Kant, Badiou, and Necessity
September 22, 2007
As an addendum to this post, I wonder whether a philosopher like Badiou is drawing a similar distinction to Kant, only shifting into a different register.
Kant draws a general distinction between our knowledge of truths which are, respectively, necessary and universal or contingent and specific. His examples make it clear that he is primarily concerned with the standard types employed in analytic philosophy: mathematical propositions, scientific propositions, basic epistemological propositions.
It seems to me that Badiou maintains a similar distinction but, as it is thoroughly embedded in his own system, with concerns that are distinct from those analytic/anglo-american philosophy inherited from Kant, its content shifts slightly. Whereas for Kant, contingent, non-universal judgements cover all the propositions we assent to on the basis of experience (whatever their register), with no immediate ethical import, for Badiou they concern ‘the indispensable exhange of opinions, which, like talk of the weather, is most often about what life promises or withdraws by way of pleasant and precarious moments’. The contingent and non-universal is connected to the humdrum realities of our daily lives, guided as they our by our impulse to live. A necessary and universal truth, on the other hand, is what allows us to become askew to all this, to break with time’s cruelties and our animal existence.
Formally, I think, the distinction is the same, but its content – or perhaps its import – differs. Actually, now I think about it, perhaps the distinctions aren’t so different, given what goes on elsewhere in Kant’s system. More on this another time if I think its going anywhere.
