The Conditional Spiral in Alain Badiou’s philosophical system
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23925/politica.v12i4.68250Keywords:
Logic, Conditions, Subject, System, MultiplicityAbstract
Philosophical attempts at reforming ontology have moved from delimiting large universal substances or totalities toward mapping formal models through time. Most of these endeavors establish irreducible difference as their primary assumption. Alain Badiou’s ontological proposal is doubtless one of the most polemical. Known for his initial formulation concerning ontology being mathematics, Badiou brought significant adjustments to his claim in 2018. In this paper, we argue that this sizeable overhauling was enabled by the multilayered conditional logic structuring his philosophical system. We contend that without such a logic, no philosophical proposal on radical difference and its material emergence can be taken as a real possibility. The ontology maps a radically formal, event-conditioned theory, distributed through subject-types. The theory of conditions provides the parameters by which to validate this claim.
Downloads
References
ADORNO, Theodor W. Negative Dialectics. London: Routledge, 1990 [1966].
BADIOU, Alain. Being and Event. Translated by Oliver Feltham. London, Bloomsbury, 2013. [ L’Être et l’événement. Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1988.]
BADIOU, A. Manifeste pour la philosophie. Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1989.
BADIOU, A. Conditions. Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1992.
BADIOU, A. Court traité d’ontologie transitoire. Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1998.
BADIOU, A. Ethics. An essay on the understanding of evil. Translated and introduced by Peter Hallward. London, Verso, 2001.
BADIOU, A. Logiques des mondes : L’Être et l’événement 2. Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 2006.
BADIOU, A. Concept de modèle : introduction à une épistémologie matérialiste des mathématiques. 2e édition. Paris, Fayard/ouvertures, 2007.
BADIOU, A. Mathematics of the Transcendental. Translated by A. J. Bartlett and Alex Ling. London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
BADIOU, A. L’Immanence des vérités : L’Être et l’événement 3. Éditions Hachette, Paris, 2018.
BADIOU, A. Validações. Textos sobre ontologia, matemática e sistema (2003-2018). Organizada por Norman R. Madarasz. Porto Alegre RS, Editora Fundação Fênix, 2019a.
BADIOU, A. Sometimes, we are eternal. Edited by Jana Ndiaya Berankova and Norma Hussey. Lyon, France, Suture Press, 2019b.
BADIOU, A. Alain Badiou par Alain Badiou. PUF, Paris, 2021.
CONNES, Alain et Patrick GAUTHIER-LAFAYE, À l’ombre de Grothendieck et de Lacan : un topos sur l’inconscient. Paris, Odile Jacob, 2022.
GÖDEL, K. What is Cantor's Continuum Problem?, reprinted in Benacerraf and Putnam's collection Philosophy of Mathematics, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1983.
HEIDEGGER, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Walter de Gruyter, 1927.
LEVINAS, Emmanuel. Autrement qu’être ou Au-delà de l’essence. Paris, Librairie générale française, 1974.
WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C.G. Ogden and Frank Ramsey. London, Cambridge University Press, 1922.