Second Manifesto for Philosophy

by Alain Badiou

Twenty years ago, Alain Badiou's first Manifesto for Philosophy rose up against the all-pervasive proclamation of the "end" of philosophy. In lieu of this problematic of the end, he put forward the watchword: "one more step." The situation has considerably changed since then. Philosophy was threatened with obliteration at the time, whereas today it finds itself under threat for the diametrically opposed reason: it is endowed with an excessive, artificial existence. "Philosophy" is everywhere. It serves as a trademark for various media pundits. It livens up cafes and health clubs. It has its magazines and its gurus. It is universally called upon, by everything from banks to major state commissions, to pronounce on ethics, law and duty. In essence, "philosophy" has now come to stand for nothing other than its most ancient enemy: conservative ethics.

Badiou's second manifesto therefore seeks to demoralize philosophy and to separate it from all those "philosophies" that are as servile as they are ubiquitous. It demonstrates the power of certain eternal truths to illuminate action and, as such, to transport philosophy far beyond the figure of "the human" and its "rights." There, well beyond all moralism, in the clear expanse of the idea, life becomes something radically other than survival.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 2009

About the author

Alain Badiou, Ph.D., born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. 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 Chair 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 center 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, Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today. Influenced by Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.

Reviews

[Kenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his Second Manifesto for Philosophy, Alain Badiou sets out to oppose the conditions under which philosophy is done today, marking a significant change from the conditions under which his First Manifesto was written. This book is also a supplement to his larger Logic of Worlds: Being and Event 2, just as the First Manifesto supplemented the earlier Being and Event. Given Badiou's practice of preparing his Manifestoes for Philosophy alongside the volumes of his Being and Event series, it's interesting to wonder whether a Third Manifesto will accompany his soon-to-be-translated Immanence of Truths: Being and Event 3, and in what ways the world of philosophy has changed since the writing of the Second Manifesto.
As I've suggested, this book less than a standalone piece of theory is best read as a supplement to Logic of Worlds, and at several stages of Badiou's argument in the Second Manifesto he refers the reader to the appropriate sections of the larger tome. His decision to do so however left me feeling like the arguments he laid out were still uncomfortably vague, as though this is really an incomplete book. The feeling of incompleteness if also fortified by two structural oddities here: for one, on both the opening and closing covers of the book Badiou has chosen to include diagrams which represent his system from Logic of Worlds - this is strange because in the Second Manifesto, Badiou barely addresses these diagrams, and where he does it is with the clear intention of once again directing readers to the appropriate sections of Logic of Worlds, rather than explaining them here. Why include them at all if barely cursory attention will be paid to them?
Secondly, the most theoretical work in Second Manifesto is completed in the introduction and conclusion. For the ends to which Badiou, in the conclusion, deploys the concepts that he spends the book developing, like Ideation, Subjectivation and Appearance, a much shorter text could easily have been written without any impact being made to the argument that Badiou is apparently trying to make here. The majority of the book accordingly and in relation to the ostensible purpose of the Second Manifesto feels superfluous.
This is by no means a bad book. But it does leave one longing for what could have been written: a more precise and self-enclosed work which refuses the temptation to include so much largely tangential content, the cost of which is a desultory, incomplete and rushed, although for all that no less timely, book.

[Deep · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was, to my memory, the first work by Badiou I ever read. Coming back to it after some further knowledge of his work and other philosophers he's in dialogue with (Kant, Plato, Deleuze, Derrida, Heidegger etc) I find it much more comprehensible. This is the issue with this text: it's an very succinct summary of Badiou's work, but a summary that presumes prior knowledge of so many other thinkers. There's so many parts where Badiou previously lost me and likely most first time readers: that transcendental used in the Kantian sense of conditions, not 'otherworldly'; the off-hand references to set theory.

In a certain sense this encapsulates a central dilemma of philosophy: where do you start? Any contemporary thinker will presume the reader has at least some familiarity with the current trends, and "Starting with the Greeks" falls into Zeno's paradox of movement (before you read Kant, read Hume, but before that you need to read Descartes and so on), soon you've read nothing.

In short I would recommend this as an introductory work to and by Badiou, but one that does have some notable issues with clarity. Would I recommend it as an introductory work to philosophy as such? While it does formulate a series of problems I in broad strokes agree with, it's a work that probably demands you keep a few dozen plato.stanford.edu tabs open at the same time.

[Ghala Anas · Rating 5 out of 5]

"في العالم الذي نحن فيه، لا يمكن للفلسفة أن تظهر إلا بمثابة اللا - موجود الخاص بكل أخلاق وبكل قانون. وذلك بقدر ما يمكن أن يظل هناك أخلاق وقانون – ولا يمكن إلا أن يظل هناك أخلاق وقانون – تحت سواء عنف اللامساواة العجيب المسلط على العالم من طرف المجتمعات المهيمنة، واقتصادها المتوحش ومن قِبل دولها التي لا تعدو أن تكون، أكثر من أي وقتٍ مضى، حسب عبارة ماركس، مجرد "مفوَّضين رسميين لرأس المال" .. وبالفعل لا يكاد يكون من الممكن في هذه الظروف أن تنجح شريحة من الشباب في التعرف على انبثاق الفلسفة الحقة، دون أن يتعرض ما كان يربطها بمجرد الاستمرار البحث إلى فساد دائم. إن سقراط قد حوكم إلى الأبد".

بيانٌ ثانٍ من أجل الفلسفة – آلان باديو \ ترجمة فتحي المسكيني

كتاب ماتع بحق، فيه قيمة فكرية مرتفعة، وتساؤلات في محلها، ونظريات جديرة بالاهتمام.

يتحدث باديو في بيانه الثاني من أجل الفلسفة عن دور الذاتية في البحث الدائم عن الكونية الذائبة في تمظهرات الحقيقة في كل عصر، وفي هذا الأفق، يتناول موضوعات البيان الثاني في كل ما يتعلق بالرأي والظهور والتفاضل والمُكرر والتحول والإدماج والتذويت والتفكير، وفيما يلي تفصيل لكل منها:

الرأي: على الفيلسوف الانطلاق من وصل الحقائق الاستثنائية بين العوالم والثقافات، لا من حرية الرأي الديموقراطية.

الظهور: تظهر الحقائق العابرة للأزمنة ضمن منطق علائقي يربطها ببقية الحقائق والتمظهرات ويدمجها معها.

التفاضل: ينطوي المنطق العلائقي على درجات تطابق مختلفة بين الكثرات (الموجودات)، بين الدرجات الدنيا والقصوى التي تحققها.

الوجود: يوجد الشيء بدرجة تفاضل معينة في المنطق العلائقي، وعادة ما يكون الوجود مقياس تطابق الشيء مع ذاته، إلا أن ذلك لا علاقة له بكينونته، أي إن كانت درجة تطابقه صفراً (كفكرة متخيلة) فإن ذلك لا ينفي عنه الكينونة.

التحول: يُنتج التحول الحدثي الحقيقة في لحظة تماس بين الصدفة والأبدية، بمعنى أن الحدث إن تحقق في درجة وجودٍ قصوى استطاع إنتاج الحقيقة.

الاندماج: يمكن لأي متكثر في العالم تمثيل الحقيقة إن كانت درجة تطابقه مع المنطق البدئي (لاموجود الحالة السابقة للعالم) درجة قصوى.

التذويت: موقف الذات من الحقيقة المندمجة في المنطق البدائي، وهو إما يكون مخلصاً يدمج الحقيقة في زمنها الجديد، أو مرتكساً يستند إلى المحافظة وخلق واقعٍ يحجب نفسه باستمرار، أو مظلماً يريد موت الحقيقة وفرض سيادة قاتلة لجسم تراثي ما، وبهذا يكون التاريخ تاريخ تفاعل متبادل بين هذه المواقف الثلاثة، ويطرح الكاتب موضوع الحُب، إلى جانب السياسة، متأثراً بهذه المواقف الثلاث، فالحب لدى الذات المخلصة يسمو ويرتفع وينطوي على اندماج بين الطرفين، ولدى الذات المرتكسة يبحث عن الضمانات في القانون وشروط الزواج وإنشاء الأسرة وإحصاء المنافع والمضار، ولدى الذات المظلمة يتمثل في الغيرة المميتة وهيمنة الطرف على الآخر.

التفكير: الاندماج مع مسار الحقيقة بوصفه (أي الفكر) ضرورة تفرض علينا لرفع وجودنا إلى الحقيقة الكونية: "إن الفكرة هي الصرامة في معنى الوجود".

وينتقد الكاتب في خاتمته إحلال الثقافة والتقنية والتصرف والجنس محل المكان النوعي للعلم والفن والسياسة والحب، كمظهر دالٍّ على الدغمائية الفقيرة والنزعة العرفانية وأيديولوجيا الديموقراطية وحقوق الإنسان، مشدداً تمسكه بمفاهيم الكينونة والذات والحقيقة، والموجودة والمؤثرة علينا وعلى عالمنا سواءً أدركناها أم لا، ويصرُّ على حاجتنا لإكمال نقد الديموقراطية عن أفلاطون استناداً إلى ما دعاه "شيوعية الفكرة"، متوجهين إلى ما يصنع الحقيقة ويحدثها ويضمن لنا أبديتها.

كتاب قصير وماتع وطرحه غاية في الأهمية والجمال، أحببته كثيراً.

[Messaoudi Mohamed]

لم يعد هدف هذا البيان مهاجمة الميتافيزيقيا أو سردية نهاية و موت الفلسفة - كما الشأن في البيان الأوّل - بل ما يهاجمه هو الدغمائية الفقيرة القادمة من الفلسفة التحليلية و النزعة العرفانية و أيديولوجيا الديمقراطية و حقوق الإنسان التي تصلب الذات الفردية و تنصب نفسها مخلصة الجماعة .

يقر باديو أن الفلسفة ليست - كما لم تكن منذ لحظة أفلاطون على أقل تحديد - نزعة علموية تكرس لبروتوكولات تجريبية تعلّب الوعي و تسقف الذهن البشري .

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring. I wish more thinkers/philosophers would deign to do this: Badiou has (for the second time) followed a massive, technical philosophical work with a short, poetic, sharp manifesto summarizing what he was up to in the massive work. It is readable but still definitely challenging. It treats you to some of the challenging conclusions, while also letting you decide whether you want to dive in to the challenge of the larger work.

From the book:
"When all is said and done this Second Manifesto is the result of our confused and detestable present time forcing us to declare that there are eternal truths in politics, art, science and love. And that if we are armed with this conviction, if we understand that to participate, point by point, in the process of creation of subjectivizable bodies is what renders life more powerful than survival, we will possess what Rimbaud, at the end of _A Season in Hell_, desired above all else: 'Truth, in a soul and a body'. Then shall we be stronger than Time."

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Badiou has a great knack of turning the mind-bogglingly complex ideas behind his masterworks into a compact, concise and readable short pieces. This book condenses the ideas in "Logics of Worlds" into something more digestale. I always think that these reductions and collections of essays (Theoretical Writings and Infinite Thought in particular) manage to show how he isn't full of the empty bluster that many critics of continental thought aim at him directly or indirectly. A great introduction to the most recent period of his work and well worth a read. Not for the beginner in philosophy, but definitely a good start for those wanting to explore Badiou's work in detail.

[Ivan Labayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

read here badiou's insistence on thought but not a corresponding neglect of practice as many people usually do especially when they divide theory and practice too much. he enlivens the idea of the 'universal' -- again quite refreshing given all the death, deaths and other deaths pronounced by POMO and all. pinaka-yummy? he anoints the proletariat as a key unit in that universal.

this, sort of relates to what marcuse yata said something in philo which makes it hiwalay to the people: "reason, mind, morality, knowledge and happiness are NOT ONLY categories of philo, but concerns of mankind." the universal is relevant, because the universal (freedom, the enacting of the Event) concerns us.

[Bram Van boxtel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Badiou attempts to mix materialism with platonism, and does so to a satisfactory degree. I find his conclusion to be quite vague (how can we recognize these eternal truths?) and I am not entirely convinced. A light read.