Besprekingen van Alain Badiou's #Spinoza [5]

In de vorige blogs [1, 2, 3, 4] bracht ik de teksten die Alain Badiou over Spinoza schreef. In dit blog breng ik een aantal informatieve, boeiende en soms kritische teksten over hoe Badiou over Spinoza scheef – plus nog enige overige informatieve teksten over Badiou’s filosofie.

● Jon Roffe, “Spinoza.” Chapter 11 in A. J. Bartlett & Justin Clemens (eds.), Alain Badiou: Key Concepts, part III, BADIOU'S ENGAGEMENT WITH KEY PHILOSOPHERS. Routledge, 2010, 2014, pp. 118 - 127 [books.google chapter 11 - cf. PDF op BookSC].

Aanvankelijk was ik van plan dit hoofdstuk dat een totaaloverzicht geeft van Badiou’s Spinoza hier te brengen, maar in zijn Note 1 daarin wees Roffe op Sam Gillespie

 

Nadat ik van diens volgende tekst kennis had genomen besloot ik om in een volgend blog het zeer informatieve en kritische artikel te brengen van:

● Sam Gillespie, “PLACING THE VOID: Badiou on Spinoza.” In: Angelaki, Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, Volume 6, 2001 - Issue 3, Pages 63-77 [cf.  tandfonline – PDF op BookSC]

Vervolgens ontdekte ik dat het tijdschrift Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, in 2006 een special had, verspreid over twee themanummers [Vol 2, No 1-2 (2006)] The Praxis of Alain Badiou. Zie hier de inhoudsopgave. PDF’s van de artikelen zijn daar te downloaden. Alain Badiou zelf had ook een bijdrage. De beide nummers zijn ineengevlochten in een bundel die daarna als boek is uitgegeven:

● Paul Ashton, A. J. Bartlett & Justin Clemens (eds.), The Praxis of Alain Badiou. Melbourne: re-press, 2008, met volledige weergave op books.google [en ook is het naar archive.org gebracht]

Sigi Jöttkandt schrijft in die special in zijn korte Introduction to Sam Gillespie: “Sam was a leading figure in introducing Badiou to the English-speaking world.” [Sam Gillespie (1970 – 2003) cf. wiki]. Sigi Jöttkandt heeft mede de redactie gevoerd om Sam Gillespie’s Ph.D-thesis postuum uit te brengen:

● Sam Gillespie, The Mathematics of Novelty: Badiou's Minimalist Metaphysics. Melbourne: re-press, 2008 - 159 pages. Het boek is door de uitgever in open Acces uitgebracht [cf. PDF]. Het bevat een sterk 2^e hoofdstuk over Badiou’s Spinoza. Daar kom ik later op terug.

● Jon Roffe, “The errant name: Badiou and Deleuze on individuation, causality and infinite modes in Spinoza.” In: Continental Philosophy Review / Springer Vol. 40, December 2007, pp. 389-406 [PDF op BookSC]

Dit artikel begon als lezing in dec. 2005
In lieu of an introduction, let me simply say that my subject here is Alain Badiou’s discussion of Spinoza’s ontology in his masterpiece L’être et l’événement. He proposes a reading that foregrounds a concept which is as central and celebrated to his philosophy as it is strictly excluded by Spinoza: the void. In short, Badiou contents that for all Spinoza’s effort to offer an ontology of total plenitude, the void returns in his philosophy under the (at first sight) unlikely name of infinite mode. [cf.]

Abstract: Although Alain Badiou dedicates a number of texts to the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza throughout his work—after all, the author of a systematic philosophy of being more geometrico must be a point of reference for the philosopher who claims that “mathematics=ontology”—the reading offered in Meditation Ten of his key work Being and Event presents the most significant moment of this engagement. Here, Badiou proposes a reading of Spinoza’s ontology that foregrounds a concept that is as central to, and celebrated in, his philosophy as it is strictly excluded by Spinoza: the void. In nuce, Badiou contends that for all of Spinoza’s efforts to offer an ontology of total plenitude, the void returns in his philosophy under the (at first sight) unlikely name of infinite mode. The presence of this errant name in Spinoza’s philosophy bears witness to the failure of his most profound intellectual endeavour. However striking Badiou’s reading of Spinoza, this paper argues that it fails to adequately grasp Spinoza’s metaphysics, particularly with respect to the central concept of modal essence, a concept which does not appear at all in the Badiouian text. By introducing a consideration of this concept, it becomes able to resolve the status of infinite modes, and to account for the move across the notorious finite–infinite divide. Thus the argument turns to the reading of Spinoza offered by Gilles Deleuze for a more thorough-going and nuanced approach, much superior to Badiou’s procrustean critique.

● Terence Blake, “BADIOU ON SPINOZA (1): the enigmatic status of « infinity »” [cf.]

● Terence Blake, “BADIOU ON SPINOZA (2): Badiou’s reading of Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza.” [cf.]

● Gregor Moder, “Spinoza in Badiou's Briefings on Existence.” [cf. researchgate]

Abstract: In his Briefings on Existence, Badiou proposes a reading of Spinoza which essentially differs from a traditional reading in one specific point. Hegel, along with other German Idealists, criticized the mathematical structure of Spinoza's Ethics. Deleuze and many others took on the task of defending Spinoza, however they did not deny Hegel's thesis that the abstract and formalist system of mathematics is unsuitable for producing philosophical truths. Rather, they pointed out that the mathematical order of demonstrations only played a limited role in Spinoza's work. In contrast, Badiou seems to defend a very exceptional position, arguing in favour of the mathematicity of being in Spinozism. As it turns out, though, Badiou differentiated between the axiomatic and the event model of thought-operations over being, and considered Spinozism to be limited to the axiomatic model where the event is excluded. But this means that he, just as Hegel before him, criticized Spinozism for the rigidity of its system of thought. In conclusion, the paper proposes an original way to conceive the level of event in Spinozism.

● Patrick Craig, “Absoluta Cogitatio: Badiou, Deleuze, and the Equality of Powers in Spinoza.” In: Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (1):227-246 (2013) [cf. Philpapers]

Abstract: Alain Badiou’s relationship to the work of Baruch Spinoza is a complex one. Though Badiou admires Spinoza’s courageous pursuit of the more geometrico, he is ardently critical of Spinoza on a number of fundamental ontological issues. Because of this, Spinoza often has had to bear the brunt of Badiou’s theoretical attacks. But how successful is Badiou’s attack on Spinoza? In this paper, I aim to show that this attack fails by examining the critique of Spinoza that Badiou provides in his “Spinoza’s Closed Ontology,” which can be found in his Theoretical Writings. Badiou’s essential claim is that the ontology of Spinoza’s Ethics employs structures or procedures that are heterogeneous to that ontology. I rely on Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza, as found in his Expressionism in Philosophy, to pinpoint precisely where Badiou’s reading of Spinoza goes wrong. I show not only that Badiou’s critique of Spinoza fails to recognize a central structural feature of Spinoza’s ontology, namely the two powers of God—the power to exist and act, and the power to think and know—but also that this misrecognition is the condition for the possibility of Badiou’s mistaken critique. The paper then discusses how it is that these issues relate, more broadly, to the relationship between Deleuze and Badiou. 

● Bülent Diken, “Profanation in Spinoza and Badiou: Religion and Truth.” In: Theory, Culture & Society, Published  June 2, 2015 [ cf. en cf. – PDF op BookSC]

Abstract: This article focuses on two different styles of profanation in Spinoza and Badiou. Notwithstanding the significant differences between them, their shared desire for profanation testifies to an interesting convergence. I deal with this convergence in divergence as a case of disjunctive synthesis through a comparison of the different understandings of religion in Spinoza and Badiou’s truth procedures. It is commonly held that Spinoza operates with three understandings of religion (superstition, the universal faith, and the true religion). But I argue that Spinoza’s thought opens up the space for a fourth understanding of ‘religion’ (which can accommodate instrumental reason and which, for the same reason, can be compared to Benjamin’s ‘capitalism as religion’). Then I discuss the formal similarity between Spinoza’s four religions and Badiou’s four truth procedures. I illustrate this discussion through two diagrams. I claim that Badiou’s truth procedures could be perceived as the Spinozist diagram’s re-entry into itself.

● Mogens Laerke, “The Voice and the Name: Spinoza in the Badioudian Critique of Deleuze.” Pli 8 (1999), 86-99. [PDF]

● Patrick McGee, "The Power of thought, or Spinoza after Negri and Badiou," Chapter 1 in dezelfde [Patrick McGee], Political Monsters and Democratic Imagination: Spinoza, Blake, Hugo, Joyce. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2016 - 272 pages - in z’n geheel te lezen op books.google

● Patrick McGee, "Ulysses and Radical Enlightenment from Spinoza to Badiou" (Unpublished Paper - June_2012 - academia.edu)

● Pierre-Franç.ois Moreau, Alain Badiou, lecteur de Spinoza [Cf.]

● Paul A. Rodriguez, “The Apostle Paul in Spinoza and Badiou.” In: NEXT, Volume, 5 Article [PDF]

This paper offers an analysis of the philosophical interpretations of the apostle Paul in Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1669) and Badiou's Saint Paul: La foundation de l'universalisme (1997). In addition, a brief description is offered on the difference between, on the one hand, the theological Paul, the Apostle of Faith, and, on the other hand, the historical Paul. Both Spinoza and Badiou offer complex philosophical readings of Paul that can be better understood when taking into consideration how they square with the image of Paul that has been constructed by the various theological traditions of Europe (i.e., the theological Paul), as well as the figure of Paul that is currently being reconstructed by historical-critical biblical scholarship (both New Perspective on Paul and postcolonial/empire-critical readings of Paul).

● Kenneth A. Reynhout, ALAIN BADIOU: HIDDEN THEOLOGIAN OF THE VOID? In Heythrop Journal LII (2011), pp. 219–233 –veel is op te steken over over Badiou & the void [PDF op BookSC]

 

● Peter Hallward (ed.), Think Again, Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy. London: Continuum / Bloomsbury, 2004 – books.google.

 

● Christopher Norris, “Alain Badiou: Truth, Ethics and the Formal Imperative.” In: Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, T. 65, O Dom, a Verdade, e a Morte: Abordagens ePerspectivas / The Gift, Truth, and Death: Approaches and Perspectives (2009), pp. 1103-1136 [cf. Jstor]

● Christopher Norris, Badiou's 'Being and Event': A Reader's Guide. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009 – books.google.

● Ian Hunter, “Heideggerian Mathematics. Badiou’s Being and Event as Spiritual Pedagogy. Representations,” Vol. 134  No. 1, Spring 2016; pp. 116-156 [PDF op BookSC]

● William E. Rankin IV, Experiencing Nothing: Anxiety and the Philosophy
of Alain Badiou. Master of Arts-thesis of The University of Western Ontario, 2014 [PDF]