou:
”
LS: Marxist from the outset, Maoist for a long time, would you accept the accusation of having yielded to a philosophical idealism?
AB: Not at all. To be an idealist you have to distinguish between thought and matter, transcendence and immanence, the high and the low, pure thought and empirical thought. None of these distinctions function in the system I propose. Actually, I would submit that my system is the most rigorously materialist in ambition that we’ve seen since Lucretius.
”
Why do you think it’s the distinction–and not the identification–of matter and thought, a distinction that seems to be presupposed in your critique (and Hallward’s; e.g. ‘pure and applied mathematics’), that strikes him as idealist?
November 23, 2008 at 3:45 am
Dana, I think I’ve made my points clearly and in detail. I’ve also emphasized that we must distinguish between how Badiou describes his position and what he actually does in his ontology. These arguments may or may not be premised on a misunderstanding of Badiou’s position. That is something that must be shown by responding to both the claims I’m making about the history of philosophy and how he fits into the history of philosophy. I see little reason to repeat these arguments once again.
November 23, 2008 at 4:13 am
LS,
As is sometimes my way, I”m trying to intellectually form the bridge, to find the proper term, which may alleviate (or express) your resistence to Badiou’s relationship to maths (not to touch too sore a subject, it also helps me come to grips with how I feel about him as well, as I hold many of your same instinctive repulsions).
When you say,
“What I did say is that maths cannot exhaust the whole story and is just a part of the story.”
How would you feel if “maths” were replaced by “information”, especially where information were understood in the Bateson sense of “a difference that makes a difference”. Would you still feel that somehow matter was not getting its due? Could it be said that information is all that can be said about Being? And, if you thought of Badiou’s apparent claim that maths are ALL that we can say about Being, what if this were followed with the Tractatus’s endcap, “Where (or of what) one cannot speak one must remain silent”.
There is an additional reason why I ask this, for as I read your eariler post on the Ideal IHCT, I was struck by what I perceived as the implied absence of metaphor and rhetorical strategy in argumentative form (Nietzsche would be one hell of an anti-IHCT). If “argument” truly were evacuated of all rhetorical means that were not merely strict inductions or deductions, would not philosophy be left with something resembling maths, but not quite math itself?
November 23, 2008 at 6:04 am
Hi Kvod,
It’s not Badiou’s relationship to maths that bothers me (rationalist that I am, I like that) but his equation of maths with ontology that I balk at. As a fellow Spinozist (I’ve been reading that damned book and trying to comprehend it– the Ethics –since I was 15), I’m perfectly happy to accept rational deductions. I’m more than happy to accept the Spinozist thesis that there are infinite attributes and modes. Spinoza differs, in that he deduces these infinite modes and worlds while being more than happy to leave unspecified what governs them; recognizing that the structuration of these worlds is unspecified and un-deducable (expect within very broad contours) from the standpoint of reason alone. One of these lesson’s that I draw from Spinoza’s emphasis on causality is that we need to turn to the world to understand substance and that this is an open-ended project. In other words, he demonstrates that substance is governed by necessity, is immanent, that there are no “sky-hooks” (Dennett), or miracles, but we still have to “grock” about among those modes to see how they function. To love substance is to study all of that. There’s an a priorism here, but also a recognition of the a posteriori from the standpoint of modes such as ourselves (though we still don’t know what we’re capable of doing). Despite Badiou’s rhetoric of situations, I simply don’t find the same attentiveness to what I call “constellations” or processes that I find in someone like Spinoza, Whitehead, or Marx. It’s as if we could turn away from them altogether, focusing only on the event and these formal structures… In part because Badiou has ceded engagement with the world to those four truth procedures outside of philosophy– love, politics, art, and the matheme –such that philosophy only thinks the compossibility of that juncture for a particular historical constellations.
I am very fond of Bateson and feel that he makes a central contribution to thinking the materiality of matter. I actually have an article coming out in Dutch that deals with information and individuation (in a very rudimentary way) that I’d be happy to share with you in email in English if you wish. As for the pedagogical fantasy I outline, in the course of my teaching I’ve come to believe there’s a sort or maieutic that students must go through before reaching more complex things such as metaphor, rhetorical strategies, and all the rest (although in my critical thinking courses I actually begin with the analysis of rhetoric and common informal fallacies). In my view the reigning doxa of our time is relativism, such that no truths exist or are possible. Insofar as this is a doxa (Plato’s cave), the more radical gesture is to first treat of valid arguments and the possibility that truth exists, and then move in to the rhetorical dimension where all of this is problematized. If you begin with the problematized position you end up being an apologist for a “whatever goes” ideology that prevents students from ever encountering the split in their being and from confronting alternatives to their own belief systems. Insofar as I think one of the aims of education separation from the familiar lifeworld so that thought might become possible (http://www.enewsbuilder.net/cccc/e_article001234678.cfm?x=bdD5fS7,b1MkKQfF,w), I don’t think it is possible to begin with such familiar doxas. Rather, it is necessary for a certain alienation and defamiliarization to take place within pedagogy prior to working up to these sorts of things.
November 23, 2008 at 7:14 am
LS: ” I simply don’t find the same attentiveness to what I call “constellations” or processes that I find in someone like Spinoza, Whitehead, or Marx.”
Kvond: With this I whole-heartedly agree, but I don’t believe this stems solely from his math/ontology reduction, but rather more out of his influence from Lacan, who suffers from the same flattening of the world (if I can put it that way). There may be a connection between these two, onto-math and structurism. I do like Lacan, but there is a failure in Lacan which to me feels very much like my dissatisfaction with Badiou.
LS: “…the more radical gesture is to first treat of valid arguments and the possibility that truth exists, and then move in to the rhetorical dimension where all of this is problematized.”
Kvond: This is an interesting pedagogy. I wonder though, where is matter, world and the body in this, the very things that you seem to think should be “calling the shots” in philosophy. I mean to say, if metaphor comes in at the end to problematize arguments. How would you feel if “matter” or “world” came in at the end of a philosophical position, as one more ideational trope?
I think, and I have respect for your well-thought out views of how to educate, if one is to end up with a respect for body, matter and world, arguments must be woven from the acknowledgment of those materials, those forces from the start. As you introduce concepts and emphasis, you also lay foundations of mental perception.
I believe that part of the task of the philosopher (even the pedagogic philosopher) is representational, to depict the world. I follow Benjamin’s general thought on this:
“If it is the task of the philosopher to practice the kind of description of the world of ideas, which automatically includes and absorbs the empirical world, he then occupies an elevated position between that of the scientist and the artist. The latter sketches a restricted image of the world of ideas, which, because it is conceived as a metaphor, is at all times definitive.”
[fuller context of the quote: http://kvond.wordpress.com/category/walter-benjamin/ ]
To treat arguments solely as forms of validity in my mind undercuts the representational nature of the philosopher’s role (or really represses it, often with the side-effect of smuggling in your own representational view, surreptitiously). Philsophies are visions (!) which operate through the coherent validity of their arguments, which shape our gaze. It is only by maintaining this representational aspect do I believe that fully can the “world”, as you call it, still “call the shots”.
LS: “In my view the reigning doxa of our time is relativism, such that no truths exist or are possible. Insofar as this is a doxa (Plato’s cave), the more radical gesture is…”
kvond: I don’t know how I feel about this. First of all, in an age of sciencism, where the truths of science inspire all forms of philosophical Realisms in analytic schools and philosophy of mind, I don’t see this doxa reigning. In fact to a great degree philosophy has had to become parasitic upon the truths of science in order to remain a convincing discourse.
But given that in some quarters there is a kind of relativism that has entrenched itself, I am unsure if the sheer validity of arguments approach is something that would dispell it, since the doxa has come about through a generalized attack on notions of “valid arguments” in the first place.
LS: “If you begin with the problematized position you end up being an apologist for a “whatever goes” ideology that prevents students from ever encountering the split in their being and from confronting alternatives to their own belief systems.”
kvond: I am not in favor of sweeping, really cultural sounding, accusations of pure relativism. When encountering relativism, instead of assuming that I have bumped up against someone who is fumbling in a Cave, it always seems interesting to ask, relative to what. All truths are in my opinion relative, that is, they are relational (either to criteria, or defintions, or practices, or intents, the list goes on). The BIG question is, what are they relative to. I’m not saying that your desire to split the Being of your students is not admirable, only, I do not imagine that students (or anyone) are in a Cave. I rather, as part of my affirmation of the world, assume that each person, even relativists, already processes a preponderance of truths. Again, no disrespect to your process or commitments. I am sure, as I can tell from your writing style (rhetorical form) that you are an excellent teacher.
November 23, 2008 at 7:16 am
p.s. and please yes, do send me your Bateson article in English. I would enjoy reading it, and weighing it against your thoughts on Badiou:
kvdi@earthlink.net
November 23, 2008 at 7:22 am
Levi, sorry if I’m rehashing old ground. I’m simply trying to suggest that your accusations–excuse me, criticisms (though we know that being attributed an a prioristic idealism is rarely a compliment in these circles) of Badiou ascribe distinctions, distinctions that are very familiar to the history of philosophy, to his thought that are not recognizable by his terms. He must have a reason for the above claim, right? Philosophers rarely state things without sufficient reason, after all. Do you know why he says this and have you considered the validity of his argument?
I suggest that
First, your argument presupposes a clean separation of being and thinking such that their identification is viewed as a loss. Without the provision of further reasoning, this distinction appears as idealist a gesture as identifying them.
Second, and this is more important, there is a loose series of equivalences made in this argument and then ascribed to Badiou. These are, at their most basic: thinkable = mathematically deducible = being. This is stated quite explicitly in the first of your summarizing points. I contend that these ascriptions of equivalences are completely unfounded. The onus is on you to prove otherwise, but I think you may not have to go farther than carefully considering what is written in Meditation One to begin questioning your stance. Here a few hints:
For one, “there is no structure of being” (26) suggests that Badiou is not limiting being to what you call “the what of being (form/essence/structure)”
Second, “deduction… is the means via which, at each and every moment, ontological fidelity to the extrinsic eventness of ontology is realized,” (242) implies that there is more going on in mathematics than deduction.
Lastly, “Thought is nothing other than the desire to finish with the exorbitant excess of the state… It is always a question of a measure being taken of how much the state exceeds the immediate. Thought, strictly speaking, is what un-measure, ontologically proven, cannot satisfy.” (282) along with “against being… the unpresented procedure of the true takes place, the sole remainder left by mathematical ontology to whomever is struck by the desire to think, and for whom is reserved the name of Subject. (285) points to a dimension of the thinkable that is concerned with something other than what mathematics deduces.
In other words, my opinion thus far is that your reading of Badiou is perhaps TOO concerned with what he is doing, too eager to place him within a narratological ‘history of philosophy’, to the point where it covers over what he’s actually saying by means of excessively broad equivalences and categories whose deployment strikes me as a bit lazy.
Before you take that last bit too personally, please understand that I greatly enjoy reading your blog, appreciate your thoughts, and wouldn’t bother writing this if I didn’t.
November 23, 2008 at 8:25 am
I am thinking that an example that might bring out something of the emphasis on the Body and the World that is missing in the Rationalist approach, apart respect for metaphor and vision-making. I have in mind the philosopher Spinoza.
Your exposition of Spinoza is wonderful, clear and precise. From the rationalist perspective (one which has been traditionally attributed to Spinoza), your knowledge of the validity of the arguments of Spinoza is assured.
But the Rationalist perspective which has dominated our reading of Spinoza for nearly 150 years, that ONLY the validity of his arguments matter, is one that has until recently entirely occluded the historical facts of Spinoza’s life.
Aside from sociological relevance, that is, the place in history from which he was writing, there are in fact specifics about Spinoza’s life which, if we paid attention to them, would help us understand his arguments themselves. If one understands what his experiences were like, then what he means by certain concepts become enlightened by our bodily understanding (imagining) of those experiences.
A small point, for instance. When Spinoza thinks about representation, in particular the represention in the thought of Descartes, or the Imagination, should we keep in mind that he lived for a great portion of his adult life in the houses of two Master Painters, and was himself a fairly accomplished draftsman?
But more than this. This summer I began research into Spinoza’s lens-grinding, and optical instrument making practices. He was well-known as a maker of microscopes and telescopes, calculated optics for what would have been the most powerful telescope in Europe. He spent endless hours at the lathe, grinding and polishing lenses. All of this has been by the lights of the Rationalist reading of Spinoza, without bearing on his arguments or conceptions. Would it surprise you that I have been assured by some of the foremost Spinoza scholars that my looking closely at these questions is the very first time it has been done, perhaps in the entire history of Spinoza scholarship? It dumbfounded me that as I looked into these matters, there is no literature AT ALL on his optical practices, theories or likely techniques — and certainly not how these practices may have helped shape his conceptions.
(I say all this, not with great esteem for my research, but dismay that it is the only study of its kind.)
To give you an idea how the visualization of his experiences at the lathe, and how they may have shaped his ideas, (and thus give us a clue of what he means by certain propositions), here are two of my thoughts on the matter. The first was written near the beginning of my study, the last near the end:
http://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/the-lathe-mind-what-spinoza-meant-by-individual/
http://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/the-dynamics-of-a-spinoza-spring-pole-lathe-hegel-and-the-modes/
It is the material orgins of his ideas which give clue, I believe, to his commitment to his body and the world. I contend that even if you were able to picture the actions of the grinding lathe (what a lathe does, the forces of its dynamice), you have a portal into his arguments which the arguments themselves do not provide.
November 23, 2008 at 8:40 am
“Despite Badiou’s rhetoric of situations, I simply don’t find the same attentiveness to what I call “constellations” or processes that I find in someone like Spinoza, Whitehead, or Marx. It’s as if we could turn away from them altogether, focusing only on the event and these formal structures… In part because Badiou has ceded engagement with the world to those four truth procedures outside of philosophy– love, politics, art, and the matheme –such that philosophy only thinks the compossibility of that juncture for a particular historical constellations.”
I haven’t read any of Badiou’s work for awhile, but I’ll echo the above from my impression when I was churning through Badiou. It is precisely my problem with his work.
Also don’t forget when discussing the One, for the truth event of Love he discusses the Two. I found extraordinarily facinating. I prefer multiplicities, thanks. lol yes yes bad joke
Oh, and I liked the discussion of form in this thread. Do situations have form? Can the method of selection from inconsistent multiplicities to form consistent multiplicities have a form? If we follow D&G, then this would be the work of abstract machines (or from Zizek’s reading, object petite a, although I don’t really know Zizek’s work) as a diagram of singular differential points, some virtual and some actual.
I guess what kind of bugs me about Badiou’s work is the question of temporality gets left at the door if situations are seemingly inconsequential. The complex and dynamic architectures of time, and correlative problems with causality and poetics of sense, belonging to situations (or Deleuzian events) are not thinkable. Any thoughts on this, LS?
November 30, 2008 at 11:17 pm
hi Synth,
I need to print this out and give it a thorough read-through with pen in hand to make sure I really get it. For now, based on just reading it online, I disagree with one key piece of this. I don’t think Badiou thinks being is mathematical or that mathematics exhausts what can be said about being. I think that when Badiou equates ontology and mathematics he’s talking about areas of inquiry. So the “ontology=mathematical” is not the same as “being=mathematical” because being and ontology are not the same thing – ontology being the study of being. I think your point about the *that*-ness rather than the *what*-ness of things is interesting, but that sounds to me like a Badiou-ian point. Badiou says somewhere in the intro to Being and Even that what mathematics-and/as-ontology is the privileged way to talk about or get at being qua being, but that the many things which are not qua being are another matter entirely. So, a table or a riot or any other being, qua being, is a matter of ontology/mathematics. But a table or a riot or any other being qua something else is not a matter of mathematics/ontology. A riot qua riot, or qua moment in the history of class struggle, is another matter and not a realm for ontology/mathematics but for other sorts of inquiry/practice. That’s my take on it anyway. For whatever it’s worth, I like this read largely as a deflationary gesture against a (mostly Deleuzian and Negrian) injunction toward/first resort to ontology within politics.
take care,
Nate
November 30, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Sorry to post twice, but I don’t know that I was clear. Another attempt: I think Badiou says or implies something like this – for any being there is that being qua being and there is that being qua any number of other categories which are not being (which is not to say ‘non-being’). This is part of the claim that any being is in a sense infinite. I think this is in many ways in keeping with Hegel’s remarks early in the Science of Logic, where being qua being is more or less empty: the category is “is-ness” and nothing additional; any being considered qua being is largely interchangeable with any other being qua being because that order of consideration – considering things qua being – is an order which equates. I take Badiou in saying “ontology is mathematics” to be saying by that anything that can be said about/within beings qua being – that is, any inquiry within the order of consideration that considers at the level of things qua being rather than qua other aspects – can be said, and perhaps said best, via mathematics. That’s only a claim about beings qua being, not about beings qua any of the infinity of other ways they can be considered.
Hope that’s clearer.
cheers,
Nate
November 30, 2008 at 11:41 pm
[…] the discourse of being qua being rather than being in itself (a point repeated by Nate in his own response to my post). I do think, however, that there is a common shift in Badiou from statements about […]
December 1, 2008 at 12:20 am
Dear Larval Subjects,
I appreciate this post very much, but like Nate I assert the same criticism to your argument. I think Badiou holds to the essence/existence division to deliver the exposition of ontology as mathematics in Being and Event. To take up your invocation of Lacan, I would suggest reading Badiou as arguing that Mathematics gives the form of the « not all » of being. That is, being as pure muliplicity. This « not all » is what the infinite and the void are, in various ways, trying to formalize. And, also to agree with Nate, ontology, playing this form of scientific dispositif, gives us a particular science of being qua being.
But ultimately I think the main problem here is that when you invoke materialism and idealism, I have a hard time pinning down what characterizes the two positions. To equivocate thinking and being can be as materialist as idealist. How does materialism accommodate thinking ? Is it to render thinking a species of material interaction, as atom firing in the void ? Some recent readings have brought me to a big debate during the Cultural Revolution where the question of materialism was brought up as a criticism of Mao. On the one side, they argued that materialism had to break off theory from practice, that is, that materialist movement had to be distinct from thought. On the other side, they argued that thought was part of, and indeed, identical to the real movement of material conditions, revealing itself at the edge of dialectical confrontations. These both qualify as materialist on some doctrinal level. I think Badiou very much inscribes himself in the latter, the camp that Mao himself sided with in his triad of essays beginning with « On Practice ».
If one put emphasis on matter, the question is one of access. How does one even begin to determine « matter » and its essence outside of an intellectual or cognitive process ? If one does not argue that what exists or what appears is already a mixture of thinking and being then we seem to be faced with either a brute dualism or an indecipherable facticity. Now there are a few places to go from here, but the standard « materialist » position, one that is posited in the analytic tradition, is one of a doctrinal materialism, which in final count is an idealist one or at least a strange form of dualism. It is the determination of the nature of existence from an external perspective ; one where the proposition « all is matter » is a true proposition. For a materialist, this has no meaning for it doesn’t get at the apparatus or methodology for ascertaining such a judgement. I have a few ideas about what materialism means but I would say for now that it cannot be one of doctrine but one that is thoroughly methodological. I leave open the question for you as it were : what is the relation between being, thinking and matter ? I think a materialist philosophy has to give an account of their equivocity.
Ps. Badiou has the chapter on the object in Logiques des Mondes where he gives a « postulat du materialisme : Whichever the world, any atom of this world is a real atom. » what do you think of this ?
December 1, 2008 at 12:56 am
Tzuchein (and Nate),
These are all outstanding points, and I confess I’m being unfair to Badiou in eliding his claim that ontology articulates what can be said of being, which does not exhaust existence. Tzuchein, I especially like your devious argument about materialist reductivism, where the materialist attempts to show how thought emerges from matter (brain), thereby giving another spin on the identity of being and thinking argument. This line of argument hadn’t occurred to me.
Maybe you could say a bit more concerning Badiou’s postulate of materialism, as there’s not much I can make of it in this sparse presentation. I think, for me, a number of my difficulties arise from the fact that I tend to advocate a far more classical Marxist position than Badiou does. My worry about Badiou’s theory of the event is that while he argues that events are always situated, the emergence of the event and reliance on a declaration, invites the political activist to ignore material conditions belonging to the social structure. Where Badiou argues for an event and the truth-procedures that follow from it, I tend to side with the Marxist mode of analysis in texts like Capital, where it’s necessary to analyze the networks and systems belonging to the social sphere, looking for those tendencies where change is taking place and striving to intensify them. Along these lines, I think there are significant material reasons as to why the major revolutions (French, American, and Russian) took place at the time they did that were a function of economic and technological transformations that took place around the world, undermining various forms of social organization and leading to the emergence of new group collectives. I just don’t think the theory of the event or void does a very good job getting at this and dangerously leads us to look away from these phenomena (Badiou goes so far as to exclude economics from political theory). In my view, the failure to analyze assemblages or networks leads to very ineffectual political engagement. Part of my materialism would thus be a focus on the organization of situations in terms of their mechanisms of production, distribution, etc. I realize that this is not a very popular position among French political theorists, though I do think it is part of the merit of Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus, as opposed to Badiou.
December 1, 2008 at 1:20 am
Thanks for the prompt reply…
I realize we could go back and forth all night but I just wanted to throw a quick comment at you and perhaps continue the discussion over a few days.
I would respond perhaps in Badiou’s corner by arguing that your concern for economic conditions and as you put it « I think there are significant material reasons as to why the major revolutions (French, American, and Russian) took place at the time they did that were a function of economic and technological transformations that took place around the world… » that perhaps you are falling into the camp of economism. Not that the identification with this camp is something that I would send you to the gulags for (heheehe…) but it is definately something to rethink. I hope to do this at the present moment. Its about time isn’t it ? Material conditions, rightly taught by Marx, do concern social formations and economic conditions but we might have to think of the problem of the break or rupture by evaluating contingency. Sometimes the only reason why the revolution is crushed is because the ruling classes have more guns. This is simply a question of contingency.
I think this is what Badiou is getting at with the theory of the event. I agree 150 percent that its a heavily problematic theory and that it relies on this fasination with the « subject » as it emerged in France with Sartre and Merlou-Ponty. Yet, to schematize this problem in terms of materialism (or rather its lack) is, in my opinion, a wrong headed move. Half of the materialist tradition (starting with Epicurus) is the problem of contingency. This must surely take us away from economics doesn’t it ?
December 1, 2008 at 2:46 am
I don’t know that I fall into the camp of economism tout court, though I do think economics and technology are a tremendously important factor in the whole mix. I’m rather fond of Arjun Appadurai’s notion of “scapes” for thinking these issues. Appadurai distinguishes between ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and mediascapes (cf. Modernity at Large, pg. 33). We could multiply these various scapes as well, introducing additional ones where empirical investigation calls for it.
In order to properly think a scape, you have to think in terms of textiles or weaving, where these various planes or scapes are woven together in a variety of ways, generating tendencies within the social field. No one “scape” dominates the others, but rather they’re woven together forming the social field.. In other words, thought here has to proceed ecologically, looking at how these various elements are interwoven in an ecosphere where all the elements respond to one another and relate to one another, also being haunted by a variety of tensions. The question of politics then becomes a question of how it is possible to maximize on some of these tensions for particular aims. And of course, just as every ecosystem is capable of contingency in the form of unique and surprising solutions to the field of problems, so too in the case of socio-material ecosystems. Nonetheless, it is very difficult to strategize effective political engagement without mapping the territory or knowing the lay of the land. While I certainly admire Badiou’s political theory as a sort of exhortatory rhetoric, I also think it carries the danger of leading us to ignore this crucial activity of mapping assemblages.
Honestly, I think there’s a lot more there in Sartre’s late work than Badiou pulls on. All Sartre’s analyses of subject-groups and groups-in-formation is first rate (if you can penetrate the Critique of Dialectical Reason) and is definitely due for rehabilitation. A lot of Guattari’s thought is deeply influenced by this strain of Sartrean thought. But here the question becomes not that of how a subject is possible– much less a subject completely free of social mediation by the “encyclopaedia” –but rather the question of how we can effectively produce and intensify collective assemblages that target key nodes in the social assemblage and open the possibility of new institutions, modes of production, modes of distribution, and individual freedom. Of course, I realize that my network based empiricism makes me vulgar, but oh well!
December 1, 2008 at 2:56 am
hey Synth,
Thanks for the kind words. I think bears re-iterating, I think your point re: what-ness vs that-ness is interesting and you should continue to develop it. I’m not sure I totally understand how your using the terms right now but I find it resonant. If I get you correctly that the that-ness is bound up with beings not qua being but rather with many things other than being (and I may have totally misunderstood you) then I take you to be saying what I think Badiou says, or at least what I want to use Badiou to say.
Other thing, on materialism etc, this is part of why I find Badiou attractive as deflationary resource (I want someone to write an essay using Badiou on ontology/mathematics analogously to how Rorty uses Tarski’s convention T, as a deflationary tool), precisely within marxism: it clears space for reflections on things other than ontology. Put reductively, it makes room to act marxist like E.P. Thompson instead of like Althusser or Lukacs – analyzing structures and practices, or, to act like the Marx of the chapters in Capital on the working day rather than like the Marx of the discussion on estrangement in the 1844 manuscripts (I’m not against philosophical/theoretical work, it’s just that I think there are different registers of inquiry and people often make category mistakes between them).
I don’t know that Badiou’s theoretical provides positive resources for that analysis (if it does, I don’t understand them), it’s the negative ground clearing move that I like Badiou for – an exit from ontology, so to speak: I want to use Badiou to say basically ‘if you want to do all that then fine, but then you really are doing something like mathematics or should start doing mathematics.’
warmly,
Nate
December 2, 2008 at 2:41 am
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