Kant's Intellectually Intuitive God vs. Spinoza's Fractal Onto-Theology?

Back to philosophy. In my earlier post on Kant, I tried to make a distinction between intellectual intuiton and empirical sensation. Kant will say something like: we cannot have a pure intellectual intuition of the object because that would give us the thing-in-itself (also known as the transcendental object). What Kant means is something like: the "transcendental" part of the thing-in-itself means that it serves as the grounds for the possibility of experience. So, the thing-in-itself, for Kant, allows for the object to be given to us, but since we participate in space and time (mediative intuitions) we only have representations of the object and never a pure intuition of it. I am trying to stress that Kant sees our spatial-temporal media as being, in a literal sense, that which keeps us from having truly primary a priori knowledge of the object.
However, that's Kant's view of human finitude. Rewind. Kant says "intuition has its seat in the subject only, as the formal character of the subject, in virtue of which, in being affected by objects, it obtains immediate representation, that is, intuition, of them; and only in so far, therefore, as it is merely the form of outer sense in general" (71).
Fastforward. "In natural theology, in thinking an object [God], who not only can never be an object of intuition to us but cannot be an object of sensible intuition even to himself, we are careful to remove the conditions of time and space from his intuition--for all his knowledge must be intuition, and not thought, which always involves limitations" (90).
But then Kant goes on to say that since time and space are conditions of existence, they must also be conditions of the existence of God. Further down though: "This mode of intuiting in space and time need not be limited to human sensibility. It may be that all finite, thinking beings necessarily agree with man in this respect, although we are not in a position to judge whether this is actually so. But however universal this mode of sensibility may be, it does not therefore cease to be sensibility. It is derivative (intuitus derivativus), not original (intuitus originarius), and therfore not intellectual intuition. For the reason stated above, such intellectual intuition seemse to belong solely to the primordial being, and can never be ascribed to a dependent being, dependent in its existence as well as in its intuition, and which through that intuition is conscious of its own existence only in relation to given objects" (90).
Long quote, I know--but the point I'm trying to make is that Kant wavers on a fundamental point: does God partake of the conditions of existence, and thus does he exist in space and time? On the other hand--God cannot exist in space and time because he has direct access to the Thing--or the thing-in-itself--pure noumenon. It is intellectual intuition that is equated with this ability--so God, the primordial being, has intellectual or original intuition. Doesn't this sound like a world in which man is fallen and only perceives so many bad copies of the object?
Anyway--the fundamental point I was trying to make in relation to Spinoza--Spinoza considers substance to be God, and God's substance to consist of an infinity of attributes. The trick is, human subjectivity only works in two dimensions: thought and extension (mind/body--space/time?). However, this does not exclude the very real fact that the true nature of God's substance exists on an infinity of different dimensions (understood as attributes--understood as possible expressions of being--a truly fractal onto-theology in the sense that there exists an infinity of modes of being that exist outside, inside, between, alongside of the realms of thought and extension. Quantum Physics--String Theory--Spinoza? hahaha. nice.

Logic of Sense: Series 2 on the Paradox of Surface Effects: Dialectics as the Art of Conjugation

In series 2 on the paradox of surface effects, Deleuze happens to mention dialectics as “the art of conjugation” (8). Before diving into the implications of this statement, we should note that for Deleuze, the pure event can be conceived of as an infinitive independent of any temporal, modal, vocal or personal grammatical determinations—and so in essence, this type of pure event can be conceived of properly as a pre-individual singularity that escapes the logical ordering of worlds (214). This insistence on the link between the infinitive and the event can be traced throughout the book and culminates in series 30 on the phantasm; however, we can understand how and for what purpose Deleuze chooses to designate a role for dialectics (note, not the dialectic) in his philosophy. All that is required is a more concrete definition of dialectics as Deleuze gives it and an unpacking of what the art of conjugation entails for an understanding of the way in which events come to be expressed in propositions and the way that these events are themselves related in propositions (8).

I did not happen to bring up series 30 on accident, for what Deleuze makes explicit is that psychoanalysis and dialectics, fundamentally at least, share a strong affinity (notice Deleuze chiding Freud for taking a ‘Hegelian’ position on the contradictory nature of primitive words) (213). This is because psychoanalysis takes phantasms as the (im)material for its science of events. Similarly, Deleuze links the incorporeal effects or “dialectical attributes” to the events that populate the surface (5). In fact, Deleuze will even say “The Stoics discovered surface effects. Simulacra cease to be subterranean rebels and make the most of their effects (that is, what might be called ‘phantasms,’ independently of the Stoic terminology)” (8). It is here that Deleuze first equates the event with being beyond the passive/active opposition, being both and neither at once (8).

If dialectics is “the science of incorporeal events as they are expressed in propositions, and of the connections between events as they are expressed in relation between propositions,” then one might well question whether or not Deleuze fully bypasses this sort of static conception of events (8). In fact, I want to hypothesize that Deleuze brings up dialectics at the start as a one-sided approach to the phenomenon of language formation along a frontier. What will become important to Deleuze is not simply how the infinitive-event is conjugated in a world, but instead how infinitive-events can be said to be a-cosmic and singular. This singularity can be tricky if we choose to see events circulating in a univocal Event that is transcendent to the world and its logic. If we choose to see the ideality of the pure event as transcendent, we fall into the easy trap that Badiou is guilty of—namely, that of condemning the concept of the virtual as that which introduces transcendence into an otherwise untainted, univocal system of immanence.

But this does not answer the obvious question—what does the virtual mean and how does it correlate with Deleuze’s concept of dialectics? If we can roughly divide the terms actual/virtual with the two movements of time Chronos/Aion, then we may be able to make some progress (or make things more confusing). As I understand it, Chronos is the time of the pure, full present, the past and the future being subsumed and contracted or folded into one layer. But Aion works exactly opposite: instead, future and past are infinitely subdivided and the present is what is empty—in this sense, the present is not, or it can be considered a void point. If we can imagine that the world partakes of both times at once, we belie the fundamental point—events that are temporalized have actual consequences on the world of Chronos. Instead of being just past or just about to come—as Deleuze understands the time of Aion and the pure event—actualized events come to share in the consequences of world formation and logical development. But this leaves the obvious question of the virtuality of the event: what about an event that isn’t actualized? We can say that the event did not take place because of a lack of force or because of a sufficient intensity for a zone was not activated. In other words, events have potentials that must be tapped into and unleashed for a proportionate actualization. In some sense, the event requires certain conditions and the relative critical energy in order for the chaos of the virtual to be actualized in the production of reality. It is, then, the duty of dialectics to be able to formulate specific conditions that augment the conjugation of pure events from the virtuality of Aion to the actuality of Chronos.

Kant, the Antinomies, and the Soul as Rebel Element

Kant’s working through of a set of functions of representation that support the interaction between the subject and object-as-appearance is dizzying to say the least. Beginning with the concepts of intuition and sensibility, Kant elaborates his distinctions between the a priori and a posteriori by linking them with their analogues: intellectual intuition and empirical sensation. Since Kant ends with intellectual intuition (B72), it is better to start with a more primary opposition.

What is essential to understand is that intuition is immediate, and thus a priori. Because of their immediacy, intuitions are pre-logical and pre-relational, which means that they exist before ever being thought by the subject. In fact, intuition only arises because of a gift, the gift of the object. Without this gift, intuition cannot function, or, better yet, if the object were never given, there would be no possibility of the (self)-consciousness of the function of intuition at all.

The gift of the object is a force that affects the subject’s sensibility, which means that our capacity for receiving the gift is defined by a particular mode which only renders representations of the object, and not the thing-in-itself. Since the thing-in-itself, a.k.a. the transcendental object cannot be known to us, it lies outside of the domain of sensibility. Only God has an intuition of this Thing and only by dint of the fact that God’s knowledge is not in the inferior mode of human thought, that which perpetuates the persistence of a relational and spatio-temporal structure. God is not in space or time, and therefore his knowledge cannot be limited to thought but must be reserved for pure intuition (taking for granted God’s existence, of course). The point is that mortal beings of thought have to think these intuitions through the understanding which then forms concepts (A19).

This brings us to the fundamental difference between thinking and pure intuition. As opposed to God, the subject can only experience intuition through thought. Concepts arise which form the structure of our apprehension of intuition. Because it is thought, intuition is not pure, which fundamentally means that it is mediated. If intuition for Kant is immediate, the representations that arise from the force of the object affecting the subject have to relate to the fact that there is no presentation of intuition, merely thoughts that form representational concepts through the understanding. Thus, all of our perceptions are a posteriori in the sense that they are mediated by the understanding.

This is what accounts for Kant’s introduction of the term appearance at the beginning of the Transcendental Aesthetic. If intuitions of objects are representations, a posteriori and empirical, then the subject always encounters “undetermined objects,” in the sense that objects are never things-in-themselves, they only merely appear in the world as phenomena (A20).

But we should ask: why is appearance the only mode for an object to affect a subject? Or, why is the object always mediated in relation to the subject? This of course leads Kant to stipulate the a priori existence of space and time. Objects, insofar as they are given to subjects, are always structured by these two forms. These two forms divide the subject into two senses: the inner and outer sense. Space refers to outer sense because of our perception of objects. Time refers to inner sense insofar as it allows the ‘I’ to synthesize the diverse and changing, sometimes contradictory states or predicates that inhere in the subject, one after another. Time and space are forms for Kant because they order the “manifold of appearance” and force relations to occur (B34, A20).

This is crucial because at first I didn’t really understand how important Kant’s definition of space and time really are. They are not grounds, nor are they containers; they do not inhere in beings or objects; they are not originary. They do not generate beings, but instead they are essential as the milieu in which beings and bodies necessarily relate. Space and time are both unitary and infinite. It is for precisely this reason that they are not generative, because they represent perfectly what the paradox of the abnormal set means. I will quote a passage from Kant in order to make this clear:

Space is represented as an infinite given multitude. Now every concept must be thought as a representation which is contained in an infinite number of different possible representations (as their common character), and which therefore contains these under itself; but no concept, as such, can be thought as containing an infinite number of representations within itself. It is in this latter way, however, that space is thought; for all the parts of space coexist ad infinitum. Consequently, the original representation of space is an a priori intuition, not a concept (B40).

The abnormal set is a set which all sets belong to and which includes itself. This paradox was nicely formulated by Russell in the 20^th century, but for our purposes the existence of the abnormal set—designated by Space and Time respectively—corresponds to Kant’s antinomies of the Soul, God, and the Universe. I have taken the term abnormal set from the way in which Deleuze describes it in Logic of Sense, and I want to expand on it by linking its complementary term with Kant’s antinomy of the soul.

The term rebel element refers to an element that “forms part of a set whose existence it presupposes and belongs to two sub-sets which it determines” (Deleuze 75). In closing, and in curiosity, I want to try to link the antinomy of the Soul (as I vaguely understand it) with the concept of the rebel element. Kant might say that the soul is precisely not a concept, cannot be sensed, and thus cannot yield itself as an object to empirical intuition. It can only be axiomatically assumed a priori. However, if the soul is the rebel element, then it means that it forms part of a set (Man) whose two sub-sets (life, death) are determined by the fact that the soul belongs to both of those planes. The antinomy from this point of view is precisely the fact that man’s life and death are significantly determined whether or not we posit the existence of the soul. But man does not equal the soul, and so as a subset, it can be presupposed to not exist without destroying the subject per se. What happens is that the soul still continues to have an effect on the set and sub-sets precisely to the extent that the soul is not done away with magically and successfully repressed, but instead it returns in the form of its negation. Thus, (soulless) man enters a completely different dialectical relationship with life and death. The rebel element thus has a way of creating a (dis)order or an alternative order by forcing a revaluation of the terms to which it relates. It is not simply that the presence or absence of a permanent or temporary soul undeniably changes the individual’s relationship with life and death; more importantly, this has to be understood as a process that is singular for each individual. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the soul is understood as an idol (an object of heights)—Monotheism—as a simulacrum (object of depths)—Buddhism—as an image (object of partial corporeal surfaces)—Foucault’s “the soul is the prison of the body”—and as a phantasm (soul as pure surface effects of the event of libidinal intensities).

Series 17: Static Logical Genesis: Metaphysical Surface

The most intriguing concept in this series seems to be what Deleuze calls the metaphysical surface or the transcendental field. I want to hypothesize that the “transcendental” in this concept signifies the possibility of language. This has something to do not only with Deleuze’s insistence on a frontier of language, but also resonates strongly with his focus on what he calls folding or enveloping. I will try to illuminate the complexity behind these concepts and show how they all interpenetrate one another in order to constitute the metaphysical surface that makes language possible.

The ontological proposition deals with individuals and persons, the former being infinite analytically and the latter being finite synthetically. These two ground one another and allow for denotation (the realm of the infinite analytic) and manifestation (related to the finite synthetic nature of the person) to enter into language. Signification is defined by possibility, and takes the place of the logical proposition. Deleuze is unable to say whether signification is primary at the start because “signification presupposes . . . an entire play of denotation and manifestation both in the power to affirm premises and in the power to state conclusions” (119). Thus, signification actually presupposes the formation of a good and common sense, linked to the individual and the person respectively. The tertiary structure of the proposition is “contingent upon sense” because it is formed by ontological and logical geneses (119). There is a secondary organization of sense (good and common) that allows for Deleuze to talk about the two x’s: on the one hand we have the object without a place, that which always exceeds its boundaries, and on the other hand we have the empty square, that which serves as the empty form of identity that common sense produces. Deleuze explains that there is, beyond the tertiary order of the proposition and the secondary organization of sense, “a terrible primary order wherein the entire language becomes enfolded” (120).

This folding is where we start to deal with the surface of language, and Deleuze asks a key question before introducing the transcendental field: “How can we maintain both that sense produces even the states of affairs in which it is embodied, and that it is itself produced by these states of affairs or the actions and passions of bodies?” (124). His answer is that it resides in the depths of the pulsation of mixed bodies, “by means of its power to organize surfaces and to envelop itself within the surface” (124). This is why Deleuze will say that “The surface is neither active nor passive, it is the product of the actions and passions of mixed bodies” (124). Making an analogy with physical surfaces, Deleuze argues that there is a surface energy which, without being of the surface is attributed to surface formations. Thus with a physics of surfaces there arises a metaphysics of surfaces as well: it is this metaphysical surface which will act as the name for “the frontier established, on one hand, between bodies taken together as a whole and inside the limits which envelop them, and on the other, propositions in general” (125). This surface, then, is linked to a “sonorous continuum” which insures that speech sticks to the extra-Being of bodies in such a way to envelop them in the interiority of language—allowing for a frontier of sound (proposition) and substance (bodies).

The last thing to emphasize is that this metaphysical surface which acts as a frontier is not one that separates—and so, this is not a limit in the Hegelian sense. It’s a limit which is not one, a porous limit, a membrane as such. This membrane is actually the articulation of sense as that which happens to bodies and insists in propositions (125). It is also not a separation in the way that sense is doubled up at the surface and deployed on both sides of the frontier. It is when this frontier is abolished that sense irrupts into nonsense and bodies fall back into their depths, unable to signify or have sense. As Deleuze argues at the end of the series, as long as the surface lasts, sense will bring about individuation in bodies and signification in propositions, allowing for the true event of language to unfold.

Iterative self-programming.

Let S be the basic symbol set where S is an ordered set of symbols which correspond one-to-one with the effective atomic operational semantics of any programming language (of sufficient power and complexity, see [1].) That is, S represents the complete enumeration of the operational semantics of a programming language P. For example, S1 would be the alphabetically first legitimate symbol in P, and Si would be the ith symbol in P. A function is any compilable, syntactically correct, ordered collection of symbols in S. Let L be the language of all such functions, beginning with simple variations on the basic symbol set, whose rules of expansion we shall return to. Let Li be the ith function in L, and the list of this set L is the complete enumeration of the .basic names of all functions generated so far over S.
Let F be the ordered index of all functions in L which either (a) generate syntactically valid output from valid input, or (b) change the (intra)system state in any way. A structured partition of F is a collection of functions taken as methods of a class and which generate syntactically valid input and output. Let a component be any collection of functions which, taken as methods of a class, generate syntactically valid input and output and utilizes other member (or family) functions or variables. A component is by definition syntactically correct and has a rough, “machinistic” (part-to-whole) meaning.
We define a closed ontology O to be an ordered collection of micro-ontologies. A micro-ontology is a special kind of class structure in which an arbitrary assemblage of component names are related to other component-names/ around five cateogires:
(a) Individuals. An individual is just a named component; let I represent the group of all individuals belonging to the micro-ontology; the first individual is the name of the micro-ontology itself;
(b) Classes. A class C is an ordered group of components with some commonality. This commonality is represented as the name of the class. At the same time, the contents of C are entirely dictated the name of C (which is the addition of a new basic symbol in O.):The name of C names the grouping-function of which C is the result;
(c) Attributtes
(d) Relations
(e) Events: Events are interruptions of a process due to an input stream (words or images) which provoke some response; this response is re-encoded as a necessary relation between an “individual” of the class of “events”;
Let K be an open ontology, the set of all valid programs—just ordered collections of closed ontologies--correlated to themselves within a macro-ontology. We shall say K is equivalent to a simple agent. Let us define three rules which expand K (i.e., generate new functionalities.)…

(i) other:
a. the function calling this function is taken as the foundation for a new program;
b. four variations and cross-variation on this interaction
i. repetition/erasure
ii. extension/contraction
iii. displacement/reogranization
iv. integration/separation
(ii) same
a. this operation is repeated, treating the newly creating network of related programs as the other who calls
b. (repeat the four variations)
(iii) synthesis (new program generation)

[1] – The basic ‘trick’ here is that the recursive step appears in the definition itself, i.e., in the relation of the symbol set to itself. We’ll get into all this later, but the programming language in question has to at the least allow for recursion, the definition of an abstract class, and the treatment of program code as an atomic data type. Provided this, we have the raw mechanics we need to simulate a heterogeneous network of communicative, self-programming agents--which allows for the multiple social instantiations of linguistically competent agency. Treating the program code as a code allows the computer to treat any code as a code—i.e., gradually and smoothly increase its facility with a symbol set by using it, experimenting with it, etc.


(sorry, finals, I’ll finish this soon)

Notes on Natural-Language Artificial Intelligence

Our first axiom must be some kind of logically justifiable affirmation that this goal is indeed reachable:

(1) Linguistic competence is attainable through the appropriate programming of any universal Turing machine.

In order to demonstrate this, let’s suppose that (‘artificial’) natural language agency isn’t possible. Accepting this implies at least one of the following two propositions must be true:

(a) Either linguistic competence will never be attainable for machines due to some kind of ultimately undiscoverable reason, or

(b) Algorithmic linguistic competence is unattainable for a reason which is, at least in principle, discoverable (i.e, empirically demonstrable)

In the case of (a), we have a clear fallacy verging on mysticism, at least without further evidence to adduce it. Formally, positively asserting impossibility based on an absence of evidence is purely inductive and has no necessary truth value. On the other hand, the truth value of (b), rather than resorting to faith in a metaphysical proposition, is based entirely on the principle of impossibility which is to be demonstrated. This is, of course, the more scientific of the two propositions, and the one that most deserves our scrutiny.
Why have we drawn this distinction? First, because it is clear that many “counter-proofs” of natural-language A.I. (“strong” A.I.) advocate (b) on the basis of (a), in a sort of admixture where they end up founding their “empirical” demonstrations upon crude and poorly-concealed metaphysical presuppositions. Second, because the second proposition (b) opens upon an important question which deserves scrutiny as a science in itself and which has been unnecessarily fettered with the supernatural faith of the first.
Let’s take as a common example the objection raised in Searle’s
‘Chinese Room’ thought experiment. He argues in essence that a computer will always and only be a model of a mind and, being just a machine, will be forever incapable of anything resembling human “cognitive states” (i.e., understanding, imagination, etc.) Searle presupposes the existence of a machine which would communicate with some degree of facility in a natural language; that the machine can speak Chinese is an arbitrary choice. In Searle’s conception, the operations of the machine are entirely determined by logical necessity. These operations, therefore, can be represented by any system correlative to a universal Turing Machine—and we must remark at this point that every physical system is of this kind, so that even a human being manually performing the operations on paper could represent the operation of the speaking machine: taking input in Chinese, “mechanically” applying rules, and delivering the result.
This is in fact precisely the case Searle considers: this way, the human is considered only as a rule-bound sign-manipulator, unconscious of meaning as such, to precisely the degree he performs the operations of the language-speaking machine. Moreover, the human being doesn’t need to understand Chineses in order to perform these operations; thus, since the pure operation of the system can’t encounter “cognitive states,” even though these may be simulated by the computer program which the human being is unwittingly but faithfully carrying out. To Searle, this also means that Chinese is not being “understood” by the machine either, even if it is a spectacularly convincing simulation. Insofar as it is just a universal Turing machine, Searle asserts that it is impossible for machines to understand Chinese.
It is easy to see how a large part of the conclusions Searle draws from his experiments are accurate: it is undoubtedly the case that computers, modern or not, are just and always mindlessly manipulating symbols. But to conclude from this that language requires something else than what is being offered. Just because the operations themselves are not cognitive states, this of course doesn’t mean that cognitive states don’t exist or are therefore impossible. Here Searle is against the Strong AI project as well as against Turing, who would seem to accept that a machine which could converse easily and convincingly at length with a human subject would qualify, at the least as ‘intelligent.’ Consciousness cannot be thoughtlessly conflated with linguistic competence.

In other words, (b) does not logically follow from (a), even if we do accept (a)’s truth-value. To speak via the position of an undiscoverable absence is, again, a non-actionable and unscientific presumption verging on the mystical.

The Slave and the God of Death

It's so easy to act like you forget and get out of answering a difficult question, isn't it? Politics, of course, provides innumerable and colorful examples, because most of the lying in politics is lying by omission, intentional or not. Take, for instance, white house spokesperson Tony Donahue's response today to a reporters question regarding whether the bombing of the Iraqi parliament which killed three Iraqi MPs represented a failure of current security operations:

"The terrorists will do everything they can to try to undermine a government that is trying to bring peace and stability for the people of Iraq."

But does it mean our security operations are in jeopardy? The question doesn't (and hasn't) resulted in a meaningful response from this administration, just a blurring of the lines of responsibility. The equivocation in this quote ("undermine a government") underscores a neglect of responsibilities, a managerial imperialism, i.e., the Iraqi government is just like ours, trying to bring peace and stability, but running against "inevitable" difficulties because of terrorism. Instead of addressing the criticisms directed at their policies, this administration relies on an implicit trust in their mission, what Bush has termed his "mandate," which validates, a priori, any activity they perform; basically, by not addressing this criticism, Donahue is in fact addressing it the most clearly: he is saying, "You asked for this. You voted for us. You put us into office and we took it seriously. You thought elections were a joke?"

*********************************************************************

For better or for worse, this "mandate" is conflated with aggrandizing a-historicism, a sort of pseudo-religious self-righteous globalism, which resonates well both with the religious right ("humanism") and oil companies ("free markets"). Now, with scandals mounting and Dick Cheney about to undergo impeachment hearings, the transparent lies are beginning to be questioned. The obvious critique of this (or any imperialist) government's desire to "bring peace and stability" to Iraq is slowly being reformulated. We swore never to forget; this administration seems only to forget, to break its promises and the law. Donahue's comments give evidence to a widespread and intense aporia: specifically, he seems to be forgetting that we made possible the conditions which allowed the Sunni revolutionaries to rise to power, in fact, we are the ones who planted the seeds of these toxic inter-sectarian conflicts.

To wash our hands of it, even rhetorically, even to escape answering more difficult questions, is neurotic, amnesiatic, but worst of all, it's cruel and irresponsible. It makes more sense to us than it is comfortable to admit that, to the citizens of Iraq, we are the God of Death. Not that Iraq would have been peaceful or not without us-- but that due to our role in the history of the development of that country, we function as the rebel God who donates fire right into the hands of Saddam, one of the most dangerous and repressive rulers in history.

Fidelity to the event of September 11th requires not becoming or supporting terroristic groups or governments ourselves. How easily we forget, or pretend to! The immense spectacle of false images which were necessary and sufficient to provoke the otherwise extraordinarily apathetic American populace to war is already evidence of the fundamentally false premise under which this "war on terrorism" has been and is still presented, waged and represented six years later.

*********************************************************************

The fact that we had to be tricked to go along with this conflict means that the fight is wrong, and the ideology needs to be updated. This war is more about oil than it is about, say, democracy, September 11, or Christianity; however, more than oil, this war is about imperialism, it's necessary and sufficient condition was a feverish, but short-lived and long-regretted super-nationalism. Iraq is about nation- and empire-building. But this is flatly contradicted by democratic ideals; aren't we "all" supposed to build the nation? We "all" participate equally in free society, we "all" form the body politic in which the vox populi is lodged, etc, etc...

This idealism is what is taken to be true before anything else, and it is here that it pays most to be critical, and not to give an inch to superstitution and self-blinding delusion. The most generic expression of the current war is founded on a syllogism: since we are a democracy, we are able to institute it elsewhere. Besides the fact that this doesn't even logically follow, it is begging the question via the preliminary presumption that we are indeed a democracy, that we value social equality, and so forth. From the mouths of aggressors and warlords, this is ultimately a blind idealism to empty concepts which allows us to forget about our hypocrisy, our deception, our narcissism and our imperialism. In fact: this leader, this administration, this "war", are all spectacles, all justified by simulation, which represent an intervention against democracy.

Being and Event: Meditation 23 on Fidelity

I call fidelity the set of procedures which discern, within a situation, those multiples whose existence depends upon the introduction into circulation (under the supernumerary name conferred by an intervention) of an evental multiple. In sum, a fidelity is the apparatus which separates out, within the set of presented multiples, those which depend upon an event. To be faithful is to gather together and distinguish the becoming legal of a chance

The word ‘fidelity’ refers directly to the amorous relationship, but I would rather say that it is the amorous relationship which refers, at the most sensitive point of individual experience, to the dialectic of being and event, the dialectic whose temporal ordination is proposed by fidelity…How, from the standpoint of the event-love, can one separate out, under the law of time, what organizes—beyond its simple occurrence—the world of love? (EE 232)

The explication of one of the truly fascinating concepts in Being and Event occurs in Meditation 23. Fidelity, as we shall see, leads also to the introduction of the subject—something that occurs last in this work, after all the order of reasons that serve as a foundation for Badiou’s set theory edifice. Though Badiou is quick to point out the resonance of fidelity to the amorous condition of philosophy, one should also point out the resonance of fidelity with notions of faithfulness and allegiance, like an oath sworn to a lord. In the short space that I have, I will set out to explicate the two dimensions of fidelity as a concept and its relationship to the subject.

Before we begin, I would like to arouse some intrigue into Badiou’s innovative theory of the subject. In Meditation 35, Badiou says that “the subject is chance” (396), and so we should juxtapose this to another quote that ends the first paragraph of Meditation 23: “To be faithful is to gather together and distinguish the becoming legal of a chance” (232). Having convoked these two statements together, what is fascinating is the fact that, from the point of view of the situation, the event is not counted as such—it is up to the subject to wager on its inclusion and to follow out the implications of this wager, implications that, in the current state of affairs, can only be described as that which will have taken place in the situation. This inclusion of the event entails the becoming legal of the logic of the event as chance, but it also indicates that the subject (retroactively?) becomes legal. Therefore, we must conclude that the subject is initially illegal.

Before flattering ourselves about this connection, we should define fidelity. It would be simple to introduce fidelity as the process that separates multiples in the situation in accordance to their (non)-connection to the event. More helpful for our topic, though, would be to point out some delimitations. First, fidelity is not linked to a “general faithful disposition;” instead, it relies on an event and so is always particular (233). Second, fidelity is not a multiple—strictly speaking, it is not. A fidelity acts as a different count, one not necessarily opposed to the state’s count, but one that enquires into the situation and marks the multiples that depend on the event. Therefore, as Badiou makes explicit more than once, fidelity is a concept related to the state. Third, when a faithful procedure is successful and it marks multiples as depending on the event, these multiples consequently are included in the situation. The fidelity is thus triply bound in its structure: it is defined by its situation, the event to which it corresponds, and the rule of connection that binds multiples as depending on the event.

However, we must remember that onto-mathematicians like Badiou wager that the being of situations is infinite. This assumption about the infinity of situations forces us to consider fidelity in its dual temporal aspect: it is “both the one-finite of an effective representation, and the infinity of a virtual presentation” (236). This means that fidelity’s goal—to count-as-one multiples marked by their dependence on the event and thus to present these marked multiples as a one—is never coextensive with the situation. The faithful count always lags behind the infinity of presentation: fidelity is a process that forever perpetuates its consistency by a further need to enquire into the connectivity of multiples to the event—the still-more of the faithful.

Before concluding our analysis of fidelity, we have to radically assert the deinstitutionalization of fidelity in order to truly capture its innovative essence. Opposed to a statist or spontaneist fidelity (the event only belongs to those who intervene) and a dogmatic fidelity (all multiples depend on the event), Badiou proposes the concept of a generic fidelity, that “which is unassignable to a defined function of the state…[and] from the standpoint of the state, [results in] a particularly nonsensical part” (237). This is because a generic fidelity allows the organization of another legitimacy of inclusions within the situation (238). For a fidelity to be generic it must be removed from the proximity of the state, the further the better. This argument makes Badiou assert a radical hypothesis: what if there is no relation between the two aspects of fidelity, namely the intervention and the operator of connection? This would mean that the operator acts as a second event in itself. Provocatively, the more it appears as a second event because of its subtraction from the proximity of the state, the more real the fidelity is for Badiou.

Nothing to Lose

Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. -"The Communist Manifesto", Karl Marx


There’s nothing to lose, a world to win... A conscious life and a faithful love, these are our chains, a resolution forged in struggle and hope. They are not the chains of the master. The master is naught but a self-conscious and over-aggressive animal, chained by death and encircled by desire-- whereas in a properly human relation, we are freely bound to life, we are creatively engaged with the world, and we are bonded to one another, and to all others, in responsibility and love.

The Peace of Belief

Freedom of belief is of central and obvious importance to a democratic community. Of course, beliefs are already quite problematic to the generation of a common public space. The twin "literal" issues surrounding the epistemological question, those of the expression and interpretation of beliefs, underscore the emergence of subjectivity in all political praxis, and in the broad sense, the critical self-questioning encountered in the everyday face-to-face encounter. As a brief example, what if the other's belief not only differs from my own, but ultimately proves threatening-- perhaps merely to my rationalization of reality, but also perhaps literally harmful or violent towards myself or my community. Do we require a dangerous other, to whom it is supposed we are "naturally" allergic, in order to achieve a community?

Let us examine the supposition that there are certain beliefs which could conceivably lead an otherwise peaceful society to violence. If there are such beliefs, they would certainly be powerless if they remained only as such; it seems to me that, by definition, beliefs only gain power when they are combined with a capacity and willingness to act on behalf of them. Even with harmful and dangerous beliefs, if they are only beliefs and influence action and speech in no perceptible way, we cannot say that they are harmful to others; indeed, we cannot properly speak of the content or value of beliefs which remain forever unexpressed. Now, in those beliefs which do transcend the immaterial realm of convictions, it can be fairly easily shown that beliefs whose content involves harm towards some other party are especially likely to be the source of actual violence or disagreement. In fact we can distinguish between two broad categories of belief: those that affirm some unifying principle of commonality, and those which affirm an antagonistic principle of division.

This distinction enables us to hazard an interpretation as to the nature of the transition which occurs from thought to action, from belief to principle of behavior. An idea has power inasmuch as it is believed; thus, belief is the power of an idea, though not the origin. Belief is faith in the possibility of revelation, in the future, but especially that aspect of reality to come which is completely unpredictable, and opens up onto a radical alterity whose horizons cannot be encompassed rationally. The infinite idea which is believed precedes the belief, if only minimally: an infinitesimal belief (which is an infinite skepticism) is required in order to approach an idea within the "reasonable" bounds of concepts. This is the essence of what it means to think rationally, "objectively"--which really stands in this case for, pretending we know nothing about the situation or ourselves, we act like we believe completely and only in the network of sensicality and in the testimony of our senses. Objectivity is actually a complex mediation of the subject-object relation which supports an illusion of perfect communicability, supposes an almost religious sort of fundamental sense-event which could guarantee the consistency and accuracy of our deductions and observations--"within reasonable limits," not comprehending the limits are just as arbitrary as the task for which the measurements are being taken.

Belief names the properly subject-ive moment in thought, indeed, it names the outermost limit of subject-thought. The process of belief transforms ideas into action. Belief powers the idea, demands faithfulness and responsibility, moves the subject to act, guides the action with deliberate concentration, with a joyful care. We can gather these strands together in order to enunciate the structure of belief; let's say that belief is the adequation of thought, and that this is accomplished by the repeated generation of (subjective) self-difference. Belief ex-cends this primordial separation between subject-object and Other, "completes" it in its total incoherency. The asynchrony between the same and the other is constantly generated by the unnatural and self-critical movement (belief, interpretation) which is brought about in the social encounter, and the subject is itself actualized in a responsibility to one's relationship to the community. Indeed, we might say the first question of any possible future democracy is at once and entirely a question of peace and political economy, and so the key question for politics at this moment would be-- to put it lightly-- who's the adult here? Could we compare society to the enactment of a scene from a dream, whose origins are lost in the depths of time and whose goals, limits and internal consistency are equally, terrifyingly uncertain?

All we own is an unfreedom we have been convinced to freely accept: where is the freedom we were taught to love? We should not be convinced of our own unworthiness or inadequacy. The non-adequation lies wholly within the total system which cannot integrate that which remains itself. Power is thought transforming into action; by escaping the reach of established power, we can lead both thought and action beyond the sick and paranoid systems which seek to completely ontologize reality, reduce everything vital and beautiful and free into a empty void full of violence and shadows and a wild, unsustainable desire... Just as there is no truth without dancing, there can be no ethics without a balance between the whole and the part, a balance which never reaches a perfect equilibrium but is always playing about the edges, deploying its forces to the limit, in an upheaval of the established institutions which is the inauguration of a new way of being. Such a transcendence is already the jouissance of a new manner of speaking... The belief in peace is salvation and slavery at once; democracy as a "peaceful" attitude towards beliefs ends up assuming an outright hostile, authoritarian attitude towards individuals. An ideal democracy is already a false one, and this hinge is why democracy functions so much better than other systems: reflexivity, evolution, and so on... But our freedoms erode as quickly as they are written into law, a writing which can never be adequate to the unfreedom which predominates...