IDEALISM WITHOUT IDEALISM
2014; Routledge; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0969725x.2014.920639
ISSN1469-2899
Autores Tópico(s)Anarchism and Radical Politics
ResumoAbstractThis article examines a contemporary proposal of how to conceive of materialism, more specifically of a materialist dialectics (another name for an immanent materialism). This proposal was formulated by Alain Badiou and it is of huge interest for the contemporary discussion as it inscribes the very historical coordinates in which it was articulated into its own proposal. The article develops this by arguing that Badiou's materialist dialectic historically situates itself after idealist options seem to have become impossible. However, the very dialectical kernel of this materialism leads Badiou to claim that after the perpetuated struggle between materialism and idealism is declared to have been overcome, the very split separating the two returns in an inverted form inside materialism, splitting it again into two. Thereby the immanent split in materialism leads to two options: either one defends a materialism devoid of any idealist reference or a materialism which seeks to rescue something of idealism. The article concludes by suggesting that only from a detailed reconstruction of the functioning of philosophy in Badiou's system does it become possible to conceive of the threats that any materialism today faces and to delineate the proposed option of how to avoid them consistently. The article demonstrates how, today, materialism can only be properly materialist (without any metaphysical, mythical foundation) by resurrecting something of idealism, which is why it deserves the name of what I call an “idealism without idealism.”Keywords: BadiouidealismMarxmaterialismphilosophical actsubtraction NotesFor their discussion of a first version of this text, I would like to thank Bruno Besana, Lorenzo Chiesa, Mladen Dolar, Oliver Feltham, Peter Hallward, Ozren Pupovac, Rado Riha, Jelica Sumic-Riha, Alberto Toscano, Jan Völker, and Slavoj Žižek.1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000) 93.2 Cited from the German version of the broadcast Der Mensch in einer sozialisierten Welt [Human Being in a Socialized World].3 See Herbert Marcuse, Repressive Tolerance, available .4 For this see also Herbert Marcuse, “Democracy Has/Hasn't a Future … a Present” in idem, The New Left and the 1960s (London and New York: Routledge, 2004) 87–99.5 Marcuse, Der Mensch in einer sozialisierten Welt; my translation.6 For the Badiousian notion of materialist dialectic see Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds, Being and Event 2 (London and New York: Continuum, 2006) 1–40.7 I have presented a systematic reading of Badiou's attempt to introduce different conceptions of negation and his reworking of dialectics elsewhere: Frank Ruda, “Remembering, Repeating, Working through Marx: Badiou and Žižek and the Re-actualizations of Marxism,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 2012/3, no. 261 (2012): 293–320.8 For this see Alain Badiou, Being and Event (London and New York: Continuum, 2005) 81–89, 142–60; idem, Theoretical Writings (London and New York: Continuum, 2004) 3–67; idem, Briefings on Existence: A Short Treatise on Transitory Ontology (Albany: State U of New York P, 2006) 21–33. The idea that the death of God has been proven by Cantor can be rendered in the following way: Cantor demonstrated that there can be different sizes of infinity (say the set of natural numbers and prime numbers are of the same size). Thereby he sought to demonstrate that there is an infinity of infinities (of infinite sets of numbers). If this were to be true – and Badiou contends it is – this makes it impossible to still defend the idea of an infinity that could encompass all infinities, the latter being a very simple definition of God. For this see also Shaughan Lavine, Understanding the Infinite (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP, 1998).9 Alain Badiou, Philosophy as Creative Repetition, available .10 Ibid.11 On science as a condition of philosophy see Alain Badiou, “Philosophy and Mathematics” in Conditions (London and New York: Continuum, 2008) 93–112; idem, Being and Event 1–22.12 For this see also Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds 153–55.13 Ibid. 1–40. The axiom of democratic materialism is: “There are only bodies and languages,” or in its second formulation: “There are only individuals and communities”; the axiom of materialist dialectics is: “There are only bodies and languages, except that there are truths” or “There are only individuals and subjects, except that there are subjects.” The materialist dialectics therefore combines a materialist stance and a dialectics of exception.14 Ibid. 11.15 Although it is well known, I want to mention it here again: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”16 Georges Labica, Karl Marx, les “Thèses sur Feuerbach” (Paris: PUF, 1987) 5; my translation.17 Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy (1923), available .18 W.F. Haug, “Die Camera obscura des Bewusstseins” in Die Camera obscura der Ideologie, ed. Projekt Ideologie-Theorie (Berlin: Argument, 1984) 18; my translation.19 Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1995) 278.20 Ibid. 281.21 Günther Anders, Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, vol. 2: Über die Zerstörung des Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution (Munich: Beck, 1980) 265; my translation.22 Theodor W. Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics: Fragments of Lecture Course 1965/1966 (Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity, 2008) 44.23 Ibid. 42.24 Elias Canetti, “Realismus und neue Wirklichkeit” in Das Gewissen der Worte (Munich and Vienna: Hanser, 1983) 66; my translation.25 Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (London and New York: Verso, 1997) 90.26 See Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life (London and New York: Verso, 2005) 29.27 A video recording of this can be found at .28 Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes (London and New York: Verso, 2008) 48.29 Here, I do not presuppose any previous knowledge of Badiou's thought. In what follows I will provide all the references and explanations needed. However, this section of the article is not meant to present an introduction to Badiou; rather, its task is to construct the mentioned fourth type of reading Marx.30 Badiou, Philosophy as Creative Repetition.31 See idem, Logics of Worlds 1–40.32 Idem, The Meaning of Sarkozy (London and New York: Verso, 2008) 55.33 See, for example, Alain Badiou, Séminaires sur: S'orienter dans la pensée, s'orienter dans l'existence (2004–2005), available ; my translation. Here, one should remember that the term “phallic signifier” was introduced by Jacques Lacan. The phallic signifier is a signifier that embodies the lack of something; in this case “democracy” embodies, for Badiou, the lack of any real political action.34 Alain Badiou, “The Caesura of Nihilism,” paper presented at the Society for European Philosophy, University of Essex, 10 Sept. 2003. Unpublished MS.35 For this see also Frank Ruda and Jan Völker, “Thèses sur une morale provisoire communiste” in L'Idée du communisme 2, eds. Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek (Paris: Ligne, 2011) 215–37.36 See Alain Badiou, Séminaires sur: S'orienter dans la pensée, s'orienter dans l'existence (2005–2006), available ; my translation.37 Alain Badiou, Frank Ruda, and Jan Völker, “Wir müssen das affirmative Begehren hüten” in Alain Badiou, Dritter Entwurf eines Manifest für den Affirmationismus (Berlin: Merve, 2008) 45–46; my translation38 Badiou, Séminaires sur: S'orienter dans la pensée, s'orienter dans l'existence (2005–2006).39 Idem, The Meaning of Sarkozy 56.40 Idem, “Philosophy and the ‘War against Terrorism’” in Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy (London and New York: Verso, 2003) 162.41 For this see idem, Logics of Worlds 109–40.42 Idem, The Meaning of Sarkozy 60–68.43 Fredric Jameson, “Cognitive Mapping” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1983) 347–57.44 See Alain Badiou, Manifesto of Affirmationism, available .45 Idem, Séminaires sur: S'orienter dans la pensée, s'orienter dans l'existence (2005–2006).46 Ibid.47 Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis (London and New York: Verso, 2010) 258–60.48 More recently this has become even overly explicit in his seminars: “For Today: Plato!” See Alain Badiou, Séminaires sur: Pour aujourd'hui: Platon!, available .49 Idem, Peut-on penser la politique? (Paris: Seuil, 1985) 60.50 For these notions see idem, Logics of Worlds 43–78.51 Idem, Le Courage du présent, available .52 See Labica, Karl Marx, les “Thèses sur Feuerbach”; Pierre Macherey, Marx 1845– Les “Thèses sur Feuerbach” (Paris: Amsterdam, 2008).53 Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy in Selected Works, vol. 2 (Moscow: Progress, 1973) 368.54 Macherey, Marx 1845– 116–17.55 See Badiou, Logics of Worlds 141–52.56 Idem, Peut-on penser la politique? 17.57 For this see idem, “On Subtraction” in Conditions 113–28.58 Idem, Logics of Worlds 144.59 Ibid.60 Alain Badiou, “Metaphysics and Critique of Metaphysics,” Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 10 (2000) 290.
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