Badiou and Plato: An Education by Truths

257 Pages·2011·3.637 MB·English

by  Adam John Bartlett

‘This is not a work of commentary but an intervention: a
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by actualizing the categories of Badiou’s Being and Event,
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Bartlett subverts the Aristotelian biases of Plato scholarship
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and exposes the sophistical basis of contemporary a
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ideologies of education. The result brilliantly exemplifies the t
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transformative import of Badiou’s Platonism.’ t
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Ray Brassier, American University of Beirut
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Using the concepts of Alain a
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Badiou, this work interrogates i
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Plato’s concept of education.

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Alain Badiou makes the claim that ‘the only education is
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an education by truths’. Drawing upon the concepts and p c
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categories developed by Badiou that support this claim, ti
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A. J. Bartlett presents a new reading of the Platonic corpus n
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showing that the question of education is at the heart of o
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A. J. Bartlett is a post-doctoral research fellow in the School tio tr

of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. n y

He is co-editor of Badiou: Key Concepts and The Praxis of b b
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Alain Badiou.
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ISBN 978 0 7486 4375 2
Edinburgh University Press E
22 George Square d
Edinburgh EH8 9LF in
www.euppublishing.com
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Jacket design: www.richardbudddesign.co.uk
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Jacket image: Malevich, Black Square, Blue Triangle g
© akg-images/Erich Lessing h a. j. bartlett
Badiou and Plato
An Education by Truths
A. J. Bartlett
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© A. J. Bartlett, 2011
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 11/13 Sabon
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 4375 2 (hardback)
The right of A. J. Bartlett
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgments iv
Abbreviations v
Introduction: Trajectory 1
1 State 29
2 Site 70
3 Event/Intervention 96
4 Fidelity 129
5 Subject 161
6 Generic 196
Epilogue 229
Bibliography 233
Index 246
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Acknowledgments
This book is the result of several ‘summers of Platonic love’. It owes
everything to Angela Cullip and to Che, Strummer, Sunday and
Jezebel: Plato awaits you just as he awaits us all! I cannot thank my
friend Justin Clemens enough, not only for his support and intelli-
gence but also for sharing with me the absolute conviction that ‘the
world never offers you anything other than the temptation to yield’.
My greatest appreciation goes to Ray Brassier and Mladen Dolar
for their generous critiques of an earlier version of this work. Merci,
chaleureusement, Alain Badiou. Many thanks to Alex Ling, Jon
Roffe, Jessica Whyte and Geraldine Kelder. This work is dedicated
to the very much-missed Tristam Claremont: a true philosopher.
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Abbreviations
PLATO
Apology Ap.
Charmides Chrm.
Cratylus Crt.
Crito Cri.
Euthydemus Euthd.
Euthyphro Euthphr.
Gorgias Grg.
Hippias Major Hp. Ma.
Laches La.
Laws L.
Lysius Lys.
Meno Men.
Parmenides Prm.
Phaedo Phd.
Phaedrus Phdr.
Philebus Phlb.
Protagoras Prt.
Republic R.
Sophist Sph.
Statesman Stm.
Symposium Smp.
Theaeteus Tht.
Timaeus Ti.
BADIOU
BE Being and Event/L’Être et l’événement
C Conditions
CM The Concept of Model
CT Court traité d’ontologie transitoire
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vi Badiou and Plato
D Deleuze: The Clamor of Being
E Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil
HB Handbook of Inaesthetics
IT Infi nite Thought: Truth and the Return to
Philosophy
LM Logiques des mondes: l’être et l’événement, 2
M Metapolitics
MP Manifeste pour la philosophie
OB On Beckett
P Polemics
SP Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism
TC The Century
TS Théorie du sujet
TW Theoretical Writings
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‘My friends, we must “chance our arm” as the saying is. If we are
prepared to stake the whole constitution on a throw of ‘three sixes”
or “three ones”, then, that is what we’ll have to do, and I’ll shoul-
der my part of the risk by giving a full explanation of my views on
training and education, which we’ve now started to discuss all over
again. However, the risk is enormous and unique.’
Plato, Laws (969a)
‘Whatever is thought truly is immediately shared . . . whatever is
understood is radically undivided. To know is to be absolutely and
universally convinced.’
Alain Badiou, ‘Mathematics and Philosophy’
‘Why do you laugh? The name changed, the tale is told of you!’
Horace, Satires, Book I, Satire 1
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Introduction: Trajectory
‘And so not here only but in the journey of a thousand years of
which I have told you, we shall fare well.’ (R. 621d)1
‘C’est la vielle.’ (TS, 346)
‘. . . you are already committed.’ (Pascal, Pensées)
In a short meditation concerning the pedagogical relation between
art and philosophy, Alain Badiou makes the claim that ‘the only
education is an education by truths’ (HB, 15).2 There are at least
three key assumptions supporting this claim: the existence of truths;
the existence of education; and the link between the two, a link that
in fact requires that education be thought as something other than
an adjunct to any institutional form. What we seek to do in this
work is to enquire into the possibility of ‘an education by truths’. If,
as is the case for Badiou, truths are what force ‘holes in knowledge’,
which interrupt, subvert and are subtracted from the circulating
rule of opinion or the ‘encyclopaedia’ – for Badiou, the order, rule
and currency of the ‘state’ – then what we are seeking has to be a
non-state education. What we present here, through a new reading
of the Platonic corpus, is an elaboration of what might constitute
such an ‘education’, an education that, as by truths, has done with
the state.
BADIOU: INTERVENTION AND DIALECTIC
Two ‘methodological injunctions’ bookend Alain Badiou’s Being and
Event. The fi rst:
The categories that this book deploys, from the pure multiple to
the subject, constitute the general order of a thought such that it
can be practised across the entirety of the contemporary system of
reference. These categories are available for the service of scientifi c
procedures just as they are for those of politics or art. They attempt
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