heh heh.

So Badiou subscribes to the first canon of all Utopian ideologues: ‘First, change your human…..’

Mr Gordon exhibits remarkable restraint in this review. Judging from the review, I wouldn’t have had the patience to get past the first chapter before getting angry. Having followed the physicist Alan Sokal after his delightfully wicked satuire of the Postmoderns (search wiki or google on ‘The Sokal Incident’ if you want some entertainment) , and his followup book ‘Intellectual impostures’ (a swingeing attack on the entire French school of postmodern thought), I have to wonder how he would savage this book, given the chance.

It’s ironic that Badiou calls Sarkozy a rat. Considering Sarkozy’s recent authoritative declaration that “laizzez-faire is dead!”, I’ll wager that Badiou has more in common with Sarkozy’s views than he realizes.

Indeed, Bob, indeed. Over the years, Sarkozy has been all about rhetoric than action. But then again, France has thrown Bastiat and Say under the bus.

Good Article.

Unfortunately, the old fascist and communist ideology of representing the Humanity as one whole, as a living organism, and ignoring all little “selfish” desires of individuals comprising it is very much alive today, as it was two three centuries ago.

Certain elite thinkers for some reason hate all that is human – the desires of flesh, the human emotions, our virtues and vices.

Yes, we are indeed build on the animal, biological platform, yes we are mortal, and sometimes weak and fragile, yes, we are irrational, but are endowed with the gift of abstract reasoning. We, the humans are NOT perfect, but we are what we are with all our weaknesses and strengths.

And to negate all that, to ignore the physical, material world, and try to re-educate us as some sort of cells or inferior building blocks of a bigger than us, greater, higher organism called the State, is simply misguided, and will result in a lot of tragedy and pain.

I believe the best model for the human society to co-exist is the Internet. Internet is a set of loosely organized smaller networks, where no-one is more or less important than others, with weak centralized governing body. And yet, in the Internet, everyone manages to co-exist – the small and the big, the fast and the slow, and every small network connected to it serves a particular goal, while managing to co-operate with all others, without harming them.

In short, the beauty, the richness of the Internet is in its diversity, and the freedom it provides to its participants. The Internet is not a one greedy beast, that needs to be fed. No single individual or network can represent it, and yet, the majority of the participants in the Internet are happy, and are mostly in harmony with each other.

Why can’t Human Race co-exist in such manner?! Why do we need a grandiose, bigger than ourselves entity to represent us?! What is wrong in many smaller entities co-existing and co-operating towards common goal – the physical survival in the material world? What is wrong with being small and relatively unimportant?

I like the idea of Capitalism and free markets, since it is closely models the idea of decentralized and cooperating diverse entities, living in harmony, perfect model of which is the Internet!

Incredible! Someone who makes Naomi Klein seem like a voice of reason. You’d think someone who fancies himself as an intellectual would actually use intellectual processes in his writings, say deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, consistency in arguments, scientific observation, etc. It’s tragic that anyone who still sees the State as an instrument to bestow virtue and wisdom on the masses is taken seriously. At least children can be excused for believing in Santa Claus.

In fairness to Badiou, his notion of “event” represents a novel challenge to traditional ontology. Perhaps, Mr. Gordon disagrees. But, for those unfamiliar with Badiou’s work, I suggest reading Being and Event before rushing to judgment. I’m not trying to defend the man, but I think it would be irresponsible to disregard his legitimate contributions to philosophy because of his erroneous political and social views. Yes, he is an unrepentent Maoist. But, that doesn’t mean we can reject his body of work on that basis alone (or, at least, it shouldn’t if we desire to be intellectually honest). We all know how frustrating it is when statists reject Rothbard or Hoppe out of hand simply because they are anarchists. The technical aspects of Badiou’s philosophy deserve to be judged independently of his less rigorous and highly specious polemics.

David, I didn’t mean to suggest you were. I was, however, getting the impression from many of the comments that others were dismissing him because of his political views. Based on your review, it is possible that those unfamiliar with Badiou’s technical writing would assume he is nothing but a leftist hack. This, in my opinion, is not true. I agree that Badiou often conflates his ontology with his politics; but he is hardly the first person to succumb to that temptation. Knowing that mises.org generally attracts an unusually thoughtful and philosophical audience, I just wanted to point out that Badiou, in spite of his political orientation, has made relevant contributions to technical philosophy which might be of interest to some in the LvMI community.

I find it highly ironic. I hear a lot of capitalists talk about people becoming faceless under the free market, but in reality true capitalism gives everyone a face and a name and no individual is replaceable because everybody brings something to the table. On the other hand, socialists are always on about the people and how “good for the people” their ideals are…but when examined in detail you find that socialists of every stripe would turn everyone into nothing more than mere faceless cogs in the works identified by nothing more than mere numbers.

I am very surprised that a man like Sarkozy was able to get elected in France. I suppose that the French decided it was time for a “change.” (to borrow the word from its owner: the Messiah most merciful) The whole country of France is far to the left and have been moving farther left ever since their revolution. Look at the euphoria over the Messiah. An American election! Granted most Frenchman are ignorant of most things American, it was just a reaction to Bush derangment syndrome.

I could not think you are more right.