From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: Bad Subjects are Sublime
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 22:32:53 -0600


Steve wrote:


Please then define precisely what seperates, what constitutes the 
differences, for you, between the ethical/moral positions of Badiou and 
Lyotard. What differences would you recognise between their 
ethical/moral positions.
 
Steve, 

In a draft of a letter to Paul Ree, Nietzsche wrote:

"She told me herself that she had no morality - and I thought she had,
like myself, a more severe morality than anybody..."

If we understand the Ubermensch, not as a future product of humanity,
the dazzling star child in 2001 or a genetically modified 6 million
dollar cyborg, both of which seem far from Nietszche's intention, what
we are actually left with is something far more radical.  

I think the case can be made that the Ubermensch, or Overman, is one who
overcomes his human-all-too-human tendencies through a willed
affirmation that says 'yes' to all the pain and suffering of the world
because it has made this very moment possible. For Nietzsche, like
Spinoza, an ethics of joy becomes possible in the Great Noon Hour of
Dionysus. The spirit that slays can also bless. And joy says 'yes' to
all eternity.

It strikes me that there is a certain affinity between Nietzsche's
approach to ethics and that of Badiou. Like the Immortal, the Overman
signifies a radical break in the situation; a yes, a no, a straight
line, a goal.

There is also a difference, however.  For Nietszche, the one who derided
Christianity as 'Platonism for the masses' and for Badiou, the
self-proclaimed Platonist, it is a difference in vectors. For Nietszche
it is a question of will overcoming itself; for Badiou, it is the truth
of a singular good transforming the situation which is singular, but not
merely individual.

I would place Lyotard as somewhere in between these two poles, that is
to say; he is a modified Kantian of sorts. In his book "Au Juste"
Lyotard simply proclaims 'be just' and makes the point that it is
necessary to judge without rules. While this is far more Aristotelian
than Platonic, it remains far from Nietzsche as well. Lyotard is very
critical of the notion of autonomy and hence of the whole idea of ethics
as a kind of free willing for its own sake beyond good and evil.
Instead, Lyotard stresses the notion of obligation - one is addressed by
a prescription and thereby held hostage. Like Badiou's Immortal,
Lyotard's subject acts justly because she must. 

Even though several new concepts intervene in his later writings, I
believe that something like this remains for Lyotard the gist of the
ethical. For example, in his essay, "The Other's Rights" Lyotard makes
the following statement:

"The master, whatever his title, exempts his pupils from the sharing of
speech in order to tell them something they do not know. He may even
speak to them in a language that they do not understand. The master is
not the figure of the general other, of you, but the figure of the Other
in all its separateness.  He is the stranger, the foreigner. How can one
dialogue with the foreigner? One would have to learn his language. This
question is in some measure analogous with that of literature and the
arts, testifying to something that is 'present' otherwise than as
interlocutory expectation: something opaque, Beckett's the
'Unnameable'."

One of the three elements that Badiou identifies conception of evil is
also this very 'Unnameable'. Badiou writes:

"At least one real element must exist, one multiple existing in the
situation, which remains inaccessible to truthful nominations, and is
exclusively reserved to opinion, to the language of the situation. At
least one point that the truth cannot force.  I shall call this element
the unnameable of a truth."

When analyzed in this fashion, it is clear to me that Badiou's
generalized strictures about the 'ethics of the other' deriving from
Levinas is far different from the kind of ethical argument Lyotard
himself makes. In fact, the very opposite assertion could be made.
Lyotard is in fact much closer to Badiou than it might at first appear.
Both understand truth as a prescription of the good, one that breaks
with the established rules, and which is concerned with a sense of
justice that can not be defined.  Finally, through the figure of the
unnameable both confront the evil that would say all the elements of the
situation can be named and represented, the evil of the politics of
consensus in the name of human rights. The truth is always somewhat
opaque to the situation and the Immortal must therefore approach it as a
kind of Stranger.

eric