‘When everything is possible, nothing is’. Alain Badiou avec Fabien Tarby

If you thought philosophy was only about the art of dying, think again. Fabien Tarby’s ‘entretiens’ with Alain Badiou is about philosophy as ‘the’ art of  living; philosophy as bouncing and alive, so alive its dynamic visions still manage to ignite our minds with more questions than definitive answers.

‘La philosophie et l’évènement’ takes us on a curious and intellectually challenging journey into this thinker’s extraordinary mind. Extra-ordinary, however, is not an adjective Badiou is comfortable with.  Badiou sees philosophy as ‘that intellectual discipline, that unique one, central to which is the conviction that there are truths to be found’ (p.148- my translation). Philosophy is a journey with ‘une vision’, a vision delivering a veritable ‘truth’, one which guides one’s existence from ‘within’. Truth masquerades in different names -‘spirit, ‘active force’- but nonetheless, the philosopher’s quest for the ‘truth’ is as dynamic today as it has ever been.

Tarby’s profoundly crafted questions invite us to explore the four fundamental pillars of philosophy, namely politics, love, arts and science. Perhaps one of the most challenging questions (that is for me, as a novelist) is in the art ‘section’ (p.92): Tarby asks about our expectation of art: should we resign ourselves to the ‘end of art’ -as in ‘the end of history’-, or can we entrust art with a ‘new project’?

Badiou sees contemporary art existing in a confused and uncertain state: there is no major orientation and with so many diverse schools, we find ourselves in a situation where ‘tout est possible’ (p.93). Badiou qualifies: ‘But we only know too well that when everything is possible, nothing is’ (ibid). The crisis of ‘Ideas’ manifests itself as the sunset of that artistic period, feeding itself on a ‘radical’ methodological critique. Art, Badiou says, used to be the critique, namely the critique of itself. ‘I think we are entering a period of the critique of the critique, a period where art can find itself an affirmative function, once again’ . Our period is that of searching and obscurity, awaiting events to shape us. He cites Ibsen: ‘The old beauty is no longer beautiful, and the new truth is not yet true’. Today, according to Badiou, we have more pornography and mysticism, and a ‘return to religions’ of some sort; in other words, a return to ‘tradition’. When you have a crisis in ‘Ideas’, two consequences emerge: on the one hand, the tension of the ‘ordinary’ human-animal sheltering in its most comfortable and habitual existence (family values, tradition) and on the other hand, the drive to abandon itself to nihilism and debauchery. It is an unavoidable ‘bipolarity’: we either retreat back to the safe ‘animal tradition’, or we do anything.

This époque of ‘bipolarity’ – imbibed in the ‘mumbo-jumbo’ of our contemporary culture, the rise of religious fervour, distrust in science and voyeuristic culture (think reality TV, virtual Social Networking) – is central to the concerns of many artists, poets and writers. In the words of  A.S. Byatt : ‘We’ve always had dumbness, but never before in the history of humanity has it been so much celebrated’.

So should we, as Fabien Tarby asks, entrust art with a new project? I think yes:  The project of ‘the other’: Art being not merely the mirror where society looks at itself in a superficial and ‘grooming’ manner, but art as that affirmative ‘vision’ of the relationship between love and our modern world. That is: the ‘Idea’, versus the crisis of ‘Ideas’, as we await the ‘évènements’, philosophically speaking, of course.

Alain Badiou avec Fabien Tarby, ‘la philosophie et l’évènement’ is published by Germina (2010) ISBN-13: 978-2917285138

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