{Clip} Alain Badiou on HARDtalk

I’ve begun to read some of Alain Badiou’s work and came upon this video. I think it is a really good compliment to Zizek’s appearance on HARDtalk. Again the host is an idiot.

This dialogue presents the extremely brutal encounter between Socrates and Callicles. This encounter creates a philosophical situation, which, moreover, is set out in an entirely theatrical fashion. Why? Because the thought of Socrates and that of Callicles share no common measure, they are totally foreign to one another. The discussion between Callicles and Socrates is written by Plato so as to make us understand what it means for there to be two different kinds of thought which, like the diagonal and the side of a square, remain incommensurable. This discussion amounts to a relation between two terms devoid of any relation. Callicles argues that might is right, that the happy man is a tyrant – the one who prevails over others through cunning and violence. Socrates on the contrary maintains that the true man, who is the same as the happy man, is the Just, in the philosophical sense of the term. Between justice as violence and justice as thought there is no simple opposition, of the kind that could be dealt with by means of arguments covered by a common norm. There is a lack of any real relation. Therefore the discussion is not a discussion; it is a confrontation.

And what becomes clear to any reader of the text is not that one interlocutor will convince theother, but that there will be a victor and a vanquished. This is after all what explains why Socrates’ methods in third dialogue are hardly fairer than those of Callicles. Wanting the ends means wanting the means, and it is a matter of winning, especially of winning in the eyes of the young men who witness the scene. In the end, Callicles is defeated. He doesn’t acknowledge defeat, but shuts up and remains in his corner. Note that he is the vanquished in a dialogue staged by Plato. This is probably one of the rare occurrences when someone like Callicles is the vanquished. Such are the joys of the theatre.

Faced with this situation, what is philosophy? The sole task of philosophy is to show that we must choose. We must choose between these two types of thought. We must decide whether we want to be on the side of Socrates or on the side of Callicles. In this example, philosophy confronts thinking as choice, thinking as decision.

	Yunus is a devout Muslim, a registered member of the Communist Party of America, a misanthrope and an artist struggling to sell his paintings of women being eaten by monsters. Secretly he worries that the world sees him as a misogynist. In his spare time he enjoys tweeting about his poop.

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