Ethics are everywhere in modern society. Nearly every profession has an ethic that their professionals must uphold. Institutions, be them small county legislative boards or international and monstrous, like the IMF, have codes of conduct. “With respect to today’s socially inflated recourse to ethics, the purpose of this essay is twofold:”
“-To begin with, I will examine the precise nature of this phenomenon, which is the major ‘philosophical’ tendency of the day, as much in public opinion as for official institutions. I will try to establish that in reality it amounts to a genuine nihilism, a threatening denial of thought as such.The structure of the book proceeds from the subject (Does Man Exist?) to the object (Does the Other Exist?). It then explains how our current discourse of ethics edges towards nihilism (Ethics as a Figure of Nihilism). The final two chapters represent an argument for a different construction of ethics (The Ethic of Truths) and the sorting out of one of the problems with this argument (The Problem of Evil).
-I will then argue against this meaning of the term ‘ethics’, and propose a very different one. Rather than link the word to abstract categories (Man or Human, Right or Law, the Other…), it should be referred back to particular situations. Rather than reduce it to an aspect of pity for victims, it should become the enduring maxim of singular processes. Rather than make of it merely the province of conservatism with a good conscience, it should concern the destiny of truths, in the plural (3)”
In the section that deals with the subject, Badiou begins by examining three thinkers who rejected the universal in favor of the particular. Foucault, Althusser and Lacan are all highlighted as people who looked towards the construction of language, towards processes, and contingency for their clues as to the formulation of theory. Badiou is clear that these thinkers are not indifferent to suffering, as some would claim because of their lack of focus on objectivity. No, “the truth is exactly the opposite: all were—each in his own way, and far more than those who uphold the cause of ‘ethics’ and ‘human rights’ today—the attentive and courageous militants of a cause” (6).
The current, modern construction of ethical is then examined. It is understood to be a priori, negative determinations of evil. He then highlights some of the themes of this project of ethics: a general human subject is posited, politics is subordinate to ethics, Evil is that from which Good is derived and that ‘Human Rights’ are rights to non-Evil (9).
This ethic has become unethical. It is characterized by universal self-interest, a lack of (truly) emancipatory politics and competition. It calls into question what man is, or whether s/he exists. This ethical project identifies people as victims. It reduces man to the level of an animal. It identifies man as the source of evil. It prevents itself from thinking singularly through its negative determination of Evil.
This is not the way to be faithful to ethics or to a situation. To be faithful means, “to treat it right to the limit of possibility. Or, if you prefer: to draw from this situation, to the greatest possible extent, the affirmative humanity that it contains. Or again: to try to be the immortal of the situation” (15).
Badiou rejects this negative and victimizing view of humanity. However, he ends the section with a play-critique from an ethicist: the ethic doesn’t begin with the subject, it begins with the other.
Does the Other Exist?
Badiou begins by looking at Lévinas’ view of the other and determines that a strictly Western, Greek origin of the term will not suffice and that rather a Jewish origin will be more helpful. “The Law, indeed, does not tell me what is, but what is imposed by the existence of others” (19).
This “other”, however, should not be seen as a simple “not-self”, but rather a radical Absolute Other, or, according to Badiou, the ethical name for God. “This means that in order to be intelligible, ethics requires that the Other be in some sense carried by a principle of alterity which transcends mere finite experience” (22). The ethical obligation stems from this radical alterity which is not bound by space and time, i.e. God.
But, since God does not exist (25), what are we left with? We are left with an infinite alterity which is what is there. The differences that we experience between distinct groups of people exist, but that is not what brings together. What brings together is truth, or rather, what deposes difference: in my terms, common experience.
“The only genuine ethics is of truths in the plural—or, more precisely, the only ethics is of processes of truth, of the labour that brings some truths into the world” (28).
Ethics as a Figure of Nihilism
“Ethics is nihilist because its underlying conviction is that the only thing that can really happen to someone is death” (35). Badiou then proceeds into the realm of bio-ethics, biopolitics, etc.
“Considered as a figure of nihilism, reinforced by the fact that our societies are without a figure that can be represented as universal, ethics oscillates between two complementary desires: a conservative desire, seeking global recognition for the legitimacy of the order peculiar to our “Western’ position—the interweaving of an unbridled and impassive economy with a discourse of law; and a murderous desire that promotes and shrouds, in one and the same gesture, an integral mastery of life—or again, that dooms what is to the ‘Western’ mastery of death” (38).
The Ethic of Truths
“If there is no ethics ‘in general’, that is because there is no abstract Subject, who would adopt it as his shield. There is only a particular kind of animal, convoked by certain circumstances to become a subject—or rather, to enter into the composing of a subject” (40). Ethics is a process whereby the subject needs something to have happened, the subject needs an event that goes beyond the universal and identifies the subject in the particular. The subject has to be honest with the event, and respond faithfully to it. “I shall call ‘truth’ (a truth) the real process of a fidelity to an event: that which this fidelity produces in the situation” (42).
The Problem of Evil
Badiou has already explained how an a priori justification of the concept of Evil is problematic. He then goes on to explain where we must begin to examine the existence of Evil. “If Evil exists, we must conceive it from the starting point of the Good. Without consideration of the Good, and thus of truths, there remains only the cruel innocence of life, which is beneath Good and beneath Evil” (60).
He goes on to claim that, of course there is Evil (look at the Nazi’s), but that the Evil only exists because of truths, and that these truths, though they create Evil, do their best to wipe it out. The process works like this: there is an event, a realization, cognitive disequilibrium, which brings about the seed of truth. Then, there is fidelity and exploration of this event. Finally, there is the truth that is created through a process, that is always in a state of yet-to-be. This allows for the three terrors of Badiou: terror (through simulacrum of truth), betrayal (of fidelity), and disaster (the identification of a truth with total power).
Conclusion
“This maxim [an acceptable concept of ethics] proclaims, in its general version, ‘Keep going!’ Continue to be this ‘someone’, a human animal among others, which nevertheless finds itself seized and displaced by the eventual process of a truth. Continue to be the active part of that subject of a truth that you have happened to become” (90-1).
Also:
“The ethics combines, then, under the imperative to ‘Keep going!’, resources of discernment (do not fall for simulacra), of courage (do not give up), and of moderation (do not get carried away to the extremes of Totality)” (91).
Fun Quote:
“Our century has been a graveyard of positivist ideas and progress” (84)
