Class: Badiou Part 3 Evil
posted by Michael | 2/13/2007 12:07:00 PM
Contributors
- Pack: Badiou Parts 1 and 2 of 3
- Class: Badiou Part 1 and 2 of 3
- Bibliography 2 (of possible 2)
- Bibliography 1 (of possible 2)
- Pack: Porto Alegre
- Class: Porto Alegre
- Pack: Block Documents
- Class: Block Documents
- Pack: Tute Bianchi Documents
- Class: Tute Bianchi Documents
12 Comments:
1. On page 85 Badiou says "The Good is Good only to the extent that it does not aspire to render the world good. What does he mean by this?
2. How does every attempt to impose the total power of a truth ruin a truth's very foundation?
3. Is it true that every situation can be looked at from a different view that could possibly render it ethically acceptable?
1. What is the unnamable?
2. Could it be said that there are other figures of evil aside from simulacrum, betrayal, and the forcing of the unnamable? If so, under what category would they fall?
3. What is the significance of the capitalization of the words evil and good?
1. What exactly is the "void" that accompanies an event?
2. Do you really agree with the statement that "every attempt 'politically' to name a community induces a disastrous Evil" (pg. 86)?
3. Does truth really force knowledges? While Badiou believes this to be the best verb in describing the action a truth can have on knowledges, are there better suited ones?
1. If Evil is "to want," as Badiou writes on page 86, how do we reconcile any attempt to want a life of Good by recognizing the truth process?
2. Are there not an infinite amount of truth-processes based on how the event and fidelity are treated?
3. By acknowledging a truth and its power, do we automatically give it an element of totality?
1. Early in this excert, Badiou said that there is no truth. However, he talks about the Germans community going towards their true destiny. What is a true destiny? What is a real-truth process? How can these things exist, when there is no such thing as truth?
2. Is betrayal simply a psychological process or does it have a physical aspect? Does one only have to deny the event in their mind for it to be considered betrayal?
3. If there is always an unnameable,how can there ever be "total power of truth".
1) How can Badiou say that there is such a thing as the "unnameable"? Isn't that naming it? And isn't that beside the point of what he's trying to say?
2)I always thought truth was a good thing and that being deceived was a bad thing, yet Badiou seems to make truth into an undesireable thing. He says there is a truth-process and that is what is important. But how can a process be more important than the result of that process especially relating to something like the "quest for truth"?
3)If Badiou essentially says that there is no such thing as a universal ethic, then isn't he saying essentially that the morals we learn as children are useless? It's almost as though he's says that, since there is no universal ethic or good in which to believe then those things that we learn, like compassion are inconsequential. Is he saying then, that it's all right to let people suffer because there is no real reason to help them?
1) In page 64, Badiou argues that since Hitler is death, what we have before our eyes is the result of the new singularities of evil, however, aren't they also tied to pre-existing evils? dont't they stick around and empower new evils?
2) If evil is the simulacrum of the truth, then what is exactly good?
3) If desire is lack and one only knows what one desires by lacking, is there ever a point in which we are fulfilled?
1. Pg-74 Badiou explains "Fidelity to a simulacrum, unlike fidelity to an event, reculates its break with the situation not by the universality of the void, but by the closed particularity of an abstract set." What exactly does he mean by distinguishing these two fidelities?
2. Is it ever possible for a betrayal, in the sense of an individual to himself or one entity to another to actually be an event warrant of good and truth?
3. What does Badiou mean on pg. 80 when he states that the question to be asked is "does the power of a truth, in the situation in which it pursues its faithful course, have the potential to be total?" What does he mean with his subsequent explanation of "total"?
1. Badiou contradicts himself by stating first that opinions are problems and “are representations without truth, the anarchic debris of circulating knowledge” (pg 50), then opinions are the way in which truths “make their singular penetration” and prevent disaster. How can opinions both be negative and positive in his context? Pg. 84-85.
2. Is the nominalization of the unnamable the absolution of a truth and therefore disaster? Or does adding of the concept of the unnamable to his philosophy an essential component to making it work?
3. How can one better determine the difference between Truth and Evil? They are both very similar in fidelities and other characteristics; and in a real application how does one going about distinguishing Event from Non-Event?
1. If the naming of an unnamable creates evil, then what does not naming an unnamable create?
2. What is the difference between a fidelity to a simulacrum and a fidelity to an event?
3. Do you agree with Badiou when he says on page 79 that you "cannot simply renounce a truth?"
1 - As mentioned earlier, how is this ethics useful for anyone besides those sitting in the hallowed ivory tower of academia?
2 - How would Badiou's ethics classify a murder on a personal level - one not on a national scale. Would it be evil at all?
3 - Why does Badiou focus on the ethics of states and nations? He spends little/no time on the ethics of individuals, whom are the ones these systems (theoretically) end up effecting.
1. What if we never named anything then would there be any evils?
2. And in which case if we have no evil can there be good?
3. It seems like he is saying that ethics are personal, based on each individual, so is nothing unethical if a person can rationalize it to themselves?
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