Alain Badiou - YouTube Lectures 2010 (current)

Philosophy's goal is subjective transformation, not new knowledge. Is dialectical in nature not rational progress toward better knowledge.

The conservative philosophical approach is one that frames philosophy as the acquisition of collectively better and better knowledge i.e. analytic or scientifically bent philosophies. They attempt at the closure of philosophy, Philosophy can answer the question.


More radical philosophies do not seek ultimate closer, but engage in dialog, a dialectic. They work off the notion that we are a dialectic between being and non-being. Even conservative closure seeking philosophies have to employ dialectics to do their "closing." So they are contained in the larger set of dialectical philosophies and therefore derivative of philosophy proper, dialectical philosophy.

The grand battle:

Analytic or conservative - gaining closure by reviving the past or remaining in the present
 vs
Dialectical - ongoing conversation of ever-churning interpretations of the past/present

5 conditions for a philosophical society:

1). The philosophers philosophy must be open for discussion, non dogmatic. Democratic.

2). Common rules of discussion or rationality.

3). The possibility of universality of philosophy. Its for everybody even other societies. Plato's slave could do philosophy.

4) ?

5) philosophies are bound to their creator and their transmission is not entirely rational. A philosophy needs to engender a new subjective desire, so the originators presence is very important.

Universality is the ability to be understood from another time or part of wold history. Not reducible to its historical context. Truth exist as human creations that escape their cultural contexts.

03/01/12

Philosophy comes from a negative state of radical negativity in doubt - a nihilism.

Only through a positive affirmation can this be overcome. 

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Mysticism (eastern "philosophy"):

"philosophy without the work, immediate"

A kind of nihilism closed in on itself

"Radical solitude with God"

Pure experience in the infinite

Pure subjectivity

In-immediate Philosophy (western) deals with the describable, non-mystic

Creative Repetition:

Creation of the new from a repetition.

A repetition of a method to new objects

A repetition of 1+n results in a new number. A dialectic of identity and difference. (has something to do with Hegel).

Then an interruption in creative repetition. An event. A beginning before creative repetition. Something between the question of existence and to be.

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The distinction between pure being and existence (appearances). What IS truth vs. the MEANING of truth. 

Two points of view of truth, from being or from existence. e.g. Hegel's two books,1st The Logic - is from being, and the 2nd, The Phenomenology - from existence. Or Plato's Parmenides from being-as-such, and The Apology from existence.

The "great" philosophers deal in both view points. English positivist dealt with only appearances or existence.

A philosophy begins from the nihilistic state in subjectivity presented with a choice between being or existence. There are differing reactions to the nihilistic state, from exstream frightfulness to resignation. The frightful want immediate escape and chose dogmatic being based philosophies. Descartes in his meditations is in this state of doubts then chooses being. Were Nietzsche or K may dwell more in the nihilistic state of subjectivity.

In science the scientist disappears in their works, not possible in philosophy because of nihilistic subjective beginnings.

-his two books conform to this dual view of truth.

Truth in first (Being and Event) was an answer to truth as proposition. Truth as otherworldly, that is truth existing non-concretely - un-touchable (with our normal senses).

Second (Logic of the World) Truth as a work of art not a confirmation or denial of a question. If truth exist then it must be concrete not other worldly.

Modern philosophy has been a criticism of the truth characterized as an equation to solve for.