On the Truth-Process:

An open lecture by Alain Badiou,

August 2002

Schirmacher: Those of you who have heard him already know that he is 'like a rock', as they
say, still fighting for the relevance of philosophy. Everyone abandoned Plato, abandoned
Paul, everyone abandoned the history of philosophy, and at the same time he was saying 'No
way, we need this!' How can he say this at the same time as all the deconstruction and
questioning of philosophy which followed after Heidegger's studies of its history? Badiou
was a student, friend and opponent to those who wanted to proclaim the end of philosophy,
but although he is fighting for something like truth, he is not ignorant or naive—he is still on
the side of Plato, but with a little smile, certainly…I am very glad that you have a chance to
hear his version of philosophy and an opportunity to ask him, to attack him, and to think with
him, because thinking is what we all have in common, that we think, that should be our battle
cry.—Let's think with Alain Badiou.

Badiou: Our epoch is most certainly the epoch of rupture, in light of all that Lacoue–
Labarthe has shown to depend on the motive of mimesis. One of the forms of this motive
which explicitly attaches truth to imitation is to conceive of truth as a relation, a relation of
appropriateness between the intellect and the thing intellected. A relation of adequation which
always supposes, as Heidegger very well understood, the truth to be localizable in the form of
a proposition. Modern philosophy is a criticism of truth as adequation. Truth is not limited to
the form of judgment. Heidegger suggests that it is a historic destiny. I will start from the
following idea: Truth is first of all something new. What transmits, what repeats, we shall call
knowledge. Distinguishing truth from knowledge is essential. It is a distinction already made
in the work of Kant, between reason and understanding, and it is as you know a capital
distinction for Heidegger, who distinguishes truth as aletheia, and understanding as cognition,
science, techne. Aletheia is always properly a beginning. Techne is always a continuation, an
application, a repetition. It is the reason why Heidegger says that the poet of truth is always
the poet of a sort of morning of the world. I quote Heidegger: 'The poet always speaks as if
the being was expressed for the first time.' If all truth is something new, what is the essential
philosophic problem pertaining to truth? It is the problem of its appearance and its becoming.
Truth must be submitted to thought not as judgment or proposition but as a process in the
real. This schema represents the becoming of a truth. The aim of my talk is only to explain
the schema. For the process of truth to begin, something must happen. Knowledge as such
only gives us repetition, it is concerned only with what already is. For truth to affirm its
newness, there must be a supplement. This supplement is committed to chance—it is
unpredictable, incalculable, it is beyond what it is. I call it an event. A truth appears in its
newness because an eventful supplement interrupts repetition. Examples: The appearance,
with Aeschylus, of theatrical tragedy. The eruption, with Galileo, of mathematical physics. An
amorous encounter which changes a whole life. Or the French revolution of 1792. An event is
linked to the notion of the undecidable. Take the sentence 'This event belongs to the
situation.' If you can, using the rules of established knowledge, decide that this sentence is
true or false, the event will not be an event. It will be calculable within the situation. Nothing
permits us to say 'Here begins the truth.' A wager will have to be made. This is why the truth
begins with an axiom of truth. It begins with a decision, a decision to say that the event has
taken place. The fact that the event is undecidable imposes the constraint that the subject of
the event must appear. Such a subject is constituted by a sentence in the form of a wager: this
sentence is as follows. 'This has taken place, which I can neither calculate nor demonstrate,
but to which I shall be faithful.' A subject begins with what fixes an undecidable event
because it takes a chance of deciding it. This begins the infinite procedure of verification of
the Truth. It's the examination within the situation of the consequences of the axiom which
decides the Event. It's the exercise of fidelity. Nothing regulates its cause. Since the axiom
which supports it has arbitrated it outside of any rule of established knowledge, this axiom
was formulated in a pure choice, committed by chance, point by point. But what is a pure
choice? A choice without a concept. It's obviously a choice confronted with two indiscernible
terms. Two terms are indiscernible if no formation of language permits their distinction, but if
no formation of language discerns two terms of a situation, it is certain that the choice of
having the verification pass for one over the other can find no support in the objectivity of
their defense, and so it is then an absolutely pure choice, free from any other presupposition
than having to choose, with no indication marking the proposed terms, nothing to identify the
one by which the verification of the consequences of the axiom will first pass. This means
that the subject of a truth demands the indiscernible. There is a connection between the
subject on one side and the indiscernible on the other. The indiscernible organizes the pure
point of the subject in the process of verifying a truth. A subject is what disappears between
two indiscernibles. A subject is a throw of the dice which does not abolish chance but
accomplishes it as a verification of the axiom which founds it. What was decided concerning
the undecidable event must pass by this term. It is a pure choice: this term, indiscernible,
permits the other. Such is the local act of a truth: it consists in a pure choice between
indiscernibles. It is then absolutely finite. For example, the world of Sophocles is a subject
for the artistic truth which is the Greek tragedy. This truth begins with the event of Aeschylus.
This work is a creation, a pure choice in what before it is indiscernible. However, although
this work is finite, tragedy itself as an artistic truth continues into infinity. The work of
Sophocles is a finite subject of this infinite truth. In the same way, the scientific truth decided
by Galileo is pursued into infinity: the laws of physics which have been successfully invented
are finite subjects of this infinite truth. We continue with the process of a truth. It began with
an undecidable event, it finds its act in a finite subject, confronted by the indiscernible, this
verifying course continues, it invests the situation with successive choices, and little by little,
these choices outline the contour of a subset of the situation. It is clear that this subset is
infinite, that it remains interminable, yet, it can be said that if we supposed it was to be ended,
it would ineluctably be a subset that no predicate unifies. It is an untotalizable subset that can
neither be constructed or named within the language of the situation. Such subsets are called
generic subsets. We shall say that truth, if we suppose it to be terminated, is generic. It is in
fact purely impossible that a succession of pure choices could engender a subset which could
be unified under predication. If the construction of a truth can be resumed by an established
property, the course of the truth will have to be secretly governed by a law. The indiscernibles
where the subject finds its acts will have to be in reality discerned by some superior
understanding. However, no such law exists and there is no god of truths, no superior
understanding. Invention and creation remain incalculable. So the path of a truth cannot
coincide in infinity with any concept at all. Consequently, the verified terms compose or
rather, will have composed, if we supposed infinite totalization, a generic subset of the
situation. Indiscernible in its act or subject a truth is generic in its result, or in its being. It is
withdrawn from any unification by a unique predicate. For example, there does not exist after
Galileo a closed and unified subset of knowledge that we could call physics. There exists an
infinite and open set of laws and experiments. Even if we supposed this set to be terminated,
no unique formula of language could resume it. There is no law of physical laws. The Being
of the truth of the physical is that it is a generic subset of knowledge, both infinite and
indistinct. In the same way, after the 1792 revolution in France, there were all sorts of
revolutionary politics, but there is no unique political formula which could totalize these
revolutionary politics. The set called 'revolutionary politics' is a generic truth of political
understanding. What happens is only that we can anticipate the idea of a completed generic
truth. It's an important point. The being of a truth is a generic subset of knowledge, practice,
art and so on, but we can't have a unique formula for the subset because it's generic, there is
no predicate for it, but you can anticipate the subset's totalization not as a real totalization but
as a fiction. The generic Being of a truth as a generic subset of the situation is never
presented. You have no presentation of the completeness of a truth, because truth is
uncompletable. However, we can know formally that the truth will always have taken place
as a generic infinity. We have a knowledge of the generic act and of the infinity of a truth.
Thus the possible fictioning of the effects of its having–took–place is possible. The subject
can make the hypothesis of the situation where the truth of which the subject is a local point
will have completed its generic totalization. Its always a possibility for the subject to
anticipate the totalization of a generic being of that truth. I call the anticipating hypothesis a
forcing. The forcing is the powerful fiction of a completed truth. A completed truth is a
hypothesis, it's a fiction, but a strong fiction. Starting with such a fiction, if I am the subject
of the truth, I can force some bits of knowledge without verifying this knowledge. Thus,
Galileo could make the hypothesis that all nature can be written in mathematical language,
which is exactly the hypothesis of a complete physics. From this anticipation, he forces his
Aristotelian adversary to abandon his position. Someone in love can say, and generally they
do say, 'I will always love you', which is the anticipating hypothesis of the truth of infinite
love. From this hypothesis, he or she forces the other to come to know him or her and to treat
him or her differently—a new situation of the becoming of the love itself is created. The
construction of truth is made by a choice within the indiscernible; it is made locally within
the finite, but the potency of a truth, not the construction, but the potency, depends on the
hypothetical forcing. The construction of a truth is, for example, 'I love you.' It's a finite
declaration, a subjective point, and a pure choice, but 'I will always love you' is a forcing and
an anticipation. It forces a new bit of knowledge in the situation of love. So in a finite choice
there is only the construction of a truth, while in infinite anticipation of complete truth there
is something like power. The problem is knowing the extension of that sort of power of a
truth, knowing if such a potency of anticipation, from the point of view of subject of truth, is
total. If we can force all the bits of knowledge concerned, then the potency is total. It is, for
example, the romantic problem of absolute love. It's the political problem of totalitarianism.
In all cases the problem concerns the extension of anticipatory forcing, and it's very important
to distinguish the pure question of the construction of a truth across finite choices, and the
question of the potency of a truth which is always the question of infinite anticipation of a
complete truth and the forcing of bits of knowledge. This question can be expressed simply
thus: Can we, from the finite subject of a truth, name and force into knowledge all the
elements that this truth concerns? How far does the anticipating potency of generic infinity
go? My answer is that there is always in any situation a real point that resists this potency. I
call this point the 'unnamable' of the situation. It is the point that within the situation, within
the eyes of a truth, never has a name. Consequently, it remains unforce–able. The unnamable,
being that which is excluded, is the term that fixes the limit of the potency of a truth. From
the point of view of the truth–process, we have a new proper name for all elements in a
situation. It is the action of forcing to give a name to all the terms of a situation. For example,
when Galileo says that all nature can be written in mathematical language, he is saying that
all elements of nature have a mathematical name possible in the situation. The hypothesis of
the point of the unnamable is that there is always one point without that sort of name, without
a name from the point of view of the construction of a truth. The unnamable is then
something like the proper of the proper. It doesn't have a proper name because it is the proper
of the proper—it is so singular in its singularity, so proper in its propriety, so intimate in the
situation that it doesn't even tolerate having a proper name. The unnamable is the point where
the situation in its most intimate being is submitted to thought and not to knowledge. In the
pure presence that no knowledge can circumscribe, the unnamable is something like the
inexpressible real of everything that a truth authorizes to be said, thus the limit of a potency
of a truth is finally something like the Real of truth itself, because the limit is the point where
something is so Real for the truth that there isn't a name in the field of truth–construction.
Let's take an example. The mathematical is, as you know, pure deduction. We always suppose
that it contains no contradiction, but as you know the great mathematician Godel showed that
it is impossible to demonstrate within a mathematical theory that this theory is
noncontradictory. A mathematical truth, then, cannot force the non–contradiction of
mathematics. For mathematical truth, the non–contradiction of the mathematical is the
limiting point of the potency of mathematical truth, thus we will say then that non–
contradiction is the unnamable of the mathematical. It is properly the real of the
mathematical, for if a mathematical theory is contradictory, it is destroyed. It is nothing. So
first, the Real of mathematical theory is noncontradiction, second, non–contradiction is the
limit of the potency of mathematics, because within the theory we can't demonstrate that the
theory is noncontradictory. Consequently, a reasonable ethic of mathematics is not to wish to
force the point. If you have the temptation to force the point of non–contradiction, you
destroy mathematical consistency itself. To accept the ethical is to accept that mathematical
truth is never complete. This reasonable ethic, however, is difficult to hold. As can be seen
with science or with totalitarianism there is always a desire for the omnipotence of truth. Here
lies the root of evil. I propose a definition of evil. Evil is the will to name at any price.
Usually it is said that Evil is lies, ignorance, deadly stupidity, brutality, animality and so on.
The condition of evil is much rather the truth–process. There is evil only insofar as there is an
action of truth, that is, an anticipation, a forcing of nomination at the point of the unnamable,
an artificial nomination of that which is without name, the proper of the proper. The forcing
of the unnamable is always a disaster. The desire in fiction to suppress the Unnamable, to
name at any price, to name all terms, without restriction, without limitation, frees the
destructive capacity contained in all truth. Evil is something immanent to truth, and not
something exterior to it. The destructive capacity of truth is the potency of truth across the
fiction of the complete truth—which is without limitation, without the point of Unnamable,
which is in subtraction to the potency of the truth. The ethic of truth resides entirely in a sort
of caution, as far as its powers are concerned. The effect of the undecidable, of the
indiscernible, and of the generic, or else the effect of the event, and of the subject, and of
truth, must admit the unnamable as a limitation of its powers. To contain evil the potency of
the true must be measured—what helps us is the rigorous study of the negative characters of
the powers of truth: The event is undecidable. the subject is linked to the indiscernible. Truth
itself is generic and untotalizable, and the halting point of its potency is the unnamable. This
gives us four negative categories, and the path of truth is something across these four
negative categories. Their philosophical study is, for ethic reasons, capital. This study of the
four negative categories, undecidable, indiscernible, generic and unnamable can be nourished
also by thought—events which shape our times: For example, the undecidability of an event
and the suspension of its name are features of politics that are particularly active today. It is
clear for a Frenchman that the events of May 68 continue today to comprise an unattested
anonymous promise. However, even the 1792 revolution or the Bolshevik revolution of 1917
remain partly undecided as to what they prescribe for philosophy. The theory of
indiscernibles is in itself an entire mathematical theory. We can also say that one of the aims
of contemporary poetics is to found in language a point of the indiscernible between prose
and poem, or between image and thought. The theory of the generic is at the bottom of the
ultimate forms of the logic of sets. The modern politics of emancipation freed from the
dialectic scheme of classes and parties has as its aim something like a generic democracy, a
promotion of the commonplace, of a quality abstracted from any predicate—so it's possible to
speak of a generic politics, and a warfield of prose such as Samuel Beckett's, which tried by
successive subtraction to designate the naked existence of generic humanity. So you can see
the study of the four categories is really a strong activity in all fields of modern thought:
prose, poetry, mathematics, logic, politics and so on, and that that sort of study is finally also
the study of what is the construction of a truth, and more ethically, what is exactly the
potency of a truth and the disaster when the potency is without limitation. The poet
investigates the unnamable in his exploration of the limits of the force and potency of
language. In addition to being a framework for contemporary poetics, the unnamable is the
question of the mathematician who looks for the undefinables of a structure, and it's also the
question for the person in love, tormented by what love comports, the unnamable sexual.
Thus the ethic of truth, in being attentive to the relation or disrelation between the
construction of a truth and its potency, is that by which we take the measure of what our
times are capable of. The construction of a concept of truth is the real of philosophy, because
philosophy finally is always the construction of some concept of truth, with or without the
name of truth. The construction of a concept of truth is useful to evaluate the potency of a
singular truth, political, mathematical or artistic —there is a relation between philosophy on
one side and the general question of the ethics of a specific truth on the other. Since the ethics
of a truth is the question of the relation between the truth's construction and its potency, the
general concept of truth is useful to evaluate it. My final point is the relation, in a truth's
construction, between singularity and universality, because a truth is exactly that; something
which is absolutely singular, and which begins with a singular event, yet is also something
the anticipation of which is universal. So a truth is a mixture in a real process of singularity
and universality, and naturally the question of the relation between construction and potency
is the question of the relation between a truth's singularity and the universal anticipation of
that truth. We can also say that the question is the relation, connection or contradiction
between truth and multiplicity—what exactly is the relation between a truth as a truth and
multiplicity? Our experience is that something true must be absolutely true, because if
something isn't absolutely true it isn't true at all, absoluteness is a predicate of truth. The
connection between something absolutely true and something absolutely open is the real
question of the relation between construction and potency. We prescribe a philosophical
world which is pure multiplicity on one side, because we are not in the dream of a Great One,
and so we have to accept that the world is pure multiplicity , but not, on the other hand,
without the perfection of some truths. It's very difficult, however, to have simultaneously the
conviction of the pure multiplicity but also the conviction that there are some real and
absolute truths in artistic production, in scientific invention, in love, and so on… and that sort
of world, philosophical, with pure multiplicity but some truths, with anarchy but also with
perfection, is like the world in a poem by Wallace Stevens. It will be my conclusion, in
poetry. I conclude with a friendship, with peace between philosophy and poetry. The title of
the poem is very appropriate to our situation because it is July Montaigne. I quote:

'We live in a constellation of patches and of pitches not in a single world

in sayings said well, in music on the piano, and in speech as in a page of poetry
thinkers without final thoughts in an always incipient cosmos.'

Schirmacher: Yeah…Alain, you really disappointed me…I was expecting an attack on what
others have said here so far, but it seems that we have so much in common that it's
embarrassing, you know, we have fighting for the honor of the name by not naming, that's
Lyotard, so much in common here…and what you gave in other classes was always
Heidegger's aletheia, the interplay between revealing and concealing, etc, but we have to
work hard now to find the distinction, to find what you have said that is new for us. Take
Heidegger. It sounds like Heidegger, so what is not Heidegger here, what have you done that
Heidegger couldn't do? You certainly went into how this revealing and concealing is really
working as a path, not just something which is a play in front of us, which we live in our lives
and which has a very singular subjective personal moment to it, which is at least what
Heidegger is not saying. That's one interpretation here. So to ask you a difficult question. You
said it was evil, this forcing, this tendency in our investigation, in our thinking, to perfect, to
complete, to find all words. I would agree with you, but I would ask myself, what makes us
evil? What is it in us which cannot stop us in forcing? We know it's wrong and we just do it
anyway. I don't believe in any judgment here. Maybe if there is something strong in us, it has
also a great truth to it. So evil is not actually evil, evil is something we couldn't live without,
our life would be such a boring thing, without this perfection, this forcing, this challenging of
the unknown to say, 'I want to have a name again, if it's evil, then it's evil, but it's what I
want.' But how come?

Badiou: It's a question of the disproportion between truth and the subject of the truth,
between finite and infinite. There is something infinite in the generic construction of truth and
there is always something finite in the subjective choice. It's true that there is something in
truth which is bigger than the subject of the truth, so when we are in anticipation, when we
are in the necessity of forcing some bits of knowledge from the point of view of the newness
of the truth, it's always a possibility, a temptation, to identify our subjectivity with the truth
itself, to something which is infinite in the truth. It's a temptation of complete forcing, not
forcing a bit of the knowledge, but forcing a total knowledge. There is a simple explanation
for that sort of movement. My thesis is that a forcing all the field of elements is real disaster,
it's the destruction of the condition of truth itself, because it's the destruction of the real point
of the field. It's not a moral question but one of destroying the point of the real which is
finally the point of the real of the truth itself. So this sort of coercion is also a question of the
possible continuation of truth's construction. Thus the disaster, the destruction, is a possible
consequence of the truth, but that sort of consequence is the destruction of truth. By what? By
truth. Truth is always the possibility of its proper destruction. So now let us hear some more
questions, my English is not so good, so if I don't understand the question, the response will
be savage.

Audience: Five minutes into your talk I was thinking 'Wallace Stevens, he's talking about
Wallace Stevens', and then you ended with Wallace Stevens. As you talked through it all, the
model and design of it, I was thinking of your system in relation to the supreme fiction,
which has three elements. It must be abstract, this is abstract. It must give pleasure, it gives
pleasure. It must change— it must account for change, but it must also pass away, If you
figure into your thinking here that your para–system would also pass away and be replaced
with yet another.

Badiou: You know, the big problem for a philosopher is always the conviction that he is the
last philosopher. It's very difficult to think you are not the last philosopher, but I think my
theory, my design is just a schema. It's not conceptually refined for the moment. It's possible
to modify the general structure, and I am in a moment of modification of the question of the
presentation of truth. Your question is difficult because you can't say that yes, my proposition
is nothing, it's perfectly equal to another proposition, because you have to think that
something is true in your proposition. I am very glad for the first part of your question,
regarding my proximity to Wallace Steven's poetry, because I think the period between the
middle of the 19th century and nowadays is a period where poetry is essential, where it says
something which philosophy proper cannot say.

Audience: My question has two parts: First, about the relation between the status of the
fictional and the status of the truth, and whether you consider this a schema which in a sense
presents the truth as a fiction, the fictional as a condition of truth. Second, the relation
between potentiality and negativity—to what extent do you consider the terms 'undecidable'
and 'unnamable' as negative terms, and to what extent as open or potential terms, and how do
you think the tension between the negative and the potential?

Badiou: It's a very complex field of questions. First of all the schema is not a distribution
between the real and the fictional. It's the schema of the path of the truth. In the path of a
truth, there is something purely real, for example, the event. The event is real, but only from
the point of view of the path. The subject is something real but not a point of real like the
event or the unnamable. Additionally there is the possibility of the subject to be in the fiction
of a complete truth. A complete truth is a fiction because a truth is never complete, never
finishes. There is something like a fiction in the potency of a truth if the potency is forcing
the situation from the idea of a complete truth. Thus the schema is first of all the integration
of the real part of truth and the fiction part in truth. The second part of your question:
Naturally, there is not only negative determination, but something positively real under the
negative determination. For example, the event is undecidable, but it's real, and the
unnamable is a negative determination, but the point of unnamable is a real point. So it's
possible that in another process of truth that the point of unnamable will be in fact name–
able. It's not a ontological characteristic to be unnamable, it's relative to the singularity of a
truth–process.

Audience: My question is in the field of political truth, regarding the limitation of ethics to a
present context. It seems that we have a specific philosophical concept of truth at present—
are we at the mercy of an unbridled technological movement that is changing our situation
without allowing some ethical examination of what that movement entails?
Badiou: The question of technology, of modernity, of techne is in my opinion not a very
important question. There are always technical questions, but there is no capital newness in
the question of technology. There is no direct ethical question of the relation between ethics
and technology. Ethical questions, for me, are questions in the field of truth. Naturally, you
are talking about scientific truth and you have problems about the technical consequences of
scientific truth, but you have to determine the problem like that: first, of what field of truth
we are talking, not about technology directly and so on. Technology is not a real concept, it's
a journalistic debate. It's not a serious question. You have to say, first of all, what is exactly
the scientific question in the situation, the question engaged in a technological problem, what
is the truth–process in some particular technological question, what is the political framework
of the question, because there is no technological problem per se, only techno–political
problems. You have to determine the political questions, the scientific questions, and finally
which field of truth, and after that sort of investigation you can examine the consequences of
technical transformation in our world.

Schirmacher: Ach so, Max, you understand that I couldn't disagree more with him, for me
truth is generated by life technique which is like all other technologies. So Alain we have a
few more years to make you aware how important the question concerning technology is,
beyond Heidegger. Anyway, next question.

Zizek: I would like to ask one question which I think can play a useful role in the discussion
— to begin with, the presentation you gave here did open the way towards engaging some of
the standard criticisms of your work. So I don't agree with my own question now, but I will
ask it so you can make it clear for us. One of the standard criticisms is that the way you
formulate the truth–process, in which the subject as finite discerns, in a pure ethical decision
out of nowhere, an indiscernible event. So, I'm almost ashamed to formulate it, but isn't your
ultimate position, in the finite subject which makes a pure irrational decision out of nowhere,
who says 'I love you, this is truth,' or whatever, simply between Kant and proper relativism?
Your position can be interpreted as yes, you should follow the axiomatic procedure but not
too far, you should always proceed with some kind of reservation, the idea of total truth is a
dream, you know what I mean. This would be the standard reproach to you, I know it's not
like that, but I think it would serve well if you made clear why is it not, for example, a kind of
Kantian reference, the dream of total truth inside the Kantian regulative Idea—why are you
not saying that?…If…if you are not saying that?

Badiou: Yes, yes, you anticipate my response. It's possible I am exactly as you say I am, that
which you are demanding that I say I am not. [laughter]. The question is ontologically the
question of the relation between finite and infinite, that's the real point. When I say the
subject is finite, the only signification of that point is that the subject is nothing else as the
finite part of a truth—so there is not a subject, and after that, something like a predicate of
the subject which is that the subject is finite. It's really on the contrary: first, truth is infinite,
and second, that which is the subject is a finite point of the infinite path of a truth. So on one
side, I write the subject is finite. On the other side, I am absolutely in contradiction with all
the modern philosophy of finitude, and I don't agree with the thesis for which the ontological
destiny of human nature is finitude, because the fundamental destiny of humanity is not the
subject but in the production of truth. The real content of humanity for me is creation and
invention of truths. The subject is only the local operation of the infinity of a truth. In my
conviction the destiny of humanity is infinite. The question of ethical moderation and so on is
only the question of the salvation of the condition of infinity. This is because the point of the
unnamable is the point which if forced to be named destroys the complete field and so
destroys the possibility of infinity. Thus, it's not in the question of relation between finite and
infinite, finally, the question is infinite creation and moderation, it's not at all something finite
in the infinite, but on the contrary, preservation of the possibility of infinite creation, and the
limit point is properly the possibility of the impossibility of the infinite—it's the real of the
infinite itself, the possibility of the infinite.

Schirmacher: Thank you, I think it's perhaps much clearer that we are maybe not all friends
here.

Agamben: I want to ask you a question about the limit point of the unnamable. We might
recall the axiom of the white knight in 'Alice through the Looking Glass'. You remember that
the white knight says that we have no name for the name. The thing for which we lack names
is the name itself. This goes with what Heidegger says in a certain way, that we have no word
for the saying of language itself. It seems to be in that perspective that the point you call
unnamable is a strange point in which language and real in a way coincide. The thing for
which we have no name is language itself.

Badiou: Yes, I prefer your second formulation, that the point is something like a point where
the real and nomination are not really separated. The proper of the proper, the pure real, but
the pure real is something which is indiscernible to the pure word as well. I agree with the
conviction that under the unnamable you have a real point, but its relation to language is
absolutely irreducible. So not exactly the name for name, because it is lack of name, not lack
of name for name, but lack of name for something like the real of the real, the absolute real of
the complete field.

Zizek: What I wanted to mention is the misunderstanding about this unnamable point, which
becomes a kind of evolutionary vulgarity, you know, that without finite language we can just
approach it, reality is infinitely more complex…stop that! When you are speaking about how
the generic procedure cannot name itself, cannot produce itself, I would say that in this sense
the unnamable is not a transcendent thing, it's absolutely immanent.

Badiou: Absolutely. it's not something of an expansive nature, certainly. It's just a point. We
can isolate the unnamable by a formal procedure, for example it's very remarkable that in
mathematics you can demonstrate that it is impossible to name the non–contradiction. It's not
at all something ineffable, religious, infinite, indeterminate, no not all, it's a specific point.
For example in love, I think it's precisely sexual enjoyment which is the unnamable of love.
It's nothing mystic. Although it is within the field of love's truth–process, from the point of
view of this process, sexual enjoyment has no amorous name.

Zizek: This limitation is not simply the fact that we don't have a name for the name—it's not
a limitation of language but how we can have language. It's not that oh my god, language is
never complete. It's a positive condition, not a negative limitation.

Schirmacher: What will we do after you leave us tomorrow, Slavoj?

Zizek: Shoot yourself! [laughter]

Audience: You made a very nice phrase, that evil is the will to name at any price, but it
invokes for me the question whether truth can assume a commodity form, which I believe it
can. if it can, is that a fixed price?
Badiou: I think truth cannot be a pure commodity, it's impossible, because truth is simply
something new without any possibility of exchange, of market. There is no market of truth,
because truths are something like pure creations, without finality. You have the possibility of
exploitation of truths, but you have to distinguish between production of truths, potency of
truths, and exploitation of truths. Exploitation is always possible but it's not in the field of
truth–production—it's something like a sort of forcing. I think there is something absolutely
disinterested in truth–production, something which creates a new subject which is without
proper interest. In my opinion there is no proper possibility that the truth can become a
simple commodity, but there can always be the exploitation of a truth, like of anything else.

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Alain Badiou, Ph.D, born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, Alain Badiou was a student at the
école Normale Supérieure in the 1950s. He taught at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-
Saint Denis) from 1969 until 1999, when he returned to ENS as the Chaire of the philosophy
department. He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Collège International de
Philosophie, on topics ranging from the great 'antiphilosophers' (Saint-Paul, Nietzsche,
Wittgenstein, Lacan …) to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century. Much
of Badiou's life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968
revolt in Paris. Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses communistes de France
(marxistes-léninistes), he remains with Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel at the centre of
L'Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention
in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). He is the author of
several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works.

Trained as a mathematician, Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today.
Influenced by Plato, Hegel, Lacan and Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic
as well as postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of
the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.

Unlike many of those schooled in the anti-humanist principles of Althusser and Lacan,
Badiou has never been tempted to celebrate the apparent end of philosophy, to question the
possibility of metaphysics, or to qualify the classical attributes of truth: rigor, clarity, and
eternity.

As Badiou explains in detail in his major work to date L'Etre et l'événement (1988), truths are
militant processes which, beginning from a specific time and place within a situation, pursue
the step-by-step transformation of that situation in line with new forms of broadly egalitarian
principles. Only a pure commitment, one detached from any psychological, social or
'objective' mediation, can qualify as the adequate vehicle for a truth, but reciprocally, only a
properly universal truth qualifies as worthy of such a commitment. Only a truth can 'induce'
the subject of a genuine commitment.

Badiou's most general goal can be described, then, as the effort to expose and make sense of
the potential for profound, transformative innovation in any situation. Every such innovation
can only begin with some sort of exceptional (though invariably ephemeral) break with the
status quo, an 'event'. An event can occur at any time but not in just any place; an event will
generally be located close to the edge of whatever qualifies as 'void' or indistinguishable in
the situation, i.e. in that part of the situation where for literally fundamental reasons the
prevailing forms of discernment and recognition cease to have any significant purchase. A
truth then expands out of this 'evental site' (site événementiel) insofar as it elicits the militant
conviction of certain individuals who develop the revolutionary implications of the event, and
by doing so constitute themselves as the subjects of its truth. A subject is thus anyone carried
by his or her fidelity to the consequences, as rigorous as they are haphazard, of an event,
while a truth is nothing other than the cumulative collection of such post-evental
consequences. The laborious, case-by-case application of these consequences will then serve
to transform the entire way the situation organizes and represents itself, in keeping with the
implications of the event.
An ordinary individual, or 'some-one,' only becomes a genuine subject insofar as he or she is
caught up in a materially transformative procedure of this kind. By the same token (for
reasons sketched in Badiou's most accessible short work, L'Ethique (1993), subjects only
remain subjects insofar as their fidelity is in turn equipped to resist the various sorts of
corruption it must inevitably face: fatigue, confusion, and dogmatism. For example, those
mobilized by the civil rights, feminist or anti-colonial movements remain true subjects
insofar as these movements, initially sparked by certain events affecting particular groups of
people in particular situations, call for the transformation of the situation as a whole in terms
that can be directly and universally affirmed by its every inhabitant. But should such a
movement seek simply the promotion of a particular group for its own sake, then its partisans
act only as the proponents of an interest in competition with other interests. The identification
of suffering victims is not by itself the sufficient basis, Badiou insists, for a genuine political
movement. Like all truths, politics must proceed in a sphere of rigorous universality, on the
basis of statements that literally anyone could make or affirm.
This doesn't mean, however, that truth operates in the domain of consensus or
communication. Every genuinely universal principle has its origin in an active and precisely
situated taking of sides; every true affirmation of the universal interest begins as divisive.
There is no philosopher more opposed to the 'ethical' coordination of opinions or differences
than Badiou.

Badiou distinguishes four general fields of truth, or four domains of subjectivation (which in
turn operate as the four generic 'conditions' of philosophy itself): politics, science, art and
love. These are the only four fields in which a pure subjective commitment is possible, i.e.
one indifferent to procedures of interpretation, representation or verification. Badiou provides
his most concise overview of the generic procedures in his Manifeste pour la philosophie
(1989). True politics is a matter of collective mobilization guided by a 'general will' in
something like Rousseau's sense, and not the business of bureaucratic administration or the
socialized negotiation of interests. Within the limits of the private sphere, genuine love begins
in the wake of an unpredictable encounter that escapes the conventional representation of
sexual roles, continues as a fidelity to the consequences of that encounter, and is sustained
through an unrepresentable exposure to what Lacan famously described as the 'impossibility
of a sexual relationship'. True art and true science proceed in somewhat the same way,
through a searching experimental fidelity to a line of enquiry opened up by a new discovery
or break with tradition. Mathematics is then the most 'truthful' component of science simply
because, thanks to its axiomatic foundation in the basic postulates of set theory, it is the most
securely abstracted from any natural or objective mediation.

In the end, every truth is 'founded' only on the fundamental 'inconsistency' that Badiou
discerns as the exclusive and insubstantial stuff of pure being qua being — the generic being
of all that is simply insofar as it is, but that is only exceptionally accessible, through the rare
commitment of those who become subjects in the wake of its evental exposure.

Books

Badiou, Alain, Barbara P. Fulks (Translation). The Political as a Procedure of Truth.

lacanian ink 19. The Wooster Press. Fall 2001, 128 pages, pp 70-81, Paperback, ISBN:
1888301082. Buy it at Amazon.com.

Badiou, Alain, Jorge Jauregui (Translation). Highly Speculative Reasoning on the Concept of
Democracy. lacanian ink 16. The Wooster Press. Spring 2000, pp. 28-43.

Badiou, Alain and S. Gillepsie, J. Clemens (Translation). On a Contemporary Usage of Frege.

Umbr(a): Science and Truth. Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture. 2000, 144 pages, pp. 99-
115, Paperback ,ISBN: 0966645243. Buy it at Amazon.com.

Badiou, Alain, Jorge Jauregui (Translation). Art and Philosophy. lacanian ink 17. The
Wooster Press. Fall 2000, pp. 48-67.

Badiou, Alain, Jean Borreil. Jean Borreil : la raison de l'autre. La philosophie en commun.
L'Harmattan. Paris, 2000, 207 pages, Paperback, ISBN: 2738438660. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. De l'amour. Ecole de la cause freudienne. Flammarion. Paris, 1999, 190 pages,
Paperback, ISBN : 2080814184. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Court Traité d'ontologie transitoire. L'Ordre philosophique. Seuil. Paris, 1998,
Paperback, ISBN: 2020348853. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Petit Manuel d'inesthétique. Seuil. Paris, 1998, 224 pages, Paperback, ISBN:
2020348861. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Kleines Handbuch zur In-&Aunl;sthetik. Verlag Turia & Kant. Vienna/Berlin,
2001, Hardcover, ISBN: 3851322665. Buy it at Amazon.de.

Badiou, Alain. Abrégé de métapolitique. L'ordre philosophique. Seuil. Paris, 1998, 176 pages,
Paperback, ISBN: 202034887X.. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Saint Paul. La fondation de l'universalisme. Presses Universitaires de France.

Paris, 1997.

Badiou, Alain. Deleuze. Coup double. Hachette. Paris, 1997, 184 pages, Paperback, ISBN:
2012352227. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. Minnesota University Press. Minnesota, 1999,
160 pages, Hardcover, ISBN: 0816631395. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.de or
Amazon.co.uk. Paperback, ISBN: 0816631409. Buy it at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Badiou, Alain. Calme Bloc ici-bas. P.O.L. Paris, 1997, 453 pages, Paperback, ISBN:
2867445477. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Les Citrouilles. Actes du Sud. Paris, 1996, 109 pages, Paperback, ISBN:
2742704140. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain and D. Collins, S. Gillepsie, J. Clemens (Translation). Descartes/Lacan;

Psychoanalysis and Philosophy; Hegel; What is Love. Umbr(a).1996, pp. 13-53.

Badiou, Alain. Ahmed le philosophe suivi de Ahmed se fâche. Papiers. Actes du Sud. Paris,
1995, 213 pages, Paperback, ISBN : 2742704523. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Beckett. L'increvable désir. Coup double. Hachette. Paris, 1995, 93 pages,
Paperback, ISBN: 2012351689. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Ahmed le subtil. Actes du Sud. Paris, 1994, Paperback, 92 pages, ISBN:
2869434049. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. L'Ethique. Hatier. Paris, 1993.

Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Verso Books. New York, 2001,
224 pages, Hardcover, ISBN: 1859842976. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.de or
Amazon.co.uk.

Badiou, Alain. Conditions. L'ordre philosophique. Seuil, Paris, 1992, 365 pages, Paperback,
ISBN: 2020182599. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain, Georges Leyenberger. Politique et modernité. Editions Osiris. Bordeaux,

1992, 213 pages, ISBN: 2905460245. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. D'un désastre obscur. Editions de l'Aube. Paris, 1991/1998, 62 pages,
Paperback, ISBN: 2876784378. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Le Nombre et les nombre. Des travaux. Seuil, Paris, 1990.

Badiou, Alain. Rhapsodie pour le théâtre. Le Spectateur français. Imprimerie Nationale.

Paris, 1990, 133 pages, Hardcover, ISBN: 2110810661. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Manifeste pour la philosophie. L'ordre philosophique. Seuil, Paris, 1989, 91
pages, Paperback, ISBN: 2020105594. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Manifesto for Philosophy. State University of New York Press/New York
University Press. Albany/New York, 1999, Hardcover, ISBN: 0791442195. Buy it at
Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. 181 pages, Paperback, ISBN: 0791442209. Buy it at
Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Badiou, Alain. L'Etre et l'Evénement. L'ordre philosophique. Seuil, Paris, 1988, 560 pages,
Paperback, ISBN: 2020098628. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Peut-on penser la politique? Philosophie Générale. Editions du Seuil. Paris,
1985, Paperback, ISBN: 2020089319. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. Théorie du sujet. L'ordre philosophique. Editions du Seuil. Paris, 1982, 351
pages, Paperback, ISBN: 2020061155. Buy it at Amazon.fr.

Badiou, Alain. L'Echarpe rouge. Maspero. Paris, 1979.

Badiou, Alain, L. Mossot, J. Bellassen. Le Noyau rationnel de la dialectique hégélienne.

Maspero. Paris, 1977.

Badiou, Alain, F. Balmès. De l'idéologie. Maspero. Paris, 1976.

Badiou, Alain. Théorie de la contradiction. Maspero. Paris, 1975.

Badiou, Alain. Le Concept de modèle. Maspero. Paris, 1969.

Badiou, Alain. Portulans. Seuil. Paris, 1967.

Badiou, Alain. Almagestes. Seuil. Paris, 1964.

Articles

Books Top

Badiou, Alain. On Evil: An Interview with Alain Badiou by Christopher Cox and Molly
Whalen, Cabinet Magazine Online, Issue 5, Winter 2001/02

Badiou, Alain. Transcript of his open lecture On the Truth-Process at the European Graduate
School, EGS, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, August 2002.