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Dilemmas of Truth
in Alain Badiou’s
Philosophy
Giosuè Ghisalberti
Dilemmas of Truth in Alain Badiou’s Philosophy
Giosuè Ghisalberti
Dilemmas of Truth
in Alain Badiou’s
Philosophy
Giosuè Ghisalberti
Liberal Studies
Humber College
Toronto, ON, Canada
ISBN 978-3-031-18295-2 ISBN 978-3-031-18296-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18296-9
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Preface: Invitations
In one of the more remarkable if not most often-cited statements Alain

Badiou has made (in a short, two-page note, with only “five remarks”),
a historical relationship is established that serves us in the present. “At
the heart of the Middle Ages,” he writes, “the philosopher finds two
large-scale intellectual operations: a textual restitution and a new
interpretation.”1 The statement is, first and foremost, an invitation—to
read, as a form of fidelity and as the most fitting relation to the past. By
telling us about an essential characteristic of the Middle Ages, Badiou
believes we, today, are in a similar situation as the medieval monks who,
drawing on the classical past by recovering and re-interpreting ancient
writing, contributed to the creation of the Renaissance. The possibility
of a “re-birth” is now preferable to the last half-century of critical
thought and its many announcements, for example, about the death of
the subject. Peter Hallward, one of Badiou’s translators, has also left an
address for readers. “Every rigorously singular procedure articulates a
thoroughly generic truth. There can be no irreplaceable subject without
1
Badiou, Alain. “Five Remarks on the Contemporary Significance of the Middle Ages.”
Tr. Simone Pinet, 156–157 Diacritics, Vol. 36, No. 3/4, Fall/Winter 2006, 156.
v
vi Preface: Invitations
engagement in a process which, in principle, any subject may take part.

This book extends an invitation, indifferently addressed, to take up such
a part.”2 The invitation has been gratefully accepted; the work to follow
is my personal engagement in the on-going process of the philosophical
consideration of truth, above all, for the individual.
Spring, 2022 Giosuè Ghisalberti
2
Hallward, Peter. “Translator’s Introduction,” vii–xlvi in Ethics: An Essay on the
Understanding of Evil. London, Verso, 2012, xxxvi.
Other Works by Alain Badiou
“Afterward: Some Replies to a Demanding Friend,” in Think Again:

Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy. Ed. Peter Hallward: London:
Continuum, 2004.
“An Essential Philosophical Thesis: “It is Right to Rebel against the
Reactionaries”.” Tr. Alberto Toscano. 669–677 Positions, 2005, 13 (3).
“Beyond Formalization,” 318–350 Appendix 2 of Bruno Bosteel’s Badiou
and Politics.
“The Communist Hypothesis,” 29–46 New Left Review, Vol. 49, 2008.
“The Democratic Emblem,” Democracy in What State? Fr. Tr. William
McCuaig. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
“Destruction, Negation, Subtraction,” The Scandal of Self-Contradiction:
Pasolini’s Multicultural Subjectivities, Geographies, Traditions. Ed. Luca
di Blasi, Manuele Gragnolati, and Christoph F. E. Holzhey. Cultural
Inquiry, 6 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2012).
“Ethics and Politics.” Tr. C.J. Davies, 401–407 Philosophy Today, Vol. 59.
Issue 3 (Summer 2015).
“Five Remarks on the Contemporary Significance of the Middle Ages.”
Tr. Simone Pinet, 156–157 Diacritics, Vol. 36, No. 3/4, Fall/
Winter 2006.
“From Logic to Anthropology: Affirmative Dialectics,” Badiou and the
Political Condition. Ed. Marios Constantinou. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2014.
“Human Rights as the Rights of the Infinite,” An Interview with Alain
Badiou, 162–186 Historical Materialism, 20.4 (2012).
vii
viii OTHER WORKS BY ALAIN BADIOU
“In Search of Lost Prose.” Tr. Jacob Levi and Lucy Bergeret. 1254–1266
MLN, Vol. 132, Number 5, December 2017.
“In Search of the Lost Real,” Badiou and his Interlocutors: Lectures,
Interviews and Responses. Ed. A.J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens. London:
Bloomsbury, 2018.
“The Lesson of Jacques Rancière: Knowledge and Power After the Storm,”
Tr. Tzuchien Tho, 30–54 History, Politics, Aesthetics: Jacques Rancière.
Gabriel Rockhill and Philip Watts (eds.) Durham: Duke University
Press, 2009.
“L’etre, l’evenement, la militance,” interviewé par Nicole-Édith Thévenin
https://www.multitudes.net/l-etre-l-evenement-la-militance/.
“L’intellectuele du gauche va disparâitre, tant mieux.” Le Monde. July 7,
2007. https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/
article/2007/07/14/l-i ntellectuel-d e-g auche-v a-d isparaitre-t ant-
mieux_935544_3224.html.
“Live Badiou.” Interview conducted by Oliver Feltham in December
2002 as an appendix to his Alain Badiou: Live Theory. London:
Continuum, 2008.
“Love must be reinvented,” 6–17 Theory and Event, Vol. 22, Number 1,
January 2019. Tr. Duane Rousselle.
“Metaphysics and Critique of Metaphysics.” Tr. Alberto Toscano,
174–190 Pli (2000).
“Of an Obscure Disaster: On the End of the Truth of the State,” Can
Politics be Thought? Tr. Bruno Bosteels. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2018.
“On a Finally Objectless Subject,” 24–32 Who Comes after the Subject? Ed.
Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, Jean-Luc Nancy. New York:
Routledge, 1991.
“On Evil: An Interview with Alain Badiou.” Christoph Cox and Molly
Whalen. Cabinet, Issue 5/Evil, Winter 2001–2002.
“On Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment,
Politics of Resistance,” 154–162 Critical Horizons: Journal of Social
and Critical Theory, Vol. 10, issue 2, 2009.
“Philosophy as Biography.” The Symptom: Online Journal for Lacan.com.
https://www.lacan.com/symptom9_articles/badiou19.html.
“Philosophy as Creative Repetition.” https://www.lacan.com/bad-
repeat.html.
“Philosophy’s French Adventure,” 67–77 New Left Review, Vol. 35 (Sept.
1, 2005), 74.
OTHER WORKS BY ALAIN BADIOU ix
“Plato, our dear Plato,” Tr. Alberto Toscano, 39–41 Angelaki, Vol. 2,
Number 3 (December 2006).
“Politics and Philosophy,” an interview with Peter Hallward, 113–133
Angelaki, Vol. 3 (3), 1998.
“The Subject of Art,” in The Symptom, Online Journal for Lacan.com.,
1997. Transcript by Lydia Kerr. https://www.lacan.com/symptom6_
articles/badiou.html.
The Subject of Change: Lessons from the European Graduate School. Ed.
Duane Rousselle. New York: Atropos Press, 2013.
“The Subject Supposed to Know: On Paul Ricoeur’s Memory, History,
Forgetting.” Tr. Natalie Doyle and Alberto Toscano. The Bible and
Critical Theory, Vol. 2, Number 3, 2008.
“St. Paul, Founder of the Universal Subject,” 27–37 St. Paul among the
Philosophers. Tr. Thelma Sowley. Ed. John D. Caputo and Linda Martin
Alcoff. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
“Three Negations,” 1877–1883 Cardozo Law Review. Vol. 29:5 (2008).
“The Triumphant Restoration,” Tr. Alberto Toscano, 659–662 Positions:
east asia cultures critique, Vol. 13, Number 3, Winter 2005.
“Twenty-Four Notes on the use of the word ‘People’,” 21–31 What is a
People? Tr. Jody Gladding. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
“Universal Truths and the Question of Religion,” An Interview with
Adam S. Miller. Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, Vol. 3, Issue 1,
Fall 2005.
“We need a popular discipline”: Contemporary Politics and the Crisis of
the Negative.” Interview by Filippo del Lucchese and Jason Smith.
645–659 Critical Inquiry, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2008).
“Who is Nietzsche?” 1–11, Pli (2001).
“1977, une formidable regression intellectuelle.” Le Monde 1944–1994.
Le Monde, SARC (Nov. 1944).
Badiou, Alain and Critchley, Simon. “Ours is not a terrible situation,”
Philosophy Today, Fall 2007.
Contents
1 Introduction: Alain Badiou’s Affirmations 1
2 Art 31
1 The Artist as a “Vanishing Cause” 31
2 The Amorous Encounter of the Aesthetic 46
3 The Betrayal of Heteronomy 55
4 Artists as Great Affirmationists 69
3 Science 79
1 Is the Matheme Scientific? 79
2 Ancient Science and Psychotherapy 89
3 Sovereignty of the Concept100
4 Biology or the True Life110
4 Love123
1 Love and the Confrontation with Enemies123
2 A Solitary Event of Two136
3 Deadly Jealousy150
4 The Reinvention of Love?161
xi
xii Contents
5 Politics173
1 Enemies and Their “Destruction”173
2 The Communist Hypothesis186
3 The One and the Many of Politics199
4 Politics or the Truth of Independence212
6 Conclusion: A Future and Happy Immanence221
Bibliography229
Index243
Abbreviations
BE Being and Event. Tr. Oliver Feltham. London: Bloomsbury, 2005.

Br Briefings on Existence: A Short Treatise on Transitory Ontology. Tr. Ed. And
with an introduction by Norman Madarasz. Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2006.
BZ Badiou & Žižek: Philosophy in the Present. Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek.
Ed. Peter Engelmann. Tr. Peter Thomas and Alberto Toscano. Cambridge,
UK: Polity Press, 2009.
CPT Can Politics be Thought? Tr. Bruno Bosteels. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2018.
CH The Communist Hypothesis. Tr. David Macey and Steve Corcoran. London:
Verso, 2010.
C Conditions. Tr. Steven Corcoran. London: Continuum, 2008.
Co Controversies: A dialogue on politics and philosophy for our time. Alain
Badiou and Jean-Claude Milner. Moderated by Philippe Petit. Tr. Susan
Spitzer. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2014.
D Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. Tr. Louise Burchill. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2000.
E Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Tr. Peter Hallward. London:
Verso, 2012.
F For a Politics of the Common Good. Alain Badiou and Peter Engelmann.
Cambridge: Polity, 2019.
G Greece and the Re-Invention of Politics. Tr. David Broder. London:
Verso, 2018.
GP German Philosophy: A Dialogue, Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy. Ed. And
with an afterword by Jan Völker. Tr. Richard Lambert. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2018.
xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS
H Happiness. Tr. A. J. Bartless and Justin Clemens. London:

Bloomsbury, 2019.
HE Le Séminaire. Heidegger. L’être 3. Figure du retrait. Ed. Isabelle Vedoz.
Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2015.
HI Handbook of Inaesthetics. Tr. Alberto Toscano: Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2005.
IK I Know There are so Many of You. Tr. Susan Spitzer. Cambridge, UK:
Polity, 2019.
IPL In Praise of Love. Alain Badiou, with Nicolas Truong Tr. Peter Bush.
New York: The New Press, 2012.
IPM In Praise of Mathematics. Alain Badiou, with Gilles Haéri. Tr. Susan
Spitzer. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017.
IT Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy. Tr. and Ed. by Oliver
Feltham and Justin Clemens. London: Continuum, 2005.
L Lacan: Anti-philosophy 3. Tr. Kenneth Reinhard and Susan Spitzer.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
LW Logics of Worlds. Tr. Alberto Toscano. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.
M Malebranche. Theological Figure, Being 2. Tr. Jason E. Smith and Susan
Spitzer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
MP Manifesto for Philosophy. Tr. Ed. and with an Introduction by Norman
Madarazs. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
MeP Metapolitics. Tr. and with an Introduction by Jason Baker. London:
Verso, 2005.
NS Nietzsche Seminars, 1992–1993. I. Anti-Philosophy. Notes taken by Aimé
Thiault. Transcription by François Duvert. Tr. and Ed. Wanyoung Kim.
file:///C:/Users/owner/Downloads/nietzsches-antiphilosophy-alain-badiou.
pdf%20(1).pdf.
NN Number and Numbers. Tr. Robin McKay. Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press, 2008.
P Polemics. Tr, with an Introduction by Steve Corcoran. London: Verso, 2011.
PE Philosophy and the Event, with Fabien Tarby. Tr. Louise Burchill.
Cambridge, UK, 2013.
PP Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy. Tr. David Macey. London:
Verso, 2016.
SP Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Tr. Ray Brassier. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2003.
SMP Second Manifesto for Philosophy. Tr. Louise Burchill. Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press, 2011.
TC The Century. Tr. with a commentary and notes, by Alberto Toscano.
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007.
TE The End: A Conversation, Alain Badiou with Giovanbattista Tusa. Tr.
Robin Mackay. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2019.
ABBREVIATIONS xv
TL The True Life. Tr. Susan Spitzer. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2017.
TS Theory of the Subject. Tr. with an Introduction, by Bruno Bosteels. London:
Bloomsbury, 2009.
TW Theoretical Writings. Ed. And Tr. Ray Brassier and Alberto Toscano.
London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
WB Badiou, Alain and Cassin, Barbara. Heidegger: The Withdrawal of Being.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Alain Badiou’s Affirmations
It seems to me that the problem with philosophical

commitment is that it is often thought to be primarily
critical. Very often, one equates philosophy and critique.
So that philosophical commitment would ultimately
amount to saying what is evil, what is suffering, of
saying what’s not acceptable, or what is false. The task
of philosophy would be primarily negative: to entertain
doubt, the critical spirit, and so on and so forth. I think this
theme must be absolutely overturned. The essence of
philosophical intervention is really affirmation.
Philosophy in the Present
Looking back today at the last half-century of European philosophical

thought and choosing May ’68 as a pivotal date gives us the opportunity
to assess a number of the predominant sensibilities of an epoch and what
has been inherited, and self-imposed, in the present. Burdened with the
consequences of historical events, and uncertainties about the future,
much of the hope or simply the belief in the human had become doubtful.
“Anti-humanism” was taken for granted as a guiding principle, as were
other attitudes to modernity. Any previous confidence was abandoned
with resignation, indifference, or cynicism. Justifications were not lacking;
and yet when the focus, for example, directed itself towards one
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
G. Ghisalberti, Dilemmas of Truth in Alain Badiou’s Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18296-9_1
2 G. GHISALBERTI
obligation—“philosophy is obliged ruthlessly to criticize itself,”1 as

Theodor Adorno demanded from a prior generation—the disappointment
about history and the human became almost all consuming. Philosophy
has in part allowed itself to forego its historical responsibilities, submitting
to a thinking that could not always anticipate its effects, the ones that
today have become dominant, much too powerful, and overly influential.
All the force of “negative dialectics,” or critical theory more generally, has
had innumerable consequences, in and out of the university and for every-
day life. Today, one begins to simply wonder how the extent of the critical
and the negative can contribute to anything but its own perpetual conti-
nuity when it is so deeply divided from itself. Its conditions are chronic
and, to a large extent, self-imposed; how long they can be endured and
whether they can be altered remains to be seen.
Badiou begins classically, as a physician with a diagnosis—which is quite
different from critique. In Infinite Thought, and true to his Platonic fidel-
ity, he writes. “There is no doubt that philosophy is ill. As always, the
problem is knowing whether this illness is mortal or not, knowing what
the diagnosis is, and knowing whether the proposed remedy is not in fact,
as is often the case, exactly what will finish off the patient” (IT 39). The
situation could be summed up with the recollection of philosophy’s thera-
peutic origins. For Plato, illness and symptoms were relatively easy to diag-
nose; the allegory of the cave has left us with a powerful image, with one
word standing out: cure,2 and one ultimately much more important than
overcoming ignorance. Freedom and a certain kind of intelligence will be
interrelated. Remedies for the patient were (and are) not at all certain; our
contemporary situation is no cause for the belief, or the hope, in a rem-
edy—in both senses of the idea. Rethinking an escape from Plato’s alle-
gorical cave and serving ourselves through education should still be
possible; the return, however, is as perilous as ever. Badiou has remained
undaunted. Are there today alternatives significant enough to initiate a
new commitment to thinking and so revitalize the human, individually
and for the many? “Evidently the problem is one of knowing if, in the
world as it is, there the slightest chance for such an enterprise to flourish
or be heard, or if what is proposed here is yet another vain invocation” (IT
1
Adorno, Theodor W. Negative Dialectics. Tr. E.B. Ashton. New York: Continuum,
1973, 3.
2
Plato. Republic. Tr. G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company,
1974, 168.
1 INTRODUCTION: ALAIN BADIOU’S AFFIRMATIONS 3
39). The either/or opens the dilemmas of the four generic truths of Alain
Badiou’s philosophy. Are his dilemmas constitutive and indications of irre-
solvable problems within the human and so of thought as such? Can they
be overcome when, as we’ll see, they can be extreme and not be reluctant
to declare enemies, violence, and war—which is quite different than the
Greek idea of flourishing, the eudaimonia that also makes happiness
attainable?
In more than a half-century of writing, Badiou has devoted himself to
the effort of philosophy with a new belief—the fidelity in affirmation—
despite the virtually abandoned trust in its purpose: truth, for so long
undermined, relativized, or arrogantly dismissed, has been once again sup-
ported—first by a diagnosis and then by a series of proposals for remedies
that will require examination from several sides. “Truth is suffering from
two illnesses. In my opinion, it is suffering from linguistic relativism, that
is, its entanglement in the problematic of the disparity of meanings; and it
is also suffering from historical pessimism, including about itself” (IT 39).
One should note, reading Badiou closely in the above statement and the
rest of the way, how he thinks about human illness and suffering. The pos-
sibilities of an improvement, from out of a set of four generic truths (art,
science, love, politics), are intended to at least offer an alternative to the
realities of the day, for a different kind of thinking and being; they are, one
hopes, more than consolations or a palliative. Can the suffering be allevi-
ated by renewing the philosophical commitment to Badiou’s triad of
being, subject, and truth and, perhaps, create sufficient protection against
a virus that is much more insidious than a microbiological one?
Well into the 21st century we can begin to examine several of the most
prominent developments of post-humanistic thought as a whole and
reflect on how, and to what extent, their various forms and more specifi-
cally the relation of critical theory to politics have contributed to a set of
consequences that are becoming more and more intractable. The antago-
nistic reality of liberal democracies is intensifying. Badiou will often use
the extreme word “nihilism” (that idea so inseparable from Nietzsche’s
19th century cultural diagnosis) to define the conditions of the age. The
triplet of terror, betrayal, and disaster will be one of Badiou’s responses,
which he announces, of all places, in Ethics and with an unrestrained
polemic against the intentions of and for the “good.” To so malign taken-
for-granted ideas, as Badiou does (and as Nietzsche did before him) will
require particular attention and a pause; reactions, extreme or measured,
will have to be anticipated. “It is for me a relative surprise to discover
4 G. GHISALBERTI
myself a Nietzschean,”3 Badiou announces in one of his seminars; while

the purpose of the following study on four truths will not be a comparative
one, Nietzsche will be called upon on different occasions to trace how
deeply Badiou’s philosophy continues the revaluation of values. Did the
denigration of the subject make it easier to subjugate real-life individuals
to the imperatives of a politics believing itself to be ethical?
The problems of our age are no longer easily identifiable according to
standard models, as critical theory has traditionally done, and seen uniquely
by exposing the manipulations of the State, capitalism, classes, economics,
or ideological domination; the latter has been adopted from many dispa-
rate interests and it might be better to use a related term, propaganda,
since there are many different elements of persuasion today. They are
more forceful than the strategies of rhetoric; they are indifferent to the
finer points of eloquence. If we have long reached the position put for-
ward by Slavoj Žižek, and one inherited from Althusser, “that the idea of
the possible end of ideology is an ideological idea par excellence,”4 then a
shift in analysis might lead to a different outcome. Jacques Ellul’s observa-
tions on the nature of propaganda are more relevant today than they were
in 1962. Americans or Soviets are no longer the sole culprits. The State is
not the monolithic fault it used to be; there are new political actors today.
“Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants
to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of
individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and
incorporated in an organization.”5 There are many different “ruling
classes” now; they are indeed organized groups and with characteristics
that can be recognized for making entire populations susceptible and
exposed to the contagion of ideas—symptoms present in the 19th century
3
Badiou, Alain. Nietzsche Seminars, 1992–1993. I. Anti-Philosophy. Notes taken by Aimé
Thiault. Transcription by François Duvert. Tr. and Ed. Wanyoung Kim. file:///C:/Users/
owner/Downloads/nietzsches-antiphilosophy-alain-badiou.pdf%20(1).pdf. Although the
following study has not been carried out with the intention of a comparison or dialogue
between the two philosophers, Nietzsche will be referenced on a number of occasions in
order to emphasize the role of philosophy, today, and the obligations he assumes—which are
compatible with the whole of Nietzsche’s project. (Is it possible, also, to affirm that Badiou
is one of Nietzsche’s heirs and the one with the most fidelity to his thought?)
4
Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989, 2.
5
Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Man’s Attitudes. Tr. Konrad Kellen and
Jearn Lerner. New York: Vintage Books, 1965, 61.
study of crowds and not foreign to us in the present.6 Coercion is no lon-

ger limited to one recognizable social body. The traditional objects of
study of critical theory have been well known, to the point that reconfir-
mations are repetitive, the same as they have always been. All the critiques
have been on-going; to what effects, today, is an open question and one in
need of being addressed. Their relations have become so binding that one
can hardly envision another possibility. More specifically, “ideology-
critique,” as Richard Rorty remarked as a problem, “has, ex vi terminorum,
moral implications.”7 These moral implications have become so exacting
that thought, philosophy and what it can offer, has been deprived of its
most fundamental value. If Peter Sloterdijk is right and we have come to
“the complete exhaustion of ideology critique,”8 what are our possibilities
for the future and how does Badiou offer us choices and specifically four
truths for the subject of being to be able to move beyond the fatigue and
towards a philosophical reinvigoration of ourselves? He can do so by being
conscious of the specific organization of politics and how, in our situation,
it has begun to exhibit peculiar, if not totally unknown, characteristics—
prohibitive and authoritarian and defined, by some, with stronger lan-
guage. Totalitarianism within the neoliberal order may be hyperbole. For
now, 20th century history should have relieved us of any naivete. It is not
simply a matter of admitting to ourselves, as Benjamin Noys does when it
comes to well-known routines of thought, that “it seems that it is difficult
to break with the habit of polemic and antagonism.”9 Our “antagonisms”
have become much more serious and produced effects only now begin-
ning to be experienced. It will be up to Badiou’s four truths (along with
philosophy) to face up to the challenges of the times. Costas Douzinas
writes: “Critique takes its severe and austere stance from the protocols of
legal propriety and sobriety. But critique is not just a tribunal. It is also a
6
A recent translation has appeared in a collection of Scipio Sighele’s writings with the title
The Criminal Crowd and Other Writings. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by
Nicoletta Pireddu. Translated by Nicoletta Pireddu and Andrew Robbins. With a Foreword
by Tom Huhn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. Sighele deserved mention in
Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
7
Rorty, Richard. “Freud, Morality, Hermeneutics,” 177–185 New Literary History, Vol.
12, No. 1, Autumn 1980, 185.
8
Sloterdijk, Peter. “Cynicism—The Twilight of False Consciousness.” Tr. Michael Eldred
and Leslie A. Adelson, 190–206 New German Critique, No. 33, Autumn 1984, 190.
9
Noys, Benjamin. “Small Differences,” 141–143 New Formations, Vol. 8, 2014, 143. The
article is a review of François Laruelle’ Anti-Badiou.
6 G. GHISALBERTI
policing operation.”10 The conjunction of law, policing, and ethics makes

for an increasingly tightening situation and one where truth, despite all
contrary claims, has been surreptitiously defined according to one abso-
lute—the political and its alliance with a new ethicism that has ancient
characteristics: once power is a dominant force, the consequences can be
felt, viscerally. Antonio Negri writes of the need “to break the connection
between negation and politics in which the metaphysical pulse of western
politics continues to beat.”11 Without extending the metaphor unneces-
sarily, just far enough, it is crucial to identify, precisely, what the nature of
this “metaphysical pulse” actually is—in other words, what is the heart of
the matter? Will our expression of love be implicated? Is Negri right to call
it a Thanatopolitics, recalling Freud’s warnings about the death-drive and
its sadistic and destructive compulsions? The response to come, unavoid-
able as it is must be today and due to Badiou’s courage, will be tied to the
most prevalent sign of the times in liberal democracies: a powerful form of
thought that has subsumed everything into itself and as Badiou high-
lighted since the first of his philosophical writings. “It is obvious,” he
writes in Metapolitics, “that we are living through the unconditioned pri-
macy of opinions” (MeP 17). How these “opinions,” subsisting as new
sacrosanct truths, have been so successfully disseminated as a new 21st cen-
tury reality can be traced across several dynamic collaborations. None of
them, individually, are new; together they have become a force of unparal-
leled power and make up, psychologically, what Badiou called “the fero-
cious figure of the law” (TS 293) and its super-ego projections. One of
Freud’s inventions of the three-part psyche will not often be invoked. Its
formidable presence in the 1975–1979 Theory of the Subject has become
more relevant today.
When Badiou writes that “politics has been reduced, in general, to a
sort of cross between economy and management, with a fair dose of police
and control thrown in” (SMP 120), we should not be complacent about
who the police has become as a force, for its reliance also on advertise-
ments and media promotions. Its presence can be noted in history by the
number of the maimed and the dead it leaves behind; today, of course, the
social methods have become both more unconscious and more
10
Douzinas, Costas. “Ouliez Critique,” 47–69 Law and Critique, Vol. 16, Iss. 1, (Jan.
2005), 50.
11
Negri, Antonio. Politics and Negation: For an Affirmative Philosophy. Tr. Zakiya Hanafi.
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2019, 9.
sophisticated.12 The cadavers of liberal democracy are neither physical nor

graphic. Graham Harman has attempted to make one difference when he
writes that his philosophy of object-oriented ontology “avoids the left/
right polarization of political discourse since the French Revolution, focus-
ing instead on the difference between truth politics and power politics.”13
The difference remains as elusive as ever.
Within the consciously defined limits of the presentation here, concen-
trating only on the four generic procedures of truth of art, science, love,
and politics, and resisting the temptation to supplement the four with
others (namely, Badiou’s unique engagement with both St. Paul’s gospel14
and psychoanalysis) following his responses to our historical situation will
give us at least an initial pause. One affirmation can be made immediately.
From Ethics: “as for the subject, the Immortal, he cannot lack the truth,
12
Introducing the psychoanalysis of the super-ego would take us in a supplementary direc-
tion. It will have to be deferred and with only a brief mention of Badiou’s analysis of the
super-ego in Theory of the Subject. There will be occasion, here and there, to add a few com-
ments on one of the most astute ways to analyze the political conditions of the times. Karen
Horney describes the super-ego thus: “It is like a secret police department.” New Ways in
Psychoanalysis. Oxford: Routledge, 1939, 211. The definition is doubly revealing: it is not
just a “police department” (which, in society, is necessary, otherwise Thrasymachus will have
his way), it is “secret” and therefore has the characteristic of a private institution within the
totalitarian state established to ensure its defense. The pertinent question is: how have so
many of the political regimes of the 20th century (i.e., the German Democratic Republic)
exhibited the most totalitarian of super-ego tendencies when they were, as their foundation,
intended to be precisely the opposite? Is the psychopolitical constitutively perverted?
13
Harman, Graham. Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. London: A
Pelican Book, 2018, 15. But which is which? Because if we naively make the same distinc-
tions with different names, then we are still in the same place as before. Surely no one still
believes that the right has power and the left has the truth. No such symmetry has existed for
quite some time, not for anyone in the middle looking in both directions and noticing, with
some apprehension, similar psychological drives. In our current age of a viral pandemic, we
can also think about adversarial contagion as Freud warned us about in Group Psychology and
the Analysis of the Ego. In another work, Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political. London:
Pluto Press, 2013, Harman adds: “Truth Politics and Power Politics, both of them coming
in Left and Right forms,” 4. The Truth/Power and Left/Right relations are going to be
necessary categories through the examination of Badiou’s thought. In politics, this will be
one more dilemma to add to the rest. Harman’s “freelance dissident” seems to be preferable
than Badiou’s militant.
14
Which has its own set of far-ranging problems that are foundational for Badiou. One
note should be sufficient to alert us to the complications of the dilemmas inherent in his
thought. He is, to say the least, a most unusual atheist. “So we need to renounce God with-
out forfeiting any of the benefits he provides.” (IPM 77) An English proverb about a cake is
not out of place. You can’t eat it and still have it.
8 G. GHISALBERTI
since it is from the truth and the truth alone, given as faithful trajectory,
that he constitutes himself” (E 61). Subject, truth, immortality, self-
constitution. These are unique affirmations when one considers how sen-
sibilities have become more than common since the advent of structuralism
and its aftermath. Have we moved ahead sufficiently to see post-modernity
as a fable? Ideas have not become so certain, one hopes, that they cannot
return and re-examine their foundations, their intentions, and the out-
comes today. In this Introduction and in the remaining presentation,
Badiou’s declarations will have to be highlighted as a method for our
commentary.
Are the four generic procedures of truth sufficiently powerful to be an
alternative to our current situation; or are they, as Badiou presents them,
complicated by characteristics that make them structurally unsteady, too
burdened with opposing intents, and so counter-productive? He has iden-
tified the task at hand; the first of his many concepts can be introduced
here: the supplement. “For the process of truth to begin, something must
happen. What there already is—the situation of knowledge as such—gen-
erates nothing other than repetition. For a truth to affirm its newness,
there must be a supplement” (IT 46). Can we, at this historical point,
simply argue for a “supplement” to be added, over and above what has
been consistently argued as essential? Many of Badiou’s other leading con-
cepts will be analyzed for their efficacy, that is to say, for life and for our
existential benefit. His imperative has been clear. “To say that ontology is
not a situation is to signify that being cannot be signified with a structured
multiple, and that only an experience situated beyond all structure will
afford us an access to the veiling of being’s presence” (BE 28).
Philosophically, the announcement opens one of the many from Being
and Event. The supplement and the multiple will have to be sustained by
an elaborate edifice, its many parts joined to sustain the whole. The obli-
gation ahead will be to outline its most sturdy aspects, of Badiou’s truth
and its other supporting concepts.
In the July 1981 seminar, he said: “philosophy today is deserted … the
inevitable result of the lack of ambitious thoughts is a mediocre politics
and a devalued ethics” (TS xxxviii). Four decades later, we seem to be in a
far worse situation than mediocrity and devaluation. Ethics has bound
politics to itself, making political thinking, thought as such, servile. Politics
has been, if not annulled by ethics, subjugated. Badiou’s confrontation
with the ethics of our times stands out considerably. Can philosophy inter-
vene with enough influence to overcome the strange conjunction of a
perfectly acceptable anti-humanism and an ethical drive supporting many

political symptoms, all of them identified by Badiou and exposed for their
effects? Are any future possibilities going to be sufficient to address the
many obstacles of our present—the ones internal to the very efforts to
further the ideals of emancipation and justice and, with them, the four
procedures of truth Badiou has uniquely identified as art, science, love,
and politics?
The responses ahead will attempt to deal with these and other issues.
One concern will be pre-eminent. Badiou has adopted both a certain atti-
tude, polemical, strident, and unapologetic (for one, for his tenacious sup-
port of Mao and the “Cultural Revolution”) while at the same time
distinguishing himself from virtually all his contemporaries by arguing for
the primacy of four truths. A reader will have to determine whether the
continuing support of an episode in Chinese history can be maintained at
the same time as truth; or whether this is but one of Badiou’s many alle-
giances that even a sympathetic reader will find limiting. Philosophically,
the four procedures of truth, for all their immense merit, will nevertheless
be self-divided and along different lines. The problem is not anything like
consistency; nor are formal considerations the issue. Rather, and despite
my fidelity to Badiou’s philosophy, each of the four procedures of truth suf-
fer from a number of dilemmas. Presenting them, from one side and the
other, will be part of the work to come. Despite his commitment to the
possibility of living what the Greeks understood to be essential to the
good life and Badiou supplements with “the true life,” which is more than
ethically “good” (and certainly more than fulfilling today’s human animal
satisfactions, which capital and productive society is more than happy to
provide with goods), the presentation of the truth of art, science, love, and
politics will be the focus of my attention and as the universal affirmations
Badiou believes them to be.
One more brief reference to Socrates/Plato can be one fitting aspect to
this Introduction. Badiou has maintained his devotion to Platonic thought,
as he presents it, without so much as a hesitation. He is an avowed
Platonist, and for reasons to be revealed at appropriate moments, as when
Diotima speaks about love, procreation, and immortality in the Symposium,
10 G. GHISALBERTI
or when psychagogia15 or the “leading of the soul” (psyche) is recognized to

be at the origin of the philosophical endeavor to achieve the human. We
are here at one of the dilemmas that will be constant. On the one hand,
the individual taking care of his or her own soul and, on the other, the
obligation one has to the polis. The philosopher/poet, without monarchi-
cal ambitions, without any desire to be a king and a philosopher, finds an
immediate conflict. A thinker with Badiou’s political motivations is in the
same situation, in relation to the Laws, as was Socrates after his trial and
waiting for his execution to take place. In the Crito, the voice of the Law
speaks, but in this case in the form of an interrogation. The rhetoric is not
disguised.
Can you deny that by this act which you are contemplating,
you intend, so far as you have the power, to destroy us, the
Laws and the whole State as well. Do you imagine that a city
can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal
judgements which are pronounced in it have no force but are
nullified and destroyed by private persons?16
Private persons: the individual, the one who can be (in his daily exis-
tence) an effrontery to what is deemed to be the real. By thinking about
the Laws in their context after Socrates’ trial, Badiou makes the political
and the judicial essential to each other. The laws in Athens, however, are
exposed in the case of Socrates insofar as he is an individual philosophically
motivated by the idea of paideia or education, the edification of others,
and with nothing else but the discipline called philosophy, the ancient
“love of wisdom” that Badiou adopts as his own and with the added obli-
gation to recognize how, late in the 20th century and beyond, it had been
historically conditioned by the human acts of art, science, love, and poli-
tics. These truths, for Badiou, correspond to his conception of the ancient
cycle of learning, his encyclopedia. Socrates had no need to answer the
15
In Plato’s Phaedrus (Tr. with an Introduction and Notes by Robin Waterfield. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002) we have the relationship of the human to the therapeutic
function of speech, as Socrates understands it in his conversation, and his definition of the
“skilful leading of the soul by means of words” (48), which he distinguishes from the sophis-
tic art of eloquence and persuasion of rhetoric. Language is not one of my explicit themes;
nevertheless, it is assumed.
16
Plato. Crito, in The Last Days of Socrates. Tr. Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant.
London: Penguin Books, 1993, 86.
Laws. He had made up his mind before the trial. The defense began with
truth, as Plato expressed it. “The truth being simply that in all that I say I
am guided by what is right and that my actions are in the interest of those
who are sitting in judgment of me. So presumably I shall have no alterna-
tive but to submit to my fate, whatever it may be.”17 We are familiar with
his “fate.” It is not tragic, fated by imperious gods. Socrates made a deci-
sion, for himself and for anyone who will show fidelity to him—one or
more disciples, like Plato who testifies on his behalf and moderns who
support its truth. Leo Strauss, for one, believes “the law of the city may be
foolish and hence harmful or bad. Therefore the justice that consists in
giving everyone what is due to him [as the laws believe they have fulfilled
dutifully] may be bad. If justice is to remain good, we must conceive of it
as essentially independent of law.”18
Badiou’s polemical announcements have not always been well received,
as can be expected from someone who has been atopos19 like Socrates, out
of place and as a disrupting force for anyone who could find themselves
too settled, in the city or, allegorically, in the cave of proliferating images
and today promoted by techno-narcissistic companies specializing in social
media. Many of Badiou’s previous associations were severed; others solidi-
fied as the situations presented themselves. He has forced himself out of
place,20 from one he occupied—and still does, in his own way—with tenac-
ity. “L’intellectuele du gauche va disparâitre, tant mieux.”21 Badiou has no
reluctance at all to direct his ire at anyone he considers to be enemies,
whatever their affiliations. Either way, his idea of the event goes beyond
any “dislocation” and the critical apparatus deployed in its acts. “Every
event is an infinite proposition, in the radical form of a singularity and a
17
Plato. Gorgias. Tr. with an Introduction by Walter Hamilton. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1960, 140.
18
Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1953, 146. Getting past right/left distinctions would go a long way in establishing the
beginning of a dialogue between Strauss and Badiou.
19
One memorable description of Socrates as atopos (strange and out of place) comes to us
via one of his mathetes, student and disciple and, parenthetically, someone with a name not
to be taken for granted. Apollodorus, a gift of Apollo, the god of medicine, for one, tells his
listeners that there has never been anyone like Socrates. His interventions, in a conversation
with certain business leaders, appear in the “Introductory Dialogue” to Plato’s Symposium.
20
The reference is to the neologism esplace from Theory of the Subject.
21
Badiou, Alain. “L’intellectuele du gauche va disparâitre, tant mieux.” Le Monde. July 7,
2007. https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2007/07/14/l-intellectuel-de-gauche-va-
disparaitre-tant-mieux_935544_3224.html.
12 G. GHISALBERTI
supplement. Everybody experiences, not without anxiety, that the current

dislocations propose nothing to us.”22 Far worse than the dislocations pro-
posing nothing, critical theory and a new kind of ethicism have, for him,
become complicit with the state, capital, propaganda, and bureaucracies,
each of them continuing to exploit the temptation to be authoritative in
the cause of the good. How does Badiou’s work set itself to be an alterna-
tive of the thought of an epoch he has often characterized and definitively
so in The Century? One conclusion and with the inevitability of antago-
nism: “the passion of the century,” he writes, “is nothing other than war”
(TC 38). Can the 20th century be overcome in more than in the succession
of time? Or are enemies and war (of words and in the formation of reality)
omnipresent in the antagonisms of political thought in liberal democracies?
His manifestos, aptly named, were emphatic; their urgency, for an
epoch approaching the end of the last century, responded to many differ-
ent necessities of being a witness and providing a testimony. “The funda-
mental problem in the philosophical field today is to found something like
a new logic.”23 The necessity of a new logic follows from an earlier diffi-
culty. Thought as such (and within the university, an institution that will
have to begin to bear a certain responsibility for its culture and its influ-
ence on everyday life24) has been almost exclusively driven by critique and
negation. Ideology-critique has been an orthodox requirement; these are
now departmental initiatives, with individuals being subjected to a press-
ing imperative. The effects are now impossible to ignore. Badiou recog-
nized them as a problem; this was no philosophical exercise. It has
permeated the conditions of life. The manipulations of existence had to be
re-thought. “In order to clarify the political situation, we also need to
search for a new foundation of the problem of negation and critique.”25
Badiou’s proposal, succinctly stated and to be often repeated, involves a
22
Badiou, Alain. “Of an Obscure Disaster: On the End of the Truth of the State,” in Can
Politics be Thought? Tr. Bruno Bosteels. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018, 114.
23
Badiou, Alain. “From Logic to Anthropology: Affirmative Dialectics,” in Badiou and the
Political Condition. Ed. Marios Constantinou. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2014, 45.
24
Badiou only very rarely mentions the university. When he does, the words are restrained,
measured, but not complimentary. In agreement with Lacan, he strictly separates the aca-
demic from the psychoanalyst (and the conscious analysand), a second difference that has yet
to be investigated.
25
Badiou, Alain. “‘We need a popular discipline’: Contemporary Politics and the Crisis of
the Negative.” Interview by Filippo del Lucchese and Jason Smith. 645–659 in Critical
Inquiry, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2008), 652.
new existential commitment to affirmation as one logic of his philosophy.

In a conversation with Slavoj Žižek, the testimony had become definitive.
“It seems to me that the problem with philosophical commitment is that
it is often thought to be primarily critical … the essence of philosophical
intervention if really affirmation” (PP 81). The imperative, before it could
be enacted, for life (the true life for Badiou) had to clearly analyze the
symptoms of the age. On the occasion of the English translation of Being
and Event, Simon Critchley defined Badiou’s thought as a “constructive
philosophy,” in part because it was impossible to ignore “a sense of frus-
tration and fatigue with a whole range of theoretical paradigms.”26 Badiou
began to offer us something more than critique. Is the affirmation of four
truths enough? And does the role of philosophy, because it is conditioned,
become something different than in the past? “Philosophy does not gen-
erate any truths,” he writes in Being and Event, “however painful the
admission may be. At best, philosophy is conditioned by the faithful pro-
cedures of its times. Philosophy can aid the procedure which conditions it,
precisely because it depends on it” (BE 359). The first of our many dilem-
mas can be stated, not to immediately defend the autonomy of philosophy,
but to respond to its function as an “aid,” analytically, to be more than a
condition since its work can also alter the conditions of truth. Philosophy
will come to the support of truth and, due to the social uses of science, art,
love, and politics and how they are each effected by different principles.
Philosophy will, at the outset, attempt to be both affirmative as a discipline
of thought and sustain the relevance of truth. In the following set of
responses, the first will be to return philosophy to its responsibility.
Everything that was supposed to be coming to an end had no impact
on Badiou—to the possibility of philosophy, or to him personally as some-
one who remained independent of currents and cultural influences on
ends, whether open or closed. He simply did not believe in any such event,
one or many. “It is simply a matter of saying I don’t believe in the dis-
course of the end, the end of philosophy and so on. Because I prefer affir-
mation to negation. I prefer to talk of trying to make a step rather than
always saying philosophy is bad, or impossible, and as such paralysing phi-
losophy” (IT 143). Badiou singles himself out with this programmatic
incipit. While an entire tradition headed with ever-greater drive towards
negation, Badiou adopted the stance of an independent thinker by
26
Badiou, Alain and Critchley, Simon. “Ours is not a terrible situation,” Philosophy Today,
Fall 2007, 358. The optimism of 2007 has perhaps changed since then.
14 G. GHISALBERTI
doubting the drive of a cultural movement; its confidence seemed to him

to be too pronounced, too self-assured, most especially when it made all
kinds of admissions as to the extreme hesitations of its work. He was not
alone. Others did not for a moment get caught up in certain sensibilities.
“The death of metaphysics or the overcoming of philosophy has never
been a problem for us: it is just tiresome, idle chatter.”27
Responding to the haste towards ends—that is, of humanism, the sub-
ject, the author, not to mention the one that started all the others, the
death of God—Badiou was not influenced by the fervor of the times, with
its various posts-, in one way or another making announcements about a
before and after, as if the expression of an apocalyptic anticipation could
confirm its truth. “In my view,” Badiou writes, “the century that is com-
ing to a close was characterized by the fact that it did not introduce, on a
massive scale, any new schema. Though it is considered to be the century
of endings, of breaks, and catastrophes … I see it instead as a century that
was simultaneously conservative and eclectic” (HI 5). For all the dazzling
thought in recent memory, with such a range of prominent thinkers—
which included, to name but only the three disciplines of archaeology,
deconstruction, and il pensiero debole28—their present relevance is no lon-
ger as assured as it once was. The neglect of the spirit was noticeable, most
especially because of one philosophical foundation and a phenomenologi-
cal statement Badiou too will inherit, for its origin in a crisis and for one
answer: Edmund Husserl wrote that “the spirit alone is immortal.”29
27
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. What is Philosophy? Tr. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham
Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, 9. On Badiou’s relationship to
Deleuze’s philosophy, and to him personally, see Deleuze: The Clamor of Being.
28
Associated with the Italian philosophers Gianni Vattimo and Pier Aldo Rovatti. See, for
example, their co-edited collection Weak Thought. Tr. Peter Carravetta. Albany: SUNY Press,
2012. I do not much like the idea of debolezza since, to me, it has always implied illness and
debility and, as above, frailty. Admittedly, once Vattimo approaches his term through
Heidegger’s verwindung (which, as he tells us, has the sense of “eine Krankheit verwinden,”
someone ill and recuperating, “getting over” an illness) its sense becomes sufficiently intri-
cate and, perhaps too, paradoxical. In “Verwindung”: Nihilism and Postmodern Philosophy.
SubStance, Vol. 16, No. 2, Issue 55: Contemporary Italian Thought (1986) pp. 7–17.
Vattimo writes: “This possibility of an event that is outside or beyond metaphysics is tied to
its Verwindung.” At this point, then, we can continue with the idea of Badiou’s event as a
remedy and a recuperation—and leaving the latter hermeneutically open in terms of the
double meaning of recovery.
29
Husserl, Edmund. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Tr. with notes and an
introduction by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965, 192.
Structures and their debility were easier to focus on, as was the annulment
of the subject; which makes Heidegger’s ideas have their own place for us
as it concerns Badiou’s thinking and his responses to this one unavoidable
precursor. “Heidegger is the last universally recognized philosopher” (BE
1), he writes, understandably, at the beginning of Being and Event. In one
sense, Badiou disqualifies the statement; because of him, there will not be
any last, only successors and the will to persevere, to further a project. One
opening response from the philosopher of the 20th century, then, on the
spirit: “The inquiry into the essent as such and as a whole, the asking of
the question of being, is one of the essential and fundamental conditions
for the awakening of the spirit.”30 The word, spirit, as a principle for
Badiou, will have to be kept in mind even if he only alludes to the word
with circumspection and, understandably so, from a committed material-
ist; and yet, he will in no way reduce his thought to what he calls the nar-
row reality of language and bodies. There are going to be infinite truths
for the immortal subject.
Affirmation as an alternative to the negative, and the effects of critical
theory has had on more than one generation, will be continuous in what
follows. One definitive statement deserves to be placed here at the begin-
ning. The examples of the same declaration have been many; they have
been presented, with quite a few repetitions, to emphasize this one point
and to ground Badiou’s thought in a different sensibility. “I feel philoso-
phy to be commanded by a duty of affirmation.”31 Duty. Other classical
virtues (like courage, discipline, and even heroism) will be added in order
to accept the commitment to thought and to what philosophy can still
contribute to the condition of being human. His decisions have been
unwavering. One other position from the many of post ’68 can be cited,
to make Badiou’s decision relational.
Once Michel Foucault had reached the end of his archaeology of the
human sciences of words and things, he announced (so dispassionately,
and yet so poetically) “then one can certainly wager that man would be
30
Heidegger, Martin. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Tr. Ralph Manheim. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1959, 50, my emphasis. Heidegger’s formulation (with the Ereignis
and his own Event in the background) is well poised to be relatable to Badiou’s philosophy.
Their dialogue may well be more important than the ones already included in the tradition.
31
Badiou, Alain. “Live Badiou.” Interview conducted by Oliver Feltham in December
2002 as an appendix to his Alain Badiou: Live Theory. London: Continuum, 2008, 136.
16 G. GHISALBERTI
erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.”32 How fitting that
Foucault announced the end in the form of a wager, which makes it appear
like an either/or proposition that might be more interconnected than he
would like and symmetrical in its effects—Pascal and Foucault both with
stakes in the future, one on the being of the God/human relation, the
other on the disappearance of “man.” In Logics of Worlds, Badiou responds
to Foucault twice. “Ultimately life is the wager, made on the body that has
entered into appearing, that one will faithfully entrust this body with a
new temporality” (LW 442). The “new temporality” will be nothing short
of the infinite and, also, capable of being more than an effect of bio-power.
The subject of being will in no way submit to being denigrated to the level
of a biological entity, or an even more manipulated because vulnerable
animality and its needs multiplied by advertising and promotion, of objects
and identities. How does the spirit deal with the effects of bio-power? The
ancient pneuma, as breath and spirt, does not give way to modern bios and
the reduction of life to human animality in either nature or history.
Heidegger reminds us that “even nature and history, and both interpene-
trating in their underlying and transcending of one another, do not exhaust
the world.”33 Any attempt to transcend both nature and history, however,
is going to be perilous. Badiou has no metaphysical delusions on the mat-
ter. There is language and there are bodies—originally stated as les mots et
les choses; but there is (more than both, Badiou declares) truth, a concept
Foucault himself would give more attention to than the previous archaeol-
ogy of the archive and its discourses once he set himself towards the proj-
ect of a history of sexuality. A point of agreement can be mentioned, in
lieu of a dialogue. Foucault writes: “For the least glimmer of truth is con-
ditioned by politics. Hence one cannot hope to attain the desired results
simply,” he adds, “from a theoretical discourse, however rigorously
pursued.”34 Theory is not enough. But is it possible that “the least glim-
mer of truth” is not conditioned by politics? Has that been one grievous
problem all along?
32
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York:
Vintage Books, 1973, 387.
33
Heidegger, Martin. “The Age of the World Picture,” in The Question Concerning
Technology and Other Essays. And with an Introduction by William Lovitt. New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1977, 129.
34
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Vol. 1, An Introduction. Tr. Robert Hurley.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1978, 5.
Philosophy, for Badiou, “exists in a movement that is always a wager, a

risky engagement. In this engagement of thought, the part of chance
remains indelible” (H 42). The wager is on thought and life, for the being
whose essence cannot be circumscribed by the hard materiality of terres-
trial existence or the order of world-makers. Badiou could extend himself
to the thought of Pascal and others who, traditionally, have been placed in
a limited category—of theology. Reducing thought to the assumptions
about a discipline are going to be limited and incomplete. He adds: “Since
it is of the very essence of the event to be multiple whose belonging to the
situation is undecidable, deciding that it belongs to the situation is a
wager” (BE 211). The individual has to make the bet; making the bet
ensures there will be no loss since the act itself is simply the belief in free-
dom. Nothing will be squandered during this pivotal situation because the
wager corresponds to an act of freedom, of commitment, of an irreducible
decision that marks (as it always has, with all its complications) the act of
subjectivation. The individual will be supported from here on in and as
inseparable from the supplement and the multiple and, finally, in the per-
ception of the event and its possibilities. No thought can be sustained for
its contribution unless the individual is once again made to be a subject of
being and truth. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche provides us with one
enduring idea of the individual—as an autonomous and creative interpreter.
The individual is something quite new which creates new

things, something absolute: all his acts are entirely his own.
Ultimately, the individual derives his values of his acts from
himself; because he has to interpret in a quite individual way
even the words he has inherited. His interpretation of a formula
at last is personal, even if he does not create a formula: as an
interpreter he is still creative.35
Badiou has been methodical; over a life-time of work, he has given us

sufficient truths to consider and evaluate—for a different good, a different
truth. Despite all the currents of thought in the last half-century, Badiou
has not failed in his obligations as a philosopher. A few reminders are in
order, personally, and so to acknowledge the beginning of the responses
to come. Autobiographical moments are not going to be avoided; the
35
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Tr. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale.
New York: Vintage Books, 1968, 403.
18 G. GHISALBERTI
individual cannot be overlooked when he speaks in his own name, as a

witness, for the sake of testimony. One disclosure out of a few others can
be the first. Calling upon his own “living experience” and one reminiscent
of Nietzsche’s own autobiographical sense, Badiou has said. “I first expe-
rienced the point in my life and only after had to create the concepts to
justify and clarify this point.”36 To take Badiou at his word, for the sake of
fidelity, means a reader will have to follow him personally, as far as conceiv-
able, as far as possible and until such time as the dominance of politics
leads to some doubt.
“I published my first Manifesto for Philosophy in 1989. It wasn’t a happy
time, believe me!” (SMP 3). Badiou was not happy, a statement that, as we
will see, is more important than it first looks. Alienation, to recall an old
concept, was one of his experiences; it was soon replaced by sober-minded
analysis. “Only the most elementary form of moralizing preaching quali-
fies any longer as ‘philosophy’… It is a matter today, in sum, of de-
moralizing philosophy” (SMP 68-69). The word “preaching” is no mere
rhetoric. Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals provided a foundation for
Badiou’s thought and its considerable reach. The transmission was direct;
in many cases, it would be arresting. To carry the thought forward was not
an easy matter, because as soon Nietzsche is consulted, the message for
some readers is not an easy one, not when difficult references are made.
His cultural critique has become current to the point of normality; there
are, however, moments without restraint, such as when he writes, so filled
with self-possession and an extreme independence, on a process, “down to
that which the socialist dolts and blockheads today see as their ‘man of the
future’—as their ideal!—this degeneration and diminution of man to the
perfect herd animal (or, as they say, to the man of the ‘free society’), this
animalization of man to the pygmy animal of equal rights.”37 Needless to
say, such statements will be experienced with great discomfort by many.
Our post-secular culture is, for the most part, supportive of his denuncia-
tion of religious sensibilities and metaphysics; our attitude to his repudia-
tion of “equal rights” is much more unsettling. Revulsion would not be an
exaggeration for those who, today, have committed themselves to the
inherent difficulties of achieving justice, equality, and rights; and yet
36
Badiou, Alain and Critchley, Simon. “Ours is not a terrible situation.” Philosophy Today,
Fall 2007, 362.
37
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Tr.
R.J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, 109.
Badiou has gone some way to pursuing this line of Nietzschean inquiry
and not have the slightest hesitation about modern ideals. His dialogue is
confrontational and iconoclastic. Can his revival of a philosophical ethos
compete with the moral self-understanding of the present?
In the “Author’s Preface” to Being and Event, Badiou recollects the
time of the original publication and writes: “we were at the end of the
eighties, in full intellectual regression. What was fashionable was moral
philosophy disguised as political philosophy. Anywhere you turned some-
one was defending human rights, respect for the other” (BE xiv).
Immediately polemical and without any apprehension as to any expected
reactions, Badiou marks a time. Its momentum has increased and intensi-
fied. More than thirty years have passed. The contemporary world, in lib-
eral democracies, has continued to “regress” right down to the
present—with no sense of a suspension of the current drive towards a
secure moral exactitude and its implementation. All visible forces are
united in a common goal, for the “other,” for “rights,” and for the memo-
rial of the victim whose mourning is perpetual. Badiou began some of his
works from out of anger and frustration; the shift to a deliberate affirma-
tion would require a new disposition and a philosophical decision. Peter
Hallward makes a point. “No philosopher is more urgently needed, in this
particular moment, than Badiou.”38 Tracing his development serves to
emphasize his unique place in thought today, for the vigor of his argu-
ments no less for the challenges he poses for his readers, those in the
Humanities in general. The left and the right are both addressed; and a
certain interpretation of morality enjoys no privilege with him. But can his
offensive dialogue (as both a confrontation and in its consequence) be
maintained at the same time as he posits universal truths?
At the beginning of a work and in the “Preface to the English edition”
of Ethics (one should note, parenthetically, the autobiographical impor-
tance of all his prefaces and introductions) he tells us about his personal
situation.
On the one hand, I was driven by genuine fury. The world was deeply
plunged in “ethical” delirium. Everyone was busily confusing politics
with the hypocrisy of mindless catechism. The intellectual counter-
revolution, in the form of moral terrorism, was imposing the infamies
38
Hallward, Peter. Badiou: A Subject to Truth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2003, xxxvi.
20 G. GHISALBERTI
of Western capitalism as the new universal model. The presumed

“rights of man” were serving at every point to annihilate any attempt
to invent forms of free thought. (E liii)
What Badiou analyzes is the bind between the moral and political and
where disparate groups within liberal democracies have made both the
church and the state seemingly, from all superficial appearances, irrelevant.
Their structures have been internalized to fashion the power of a new and
growing elaboration of the social world for the 21st century and a beyond.
Badiou’s courage—or, to some, recklessness—in exposing the meaning
of our cultural ideals culminates in a diagnosis first made, again, by
Nietzsche, on the effects of nihilism. Badiou writes: “The mainspring of
the effervescent practices of human rights and humanitarian interventions
is a political nihilism” (MeP 118). Nihilism: Nietzsche prepared his read-
ers for its advent, with many different kinds of symptoms, political and
otherwise. One entry should strike us with poignancy. It was written for
us. “What I relate,” Nietzsche writes, “is the history of the next two cen-
turies. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently—
the advent of nihilism” (WP 3). “The next two centuries.” Our present.
The crucial task ahead would then be to outline all the characteristic of our
nihilism and how (and where) it is most being enacted, by whom, for what
purpose, and to what end. One could make a veritable list of all of Badiou’s
interventions; they are exhaustive, and yet the political holds him to one
guiding principle. He has never lost faith in politics, or in the ideals of his
version of community. Some readers will (perhaps, too, for moral reasons)
find this to be a first and long-lasting objection. The privilege of the politi-
cal, and its revolutionary ambitions, is not immediately acceptable; we are,
today, much less idealistic, or naïve, about the events of a revolution and
how they would end up. Badiou’s convictions should not be, for us, self-
evident. This one affirmation, among others to follow, is the basis for one
disagreement. “The infinite comes into play in every truth procedure, but
only in politics does it take first place. This is because only in politics is
deliberation of the possible (and hence about the infinity of the situation)
constitutive of the process itself” (MeP 143). The infinite in politics? One
of Badiou’s primary objectives will be to once again place politics at the
forefront of our considerations and, at the same time, being independent
from ethics. The two, politics and social morality, will be wrenched apart.
Whether the operation is successful will be one outstanding question.
Isolating three of Badiou’s prime obstacles (he does not hesitate to use
the word enemies, which will concern us in many different places) can be
provisionally named critical theory, morality, and nihilism. In Ethics proper,
the devotion to the work ahead was made clear: one more engagement
with the problem of nihilism is not superfluous. “To begin with, I will
examine the precise nature of this phenomenon, which is the major ‘philo-
sophical’ tendency of the day, as much in public opinion as for our official
institutions. I will try to establish that in reality it amounts to a genuine
nihilism, a threatening denial of thought as such” (E 3). The critical intent
will be, for us, minimized and replaced, in points and when possible, with
an analytic one as the first step towards the affirmative. Prior to embarking
on the responses to Alain Badiou and the attempt to make certain deci-
sions once again relevant for our contemporary situation, consulting other
prominent thinkers on the nature of the reality at hand shows an unavoid-
able commonality. Despite all the conscious assertions of their importance,
as relevant thinkers for our situation, a curious myopia has accompanied
theoria. One aspect of philosophy has been suppressed: argument, debate,
or that now almost archaic word (dialogue) has been effectively under-
mined by the absolute assertion of a moral worldview. Morality and ethi-
cism are the ur-categories of the times; the power of the ethical has been
effective and disarming. Philosophers have not been reluctant to state
their cases. Their analysis has revolved around several interrelated points.
But have they, more than cognitively, been noticed? Because when we
examine many of the most eloquent and influential thinkers of our age,
the drive of the present has not been even slightly altered despite their
repeated warnings: the three symptoms of the times, with equal if different
power than capital and the state, has resulted in a forceful relation—critical
theory, morality, and nihilism are not, according to our most well-known
thinkers, inimical to each other. “There are signs of significant theoretical,
moral, and political disaffection with some aspects of liberalism.”39 It is all
the more necessary to make an emphatic first statement on the matter and
follow it up with selected others. The arguments, as a whole, should be
sufficiently robust for all of us to take notice and in what way being com-
plicit may have eluded our perception.
Giorgio Agamben calls one symptom an aporia. “Modern democracy’s
decadence and gradual convergence with totalitarian states in
39
Geuss, Raymond. “Liberalism and its Discontents,” 320–338 Political Theory, Vol. 30.
No. 3 (Jun. 2002), 320.
22 G. GHISALBERTI
post-democratic spectacular societies … may well be rooted in the aporia,

which marks the beginning of modern democracy and forces it into com-
plicity with its most implacable enemy.”40 The complicity between ene-
mies (a word Badiou will not hesitate to use, and stridently so when it
comes to the truth of love and politics) is no longer such an aporia.
Normalization has made it well protected. Sloterdijk writes:
Only a civilization in which the right to have rights has become

an internalized disposition and an institution sustained by state
agencies could the spiral of continually expanded juridification
begin to develop … This expansion of the space in which rights
are claimed admittedly casts an increasingly problematic shadow.
A national and supranational regulatory law-monster that is
virtually unparalleled in history has been created by the reciprocal
interaction of the limitless propagation of rights with gargantuan
statist system of self-reinforcement.41
Byung Chul-Han asks: “What kind of politics—what kind of democ-

racy—is still conceivable today, given that civil society is vanishing, given
the mounting egoization and narcissification of human existence?”42
Decadence, expanded juridification, narcissification, along with Badiou’s
all-encompassing nihilism: all of them have resulted in the most sophisti-
cated critiques imaginable. The analysis is clear: a comprehensive ortho-
behaviorism has been applied; methods and consequences have been
exposed. A more complete list would involve a catalogue of thinkers who
have been concerned about the nature of ideologies. Augusto del Noce
calls the current process a sliding “toward a new totalitarianism.”43 Adding
one more observation among many others he has made, René Girard (true
to his Freudian engagements) refers to pathologies. “In many cases, cari-
catures are taking root, pathological explanations and hijackings of the
victimary obsessions. It’s now no longer possible to persecute except in the
40
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Tr. Daniel Heller-
Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, 10.
41
Sloterdijk, Peter. What Happened in the 20th Century? Tr. Chris Turner. Cambridge, UK:
Polity, 2018, 9.
42
Han, Byung-Chul. In the Swarm: Digital Prospects. Tr. Erik Butler. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017, 65.
43
Del Noce, Augusto. The Crisis of Modernity. Ed. And Trans. by Carlo Lancellotti.
Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014.
name of victims.”44 Including this one phenomenon, on the most service-

able of political instruments, only adds to the complications of the times.
The analysis of the function of the victim has been presented. But who has
taken notice, analytically instead of merely with cognitive awareness, this
statement and many others by Slavoj Žižek?
The crucial point is thus to recognize clearly in the ideology of

global victimization, in this identification of the (human) subject
itself as “something that can be hurt,” the mode of ideology that
fits today’s global capitalism. This ideology of victimization is
the very mode in which—most of the time invisible to the public
eye, and for that reason all the more ineluctable—the Real of
Capital exerts its rule.45
These are harsh judgments; their impact is hard to minimize. How does
this assessment, by some of our leading thinkers, force us (instead of sim-
ply relying on rejection or disavowal) to consider their positions? For the
victim to have served instrumental use leaves us with some apprehension
as to what can still be used and abused. For Žižek, the managers of the
state and their corporate partners are more than eager to go along with
any new proposal made by this and that ethical group, as long as it does
not interfere with the only objective that counts: the circulation of capital
outlined in Marx’s Grundrisse and the perpetuation of the human animal
as a fragile and helpless organism that requires constant care. Once solici-
tude became the concern of high-minded bureaucrats (we are, today, well
beyond elementary “the care of the self,” and in the classical forms out-
lined by Foucault) the human was quickly eventually defined according to
either their use value or its ontological debility—indeed, both together.
One is cared for in order to produce and consume more efficiently. The
solicitude today is all pervasive. The human has never been more fragile,
nor more infantilized. The more care it receives, the more function and
use-value it will have as the go-between of production and consumption.
On the question of the self and of truth, Foucault observes that the classi-
cal idea of “(the care of the self) designates precisely the set of conditions
of spirituality, the set of transformations of the self, that are the necessary
44
Girard, René. When These Things Begin. Conversations with Michel Treguer. Tr. Trevor
Cribben Merrill. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014, 37.
45
Žižek, Slavoj. The Fragile Absolute; or, Why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for?”
London: Verso, 2000, 60.
24 G. GHISALBERTI
conditions for having access to the truth.”46 One could add that, today,
the possession of certain truths, inviolable as they are, forego the difficult
obligation of “the transformation of the self” as long as one makes the
loudest pronouncements about this or that moral imperative to be
addressed—usually, with grievance and rage and self-justification.
The perceptions of a pressing reality have been confirmed many times
over; whether they have been heeded is another matter. There seems to be
no willingness to consider an additional situation to the well-known one.
Jean Baudrillard writes: “Capital, which is immoral and unscrupulous, can
only function behind a moral superstructure, and whoever generates this
public morality (by indignation, denunciation, etc.) spontaneously fur-
thers the order of capital.”47 Have capital and “public morality” today
become inseparable allies in the progress of a system that makes objects
and subjects, things and human beings, according to full-fledged workings
of propaganda. Karl Marx is our impeccable source. “A part of the bour-
geoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the
continued existence of bourgeois society.”48 We can conclude the segment
with one more observation, from Badiou. He can leave us with a perma-
nent reminder and with one more reference to Marx, who “accepted that
there were similarities between the ambitions of emancipatory politics and
the workings of capital … obviously it’s a formidably complex problem,
which can sometimes expose us, I admit, to the risk of being the uncon-
scious agents of capital itself.”49 Once the unconscious is introduced into
the analysis of politics, the subject of truth and of being becomes all the
more central. The demands on us, as individuals, or for anyone teaching
in institutions of higher learning, are considerable. The doubts raised by
an entire tradition of thought should leave us with a certain discomfort—
for being relieved of some of our ideals and for the pressure of, perhaps,
beginning the process of a re-evaluation. The genealogy of our morals has
been presented to us in the 19th century. What do we do now?
46
Foucault, Michel. The Hermeneuetics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1981-82. Ed. Frédéric Gros. Tr. Gramah Burchell. New York: Picador, 2005, 17.
47
Baudrilland, Jean. Simulations. Tr. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman.
New York: Semiotext(e), Inc., 1983, 27.
48
Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick. The Communist Manifesto. Introduction by Eric
Hobsbawm. London: Verso, 2012, 70.
49
Badiou, Alain. “Politics and Philosophy,” an interview with Peter Hallward, 113–133 in
Angelaki, Vol. 3 (3), 1998, 120–121.
One attitude will be maintained now that several of our foundational

perceptions are adopted. The precise term given to us by Nietzsche, nihil-
ism, will give way to the overall project of presenting the universality of
four truths even as, at times, they will seem internally unsteady and,
together, very uneven. The agonistic confrontation with the purveyors of
morality and ethicism will be, from here, indirect. One issue will involve
the replacement of ethics with the virtue of a Greek arete ̄, human excel-
lence as opposed to the imperative of being morally, and one-dimensionally,
“good.” In what way will the analysis of our contemporary situation and
its substitution with excellence lead, Badiou believes, to the possibility (of
all things) happiness? “In every one of his experiences, the individual who
is subjectivated, incorporated into the process of truth, experiences that he
is living, that he is living in the joy of being—and that in itself is enough
to separate oneself from the world as it is” (E 94, my emphasis). The joy of
being. One has to be aware of being tempted by cynicism here; otherwise,
in the usual serious, today grave, discussion of philosophy, the choice to be
dismissive is always present. Nietzsche’s fröhliche Wissenschaft will not have
been squandered. Surely the idea of happiness is preferable than the gen-
eral malaise produced by the negations of the critical theorist. In any case,
Badiou makes us aware of a condition and asks us if we have any thoughts
on changing it.
Badiou’s affirmation leads him to the creation of a many-layered phi-
losophy with similarities to Nietzsche’s supplemental palimpsest,50 the
ontological figure capable of interlacing moments of situations one on top
of another to sense their comprehensive affect and what, together, they
may be able to create. Events do not just happen; preparations are involved,
expectations thought about, the future anticipated for what it might hold
and reveal from the traces of long-lost events. My response to Badiou’s
work will have one overall intent: to present a modern thought that offers
the individual more than the totalizing impositions of our present. “The
misadventures of critical thought”51 are going to be suspended, if only
momentarily, to give us a chance simply to think otherwise. In the
50
First presented in his essay on history in Untimely Meditations. The concept is discussed
in Nietzsche and the Self-Revelations of a Martyr. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022.
51
Rancière, Jacques. The Emancipated Spectator. Tr. Gregory Elliott. London: Verso,
2011. The reference is to the title of Chapter 2.
26 G. GHISALBERTI
meantime, as we begin to examine the four generic procedures of truth,

the responses for Badiou will be consistent both with the attempt to use
the figures of thought so important for him and the ones adopted here
until the end: interpretative intervention, configuration, and incorpora-
tion. These are the primary acts of the free subject of being and truth.
The first point sets out from the turning away from any announcements
of one or more ends and instead follow Badiou in his call for a decision.
“To put an end to the end, it is necessary that a decision be made” (H 65).
No hesitations, no deferrals, no endless theoretical hand-wringing about
philosophy and the task it has had for itself since Socrates and before. A
decision—that is to say, an act of freedom and a declaration. Badiou has
made himself clear on the matter. One of his unique traits, unlike virtually
all of his contemporaries, is to re-affirm the necessity of perhaps the most
important conviction of all: the subject and his and her freedom. The
“project,” to recall Jean-Paul Sartre’s word, is not misplaced. Nothing less
than the freedom of the subject is presented once more, as a conviction.
One lesson would not be relinquished. Jean-Paul Sartre writes: “For
strictly philosophical reasons, our point of departure is, indeed, the subjec-
tivity of the individual—not because we are bourgeois, but because we
seek to base our doctrine on truth.”52 The individual and the truth. Badiou
outlines one of his origins, as a disciple of a maître.
What Sartre taught me was simply, existentialism. But what does

existentialism mean? It means that you must have a tie between the
concept on the one hand and on the other the existential agency of
choice, the agency of the vital decision. The conviction that the
philosophic concept is not worth an hour of toil if, be it by mediations
of a great complexity, it does not reverberate, clarify and ordain the
agency of choice, of the vital decision. And in this sense, the concept
must be, also and always, an affair of existence. That is what Sartre
taught me.”53
52
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism. Tr. Carol Macomber. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2007, 40.
53
Badiou, Alain. “Philosophy as Biography.” The Symptom: Online Journal for Lacan.com.
https://www.lacan.com/symptom9_articles/badiou19.html.
Others, “existentialists,”54 if you will, were no less important and some

others have emerged at the right time to also make a difference. Badiou
asks himself—and us: “what can we expect from a theory of the subject, if
not to shed some light on the mystery of decision?” (TS176).
Badiou’s intentions will be followed. He makes a wager on his axioms;
the willingness to purse them as far as possible allows him, at the end, to
make a claim. A recent work, La métaphysique du bonheur réel, can serve as
a point of arrival and from there retrace the path of his thought, in parts,
since first dedicating himself to the subject, that is, the individual and
four truths.
As an event is a revelation of a part of the world which existed

previously only in the form of a negative restraint. And the
correlation between the revelation and the question of happiness
is clear: as it is the lifting of a constraint, there is immediately, for
all those who subsist without clearly recognizing his constraint, the
apparition of new possibilities for thought and action. Thus a possible
definition of happiness might be: to discover in oneself an active
capacity of what we unknowingly possess. (H 82, my emphasis)
A revelation, for Badiou, is the discovery, in the individual, of a previ-

ously excluded possibility of being. The affirmations to come, on the four
procedures of truth (art, science, love, and politics) are going to have to
be declared from out of their consequences for human life, better yet, for
what Badiou calls the true life. To support the effort, despite the lingering
and perhaps never overcome hesitation about the primacy of the political,
complements will be introduced and enacted all the way through. Acting,
as much as possible, affirmatively, the subject of being will be attentive to
Badiou’s work. One more reminder is not superfluous.
After a life-time of philosophical work, Badiou arrives at a conviction;
the belief in its possibility has not been undermined by the three funda-
mental obstacles to the attainment of what he calls (after Nietzsche) a
revelation. Despite the last half-century of a persistent critical thought,
54
Badiou’s references to Kierkegaard are not merely occasional. See Book VI, Section 2 of
Logics of Worlds and being “summoned to a radical decision,” 365. We can now consider the
movement fully revived and made relevant for the times by Markus Gabriel. See his Neo-
Exsistentialism. That Gabriel chooses the science of neurobiology to respond to will be men-
tioned again at a later point. Badiou again: “it turns out that existing in what one thinks
always comes down to choosing,” 367.
28 G. GHISALBERTI
Badiou remains faithful to the ability—to discover in oneself the resources

for a recommitment to what he calls, with the Greeks, the good life and,
equally as important, the true life. “Philosophy’s subject matter is the true
life. What is true life? That is the philosopher’s sole question” (TL 7).
How, then, does Badiou propose to make the revelation of the true life
possible and, perhaps too, livable? Although the explicit thesis is often
made, and unequivocally so (philosophy is conditioned by art, science,
love, and politics, and is therefore in a strong sense supported by them)
once we examine, one by one, the four conditions of philosophy and as
generic procedures of truth, we will be in a better situation to consider
Badiou’s overall intent. Can philosophy, admitting to its conditions but
also drawing on many resources, find itself today with the means to pro-
vide a strong enough, an appealing enough, alternative to some of the
symptoms Badiou has diagnosed in our contemporary culture? Jason
Barker writes. “The consequences of (his) thinking becomes absolutely
incalculable for thinking.”55 Thus far, we find ourselves in a predicament
that will not easily be avoided as we more systematically analyze how
Badiou’s philosophy as a whole and in his creation of a four-part condition
of philosophy leads him to offer an alternative to the increasing influence
of critical theory, morality, and nihilism. Are the four procedures of truth,
as Badiou presents them, sufficient to be an alternative to the drive of the
times? Or will this be, necessarily, one among other responses that are
needed and so to build a counter-consensus to the mis-steps of our con-
temporary situation?
Badiou has been tireless and committed to a perpetual obligation. Like
many philosophers or, more generally, anyone committed to thought, he
has recognized age-old problems and, in the last half-century of our focus
as a tradition, identified them as opposite to what he has dared to call, in
this age of high skepticism and worse, truths. “To put things succinctly,
let’s say that technology, culture, management and sex have taken up the
generic place of science, art, politics and love. As a result, not only must
we recall these conditions and their modern countenance, we also need to
defend their active autonomy”56 (SMP 120-1). There is bound to be little
55
Barker, Jason. “Wherefore art thou Philosophy?” 78–93 in Cosmos and History: The
Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 8. No. 1, 2012, 79.
56
The relevance of autonomy, soon to hold our attention in the thinking of the work of
art, will also be essential when we think about the subject of perception—whether the viewer
(of, say, a painting) and how different forms of sensibility will enhance the life of the
individual.
to disagree with; and yet one recurring problem will continue to preoc-
cupy us during an investigation into the systematic presentation of
Badiou’s philosophy and, if at the end (despite the unquestionable com-
mitment to an affirmative thinking dedicated to the subject and to free-
dom), the whole can be sustained. I am not so much concerned with the
foundational argument that philosophy does not, itself, present any truth
and only supports the truth of art, science, love, and politics. The argu-
ment, for the sake of exposition, can be accepted; more difficult is the
thesis, as above, and the relation between the conditions and their auton-
omy. Because we will immediately recognize, and then continually see,
that the explicit declaration is not at all sustained with any sort of consis-
tency. On the contrary, at some point we will have no choice but to won-
der if the “vacillation” (his term) does not seriously compromise the whole
endeavor. The conclusion to Theory of the Subject will be taken into con-
sideration and as an inherent aspect of his philosophy. “To vacillate defines
the structure of the subject” (TS 323). Let the claim not be a rationaliza-
tion or the evasion of a responsibility. “Vacillation” can be conscious and
methodical; or it can be a symptom of unresolved tensions and forces
Badiou cannot easily control. The many-sided forces opposing truth
require a sophisticated and self-conscious dexterity. There will be many
opportunities to identify them, including raising the question on the four
generic procedures of truth being conditions of philosophy. In “By circu-
itous paths,” one of the last sections of Daybreak, Nietzsche asks himself a
few questions that will become guiding. “Whither does his whole philoso-
phy, with all its circuitous paths, want to go? Does it more than translate
as it were into reason a strong and constant drive?”57
Part of the work to come will be to both highlight the dilemmas of
truths and, if possible, minimize their use and instrumentalization. The
truth of art and science, love and politics, can certainly be affirmed; they
also represent persistent difficulties because they are driven by purpose.
Whether Badiou’s philosophy can contribute to addressing the epoch now
unfolding in the 21st century and with the dynamic of the last half-century
fading behind us remains the responsibility to come. The “Conclusion” to
his Second Manifesto for Philosophy leaves no doubt as to his commitment;
they echo sentiments already expressed, with the same determination.
During an epoch of the deepest suspicions about both the human being
57
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Tr.
R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 223.
30 G. GHISALBERTI
and the truth, Badiou dared to introduce an entirely new disposition and,
instead of being caught up in a counter-current (which effectively moved
on and past May ’68, and with the participation of “new philosophers”58),
he held firm to some of its most important ideals. Claude Lefort describes
the times this way: “to suddenly see such a liberation of words, powerful
words, that was in itself an extraordinary event.”59 Whether the power of
the words as events are, ultimately—and so, regrettably—merely political
will be one of the responsibilities in the following examination. Other
truths will have to be emphasized with equal if not more commitment.
“When all is said and done, this second Manifesto is the result of our con-
fused and detestable present time forcing us to declare that there are eter-
nal truths in politics, art, science and love” (SMP 129-130). Our
examination will set us towards identifying Badiou’s four generic truths as
conditions of philosophy. In so doing, one problem will be primary: are
the four truths beset by difficult, perhaps intractable dilemmas; and, if so,
can the aid provided by philosophy make it possible to effectively over-
come our present situation and the one most evident in our social and
political life? Can the truths as articulated by Badiou lead to a “genuine
life?” The opening begins with such an aspiration; whether it can be main-
tained will involve on-going responses until the end and the final chapter
on the truth of politics. Badiou has not given up on his task. In what fol-
lows, his ensemble will have to be examined in some detail, with disparate
elements, moving in different directions, motivated by different concerns.
The subject of truth, our individual, will bear the responsibility of witness-
ing Badiou’s testimony, with fidelity, and with the care that the truths of
love, art, science, and politics require.
Whoever is the subject of truth (of love, art, or science, or politics)

knows that, in effect, he bears the treasure, that he is traversed by an
infinite power. Whether or not this truth, so precarious, continues to
deploy itself depends solely on his subjective weakness. Thus, one may
justifiably say that he bears it only in an earthen vessel, day after day
enduring the imperative—delicacy and subtle thought—to ensure that
nothing shatters it. (SP 54)
One notable example was Bernard-Henri-Lévy’s Barbarism with a Human Face.

58
Lefort, Claude. “The Test of the Political: An Interview with Claude Lefort” with Pierre
59
Rosanvallon. Tr. David Ames Curtis. Constellations: An International Journal of Critical &
Democratic Theory,” Vol. 19, Issue 1, March 1, 2012, 14.
CHAPTER 2
Art
When one undertakes the thinking of art

as an immanent production of truths, what
is the pertinent unity of what is called “art”?
Is it the artwork itself, the singularity of a work?
Is it the author, the creator? Or is it something else?”
Handbook of Inaesthetics
1 The Artist as a “Vanishing Cause”

Since his 1975–1979 lectures, published as Theory of the Subject, defend-
ing the being of the subject (the individual) has singled out Badiou as a
thinker whose commitments ran counter to his times and culture; the
philosophical defense of the individual made him virtually unique among
his contemporaries and with a particular form of expression, a testimony,
representing in no small measure the force of his language, at once adopted
from a juridical and/or theological source and stamped with his own
method. Badiou has not been reluctant about adopting specific terminol-
ogy and using it for himself. “Of all those for whom I am testifying,” he
writes in the “Preface,” then followed by a list of individuals who will be
called upon to reflect on his proposal: “militants, friends, students, diffi-
cult interlocutors, provisional or returning enemies, and who know that I
know it” (TS xxxix). All the neglect, and worse, the aversion to the subject
by a generation of thinkers, is philosophically suspended and countered by
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

Switzerland AG 2023
G. Ghisalberti, Dilemmas of Truth in Alain Badiou’s Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18296-9_2
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about the gardens, propelled by Christopher’s firm hand on her elbow and
keeping up with his great strides, laughing, talking, the blood quick in her
veins, the scent of spring in her nostrils, the gay adoring words of that
strange young man in her ears. Mr. Lambton must be about Christopher’s
age, she thought. Yet to Mr. Lambton she was merely some one, perhaps
more accurately something, to be placed carefully in a chair out of a
draught and then left. Which of them was right? It was most unsettling. Was
she the same person to-night as last night? Was she two persons? If she was
only one, which one? Or was she a mere vessel of receptiveness, a
transparent vessel into which other people poured their view of her, and she
instantly reflected the exact colour of their opinion?
Catherine didn’t like this idea of herself—it seemed to make her
somehow get lost, and she shifted uneasily in her chair. But she didn’t like
anything about herself these days; she was horribly surprised, and shocked,
and confused. After all, one couldn’t get away from the fact that one was
well on in the forties, and supposing that there were people in the world
who did seem able to fall in love with one even then—silly people, of
course; silly, violent people—surely one felt nothing oneself but a bland
and creditable indifference? On the other hand she didn’t believe she was
nearly old enough to be planted among cushions out of a draught and left. It
was very puzzling, and tiresome too. Here she felt almost rheumatic with
age. Last night——
The mere thought of last night woke her up so completely and made her
so angry that she gave the footstool an impatient push with her foot, and it
skidded away along the polished oak floor.
Mr. Lambton looked up from the papers he and Virginia were poring
over, and mildly contemplated the figure by the fire a moment, collecting
his thoughts. Something rather vigorous seemed just to have been done.
There had been a noise, and the footstool was certainly a good way off.
He got up, and went across and replaced it under Catherine’s feet.
‘You’re sure you’re quite comfortable, Mrs. Cumfrit?’ he asked, in much
the same voice with which, when district visiting, he addressed the aged
poor—a hearty, an encouraging, a rather loud voice. ‘You wouldn’t like
another cushion, would you?’
Catherine thanked him, and just to please him and make him feel he was
pleasing her, said she thought another cushion would be very nice indeed,
and let him adjust it with care in what he described, evidently from his
knowledge of where his older parishioners chiefly ached, the small of her
back.
The small of her back. She wanted to laugh. All these elderly places she
seemed to have about her—feet needing supporting on footstools, shoulders
needing sheltering in shawls, backs needing propping with cushions.... But
she didn’t laugh; she sat quiet, having nicely thanked Mr. Lambton, and on
the whole did feel very comfortable like that, cushioned and foot-stooled,
and no demands of any sort being made on her. It anyhow was peace.
Down here she was still simply somebody’s mother, and it was a restful
state. Except for the last three months she had continually in her life only
been somebody’s something. She had begun by being somebody’s daughter
—such a good little girl; she clearly remembered being a good little girl
who gave no trouble, and played happily for hours together by herself. Then
she passed straight from that to being somebody’s wife; again a great
success, again doing everything that was expected of her and nothing that
wasn’t. Then, when this phase was over, for twelve years she became
exclusively somebody’s mother; but how had she not, when that too ended,
stretched out her arms to the sun and cried out all to herself, ‘Now I’m
going to be me!’
Three months she had had of it, three months of freedom in London; and
friends had seemed to spring up like daisies under her feet, and Mrs.
Mitcham was always making tea, and cigarette ends were always being
emptied out of ash-trays, and some cousins she had in London, who had
cropped up the minute she had got there, brought friends, and these friends
instantly became her friends, and it was a holiday, the three months, a very
happy little holiday as different as possible from anything she had ever
known, in which every one she met was kind and gay, and nobody in any
way restricted her movements, and when she wanted to be alone and go for
her solitary enjoyments, such as music, which she best loved alone, or visits
to Kew to see whether spring wasn’t anywhere about yet, she could be
alone and go, and when she wanted to see people and talk, she could see
them and talk, and there was no clash anywhere of some one else’s
opposing tastes and wishes.
A pleasant life. An amusing, independent, dignified small life; opening
out before her with that other life of faithfully fulfilled duties and
expectations at the back of her like a pillow to rest her conscience on. She
hadn’t had time to arrange anything yet, but she certainly meant to do good
as well as be happy, to find some form of charitable activity and throw
herself into it. She wasn’t going to be idle, to drift into being one of those
numerous ex-wives and mothers, unhappy specialists out of a job, who
roam through their remaining years unprofitably conversing.
All this had seemed to open out before her like a bland afternoon
landscape, and what had she done? Behaved so idiotically that she had been
forced to run away; and not only run, but not know in the least when she
would be able to go back again.
It was most unfortunate that she should have chanced to meet and make
friends with the one young man in, she supposed, ten millions, who could
be mad enough to fall in love with her and was of an undisciplined
disposition into the bargain. Why, he might have been a quite meek young
man—one of those who worship in secret, reverence from afar, one
controlled by a lifted finger or a flickered eyelash. But nothing controlled
Christopher. He was an elemental force, and he swept her with him—she
had certainly been swept somewhere unusual that brief moment she became
so strangely quiescent in his arms. In his arms! Disgraceful. It rankled. It
gnawed. The only thing to do, with such a memory scorching one, was to
take to one’s heels. But imagine at her age having to take to any such
things. The indignity....
Once more the footstool skidded across the shiny floor.
The heads bent over the table turned towards her inquiringly.
‘Have you the fidgets, mother?’ asked Virginia gravely.
‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ said Catherine, getting up from her cushions.
Mr. Lambton hastened across to help. An odd desire to slap Mr. Lambton
seized her. She blushed that she should wish to.
‘But not before prayers?’ said Virginia, surprised.
‘Oh yes—I forgot prayers,’ said Catherine, slightly ashamed.
Virginia, though, was more ashamed. It did seem to her unfortunate that
her mother should have said that before Mr. Lambton. Bad to forget them,
but worse to say so.
She got up and rang the bell.
‘We’ll have them now, as you’re tired,’ she said.
There usedn’t to be prayers in Catherine’s day, because George in his
day hadn’t liked them, and she had kept things up exactly as he had, so that
it was natural she should forget the new habits, besides finding it difficult to
remember that the Manor was really a rectory now, a place in which family
prayers the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning were
inevitable.
In came the servants, headed by the parlourmaid bearing a tray of
lemonade and soda water, and it seemed to Catherine, watching for the
faces of old friends, that they had been much thinned out. They trickled in
where, in old days, if there had been prayers, they would have poured.
Manifestly they were being rapidly exchanged for cottages. There was
hardly one left to smile furtively at her before settling down with folded
hands and composed vacant face to listen to Mr. Lambton.
He officiated in Stephen’s absence. He did it in a clear tenor. The room
growled with muffled responses. Virginia’s voice firmly led the growls.
They all knelt with their faces to the walls and the soles of their shoes
towards Mr. Lambton. Catherine became very conscious of her shoes,
aware that their high heels were not the heels of the absolutely pure in heart.
Before her mind floated a picture she had once seen of a pair of German
boots that had belonged to a German woman who had been wicked, but, by
the time she wore the boots, was good. They were the very opposite of the
shoes she herself had on at the moment, and below the picture of them was
written:
O wie lieblich sind die Schuhe
Demuthsvolle Seelensruhe....
She wondered what Mr. Lambton would think of them as outward signs of
inward grace, and, if he thought highly, what would he think of hers?
Ashamed, she collected her wandering thoughts; for the words Mr.
Lambton was repeating were so beautiful that they sanctified everything—
himself, herself, the assembled upturned shoe-soles. She suddenly felt very
small and silly, as though she were one of the commoner insects, hopping
irreverently at the feet of some great calm angel. She laid her cheek on her
folded arms and listened attentively to the lovely words Mr. Lambton was
praying—Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee.... How often she had
heard them; how seldom she had noticed them. They were more beautiful
than music; they were nobler....
Virginia saw—it was her business to see how the servants behaved, and
her glance naturally took in Catherine too—her mother’s attitude, and
hoped that Mr. Lambton didn’t. The only decent way of praying in a
drawing-room was to kneel up straight, hands folded and eyes either shut or
looking at the seat of one’s chair. Her mother was crouching, almost sitting,
on the floor, her arms resting on her chair, her head laid sideways on her
arms. Mothers oughtn’t to do that. A child who was very tired might, but it
would certainly be reproved afterwards. Fortunately the servants couldn’t
see because of their backs, but Mr. Lambton, if he raised his eyes, wouldn’t
be able not to. She hoped he wouldn’t raise his eyes. How very keenly one
felt everything one’s mother did or didn’t do. Strange how sensitive one
became about her when one was grown up, and how, in some
uncomfortable way, responsible.
Prayers were over in ten minutes, the servants filed out, Mr. Lambton,
having drunk some soda water and said what was proper about his evening,
went away, and Virginia, reluctant to go upstairs to her frigid solitude, came
and stood by the fire warming her hands so as to put off the melancholy
moment a little longer, and talked of Stephen.
‘I do so miss him these week-ends,’ she said, strangling a sigh.
Catherine sympathetically stroked her arm.
‘I can so well understand how much one would miss some one one loved
as you love Stephen,’ she said.
(‘Mother,’ thought Virginia, ‘is really very nice, in spite of her queer
ways.’)
‘You’ve no idea,’ she said aloud, her eyes bright with pride, ‘how
wonderful he is.’
(‘Who,’ thought Catherine, ‘could have imagined it. That solemn old
Stephen.’)
‘I’m so glad,’ she said aloud, putting her arm round Virginia. ‘You know
I used to be afraid—I wasn’t quite sure—whether perhaps the difference in
age——’
‘Age!’
Virginia looked down at her mother pityingly. ‘I wish you understood,
mother,’ she said gravely, ‘how little age has to do with it so long as people
love each other. Why, what can it matter? We never think of it. It simply
doesn’t come in. Stephen is Stephen, whatever his age may be. He never,
never could be anything else.’
‘No,’ agreed Catherine rather wistfully, for if Stephen could only be
something else she might find him easier to talk to.
However, that was neither here nor there. He wasn’t Virginia’s husband
in order to talk agreeably to her mother. The great thing was that he
succeeded in bringing complete bliss to his wife. How right the child had
been to insist on marrying him; how unerring was her instinct. What had
she cared for the reasoning of relations, the advice so copiously given not
only by Catherine herself, but by various uncles and cousins, both on her
father’s and mother’s side? And as for the suggestion that she would look
ridiculous going about with a husband old enough to be her father, she had
merely smiled gravely at that and not even condescended to answer.
‘I wonder,’ said Catherine, pensively gazing into the fire, her cheek
against Virginia’s sleeve, ‘how much happiness has been prevented by fear.’
‘What fear?’
‘Of people—and especially relations. Their opinion.’
‘I am sure,’ said Virginia, blushing a little, for she wasn’t used to talking
about these things to anybody but Stephen, ‘that one should give up
everything to follow love.’
‘But what love?’
Virginia blushed again. ‘Oh, mother—of course only the right love.’
‘You mean husbands?’
‘Well, of course, mother.’
Virginia blushed a third time. What could her mother imagine she was
thinking of?
She went on with grave shyness: ‘Love—the right love—shouldn’t mind
anything any one in the world says.’
‘I suppose it shouldn’t,’ said Catherine. ‘And yet——’
‘There isn’t any “and yet” in love, mother. Not in real love.’
‘You mean husbands,’ said Catherine again.
‘Well, of course, mother,’ said Virginia, impatiently this time.
‘I suppose there isn’t,’ said Catherine pensively. ‘But still——’
‘There isn’t any “but still” either.’
Before this splendid inexperience, this magnificent unawareness,
Catherine could only be mute; and presently she held up her face to be
kissed, and murmured that she thought she would now go to bed.
Virginia fidgeted. She didn’t seem to want to leave the fire. She raked
out the ashes for quite a long time, and then pushed the chairs back into
their proper places and shook up the cushions.
‘I hate going to bed,’ she said suddenly.
Catherine, who had been watching her sleepily, was surprised awake
again—Virginia had sounded so natural.
‘Do you, darling?’ she asked. ‘Why?’
Virginia looked at her mother a moment, and then fetched the bedroom
candles from the table they had been put ready on, the electric light being
now cut off by Stephen’s wish at half-past ten each night.
She gave Catherine her candle. ‘Didn’t you——’ she began.
‘Didn’t I what?’
‘Hate going to bed when my father was away?’
‘Oh. I see. No, I didn’t. I—I liked being alone.’
They stood looking at each other, their candles lighting up their faces.
Catherine’s face was surprised; Virginia’s immensely earnest.
‘I think that’s very strange, mother,’ she said; and added after a silence,
‘You do understand, don’t you, that in all I’ve been saying about—about
love, I only’—she blushed for the fourth time—‘mean proper love.’
‘Oh, quite, darling,’ Catherine hastened to assure her. ‘Husbands.’
And Catherine, not used to bedroom candles, held hers crooked and
dropped some grease on the carpet, and Virginia had the utmost difficulty in
strangling an exclamation. Stephen did so much dislike grease on the
carpets.
XIII
Stephen came back by the first train next morning, suppressing his
excitement as he got out of the car and on the doorstep saw Virginia,
standing there as usual, in her simple morning frock and fresh neatness,
waiting to welcome him home. Outwardly he looked just a sober, middle-
aged cleric, giving his wife a perfunctory kiss while the servants brought in
his things; inwardly he was thirty at the sight of her, and twenty at the touch
of her. She, suppressing in her turn all signs of joy, received his greeting
with a grave smile, and they both at once went into his study, and shutting
the door fell into each other’s arms.
‘My wife,’ whispered Stephen.
‘My husband,’ whispered Virginia.
It was their invariable greeting at this blissful Monday morning moment
of reunion. No one would have recognised Stephen who saw him alone with
Virginia; no one would have recognised Virginia who saw her alone with
Stephen. Such are the transformations of love. Catherine kept out of the
way; she went tactfully for a walk. They were to themselves till lunch-time,
and could pour out everything each had been thinking and feeling and
saying and doing since they parted such ages ago, on Saturday.
Unfortunately this time Virginia had something to pour out which wasn’t
going to give Stephen pleasure. She put it off as long as she could, but he,
made quick by love, soon felt there was something in the background of her
talk, and drawing his finger gently over her forehead, which usually was
serene with purest joy, said, ‘A little pucker. I see the tiniest pucker. What is
it, Virginia love?’
‘Mother,’ said Virginia.
‘Mother? My mother?’
Stephen couldn’t believe it. His mother causing puckers?
‘No. Mine. She’s come.’
‘Come here?’
Stephen was much surprised. And on Saturday night not a word, not an
indication of this intention.
‘Had you asked her?’ he inquired.
‘Oh, Stephen—as though I would without your consent!’
‘No. Of course not, darling. But when——?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘On a Sunday?’
‘Yes. And I’m afraid—oh, Stephen, I do think she doesn’t mean to go
away very soon, because she has brought two trunks.’
Stephen was much moved by this news. He looked at his wife in real
dismay. He considered he was still in his honeymoon. What were three
months? Nothing. To people who loved as he and Virginia loved they were
absolutely nothing, and to have a parent come and interrupt, and especially
a parent to whom the whole place had so recently belonged.... Unfortunate;
unfortunate; unfortunate to the last degree.
‘How very odd,’ said Stephen, who till now had regarded his mother-in-
law as a monument of tact; adding, after a pause, ‘Two trunks, did you say?
You counted them, I suppose. Two trunks. That is certainly a large number.
And your mother said nothing at all of this when I dined with her on
Saturday——’
‘I do hope, darling,’ interrupted Virginia anxiously, ‘that you had enough
to eat?’
‘Plenty, plenty,’ said Stephen, waving the recollection of the scrambled
eggs aside. ‘She said no word at all, Virginia. On the contrary, she assured
me she was coming to St. Clement’s to hear me preach last night.’
‘Oh, Stephen—I simply can’t understand how she could bear to miss
that!’
‘Have you any idea, my love, what made her come down unannounced?’
asked Stephen, the joy of his homecoming completely clouded over.
‘No, darling. I can’t make it out. It really puzzles me.’
‘You have no theory at all?’
‘None.’
‘Nor any idea as to the length of her proposed stay?’
‘Only the idea of the two trunks. Mother hasn’t said a word, and I can’t
very well ask.’
‘No,’ said Stephen thoughtfully. ‘No.’ And added, ‘It is very
disquieting.’
It was; for he saw clearly what an awkward situation must arise with the
abdicated monarch alongside of the reigning one for any time longer than a
day or two, and also, since nothing particular appeared to have brought her
down, she must have come idly, on an impulse, because she had nothing
else to do,—and to be idle, to drift round, seemed to him really a great pity
for any human being. It led inevitably to mischief. Fruitful activity was of
the first importance for every one, he couldn’t but think, especially for one’s
wife’s mother. But it must take place somewhere else. That was essential: it
must take place somewhere else.
‘Well, perhaps,’ he said, stroking Virginia’s hair, endeavouring to give
and get comfort, ‘in spite of the trunks it will only be for a day or two.
Ladies do take large amounts of luggage about with them.’
Virginia shook her head. ‘Mother doesn’t,’ she said. ‘Each time before
she only brought a bag.’
They were silent. He left off stroking her hair.
Then Stephen pulled himself together. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Come,
come. Whatever it is that happens to us, Virginia love, we must do our best
to bear it, mustn’t we.’
‘Oh, of course, Stephen darling,’ said Virginia. ‘You know I’ll do
whatever you do.’
She laid her head on his breast, and they gave themselves up to those
happy lawful caresses that are at once the joy and the duty of the married.
Exquisite arrangement, Stephen considered, who had been starved of
caresses till middle age, and now, let lawfully loose among them, found
them more delightful than in his most repented-of dreams he had dared
imagine—exquisite arrangement, by which the more you love the greater is
your virtue.
‘After all, my darling,’ he whispered, ‘we have got each other.’
‘Indeed and indeed we have,’ whispered Virginia, clinging to him.
‘My own dear wife,’ murmured Stephen, holding her close.
‘My own darling husband,’ murmured Virginia, blissfully nestling.
Catherine, meanwhile, was hurrying back across muddy fields and many
stiles so as not to be late for lunch. Anxious to leave her children—was not
Stephen by law now also her child? fantastic thought—to themselves as
long as possible, she had rather overdone it, and walked farther than there
was time for, so that at the end her walk had almost to become a run.
Stephen, she felt sure, was a punctual man. Besides, nobody likes being
kept waiting for meals. She hoped they wouldn’t wait. She hurried and got
hot. Her shoes were caked in mud, and her hair, for the March wind was
blowing, wasn’t neat. She hoped to slip in unseen and arrange herself
decently before facing Stephen, but when she arrived within sight of the
house they both, having been standing at the window ever since the gong
went, came out to meet her.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ she cried, as soon as they were near enough to
hear. ‘You shouldn’t have waited. I’m dreadfully sorry. Am I very late?’
‘Only a quarter of an hour,’ said Stephen courteously—how wonderful
he was, thought Virginia. ‘Nothing at all to worry about. How do you do.
This is an unexpected pleasure.’
‘I hope you don’t mind?’ said Catherine, smiling up at him as they shook
hands. ‘I’ve been impulsive. I came down on a sudden wave of longing to
be with Virginia. You’ll have to teach me self-control, Stephen.’
‘We all need that,’ said Stephen.
He hid his feelings; he contrived to smile; he was wonderful, thought
Virginia.
‘And on my very first day I’m late for lunch,’ said Catherine. ‘I wish
you hadn’t waited.’
The expression ‘my very first day’ seemed to Stephen and Virginia
ominous; nobody spoke of a first day unless there was to be a second, a
third, a fourth, a whole row of days. There was, therefore, a small pause.
Then Stephen said, as politely as if he were a man who wasn’t hungry and
had not had breakfast ever so much earlier than usual, ‘Not at all’—and
Catherine felt, as she had so often felt before, that he was a little difficult to
talk to, and Virginia, who knew how particularly he disliked being kept
waiting for meals, even when he wasn’t hungry, loved him more than ever.
Indeed, his manner to her mother was perfect, she thought,—so patient,
so—the absurd word did describe it—gentlemanly. And he remained patient
and gentlemanly even when Catherine, in her desire to be quick, only gave
her muddy shoes the briefest rubbing on the mat, so that she made
footmarks on the hall carpet, and Stephen, who was a clean man and didn’t
like footmarks on his carpets, merely said, ‘Kate will bring a brush.’
Lunch went off very well considering, Virginia thought. It was thanks to
Stephen, of course. He was adorable. He told her mother the news of the
parish, not forgetting anything he thought might interest her about the
people she had known, such as young Andrews breaking his leg at football,
and foolish Daisy Logan leaving her good situation to marry a cowman and
begin her troubles before she need; and afterwards in the drawing-room,
where they had coffee—when she and Stephen were alone they had it cosily
in the study, the darling study, scene of so many happy private hours—he
sent Kate to fetch the plans and estimates, and went through them with her
mother so patiently and carefully, explaining them infinitely better and
more clearly than she had been able to do the day before, and always in
such admirable brief sentences, using five words where she, with her
untrained mind, had used fifty, and making her mother feel that they liked
her to know what they were doing, and wanted her to share their interests.
Her mother was not to feel out in the cold. Dear Stephen. Virginia glowed
with love of him. Who but Stephen could, in the moment of his own
disappointment, think and act with such absolute sweetness?
Time flew. It was her hour for putting up her feet, but she couldn’t tear
herself away from Stephen and the plans. She sat watching his fine face—
how she loved his thinness, his clean-cut, definite features—bent over the
table, while with his finger he traced the lines her mother was having
explained to her. Her mother looked sleepy. Virginia thought this queer so
early in the day. She had been sleepy the evening before, but that was
natural after the journey and getting up so early. Perhaps she had walked
too far, and tired herself. After all, she wasn’t any longer young.
‘You see how simply it can be worked,’ said Stephen. ‘You merely turn
this tap—a—and the water flows through b and c, along d, and round the
curve to f, washing out, on its way, the whole of e.’
Her mother murmured something—Virginia thought she said, ‘I’d like to
be e’—and if this was really what she did say, it was evident that she not
only looked sleepy, but was very nearly actually asleep. In which case
Stephen’s pains were all being wasted, and he might just as well leave off.
‘Not only,’ said Stephen, ‘is this the simplest device of any that have
been submitted, and as far as one can humanly tell absolutely foolproof,
but, as is so often the case with the best, it is also the cheapest.’
There was a long pause. Her mother said nothing. Virginia looked at her,
and it did seem as if she really had gone to sleep.
‘Mother,’ said Virginia gently. She couldn’t bear that Stephen should be
taking all this trouble to interest and inform somebody who wasn’t awake.
Her mother started and gave herself a little shake and said rather hastily,
‘I see.’ And then, to save what she felt was a delicate situation and divert
Stephen’s attention from herself—he was looking at her thoughtfully over
the top of his glasses—she pointed to a specially involuted part of the plan,
where pipes seemed twisted in a frenzy, and asked what happened there, at
that knot, at—she bent closer—yes, at k.
Stephen, simple-minded man, at once with the utmost courtesy and
clearness told her, and before he was half-way through his explanation
Virginia noticed—it was really very queer—her mother’s eyelids shutting
again.
This time she got up a little brusquely; she couldn’t let Stephen’s
kindness and time be wasted in such a manner. ‘It’s my hour for resting,’
she said, standing gravely at the table, one hand, a red young hand with a
slender wedding ring, resting on her husband’s shoulder. ‘I suppose I ought
to go and lie down.’
Her mother at that moment came to life again. ‘Shall I come and tuck
you up?’ she asked, making a movement as if she were going to accompany
her.
‘Sweet of you, mother—but if Stephen doesn’t mind, I thought I’d rest
on the couch in his study to-day. It’s so comfortable.’
‘Certainly,’ said Stephen.
He refrained from calling her his love; he and she both refrained from
any endearments in public,—on principle, as unseemly in a clergyman’s
family, and also because they feared that if once they began they mightn’t
be able to stop, so excessive was their mutual delight, at this early stage, in
lovemaking, and so new were they both at the delicious game. And, besides
this, they were shy, and unable either of them in their hearts to get away
from a queer feeling of guilt, in spite of the Law and the Church both
having shed their awful smiles and blessings on whatever they might
choose to do.
‘Oh, I won’t profane Stephen’s study,’ said her mother, smiling at him.
‘I’ll only just come and tuck you up and then leave you to sleep. Thank you
so much, Stephen,’ she added, turning to him; ‘it has been so good of you. I
think your ideas are marvellous.’
But how many of them had her mother heard, Virginia wondered as,
after a pressure of her husband’s shoulder which meant, ‘Be quick and
come to the study and we can be by ourselves till tea,’ and a brief
answering touch of her hand by his which meant that he’d follow her in five
minutes, she and Catherine walked together down the long, beautiful old
room, while Stephen laid his papers carefully in the wicker tray kept for the
purpose. Very few, surely. Yet her mother spoke enthusiastically. It did
slightly shake one’s belief in a mother who obviously slept most of the time
ideas were being expounded to her, that she should, with that easy worldly
over-emphasis Virginia hadn’t heard now for three months, that pleasant
simulation of an enthusiasm which Virginia had always, ever since she
began really to think, suspected couldn’t be quite real, declare them
marvellous, on waking up.
‘I mustn’t be unfair, though,’ thought Virginia as they went into the
study arm in arm—it was Catherine who had put her arm through
Virginia’s. ‘After all, I explained things yesterday, so mother did know
something of our ideas, even if she didn’t listen to-day. But why should she
be so tired?’
‘Didn’t you sleep well last night, mother?’ she asked, as Catherine
arranged the cushions comfortably for her.
‘Not very well,’ said Catherine, turning a little red and looking oddly
like a child caught out in ill behaviour, thought Virginia.
How strange the way the tables of life turned, and how imperceptibly yet
quickly one changed places. Here was her mother looking just as she was
sure she herself used to look when she was caught out doing wrong things
with the fruit or the jam. But why? Virginia couldn’t think why she should
look so.
‘I shall sleep better when I’ve got more used to the bed,’ said Catherine,
who was unnerved by the knowledge that Stephen’s conversation did
inevitably dispose her to drowsiness, and that Virginia was on the verge of
finding it out.
Used to the bed. Virginia turned this expression over in her mind with
grave eyes fixed on her mother, who was smoothing her skirt over her
ankles.
Used to the bed. It suggested infinity to Virginia. You couldn’t get used
to a bed without practice in spending nights in it; you couldn’t get used to
anything without many repetitions. How she wished she could be frank with
her mother and ask her straight out how long she meant to stay. But could
one ever be frank with either one’s mother or with one’s guest? And when
both were combined! As a daughter she wasn’t able to say anything, as a
hostess she wasn’t able to say anything, and as a daughter and a hostess
rolled into one her muzzling was complete.
Virginia watched her mother gravely as she busied herself making her
comfortable. It was for her mother to give some idea of her intentions, and
she hadn’t said a word.
‘Are you quite comfortable, dearest?’ Catherine asked, kissing the
solemn young face before going away.
‘Quite, thank you. Sweet of you, mother,’ said Virginia, closing her eyes.
For some reason she suddenly wanted to cry. Things were so contrary; it
was so hard that she and Stephen couldn’t be left alone; yet her mother was
so kind, and one would hate to hurt her. But one’s husband and his
happiness—did not they come first?
Her mother went away, shutting the door softly. Virginia lay listening for
Stephen’s footsteps.
Her forehead had a pucker in it again.
Used to the bed....
XIV
Catherine was safe at Chickover; for that much she was thankful. But,
apart from safety, what a strange, different place it now seemed to her.
Each night throughout that week as she undressed, she had a fresh set of
reflections to occupy her mind. It was a queer week. It had an atmosphere
of its own. In this developing dampness—for so at last it presented itself to
her imagination—she felt as if her wings, supposing she had any, hung
more and more stiffly at her side. As the solemn days trudged one by one
heavily past she had a curious sensation of ebbing vitality. Life was going
out of her. Mists were closing in on her. The house was so quiet that it made
her feel deaf. After dark there were so few lights that it made her feel blind.
Oh yes, she was safe,—safe from that mad young man; but there were other
things here—strange, uncomfortable things. There was this depressing
feeling of a slow, creeping, choking, wet fog gradually enveloping her.
On Monday night as she undressed she didn’t think like this, she hadn’t
got as far. All she did on Monday night was to go over the events of the day
with mild wonder. She had said a great many prayers that day; for not only
had there been family prayers before breakfast and the last thing at night,
but Stephen had asked her after tea whether she wouldn’t like to go with
him to evening service.
A host’s suggestions are commands. When he invites, one must needs
accept. Indeed, she had accepted with the propitiatory alacrity common in
guests when their hosts invite, aware that he was doing his best, with the
means at his disposal, to entertain her, and anxious to show herself grateful.
Where other hosts take their guests to look at ruins, or similar unusual
sights, Stephen took his to church.
‘Oh—delightful,’ she had exclaimed on his proposing it; and only
afterwards reflected that this was perhaps not quite the right word.
Virginia didn’t go with them, because so much kneeling and standing
mightn’t be good for her, and she and Stephen set out after tea in the windy
dusk by themselves, Stephen carrying the lantern that would be lit for their
walk home in the dark. Catherine, accordingly, had had two tête-à-tête talks
with Stephen that day, but as she was walking rather fast during them, and
there was a high wind into the bargain, flicking her blood, she had had no
trouble in keeping awake. Also there was the hope of the quiet relaxing in
church at the end, with no need to make any effort for a while, to support
her.
But there in the pew that used to be hers, sitting in it established and
spread out, was Stephen’s mother; and Stephen’s mother was of those who
are articulate in church, who like to set an example of distinctness in prayer
and praise, and look round at people who merely mumble. Catherine, who
was a mumbler, had had to speak up and sing up. There was no help for it.
One of Mrs. Colquhoun’s looks was enough, and she found herself docilely
doing, as she so often in life had found herself docilely doing, what was
expected of her.
Afterwards she and Mrs. Colquhoun had waited together in the porch for
Stephen to come out of his vestry, the while exchanging pleasant speech,
and then they had all three gone on together to a meeting in the schoolroom
—Catherine hadn’t known there was to be a meeting as well as the service
—at which Stephen was giving an address.
‘Would you care to come round to the schoolroom?’ he had asked her on
joining his two mothers in the porch, buttoning his coat as he spoke, for it
was flapping wildly in the wind. ‘I am giving an address.’
At this point Catherine had felt a little overwhelmed by his hospitality;
but, unable to refuse, had continued to accept.
He gave an informing address. She hadn’t known till she heard it that
they were at the beginning of the week before the week that ends in Easter,
the busiest fortnight of the clerical year, and she now discovered that there
were to be daily morning and evening services, several sermons, and many
meetings, between that day and the following Sunday.
Would she have to come to them all? she asked herself, as she sat with
Mrs. Colquhoun, after having been stopped several times on her way to her
seat by old friends in the parish, people she had known for years; and
always tête-à-tête with Stephen during the walk there and back, and always
under Mrs. Colquhoun’s supervision in the pew?
Up on the platform, in front of an enormous blackboard, stood Stephen,
giving his address. He told his parishioners they were entering the very
most solemn time of the whole year, and exceptional opportunities were
being offered of observing it. He read out a list of the opportunities, and
ended by exhorting those present to love one another and, during this holy
season, to watch without ceasing and pray. Yes, she would have to come to
them all. A guest is a helpless creature; a mother-in-law guest is a very
helpless creature; an uninvited mother-in-law guest is a thing bound hand
and foot.
Soberly, when the meeting was over, she walked out of the stuffy
schoolroom with its smell of slates, into the great wind-swept cleanness of
the night. It was nearly half-past seven, and she and Stephen were unable
therefore to accept Mrs. Colquhoun’s invitation to go into the Rectory and
rest. She had had, however, to promise to look in the next day but one
—‘That is, dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ Mrs. Colquhoun had said, suggesting the
next day but one as a test of the length of her visit, ‘if you will still be here.
You will? Delightful.’
As she undressed on Monday night and thought of her day, her feeling,
though she regarded its contents since Stephen’s arrival with surprise, was
still that she was thankful to be there. It was sweet to be with Virginia,
sweet and natural to be able, in moments of stress, to take refuge in her old
home, in her Virginia’s home. And Stephen, though he took his duties as
host too seriously, was such a good man; and Virginia was evidently
supremely happy in her undemonstrative little way. If only she could
manage, when Stephen talked, to keep awake better.... What was it about
him, whom she so much respected, that sent her to sleep? But really, after
the silliness of her recent experiences in London, it was like getting into a
bath to come into this pure place—a big, cool, clean, peaceful bath.
Thus did Catherine think on Monday night in her bedroom; and, while
she was doing so, Stephen was saying to Virginia: ‘What, my love, makes
your mother so drowsy? This afternoon—and again this evening——’
‘Don’t people always get drowsy when they get old?’ Virginia asked in
reply.
‘Ah,’ said Stephen thoughtfully. ‘Yes. I suppose they do.’ Then,
remembering that Catherine was a year younger than himself, he added,
‘Women, of course, age more rapidly than men. A man your mother’s age
would still be——’
‘A boy,’ interrupted Virginia, laying her face against his.
‘Well, not quite,’ said Stephen smiling, ‘but certainly in the prime of
life.’
‘Of course,’ said Virginia, rubbing her cheek softly up and down. ‘A boy
in the prime of life.’
‘Yes—had he had the happiness of marrying you.’
‘Darling.’
‘My blessed child.’
On Tuesday evening, once more in her room preparing for bed, with
another day past and over to reflect upon, her thoughts were different, or,
rather, they were maturing. She continued to feel that Virginia’s home was
her natural refuge, and she still told herself she was glad she was in it, but
she had begun to be aware of awkwardnesses. Little ones. Perhaps
inseparable from the situation.
If Christopher had forced her down to Chickover in a year’s time instead
of now, these awkwardnesses would probably not have occurred. But the
servants, indoors and out, hadn’t had time to forget her, and they showed a
flattering but embarrassing pleasure at her reappearance. She had had no
idea that they had liked her as much as all that. She couldn’t imagine why
they should. It was awkward, because they conveyed, most unfortunately,
by their manner that they still looked upon her as their real mistress. This
was very silly and tiresome of them. She must draw into her shell. But
naturally on coming across a familiar face she had been pleased, and had
greeted it amiably, for of those who were still there she knew all the history,
and for years they had looked after her, and she them. Naturally on meeting
them she had inquired after their family affairs. Their response, however,
had been too warm. It amounted to a criticism of the new régime.
Out in the garden, for instance, the gardeners that day had seemed to
come and garden wherever she happened to be walking, and then of course
—how natural it all was—she had talked to them of the last autumn bulbs
which had been planted under her directions, and had gone round with them
looking at the results, at the crocuses in full glory, the daffodils beginning
their beauty, and the tulips still stuck neatly in their buds; and she had
become absorbed, as people who are interested in such things do become
absorbed, in the conversation.
Stephen, passing through on his way to some work in the parish, had
found her like this, poring over a border, deep in talk with the head
gardener, and hadn’t liked it. She saw by his face he hadn’t liked it. He had
merely raised his hat and gone by without a word. She must be cooler to the
gardeners. But as though it mattered—as though it mattered. Little children,
love one another.... She sighed as she thought what a very happy world it
would be if they really did.
Then there was Ellen, the under-housemaid, now promoted to be head,
and one of the few indoor servants left. In the old days a model of reserve,
Ellen now positively burst with talk. She was always hovering round her,
always bringing her hot water, and clean towels, and more flowers—
watching for her to come upstairs, wanting to know what she could do next.
That morning, when she came back from church, Ellen was there in her
room poking the fire into a blaze, and had insisted that her stockings must
be damp after the muddy walk, and had knelt down and taken them off.
Catherine, amused at her care for her, had said, ‘Ellen, I believe you
quite like me.’
And Ellen, turning red, had exclaimed, ‘Oh, ma’am!’
The excessive devotion in her voice was another criticism of the existing
régime. It was a warning to Catherine that she must not encourage this.
Servants were like children—the past was always rosy to them, what they
had had was always so much better than what they were having. She must
furbish up her tact, and steer a little more carefully among these unexpected
shallows. She sighed faintly. Tact was so tiring. Still, she was thankful, she
told herself, to be there.
And while she was thinking this, Stephen was saying to Virginia: ‘We
must make allowances.’
He had just been describing what he had seen in the garden. ‘No one,’ he
had finished thoughtfully—‘no one would have supposed, from their
general appearance and expression, that your mother was not the mistress
and Burroughs her servant. Burroughs, indeed, might easily have been
mistaken for a particularly devoted servant. I was sorry, my darling, because
of you. I was, I confess, jealous on my Virginia’s behalf.’
‘And there’s Ellen, too,’ said Virginia, her brow puckered. ‘She’s always
in mother’s room.’
At this fresh example of injudiciousness Stephen was silent. He couldn’t
help thinking that perfect tact would have avoided, especially under the
peculiar and delicate circumstances, long and frequent conversations with
some one else’s servants. He didn’t say so to Virginia, for had he not often,
and with sincerity, praised precisely this in his mother-in-law, her perfect
tact? She appeared after all not to possess it in quite the quantity he had
believed, but that was no reason for hurting his Virginia’s feelings by
pointing it out. Virginia loved her mother; and perhaps the lapse was
temporary.
‘We must make allowances,’ he repeated presently.
‘Yes,’ said Virginia, who would have given much not to have been put
by her mother in a position in which allowances had to be made. After
having been so proud and happy in the knowledge that Stephen considered
her mother flawless as a mother-in-law, was it not hard?

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Dilemmas of Truth in Alain Badiou's

Philosophy Giosuè Ghisalberti

A New Dawn for Politics 1st Edition Alain Badiou

In Search of Truth Sharon Wray

In Search of Truth Sharon Wray

In Search of Truth Sharon Wray

Multiplicity and Ontology in Deleuze and Badiou 1st

Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece Alain Duplouy

Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi

Contemporary Populists in Power 1st Edition Alain

ISBN 978-3-031-18295-2 ISBN 978-3-031-18296-9 (eBook)

Cover illustration: © Alex Linch shutterstock.com

In one of the more remarkable if not most often-cited statements Alain

engagement in a process which, in principle, any subject may take part.

Spring, 2022 Giosuè Ghisalberti

“Afterward: Some Replies to a Demanding Friend,” in Think Again:

1 Introduction: Alain Badiou’s Affirmations 1

6 Conclusion: A Future and Happy Immanence221

BE Being and Event. Tr. Oliver Feltham. London: Bloomsbury, 2005.

H Happiness. Tr. A. J. Bartless and Justin Clemens. London:

Introduction: Alain Badiou’s Affirmations

It seems to me that the problem with philosophical

Looking back today at the last half-century of European philosophical

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

obligation—“philosophy is obliged ruthlessly to criticize itself,”1 as

myself a Nietzschean,”3 Badiou announces in one of his seminars; while

study of crowds and not foreign to us in the present.6 Coercion is no lon-

policing operation.”10 The conjunction of law, policing, and ethics makes

sophisticated.12 The cadavers of liberal democracy are neither physical nor

perfectly acceptable anti-humanism and an ethical drive supporting many

or when psychagogia15 or the “leading of the soul” (psyche) is recognized to

supplement. Everybody experiences, not without anxiety, that the current

new existential commitment to affirmation as one logic of his philosophy.

doubting the drive of a cultural movement; its confidence seemed to him

Philosophy, for Badiou, “exists in a movement that is always a wager, a

The individual is something quite new which creates new

Badiou has been methodical; over a life-time of work, he has given us

individual cannot be overlooked when he speaks in his own name, as a

of Western capitalism as the new universal model. The presumed

post-democratic spectacular societies … may well be rooted in the aporia,

Only a civilization in which the right to have rights has become

Byung Chul-Han asks: “What kind of politics—what kind of democ-

name of victims.”44 Including this one phenomenon, on the most service-

The crucial point is thus to recognize clearly in the ideology of

One attitude will be maintained now that several of our foundational

meantime, as we begin to examine the four generic procedures of truth,

What Sartre taught me was simply, existentialism. But what does

Others, “existentialists,”54 if you will, were no less important and some

As an event is a revelation of a part of the world which existed

A revelation, for Badiou, is the discovery, in the individual, of a previ-

Badiou remains faithful to the ability—to discover in oneself the resources

Whoever is the subject of truth (of love, art, or science, or politics)

One notable example was Bernard-Henri-Lévy’s Barbarism with a Human Face.

When one undertakes the thinking of art

1 The Artist as a “Vanishing Cause”

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

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Spring, 2022 Giosuè Ghisalberti

1 Introduction: Alain Badiou’s Affirmations 1

6 Conclusion: A Future and Happy Immanence221