Wednesday, July 21, 2004
(7:25 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Initial Reflections on Alain Badiou
PreludeYesterday, I found that I could not bring myself to spend eight hours translating debates over EU policy and admiring retrospectives of the career of Du Bellay. I am not taking the University of Chicago exam in two weeks, and I think I can afford to go at a slower pace -- I'm thinking an hour or two a day for the rest of the summer, if I can swing it. After spending the day avoiding it, I realized something: okay, now I've reached the point where I can't possibly spend eight hours on French; but what could I do other than chat on IM and e-mail with my distinguished correspondants and poke at the Yamaha electric keyboard I've had since I was twelve? Oh, I know: I could read something. So I read some Badiou, specifically his Ethics: An Essay in the Understanding of Evil. I read Peter Hallward's excellent introduction, plus the long interview in the back (a process Italo Calvino aptly calls "reading around a book"). Today, I hit the Text Itself.
Initial Reactions, with a Lengthy Block Quote
After hearing so much talk of Otherness, how refreshing to hear someone daring to say something different! And so forcefully, so eloquently! I am more than a little jealous that French high-schoolers apparently get to read this, although I will say that the English faculty at Davison High School was very French-oriented: lots of Poe, lots of Guy de Maupassant, lots of existentialism. (God bless you, Mrs. Herfert -- those who complain about your endless personal anecdotes don't realize what they have!)
I have read the first two chapters, which consist of his critiques, respectively, of the ethics of human rights and the ethics of otherness. Though many regard him as having constructed a straw-man out of Levinas, I feel it is at the very least a respectful straw-man -- I especially enjoyed his going out of his way to dissociate Levinas himself from the rather facile philosophies of cultural difference that have grown out of the "other idea."
But what I'm really getting at is a quote:
Finally, thanks to its negative and a priori determination of Evil, ethics prevents itself from thinking the singularity of situations as such, which is the obligatory starting point of all properly human action. Thus, for instance, the doctor won over to "ethical" ideology will ponder, in meetings and commissions, all sorts of considerations regarding "the sick"... But the same doctor will have no difficulty in accepting the fact that this particular person is not treated at the hospital and accorded all necessary procedures, because he or she is without legal residency papers, or not a contributor to Social Security. Once again, "collective" responsibility demands it! What is erased in the process is the fact that there is only one medical situation, the clinical situation, and there is no need for an "ethics" (but only for a clear vision of this situation) to understand that in these circumstances a doctor is a doctor only if he deals with the situation according to the rule of maximum possibility -- to treat this person who demands treatment of him (no intervention here!) as thoroughly as he can, using everything he knows and with all the means at his disposal, without taking anything else into consideration. And if he is to be prevented from giving treatment because of the State budget, because of death rates or laws governing immigration, then let them send for the police! Even so, his strict Hippocratic duty would oblige him to resist them, with force if necessary. "Ethical commissions" and other ruminations on "health-care expenses" or "managerial responsibility," since they are radically exterior to the one situation that is genuinely medical, can in reality only prevent us from being faithful to it. For to be faithful to this situation means: to treat it right to the limit of the possible.(With that, the binding to this Verso edition of Ethics is officially broken -- of course.)
Food for Thought, Stemming From the Passage Just Quoted
What might it mean to be faithful to the blogging situation? Can we think of examples? (The one that springs immediately to mind: John Holbo.)
Religious Interlude (Humor Me)
One must re-read the book on Paul, and the letters of Paul, and one must then assess the degree to which the ethics here announced, of faithfulness to the situation, are homologous to the Kingdom of God, whether, indeed, an ethic of the Kingdom in fact requires that neglecting everything aside from doing the gospel-stuff is okay because God's going to come pick up the pieces pretty soon anyway. And then, then, because one has committed to write a piece on John Wesley avec Badiou -- one must read through Wesley's sermons, see if he is in agreement with Paul, and if a homology is possible there. Having done so, one must stare out the window and wonder vaguely whether the task of the thinker is to think that which is homologous.
Promise for the Future
Tomorrow evening, after French, I will certainly finish Ethics (if not before! Oh, Alain, convince me! Seduce me! Make me yours!) And then, hell, I might as well do that stuff with St. Paul and St. Paul that I discussed above.
And then -- but can I do it? Will it constitute a betrayal? -- then write about Derrida. "Force of Law." "Declarations of Independance." The police shall constitute a guiding thread. You will not believe the title I have worked up for this thing, but I must wait until the paper is done, to determine whether the paper is worthy of such a title.
