From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: readings on the 11th september
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 21:34:28 -0600


Rod,

Thanks for posting the Badiou text.  Since 'Theory and Event' requires a
subscription to view, would you tell me if this was the full text or
just a partial quote?

I have been thinking for some time now about the connection between
Badiou and Lyotard. For Badiou, ethics is about applying a process of
truth to radically transform a situation, irregardless of the cultural,
political or social considerations. It is what allows ethics to be
concerned with what Badiou calls the Immortal as opposed to the
consideration of the Other in the context of human rights.

Despite Lyotard's interest in Levinas, I am convinced that Lyotard's
approach to ethics and politics is closer to Badiou than it is to
Levinas.  The crucial move away from Levinas I believe Lyotard makes is
to consider the Other not merely as the human Face, but more ambiguously
as the figural; one that can certainly be found in another, but can also
be found in ourselves. 

The figural is that which resists discourse and representation; it is
also the sublime event which does not present itself; again it is the
enfans upon whose flesh the Law is inscribed but which remains always
external to the Law. 

Lyotard is consistently opposed to a humanism which is founded on
metanarratives, universals and grids of representation because
inevitably these systems must end implicitly denying the figural.
Paradoxically, for Lyotard, we can only become human to the extent we
testify to this inhuman Other (the figural, the sublime, the enfans).
We must listen to this voice that is not a voice, framed in the silent
language of the Out-Law.

This is where Lyotard links back to Badiou. What one calls truth, the
other the other calls the sublime. Both share in common a witnessing to
something that is external to the situation, that cannot be represented
in the situation, and that is necessary to realize in order to transform
the situation. In short, for both, ethics is founded as the radical
response to an Event.

I would argue further that there is something deontological about this
approach insofar as it cannot be identified with utilitarianism,
pragmatism or phenomenology.  In short, both Badiou and Lyotard are both
Kantian with regard to ethics, albeit that this is a Kantian ethics of a
very radical kind.

I certainly do not mean here the kind of appropriation of Kant that is
common to political liberalism, human rights theory, or philosophers
such as Rawls.  Rather I mean something closer to what Lacan identified
in Kant; an uncompromising sense of duty as fidelity to the truth or the
Real.  A categorical imperative which remains empty to the extent that
it tells us something must be done, but does not prescribe 'how' in any
detail. As such, Kantian ethics becomes an Archimedean lever with which
to move the world.

At the heart of Kantian ethics is what Kant himself called the 'kingdom
of ends' and here too we must reinterpret this in a much more radical
way. Taken literally it means that there must be an end to domination of
every kind; whether this is racism, sexism, authoritarianism,
exploitation, chattel slavery, wage slavery, and any form of social
existence where one person must become subservient to another. In short,
Kant's imperative entails that we transform an existing set of
situations that are planetary in their scope to create a world in which
there are No Gods and No Masters. In short, it means we called upon to
make an autopoietic society.

I would like to propose this as one possible response to the current
situation. Certainly, under the circumstances we must back necessary
reforms, but we must also recognize such reforms are never enough.
Ultimately, we must take the radical stance of demanding ethical
responsibility in the growing face of a pervasive immorality.  

We must because we can. 

Another world is possible. 

There is always an alternative.

eric