Badiou Alain - In Praise Of Love

Born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, Alain Badiou is a leading French philosopher. A lifelong communist, he is the author of The Meaning of Sarkozy, Being and Event, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil and The Communist Hypothesis.

Writer and journalist, Nicolas Truong is a regular contributor to the French daily, Le Monde.

ALAIN BADIOU

with Nicolas Truong

Translated by Peter Bush

A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request

The right of Alain Badiou and Nicolas Truong to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Copyright 2009 Flammarion SA, Paris

Translation copyright 2012 Peter Bush

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published as loge de lamour in 2009 by Flammarion SA, Paris

First published in 2012 by Serpents Tail,

an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

3A Exmouth House

Pine Street

London EC1R 0JH

www.serpentstail.com

ISBN 978 1 84668 779 2

eISBN 978 1 84765 658 2

Designed and typeset by Printed by Clays, Bungay, Suffolk

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

As we know, love needs re-inventing.

Arthur Rimbaud

A season in hell, Hallucinations 1

A philosopher must never forget the countless situations in life when he is no different from anyone else. If he does, theatrical tradition, particularly comedy, will rudely remind him of that fact. There is, after all, a stock stage character, the philosopher in love, whose Stoic wisdom and well-rehearsed distrust of passion evaporate in their entirety the moment a dazzlingly beautiful woman sweeps into the room and blows him away forever.

I realised this a long time ago. I have suggested that a philosopher (and this neutral noun naturally encompasses both male and female varieties) must be an accomplished scientist, an amateur poet and a political activist, but also has to accept that the realm of thought is never sealed off from the violent onslaughts of love. Philosophy requires its practitioners of either gender to assume the roles of savant, artist, activist and lover. I have called them the four conditions of philosophy.

That was why I immediately agreed when Nicolas Truong invited me to join him in conversation in the Theatre of Ideas series he organises at the Avignon Festival. It looked as if it would be a delicious cocktail of theatre, crowds, conversation, love and philosophy. Besides, it was going to be held on 14 July (2008) and I was excited by the idea of celebrating love, a cosmopolitan, subversive, sexual energy that transgresses frontiers and social status at a time normally devoted to the Army, the Nation and the State.

Lets now blow our own trumpet a little:

Nicolas asked the questions, and I performed the ambiguous role of a philosopher of love, we worked well together and it was a success. No doubt about it: it was a hit.

The text you are about to read is an elaboration of what we said on the day. It retains the spontaneous rhythm, clarity and energy but is more rounded and incisive. I believe that, from start to finish, it is what it says it is: praise of love, sung by a philosopher who thinks, like Plato, whom I quote: Anyone who doesnt take love as a starting point will never understand the nature of philosophy. So here you have Alain Badiou, the philosopher lover, tussling with Nicolas Truong, a wise interrogator, a philosopher, and, of course, a lover.

In The Meaning of Sarkozy, a book that has subsequently become famous, you argue that we must re-invent love but also quite simply defend it, because it faces threats from all sides. In what ways is it threatened? How, in your view, have the arranged marriages of yesteryear been re-packaged in the new clothes of today? I believe that recent publicity for a dating website has particularly struck you

Thats right, Paris is plastered with posters for the Meetic internet dating-site, whose ads I find really disturbing. I could mention a number of slogans its hype uses. The first misappropriates the title of Marivauxs play, The Game of Love and Chance, Get love without chance! And then another says: Be in love without falling in love! No raptures, right? Then: Get perfect love without suffering! And all thanks to the Meetic dating-site that offers into the bargain and the notion takes my breath away coaching in love. So they supply you with a trainer who will prepare you to face the test.

I believe this hype reflects a safety-first concept of love. It is love comprehensively insured against all risks: you will have love, but will have assessed the prospective relationship so thoroughly, will have selected your partner so carefully by searching online by obtaining, of course, a photo, details of his or her tastes, date of birth, horoscope sign, etc. and putting it all in the mix you can tell yourself: This is a risk-free option! Thats their pitch and its fascinating that the ad campaign should adopt it. Clearly, inasmuch as love is a pleasure almost everyone is looking for, the thing that gives meaning and intensity to almost everyones life, I am convinced that love cannot be a gift given on the basis of a complete lack of risk. The Meetic approach reminds me of the propaganda of the American army when promoting the idea of smart bombs and zero dead wars.

So do you think there is a connection between zero dead wars and zero risk love, in the same way that sociologists, Richard Sennett and Zygmunt Bauman, see an analogy between the No commitment to you that finance capitalism tells the casual worker to the No commitment for my part the lover tells his or her partner as they float in a world where relationships are made and unmade in the name of a cosy, consumerist permissiveness?

Its all rather the same scenario. Zero deaths war, zero risks love, nothing random, no chance encounters. Backed as it is, with all the resources of a wide-scale advertising campaign, I see it as the first threat to love, what I would call the safety threat. After all, its not so very different to an arranged marriage. Not done in the name of family order and hierarchy by despotic parents, but in the name of safety for the individuals involved, through advance agreements that avoid randomness, chance encounters and in the end any existential poetry, due to the categorical absence of risks.

The second threat love faces is to deny that it is at all important. The counterpoint to the safety threat is the idea that love is only a variant of rampant hedonism and the wide range of possible enjoyment. The aim is to avoid any immediate challenge, any deep and genuine experience of the otherness from which love is woven. However, we should add that as the risk factor can never be completely eliminated, Meetics publicity, like the propaganda for imperial armies, says that the risks will be everyone elses! If you have been well trained for love, following the canons of modern safety, you wont find it difficult to dispatch the other person if they do not suit. If he suffers, thats his problem, right? Hes not part of modernity. In the same way that zero deaths apply only to the Western military. The bombs they drop kill a lot of people who are to blame for living underneath. But these casualties are Afghans, Palestinians They dont belong to modernity either. Safety-first love, like everything governed by the norm of safety, implies the absence of risks for people who have a good insurance policy, a good army, a good police force, a good psychological take on personal hedonism, and all risks for those on the opposite side.