Talk:Alain Badiou
Latest comment: 19 years ago by Cleversnail in topic List of Badiou's books
It would be good if someone could actually summarize his rather baroque ontology. Alas, that is beyond my abilities for now. Mporter 01:52, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Yes, I had the same idea, and hesitated too. But I'll try to add a philosophy section this week. What concepts do you suggest should be treated? I was thinking about something like this:
- 1. Something general; contrast with "anti-philosophers" and "sophists"
- 2. Mathematics = ontology
- 3. Sets and Situations
- 3.1 "evental site"
- 4. The Event
- 5. The Subject
- 5.1 Four conditions
- 5.2 Ethics
- 5.3 E-vil
- David Sneek
- Perhaps also the "four conditions of philosophy", the history of philosophy in "Manifesto for Philosophy", modern philosophy as a new sophistry. Something also about how he uses mathematical concepts, which is, so far as I can tell, just as metaphorical and disconnected from actual mathematics as anything attacked by Sokal and Bricmont. In fact, Badiou might be the supreme example of the 'poetic' use (or misuse) of mathematics in modern philosophy, precisely because he goes about it with such comprehensiveness (e.g. he has an ontological exegesis for each separate axiom of ZF set theory). Badiou's relationship to real mathematics is one of the things I'd like to figure out about him. Is he casting light on what mathematics is really about, or is his mathematics just an inspiration and a launchpad for a speculative metaphysics which is really about other realms of being entirely? Mporter 01:24, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- I think that to describe the rigor and correlation between mathematics and ontology that Badiou enumerates as 'poetic' usage is tantamount to saying the same regarding physics. I believe what he is doing is describing a strict adherence of the world to the mathematical set-theory, and not simply providing an incredibly detailed metaphor about how ontology seems-like math. When you look at Badiou as compared to perhaps Deleuze or other thinkers who have dabbled with mathematico-poetic philosophies, a clear difference comes out, and not only in the comprehensive ability of the system to explain situations. This is my cursory answer to your question. Sgaber
- Ok, I've updated the schema above a little, and will write something later
today. I don't think, btw, that Badiou intends his use of mathematics to be metaphorical or poetic; if ontology is mathematics, axiomatically, then for example the description of 'the event' as 'undecidable', in Gödel's sense, should be taken literally...David Sneek 09:16, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- I especially doubt that Badiou's undecidability is the same as Gödel's. Even if he is earnestly trying to 'ontologize' the latter, I think that ultimately he must be conflating two different things. But my access to Badiou's works is too limited to be sure. Mporter 13:04, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- I read Badiou's 'undecidability' to be very much like that of Jacque Derrida. If he attempts to related it to Goedel, it may be categorically incorrect since it would be an attempt to find mathematical justification for a moral concept. Derrida presented undecidability as an aspect of authenticity in contrast to Heidegger's 'decision', which can be found in Sein und Zeit, Beitraege, and other 'middle' works. Zeusnoos 20:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
- I think the article needs to reflect his theses on art, I know there is an externel link but my feeling is that it has a place within the body of the article. Also if you are going to critise Badiou's use of mathematics I would put that entirely under a new heading and not let it seep into any of the other presentations, and I would be very careful and only do it with credible knowledge as Badiou originally studied math.
Getting the ball rolling
Seeing as there was still no actual writing beyond a bio, I've tried to give a brief run through of Being and Event. (Which for the record is very hard!) It's a veritable balancing act between oversimplification and overcomplexity writing this but I think it grapples with the fundamental cornerstones of the book. (Or some anyway, if I did them all it'd last forever - and I'm mainly using this to get practice writing a paper on him.)
Anyway, feel free to tweak. I've purposefully left out the parts on Evil and religion because they'd probably be better covered in a different section. I've also tweaked the bio myself, primarily because it cast him as a mainline Marxist, which he really isn't.
Cheers,
SHJ.
- Great work! VoluntarySlave 18:58, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Broken Links
- Politics: a Non-expressive Dialectics (PDF) is a broken link. Should it be removed? I can't find this PDF anywhere.--Paul Adams 22:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
- It's working again. David Sneek 16:44, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
List of Badiou's books
I hope it is useful; I only copied from the back of his last one.--Cleversnail 13:08, 14 July 2006 (UTC)