‘kierkegaard, metaphysics, and political theory’

my review of Alison Assiter’s recent book on Kierkegaard is now up on the Philosophers Magazine website. You can read it here.

it’s maybe a bit harsh, but at least honest.

Will of the people: notes

So, to hopefully push forward the discussion which started during the last post, I’m going to post some rough notes/thoughts on Hallward’s ‘The will of the people’.

I’ll begin with Hallward’s definition of ‘will of the people’, which for him is “[...] a deliberate, emancipatory and inclusive process of collective self-determination.”

For me the crucial question is in regards to the use of the term ’self’ in this description, and more importantly, the question of anthropology, which resides under this discussion. At this point, Hallward has not developed any sort of an anthropology of this wiling self, or, free human. Although it may be coming in a more full scale work, I think any project of this sort needs to start with some simple questions on the nature of the human as such, and the subsequent capacity for this human to act as both an individual and as a unit of a collective project. A failure to theorize the human in this way is what seems to lead to the accusations of this project being either ‘vitalist’ or ‘folk-psychological’ (criticisms he anticipates in this piece).

Another interesting point in the piece is when Hallward claims:

“It’s no accident that, like Agamben and Zizek, when Badiou looks to the Christian tradition for a point of anticipation he turns not to Matthew (with his prescriptions of how to act in the world: spurn the rich, affirm the poor, ’sell all thou hast’…) but to Paul (with his contempt for the weakness of human will and his valorization of the abrupt and infinite transcendence of grace).”

Two thoughts here. First, this brings up the generally interesting question about why recent political philosophers using Christianity for material have focused so much on Paul, for whom man is ultimately nothing without divine grace (theologians, correct me if I’m reading him wrong), and thus, using Paul seems to hold on to some sense of divine transcendence (whether this be the divine/god/void/nothingness). Hallward’s point here seems to once again focus on what could be called (in light of Badiou) pre-evental man. Whereas Badiou’s pauline subject comes into existence with the event, it seems as if Hallward is attempting to theorize the human as that which can will to act on its own accord, and subsequently use this individual will to reinforce and support collective will. Rather than drawing on some ‘outside’, Hallward here seems to want to emphasize the inherent potential (potentia) of humanity to act politically. Once again, this issue seems to reside on the question of anthropology, and a theorization of this pre-evental human. The risk here, from my perspective, would be theorizing the individual human in such a way as to not lapse back into a tired brand of liberal individualism, and instead theorize the individual as that which is dialectically related to the group at all times. The tension seems to be, how to keep the willing individual, without losing the group subject.

A bit further on in the piece, he quotes S’bu Zikode, who is the chairperson of the Durban shack dwellers movement Abahali baseMjondolo as calling for a ‘living communism’ which asserts the ‘humanity of every human being.’ Hallward seems to openly affirm this call, which brings up the question of the place of both life (living communism) and humanity once again. I know I must be sounding redundant at this point, but I must again ask, what do these terms (life/humanity) mean in this context, and how does a theory of the living human ground this theory of dialectical voluntarism as a whole?

I’ll stop my notes here (about half way through the article) to keep it short, and will hopefully post more later. But as can be seen, my main issue at this point is one of anthropology. What does it mean to be human for Hallward? And equally, what does it mean to be a living human? My concern revolves around who this human is that is able to freely will and organize in collectives. It may seem nit-picky, but for me these issues are crucial when one wants to theorize from the individual to the group in a way which thoroughly accounts for each.

Would love to hear some other thoughts on this.

Hallward’s ‘The Will of the People’

This could very well by old news, but a pdf of Hallward’s piece from the last radical philosophy is available here.

While this has been around for a couple of months now, I’ve yet to see any interaction with it on the world wide interwebs. This may due to lack of accessibility, or because this piece (as well as Hallward’s current project) seems to fall outside the realm of what’s ‘in’ in interweb based philosophy these days. Personally, I have lots of sympathies with his project, and will try to find time to post some thoughts of critical affirmation soon. As I said in a previous post, I was surprised with the hostility towards Hallward’s position which emerged at the Immanence/Materialism conference in London a few weeks back, so would be interested in hearing others thoughts on this piece, and the project in general.

Ernst Bloch-Atheism in Christianity

Peter Thompson left this comment today on an older post, and I think it deserves to be seen by all:

Dear All
one of the figures who has been largely forgotten or ignored in the whole debate about liberation theology is Ernst Bloch, who, as a Marxist, took as his starting point the attempt to define the message of exodus in the old and new testaments as a self-misunderstood rational for the uprising of the subaltern. Verso are just re-publishing this work in English translation and I think it could answer some of the debates going on on this (excellent) blog. He anticipates much of the stuff which Badiou, Zizek, Meillasoux etc. have argued and posits the possibility of transcendence without the transcendental. The book can be found at http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/b-titles/bloch_ernst_atheism_and_christianity.shtml
or http://www.amazon.co.uk/Atheism-Christianity-Ernst-Bloch/dp/1844673944and has an interesting and very good new introduction (hey, if I don’t say it no-one else will!)

I have heard about Bloch before but have yet to read him, but I’m glad Peter has brought this work (which was has written the introduction for) to light. As soon as it’s available for order I will definitely be checking this out. Of specific interest seems to be Bloch’s work on transcendence.  If anyone here is familiar with Bloch’s work I’d love to hear more…

new Kierkegaard texts

As many whom either know me personally, or know this blog digitally, have ascertained, one of my primary areas of interests is the work of Soren Kierkegaard, and specifically in developing a reading of his work which places him in proximity with the political and ontological concerns of the recent materialists (and/or ‘post-phenomenological’) traditions of European, and specifically French Philosophy. That said, there are two recent works which seem to share a similar concern, which is both exciting and encouraging.

The first, written by Latin American (but US based) Theologian Eliseo Pérez-Álvarez, is entitled A Vexing Gadfly: The Late Kierkegaard on Economic Matters.This one is not only interesting as its the first study (at least that I’m aware of) which takes Kierkegaard seriously on economic matters, and its about time. Even more interesting is that the preface to this book was written by liberation philosopher Enrique Dussel, on whom I wrote much of my MA (on liberation philosophy and theology). It’s always exciting when two seemingly disparate research areas converge. Regardless, I’m waiting for this to be available on amazon.co.uk, and I will likely post thoughts as soon as its in my hands.

The other book, written by Alison Assiter of University of West England, is titled Kierkegaard, Metaphyics, and Political Theory. Sadly, this is being published in the Continuum series which constantly publishes interesting sounding text in paperback only editions cost over £50, far out of the economic reach of this books prime audience, PhD students. That said, I’m hoping to get an inter-library-loan copy of this book to read, and I’m really looking forward to it. Taking Kierkegaard seriously in regards to metaphysics and politics is one of the issues which helps get me up in the morning, so its exciting to someone else with a similar concern. I must admit, however, that when I first heard of this book I was afraid that it would render my project un-original, but luckily, what I’ve seen of this work so far seems to be far from what I’m working on.

Regardless, both would be interesting for anyone wanting to reckon with Kierkegaard as a political (and inherently non-postmodern) thinker should give these a read. I’ll try my best to post some notes once I acquire these.

existential marixsm in postwar france

I’m sure many of you are already well aware of this, but if you’re not, Mark Poster’s important text, ‘Existential Marxism in Postwar France‘ is available online in the form of a well organized website.

Worth a read if you get the chance.

the incident at antioch/the incident at glasgow

As always, sorry for never posting. I can promise that while not posting here, I’ve been getting good philosophical work done in the real world though! More on that at another time…

So, a couple of weeks ago a colleague and myself spent the day at an event in Glasgow which featured the first english performance of Alain Badiou’s play ‘Incident at Antioch’. The event featured about an hour of selected scenes from the play, followed by a ‘discussion’ time in which the translator of the play and Ward Blanton (University of Glasgow) asked questions to Badiou, and it ended with about 20 minutes of open q&a time.

So first, the bad. The play was embarassingly terrible. My colleague and myself, who seemed to be two of the only philosophy-types there (the event was advertised and organized by theology/literature people) were having to hold back from laughing out loud during some of the scenes. It was almost as if someone fed a copy of ‘Being and Event’ to some automatic play generator website. The character development was pretty hilarious as well, you had this angry revolutionary son who represented Theorie Du Sujet with a more axiomatic mother who’s personality resembled Being and Event. I’m sure if the play was updated he’d add a wise old grandmother to represent Logiques de Mondes. Badiou seemed to at least be somewhat aware of his (lack of) playwright abilities, as he at one point quipped that this was the second public performance of this piece in over twenty years.

During the initial part of the discussion time the translator and Ward Blanton (who is a professor of biblical literature I think?) asked fairly tame questions. The translator of the play (I forget her name, American woman from LA) asked fairly boring questions and treated Badiou as an interesting playwright rather than an important philosopher, and clearly her background made it unlikely that she really had a basic grasp of his philosophical work anyways. Blanton’s questions were a bit better, although he kept trying to ‘push’ Badiou into talking about religion/theology, which he slyly avoided by basically quoting himself from the St. Paul book. The level of discussion made it seem as if most of the crowd had read the St. Paul book, and likely nothing else, so for someone who is a serious student of Badiou, it was a bit frustrating.

After the moderated discussion they opened the floor for questions. The first question amounted to “hi, I’ve clearly never read your work but am now going to ask a question in which I seem like I’m being creative and challenging but in fact just exhibiting the fact that I haven’t even read the introduction to one of your major works”, and sadly, Badiou then spent 10 minutes responding with some really basic remarks about his system as a whole. The next question was asked by my colleague, and was quite an in depth question regarding forcing, cohen, set theory, etc; and sadly, I don’t think Badiou understood much of it, and the translator didn’t get it either, so it wasn’t translated well, and then he just gave a basic response regarding the place of set theory in his work. I had my hand up to ask a question about Kierkegaard (which in all fairness amounted to me searching for some justification regarding my doctoral research project) but sadly they cut off questions after about 20 minutes.

Although Badiou wasn’t really given time to speak at length, I took some notes and will share them here:

At one point while discussing violence he stated that “Violence is the result of order, not dis-order.” Which was interesting.

Later he mapped out what he sees as the four primary political ‘groups’. They were:

1) Students

2) Residents of the Paris Suburbs

3) Workers

4) Undocumented Works

He went on to say that a riot amongst one group qualifies as a revolt or movement, but the inauguration of a new politic (or a real politic) requires that 2 or more groups be engaged. At one point he said “politics is to create the passage between one movement and others.” He said that when groups go to action one by one, it qualifies as revolt, but one more than one group go into action together it becomes a political possibility. He went out to define politics as “the creation of the passage between two different groups“, and said that “the union of four groups would be the revolution“, and only in extraordinary circumstances is that possible.

He then went onto to provide a counting exercise that was right out of a revolutionary version of sesame street in which he stated that:

“4 is the number of the event, or change; 3 of new forms of organization; 2 is the number of politics; and 1 is nothing.”

So, nothing new exciting, but as a some sort of ’student’ of Badiou’s work, I still found it to be exciting experience, although I’m hoping that the communism conference in London next week will serve as a much more intense experience of Badiou’s ‘live’ work.

Kierkegaard and Capital

My supervisor makes me write a lot. Here is an excerpt from a pile of notes on Kierkegaard I threw together for this week’s supervision:

—–

In opposition to the present age, Kierkegaard provides the revolutionary age, which is “an age of action”, in opposition to the present age of “advertisement and publicity.”  This critique of the present age’s obsession with the press leads to one of Kierkegaard’s only direct critiques of the expanding grasp of capital in his age:

“In the end, therefore, money will be the one thing people will desire, which is moreover only representative, an abstraction. Nowadays a young man hardly envies anyone his gifts, his art, the love of a beautiful girl, or his fame; he only envies him his money. Give me money, he will say, and I am saved.”  (The Present Age)

By noting that the young man of the present age seeks salvation in money, Kierkegaard is one of the first authors to overtly critique the inherently religious nature of capital. This reliance on money is a sign of the overarching problem of the present age, a lack of passion and action. Because of this lack of ability to act passionately, “everything is transformed into representational ideas.”  Thus, the present age is one obsessed with nothing but reflection and representation, and this lack of anything real, or actual, is the cause of a lack of a passionate prior self-relation in the individual. Here it is clear that Kierkegaard’s conception of subjectivity in no way leads to stark a-social and a-political individualism, but is instead the necessary pre-condition for the individual to passionately exist in (and affect) reality.

meillassoux vs. hallward vs. brown

An interesting debate seems to be taking place in response to Peter Hallward’s recent review of ‘After Finitude’ which was published in this month’s issue of radical philosophy. If you don’t normally read radical philosophy, I highly recommend getting a copy from your library or local bookstore and reading this review, which is on par, and in many ways similar, to the previously mentioned review of Logics of Worlds Hallward published in last month’s New Left Review.

Over at speculative heresy they have posted a response to Hallward’s review by Nathan Brown. It’s a well thought out review that brings up many good points, but, I must say that I still side with Hallward’s review. I think his critique of Meillassoux’s use of mathematics (which is very similar to the way he critiques the use of mathematics in Badiou) is quite accurate, and poses an interesting problem for those of us working on Badiou and Meillassoux.

For a taste of Brown’s piece, towards the end he says:

“Throughout Hallward’s critique of After Finitude, the basic move is to extend the book’s arguments beyond the proper domain of their application and then to hold Meillassoux accountable for the resulting difficulties.”

I, for one, find this critique a bit problematic. Hallward brings up some important questions regarding the potential (or lack there of) present in Meillassoux’s contingent ontology to bring about political and social transformation. As much as Meillassoux doesn’t explicitly set out to make an argument of this sort in After Finitude, can’t it still be said that every ontology necessarily has political and social implications? And if Meillassoux holds a position of absolute contingency, doesn’t it leave us waiting for political novelty to happen, rather than providing a way towards developing the sort of ‘transformational materialism’ that Hallward seems to be aiming for? In a sense this critique is very similar to those levelled against Badiou, and specifically in regards to what is to be done in the pre-evental state of existence from the perspective of the potential subject. Whereas Badiou has (to an extent) clarified this in Logiques des Mondes in the sections on the commune, intensity, and evental sites; Meillassoux has yet to clarify what is to be done towards the work of transformation in a situation of absolute contingency. He could very well, and I would assume likely will, clear this up in his future work; but as it stands now, it seems as if Hallward has every right to make this critique.

The only thing I would say regarding Hallward, is that in light of his two recent reviews, I’m quite anxious to see how he attempts to solve these problems haunting contemporary French materialism in his own work. As far as I know he still seems to be working on his political will/determination project, but hopefully he takes a more constructive and original path in his future work and begins to develop this transformational materialism he seems to find lacking in both Badiou and Meillassoux.

in lieu of ‘real’ posting

Due to being currently caught in the grips of quite a nasty flu, I am incapable of posting anything worth reading. So instead I recommend you go and read this post over at poetix, which is an interesting reading of Meillassoux ’spectral dillema’ in relation to Marx’s theory of alienation.

Here is the conclusion to whet your appetite:

“What we should seek to recover from the political and cultural projects of the past is not their squandered vitality, but their abandoned fidelity.”