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Roberto N. Pedroso
Professor Chin
CMLT 24901
3 June 2010
Cosmopolitanism as Ontological Demand: Lacan, Badiou, and Diogenes
Although we are all cosmopolitans, Homo sapiens has done rather poorly in
interpreting this condition. We seem to have trouble with the balancing act,
preferring to reify local identities or construct universal ones. We live in-between.
(Rabinow 258)
Paul Rabinows words, we are all cosmopolitans, form the heart of this treatise. The
word cosmopolitan dates back to the Cynic Diogenes, who [a]sked where he came from, he
said, I am a citizen of the world. This logic of unity resonates through the Meditations of the
Stoic Marcus Aurelius and the universalism of Pauline Christianity.
The word cosmopolitanism, however, lends itself to the misinterpretation Rabinow
opposes. The suffix, -ism, for example, implies the action of a verb, or a movement, neither of
which align with the signified of cosmopolitanism. This confusion has lead to entire centuries
of thought that has labeled cosmopolitanism as a particular set of procedures or institutions, such
as baptism, or a movement with a set of specific characteristics, such as liberalism. Worse yet,
some come to see the cosmopolitan as an elite, privileged figure, with no respect for the rooted
vernacular (Clifford 99).
These conceptions often mean well; for example, Kant postulates a federation of
sovereign states to ensure perpetual peace, but in doing so, both limits cosmopolitan
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hospitality to the right of residence, and relegates it to the status of an ethical ideal. Others
discuss the term as a descriptive signifier for a set of literatures (Pollock 219; Beecroft 94). None
of these conceptions, regretfully, asserts the crux of Rabinows analysis.
Cosmopolitanism neither reflects an ethico-political ideal that moralists impose on
mankind, nor does it serve as a practical anthropological category to address and characterize a
particular state of affairs. One cannot pursue cosmopolitanism; it comprises a set of demands that
arise because of humanitys socialized ontology. As citizens of the universe, humans are
entangled and thus compelled to meet the obligations they subsequently incur. Specifically,
cosmopolitanism demands the mobilization of desire and action against the otherizing force of
ethics, and ultimately toward a new type of universalism.
Most importantly, this project must address Rabinows balancing act. For him, the
problem of cosmopolitanism is the oscillation between two extremes: the status quo, and an
idealized new world-order. Cosmopolitanism demands that we change the status quo without
attempting to raise any particular metaphysical infrastructure, and let alone a global political
enterprise. Cosmopolitanism stands ready to be embraced, but not by the current fixation on
individuality and alterity.
Developing a Social Ontology
For centuries, philosophers have disregarded the irreducibly social and conflicted nature
of the human mind, instead extoling the virtues of rationality and autonomy. This bias originates
in Descartes Cogito, embodies the transcendental subject of Kantian metaphysics, and
inaugurates the narcissism of contemporary American libertarianism. Ayn Rand, for example,
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contrives an epistemology based on absolute rational autonomy and situates it in a world of
justly self-interested capitalists.
The psychoanalytic movement, however, discloses the various levels among which the
psychical apparatuses operate and conflict with each other, all in order to reveal our social
nature. Nietzsche, psychoanalysiss first contribute, suggested first that, When I analyze the
piocess that is expiesseu in the sentence, 'I think,' I finu a whole seiies of uaiing asseitions
that woulu be uifficult, peihaps impossible, to piove" (2S). Accoiuing to psychoanalysis,
oui uesiies aie piouucts of unconscious thoughts, libeiateu fiom the Ego, which can only
impiint on the pie-conscious system anu, as such, the conscious minu can meiely
appiehenu these uesiies. These unconscious uiives aie the motoi foice of the psychical
subject. The subsequent tiichotomy between the Iu, Ego, anu Supeiego leaus Lacan to posit
that the psychoanalytic expeiience "sets us at ouus with any philosophy uiiectly stemming
fiom the !"#$%"" (crits 75). This, of course, is a consequence of the Mirror Stage, in which the
child views its own reflection and so comes to understand itself as possessing an alienating
identity that will mark his entire mental development with its rigid structure (crits 78). The
other image in the mirror, the adult carrying the infant, gives this process a symbolic dimension;
this adult represents the big Other of the Symbolic order, the internalization of social discourse
and the time at which the specular I turns into the social I (crits 79).
Because of the big Other of the Symbolic order, the network of signifiers that constitutes
the Lacanian subject exists only as a dialogue with other persons. As Saul Kripkes analysis of
Wittgenstein demonstrates, the individuals inability to establish the meaning of signs makes a
private language impossible (55). The Symbolic order cannot exist without a language to enable
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the organization of the subject. The subjects mental apparatuses thus irreducibly socialize its
psyche.
Even the conscious thoughts of the Ego cannot be unique. The Egos ideas stem from a
shattered multiplicity of quotations that persons rearrange into coherent assemblages. According
to Roland Barthes, texts are nothing more than a tissue of quotations drawn from the
innumerable centres of culture (146). This consequence of postmodernity further implies the
disintegration of the existential autonomy of the Cartesian subject, and the birth of a new social
ontology.
Moreover, the precariousness of life makes senseless any ontology that fails to integrate
the multiplicity. According to Judith Butler, understanding human ontology requires that we
apprehend the precariousness of life: the body is exposed to socially and politically articulated
forces as well as to claims of sociality including language, work, and desire that make
possible the bodys persisting and flourishing (Frames of War 3). A child born in the world
requires nourishment; precariousness is coextensive with birth itself (Frames of War 14).
Consequently, ones life is always in some sense in the hands of the other (Frames of War 14).
Butler concludes on an ethical note that the very possibility of celebrating life requires that life
be grievable. In this way, the inherent precariousness of human life implies an obligation to
maintain it, and thus an obligation to remain social. Most importantly, life exposes the body to
social crafting and form, and this is what makes the ontology of the body a social ontology
(Frames of War 3).
This portrayal of the entanglement characterizing the human condition originates in Stoic
cosmopolitanism, and marks an important break between the Stoics and the Cynics. For the
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Cynics, such as Diogenes, living according to Nature means living a self-sufficient lifestyle
(Diogenes 39). For the Stoics, however, interpersonal relationships insist upon social cooperation
(Aurelius 42). Aristotles Politics described man as a political animal, more so even than bees
or any other gregarious animals (1129). In accordance, Marcus Aurelius championed the role of
individuals as parts of the greater whole of mankind, [f]or the perfect Whole is mutilated if you
sever the least part of the contact and continuity alike of its causes as of its members; and you do
this so far as in your lies, whenever you are disaffected, and in a measure you are destroying it
(37).
Still, the Stoics and the Cynics partake of similar views of mankinds shared existence,
which reconciles the relationship of their cosmopolitanisms. According to Diogenes:
all elements are contained in all things and pervade everything: since not only
is meat a constituent of bread, but bread of vegetables; and all other bodies also,
by means of a certain invisible passages and particles, find their way in and unite
with all substances in the form of vapour. (75)
This formulation parallels the Aurelian dictum, constantly think of the Universe as one living
creature (31). This atomistic view reflects butlers warning to apprehend but not attempt to
recognize precariousness: the sheer scope of our interconnectedness with nature and the universe
asks much of us, but nature must always exist outside our grasp. Hegel, for example, attributes
the suffering of modernity to the legal formalism that originated in Abraham and Noahs Spirit
of beherrschen, mastery, over nature. In either case, both philosophies echo the same principle
concern: one must live in the world, rather than trying to supersede it.
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To summarize: understanding the psychological subject as a fragmented locus of
conscious thoughts and internalized psyches paves the way for a new social ontology of the
subject. Butlers reconsideration of humanitys precariousness reifies this social basis. The result
is a tangled network of persons who share in the fluid, atomistic universe. Foucaults preface to
Deleuze and Guattaris Anti-Oedipus best explains the reconceptualization this discovery
necessitates:
Do not demand of politics that it restore the "rights" of the individual, as
philosophy has defined them. The individual is the product of power. What is
needed is to "de-individualize" by means of multiplication and displacement,
diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting
hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization. (xiv)
Foucaults analysis of Anti-Oedipus as the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a
long time (xiii) finally begs the question of politics in light of Deleuze and Guattaris
rhizomatic worldview. To understand the demands of cosmopolitan ontology, we must inquire
what ethics the multiplicity of the subject calls for, and whether we can reconcile an appropriate
politics without reinscribing the fascism of a Hobbesian global-state.
Ethics of Action
Why does Derrida write in his essay On Cosmopolitanism that, inasmuch as it is a
manner of being there, the manner in which we relate to ourselves and to others, to others as our
own or as foreigners, ethics is hospitality (16-17)? He writes of hospitality this way precisely
because hospitality must be a paradox, and because ethics, traditionally conceived, exists
paradoxically. Hence Derrida writes:
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It is a question of knowing how to transform and improve the law, and of
knowing if this improvement is possible within a historical space which takes
place between the Law of an unconditional hospitality, offered a priori to every
other, to all newcomers, whoever they may be, and the conditional laws of a right
to hospitality, without which The unconditional Law of hospitality would be in
danger of remaining a pious and irresponsible desire, without form and without
potency, and of even being perverted at any moment. (22-23)
The social ontology of the subject urges moral agents to resist the temptation to absorb the
irreducible alterity of the Other, the infinite gab, into the rubric of the Self. Levinass ethics of
the Other try to avoid the logic of the Same, but Derrida shows how the dialectic between the
Other and the Same is the principle characteristic of ethics. As Badiou demonstrates, the demand
for infinite hospitality, the respect for differences, and the ethics of human rights to seem to
define an identity! (Ethics 24). Consequently, the Levinasian injunction reduces to: become
like me and I will respect your difference (2 Ethics 5). The remainder contains nothing that we
would call just or good.
Likewise, the sin of Kantian ethics lies in its failure to apprehend the multiplicity. The
ethics of singularity calls forth a rigid set of universal laws that, as Alenka Zupan!i! rightfully
points out, would absolve the subject of his responsibility (61). The turn to human rights, as
Badiou points out, creates an ethics that defines humanity as a victim. The universalism of this
tradition aims to blanket humanity in a thin comforter of basic liberties, and nothing else (Ethics
11). Any additional action could be, at best, superogatory, or, at worst, unethical. This leaves the
ethics of human rights and negative freedom entirely impoverished.
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These two movements share an understanding of Evil which renders their philosophies
inert and nihilistic. So long as the primary motivation of action is to fight against Evil, it will
continue to emerge: every revolutionary project stigmatized as utopian turns, we are told, into
a totalitarian nightmare. Every collective will to the good creates Evil (Ethics 13). By fixating
on Evil, specifically the victimization of persons, ethics paralyzes the moral actor. The
inauthentic person, warns Heidegger, must suffer: Busily losing himself in what is taken care of,
the irresolute person loses his time in them, too (377). Hence, ethics is nihilist because its
underlying conviction is that the only thing that can really happen to someone is death (Badiou,
Ethics 35).
To avoid this vicious circle of nihilism, and to bypass Derridas paradox of hospitality,
cosmopolitanism demands an active, authentic subject. This is to say, persons must always act on
maxims consistently; they must act resolutely, and take responsibility for what transpires. Hence
Badiou declared:
But I've had enough of "fighting against," of "deconstructing," of "surpassing," of
"putting an end to," etc. My philosophy desires affirmation. I want to fight for; I
want to know what I have for the Good and to put it to work. I refuse to be
content with the "least evil. (Evil 61)
For Badiou, we must aim above the feeble, victimized subject of the ethics of Evil. For this aim,
he establishes the dependence of Being on particular Events: new ways of Being that ascribe to
the category of politics, science, art, or love. The demand of ethics is fidelity to the Truth-Event:
authenticity in its Heideggerian sense. Hence, Badiou says:
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A Truth is the subjective development of that which is at once both new and
universal. New: that which is unforeseen by the order of creation. Universal: that
which can interest, rightly, every human individual, according to his pure
humanity (which I call his generic humanity). (Evil 72)
Herein lies the Lacanian injunction, do not give up on your desire (Seminar VII 320). Desire
lies in the indiscernible, incommunicable realm of the unconscious, yet constitutes the subject in
every way. Desires exist on the level of the Real, that above which the Imaginary serves as an
opaque cloak. This fundamental lack characterizes the shared experience of humans, and so
compels humanity to pursue the Truth-Event. Lacans imperative is this Badious fidelity: the
measure of consistency critical to the Good.
The subjectivity of Truth, its dependence on novelty and another sort of universality, do
not amount to relativism or neo-Kantianism. Badiou effaces universality from the faade of the
Kantian monolith precisely to resituate it as Zizeks universal: the only way to understand the
universal is via the metaphoric universalization of a particular demand, for without litigation of
a particular that stands in for the universal, there is no universal proper (Diken and Laustsen
11). The universal will not remain static, nor should it; stagnation only leads to nihilism. Thus,
we return to Derridas desire to improve the law. The mutability of the Truth, of the universal,
is necessary to motivate the improvement of the law. To avoid nihilism, humanity must always
move forward through an endless tunnel, where the light at the end signals nothing other than the
infinite, impossible demands of ethics that cosmopolitanism nonetheless assigns.
This sort of universalism, the fidelity to the interruptive Event and to the subjective
universality of human thought, originates in Aurelius Meditations. The journals were partly the
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products of self-chastising Aurelius wrote these aphorisms to remind him of the philosophy to
which he accorded and willed to remain consistent. The entire Meditations seems to serve as an
exercise in Badious fidelity. Accordingly, he once wrote, it will not seem surprising or strange
to me if he acts in certain ways, and I shall remember that he is obliged to act like this (70). The
subjectivity of thoughts and dispositions necessarily shape the human experience; centuries
before, Aurelius has predicted what Alasdair MacIntyre calls the slightly shrill tone of so much
moral debate (8). Nonetheless, Aurelius affirms his own consistency and the heart of Badious
Truths, namely, that if they do what is right, you ought not complain, but if what is wrong,
clearly they act involuntarily and in ignorance for every soul is unwilling to be deprived of the
truth (106). What, for Aurelius, is ignorance is, for Badiou, base instinct: Evil is the
interruption of a truth by the pressure of particular or individual interests (Evil 73). This must
be clear: instincts are not a priori evil, but the interruption of a Truth by the rule of impulses
(Evil 73), which reminds us that the human species is an animal species, governed by the lowest
interests (Evil 73).
Having established the necessity of a new, universalized ethic, both in light of the social
ontology of man and the demand for the Truth-Event, we must establish what sorts of politics
can be informed by our analysis. Returning, both to Foucault and to Rabinow, we must feel
compelled to ask what the relationship between the cosmopolitan and the state ought to look like.
The New Political Sphere
Thinkers of cosmopolitanism often make the mistake of inscribing a politics based on
respect for difference. Kwame Anthony Appiah proposes that there are some values that are,
and should be, universal, just as there are lots of values that are, and must be, local (xxi). Kants
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proposal for perpetual peace calls for hospitality to be limited to the right of residence (118), as
well as for the continued recognition of state sovereignty, to uphold the rights of difference
(115). Regardless of the intent or conceptualization, so long as the ethics reinscribes the
Self/Other dichotomy at the heart of its judgment, that theory must necessarily create a harmful
politics of identity. Badious criticism of Levinas focuses precisely on this notion.
Alexanders letter to the Persians best illustrates Badious criticism. Alexander, having
conquered the Persians, instructs them to obey his command, but promises them their religious
practices and social customs. Make no mistake; the cosmopolitan cannot justify Alexanders
apparent multiculturalism, for this policy represents nothing more than a false magnanimity to
appease the newly conquered masses. This gift establishes reciprocity (Mauss): the Persians
pay back their debt to Alexander (for his generosity) by accepting his reign. This example
highlights the problem of conflating politics and cosmopolitanism; namely, that the tension
between them threatens Badious project.
In On Forgiveness, Derrida points to a similar problem of political forces within
institutional forgiveness: There is always a strategical or political calculation in the generous
gesture of one who offers reconciliation or amnesty, and it is always necessary to integrate this
calculation in our analysis (40). Indeed, this leads Derrida to conclude that political institutions
cannot grant true forgiveness. To some extent, forgiveness must always circumvent politics:
it is necessary also in politics to respect the secret, that which exceeds the political or that
which is no longer in the juridical domain there is a sort of madness which the juridico-
political cannot approach (55). To some extent, then, the actions of politics must remain
separate from the demands of cosmopolitanism as well. Derridas forgiveness, read
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metaphorically, creates a new sense of interpersonal relationships; this madness is rather a
symptom of how humans relate to each other ethically. Politics and friendship, to some extent,
must remain heterogeneous.
Simultaneously, politics must play a key role in the constitution of a new subjectivity and
universalism, as it is necessary to right the harms of several centuries of liberal democracy and
capitalism. This is the case precisely because politics can perpetrate Evil on a grandiose scale.
According to Badiou, Evil in politics is easy to see: Its absolute inequality with respect to life,
wealth, power (Evil 64). These power inequalities defined the Alexandrian empire, and new
take on a new form, fueled by globalization and a misappropriation of cosmopolitan thought.
Marx first recognized that [t]he bourgeoisie has thought its exploitation of the world market
given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country (6). Now, with
the decline of sovereignty and the dominance of globalization, Hardt and Negri witness the
Empire materializing before our very eyes (Empire xi). According to them, [a]long with
the global market and global circuits of production has emerged a global order, a new logic and
structure of rule in short, a new form of sovereignty. Empire is the political subject that
effectively regulates these global exchanges, the sovereign power that governs the world
(Empire xi).
Clinging to sovereignty, a notion at the core of Kantian cosmopolitanism, or nationalism,
which Lu Xun mistakes for a defense against assimilation, no longer makes any sense. Modern
sovereignty lacks the characteristics of the medieval state: its authoritative capacities lie in the
discipline of its constituents. Within the global paradigm of capital flow, state identities mean
nothing. According to Hardt and Negri:
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The panoply of thermonuclear weapons, effectively gathered at the pinnacle of
Empire, represents the continuous possibility of the destruction of life itself. This
is an operation of absolute violence, a new metaphysical horizon, which
completely changes the conception whereby the sovereign state had a monopoly
of legitimate physical force. (Empire 345)
Thus, the passage to Empire represents a fundamental change in the constitution of the state.
Though contemporary libertarians, such as Robert Nozick, define the state as a monopoly on
coercive force, the transcendental power of nuclear annihilation paints a horrendous image of a
suicidal globe at the twilight of the death-drive, dissolving sovereignty along the way.
Cosmopolitanism and the Ethics of Action demand, then, resistance by the multitude of
the forces of capitalism and globalization coalescing around humanity. This demand arises in
light of a transformation of the Medieval world-order into a force that threatens cosmopolitanism
through its inception. For Hardt and Negri, the multitude is a multiplicity of social forces and,
on the other hand, in contrast to the mob, the multitude comes together in a common act
(Globalization 17). They employ guerilla warfare as a micropolitical revolution, the essence of
Badious Truth-Event, embraces serpentine struggles [that] strike directly at the highest
articulations of imperial order (58).
We are left, then, with a compromise: like a Venn diagram, politics and the demands of
the cosmopolitan must overlap, but ethics must, to borrow once again from Derrida, exceed the
political. This resolution adheres to Rabinows declaration that [w]e live in-between. On the
one hand, following Derrida, politics must always be open to questioning and re-evaluation. This
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stems directly from the subjective nature of Truth. On the other hand, resisting political
oppression requires nothing less than a new, revolutionary politics.
Diogenes the Hero
At the end of his seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan offers a definition of
a hero: someone who may be betrayed with impunity (Seminar VII 320). The most obvious
example is Antigone, who Lacan spent much time analyzing; despite her unimaginable
punishment, living entombment, the character never flinches. This impunity, like much of
Lacans writing, carries a double meaning: on the one hand, the one who never gives ground
relative to their desire cannot suffer for a betrayal, for it glances off them; on the other hand, the
betrayer suffers no revenge. Creon, in fact, who has literally lost all other goods as a result of
the affair, (319) is liberated by Antigones courage.
The ultimate requirement of the hero is the acceptance of death as a necessary aspect of
fidelity. This is the true meaning of the death-drive: the utmost ethical principle propels us
toward our demise. For Badiou, death, too, is an Event, in the context of which all of Ethics is
made possible; to fear death is an empty nihilism that leaves humanity ethically impoverished.
When Oedipus announces that, perhaps it would be better not to live at all, (140) he does not
mean that he would prefer to never have been born, but rather, that the life full of pain and
torment (140) must be met with fidelity, to the death. Fidelity to the Truth-Event will inevitably
betray the hero, and the hero will die tragically.
Who, then, takes up this cosmopolitan ethic, and serves as the hero Lacan and Badiou
demand? None other than Diogenes. Diogenes lived the life of a true Cynic, contemplatively:
To one who presented he was ill adapted for the study of philosophy, he said, Why then do you
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live, if you do not care to live well? (67). Unlike many thinkers, however, Diogenes never
allowed himself to be paralyzed by thought. Whether or not he was certain, he acted with fidelity
to his lifestyle, and ridiculed the hypocritical:
And he would wonder that the grammarians should investigate the ills of
Odysseus, while they were ignorant of their own. Or that the musicians should
tune the strings of the lyre, while leaving the dispositions of their own souls
discordant; that the mathematicians should gaze at the sun and the moon, but
overlook matters close at hand; that the orators should make a fuss about justice in
their speeches, but never practice it; or that the avaricious should cry out against
money, while inordinately fond of it. (29-30)
At the crux of this criticism lies infidelity; as Badiou warns, base impulses disrupt the ethical
Truth-Event, and so deserve to be deemed Evil. For Diogenes, this sort of hypocrisy, which does
not arise from a conscious decision, cannot access the realm of the Good. He does, however,
glorify those who actively make choices: He would praise those who were about to marry and
refrained, those intending to go a voyage never set sail (31). Like Badiou, who tells us that
Truth-Events must be novel transformations of the status quo, Diogenes affirms the importance
of the Events that define our lives. This necessity even takes on a social dimension: He used to
say, moreover, that we ought to stretch out our hands to our friends with fingers open and not
closed (31).
Lacan warns us that the inaccessibility of our desires, the objet petit a, causes us to feel a
lack, which we then try to fill with commodities. The Cynic lifestyle of Diogenes stands as the
absolute renunciation of commodities, in favor of a simple, yet active life. It is said that
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Diogenes threw away his bowl when he observed a child using a hollow morsel of bread to hold
his lentils, all in an act of utmost defiance (39). In conformity with Badious warning, Diogenes
rejects his impulses in favor of a lifestyle in harmony with Nature.
To the death, Diogenes held steadfast to the lifestyle of the Truth-Event. Though the
cause of his death will remain uncertain, the many accounts of his death point towards the same
consistency he accorded the rest of his life. Whether he died eating raw octopus or from blood
loss due to a dog bite, the death was the cause of a lifetime of denying luxuries and comforts.
Most remarkably, his friends conjectured that [his death] was due to the retention of his breath
(81). Though this act appears physiologically implausible, his legacy had created a personality so
strong and willful that many could ascribe such an absurd cause of death. Like Badiou
demonstrates, the death-Event constitutes the subject, an irreducibly social phenomenon for
Butler. Many citizens grieved Diogenes: a fitting end by Butlers analysis, and an appropriate
appreciation of a heroic life.
Conclusion
To reify Rabinows analysis, cosmopolitanism demands a transformation, but not a
contrived reappraisal of humanitys attitude. Local identities cannot define our actions, nor
should we try to construct a universal image of mankind. We live in-between because Ethics
demands that we act according to our social ontology, with fidelity to the Truth-Event.