This week, we will take another deep dive into a contemporary philosopher’s view on ethics. This time, Alain Badiou and his book Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil.
This book was written for the level of a French High Schooler, which makes it easier to read than some of his other work, but honestly, it certainly made me question my own education. In many ways, this relates to the work of Alenka Zupančič that we covered over the last few weeks.
Ethics
Badiou begins by sharing his perspective on contemporary ethics. He asserts that today,
the term ‘ethics’ relates above all to the domain of human rights… We are supposed to assume the existence of a universally recognizable human subject possessing ‘rights’ that are in some sense natural: the right to live, to avoid abusive treatment, to enjoy ‘fundamental’ liberties (of opinion, of expression, of democratic choice in the election of governments, etc.). These rights are held to be self-evident, and the result of a wide consensus. ‘Ethics’ is a matter of busying ourselves with these rights, of making sure that they are respected.1
Further, he sees ethics as being grounded in the concept of evil “Evil is that from which the Good is derived, not the other way round.” (9) And that “‘Human rights’ are rights to non-Evil: rights not to be offended or mistreated with respect to one’s life (the horrors of murder and execution), one’s body (the horrors of torture, cruelty and famine), or one’s cultural identity (the horrors of the humiliation of women, of minorities, etc.).” (9)
This idea is similar to Zupančič, whom we talked about for the last few weeks, who asserted that much of contemporary ethics is about constraint and what you cannot do.
Badiou, on the other hand, asserts that ethics should be based on the following ideas:
• Thesis 1: Man is to be identified by his affirmative thought, by the singular truths of which he is capable, by the Immortal which makes of him the most resilient [résistant] and most paradoxical of animals.
• Thesis 2: It is from our positive capability for Good, and thus from our boundary-breaking treatment of possibilities and our refusal of conservatism, including the conservation of being, that we are to identify Evil – not vice versa.
• Thesis 3: All humanity has its root in the identification in thought [en pensée] of singular situations. There is no ethics in general. There are only – eventually – ethics of processes by which we treat the possibilities of a situation. (16)
In other words, first, by understanding truths and holding to them, we can go beyond our situation and attach ourselves to something much more significant and “immortal.” Second, by seeing good as something we can do and achieve, we define evil as a conservative approach that refuses that rather than seeing evil as an absence of good. Finally, every situation and context is unique, so ethics must be specific to each context.
Accepting of Differences
One of the ways that contemporary ethics presents itself is around the idea of the other and accepting differences. However, Badiou notes the limitations of this, writing that often we would say:
I respect differences, but only, of course, in so far as that which differs also respects, just as I do, the said differences. Just as there can be ‘no freedom for the enemies of freedom’, so there can be no respect for those whose difference consists precisely in not respecting differences. (24)
He continues:
The problem is that the ‘respect for differences’ and the ethics of human rights do seem to define an identity! And that as a result, the respect for differences applies only to those differences that are reasonably consistent with this identity (which, after all, is nothing other than the identity of a wealthy – albeit visibly declining – ‘West’). (24)
That is to say, we are inclusive only of those who are inclusive in the same ways we are. We see this dynamic happening often at work where some differences are excluded. As Badiou says succinctly, “Become like me and I will respect your difference.” (25)
These differences tend then to be the root of our conception of ethics.
Contemporary ethics kicks up a big fuss about ‘cultural’ differences. Its conception of the ‘other’ is informed mainly by this kind of differences. Its great ideal is the peaceful coexistence of cultural, religious, and national ‘communities’, the refusal of ‘exclusion’. But what we must recognize is that these differences hold no interest for thought, that they amount to nothing more than the infinite and self-evident multiplicity of humankind, as obvious in the difference between me and my cousin from Lyon as it is between the Shi’ite ‘community’ of Iraq and the fat cowboys of Texas. The objective (or historical) foundation of contemporary ethics is culturalism, in truth a tourist’s fascination for the diversity of morals, customs and beliefs. And in particular, for the irreducible medley of imaginary formations (religions, sexual representations, incarnations of authority …) (26)
Now, this position may sound very conservative. It seems to reject inclusivity and what we consider good, which should make us take notice. Badiou is far from conservative and is creating a much more progressive stance.
The problem with a focus on difference is that it always comes from a perspective that something different is compared to some standard, and that standard is often based on those with power. When describing something as different, it is essential to ask, “Different from what?” In that way, we can often see the power differential at play.
For Badiou, we are all different. And there is no point in focusing on this. He points out, “There are as many differences, say, between a Chinese peasant and a young Norwegian professional as between myself and anybody at all, including myself.” (26)
Each of us is different from everyone else in unmeasurable ways, and we are not even consistent within ourselves. From this perspective, equality is always about treating people based on their unique position. This makes focusing on and accepting difference as a root of ethics meaningless; instead, he is looking for what can unite people: truth.
Badiou makes the point that for something to be a truth, it must be universal, and it must transcend these differences that we are locked into
since differences are what there is, and since every truth is the coming-to-be of that which is not yet, so differences are then precisely what truths depose, or render insignificant… Only a truth is, as such, indifferent to differences. This is something we have always known, even if sophists of every age have always attempted to obscure its certainty: a truth is the same for all. (27)
With this concept of truth, Badiou moves beyond what can be seen as any form of moral or cultural relativism.
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. Ethics must be taken in the sense presumed by Lacan when, against Kant and the notion of a general morality, he discusses the ethics of psychoanalysis. Ethics does not exist. There is only the ethic-of (of politics, of love, of science, of art). There is not, in fact, one single Subject, but as many subjects as there are truths, and as many subjective types as there are procedures of truths. As for me, I identify four fundamental subjective ‘types’: political, scientific, artistic, and amorous [amoureux].(28)
Ethics must always be contextual. It must be the ethics of business, managing, or governing. And we must recognize that every person is unique in their relationship to these truths, which are universal.
Universal Truths
Many may feel uneasy about this idea of universal truths because it harkens back to the position of religion. It seems that to make something universal is to exclude the perspectives of others, and traditionally, the marginalized and excluded have been the powerless. But Badiou counters this argument.
Precisely because a truth, in its invention, is the only thing that is for all, so it can actually be achieved only against dominant opinions, since these always work for the benefit of some rather than all. (32)
It is precisely that a truth is for everyone and doesn’t benefit anyone more than anyone else that it has its value as something universal. This definition of a truth, as we shall see, is critical to Badiou’s notion of ethics.
For Badiou, ethics is about being loyal to a truth procedure, and the central maxim is “Do not give up.”
‘Do not give up’ is the maxim of consistency – and thus of the ethic of a truth – we might well say that it is a matter, for the ‘some-one’, of being faithful to a fidelity. (47)
This leads to Badiou’s clarification of his ethics of truth:
‘Do all that you can to persevere in that which exceeds your perseverance. Persevere in the interruption. Seize in your being that which has seized and broken you.’ (47)
This will strike you as familiar for readers who made it through the last few posts on Zupančič. To be ethical is a requirement to move through and be willing to give up even that which is most vital.
To help and clarify this, Badiou sees that the subject needs “needs something to have happened, something that cannot be reduced to its ordinary inscription in ‘what there is’. Let us call this supplement an event, and let us distinguish multiple-being, where it is not a matter of truth (but only of opinions), from the event, which compels us to decide a new way of being.” (41)
Thus, this subject must decide on a new way of being because of an event that has broken them out of being who they are forced to reconcile with a new way of being due to an event.
From which ‘decision’, then, stems the process of a truth? From the decision to relate henceforth to the situation from the perspective of its evental [événementiel] supplement. Let us call this a fidelity. To be faithful to an event is to move within the situation that this event has supplemented, by thinking.. the situation ‘according to’ the event. (41)
The subject’s decision must be based on a desire to remain faithful to what the event has made known such that the subject is willing to change how they are in all contexts (situations) based on that new knowledge.
To understand this, we need to understand two key terms: a truth and an event.
Essentially, a truth is… an immanent break. ‘Immanent’ because a truth proceeds in the situation, and nowhere else – there is no heaven of truths. ‘Break’ because what enables the truth-process – the event – meant nothing according to the prevailing language and established knowledge of the situation. (42-43)
A truth is something that cannot be understood by what is expected in a situation; it is not something we can know in advance, talk about, or even discuss.2 Events are individual instances of these truth processes.
Thus, the question we must ask ourselves in the ethics of the truth is
how will I, as some-one, continue to exceed my own being? How will I link the things I know, in a consistent fashion, via the effects of being seized by the not-known?…how will I continue to think? That is, to maintain in the singular time of my multiple-being, and with the sole material resources of this being, the Immortal that a truth brings into being through me in the composition of a subject. (50)
That is, Badiou encourages us to ask, “How will we relate to the various self-identities that we have when we learn new things that challenge what we know?”
And, Badiou clarifies, what we learn, the new truth that we discover, doesn’t come as something that we can be 100% convinced of.
In one of my previous books, my formula was: ‘Love what you will never believe twice’ [Aimez ce que jamais vous ne croirez deux fois]. In this the ethic of a truth is absolutely opposed to opinion, and to ethics in general, which is itself nothing but a schema of opinion. For the maxim of opinion is: ‘Love only that which you have always believed.’ (52)
This is a bet. We can’t know if it is an event or a truth. We must make a leap. We must take a risk and be convinced by something that separates us from our beliefs and what we know.
Let us not forget that all the components of my multiple-being could never be engaged together – no more, by the way, through the pursuit of my interests than through the consistency of a subject of truth. And so it can always happen that the brutal requisition of this or that ‘dormant’ component – under the socialized pressure of interests, or as an ongoing stage of a fidelity – might destabilize all the previous fictional assemblages through which I organized my self-representation. (55)
As a subject, we must realize that fidelity to an event can mean the destruction of portions of our identity. As Badiou previously stated, we are different from ourselves, we have multiple perspectives, and are not always consistent. A truth will make us give up pieces of who we are for who we are becoming.
Conclusion
While the simple statement of the ethics that Badiou shares is “Keep going!”, there are three key things that we must bear in mind:
resources of discernment (do not fall for simulacra), of courage (do not give up), and of moderation [réserve] (do not get carried away to the extremes of Totality). (97)
To explain each of these:
- We must be sure that an event is a real event. In many ways, we cannot know for sure (“Love what you will never believe twice”), but we must be discerning. We must see that what is named by the event, what comes to be seen as a truth, was previously outside of what was discussable. It must be like the object in an optical illusion that was present but could not be seen until that moment that broke. To be a true event, it must be universal and progressive. It must lead to greater equality.
- We must have the courage to commit to what has changed. We take on many identities, some of which may not be compatible with the truth. We must have the courage to abandon our ways of seeing ourselves to remain faithful to the event.
- We must not allow the truth to totalize everything. We must allow something to remain outside and unnamed by the truth. This creates the possibility for future truths.
What does this mean for a middle manager?
- We need to move beyond the idea of thinking of the differences of our teams, we often focus on demographic traits and try to find a way to make differences work, and we should encourage instead the perspective to operate from the perspective of truths and identify real truths which can never be at the expense of an individual or group.
- We must hold our identity lightly and take truths as opportunities to a new becoming and remain true to that, knowing that we will lose something as a result.
- We must recognize that for every truth, there are things that cannot be named. While it is universal (the same for everyone), it is not absolute (valid in all conditions).
Such a truth-procedure can begin only with some sort of break with the ordinary situation in which it takes place – what Badiou calls an event. An event has no objective or verifiable content. Its ‘happening’ cannot be proved, only affirmed and proclaimed. Event, subject, and truth are thus all aspects of a single process of affirmation: a truth comes into being through those subjects who maintain a resilient fidelity to the consequences of an event that took place in a situation but was not of it. (ix)
- Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (p. 4) All future references will have the page number in parentheses. ↩
- This is similar to the Lacanian concept of the real. Which was discussed here. ↩