Badiou's What is Philosophy?

"http://www.egs.edu/ Alain Badiou, French philosopher and author, lectures on the nature and essence of philosophy. In this lecture, Alain Badiou asks the question: 'what is philosophy'. He begins with three concrete problems, namely: philosophy and language, philosophy and duty, and dialectical versus analytic philosophy. In Part I, of 'What is Philosophy', Badiou focuses on the problem of language, the difference between philosophical, reactive and conservative dispositions, duty, desire, subjective transformation, reflexivity, knowledge, closure and openness, and the difference between dialectic and analytic philosophy. Public lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe 2010 Alain Badiou. "

The lecture has two parts (of 1:30 and 1:00 hr), and due to the bad sound quality and Badiou's Franglish, I decided to (partially, work in progress) transcribe in hope that is helpful to someone besides me. His views regarding time are extremely interesting and I dunno where else he has written about this.

Badiou’s transcription:

The world of philosophy does not exist. Precisely, philosophy is useful because the world of philosophy is not exactly the world as it is. But something that it is between the world as it is and the world as it must be, the world as we desire.

The second question which is a consequence: what is exactly the question of language [...] the precise question in which language philosophy exits. Today there are two options: philosophy exits in the dominant language of globalization, philosophy accepts the world of today, and accepts the language of globalization. [...] But philosophy cannot do only that, the creative possibility is to inscribe in the multitude of languages, it cannot be reduced to a particular language, then it cannot be universal.

There is a temptation of the being to speak german —poor german being of Heidegger. This is again against the universality of humanity. Philosophy for me is not possible if we don’t recognize something as humanity as such. Humanity as such is pure multiplicity. There is something like generic humanity, not reducible to its immanent differences.

If you say that philosophy speaks only one language, you can do that in two ways: not because being speaks english —poor being— but because it’s a necessity of today’s world.

Philosophy is not a business. Is philosophy today able to be an exception? We cannot be reduced to the idea of speaking only one language. We must go beyond this opposition [of speaking the language of business on the one hand, and enclosing ourselves on our own private language on the other]. This is the most important contradiction of the world today: the universality of choice and the particularity of culture.

And it is a philosophical question that we must be conscious of, that when we thought ourselves a new possibility, this is part of the general problem of a new possibility; and this is why philosophy is simultaneously purely individual and completely universal. It is purely individual because it is not political philosophy —we do not create a philosophical party—[...] is the possibility of a new desire of somebody [...] a new individual desire of the world as such.

[The conservative position] is the end of history, the end of philosophy [...] because it's the end of the idea of creation, it is also the end of artistic creation; it is the end of scientific creation because science becomes a slave of technology and business; it is the end of love as a creative position of existence as such, it is the end of all these ruptures and creatives ruptures in the human existence, and so it's a horrible position. The only point which is the norm of the conservative position is security; the dialectical position is also the acceptance of some risk. (We cannot hope for absolute security in love, [...] and the same thing in artistic experimentations: when you want to create something new, you can not desire absolute security, no failure, only success —it is absurd.) 

Corruption of young people is to learn that security is not the truth desire of humanity; and to propose the dialectical vision where we assume the risk, the chance, uncertainty, and the desire of all this. And not the desire of sameness, the identity, the continuation —which is dominant position today.

We have to use in another manner all the past, not to repeat [...] but to interpret it in the light of the future. The present of philosophy is the interpretation of the past for the future. We can have the same future, you and me; and if we can create a community it is because we can have this point in common, which is in the world as it is, the possibility of a new future. And it is a very strong idea, the unity of humanity from the point of view of the future is a necessity.

If you have a dream of a community beyond the differences; and the existence of a genetical humanity that respects the difference, is clear that this community from the point of view of the future is necessary.

And this is why philosophy is important, because it is a paradigm of all that; in philosophy all the past is with us, and all the past is with us because we can have a future by the means of a new interpretation of this past. Then if all that is true, when I talk to you is not only the transmission but a new interpretation of the past.