badiou – Fractal Ontology

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

A science of being is not enough. This subtraction which purifies, this selection and division which makes holy, which ‘invents’ and ‘discovers’ truth — how could ontology do anything but give us theories of the One, of the Law, of the Real, of the existing-as-such? How could it do anything but carefully induce multiplicity to subtract itself into unified theory, divide itself into functions and axioms; endlessly seduce differences into homogeneity, and minorities into conformity; […]

Immersion

Monday, July 14, 2008

by Joseph Weissman

comments 2

badiou / becoming / Deleuze / form / language / machine / myth / notion / ontology

At the height of its concentration, the art of the [twentieth] century — but also all the other truth procedures, each according to its own resources — aimed to conjoin the present, the real intensity of life, and the name of this present as given in the formula, a formula that is always at the same time the invention of a form. It is then that the pain of the world changes into […]

Badiou on Logic

Saturday, July 5, 2008

by Taylor Adkins

comments 3

badiou / godel / logic / mathematics / metamathematics / ontology

Stellar cartographies has translated two different selections of course notes from Badiou’s lectures circa 1980-82 here and here. This translation is short, but extremely concise, so there’s a lot of material to absorb. In particular, the notes help to explain Godel’s achievement and his theorem and offers good insight into Badiou’s own mathematico-ontological project. Definitely check it out for a quick read on a slightly neglected aspect of this philosopher’s expanding corpus. Also be sure […]

(Non-)Epistemology and Ontology: Three more definitions from Laruelle’s Dictionnaire

Thursday, July 3, 2008

by Taylor Adkins

comments 3

Aesthetic / axiom / badiou / epistemology / form / Laruelle / legitimacy / matter / non-philosophy / ontology / science / transcendental

Laruelle, Francois. Dictionnaire de la non-philosophie. Paris, Kime, 1998. Original translation by Taylor Adkins. Non-epistemology Unified theory of science and philosophy that takes for its object and material the discourse which lays claim to a particular mixture of science and philosophy: epistemology. Philosophy recognizes epistemology in two ways which are not always exclusive. It can treat it as a continuation of traditional philosophy of science, crystallized around the Kantian question of the possibility of science, […]

Metaphysics beyond Psychoanalysis: The Unconscious, Language and Reality after Heidegger and Deleuze

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

by Joseph Weissman

comment 1

anti-philosophy / badiou / deconstruction / Deleuze / difference / heidegger / lacan / levinas / mathematics / metaphysics / negation / poetry / psychoanalysis / unity / writing

Metaphysics beyond Psychoanalysis 0: Entryways “What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?” Lacan “Lacan never pursues purely philosophical objectives.” Badiou Questions, not meanings, are forgotten. May we therefore at last refrain from inquiring what psychoanalysis means, or asking what it is supposed to signify? And, since this alone is clearly insufficient, could it also be possible to take a cautious step “backwards,” simply in order […]

Event and Decision at Claremont Graduate University

Friday, December 7, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

New Badiou Translation!

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

comments 5

A.J. Bartlett / badiou / Concept of Model / mathematics / publication / re-press / Sam Gillespie / translation

As I have found out recently from A.J. Bartlett (co-editor of the Praxis of Alain Badiou), Re-press has just published a new translation of Alain Badiou’s The Concept of Model (see my partial translation here) with a scholarly introduction, translated by Zachary Fraser and Tzuchien Tho.

Translation of Vision-in-One: Additional Definition to Laruelle’s Dictionary of Non-Philosophy

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

comments 3

axiomatics / badiou / Deleuze / determination / French Translation / immanence / Laruelle / non-philosophy / the count / the multiple / the One / the Real / Theory / Philosophy / Untranslated Theory / vision-in-one

The following is an entry from Francois Laruelle’s Dictionnaire de la non-philosophie. Paris: Editions Kimé, 1998. Original translation by Sid Littlefield, 10/31/07. Vision-in-One (One, One-in-One, Real) Primary concept of non-philosophy, equivalent with “One-in-One” or the “Real.” What determines the theory of in-the-last-instance and the pragmatics of the Thought-World (“philosophy”). The vision-in-one is radically immanent and universal; it is the given-without-givenness of the givenness of the Thought-World. Philosophy is the desire and oppression of the One, […]

Translation: Alain Badiou and the Concept of the Model: Introduction to a Materialist Epistemology of Mathematics

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

comments 5

abstraction / badiou / Carnap / Dialectical Materialism / epistemology / French Translation / ideology / marxism / mathematics / meta-theory / model / philosophy of science / Quine / Untranslated Theory

The following is the first three sections of Alain Badiou’s first theoretical book Le Concept de modèle: introduction à une épistémologie matérialiste des mathématiques. Paris: Maspero, 1968. p. 7-17 and is an original translation by Taylor Adkins [10/17/07]. Editor’s Advertisement: The beginning of this text continues a talk given on April 29, 1968 by Alain Badiou within the framework of the “Course of philosophy for scientists” given to the National university. This continuation should have […]

French Translations: Works in Progress

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

comments 23

Bachelard / badiou / Boudot / Deleuze / French Translation / guattari / Laruelle / Lautman / Lyotard / Ruyer / Serres / Simondon / Stengers / Untranslated Theory / Whitehead

My last six posts have all been translations; they range from philosophy of science to paradigms for approaching and studying Nietzsche. I plan to continue working on translating Boudot’s work (including sections from three of his books on Nietzsche, featuring comparisons of Nietzsche with Bataille, Camus, and Bachelard); Ruyer’s work (Genesis of Living Forms, Cybernetics and the Origin of Information, and The Paradoxes of Consciousness and the Limits of Automatism); Guattari’s work (Schizoanalytic Cartographies; The […]

‘The Teacher of the Destruction of the Law:’ Introduction to Alain Badiou’s St. Paul

Friday, September 21, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

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anti-philosophy / atheism / badiou / Christianity / declaration / event / fidelity / Paul / universal politics

Badiou, Alain. Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism. Trans. Ray Brassier. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. Badiou starts off his book with an interesting definition of the fable: A ‘fable’ is that part of a narrative that, so far as we are concerned, fails to touch on any Real, unless it be by virtue of that invisible and indirectly accessible residue sticking to every obvious imaginary (4). Thus Badiou asserts that Paul reduces the Christian narrative […]

Politics beyond Ontology

Friday, August 31, 2007

by Joseph Weissman

comment 1

badiou / Deleuze / guattari / Nietzsche / ontology / Politics / Whitehead

Fractal Cow is made by Gabor Csordas and Gabor Papp and can be found at http://www.mndl.hu/works/fractalcow. Hypothesis in Process Philosophy Abstract It seems that we experience the world: but beyond this, what more can be said? Can we hypothesize the abyssal and incorporeal depths of the origin of social desire, and could description perhaps reach even farther? In this paper, my goal is to provide a reading of the work of Alain Badiou and Gilles […]

Wandering Fidelity: the State of the Political in Badiou and Deleuze-Guattari

Friday, August 31, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

comments 2

badiou / classes / Deleuze / fidelity / guattari / masses / nomads / ontology / Politics / subject-group

“Our quarrel can be formulated in a number of ways. We could approach it by way of some novel questions such as, for example: how is it that, for Deleuze, politics is not an autonomous form of thought, a singular section of chaos, one that differs from art, science and philosophy? This point alone bears witness to our divergence, and there is a sense in which everything can be said to follow from it.” –Alain […]

Identity and Division

Sunday, August 26, 2007

by Joseph Weissman

comments 5

badiou / distinction / event / identity / void

Identity Project (Skull Lab), oil on old silkscreen frames (February / March 2006) What is the relation between experience and identity? Clearly, a purely logical account of identity cannot lay claim to our ‘experience’ of identity, only its most formal aspects. Even an ontological account of identity, identity as collection of experiences or even identity as a pure cognitive event, would again demonstrate only the tautological function of identity (for example, agent A is that […]

Converging Debord, Badiou, Deleuze and Guattari

Friday, May 11, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

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badiou / BwO / Debord / Deleuze / Logic of Sense / oedipus

Three aspects of the spectacle—society itself/parts of society/means of unification. This is the place of false consciousness because it is where all consciousness converges–it is merely the official language of generalized separation [Badiou, language of the state of the situation, field of knowledge that is encyclopedic in its domination–a truth pierces the whole of knowledge by piercing a hole in knowledge, and, shall we say, causes an irruption to take place within the “official language,” […]

Being and Event: Meditation 23 on Fidelity

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

Logic of Sense: Series 25

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

comments 2

being and event / counter-actualization / Deleuze / disjunctive synthesis / extra-being / Logic of Sense / Monads / univocty

Of course, with Series 25, one could, along with Badiou, single out the title as the concept that needs to be unpacked, especially since univocity has a particularly Deleuzian ring to it. But the term—and Deleuze starts using it around p. 150 in the text—that most interests me in this series is counter-actualization. On the one hand, we can remember the play of the virtual/actual couple that Badiou finds so fun to dismantle. On the […]

Levinas

Friday, March 9, 2007

by Joseph Weissman

comment 1

badiou / levinas / meaning / metaphysics / multiplicity / ontology

Levinas addresses a question (or criticism) very similar to Badiou’s in his essay God and Philosophy (published in 1975, the ideas put forth were already put forth in different forms in lectures given from 1973-4). In these writings we find Levinas considering the tenability of the inclusion of God within philosophical discourse. It would seem that as soon as we conceptualize God’s existence, we must also situate God amidst existence, somehow mysteriously within being’s movement. […]

Badiou / Lacan / Descartes

Saturday, February 10, 2007

by Joseph Weissman

comment 1

badiou / being and event / cogito / descartes / lacan / ontology / psychoanalysis / truth

In the last chapter of Being and Event, Alain Badiou investigates Lacan’s relation to (what Badiou perceives as) his contiguity with the history of thought since Descartes. Badiou confronts Lacan with his overemphasis on the solidarity of the subject and her speech. In order to show this, Badiou highlights Lacan’s assertion of the subject’s ex-centered dependency with regard to language. After all, isn’t this already the Cartesian gesture embodied by the cogito? For example, when […]