I shamelessly copied this photo and text from a shameless copied photo and text from a shameless blogger of another shameless blog:"Philosophy has been defined as “an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly”; I should define it rather an “an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously”. The philosopher’s temperament is rare, because it has to combine two somewhat conflicting characteristics: on the one hand a strong desire to believe some general proposition about the universe or human life; on the other hand, inability to believe contentedly except on what appear to be intellectual grounds. The more profound the philosopher, the more intricate and subtle must his fallacies be in order to produce in him the desired state of intellectual acquiescence. That is why philosophy is obscure." - Bertrand Russell
The Desire of Philosophy and the Contemporary World
Alain Badiou’s essay “The Desire of Philosophy and the Contemporary World” – translated as the first chapter of a collection of his writings, in English, Infinite Thought, from the French by Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens – is an infinitely demanding, yet clear and consise, if, nonetheless, rigorous and unforgiving, address to contemporary philosophy and to the world; it may be read as a response to the plea not simply from one of the founders of empiricism and logical positivism, but from the world, and for logic, or, if you prefer, for a clear thinking. But what is a philosophical address? And to whom is philosophy addressed to? The philosophical address is an address to all, or, better, it is address to nobody in particular, devoid of any specific address, to the void that it itself is.[1] Here I will give a summary of the first part of this essay, and if you so desire to read further you can do so.
What is the future of philosophy? We can only speculate; but, to address what philosophy can think, here and now, we must first consider what philosophy wants, or, rather, what is wanted of philosophy, what the world demands of philosophy, today, in our contemporary multiplicity of situations. The first step in the procedure, for thinking which desires logical consistency, must, henceforth, be a declaration of axioms, from which one can logically proceed, must decide upon what is and what takes place. What does philosophy desire? What are its axioms? For Badiou, the desire of philosophy is four-fold:
1. Revolt : “there is no philosophy without the discontent of thinking in its confrontation with the world as it is”; i.e., it is the world which takes place, and we must ourselves assume full responsibility for the consequences of revolt: logical, destructive, negative, creative, subtractive.
2. Logic: “a belief in the power of argument and reason”; i.e., it proceeds from a fidelity to axioms and seeks verification through deduction, consistency, and the most devoted rigour.
3. Universality: “philosophy addresses all humans as thinking beings since it supposes that all humans think”; i.e., presupposing the “equaliy of intelligence”[2] and the void of the address itself, in order to verify what is valid for all thinking.
4. Taking Risks: “thinking is always a decision which supports independent points of view”; i.e., it must reach a point whereby it makes a decision to continue to follow through on specific position(s), even if the choice is not absolutely clear from the very beginning; but, the decision must not, nevertheless, be forced (especially when we encounter a false choice between a synthesis of two disjunctive positions (the case of State representational-parliamentary democratic politics today)), without an ethic of patience and persistence: in other words, thought is a slow and difficult process, yet it must continue; a forcing of a decision, then, is of the highest risk.
Denying the possibility of the four dimensions of the desire of philosophy, in the world as it is, today, are four counter-facts (i.e., facts which run against and pose as obstacles to the commitment to these desires of philosophy – remember Lacan’s ethical injunction: “do not compromise/give up on your desire!” –so as to, perhaps, extend our discussion of information served to us, shrink-wrapped and on a hot plate, and the facts, headed to the wikis), which Badiou names, but doesn’t name them as such (i.e., as counter-facts):
1. Freedom: because we live in a world that is free, a commercialized world, we no longer have the necessity to revolt. After all, who needs to revolt when we can shop online, travel to exotic lands, and have all our basic necessities for basic human survival a few steps away?
We clearly see what kind of world this is. It is, of course, the “Western” world, the “free world” where the market and the superego reign supreme, where everyone has their human rights and humanely gives them to those who have none: enjoy, be happy, healthy, and fit for the world of goods! No need for despair , because we have none, we are free as the stars in the sky! Of mechandise, sales, and profits; goods, commodities, and fetishes. And, of course, it is important to underscore in this beligerency of freedom the primary contraction between the world as such, and the world as it really is.
2. Communication: illogical; the reign of information and the renaissance of the encyclopedia – to quote at length, because this concerns some of the questions we are posing here on this Great Machine:
“Communication transmits a universe made up of disconnected images, remarks, statements, and commentaries, whose accepted principle is incoherence. Day after day communication undoes all relations and all principles, in an untenable juxtaposition that dissolves every relation that it sweeps along in its flow. And what is perhaps even more distressing is that mass communication presents the world to us as a spectacle devoid of memory, a spectacle in which new images and new remarks cover, erase and consign to oblivion the images and remarks that have just been shown and said. The logic which is specifically undone here is the logic of time.”
The world of news, opinions, and polls. The world of votes, conferences on anything and everything that can inform, debates, interviews, debates, interviews, and oh so many more debates, blogs, wikis of vast amounts of edited and unedited information, of Hollywood stardom, reality television, and commercial sales, music videos and YouTube for the kiddies and Reader’s Digest and National Geographic for the elders, Al Jazeera for some, Fox News for others, and Democracy Now! for the free. The world as it is everywhere, flowing freely across airways, and regurgitated from space, the world where it really is as it takes place, floating in space without logic, nor any trace of the past, nor time to think, and the speed of waves and frequiencies.
3. Fragmentation: via abstract economic and technological configurations, a multiplicity of forms of production, monetary distribution, a seemingly limitless diversification and the specialization of particular functions. No validity anywhere.
4. Calculation: a world full of probability theorists, statistics junkies, and risk management and insurance brokers, the probability of a terrorist attack (red-orange-yellow-green), what is the probability that my apartment will burn down? What is the probability that I will get in a car accident?
We must refuse to be objects of this calculative eruditism. Calculation is needed only in so far and ever because we are insecure, hence calculate and calculate, secure, secure, secure, so long as you are happy and free, the world will remain the same and we can die in peace.
[1] See Badiou’s “What is a Philosophical Institution? Or: Address, Transmission, Inscription” in The Praxis of Alain Badiou, Paul Ashton, A.J. Bartlett, and Justin Clemens, ed., Open Access publication.
[2] Badiou doesn’t explicity state this anywhere in his work, although he does take equality as an axiomatic condition necessary for any form of militant, emancipatory politics. It is, rather, a position taken by an early 19th century exiled schoolmaster, Joseph Jacotot, whose verifaction of this principle in the concrete, experimental situation of the classroom, does away with reducing “intelligence” to the capacity or ability of cognitive faculties, the distinctions of social class, or any other predicate for that matter, one has - “has” here inherently implying possession - to think. See Jacques Ranciere’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Kristin Ross, trans., Stanford UP, 1991. See also, if you read French, Sylvain Lazarus’ L’Anthropologie du nom, Seuil, 1996, the first statement of which is: “Les gens pensent.” (“People think.”)
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