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Philosophy as Anti-Religion in the Work of Alain Badiou

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Abstract

The Heideggerian rupture in the history of philosophy in the name of a phenomenological and poetic ontology has provided an opening which many of the key figures in twentieth century continental thought have exploited. However, this opening was marked by Heidegger himself as an ambiguous one, insofar as metaphysics was perhaps integrally ‘onto-theology,’ that is, ultimately continuous with the world-historical capture of the thought of being. This piece argues that the philosophy of Alain Badiou, which departs from the recognition that Heidegger is the ‘last universally recognised philosopher’, provides the means for a radical reconsideration of the philosophy-theology relationship in its specifically Heideggerian form, involving as it does further questions of science and technology, the status of the poem, and the nature of ontological thought as such. We argue that, through the deployment of mathematics as ontology, the Gordian knot of onto-theology and its legion of consequences can be cut, and a new assemblage of many of the key Heideggerian motifs can be put into play: the poem, history, and philosophy itself.

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Notes

  1. See Heidegger 1977 for easily-accessible English translations of some of the key texts.

  2. See Heidegger 1975.

  3. See the collection of texts in Heidegger 1971.

  4. See, among the very many works of Derrida which directly engage with Heidegger, Derrida 1982, 2008, 1987, and 1989; see also Lacoue-Labarthe 1990, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 1997, and the latter’s The Birth to Presence (Nancy 1993).

  5. See, for instance, the work of Emmanuel Levinas, including Levinas 1969, the more recent theology of Jean-Luc Marion, e.g. Marion 1991, and that of Michel Henry (Henry 2002; O’Sullivan 2006).

  6. See on this point, Milner 1995.

  7. See the notorious interview with Foucault in which he admits that, for him, Heidegger always remained ‘the essential philosopher,’ (Foucault 1989, p. 326); see also the illuminating interview with the great German media-theorist Friedrich Kittler, in which he baldly states: ‘For me, the import of Foucault and Lacan rests on the fact that their writings are two possible ways of returning to Heidegger without naming him,’ Kittler and Armitage 2006, p. 20.

  8. The key text in this regard is Deleuze 1990.

  9. See, for example, Inwood 2000.

  10. See, for instance, Agamben 1998, or Fukuyama 2002.

  11. Interestingly, this term is also to be found deployed in the writings of Félix Guattari, both before and after his encounter with Deleuze (see Genosko 2002, especially the second chapter). Given Badiou’s strangely delayed introduction to the Anglo-American philosophical scene — having all of the characteristics of the structure of a trauma — much remains to be done in relating his thought in an appropriately detailed manner with that of his contemporaries, especially when they are, like Guattari, ‘enemies’.

  12. As the translator David Farell Krell notes, the translator of this volume notes, this is perhaps the earliest terminological use of the word ‘Ereignis’ in Heidegger’s thought.

  13. Indeed, in Badiou 1999, Badiou gives the palm to modern capitalism for killing God.

  14. In addition to the aforementioned references, see Badiou 1991, 1992a , b, 2003b , c, and 2005b.

  15. Indeed, as Richard Rorty once remarked, Heidegger ‘was never able to see politics or art as more than epiphenomenal — never able to shake off the philosophy professor’s conviction that everything else stands to philosophy as superstructure to base’ (Rorty 1992, p. 225).

  16. See also Chapter 3 of Badiou 2003a for a slightly different account of the concept of ‘nihilism,’ where he takes up the Nietzschean definition of preferring to will nothingness rather than not will at all.

  17. For a brief justification of these features, see Clemens 2006.

  18. See also the essay on ‘Philosophy and Poetry’ in Badiou 2003b, pp. 135–49.

  19. Badiou discusses this conjunction insightfully in the opening Meditation of Being and Event (Badiou 2005 [1988]), but also in his book on Deleuze (see Badiou 2000, pp. 79–81). On the inscriptive nature of Badiou’s use of mathematics, see also Clemens 2003.

  20. This is already indicated in his claim that Badiou maintains an ‘ontology of number’. Certainly, Badiou does present such an ontology, particularly in the closing parts of Badiou 2008. However, the claim is not that being is numerical in nature — a claim that has a number of close relatives and a rich lineage in early modern philosophy. Rather, as Badiou insists in the Introduction of Being and Event, ‘The thesis that I support does not in any way declare that being is mathematical, which is to say composed of mathematical objectivities. It is not a thesis about the world but about discourse. It affirms that mathematics, throughout the entirety of its historical becoming, pronounces what is expressible of being qua being.’ (Badiou 2005a [1988], p. 8).

  21. Again, the key point of reference here is the opening Meditation of Being and Event, which connects the subordination of the one to the multiple to Lacan.

  22. The paradigmatic text, with respect to deconstructive approaches to the tradition, is certainly Jacques Derrida’s ‘Differance’ (Derrida 1982, pp. 3–27).

  23. On the significant role of formalism in Badiou’s thought, see the enlightening remarks on this topic in a recent interview published at the close of Badiou 2007.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, P.O. Box 4272, 3052, Victoria, Australia

    Justin Clemens

  2. Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, University of Tasmania, Melbourne, Australia

    Jon Roffe

  3. Philosophy Program, School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry, La Trobe University, Victoria, 3086, Australia

    Jon Roffe

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  1. Justin Clemens
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Correspondence to Justin Clemens.

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Clemens, J., Roffe, J. Philosophy as Anti-Religion in the Work of Alain Badiou. SOPHIA 47, 345–358 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-008-0078-z

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