Badiou - Wittgenstein's Anti Philosophy (2011)

7/28/2019 Badiou - Wittgenstein's Anti Philosophy (2011)

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anslator's Introduction

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n an earlier version o e rst of e two essays atake up s short ook Alain Badiou sets e scene andtone of his anasis o Ludwi Wittenstein's antiphiloso-phy by orrowin a rief anecdote om JacquesAlainMiller, e soninlaw and ocial editor of anoer reatodern antiphilosopher, Jacques Lacan

JacquesAlain Miller readily tls e story of te"little psychoanalyst who after bein spat on

every day in the elevator y some nobody, wipesoff his jacket and sanctimoniousy replies to abystander who is surprised his phlem "Whatdo ou expect? That's his symptom Miller thusseeks to point out the oinous abjection that lies

in wait or psychoanalysis when t is no loneranythin else an a ious hermeneutic

Aain Badiou Sin soipsism saintt Lantipiosophi d Wittg nstin "

aca Pos Poltque Pchaas 3 (99), p 3 (a tansations, unss othwsindiatd, a min) Th wo opning passa g o this ai vsion is omttdom t vsion tansatd h Badiou did not, howv, dt a susq unt

ausions to th oig ina passa g This is anoth ason why , o th sa o tads comphnsion I hav didd to dw on it in th psnt intoduion



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At rst sight, this would appear to be a stor with afairl straightforward oral lesson, one that further-

ore could easil be transferred just as it is ontophilosophcertainl as far as the European philosophical scene is concerned Indeed, an socallecontinenosophers are also eager to go to workand be sat on in the elevator as part of their dail

rotine "On this account, we could s that todthere are plent of little philosophers' who adore thefact that, as a spto of our tie, people hold thephilosopher's desire to be soething vile orsuperuous. or Badiou, this coo attitude is a

result of the internalization of a urr of attacks uponthe philosoher's illennial pursuit of truth as anendeavor that, judged fro the tribunal of worldhistor, would be not ust wrong or istaken butrather harmful or downright abjec "aced with theproceedings that our epoch has initiated against us and

upon readig the records of this trial, the ajorevidence of which is Kola and Auschwitz, ourpilosophers, shouldering the burden of the centurand, ultimatel, of all the centuries since Plato, have

2 Ibid See he thesis (or nonthesis) of Philippe acoueabarthe, who claims ina chapter fro his HedeerAr and Pocs, sigicanly titled The Age's Modesy,"tha he hilosoher aer Aushiz should abado he desire o or or philosohyA very obscure imperaive, going beyond or falling shor of the ere refusal of what is doiant, commads at we let hilosophy collapse within ourselves andthat we open ourselves u to tha diminishing, that exhaustion o hilosophy, today.We ust no loger hae the desire to philosophize." acoueabarthe, Hedeer

Ar and Polc he con he Polcal, trans Chris urner (Oxford: BaslBlackwell, 99 5 .

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decided to pad Bi. Thus, just as pschoanalsisrisks being reduced to a band acknowledgeent of

e universal reign of the spto in which each indvidual can be seen as passionatel ttached to his orher own traua, so too philosophin the nae oft- genocidal and totalitarian disasters tat ark thelong twentieth centurall too often accepts being

conned to te elancholic proclaation of its ownundesirabilit or th prophec of its welldeservedand iinent end n both ases, though for differentros and adopting ver different attitudesphleg-atic coposure in one case and tragicpathetic

posturing in the othersuch readiness to plead guiltto the harges laid at the doorsteps of the pscho-analst and the philosopher alike signals a rearkaleintellectua forfeiture

Upon coser inspection however, the ipliations ofMiler's anedote are greatl coplicated when thetarget o the attack is shifted o a pschoanalst to aconfessed philosopher In the rst place, we shouldconsider the fact that the role of e analst wiin clin-ical pracice to soe extent awas invoves a consciousact of selfdivestture nstead of clinging selfindulgentl

to the authorit of the subject who is supposed tow, an authorit conferred b the analsand as aresult of e transferential process, e analst ustallow hi or herself to beoe a little piece of waste

3 Aan Badou, Manstor Phlosophy, tans Noan Madaasz (Abany : Stat

Unvsty o NwYo ss, 999), . 28 (tansaton odd) n ths oasonBadou nts nto a ong dsput about aouabaths thss




or refuse (dcht), as Lacan was fond of repeatng, ostnotab in is 97 seminar The P hont t.Technica seaking, te anast in the end must cometo occup he posiion of he objt ptit a:

The en er of te anasis consists in the fa ofthe subet suposed to know and its reduction to

the adent of his objt , as cause of th disn ofthe subect, wic comes in its pae Te onewho, at te evel of fantas, wth the anasand,as e art with regad to te subet supposedto kno, to t te anast, s e one o at e

end of the anass cos to bea e fact of bengnoting moe tan tis efto, th nant ofthe own thing hat s called objt 4

On b us beng robbe f e ast guaantee beind

al mana deas and smboc mandates can tesubect ok throu s o e wn fantasies and cometo terms the fact hat such fantases ae actualscreens at de (not anoe, tuer or fuer reait,but ate a substania oi.

Uke wat igt be e case for a psoper, fr

anast to aw o ersef to be spat o s sensedoes not ndaenta undne e premses d aisof e scoaca pocss ; t eel es s pocessa too picalost comcalntptaton whie

Jaq us Laan, Smna du 0 jan 967, " A pniqu minir66 (unoa tanspt) p 87

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coplete rupture i Descartes Lacan signals athe "does not isreconize at e conscious certitude of eistence, at e centre o e Bi, is notianent, but raer transcendent "Transcendentbecause e subject cot coincide i e line ofidentication proposed to it b is certitude hesubject is raer e latter's m aste.

Thus, assuing soething that a be far fro evidentdespite its being a coon presupposition, includingin Badiou's orknael, that Descartes stands forthe quintessentia odern philosoher to ho Pasal

can then be the corresponding antiphilosophereould be justied in etending te scope of our anec-dote so as to eaine the conteporar destin ofphilosoph in its light. Hoevr, no sooner do e trto iagine that toda's philosophers, too, frequent

allo theselves to be spat on than e ust also recognize the fact that, aong thos lining up to do thespitting, pschoanalsts are oten to be found at thehead ofthe queue

After all, it belongs to Lacan to hae reived theeighteencentr ter "philosoph or e purposeof dening the relation of his vie o the reudianeld to hat has traditionall been handed don tos as philosoph since at least Plato: / ri u in rv,so to speak, against philosoph hat is sure is that it

lain adiou eng and Een, trans Olier Feltham ondon ontinuum5 431



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is soething nite and done with Even if epectsoe rejecs o grow ou of it Such regrowths arecoon enough with finite things This antiphilo-sophical aniosit, which is coonl found aongpschoanalsts together with a fair aount of plinaniacadeicis, creates a second coplication foran selfprofessed philosopher who would wish to

borrow the anecdote fro Miller 7ollowing in reud 's foosteps , Lacan in fac consid-

ers philosoph a for of pschosis More specicall,

6 Jacques Lacan, onsieur A," Ornicar? 1- (summer 0, p. 7. or three

different accounts of Lacan's antiphilosoph, see Jean-laude ilner, 'antiphilosophie," uvre caire: Lacan a science a phisophie (Paris Editons duSeuil, 15, pp. 146-5; Franois Regnault, L'antiphilosophie selon Lacan,"orences d'esthtiue acanienne (Paris: Agalma, 1997), pp. 5-0 and oletteSoler, Lacan en antiphilosophe," Fiozki Vestnik 27. 2 (2006 , pp. 121-44. orerecentl, see Adrian Johnston, This Philosoph Which Is Not One Jeanladeilner, Alain Badiou, and Lacanian Antiphilosoph," Journa the Jan Van yck irce or Lacanian eoo ritique 3 (20 1 0, pp. 2-22. The gure who has dealt

most extensivel with the categor of antiphilosoph in the wake of Lacan andHeideer is the Argentine pschoanalst Jorge Alemn See, for instance, his Notasantoscas (Buenos Aires Grama, 200. or a comparison with Badio, seearlos mez, l adversario el doble en la losoa de Badiou," adiouue desus mites ed. arlos Gmez and Angelina Un (Benos Aires Imago undi, 2010 , pp. 720. or an intellectual histor of the original antiphilosophers, mostl reactionar and religi thiners who opposed the phiosophes of therench nlightenment, see Didier asseau, Les Ennemis des phiosophes:

'antiphiosophie au temps des Lumires (Paris Albin ichel, 20007 To defend his thesis that Lacan is essentiall a philosopher who mst be readalongside Descartes, Kant, and egel, Ziek goes so far as to suggest that Lacan is targeting the bad kind of postmetaphsical philosoph In short, what is toda praciced as philosoph' are precisel dierent attempts to deconsruct' something referred to as the classical philosophical corps (metaphsis,' logocentrism,' etc)," wites iek One is therefore tempted to risk thehpothesis that what Lacan's aniphilosoph' opposes is this ver philosoph qua

antiphilosoph what if Lacan's own theoretical practice involves a kind of return tophiosophy" See Slavoj Zie, arryin with the Neative Kant Hee and the ritiue eoo urham: uke niversit ress, 199), pp

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Cabridge Perhaps the insight that results fro suchselfiposed hardships does not quite constitute a

for of thought properl speaking, if b that we ana theoretical or doctrinal proposition with a sense; butnobd becoes an antiphilosopher without believingthat soe privileged tpe of eaning, sense, or knowl-edge can be accessed rough the ordeal of allowing

oneself to be divested of the contented authorit ofpreestablished truthshatever eerges o is process of selfdvestre,

soe of which is stil captured even in the ok-coical caricature of our anecdote , serves precisel as

the necessar leverage for the antiphilosopher whowishes to expose and depose the loft clais of isphilosophical rival or it is onl based on this differentkind of knowedge or eaning, which we could alsodescribe as an arative kind of nonthoughtforexaple, to use ittgenstein's wellknown formula-tion fro the atat LO B icoPhi1oop hi, the silentnonthought that occurs in e "stical eleent ofthat which shows or anifests itself but cannot besaidthat it is possible to treat as sheer nonsense, or asa sick and reactive for of nonthought, the phioso-

pher's asterful pursuit of truth




the sophists of or tie denes the path followed ostotabl in Mantr Phihy as well as in severalessas and talks colleted in e vole Cnditins."Philosoph is alwas e breaking of a irror, claisBadio "This irror is the srfae of langage, ontowhich the sophist reduces everthing that philosophtreats in its act If e philosopher sets his gaze on is

srface, his doble, the sophist, will eerge, and hea take hiself to be one Badio's interest inWittgenstein, too, eerges rst and foreost in econtext of this redeition of philosoph over andagainst its constant irroring and rdoubling in sophis-

tics "Jst as Plato has te professionals of sophistis , atonce bllheaded and barers of odernit, as his inter-loutors, so also dos te aept to adialize terptre with classial categories of oght todadene what it is reasonabe to call a great odernsophistis,' linked ssentiall to Wittgenstein And

Alain Badiou, Deiion of hilosophy," ndtns ans Seen Cocoan(London Coninuu, ) p also in Manstr hilsph pp. Badiou, Manest r hilsph p. 9 (anslaion odied) Badiou adds:

The decisie ipoance of language and is aiabiliy in heeogeneous gaes, doub as o he peinence of he concep of uh, heoical poxiiy o he

eecs of a, pagaic and open poliics so any feaues coon o he Gee sophiss and o any nube of conepoay oienaions, which explain why sudies and efeences deoed o Gogias and oagoas hae ecenly beenuliplied" (ibid). Aong such sudies of ancien and oden sophisics in heconex of ench hough, Badiou is undoubedly hnking of he wo of BabaaCassin, fo exaple, in t sphstque (ais: Galliad, 995) o Jean-Fanois Lyoad in Just Gamin an exended (ani)Plaonic dialogue wien wih JeanLoup Thbaud, ans Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: Uniesiy of Minnesoa Pess, 9); o he Poagoas Noice" and Gogias Noice" in The Drend hrases nst ans. eoges Van Den Abbeele (Mineols Unesy of MnnesoaPess, 9), pp and



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distne tht septes tese two lims whih s esult nnot both be sibed eqully to the sophisti

tendeny: eithe tuth n be edued entiely to theules of linguisti legisltion o else silene inteuptsthe egime of te syble opening up spe fo theethil expeiene by wy of some dil nontheoetil t. Fo Bdiou this gp oesponds to the distne

not just between the Phiosophica InvestiBations n theactatus LOBico-Phiosophicus but lso within the actatusitself between o the one hn the genel dotinesof the poposition of the wol of nmes nd ofobjets fom whih etin logil tomism deivesits impetus nd on the othe the dotines of teunsyble of types of nonsense nd of the mystilelement fom whih n mtive kind of non-thought n emege To ptue this distne thoughequies tht e study of the sophisti fmewok besupplemented with n nlyss of the ext ntue of

ntiphilosophy s esult of whih only the lte Wittgenstein will ppe to be sophist one who endsup poposing kind of ultul nthopology entedon te ieduible ivesity of lnguge gmes ndfoms of life: The fue oeuvewhih is not elly

one sine Wttgenstein hd the good tste not topublish o nish ny of itslides om ntiphlosophyinto sophisy"8 The nlysis of the ely Wittgenstein on the othe hnd gins muh shpe edge one it is

1 Aain Badiou Bs Wrl trans Aert Tscan Lndn Cntinuum009 54

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insofar as ese operations claim to o beyon what istheoreticaly transmissible their proponents also

frequently taret the iscourse of philosophy as theepitome of speculative eory mistaking itself for transformative practice: Marx announces the en ofphilosophy an its realization in practice Lacan speaksof antiphilosophy' an releates speculative totaliza

tion to the imainary There is no further iscussionof this aspect of the octrines of Marx Freu an theirfollowers In in and Evn Baiou amits that a ulycontemporary philosophy must be able to live up to thechallene of these theoreticopractical orientations

whether clinical or political; but he oes not o so faras to investiate the effects of tis challene for thestatus of the act of philosophizin as such

In the perio between ho h Sbj an in and Evn Baiou in sum rarely enaes in etail withantiphilosophy an in works such as Mano JorPhioophy that immeiately follow in the wake of in and Evn his polemical comments are mostly limiteto the familiar pair of the philosopher an the sophist asseen in the contemporary liht of the linuistic turn In

Ii pp Marx an Fru ar riy mnion as th rsrsponsi or a ouh antiphiosohica orintation in thoug htin aition toth construcivist tanscnnt an g nric orintations S h n o Mitation Twnty Svn Ontoog ica Dstiny o Orintaion in Thoug ht Ithos hat h truth o th ontoog ica impass cannot siz or thoug ht inimmannc to ontoogy its nor to spcuativ mtaontoogy It assig ns thunmasur o h stat to th hstorica imitation o ing such that withoutknowing so phiosophy ony rcts it to rpat it ii p But nithr

Marx nor Fru is g rant a sparat mitation in eng and Event or vn a sction o nnot in Log !orl.

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contast in his contition to the confeence Laanwth th Phoophr, hel in Pais in 990 une the

auspies of the Collge intenational e philosophiean st plishe in 9 9 as pat of the poceeingsBaiou ens to opeate moe systematically omwe ewo of Lacs pofesse philosophyEven so the funamental question emains whete

ths antihilosohy can e euce to a fom ofsophistics:

It is a question of nowng once an fo allwhethe antiphilosophy which Lacan openly

eclaims as his own is necessaily a sophisticgue n o eyes If this is e case it wol foceus no matte how much we may othewise amiewhat tis maste contites to te el ofpsychoanalysis to oppose to its antiphilosophythe antisophistic agumentative age tat since itsoigin constitues the thmo, the enel of agean polemics of philosophy23

23 ain Badiou Lacan et Paton e mathme esti une ide? acan avec fesphfosophes Paris in Miche 11 ) , p 1 6 . This artice is aso puised in a shorter and sig ty modied version as ntiphiosoph Lacan and Pato

ondtons, pp 8 Lacan himse in Boo X as y et unpuished) o hisnare tited Probfes crucaux pour fa pchanase, frms The psy choanay st isthe presence o the sophist o our time ut with a dierent status session o Ma y 1 2 1 6) . Cassin q uotes this armation twice in n a pas de rapport sexuef pp 1 1and 4) Yet as she susumes Lacan under the ae o sophistics Cassin ais tomeasure the distance etween sophistry and antphiosophy that is so crucia orBadiou in his reading o Lacan She thus caims that antiphiosop or Badiou woude te name or the common ine Gorg iasLacan iid p ) whereas Badiou

mse i is earier review o assin's t sophstue, concudes Lacan wi srea is coser to Pato than to org ias Log ooie contre ontooie p 1 1 ) .

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Badiou is convinced tat is equation o f sophistics andantiphilosophy does not hold up n e case of LacThus in the rst version of his talk composed for Lacanwth he Phoophe, Badiu procees to distinguish anumber of presuppositions that separate the psychoanalyst om the sophist Three presuppositions to beprecise : rst if Lacan's iscourse cannot be reduced to

the great modern sopistics it is primarily because forhim there exists at least oe tuth; and this tuh ismoreover never fully sayable but at best only halfsaid" (in Fench dt, which also happens to be ahomonym of d, the high noon" of armation or e

hour of the shortest shadow" according to the thirdgreat modern antiphilosopher Nietzsche) Second forLacan contrary to the basic tenet of all sophists logiccan never be fully equated with rhetoric withoutproducing some leftover or remainder ; nor ae languageand reality ever fully coextensive for tere is alwayse horror of some point of the real that absolutelyresists symbolization Third and nally Lacan's insistence on the nature of truth as an operation or actrathe than as a rule fr the evaluation of statements orpropositions, also separates his take on philosophy

from a purely sophistic understandingFor Badiou in fact these three features of Lacan's

work are better dealt wi under the heading of antiphi-losophy Perhaps is explains why in the shorterversion of Badiou's talk from Lacan wh the Phoopher

included in Condton the part concerning the limits ofacans sophistry is omitted atogether in favo of an

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exlusive fous o n his ntiphilosophy Besie s s in these of te Wittenstein of e atatus, the investi-

tio into the menin of this lst notion llows fo muh moe poutive enement with the enemieso vesies of titionl phiosophy tn ny meeuptin of ntisophisti e eve oul

Of ouse oin to Biou in evey moern

ntiphilosophy thee e lwys numeous sophistielements (evey ntipilosophe is vitul omplie of sophisty he ues in Lo g i Word4) butese elements e not e most impotnt ones nthey minly onen the peliminy netive o i

nosti sie of ntiphilosophy On te other hn ifntiphilosophes lys hve moe punh thn osophists loe it is beuse ey o not limit themselves to holin up mio in whih hilosophes seethei lnue eete n emptie out of l tuthvlue nlike e sphists e tully ispe e

philosophe's t in the nme of noe t one thtoul be f moe il n yin e metphysil seh fo tut oul eve hope to eliveAn fo Biou tis ntiphilosophil unestninof e t not only llows e inosti to ive wy to

the isposition of hepeuti ountept it is souniquel pble of illumintin b wy of ontstthe t tht woul be spei to philosophy nmelye seizi witin thouht of e uts tt epoue in its own time

24 Badou Wol, . 5

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III

Espeilly in his semins on Nietzshe nWittgenstein,Biou thus ens up poposing tingulon betweenphilosophy, sophistis, n ntiphilosophy. Now eee ee tems n not just two, s in the etenl pi-ing of th philosophe n the sophist in Plto o fo Biou himself in his elie wok. One ptiullyfsinting wy of unestning this tingultionis by gsping the ole of the sophist n the ntiphilosophe s neessy eutos f the vowe

philosophe.Fo Biou, both sophistis n niphiosophy n

be ene s ivl isouses tht put philosophy to thetest of its own ontemponeity. The ultimte im ofenggin i ese othe isouses etinly onsists

in essuin e intlliibility of the t of philosophizin, but typilly is t nnot emonstte itstulity ithout tn into ount lessons ofsuh ivls. The pity of philosophy to be on p wi is time, in ote wods, epens on is pityto nue both the ionies n ssms of the sophistn th ustions n insults of the ntiphilosophe.

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In te st case tis means that philosophy must beable to gaze at its own eection in the mio that te

moenay sophist seutively hols in font ofit Nomatte how supecial this eection nonethelessseves as an inispensable emie both of the factthat the philosophe's iscouse is cauht in a constantbattle among competing stylistic an geneic aane

ments an of te fact tat this iscose itself can onlyeve pouce an empty concept of tuth (o Tuthwithout bein able to pouce any actual tuths of itsown

On the one han then the ole of the moen

sophists consists in aleting the philosophes to thecontempoaneity of thei iscouse: The geatmoen sophistics linguistic aestheticizing anemocatic execises its issolving function exam-ines impasses an aws the pictue of what iscontempoay to us. It is just as essential fo us as thelibetine was to Blaise Pascal it arts us to the singu-laities of the time . On the othe han the functionof the sophist is not just stylistic o aesthetic but alsoethical in natue Wee it not fo the vebal joustinmatches with thei hetoical ouble that emin

them of the emptiness of thei conceptual opeatos

25 Badi, Manstor Plosoh, p. 9 Badis mentin f the antiphilspher Pascal in this passae is symptmatic f anther cnstitive aspect f his prpsedtrianlatin f philsphy, sphistics, and antiphilsphy: fr a sphist, thenphilspher is excessively atachedt e pilspher, eit e uisef a nnphilsphical trth" at e th f philsphy. Bh e philspher

ad the anphilsher maintain t strn a ntin f the act whereas thediscrse f sphistics is relieved f the rden f any sch ntin whatsever.

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hilosoers might believe themselves able ofoing some sbstntive tths of their own

whereas tths an only ome to them from theotsie namely from the nonhilosohal ratiessh as siene or art o olitis that are the materialonitions of hilosohy The gre of the sohist i sat ll times reqire if hilosohy is to mintin its

ethis Bio ths wans Bease the sohist is theone who remins s of the emtiness of the ateoryof Trth."26 To ignore this eminer by refsin toenre the sohist's omany always riss leainghilosoy into the isastros b elief that it an eo-

ble itself s its own onition an beome sienen ar or olitis ll by itself For Baio this iswhy the ifferent gises of the sohis mst t alltimes be anowlege an taen aain an againas at of the selfenition of hilosohy Thehistory of hiloshy is the history of its ethis: itonsists in the session of violent gestes thoghwhh hilosohy is withaw from its isastrosredobling o t it another way: hilosohy in itshistory is bt a esbstantialization ofTth whih isalso the selfliberation of its at 27

Whee then lies the ifferene? If rhetorially orisrsively hilosohy an sohistry are iniserniblemiror images of one another where lies te sore of

26 Bdi The Retn Phisph " p 9; s in Mano rPhlooh, p

27 Bdi Denitin Phisph p s in Manoor loop tnstin mdied

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their erce dialectical strife over qestions oflangagebeing meaning and trth? According to Barbara

Cassin a maor expert in the tradition of classicalsophistics and a close collaborator of Badio this battleconcerns nothing less than the fndamental orientationof thoghtwhat she calls the decision of sense"from the ancients all the way to the moderns and

ostmoderns This is the decision between the follow-ing two options: either langage is seen as possessing anivocal sense capable of captring being in thediscorse of ontology as the science of being u beingor else langage is eqivocal from beinning to end

bt then the discorse of metaphysics or ontologymst be replaced with a generalized sophistics orlogology in which tere is no being except what ections of langage have the power to create

For Cassin Aristotle is the fonding gre behindthe metaphysical orientation whereas she seesDemocrits as inagrating the sophistic playflnessthat reaches a wellnigh nreadable climax in Lacaniantexts sch as L' tordit" Upon this reading theFren psychoanalyst ths appears rst and foremostas a sophist who confronts s with the decision of

sense Here is how Cassin denes the fndamentalchoice:

On the side of hilosophy, the sense of a wordgiven in its deniion says the essence of the

thing and this is why there cannot not be nivoc-ity: a man" is a man On the side of Lacan the

0




unique sense, the onesense, i s unsense, that is tosay thedeprivedofsense (homophony alwaysalready enacts the equivocal), or again: it is signication, ut not sense There is only sense that isequivocal and that is called asese , escape fromthe Aristotelian norm of sense 28

f the pilosopher always needs the sophist as anadversary, it is ecause the univocity of sense cannote proven except negatively, y pointing out thecontradiction that emerges as soon as one attempts tomake any assertion at all that would deny it n fact,

were we to list all the adversaries whose performa-tive contradiction has been put to the advantage ofphilosopy in this particular maner, from Plao andAristotle all the way to Jrgen Habermas and KarlOtto Apel, it would turn out that sophists actually

have been the prtagonists of another understandingof hilosophy, ut one whose origins still lie in ancientreece

Cassins overarching aim in rcognizing the protag-onism of sophistics is to give the history of philosophya ifferent eginning y reverting the decision ofsense away from the principle of univocity and ackto linguistic equivocation Unlike wha happens inHeideggers history of metaphysics but in a similarlyambitious vein, this oter eginning invites us tomove not from Plato to the preocratics but rather

28 Cain a as de raor sexueI . 25

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fom Aistotle to Democits , Gogias , o Protagoas :We coul say that Cassin attempts a synthesis

etween eiegge (thee is inee a Gee incep-tion that estines an taveses s) an the lingistictn (eveything is langage, an the philosophyclosest to the eal is a geneal hetoic). t is as theheo of this synthesis that Gogias challenges the

hegemony of Pamenies ."29Fo Baio, the philosophe cetainly cannot ignoethe powe of section of e sophists plea in estggle between ontology an logology. Fo schsectiveness speas to the necessity of taing into

accont the iscsive faming of the philosophical act.Even if this act in the hans of the sophist is atteneot to the point of vanishin into the sface oflangaealone the mimetic ivaly in which metaphysics anhetoics, o ontology an logology, exchange pnchesy imitating each othes esoces nonetheless sevesthe ppose of aletin the philosophe to the lingisticsingulaities of his o he own time.

Ultimately, Baios obection to the sophistic ag-ment is not one of moal inignation t one ofintellectal isinteest, even oeom. As he wites in

his eview of Cassins wo

What philosophy with lato epiates is not thepaaox o the immoal" complexity of thepimacy of noneing, o of te soveeignty of

9 Badiu Lo od, 5434

2



TRAS LATOR S TRODCT O

language It is on he contrary the easiness of thesophistic solution" That nonbeing constitutes

the rule for bein is something aunted by thesophists Bt te difcult hing to do is not to statethis and cheerily deduce from it the rhetorician'sdemocratic" legitimacy; it is to manage to hinkthis and mahematically to deduce from it the

laborios existence of some truth3

Now, pecisely, the sophist's discoursehough a reatedcator in terms of putting philosophy's contempora-neity to the test ofits linguistic and stylistic protocolis

relieved of e ballast of any act whatsoever that mightlatch onto te existence of a truth outside the essentialeqivocaion of langage Fro a political standpoint,moreove, e effect of this emptying out of e cate-gory of ruh is said to be profoundly conservativeWhat we target in sophistics is the fact that, beneathits sbversive appearance , in terms of thought it author-izes only a technical vaiant of the conservation oflinguistic and political resorces," writes Badio Evenif one disagrees wi this wholesale portrayal of thesophist's conservatism, in the nd the challenge to

philosophy hat comes from this tradition does nothold Badio's attention for long: As Deleze woldhave said , even thogh he did not believe in truth either,sophistics is not interesting Besides, is is theltimate and principal argmen for Plato he sophist

30 Bdi Lg g ie cntre ntg ie p 1 1 4

33



TR S LTOR S TRODUCT O

n questions re uniformly nonsensil, nLn, hilriously, poposes to reple ontoloywi hontoloy An then shoul we turn to ourvnte this rnt ttempt to isreit philosophy once andr a32

Here too, ouh, e invetives ontn vluble lessons

for n rouh e speiity of the philosophilt Thus, ust s Ln is n inispensble eutor forny pilosophy tht seeks to be tuly ontemporry, sotoo Biou proposes to see in Wittenstein herowose use shoul not be lost on e philosopher

Ln ppointe himself s the eutor of ll turephilosophers. A ontemporry pilosopher, for me, isinee someone who hs the unflterin oure towork rou Ln's ntiphilosophy, he writes inCodiio ; 3 n the sme rument n be me fo e

two oer ret moern ntiphilosophers, Nietzsen Wittenstein, who similrly presribe new utyto philosophy orin to Biou:

Antiphilosophy is lwys wht, t its veryextremes , sttes e new uty of pilosopy, o its

32 Baiou, Siece, oiie, aitet 1 3 ee are te esays opeigor rigt beore te aecote take o cqueAai Mier Nietce cate iosoer te criia o criias i a agait ristiaity, i TeAt-t Ee Homo Tlt ' te Idol ad Ote Wt, e Aaro Riey aJuit Nora abrige abrige iersity res 2005) p. 25 eeo u o ote ae a otoloe otoogy i Book XV o iSema: e Ote Sde oaa 2 0 3 3 Baiou, odto, p. 29

5



TA SLATO S TODUCT O

new ossibility in the ure of new uty. I thinkof Nietzsche's mness ofWittenstein's strne

lbyrinth of Lcn's nl muteness. In ll reecses ntihilosohy tkes the form of lecy Itbequeths somethin beyon itself to the verythin t it is htin inst . Philosohy is lwysthe heir to ntihilosoy.34

The reson why is secon rivl iscourse seems somuch more interestn to the philosoher is ttwheres e sohist puts in lce enerlize mimetics om which ll noions of e ct of seizin trus

hve been subtrcte the ntihilosoher enouncesthe hilosophicl ct in the nme of nother ct whichputs the hilosoher on lert in unique wy s to theoccurrencesn rt or olitics or sciencetht enethe contemporry moment.

In orer to unmsk the hilosohicl seizin of truths nefrious subterfue ntiphilosohers rb hol ofthe mterils of their time with the lim tht eirtretment of these mterils is ble of outperformn the hilosohers on ll counts Fce with scientic invention n rtistic cretion or oliticl

exeriment they o not turn these mterils towreternty s universl ies but rther bsorb their snulr force into the rotocols of their own unerstnnof the ct. By pproritn te force of ese

34 Ali dio "Wo is Nitzs? ts Albeto Toso Pl The arwournal hlooh 1 1 (2001 ) , 1 0

6



TASLATOS TODUCTO

occrrences , the ntiphilosophers cn then rely on thisimplse to sppress the philosophicl ct y climingto hve ccess to dimension tht their rivls cnnotfil to ignore.

Ultimtely, then, there is lwys n spect of irref-tle rdiclity inherent in the ntiphilosophicl ct, inresponse to which the philosopher is fond to e s

mpotent s ny mster nterpellted y the hystericsrettl: Whtever yo sy, thts not it!" However,st s psychonlysis egins y listening to the hysterics discorse, so too philosophy cn strengthen tscontemporry possiility y listening to the inslts nd

provoctions of te nti philosopher, who pts it intoch with the events of its time As Bdio sys in ninterview:

This is why philosophers mst constntly engge

with the experiences of their time, hve n erfor wht hppens, nd especilly listen to thenti philosopher, ecse the ntiphilosoher islwys sy sying to him, Bt wht yo, thephilosopher, re tling ot no longer exists,or it doesnt relly exist, nd then there is his,

which yo dont tl ot nd which is essen-il," nd so on. Tht is rel convocton toones time 3

35 Qtd i stls C Ch Thht? A Dil

with Alid Alain Badiou : Philosophy and Its Conditions, d bl (lb ttUivsit f NwYk ss 2005 p 54

37



TA SLATO S TODUCT O

I ths race agast tme, the atphlosopher may welloccpy the poston of e tortose, whom o phlo-

sophcal Achlles wll ever be able to overtake Bt forBado ths does not make t any less rget to lsten tothe voce of the atphlosopher.

The atphlosophical act may not oly seem tohave wo ot n advace ths rvalry wth the

phlosopher, t ca also preset tself as more radcalthan ay of the scetfc, artstc, or poltcal evetsfrom whch t approprates the force of ts radcalmplse. In a sese, the resltg act pretes to emore radcally scetfc tha all exstg scece,

more deeply aesthet than all avalable works of art,ad more profoudly poltcal than any really exstgpoltcs Ths s why Bado calls the atphlosophcalact archpoltcal the case of Netzsche ; archaes -thetc the case ottgeste ; an archscetc the case of Lac . Ths does ot mea that Netzsche,Wttgensten, or Laca wold be the ltmate refer-ence ponts f we wated to captre the essence ofor tme terms of poltcs, art, or scece I fact,at least the cases f Nietzsche ad Wttgenste,Bado notes that for al ther talk abot politcs a

aesthetcs, ther kowledge of the actal evets thatoccr these domans s actaly farly lmted , f notprely aecotal Ths s why a mportat cocep-tal dstcton mst be ntroduced betwee theatre of te act, o the oe had, ad the sbject

matter, te materals or the bas from the pot ofwhch he act presets tself, o the other. A large

8




In sum whereas the rivary with sophistis onfrontsthe philosopher wit the mime tis of a isursiveprotool that puts phiosophy in touch with the linguis-tic singularities of its time evoi of any at te rivalrywith antiphilosophy is rater one of at against actThere is always another more raial act in regar towhih the antiphilosopher maintains that there is a

nonphlosophical truth of the philosophical categoryof trut For Baiou no ontemporary philosophy ispossile without traversing this chaenge sine sophistis an antiphilosophy mark preisely the el inwhich this contemporaneity is etermine

40



IV

In several sessions om his unpublishe seminar onWittgenstein Baiou illustrates is trigulationbetween hilosohy sohistics and antihilosohy byiscussing two oler but still insightful reaings ofWittgenstein namely, Jacques Lacans session of January2 1 , 1 970 in his seminar The her ide hnian Richar Rortys Keeping Plosophy Pure: An Essayon Wittgenstein," rst publishe in 1976 an reissue asart of e collectin of essays neqene mm

These interpretations provie useful counterpoints toe one Baiou presents here insofar as he introucesRortys take on Wittgenstein as tat of a sophist whereasLacan reas Wittgenstein in a resolutely antihilosophi-cal key Baious own aim is to carve out a pa own e

midle, with a hilosophical reaing of antiphilosohyat is equally istant from yet equally engage wi eoer twothe sophistic an e antiphilosophical

Regardess of the lae we wish t ax to theirrespective positions, wat is most striking n ths

confrontation is the fact at oth Rorty and Lacancompletely agree that te Wittgenstein of te



TRA SL ATOR S TRODUCT O

in e en remains too much of a philospher. Theifference is that for Rortyas for any reaers of the

American Wittgensten, incluing Stanley Cavellthe Phisphica nvestiatis provie us with a potentialway out of this impasse, whereas Lacan, much likeBaiou, prefers to well precisely on the impasses ofthe early Wittgenstein, whom he reas as possesse

with a remarkable psychotic ferocity from whichpsychoanalysis still has a great al to learn if it wantsto live up to its antiphilosophical ambition.

For Rorty, e streng ofWittgenstein's later work,exemplie in e enormous impact e Phisphica

nvestiatis have ha connue to have, lies in e factat he oes not propose an alternave souon for etypical problems of pilosophy ansmie m Platoto escartes to Kt, even up to an incluing eactatus. As such, e later Wigenstein woul fall linewi a broaly unerstoo pragmast orientaon ofought she wi e likes of John ewey I want toargue at e later Wittgenstein belongs wi ewey asmuch as e elier Wittgenstein belongs i KantatDewey's ebg of aional noons of philosophy, his attempt to bre own e isncons between

art science, philosophy an science, rt religion,morality an science, re a natral outcome ofWigenstein's crique of e Ctesi aion, explnsRorty. In s accot, philosophy is ene s one liter- genre or cultural aion among oers, one at

rermore may ave outive its useess or atnowaays in y case lies before us reay to wier away:

42



R S LOR S RODUC O

On Dewe's view philosoph s wht is commonto Plto Knt n the actat is inee istinctive cultul titionbut it is not ach(though its stu is). Philosoph in boe senseoughl the sot of witing which genelizes so sweepingl tht one hs no othe omptment fo itis something else but it is

not ach eithe. No ach, no metphilosophiclpoblems bout its subjects n methoso noilmms of te sot I hve been unning though.

Inste of spening more vluble time seching o

some necess st gounwhether in the orer ofthings in the fculties of the min o nll in tegenerl form of lngugeit woul be bette to bn-on the ening fo coneptul necessit ltogehe:To stop using the concept of necessit woul be tocese to t to keep philosoph pue but tht ttemptI think hs cost us too much wste motion le.3

Rot's costecienc nlsis in te nl instnceconvets the ntiphiosophe into the poponent of postphilosophicl cultue B the ltte is ment stu of the comptive vntges n isvntges

of the vious ws of tlking which ou ce hsinvente n which is closer to liter or cultul

6 id t, "Kpig Pilsp P A Ess Wittgsti,Consequences Pagas: Essa (iplis Uivsit f istPss, 1982) , . 28 . tl, s ls xllt smplig f t"Ami d/ "wWittgsti, fm Stl Cvll t C Dimd, it llti f sss he New gensen d Ali C d pt d(d tldg, 2000).

4




ctcsm thn to the el of phlosophy s puescence fo whch Roty eseves the cptlze nounPhlosophy. It looks n shot much lke wht s sometmes clle cultul ctcsm' tem whch hscome to nme the lteyhstoclnthopologcl-polcl meygoon t my es nclungthe Wttgensten of the acaus s well s those

Wttgestens who seek to n n hm the mes toput phlosophy on m scentc gouns gn sphlosophy of lnguge wsh to lght fom n the hopeof umping fom phlosophy to Phlosophy.37 Fo theecently ecese uto of Consequences PBmaism

the whole pont s pecsely not to ump off but to stys long s possble on the meygooun n questonwthout wshng to keep phlosophy pue.

In the eyes of Bou ths pgmtst eng ofWttgensten cn be seen s the wok of sophst. It s ple fo n mmnent cesston of phlosophynoweuce to beng nothng moe thn cultul t-tonn the wy t hs been hned own to us fomPlto. Ths cultul tton loses ts stnctveness nthe sme movement n whch ny petenson to tuthvnshes togethe w the ole of scence n ptcul

mthemtcs s pvlege contion fo phlosophy.Scence s the souce of tuth vlue whchoutnks the mee gooness of mol vtue n themee euty of ts one of the tes otoswhch vsh whe the el of phlosophy s strct

37 , Consequences PBats, pp xxxiii d x



TRA SLATOR S ITRODUCTI O

science' vanishes, concludes Roty. Wittgenstein'sesistance to science' is, I believe, best intepeted as a

esistance to the entie cultual tadition which madetuththe successful cossing of the void whichdivides man fom the wolda cental vitue.3 Toput an en to this tadition then demands the utte elaxation o loosening up of the philosophe's

discouse, om which all stong emnants of the act ofseizing tuths must be eleased. On the othe hand,insofa as Wittgenstein in the aa stil habos thesecet desie to ovecome te tuths of natual sciencewith a highe gasp of the sense of the wold, he emains

on the lookout fo somethical o aesthetic athe than doctinalvitue and , in his sense, he altenatelycan be called too much of a philosophe o too much ofan antiphiosophe. Fo a sophist, in fact, both aeequally guilty of holding onto a stong undestaningof the act , which is pecisely what a postphilosophical

cultue would teach us how to do witout.And ye, accoding o Badiou, this eading of

Wittgensteinlike any good sophistic ntepeta-tiondoes manage to captue a cucial aspect of histinking, namely, the question of style. Fo instane,

athe than see it as a backhanded attmpt to etun usto a pue fom of philosophy, Roty poposes that weead the ve g ao as a supeb example of liteaysate ypically, attempts to ovethow the taditionalpoblems of moden phiosopy have come te fom

8 Ibid. pp

4




ofroosals aout how we ought to think s o as to avoithose prolems" writes Rorty But this is recisely

what the author of e InveiBin oes not o: WhenWittgenstein is at his best he resolutely avois suchconstructive criticism an sticks to ure satire"39Again the choice efore us can be sai to coincie withthe shifting mission behin the an the

InveiBin, from a certain ygoe dream of logicalatomism to the roposal for a osthilosophicalculture Either Wittgenstein is showing how emiricalmeans can e use to iscover the limits of language(in which case hilosohical error will be of all thigs

a failure to gather enough facts) or he is somehowlaying on our mixe feelings aout the hilosophical traion (now in e mnner of a satirist now in tatof a arlor sychoanalyst)"4 In all these instancesthere can e no out that only the secon otion isrouctive in the eyes of Rorty

Wittgnstein's stengh which on this accountconsists in roposing a egime for the immanent cessa-tion of philosohy is inseparale from his work as asefstyle olemicist wo gives up on the esire forthe virtue of truth in all its variants. In tis sense he

may well be an antiphilosoher ut one who is at hisbest wen he no onge aims for any raical act what-soever or when there no longer exists any iningincile or axiom in a strong sense ony the ctive

39 Ibid . 3440 Ibid, . 2.

46




powes tht compise hetoicl style If we stopthinking ofWittgenstein s the nthopocentic theo-

ist who si tht necessity comes fom mn, n sttthinking of him s the stiist who suggeste tht weget long without te concept of necessity, then wemight hve fewe ilemms out wht sot of iscipline philosophy ws, ut only t the cost of eing

uious out its vey eistece>4 This st cost is onetht Roty is only too hppy to ccept, since to oohewisefo emple y cossing the vo etweenmn n the wol o etween eing n event withthe supposition of ome tuthswoul mount to violent inteuption o the cultulemoctic conve-stion of humnin, o t est of the West

Whees, in Rotys view, Wittgenstein tus invitesus to el philosophy to the point of inistiction, inThe ther ide P�choanai Lcn invokes theactas s jumping o fom which to suject

philosophy to n exteme tension We cn gsp some-thing of the enomous iffeence in intensity etweenthese two intepettions y contsting Rotysconclusion, which is n llusion to pgph 1 3 3 ofe Phioophica Ivti g ations: Wht gives Wigenstein's

wok its powe is, I think, the vision of point wheewe cn cese oing philosophy when we wnt to,>42with the enigmtic sttement tht Lcn is si to hve

41 bid42 bid , pp ; f Wittgsti: l dis is t tt mks

m pbl f sppig ig pilsp w w Philosophical nvesiaionss G. E . Asmb (Nw Yk: mill, 198) , p 5 1 .

4



TASLATOS TODUCTO

osted on the wll of hs consultton room: Ne devien pafo qUi ve, Not just nyone cn go md who wntsto'43 As oosed to the sohst's roosl to loosen uthe democrtc converston n fvor of osthlosohcl culture, we thus obn the nthlosoher'smge of n lmost rstocrtc rrefyng of dscoursett borers on nsnity Wht fscntes Lcn n

Wttgensten s recsely the etent to whch hedslys, s do few other nkers besde hm, n ecetonl ccty for mdnessfor sychoss, to beect Ths dgnostc concerns not so much thebogrhcl erson s the dscursve oertons

nvolved n Wttgensten's workOn the one hnd, even though Lcn does not usethe ctul term n ths rt of hs semnr, he clerlydentes certn nthlosohcl oerton n theaca Lo g icoPhioophic t he hs no trouble

recognzng s beng close to hs own Ths oertonconssts n loctng the ect source of the hloso-her's mdness Such n effort t ut hlosohy n tslce lwys entls detectng form of crookednessThus, ths Wttgenstenn oerton s notng but netrordnry rde, the detecton of hlosohcl

crookedness''44 Phlosohers re crooks nsofr s they

4 Jqs cr s Fik (Nw Yk W W N 006) p. 16 (sli mdid).44 he Oher Sde P�choana p 61 (sli mdid wi"kdss d "kv i fllwig qs slig canaere)

F xll mpiv ivsigi fWigsi d fm pif iw h is ls i's s Fis F Efhique du silence.Benen e Lacan (is il 999)

8




isvow the imension of esie tht subtens llspeeh The min subtefue tht philosophes use in

oe thus to obtin the illusion of objetivity is theelince on metlnue Lcn, thouh, not onlyshes with Wittenstein the pinciple tht ee is nometlnue he lso believes tt this pinciple o levee point is mibly pushe to its loil

extemes in the actats. At lest in this e, theely Wittenstein n be seen s fellow ntiphlosophe to Lcn He, too , unmsks te inceible stupiityof the philosophicl ct: The stupi thin, if I my syso is to isolte the fctitiousness of It is y It is

poiiously ich piece of stupiity fo it ives ise to levee point, vey peisely the followin one, fomwhih it esults tht wht I hve use s levee pointmyself, nmely tht thee is no metlnue, is pusheto its ultimte consequences

Anothe wy of fomultin the ntiphilosophiclpoximity between Lcn n the ely Wittesteinwoul be to show tht fo bo wites, who e lsosimilly emkble tehes, philosophys elince on metlnue involves betyl of n ethicl kin Itis not so much flse o mistken s it is sinful o ishon

est Finlly, philosophy is n ct of knvey o bstytht consists in the belief tht tuth cn be septefom the effets of lnue tken s such No tuthcn be loclize except in the el in whih it is stte ,sys Lcn Only cooks n knves believe in tuth

4 , Th Ohr Sid Pchanasis p 6

49




beyon o outsie lanuae. Thee is no othe metalanuae han all e fos of knavey if we theeby

esinate these uious opeations eivable fom thefat tat mans esie is the Othes esie. All ats ofookeness ae base on the fat of wishin to besoeones Othe I men someones bi Othe theewhee e ues by which his esie will be aptivate

ae awn.46 Fom e stanpoint of te antiphiloso-phe that Laan eonies in Wittenstein thee is nolanuae oe tan e lauae of esie whih alsomeans lanuae fae with the inonsisteny of anoe at is notAll. Thee is no sense exept the

sense of esie. This is wht one an say afte havinea Wittenstein Laan oles. But the nonphilosophial tuth of this esie wih is watphilosophy oneals behin the supposition of a metalanae is not anoe notion of fullness but ae te impossibility of enjoyment one psyhoanalytialname of which is astation: Thee is no tuth exeptof tht whih e sai esie hies of its lak so s tomake liht of what i oes n .47

Why en oes Laan also asibe a psyhotifeoity to Wittenstein? If e stutual analoy is

between psyhosis an phiosophy base on the foelosue of a uial element of esie o enjoyment thatte omes bak i e eal oes is me tatWittenstein in e en is not quite the ntiphiosophe

46 6 n 62 (trnton o)47 , 6 (trnton corrct.

5




that Lacan beleves he could be? Hee n effect one ofthe most assued dscouses and somethng o othe

that s stkngly suggestve of psychoss concu somuch that I am sayng hs on the sole bass of feelng tseffect" acan confesses stll efeng to te ealyWttgensten How emakabe t s that a unvestylke the Englsh unvesty made a place fo hm A

place apat ts appopate to say a place of solatonwth whch the autho went along pefectly wellhmself so much so that he wthdew fom tme totme to a lttle house n the county and then etunedto pusue ths mplacable dscouse"8 Hee we comeupon the lmt of the compatblty between Lacan andWttgensten The lattes mplacable dscouse sndeed stll pemsed on some knd of fullness thatwould be avalablenot to the popostonal sense ofwhat can be sad but to the showng of the sense of thewoldn what he calls the mystcal element

The Wttgensten of the actats, n othe wods sstll a cook whose antplosophcal opeaton fallsshot of tuly undemnng the pesupposton of somesubct wo s supposed to know Fo Lacan thscontnues to be the dese fo a total sense And as a

esult Wttgensten too s nally a phlosophe Hemantans the cettude of a possble access to fullthought" as Badou explans He too foecloses tatwhch n enoyment s emedably baed unde thename of the mystcal element o of od o of the

48 Ibi p 63

5




sense of the wo. Wittgenstein maintains that tethoght is on the sie of being. Thi is why one can n

a psychotic feocity in im. Psychotic feocity' means:the paanoi cetitue of he who beieves in saving theintega tuth"9 Fo acan howeve is oes notmean that we shol simply move on an eplace theeaie with the late Wittgenstein.

As an antiphiosophe te psychoanayst shol stickas closely as possible to the leveage point offee inthe atat, namey tht tee is no metalangage btwi eye on a acaly ieent nesting of eact which wol be the psychoanalytica act that aonemight cue s fom psychosis: As fo the analyticopeation it is istingishe by avancing into the ein a way that is istinct fom wha is I wou say founemboie in Wittgenstein's iscose that is a psychotic feocity in compaison with which Ocham'swelown azo which states that we mst amit

ony notions that ae necessay is noing.50 Finallywhat Lacan appeciates e actat is e extent towhich is ao is ling to ease himself om his owniscose: ely e ao has someing close to eayst's posion nely at he eliminates imself com-

petely om his own iscose."5 is last amaonmay seem paaoxical insofa as Wittgenstein conclesthe acta b einseting himself as the ultimate

49 Ali Bi "c l philsphi l flie Coreces eArgete et au Clhs pblishe pesip, Obe 1 994) , pp. .

50 c e Oter Se Pcoaass p. 62.5 1 Ibi p 6 3

2




referet of all of the books roostons u to thatot, whh as a result apear to be as osesal as

those of trdtonal hlosophy: My roostos serveas eludatos the follow way: ayoe whouerstas me evetually reogzes them as ose-sal, whe he has used temas stesto lmb ubeyo them I realty, ths referee to the sgu-

larty of the subet of the euato s a tegralart of the wrterly style of eah an every athloso-her, from Kerkeaards dares to aas semars

Istead of retedg that the voe of be or someother obetve order dretly seas through hm, ashlosohers gladly do the wellgh halluatorydsourse of otoloy, the athlosoher seaks oly the name of hs ow tormeted subetvty, as torbetwee slvato ad s, or betwee satless adsude, as s Wtteste What s more, he s wllto fade away, or to beome othg more tha a trae

or resduea lttle ee of waste hs owdsourse I ths reard, the athlosoher resem-bles ot oly the aalyst but also the oet who smlarlyaets e abset of the author as a eessaryodto for the at of poetry As Mallarm wrtes:

2 wig Wigesei acau LcoPhoohcu rs F Pes B. F.MGiess ( ew Y: lege, 2001), 64 ee ls Cims eig f his imp pssge i ems f "wh Wigeseiems f he ee f he acau he ee f b f sesilppsiis mel "Y e e his sesil ppsiis es hem b hei h; s s he es himself hve esp he sese ee b philsphes hgh esig hei

ppsiis b hem C Dim "hs Imgii he acau"The Newenen pp 16



TA SLATOR S TRODUCT O

Impersone, the vome, to e extent that oneseparates from t as athor, oes not eman a reaer,

ether As sch, pease note, amon hman accessores ,t takes pace a by tself: nshe , exstn3 Is s notaso the staern ambton that s palpabe n theaca?

In he case ofWttgensten, however, he operaton

of recn the sbect to a mere vanshn pont thatfaes away nto scourse oes not o a the way own,at east not n the eyes of Lacan In oher wors, theathor of the aca s not as raca or as nsurrec-tonary an antphlosopher as the psychoanayst camsto be In terms of our openn anecote, we co saythat Wttensten oes not submt y to the cha-ene of the others sptte n the eevator; n hsown terms, t s not exacty the subject but ony hsropostons that are alowe to rop competey, kethe famous laer after t has been cmbe

An so, n ht of ths twoprone settn ofaccounts, the foown becomes the oube task that

3 pe Mrm, "esre A, Dvaatons, trs Brr JsCmrge rvr versy ress , 00), p 9Wgese, g, y sers me reeree e speg I "me) e e e

atatus; e s fmsy pes es e reer r "Is prpsew e eve f ge pesre e pers w re ers Prefe) Eve s, B s srey jse w fws mpre e rm strre f e atatus Mrm's A hrow De , we episp ssee e ee ge fe w e mre im Fr ere e Wgese's re fr emprry pes , seee wr Mrjre Per, ttensten s adder oet Lanuae and theStneness !the Ordna Cg Uversy f Cg Press, 99) A,

ser B e qes se, Ai le, Coet rvent Ies hlosohes de ant tteste ou Ie sle ttensten Prs: m, 2003 ).

S4



TA SL ATO S TODUCT O

Bdou s up gnst n hs redng ofWttgensten Hemust rst of ll come to terms wth the fct tht, for

selfprofessed ntphlosopher such s Lcn, theCmbrdge professor s stll too muh of phlosopher,whose prose shnes forth wth strek of mdnessAnd, second, he must lso sorb the possblty tht,for prgmtstsophst such s Roty, the lter

Wttgensten s no longer phlosoher but perhpsjust polemcst, whose wrtng rllntly, f lsoloosely, revtlzes the trdton of lterry stre Thepont s to grsp these two orenttons n tndem ndpply them to the Wttgensten the wrter ofgenus does ndeed tke whtever cn be sd bout theworldn logc or n nturl scences the subjectmtter of ths mbtous work, but from wthn therelm of the syble tht s thus exhustvely outlned,the ultmte m of e operton s to trverse tsmteril n the drecton of slent ct or mysticl

element n whch the psyhonlyst wll hve recognzed the psychotc excess of n unsyble plentude

5 5



v

Refeing one lst time to Mille's neote we enow in position to ise set of onluing questions ll of wi in sense e pompte by gue in testoy tt s not yet lime ou ttention nmelyte bystne in te elevto wo is supise by tenlyst's plegm:

Cn this thi pty emin neutl o must eo she neessily hoose one of te sies

involve in te spitting ontest? Tose of uswo ly no speil lim to being eite pilos-opes o ntipilosophes fo instne ewe by efult boun to be tete s meesophists utul eltivists o emoti

mteilists foeve t the mey of Biou'sunfogiving Pltonism?Wen ll is si n one is tis bttle foughton te exlusive tein of philosophy o etee lso lessons tht nonphilosopes in genei sense n w fom this fo exm-pe bout wys of gsping the poiti

57



TA SLATO S TODUCT O

rtistic scientic nd other eventsorctsof our time? (After ll even Rorty

rees with Biou tht philosophy could bedee in Heels terms s its own timepprehende in thouht54)Wht is the difference nywy between nct n n event? Are ese two terms synony

mous s mny reder miht hve concludedfom Zieks work in its onoin dilouewith Bdiou (whom the Slovenin t one pointclls "he theoist of te Act55) ? If they re notsynonyms e ey two iffeent types of

occurence o rther two iffeent modes oftretin one n the sme type of occuencesy musicl peformnce or politiclevolt? Wht re the consequences of septin such moes or types by nmin themeite philosophicl o ntiphilosophicl?If Mllm n Wittenstein for instnceboth hve their own enition of the ct wht

54 Rory, Coseques < Pmasm, p. l. e uoe is o G F. Hegel,Phlosophy < Rh rans. T M. no or or nersiy ress, 192,p. 1 1 , jus eore e line aou e owl o Minera. Baiou also ars " I aeassigne pilosopy e as o consucin ous erace o is own ie, oreacing neworn rus roug e uniue pris o conceps, in eorealrs, e. an rans. Alero oscano an Ray Brassier Lonon: oninuu,200) , p. 14 .55 Slaoj Ziek, elome o he Der < he Real Fe Essays o Semer aRelae Da Lonon Verso, 200 , p. 1 1 or a coparison o e nos o acan een, see rian Jonson, ao Zek a Polal aormaos: eCaee <Chae Eanson: Norwesern niersi ress, 009. or a ciiue

o Zie's reaing o Baiou, see Baiou wiou Ziek Poraph 1 2005 pp. 2 1 4 .

5 8



TR SLTOR S TRODUCT O

do we gin o lose b y lling these ts poeti"in one se d hiestheti" n the othe?O n the se of Ln by lling hs deni-tion of the t hisienti" the neite sienti o psyhonlytil? O lly in e se of Nietzshe by lling hism em of t hipoltil" te

n speking of gnd polits"?In tems of the onete intelligibility of onete sitution wht e the effets of theintodution of ll tese pexes with whihe philosophe somewht obsessively polies

d dws e boundies ound the speity of hs own t?

These quetions obviously nnot be nsweed in thespe of this intoution nd leve e to be eveloped elsewhee by othes o by Biou himself. Hee will liit yself to entioning two otempoyvoies tht t inimum miht help us lify thestkes t e involved

tnley Cvell is the st to put us on k in eet essy wit e ily Bdouinsoundin title

Te Wittgensteinin Event. In this essy fomPilosop t Da A Tooo, he outlines potentilpogm of study tt would seem to ome extemelylose to Biou's oienttion n his yelong seinson ntipilosophy o the ely s . Wht is moe

lthough he pefes to tlk of ountephlosophilition i wi to inlue not e elie but the

59



TASLATOS TODUCTO

later Wttgensten Cvell even provdes a lst of exam-ples almost dentcal to Badou's gve or take a couple

based on hs personal predlecton:

It sometmes seems magnable to me that theInvestiBations wll come to be thought of asbelongng to a more o less honorable lne of

counterphlosophcal works whose palpable philo-sophcal eccentrcty ensures er margnalty to acentral phlosophcl curculumalong perhapsw Montagne's or Emerson's Essa y s, Pascal'sPens, Rousseau's Poenades, Fredch chlegel's

FBments, Kerkegar's Phiosophica FBments,Netzsche's Zathusta, woks neadcably tingedwt e phlosophcal whose lfe neveelesslargely depends upon the nterestng ose beyonde call of professonl phlosophy. 6

Cavell hmself however pomptly rejects ths lne ofstudy on the grounds that t ould fal to grasp thegenune nnovaton of Wttgensten's approach tophlosophy:

uch a development would to my mnd lose asngular feature ofttgensten's later work (mostfamous from the Investiations, a feature of unfal-ng fascnaton for me whch s pecsely ts

5 6 Sae ae he Wgesea e Phlooh the DAer Toorrowabrge he Belkap ress f Harar Uiers ress 2005 p. 9 3 .

6




ema for a exstece at oce se the profes-so of phlosophy a otse of t hespeccato at oce" s crtcal ths formlato; t eclares that someth essetal to thewors fascato s msse f oe sees to eepthe palpably phlosophcal stretches, cocerewth problems of mea, referece, er

sta, states of coscosess , laae ames ,rammar, a so o, free from the patetly aembarrasse lterary resposes to tsef, wherewe are ase to coser sch matters as a ytrappe a bottle, a beetle a box, tal from a

lo, e teeth of a rose 7

I tae these les to mply that e se of prexes schas at o coter bt also arch , eve whe thereexsts a veerable le of hers for whom ths sage

mht be jste , loses sht of the proctve eqvo-cato tat les at te very heart ofWttestes owse of the term phlosophy," whch effect oscl-lateswot vsle scottybetwee palpablyphlosophcal stretches" a patetly a embarrasse lterary resposes to tself"

To be sre, Bao hmself s perfectly aware of eoble valece of e term phlosophy" for Wtteste,

57 I hs evew Cvells w el w ese ep ses sl sm "Oe wl hve hh h e we wee le h e wes le ese eshe wh essepesslz we m

h e sme sm phlsph whh dd notm l phsph "Cvll psm Cnsequenes Pgat, p 8



TRA SLATO S TRODUCT O

as the following ey statement om e tt,repeately invoe in Baiou's essys below: Philosophyis not a boy of octrine but an act"58This clam obviouslyhols bth for Wttgensteis own unerstaning of whathe oes incluing at e level of formal or even literaryexperimentaton and for e iscourse aitionallyhane own uner e nae of philosophy In bo cases

we are ealing rst an foremost wi prctical interven-tons raer an wi purely eoretical or octrinlstatements Now introucing e term antiphilosophy"into s ebate certainly enbles a helpl elimitaon ofe ierent values assigne to e act of traonal

philosophy n e act of Wittgenstein's crique orenuncaton thereof The latter fter all consists inuncovering e element of crooeness wth which traional philosophy clais nt to be an act but a eory Theneologism nphilosophy" even enables us to grasp emoral or eical hierrchy at is presuppose in iselimitation: traitional phlosophy savows its onnture qu act by nonsensiclly assing o nonoughtsas ough ey were oughts at is as ough ey werepurely ocinal proposions enowe wi sensewhereas e iostic of is traition which Baiou

proposes to relabel nphilosophical shows e bsr-ity hien in is isavowal

58 Wgese aaus LogoPh]osohus, 4 ( hve sle gkehee s " he s "v llwg he exmple B wh eles hgh hs s he pblshe Feh sl he aauspepe ee Bl " phlsphe es ps e he ms e Wgeses "De hlsphe s ee ehe se ee Tge) .

62



TA SLATO S TODUCT O

The hiosohy/antihilosohy inary wi haveeen a re rodct of hiosohy, one that

hiosohy wi present as awaysaready having astrctring effect It is this effect of awayarady(which athorizes the awaysaready of eing orof Being, of trth or of Trth, of the rea or theRea) that the second discourse, named anti-

hiosohy" y hiosophy, renders manifest

However, as we saw earier, the discorse of ogoogyaso reies on the effect of an awaysareay, namey,the awaysaready strcturing effect of the eqivoca

angage enacted in ns, homonyms, and so on How,then, shod the reader resond to this gigantomachiain which hiosohers, sohists, and antihiosophersaways aready seem to have gained the er handover their adversaries?

The east one can do as a reader, I wod roose , is

measre the degree of rior and commitment withwhich Badio in his nbishd seminar and in thetwo essays at foow engages with the work ofWittgenstein If, after that, the nssecting ystander

9 Css "Psspm ss fme e qelqes ppss fe p pe e q s, nj a a de raort exueI, p 96 Css shee espg ve B's eg f hs ex "es fmlese '' h mmee fllws hes He w ppsl wl vsh bsm "Wh I ll lglg' he h phlsph lhes llbsm h lws mes he he fll he he se hs essg hepeemee f he e he e wll he be esge wh hephlspheme: pe beg s b mlpl') g he mel f

sese ll h s se f sese pssesses sese s fle) m whh spesel qes f sepig eself "Psspm pp 96).




in the elevator still wishes never to have gotten involvedin the spitting contest to begin with, there is alwas the

optio of next time taking the stairs

* * *

Just one terminological ote might be in order to

· th f " ) d " hexp a e uses non sense an eang w atfollows Whereas the German Sinn is easil translatedin French as n, in English this can be rendered bothas "sense and as "meaning n the existing Englishlanguage translation of the aau LOBioPhioophiu,

"sense is the commonl used rendering, but in manofWittgenstein's wellnown statements from lettersand notebooks we also encounter expressions aboutlife, the world, or God, for which his biographers BrianMcGuinness and Ra Monk profusel quoted bBadiou in their Fench translations) most often use" d " E · h R th thmeang an not sense ng a er anchanging uotations from the existing biographies, have kept eir rendering even at the cost of a slight

d· b " d "tero ogca ssonance etween sense an meaning, which is absent fro the French where Badio

ses n in all cases Similarl, whereas in Gemaniclanguages ninn or "nonsense can easil be turnedinto the adective uninniB or "nonsensical, tienneBalibar on whose npblise rench translation ofte aa Badio relies throgot this book) opts

for the etoloicall nrelate ar hae restoredthis as "nonsensical excet where Baio in his own

6



TRS LTOR S TRODUCT O

paraphrases sees to use absurd and even te noun absurdi, not as techncal but as generic ters To

translate Badous coon paraphrases dpourvu d snsand dou d sns, have opted for te setrcal"devod of sense and "endowed wth sense Fnall,soe Wttgenstenans have tred to decipher whetherthere s a sgncant difference between unsinniB and

sinnos, here rendered as nonsenscal and senseless.But ths dstncton does not see to carr uchanaltcal weght n Badious nterpretaton. Whatatters s rather the overarchng ternologcalconguration surrounding eanng, sense, and

nonsense n Wttgensteins work For Badou, certanln the case of etzsche and Wttgensten, the debatebetween phlosoph and antphlosoph n effect can beconcentrated n the different artculations and herar-ches between trut and eang/senseor, n thecase of Lacan, e slghl dfferent artculaton betweentruth, sense, and knowledge n the real .

As for the references, have tred to the best of ablt to track down and annotate the ultple quota-tons for which Badou does not provde an source. Allfootnotes and an possble errors therein are exclu-

svel the translators responsblt References to theacaus LBicoPhiosophicus wll be gven n the bod ofthe text, wth the standard nuberng n parentheses.

66



Prace

Aong h ost intrsting phiosophrs r artos who I ca antiphosophers, takn ead

o Lacan In t pags that follow, th rader wid th dition I propos of the The iportantthing is that I take to be awakeners who forc tothr phiosophers not to forget two points

1 Th conditions of philosoph, i , th truthsto which it bars witns s , are awas onempora

to

t It is in th confusion of thir own tie thatphilosopers consrc new concpts, and thecannot diinish thir artnss, be content withwhat is arad thr, or contribut to aitainin th status quo, without at th sa ti faing pr

to th worst possib risk for th fat of thir discipine its asorption or incorpoation into acadicknowd Th antiphiosophr rcas for us that aphiosophr is a poitica iitant , nra hatd bth powrs that and b thir srvants ; an astht ,

who waks ahad of th ost unik crations aovr whos if is capab of capsiig for a woanor a an a savant who frqunts th ost viontparaoxica dvopnts of th scinces an thatit is in this ffrvscnc, this indisposition this

rbeion that phosophers produc thir cathdras of ias

6



L BDOU

2 The phlosopher assues the voce ofthe asterPhlosophers are not, nor can they be, odest partc-

pants n tea work, laborious nstructors of a closedhstory, deocrats gven over to publc debates Therword is authortaran, as seductve as t s volent,cottng others to follow sut, dsturbng andconverting the Phosophers are present, as such, in

what tey state even f ts presence s lso tht of anexeplary subisson , they do not subtract theselvesfro the duty of reason

Antphlosophers, for their part, have an absoluteysngular way of placng theselves vsvs these two

ponts They cla to be the conteporares not onlyof the truths that proceed n ther te but they alsoake ther own lfe the theater of their ideas , and theirbody the place of the Absolute Ths s true fro Pascal ,"joy, joy, joy, ters ofjoy, to etzsche , "I a soething decsve and dooladen standng between twollenna Fro Rousseau, "I have resolved on anenterprse whch has no precedent, and whch, oncecoplete, wll have no tator, to Lacan, "I herebyfound by yself, as alone as have always been 2

See Blaise ascals eorial, a e sew io his clohig ha he is said ohave carried wih hi a all ies, i Pnss, ras A. J. Krailsheier Lodoegui, 199) , p 28 ; ad iezsche, leer wrie ro Nice, Frace, oReihar vo Seydliz, o Feruary 1 2 1 8 88 See Slctd Lttrs FrdrchNtzsch, ed. ad ras. hrisopher iddleo hicago: Uivesiy o hicagoress, 199) p. 2842 These e e opeig lies JeJacques Rousseau, h Coo, as. J. .ohe Lodo egi, 193) p . ; ad Lacs opeig saee o Jue 2 1 ,

19,is Ae de odao de cole Fraise de sychlyse, pubshed i 195by e cole Freudiee de is d reissued e Anar ( 1 9) , pp 8-8

68



W T T G S T S A T P H L O S O P H Y

Fro Kirkgaard, I hav nothing but lf, and a happ to put it at risk whnvr a dicult ariss ,to Wittgnstin, as w will s in gratr dtail blowFor th antiphilosophr, th pains and cstass ofprsonal lif bar witnss to th fact that th concpthaunts th tporal prsnt all th wa to includ ththros of th bod And as for not bing a drudg, a

r tutor, a graar prig or a pious guardian oftpls and institutons, this is a dut to which thantiphilosophr dvots hislf with all th xtrviolnc of his opinions about his prs, th philosophrs Pascal against Dscarts, Roussau against th

Encyclopdists, Krkgaard against Hgl, itzschagainst Plato, Lacan against Althussr: ach antiphilosophr chooss t philosophrs who h hops toak into th canonical xapls of th pt andvain shll of a word hat for hi is phlosoph

For all ths rasons , dvotd sinar for soars to h grat odrn antiphilosophrs irstitzsch, thn Wittgnstin, and thn Lacan Aftrwhich, carring out th grat lap backward, concludd with Saint Paul , th invntor of th antiphilo-sophical positionunlss this honor blons toDiogns , or vn to Hraclitus

Th rst part of this littl book, ssntiall conscratd to th unqu astrpic that is ctt sthus th rsult o th scond sinar of this ccl

3 K Phlosophial Framents, The Kerkeaard Reader, Chmbeli h Oxf lwell 200) p 60

9



ALA BADOU

Publshed rst n 94 n e journal r! (Toulouse,no 3 ) , ths part has been consderabl revsed to gve

wa to a slender volue n Geran, publshed n 2007b Daphanes under the ttle i8ninni p hiphi,translated b Henz Jatho The second part , whch dealsw the language, or rather the languages, or thestles , ofWttgensten , was orgnall the subject of an

nterventon n the senar that Barbara Cassn held atthe Collge Internatonal de Phlo sophe on the topcthat has alwas been her passon the lngustc placewhere what conventonall goes b the nae "phloso-ph coes to nd a hoe Ths nterventon was

subsequentl redacted for publcaton n the journal ofthe Collge, R ar (no 26 , 9) .If hese texts have been dorant for a long te, t s

because I envsoned coposng a trptch the text onWttgenstens stles would ave functoned as acaesura and a edaton between the analses of thetwo ost portant "books (the second never havngbecoe a book, at least not dung Wttgenstens lfe-te) of s torented antphlosopher the aaon one hand, and the Phiphia Invi8in on thother Soe desperate, dscouragng attepts, taken

up agan o an everreater stance, have not producedng of nterest concernng e Invi8ain To tellthe truth, as readers oreover wll be able to seefor theselves, d not reall lke ths laer book, andeven less so, I ust sa, what t has becoe, to wt the

nvoluntar, undeserved uarantee of AngloAercanraaran phlosophthat twentethcentur for

0



W T T G N S T N S A N T P H L O S O P H Y

of scholastcs, a s pressve for ts nsttutonal forceas t s contrr to everthng that Wttgensten the

stc, the aesthete, the Stlnst of sptult, couldhave desired

Can we all conclude that Wttgensten waspunshed for hs own sns? Too uch arrogant skeptcs , too uch scbrous vrtuost, too uch fuureless

deconstructon, too uch attenton gven to sntax, atthe expense of deas And the gravest of ll , the teptaton to whch antphlosophers gldl succub, n therst place etzsche, who knew nothng about t, butalso, ore underhandedl, those who lke Pascal or

Wttgensten began b beng genuses t t: the abltto despse atheatcs, reducng t, n regard to whats orll serous and exstentall ntense, to a erechlds gae The contept for aheatcs s soe-tng o whch no phosoph can lft tself up agan Ths s wh stop readng ofWttgensten s work atthe atat, where ths contept s alread present,but xed stl wth adraton

have alread presented Sant Paul Here thenou have ore cursor, Wttgensten When havehe te, wll coplete these porats wh ose of

etzsche and Lacan Wthout gvng up copletel onthe dea of one da dong e sae for the great classcalwhch also eans Chrstanantphlosophers:Pascal, Rousseau, and Kerkegaard

Jul 2008

7



1

Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy

t is certainly not unreasonable to hold at Wittgensteinhas been a heo of our time. But only if we rigoouslyxamin whch caue he has been te hero, ow eheld up this cause, and how he lost himself in theimposibilitypoorly masked by a kind of speculativeinsolenceof the unprecedented act whose promisehe cherished.

I

n November 1 9 1 4 , ittgenstein is at war He hasalready seen the line of re His activity as a sodier is

stragely attuned to hs maim according to whch it svain to roduce philosopical propositions, given thatwhat matters is the clarication of propositions"( 4 1 1 2 ) et s transate ts to mitary aggee poit is ot to soot bt to carfy te sot. An soWittgenstei, wo will ater ecome a oserver" tocorrect the traectory followed by te ombs, takes

7



ALA BADOU

car of a sarchlight on board a gunboat . His bas is iKrakow Hr h finds h crucial nal works of

Nitzsch t ons from 1 8 8 8 , abo all The Antihrist. At this tim h ots i his ournal : "I am stronglyaffctd by his hostility against Christianity. Bcaus hiswritigs too have som [part o tru i thm.

Our rst qustio will b t followig: what is this

part of truth" whos xistc Wittgstei rcog-izs in imprcations of Dioysus agaist thCrucied? Ad our scod o : what ca Wittgstima by Christiaity if despit this par h flsdply hurt by th antiprist lgislatio of h fury

from Turin? Ths ar dcisi qustions if w considrthat Nitzsch ad Wittgnstin ach i his own urnhav st th t for th twtith ctury i trms ofa crtai form of philosophical cotmpt forphilosophy.

1 Quoed in Brian Mcunne, gee A Youg udwg -

eee Uivei of Caifonia e 1988, p Heeafer cied aMcuinne

74




IIWhat Nietzshe and ittenstein share in oon I will desinate wit a term introded by the thirdgreat an fasinated detrator of philosophy fro thelast entry Jaqes Laan antiphilosophy. The wor is

ot Bt not as an isolated one , bease if t is tre thatthe eluidation of this term denes the stakes of thiswhole tex for whih ittenstein will be our teaher,we are no for this reason ee of the brden teporarily to x e bondaries of its power

Antiphilosophy fro its origins (I wold say fromHeralits wh is as mh the antiphilosopher toParmeides as Pasal is to Desartes, an be reonied by tree oint operations:

1 A lingis, logial genelogi riqe of he

statements of philosophy; a deposing of e ateory of; an raveling of e pretensions of philosophy toonstte itself as eory order to do so anphilosophy oen delves into he resres at sophissexploit as well In e ase of Nietzshe, is operaonbers e ne overtrnin of all vales , sle aainst

e Platodisease, ombatt grmr of sis d types . The reognition of e fat that philosophy in

te al instane annot be reded to its disrsiveappearane, its propositions, its fallaios theoretialexterior. Philosophy is an at, of whih te fablations

abot trth are the lothin, the propaganda, the liesn the ase of Nietshe, it is a qestion of disernin

7



W T T G N S T N S A N T P H L O S O P H Y

Philosophy is divested of a theoretica prete-sios, ot because it wod be a embroidery of

approximaios ad errorswhich wod stil beconceding too mch to itbt becase its very inte-tio is vitiated Most of the propositios and estionsto be found in phiosophica works are not fase btnonsensical" (4 003) t is typical of antiphilosophy that

its prpose is ever to i ay philosophical theses(like the philosophers worthy of that name who reftetheir predecessors or their cotemporaries, sice todo so it wold have to share its norms (for istace,those of e tre and the fase. What the atiphioso-

pher wats to do is to sitate the philosophica desire inits entirety i the register of the erroneos and theharmfl . The metaphor of sickess is never absent fromthis pan, ad it certainy comes through wheWittgenstei speaks of the osesical." nsofar asnonsensica mean deprived of sese , it foows thatphiosophy is not even a form of thinkig. he dei-tion of thought is indeed precise A thoght is aproposition with a sense" (4)

Piosophy, then, is a onthoght. Moeoverthisis a subtle bt aso crcial poitit is ot a cf rmi

nonthogt, which wod cross the imits of the prop-osition edowed with sese in order to seie po area nsayabe. Phiosophy is a sick ad regressive on-thoght, b i rn rn h nnn h i rr i wihin riin n ri rir

he philosophical sickess appears whe nosenseexhibits itsef as sese, when nonthoght imagies

77



AL BADOU

itself to be a thoght. Hence, philosophy mst not berefted, as if it were a false thogh; i t mst be dgedand condemned as afa nnhh, the gravest offalts to inscribe itself nonsensically into the protocols(propositions and theories reserved for oght aone .Philosophy, with regard to e eminent nl dignity ofafrmative nonthoght (that of an act that crosses the

barrier of sese, is . The fact that the essence of philosophy does not

reside in its sick and fallacios appearance in the formof propositions and theories, bt that it is rst andforemost on the order of the act, is something that

Wittgenstein proclims , in . 1 1 , not withot lettingan eivocatio srface between inherited philosophy,which is nonsensical, an his own antiphilosophy:Philosophy is not a body o doctrine bt an activity.

The general value of this assertion noneteless

becomes clear if we relate the desire of philosophy tothe activity of the sciences. Eveyone will agree thaphilosophy is concerne wi e nal ends, wih whatis higher with what matters to the life of hman beings.Howeer, none of his is of any concern to the theoreti-cal activity properly speaking, which takes the or ofpropositions (endowed wi a sense, or even better,tre propositions, that is to say, science: The toaityof tre propositions is the whole of natral science[ . 1 1 ] . Perhaps it is regrettable (especially to hosewho beieved that they cold d a positivist in

Wittgenstein, or even an analytical and rationalistphilosopher, bt it is beyond dobt a ropositions

78




can express nothing that is higher () And betteryet : We feel that even when all pb scientic es-

tions have been answered, te problems of life remaincompletely ntoched () n the general aspia-tion that indces its existence, philosophy, devoted as itis to the problems of life, is intrinsically differentom any scientic or theoretical gre It is sbtracted

from the athority of propositions and of sense, and forthis reason destined t the same time to take the formof the act Simply pt, there wil be two types of schan act One, which is infrascientic and nonsensicabecase it ttempts to bend nonthoght by force into

e theoretical proposition, is the philosophical sickness roper The other, sprascientic, silently afrmsnon hought as a tochin of the real It is te athen-tic philosohy," which is a conest of antiphilosoph

3 . It is s necessary to come to e annocement ofan act of a new tpe, which simltaneosly overcomesthe philosophical sicnss, ndoes e regressive act bywch one seaches nonsensically to incarnate the problems of life in eoretcal poposions, and arms, isme beyond science, e rihts of e real In order beerto disngish is act om all at is foced and miacal

abot e plosophical act, Wittgenstein raer describesit as an element, as at n whiche aentic nonoghtdwells But already Nietzsche proceeded in e same wayin oder to transmit to s e powers of e Great Noon,of santy armaton one did not pass ogh e hall

ways of e wl in its nrow, programmatc, and moralsense; one was trsporte y raiant metaphors

79




e apilosophical act comes down to tracig a line ofdemarcation as Althusser would hae said n e wake ofenin. And it is ery well possible atlussers proectuner e name of materialist philosophy" came close totwenecentury antiphilosophy. The dierence beingat for Altusser it was e proximity of reolutonarypolitics under e partisan name of tig sides" at

silently educated e clari induced by tis sepatigact while for itenstein under e name of e myscal element" it is raer a mixre of e Gospels ad ofclassical music.

In any case there can be no doubt that the tree

constitutie operations of all antiphilosophy can beretrieed in Wittgenstein which does ustice to hisiscoery of a part of trut" in Nietzsches work hisreatest predecessor in this matter

This part of truth ten enters into a dialectic withthe obious differences:

To the genealogical ruin of philosophical state-mens in Nietzsche to te eidencing of typesof power supporting them and thus to ananalytic of the le as a gure of ital impulse

there corresponds in Wittgenstein theeidencing of a absurdity which entails theforcing of the linguistic sphere of sense bynonsense. For Nietzsche metaphysics is willto notingness; for Wittgenstein it is the

nothingness of sense exhbited as sense. Thesicess bears a name for Nietzsce t s

8



ALA BDOU

nihilis; for Wittgenstein, perhaps worse,gassing or babbing.For ietzsche, e hidden philosophical act is eexercise of e ological power of e priest.For Wittgenstein, it is e erasure of e line ofparoning between e saable d te saable, beten e inkable d e unkable;

it i s e will to nonclari about liits. It i s usalso, d here ietzsche would agree, e blind,properl unchained exercise of a lguage deliv-ered over to e drea of not being interruptedb rule, nor liited b erence.

For ietzsche, e nounced act is chipolical, sce e pure araon is equall e puredesucon of e e power of e priest.For Wittgenstein, it is ciaesec, since eprinple (which is itself unsaable of l cli

regdin e liits of e saable proceeds oe possibili of gain access to e arscpadigs of pure showing, which also esaccess to e saint e as inner beaut "Eicsd aesecs re one d e se (.1And, better et, is belated, ost testaen

tar decaon (aer y abandonents andwderins what is esseal coes back I t sed p attude to pilosophwhen said phiosphy oght reall to be writte only as a poeti omposition

3 Ludi Wienein Cuure ad ae ed G H von Wri an eer

8



3

Here thouh is what Nietzsche and Wittenstein do no share: the second is strongy affected" by the rstshostility toward Christianity.

The connectio of Christianity to modern antiphiosophy has a long history We c easiy draw up e ist ofantiphiosophers of strong caiber: Pasca RousseauKierkeaar Nietzsche Witenstein and acan Whatcatches e eye is at for of tese stand in an essentiareaon to Chrisanity: Pasca Rousseau Kierkegaard

and Wittenstein; that Nietzsches eraed hatred isitsef at east as stron a bon as ove which aloneexpains fact at e Nietzsche of e etters ofmaness" c si indierenty as Dionysus" or as eCrucied"; at acan e ony tre rationaist of e

group bt aso e one who ompe cyce of modernantiposophy nonetheless hods Christianity to bedecisive for e constution of e sbect of scienceand at it is in vain at we hope to ntie ourseves omthe reiious theme which is strctural in natre.

Wih hiago: Uiversiy of hiago ess 1 984 p 2

8



ALA BADOU

The tre qestion consists in knowing whatChristianit is the name of in Wittgenstein s atiphilosophical arrangement. t is certainl not e name ofan established, or instituted, religion This is, moreoer, neer the case, not een for Pascal, whose hatredof te Jesits is clearl aimed at eerthing in religionthat takes the form of a reai The religion of antiphi

losophers is a material they grab hold of at a distancefrom pilosop so as o name the singulri of theiract.

Wittgensteins references to Christianit are rst ofall literar and Rssian: Tolsto and Dostoesk. The

Gospel itself is grasped as sch an oere, e possibleexample of a principle of clarit as to what the saintllife , at is , e beatifl life , can be.

In trh, Christiani" names a clarification of thesense of life , which is also te sense of the world (since,as per 5 6 3 , I am m world. It can then be distribted along two axes

1 Obectiel, we o tat the sense of teworld does not belong to what can be said, which, inthe for of the proposition or of theor, is only scientic. Ths the sense or meaning of te orld, situated

ot of reach of the saable, can be represened as transcendent (external to the world. nd as a reslt thename of God is aropriate for i. In a noteook from1 1 6 , Wittgenstein writes: The meaning of life, i.e.the meaning of the world, we can call God." We n

1 Qe i M Ldwi Wittnstin Th D Gnis w Y:

8



ALA BADOU

batte withot norm is raging between sainthood(happiness and aection (nonsense the ignobe

sicide In this batte for which science (that whichdeivers sense in the word is entirel seess we cannd spport on in the aesthetic feeing (the uginesswhich is see, of ife withot God) and in the innitecarification of the saabe of which we can hope that it

nrtres a sient experience of e imits of the wordand gives s acess to happinessIn the rst direction Wittgenstein mtipies te

sefexaminations of his conscience and considers asPasca does for the miser o the hman condition the

franky naesthetic side of his so The texts on thispoint are legion Let me cite a eter to Russe from 4 : M life is FULL of the giest and pettiestthoghts imaginabe (is is nt an exaggeration Mife has been one nast mess so far"4 With no less hanthree brothers who ommitted sicide he who woldaso decare that sine te age of nine he continuallythought of sicide focses on sicide as the elementar amost atomic form of sin (and if Christiansainthood denes happiness it is ogical that sicidethat egitimate conseqence of nhappiness woud be

the qintessentia Evi) In a notebook from 7 ,taking abot Dostoevsky If sicide is aowed theneverything is aowed f anything is not aowed then

4 Leer of arch 1914 fr Skolden Nrwa o errand ssell inLdwig Wigensein Letters to Russe eynes and Moore, ed. H. on Wrig

aca Cn Uners Press 94 55 iness 50.

8



W I T T G E N S T E I N ' S A N T I P H I L O S O P H Y

sicide i s ot allowed. his throws a light o the atreof ethics, for sicide is, so to speak, the eemetary

si." Here we see the Wittgestei of the perpetacossion

his Wittgestei is ot formaly opposed toNietzsche, who mst cite himself eally ofte i orderto appear as the exemplicatio of his act. Sfce it to

ook at the methocal fctio of Ecce omoesides, atiphilosophy eires that the atiphios

opher be costatly exhibited as a existetial iglarity.here is o exceptio to this reiremet. FromPascals Memorial" to the iclsio, at te heart of

acas semiars , of his persoal ad istittioal fate ;om Rosseas Cossions to Why I am a Destiy" byietzsche; from Kierkegaad ad Regias triblatiosto Wittgestei s battles wih sexal ad suicidal temp-tatio, the atiphiosopher cimbs i perso oto thepblic stage to expose his thoght. Why? ecase asdistinct from he reglated aoymity of sciece and ioppositio to everyig i philosophy that claims tospeak i he ame of the iversal, the atiphilosophical act, whic is without precedet or garatee, hasoly itself ad its effects to attest to its vae.

he atiphilosopher ths ecessarily speaks in hisproper name, ad he mst show this proper" as realproof of his sayig. I effect, there is o validatio ado compesatio for his act except immaet to tisact itself, ice he deies tat this act ca ever be

6 Ib. p 1 57 .

87



ALA BADOU

whereas the archipolitical ac mus decide for ifeagains God. This displacemen depends enirely on the

fac ha Wigenseins onology allows for a snse ofhe world (o of the subecie oaliy, wic is esam hing) o be ouside of he world While forNiezsche no only does nothing exis ouside of heWhole ofife bu also there is no sense of e oaliy or

of life, for one fundamenal reason, which is tha hevalue of lie canno be ealuaed."9Wih he aim of liing up o he digniy of their

aniphilosophical ac, Niezsche and Wigensein arebo absoluely deod o soliude and a e same

ime boh seek o sho his soliude. Ye hey go abouis in opposie direcions. The rs exhibis he sainhood of an unealuaable armaion; and e scondhe sainhood o someone who reno�ces he unsayabl and ignoble auhoriy of dea in faor of e

al I mys e emen .s o e seond basis or Wigenseins aseic

Chrisianiy" namely he unremiing claricaion ofhe sayable the work on side o hough o hesublime powes of nonhugh w now ha h hasonecrad th ssenal par of hi life o this as by

relnlssly oing ac o a ery pariular se oflogialand mahmaical marial. For all is is acessible o

9 See rieric Niezce, lt te , ran J Hollinale Lononenuin, 990), p : Jueen, aluejueen concernin lie, or oraain, c in e la reor neer e rue ey poe alue oly ypo,ey coe ino conieraion only a ypoin eele uc jueen

are upiiie ne u reac ou an ry o grap i aoniin, a ealue o lie canno e ealuae [agctt anlaion oie

9



G N S N S A N H O S O H

saying. And Wittgenstein was a magnicent "sayer, avolule , sarcastic and violent teacher Before taking up

ths aspect, will make two remarks1 For Wittgenstein, this work is not the most

important For it is less te act itself than the alwaysunachievale description o what is situated bnath themystical element , eneath what the "tracing of e act

gives us access to We should never forget whatWittgenstein, in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker in 1 9 1 9 ,writes in regard of e atatus " have anaged in myook to put everything rmly into place by eing silentaout it .

. he theory o the world and us also the theoryof the propositon (since a proposition has sense onlyy registering an intraworldly "state of affairs and, as aresult , 5 . " The iits anu mean the limits omy worl ll most ofWttgenstein's ook. But theyare unreadale i we omt the actve uestion thattraverses em what should e world e so at wemay silently enact that which rings us in accord withe dvine sense o the orld his uestion alonemake clear ta Wigenins ontology is indivisily athought o ein and a thought o sayn . t is also this

very ueston at siuates e entire endeavor netween idealism and "materialism, since the siutnous seing o o the compositon o the worldand of th ompositon o e propositions that say te

0 nae eer o Luwg on cer uoe n Mcunness, 288 an

tt n e tttt e. B Mcunness T Nyerg an . H on Wrgaca ornell nersy ress 5

9



ALA BADOU

composition of the world does nothing else than traethe line o demarcation etween that which can e said

of eing and that which cannot There is no paradowhatsoever in Wittgenstein's claim, in 5 4, that "soip-sism, when its impications are ollowed out strictly,coincides with pure realism

92



4

Acadeics on all sides are delighted y the fact thatWittgenstein , in the "second part of his oeuvre (a partwhich, in truth, has reained thout oeuvre), would

have aandoned the ontological construction of theTactatus And yet, it is in this ontological constructionat we ought to situate Wittgenstein 's radical effort torender possbe the sovereignty of the ystical eleentWe ust therefore engage with it, all the ore so inso-far as all the graarian and analytical accounts, the"linguistic turn and other university glosses (if wethink of all that was Wittgenstein's torent, of hisbottoless contept for the professorial function, ofthe shae he felt for indulging in it! e ust have feltas punished as the Great Eperor in ugo's es

Chtments upon hearing that Napoleon I is succeedinghi), have caused us to lose sight of the fact that whatwe had here was one of the rare conteporary atteptsaioatically to lay te grounds for a doctrine ofsubstance nd of te worl .

Te fact that Wittenstein's otoloical construction soeow operates in a tit toadfro oveent

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W I T T G S T I S A T I P H I L O S O P H

the theme of jouissance and the hing to which it isoked, which the philosopher cannot and does notwant to know What remains to be seen, though, iswhether of this real the antiphilosopher offers usanthing oher than a abbergasted vanishing act, orwhether his act is not, like woman for Claudel, apromise that cannot e kept Unless it is a question of

womanhood all along i this story precisely womanabout whom we will immediatel agree that philoso-phy has no ambition whatsoever to speak, but aboutwhom we can also wonder whether to this dadisplaed as she is in the series of nouns (faith, aniet,

life, silence , enjoyment ) with which antiphilosophy, with the eception of Lacan, has pinned herdownshe has done an etter than to disappear heantiphilosopher would wave the specter of e femi-nine in front of the ees of the philosophers who,loally, foreclose this specter from their hinkingmaneuvers, educated as hey are on is point byscience his goes some way toward explaining esriking misogyny at characteries all antiphiloso-phers he unconscous woman serves e ony o pinsome banderillas on e philosopher's ick neck Which

f · H a ter a , an exp anatn among men ave we everseen more deestable people, in eir explicit declara-tions abou women, an Pascal (did he ever notice oneother an his sister, Rousseau ('s Sophie!),Kierkegaard (e neurosis of marriage!, Nietsche

(let 's no even go there or Witgenstein (wi on istopic, the haffrankness of a halfhomoseuaity

95



ALA BADOU

Supposing that the real reainder of philosophicaltheories, fro the point of view of desire, ust e

sought on the side of the feinine , e fate reserved forthis reainder is certainly ore enviale when one iscalled Plato, Descartes or Hegel, to the point wherewe could consider the relationship to woen anotherdistinctive feature the more agrant the isogyny, e

ore we are in the vicinity of antihilosophy Thiswould also shed an intense light on the case of Kant,whose declarations aout woen are hairraising andwhose tortuous goal can easily e suaried asfollows to give a philosophical form to antiphilosophy

itself; to show philosophically that the philosophicalpretension can only stir up air; to suliate te oralact , which is doutless ly aphilosophical , with regardto the phenoenal iseries of knowledge Fro thiswe can infer, since for him the reainder ears thenae "nouenon, that a Kantian desire alwaysaddresses a nouenal oject This s, strongly concep-tualied, the old certitude of the "ystery of thefeinine In Wittgensteinian language, "woan is thatof which we cannot speak, and which we ust tere-fore pass over in silence

9



L BDOU

eistent) to the "real world, consists in knowing whatcorrelation eists etween the world and sustance.

2 . he ojects, or atoms, that make up sustancelead us immediately into the vicinity of e "remainderthat thought stumles upon . An oject as such , suppos-edl isolated, cannot e thought. Only a cominationetween several ojects , which is called a state airs,

is thinkale he oject is thus solely what we mustsuppose to render possible a comination of ojects , ora state Thus, 2 . 0 2 "There is n object that we canimagine ecluded from e possiility of cominingwith others . If can imagine ojects comined in states

of affairs, I cannot imagine them ecluded from thepssibili of such cominatons . he major ontologicalproblem in this case consists in determining whatexposes the multiplicity of objects to thought, if theoject itself is unthinkale . Or: how do we know at astate of affairs (a relation) refers to a multiplicity ofojects for whose cominatin it provides , if we do nothave any access to the individuality of ojects?

his second prolem is all the more acute insofar asittgenstein, immediately separating himself fromeini , posits that ojects , the simple atoms that make

up every state of affairs, are indiscernile "f twoojects have the same logical form , the onl distinctionetween em, apart from their eternal properties, isthat they are different ( 2 . 0 233 ) . This violates eini's"principles of indiscernibles more radically than is e

case, for eample, in Lucretian atomism Because forte latter, beon te essential qualitative difference,

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ALA BADOU

endoed ith sense, for this state of affairs to "eist(to happen) Sense is a categor of (eternal) being The

result is that fro the siple fact hat e reall understand a proposition e can infer that it establishes apicture of a state of affairs hich "is, that is to sa:hich i s eternall detained in its substantial or possiblevalue, or again: hich ca happen This is soething

the book underscores ver earl on in stateent 2 203 :"A picture contains the possibilit of the situation thait represents Then, if e reeber that thought isnoting else than the proposition endoed ith sense,e ill understand in the sae a: "A thought

contains he possiilit of the situation of hich it isthe thought What is thinkable is possible too (302)This possiilit, in the guise of a state of affairs describedb the proposition hich eans presented in thepicture), constitutes the groun of being of sense:"What a picture represents is its sense (2 2 2 1 )

Finall, a particular ase of the possible is realit: astate of affairs is certainl possible if it "happens and,thus, if it is part of the orld An eleentar proposition at describes a state of affairs that participates inthe realit of the orld ill be called true. It ill be

said to be false if it describes, not nothing, in hichcase it ould have no sense, but a state hich is(substantiall), ithout for this reason happening(eisting as a state of e orld)

Wittgenstein's ontolog, concentrated in the

doctrine of the eleentar proposition is an ontologof the irtual The being of "there is, as substance

04



ALA BADOU

stle , an inversion of the classical values attributed tosense and to truth One can indeed easil believe thatsense is a uestion of eperience and convention,whereas truth, attached to being as being, is ncoun-tered onl beond worldl donation his is preciselwh philosoph holds that there are "eternal truthsBut now we have Wittgenstein attributing eternit to

sense (as propositional picture of substantial states) anddeveloping a strictl empiricist and contingent doctrineof truths

Indeed, insofar as a proposition is true onl inas-much as it describes a state that "happens , or a state of

the world, and insofar as e world, as collection ofevents , is given over to contingenc, there is no othereans to verif that an elementar proposition is trueecept to compare it with realit, with the observable"it has happened "In order to tell whether a picture istrue or false we must compare it with realit ( 2 2 2 3 ) ruth is simpl a ater of empirical observationSense, on the other hand, rooted in the substantialeternit of possiblemultiples, of combinations ofobjects , is readable in the ver structure of the propo-sition, in the immediate fact that we understand it

independentl of all eternal verification It is clearthat, after Nietsche, though with different means andfollowing opposite strategies, Wittgenstein partici-pates in the powerful tendenc at, in the twentiethcentur, has sought to depose truth in favor of sense

he act that aniates tis tendenc, we do well torecognie , is what articulates itself as antiphilosoph

6



ALA BADOU

Wittgenstein's antiphilosophical orientation on thispoint is very clear if the names of objects were to

envelop a thought, we would have a relation on theorder of both anuae ad thouht to the intimatecomposition of substance, which accordingly wouldweaken the need for the sient act

Wittgenstein does not clarify this uestion of names ,

which has been the topic of strog debates in philoso-phy since at least he Craus I can certainly understandthat in the proposition names represent objectscombined in the state of affairs , described by the proposition in whch ese names appear But what I do not

understand is how the unthnkabe dfrence objectscomes to be represented by the dfrence attested to by thenames ere, a ssure slps nto the specular constuc-tion that brings acetoace the multiple of objects (onthe side of substance) and e multiple of names (onthe side of the proposition, or of the picture) If objectsviolate the Leibnizian principle of indiscernibles, howis it that names , which are there only as signs of objects ,obey this principle? Because it is certain, no matterwhat the etent of homonymy might be, that two indis-cernible names ultimately are the same Names, as

opposed to objects , are not identied by their eternalrelations They have a dense intrinsic identity

As a result, one begins to doubt whether nominationas such ight be a nonthought And in fact, we canand ust maintain hat there is a practice of language

that is entre dedated to namn as thouht, that is,poetry The poetic act ideed is neither descritive

08



ALA BADOU

unthinkale . Let me add that it is the idea that "all isthinkale which, for the antiphilosopher, constitutes

the unsupported theoretical presumption of the philos-opher, which makes the atter 's alleged act into animposture.

But not everything is clear either in regard to thisold uestion of the impossile and its possile thought

I understand very well hat the possile is given sense.What I understand less is what we must comprehendunder the impossile, even if it is on the order of nonthought. Rather than foridding that it e thought, itseems to me at Wittgenstein forids al beinB to the

impossible For if a state of affairs , y the sole fact at itis sustantially (which also means that it can edescried in an elementary proposition, can happen(which means at the proposition can e true, insofaras it makes sense, it is clear that the impossile is notrepresentale ua state of affairs. his amounts tosaying at it is void, ecause what issustaceiscomposed of ojects (for which e words "possile or"impossile are devoid of sense comined in states ofafairs. Or again as in any ontology of te virtual(eleue 's is no eception in this regard , to e impos

sile means purely and simply not to e (and not onlynot to e thinkale .

N ow, ere are at least two forms of ouht that areoriginarily suited for the impossile mathematics andpolitics. he rst, ecause its point of e real is to

literalie tat wich all tougt leaves ehind as aremainder (as impossile proper to its eld of

1



W I T T G E S E I ' S I P H I O S O P H Y

determination; all thought, even and aove all itself(mathematics), in the previous state of its develop-ment hus, the incommensurale (Eudous), thecurve reducile to a set of segments (Archimedes), thevanishing uantities (Leini and Newton), the indis-cerniles (Galois), the innitely great (Cantor), theinnitesimals (Roinson, etc As for politics, it draws

its value only from the prescriptio of a "possiility fora situation that the immanent norm of this situationdenes precisely as impossilea impossiility that,moreover, is reuired for the situation to e consistentin the rst place his is evident when we think of the

eecution of the ing in 793 (which ant, y the way,considered eplicitly to e unthinkale), or of thedirective "all the power to the soviets in 9 7 , or ofMao 's maim, which is intrinsically impossile, or evenasurd, that the weaker can vanuish e stronger

f the reuirement of a miseenscne of the archi-aesthetic act implies that the impossile also e theunthinkale, or even that the impossile e void, wewill have to conclude that neither maematics norpolitics are forms of thought For to hold that they arecapale of ought reuires that we grant the impossi-

le a minimum of eing Alas, at the cost ofmisunderstanding oth poitics and mathematics, thisis precisely what Wittgenstein, for whom the endgoverns the means, ends up y saying In the case ofaematics, he does so eplicitly (and after the

Tcttus wi a erceness worthy of a etter cause) : "Aproosition of matheatics does ot epress a thouht



A A BAD! 0 U

omY the philosophical act touches upon nonsense,but it is the nonsense of truths And it is because it

remains subordinate to sense that the antiphilosophi-cal act is wthout truth .

Seconly, even if we grant ittgenstein that philos-ophy produces propositions devoid of sense, we willask him to explain how it happens that such pro-

positions exist It is assred that a propositio happns,it is in the world As ittgenstein says "A propositionalsign is a act ( 3 4 ) ow should we characterize, as afact, the (philosophical) proposition that is devoid ofsense? On this point, ittgenstein is ar from showing

the scruples that philosophers show when ey treat(and they are always bound to do so the delicateuestion o the existence of the sophistic saying hisuestion alone leads Plato, in e Sophst, to creativedevelopments that are terrily complex e would likethe antiphilosopher to treat the existence of nonsensi-cal (pilosopic) proposions wi e same liveliness,e same inventiveness , as that which pushes the phlos-opher to do justce to the exstence of purely rhetorcal(sophstic) propositions What does ittgenstein referus to? o the "confusons of ordinary language, to

homonymies, to the inteferences among dierentfunctions, to the example (elaorated by philosopherssince e dawn o history) o the word "s, which"ures as the copula, as a sign for identity, and as anexpresson or exstence ( 3 3 2 3 ) And he concludes in

all tranuility "In is way the most namental con-sions are easily produce (e whole of philosophy is full

1 1 8



W I G E N S E I N S A N I H I L O S O H Y

of the) ( 3 3 24 ) . So the prole of propositionsd ·d f · " ev sense IS easy

Let us ake a little enry into this "easiness When Isay that a proposition is devoid of sense, I for a prop-osition his proposition descries a state of aairs,naely the (philosophical) proposition devoid ofsense,here treated as pure fact his requires "devoid of sense

to e : An iediately understandale property,which can e attriuted to this state of affairs (the philo-sophical proposition) , which eans that there is a senseto the fact of not having any sense, that "nonsense

elongs, like everything that can e thought in the forof a proposition, to the register of sense ;2 A sustantal possiility for the conation of

oects of whch the proposition "this proposition isdevoid of sense is the linguistic picture Which aountsto saying that a nonense ust e rooted in the eternaleing of oects , as e singular coination of indis-cernile oects

Plato addresses is type of questiontied as far ashe is concerned to the ontological status of the soph-ist's ietic sayingwith an eeplary seriousness

e is thus l ed to revise his doctrine of eing in such awa so as to ake roo for a "support of eing of non-eing One can hardly say that Wittgenstein , in arguingagainst philosophical propositions , akes a coparaleeffort The "easy linguistic confusions he invokes

aside fro the fact that fro a distance they areresponsile for the ediocrities of "orinary language

9



8

Wha a complex propoionSnce e elementary proposiions descrie com-

naon of ojecs (ae of aair, one could easilymagne h complex propostion descrie comna

ions o ae. o e sple uny of ojecs erewould correspond te smpe uny of names; o acomnaion of oec (a sae, ere would correspond elemenary propoion ; and o a cominaionof ae, a complex proposion, arculang severalelemenar propoon among em.

he eenal onologca diculy of arrangemen, n hic eemenary roposon are o compexpropoons wha name are o elemenry propoions, les n e fac a wle oec can e comned(f e hav "exernal elaon , We ave

alread en a a ae o affa aouely ndependen. he aemen 2 62 ndcae n all clarya, even a concern he fac of appenng, ha , oexng (of eng of e world , saes ave no relaonwhaoeve among emelve "From e exence or

nonexence o one ae of aar mpole oner he exence or nonexence o anoe. ae



W I G E N S E I N ' S N I H I L O S O P H

both th stat of affairs dcrid y p an th stat ofaffairs dscrid y having "happnd, or ingosrval in th world. hus, w could distinguish a"typ of copl proposition (hr, th conjunctionp and ) y th way in which it attriuts a truth-valu to th coplx proposition in function of thtruthvalu of th lntary propositions his is

th crucial statnt "Entary propositions arth truthargumnts of propositions ( 5 0 )

t is ssntial to not that in this whol affair, th"and (in p and ) rfrs to nothing ral, and thus has nosns in and of itslf What w hav ar th stats

dscrid y p and inasuch as thy "ar trnally,and inasuch as thy " ist in th world (or not) . hlogical signs (and , or, iplis , tc . ) ar only th hlpfulans to rgistr that a crtain jutaposition oflntary propositions posssss, wth reBar to the

exstence or nexstence the states that these propostonsescrbe a crtain truthvalu Or again, as Wittgnstinsays "hr ar no logical ojcts ' or logical constants '(in Fr's and Russll's sns) ( 5 .4 ) . his ans thatthr is no ontology of logical connctors thy do noor than "punctuat th valu of th juxtaposition,

whn graspd from th viwpoint of th world, andtus o viwpoint of th tr (or fals) "Signsfor logical oprations ar punctuationars (5 46 )

Anor pl atoic proposition p dscris acrtain stat of aairs . What c w say of proposition

"not? It rfrs to sa stat of affairs, ondscid b p . Or, as Wittgnstin sas (4 .062 ) , wi

2



LAI BDIOU

observe the eistence or ineistence of the sttesconcerned. Bt nothing in the proposition ts indi

ctes to e tht it is tre hence scientific I st kethe detor throgh the pre chnce of the world .

ht shold we ke then of those cople propositions, if te eist, tht re tre npnnt thral th worl, independentl of wht hppens?

Let s tke the eple of the cople propositionp or not. The "or withot rel referent signiesonl te following: I consider the stte described b p nd I r tht it either hppens (eists in theworld) or else it does not hppen. It is cler tht teworld, whatvr t s nd precisel becse it is on teorder of the event reires tt it be one or the other(contrr to eternl sbstnce where the possibilittht this tble is ellow is cobintion of objects thtis copossible, even if withot n link with the possibilit tht it not be ellow). Bt if one "hppens, the

oter does not hppen. As reslt, the proposition por not is tre wholl independentl of the estionof nowing whether the stte described b p eists ornot . And s conseence , independentl of wht theworld is .

e finll discover necessit tht of the trth ofcertin cople propositions. A proposition tht isnecessril tre, whtever the world be, nd thswhtever e ccidentl, contingent) vle of thetoic propositions tt gre in it be will be

clled tatolo These re the propositions tht secren order of necessit sbtrcted ro the ricl

28



W T T G N S T N S A N T P H O S O P H Y

contingency of the truth of scientic stateents (in thesense of natural science). This order is logic: "The

propositions of loic are tautologies (6 ) But what necessity is tis the necessity? Evidently it

is not a necessity of e world, or in the world . And thisfor the good reason that tautologies say nothn of theworld. And rihtly so ! To say soeting of the world is

always to ar (or deny) tat ts or tat statehappens. Now the tuth of a tautology in which aneleentary proposition gures is precisely indierentto is point, because it ust always aintain itself,wheer one supposes tat "it is the case that or one

supposes the contrary hence the fundaental stateent : "The propositions of logic say noting ( 6 . ) n fact, there is no necessity of the world, or in the

world . This is a constant thee of ittgenstein's "There is no copulsion aking one thing happenbecause another has happened ( 6 . 37 ) But there isnecessity th , there are (epty) laws iposedon states as soon as they happen , or not or eaple ,it is a necessity that the state described by , if ithappens in the world, cannot not happen. hencethe tautology " or not (the "or is strict, eclu

sive). Or again, it is a necessity that if the statedescribed by is the case , and if the state described by also is the case, then it is ipossibe that the case of forbid the case of . hence the tautology " and iplies that not ( iplies not) . All this is indiffer

n to the fact of knowin whether or not all thesestats happen in the orld .

29



ALA BADOU

et us anchor the voabular, at some distance fromWittgensteins, wich is not alwas stable. et us callthe being of a state its substane (a ombination ofobects . It is in describing this being that te elementar proposition has sense . et us all te "existence ofa state the fat of happening, the fact that it is the casein the world . It is b rightl arming existence tat the

proposition is true (b wrongl arming it that it isfalse. An existene is nvr necessar, it must beobserved, and the true propositions that are linked tothe observations of existence are scientific .

Tautologies , which are necessar, are not linked to

an observation of existence Nonetheless, the arealso not laws of being (beause in being, or substance ,the state and a state that is "existentiall incompatible with can perfetl obe . Tautologies are laws ,not what xsts but xstnc et us understand b

this that it is for ever possible world, for worldhood(or existence in general , that statements like " and implies that not( implies not imposethemselves.

These necessar statements, which show whatWittgenstein calls the "scaffolding of the world (andwhih is something oer than what exists in it, bringthe gap between sene and truth to its culminatingpoint. Indeed, the price the pa for their necessit isnot having an sense: "Tautoogies and contradictionslack sense (4461 ) . This much is assured , since tautol

oies describe no world in particular.inall, the word is on the one hand absolutel

0



1 0

The simple question "Is mathematis a fom of thought?subteaneousl oganizes the debate between philoso-ph and antiphilosoph h? Beause if mathematial

popositions think, then this means that thee eists asaing without epeiene of the objet, an asubje-tive and egulated aess to the intelligible that beingis not neessaril foelosed fom all poposition; thatthe at itself is pehaps of a theoetial natue. The

antiphilosopher absolutel ejets all of is henethe geneal line of antiphilosoph on this point, whihholds that mathematis is not a fom of inking, but acalculaion And, via its "alulating dimension, or aspue opeation on signs , the invaiable maim beomes :mathemats i s a vaiant of logi .

ittgenstein delaes this with his habitual brutalit : "Mathematis is a logial method (6 2 )

Throughout the ontinuation of his "areer,ittgensten will prove himself etaordinil stubborn in hs resilene aainst the idea of mathematis as

a sinular or of thinkn To ths end hewho kewthe queson qute wellwill emplo means of the

37



L B DO

ost provocatve supercaty, gvng such nexact and

eager versons of the ost profound and ngenouseores (partcuary ose of Cantor or Gde) aths ost fervent atterers are soetes dsconcertedy this and have to devote powerfu voues to atteptsat a justcaton

Ths erceness s the result ofWttgensten 's convc-

tionn whch he s justedhat, since Patoatheatcs has been the decsve support for what heconsders to e the greatest posture: the etaphys-ca posture To redue aeatcs to the coondenonator, to show by a eans, ncudng the

owest ones that there s nothng n atheatcs atone cannot nd n any "anguage gae whatsoeverpreferab the ost futie, s an ungratefu and endessjob, but the gae is orth the effort: one thus wpreserve the rights of "ordnary anguage phosophy

as a sustitute for the nefarous seizure of truths , whichs proper to the phosophca actAs the ate Wttgensten becoes a sophst the

essenta procedures consist n reatvzng suspendnganthropoogzng aeatcs , aking t into a conven-tiona gae that n the ast nstance depends on ourlngustc hats A passage fro the notes pubishedwth the (partcuar ronc) tte Rmark on thunaton Mathmat wi ustrate this pont. Wewi notice that after the constanty aratve stye ofthe Tatatu there foows a constanty interrogatve

ste, which is the uasihsica arkn of theoent when one for of antiphiosophy, tred of

38



I N S T I N S N T H O S O H

silently watng in ain for ts unprecedented act losesitself n a suspended chatter borrowed from sophistics .We will also see that at the end of this riddling it is note rm virtue of criticsm that invades us but a kind ofopaque vetigo

Imagine set theorys having been nvented by a

stirist as a kind of prody on mthematics.Later a reasonable meaning was seen in it and itws incorported into mathemtics. (or if oneperson can see it as a paradise of mathematicians why should not another see it s joke?)

The question is: even as a joke isn't itevidenty mathemtics?And why is it evidently themtics ?ecuse

t is a game wih signs according to rules?ut isn't it evident that there are concepts

formed hereeen if we are not cer about theirappicatons?

ut how is it possible to have a concept and notbe cler about its application?

In the Tacau the line followed is both more rdicl

and more consistent. It comes down to desinularizing athematics by identifying t with the vacuity oflogic

The resoning relies entirely on e fact that

1 Luwig Wigenein, Remarks o he udaos < Mahemas, revie, . G H v Wgh, hs G E. M. nobe abrigeMA MIT re 198 266 5 .

39



ALA BADOU

according to Wittgenstein , a mathematical propositionis always an euation "he logic of the world, which isshown in tautologies by the propositions of logic, isshown in euations by maematics (622) But aneuation sas nothing about its two members , it is notinterested in he ueston of whether it is the case ornot hus, to establsh an euation, we have no need to

look at the world, which proves that mathematicalpropositions have no sense "he possibility of provinge propositions of mathematics means simply thattheir correctness can be perceived without its beingnecessary that what they express should itself be

compared with the facts n order to determine itscorrectness (6 2 3 2 1 ) or Wittgenstein, mathematics is a "blind calcula-

tion in that it proceeds from equation o euationthrough the simple artifice of substitutions, witoutever having to think anything at all Statement 624recapitulates this linguistic "[in mathematics]language itself provides the necessary intuition[6 2 3 3 ] ) , operational, and thoughtless vie of math-ematical progression

he method by which mathematics arrives at itsequations is the method of substitution

or equations epress te substitutability oftwo epressions and, starting fro a number ofequations, we advance to ne equations by substi-

tutin different eessions in accordance withthe equtions 624

40



W T T G E N S T E I ' S T P H l L O S O P H Y

Set theor n partcular nctons as an objecton to thsve on te topc, rogh e astonshng exstental

statements t demonstrates , especall regardng e nnte In e te, t s doubtl at one could reduceexstence to hat s e case, to hat can be observedas fact Consequentl, troughout hs lfe, ttgenstenll pursue e Cantoran eor t vglant hatred,

and ths startng the Tacau he eor of classess completely superuous n mathematcs ( 6 . 0 ) .

I am not concerned th the aplomb of statementssuch as these t s tme to underscore that the concepton of mathematcs sketched out b ttgensten s

lght and ndefensbleFrst of all, the essence of a atheatcal propos�ton s not te equaton he profound theores belongto at least our tpes

. heoems of exstence , partcularl at a far removefrom all logcal reductonsm he rase the problem of a nonorldl, or nonaccdental,exstence It s up to ontolog to accomodatesuch theorems, and not up to these theorems todsappear n order to safeguard an ontology

2 . Theores of poer (lke the one that , snce theGreeks, establshes the estence of an nntof pre nubers) The rase the proble ofnntebeng, hh all phlosoph ust ntegrate, rather than turnng aganst aheatcs

eores of decoposton numerous n algebra), c estals that a structure can e

4



L B O U

lets itself be thoght n eistence. And conseqentlyone wold wish, with a desire that is admittedly philosophical, for the "sense of the world to nd at leastits anchoring in a Jogic the limit , which wold elcidate sbjective solipssm from the angle of logicalpropositios

Bt Wittgenstein does not take this path The reason

for this is that the sbject, even if it is the "limit of teworld, essentialy falls otside the world , so at it willnd itself entirely on the side of the act and sbtractedfrom the saying: "In an important sense there is nosbject for it alone cod not be menioned in that

book [the Tatatus 5 . 6 3 1 ) , whereas logic , even if it isalso not a saying, nonetheless comes in the form of eproposition Let s say at, for Wittgenstein, there isno subjective propostion.

Wittgenstein, it is tre, has a song grasp of e fact

at e sbject, as Onecrrelate to e world, st haedisappearing as its being at it mst present itsef as avnishing point, so at only its ticlaon reains eworld. Statement 5 .64 is very ose to Lac, if onerecalls that "reality is in fact a set of propositions "Theself of solipsis shrinks to a point wiot etension, and

ere remains e reality coordinated wi it Bt nlikeLacan, Wittgenstein does not go on to prodce a logicalalgebra of his vishing, nor a topology of e liit ofbeing/ eistence at wold be a little less storted one sole side of beng n tis regar he is content wi n

iage that cot easily e developed or does eengage i even at ini of ontolog, eant to

48



1 2

To speak of the antiphilosophical act is obviouslycontadictoy. What is moe , one feels a cetain (philosophical) embaassment fo having to adopt a

bioaphical postue to do so, since it is the livingsubject who pesonally beas witness to that whichexceeds e wold towad e unsayable tanscendenceof its sense . will limit myself in this egad to a seiesof punctuaions

. The act is t by which a value manifests itself.t is us what institutes a dfrence. Fo, in the wold,thee is no dffeence (all tue statements have thesame value , which means that they have none) . value,which is also an instance of the sense of the wold,exsists in the wold as a paticula element (opposed

to the scientic element) which one will qualify asmstical The act is the showing, without concept, ofthe mystical element.

2 . value that is actively shown can be called od .et us llustate this point once moe with a emak

fom a noteook of 1 0 "hat is good is also divine

5



W G E S E S A H L O S O H Y

bout e atatus: "The work i ict philoophiclnd t the me time literar, but ere i no bbblng in

it Bbbling i philooph in it etphicl ene Theoppoition to bbbing concern imultneoul:

The mattr, which i rigorou, cientific, loicl , n the ervice of ene (in the world)

The act, which i rchiethetic , literr, in theervice of Sene (of the world, of life, ofthe ubject)

n 191, Ruell note (bout the one who i till hi

friend) : "e h the rtit feeling t he will producethe perfect ing or nothing Thi i not feeling butn obligton ut ietche deemed it dut towrite a form of Germn of unprecedented beau)Becue the ct i induced, not from wht the work, but from it perfection

S . The effect of the rchiethetic ct mut notconcern thought or doctrne but the ubject, whichmen life (o the world) eied from the ide of itlimit Th i wh the ct i in it element inhritinit n the 1 40 : " think tht one of the

thing hritinit i tht ound doctrine rell uele Tht ou hve to chnge our

6 . The cpcit to chnge one life indictecivel tht one i ved, which i nterior to ll belief,

Qud Gunss 8 8 d p 177 Qu n o 57 .5 Ibd p 90



ALA BADOU

and thus to al docin. Bcaus to b sad is nothings than th upsurg of act In a notbook 1 937 ) "First o must b rmd and hod on to ourrdmtionthn ou wi s that ou ar hodin fast to this bif [Rsurrction] Thn vthing wi bdiffrnt, and it wil b no wondr' if ou can do thingsthat ou cannot do now. It is of th ssnc of th act

to b ntior to saation.7 . Th rst sign of saton is us a dcision at

prous was nk, incacuab, and n "impossi-bThus, in th if ofWittgnstin, th dcision to ba simp sodir durin Word War ; at of rnouncing

his hritag an of bcoming a simp tachr in 1 9 1 9 ;at of aing for Soit Russia to b an ordinar manuaworkr.

Non of s dcisions a hods non gisstrucur to a duration. Wit nstin awas nds up

in a profssor in Cabrid, somin which makssns for ouht) which is absrd, n digusting,in iht of act . hs dcisions in fact nction as sin at on is prhaps sad . t is a mattr of xpinc-ing what subjct, puri b act, is caab ofr Not drstandin, or knowin, or ,

but carryin "Whn takd of coura . . . mttak a burdn & tr to r t . . . . 'm not much good atcarrin burdns msf. But s it's a I ot to satt to Rowand utt, durng Word War . 7

6 i . i , 4 6 1 .



W I S I S A I H I O S O H Y

8 ter the decision e confession i s e secondsign of saation. Like Rousseau Wittgenstein towarde end of 1 2 enisions writing an autobiograph. Asis shown in a etter to Moritz Schick is initiatie ismeant to produce a "carit; it is in itsef a sign of teforce of te act: "Someing inside me speaks faouro m rting m biograph nd in fact woud ike

some time to spread out m ie clearl in order to haveit clearly in ont of me and or oers too. Not so muchto put it on tria as to produce in an case carit andtru.8 The biographica confession is not documentarnor is it on e order of e judiciar "examination

(whc woud ead back to proposions nd to "tru ine wordy sense) t is a production of lightB Christmas 1 3 6 Wittgenstein has gathered

severa of is iends to hear his confession . The princi-pa sin was it seems his rutaity (ery great indeed)

toward chidren hen he was a teacher more anteen ears earier. And in fact (is is an instance ofe unike decision indicatie of saation) he asreturned to the Austrian village where he had taught soas to present his apologies to e chidren and theirfamiies. As a resut he fees good ("First ou must beredeemed) : "Last ear with God 's hep pulled myselftogether and made a confession. This brought me intomore settled waters into a better relation wit people

d �an to a greater serousness .

8 Ibid 2 8 2 .9 Ibid, 32 .



ALA BADOU

he confession proceeds from e act and not theoer wa around: For consciousness of sin' is a real

evet.9 From the pont of view of the collective, the

substance of the act s not poltcal n the commonsense of te term . he uestion of the forms of owerleaves Wttenstein indierent . o a riend who evoked

to him the total absence of freedom n Stalnst Russa ncludi for te workers Wttenste answered witha shru of hs shoulders: Trann doesn't mae mefeel ndnant. he act onl calls for an archaesetcs of euality. neualit s e u lness o e world. t

is solel n ts sense at Wittensten s able to declare(to Rowland utt): am a communst t het ofuse wh others n e anonmit of servce s wat issuperor nd te socety that maes ths possble, oreven obliator for all is e best. t bottom t is aueston of eneralizn e ure of te prest wutdoctrne.

1 0 Wi red to form e text to wich ett sould be compared s allarm's A hw ie Wi Nee Ablish hne . e armatve and hierarccal unfoldn of proostions the metaporcal

tenson combned wt a mathematzn ri or elatent rony o e ures the absolute selfsucecand et the reference to an overcomn of e Bookall these features brn toether e two roects both

1 0 Wienein, Clre dle, 2 8 .

1 1 uoe in Monk, 35312 lbi , 343

56



AL A BAD 0 U

photocop to e, since this translation is still"unpublished

2. principal sources of docuentationconcerning ittgenstein's life, diaries, notebooks,etc , were : Brian cGuinness , Wittenstein Loun Ludwi 1889-1921 (Berkele: Universit ofCalifornia Press , 1 9 ) ; and Ra onk, Ludwi

Wittenstein he Du Genius (New York: Penguin,1990)

3 . Lacan's ost iportant stateents aboutittgenstein can be found in Book XVII of the Seminar acques Lacan , he Other ide P�choanasis, ed

JacquesAlain Miller (Paris : Seuil, 1 99 1 ) ; English translation b Russel Grgg (New York: W W Norton,2007) See especiall th seinar of Januar 2 , 1 970

. The nuber of books written on ittgensteinis alread gigantic , and everthing leads one to predictthat it will onl continue to grow until breaking allrecords In a certain sense, it is ittgenstein who ledthe wa, if one considers that all his "saings, piouslrecollected and edited aftr his death, are onlthis is opinionglosses that are ultiatel urderous ona single and poerfu crit the Tactatus So the real

easure to be taken, and this is illuinating for theantiphilosopher in general, is that of the relationshipbetween the galactic ass of glosses and the thinness ofthe tet In order to inscribe self into tis

i ss h Fh s bYv bm 99 4 Fh si b Ab shf 99



2

The Languages oWittgenstein

I cannot describe Wittgenstein's langages in eir

materiaity. This would reire measuring whatever engish language inicts upon e German, and tinking te gap between e Austrian singularity and itsoverdetermination by exile It wold reire above all adetailed evaluation of the relationship, proper to everyantiphilosopher bt exacerbated in e case thatconcerns us, between oral transmission and writtentext. Fo Wittgenstein, ere exists a didactic paradigm,a Socrati gure of urgency and autoity, of which hiswish to be a teacherand, for some time, te verybrutal realization of this wishis te moral fantasy he

written language, beginning in te Cambridge years, isin its most intimate scansion marked by tis paradigm.It is made up of notes, or annotations. Eveg existsin e form of e notebook: Wittgenstein te instructor as his own schoolboy

will therefore restrict myself to a more limitedpoint Let us say: Wittgenstein's retorics, or, te

6



L BDOU

th phiosoph pocds itimaty y way of thwitt, w osv th phomo of a iitabo, a ackig of pags without ay dstiationoth tha th iti advacmt of th aaysis ,pags mad igie y dss hashig o oscuootedss i the maz of sujctivity, as witssdy th impotc w fac i attmptig to app-

hd aythig moty smig th comptwoks of Liiz o uss Th phiosoph, mostoft, ith avs t to oths to wit dow thwods with which h has sujugatd his audiec , osticks to th dss wokooks of a thought with-

out satisfatioLts say that phisophys moth tou is thsso, o v th xcis, at st th maua (whichis to th tast of sats) Th ook, i th ss ofth ouv, aways coms scod

h cosucs of is scodaiss of ookcoc aov a th sytax Th phiosophicadiscouswh a daig with Aistot,scats o idgg maks o dic whatso-v i ts ads assmd wi a y ootaiig asst, which must xtotd v y atic-

ipag, as much as ossi, vtua ojctiosWhc a sytax at is aways soid, i th ss ofdssy hittig th sam ai o, to mo pcis , ofsuig at, o matt how o hods th hamm, itis aways sam ai that ts ockd i this

ad, th mo a phiosohy dcas itsf o,dosutiv, o v skptica, mo ioous

64



L BDOU

borrowed o the newy aeatied ogi, isdestined, as aways in phiosophy, to frae whatsupports the sedution and the raying, whih is theineutabe seanti variation. In Wittgenstein's onybook, every noination is suspended by the ontagebetween its side of truth (whih is epiria or wordy)and its side of vaue (whih is transwordy and resinds

the at of noination itse This is why Wittgenstein's anguage is subjeted

o wiin to a terribe torsion .Let us observe rst of a that the syntatia soidity,

the idea of a deniive presentation of panes arranged

between e sayabe and te unsayabe, e otive ofwhat one ight a an phorstc completeness a is isay onditioned by its inessentia harater, even inthe eyes of Wittgenstein hisef. Let us say that thepresentative syntax is a the ore opex and

pereptory the ore wht is presented has no deisiveiportane for the autor's editation. Sure, a theprobes are soved, but in orde to show "how itte isahieved when these probes are soved (Prefae).What is essentia is transinguisti, it is on the order ofthe at . For the at aone is that by whih a vaue ani-

fests itsef.In e 1 940s , when, as often, he is asked by a poten

tia disipe to dene a sabe dotrina orientation,Wittgenstein deares his beief that "sound dotrinesare a useess . That you have to hange your l "!

1 Quoted i Mok, . 490

68



W T T N S T N S A N T H S H

We could venture tat tis unilateral importance of"canging one's life is the side of Rimbaud inWittgenstein, whereas the care given to the montage,the disposition of the page, the inessential solidity ofthe syntax, is his allarman side. The Tatatu is abit like A San in H wrtten in the form of A hrw Di This sows te enormous pressure exerted on

the text, as is immediately sensible to the reader, inasmuc as we never know whether we are really in theprocess of reading this texwhat it means to read inthe present circumstanceand whether what is onthe page really belongs to the order of the

readable.The properly unbearabe side of this masterpiece,the proof of its uniqueness, of te absurdity ofntinuinB in this vein, or in this form, sheds somelight, think, on the ulterior renouncing of the solidsyntax , the aphoristic completeness , and its replace ment by its exact opposite the uninterruptedquestion witout an answer, the question destinedto provoke irritation, and not an assertion. Tis iswat one might cll the style of te bee tormentand sting. As always , Wittgenstein explains his inten

tions "Such a contradiction is of interest onlybecause it hs tormented people, and because thisshews bot how tormenting problems can grow outof language, and what kind of things can tormentU " o put in plce torment, so s to ke cler

2 Wigensein r on h ndon Mh p 2 0

69



ALA BADOU

that the on inner peace , no mater ho unike, isin an case guarantee to stem from the act , and not

from iscourse.Wittgenstein's rhetoric thus passes from an impres-

sive but inessentia soidit to an irritating, deceptivebut essentia harassment. The aplomb (or the pschosis) that remains takes refuge in the muchaunted

reevce of e most evasive exercises. e amostaas begin ith "We might sa, for exampe . . or"We can imagine . . . Let us give a tpica exampe ofthis second rhetoric, of is siring anguage :

"Ho does one count in the decima sstem?"We rite after 1 3 after . 1 4 after1 3 . . . 1 4 after 1 3 That is anexpanation for someone ho, hie there isindee something he doesn 't kno, does unerstan "and so on. And unerstanding it meansnot unerstaning i as an abbreviation it oes mean that he no sees a uch onger sriesin his mind than that of m exampes. That heunerstans it comes ot in his no makingcertain applications, in his saing and cting

in particuar cases ."Ho o e count in he ecima sstem?

. . . . . . . . .No is that not an anser?But it isn 'tfor someone ho di no understan the "nd soonBut ma our expanation not have made it

inteigibe to him? Ma he not, through it, hegot hod of the idea of the rue?Ask oursef

70



W I T T G N S T I N S A N T I H I L S H

what are the criteria for his having got hold o f theidea now

What is it that compels me?the expressionof the rule?Yes, once I have been educated inthis way But can I sa it compels me to follow it?Yes if here one thinks of the rule not as a linethat I trace, but rather as a spell that holds us in

thrall

Taken om one of Wittgenstein's most inexistent"books (the Rmark o th Foudato Mathmatc , aposthumous mass of notes going back to the period

1930), this passage is not for this reason an lesschaacteristic of the swirling aggressive an retractilestyle of the "second period Between the uestionsthat nobo would dream of raising, the paradoxicaland promptl contradicted answers, the transforma-tion of each answer into a uestion and viceversa , the"concrete examples that are especiall abstractthe rhetoric of agitated uncertaint in short thehstericiation of the whoe discourse, pushing eversupposed reader to the point of vertigo, which is also atring accusationthe tet in the end imposes less a

position than a deposition e could even say a capitu-lation, which is the subjective essence of e essentialhassle or harassment or the aim is ultimately to establsh that ere are onl rules, whose ecac stemsfrom anthropological particularities This is h e

3 Ibd 395 .



ALA BADOU

can compare he ogic of he seuence of numbers o "aspe a hods us in hra .

The inessenia soidiy, which reies on a synax ofarmaion , was a hidden aphoristic assembage whoseuimae guaranee was an ontoogy, namey, ha ofobjecs. The essentia harassmen is an anhropoogicadisassembing of soid evidences , in favor of he conin-

gent puraity of rues and the eradicaion of aonoogy.

The anguages themseveswihout enering inooo much deaiare aso differen. Wigensein'srs anguage is at botom that of Niezsche, a anguage

of the grea Noon of armaion, whose signifyinguniy is he aphorism and whose paradigm is he uivering impassiviy of e poem. I is a form of Germanhat is boh ortured and imperia. The second, highymarked by he didactic eement and he perpeua

inuiry, of which Engish is he underying mode , is adeiberaey minor anguage, which hods any arma-ion tha is overy soidied ino he phrase o be ametaphysica impoieness .

This being said, are there invarians?es, here are.Are we aways deaing wih Wigenstein, and in what

sense? es, i is aways a uesion ofWigensein heaniphiosopher. Tha is o sa, in he na anaysis, anadversary of mahematica preension: an enemy ofPato.

irs, negativey if ne hods ha no disipline an

preend o esape e anhropoogia disseinaion,he rued oningenc f ever onstrain, en it wi

72



ALA BADOU

ethics The essence o lie remains unsaable, orits stakes, its gravit, onsist in "taking a burden andtring to carr it

Hence, what takes the place o the aphoris andits nuerical spacing is o the order o the etaphor, or even o approxation pure and siple,since the ultiate value o language oscillates

between its ethical nullit and its anthropologicalrelativit. Let us sa that, sntacticall, there canexist no rule o rules, and, thus, no univocal stle;and, seanticall, since te absolute stems ro theact, all signications are both rulebound and

reeoatingn a highl consistent ashion, the iperial stlisticso univocit is ollowed, but at botto or the saereasons, b a writing stle that accepts, or vindicates,that there i s no rule or the use o words The hassling

is en something like an injunction without a law. Orever ethical stle is linguisticall solipsistic, whicheans that language can be easured therein onl bits iediate eects

aintained that, i the Tactatus, the eleent oequivocation is alwas severel raed b the sntaxThe second Wittgenstein suppresses the raing andinstalls hisel within a reeoating ethodologThe seantic drit is a aj or procedure o the stleo harassent, which seeks to ipose the

5 Q M 278.6 Ibid 4 6 1 .

4



W I T G N S T I N S A N T I P H I L S P H Y

anthropological disseination of rules This drift isnall supported b the equivalence of sensibleconstraints, the coplete destabiliation of words,and the abolition of the principle of noncontradiction The following is a tpical exaple, still fromthe Remarks on the Foundatons Mathematcs, in whichwe nd an ausing reiniscence of the deceiving

God of Descartes

Could it perhaps be iagined that where I seeblue, this means that the object that I see is notbluethat the colour that appears to e alwas

counts as the one that is excluded? I ight forexaple believe that God alwas shews e acolour in order to sa not this

Or does this work e colour that see ereltells e that this colour plas a part in the description of the object It corresponds, not to aproposition, but erel to the word blue Andthe description of the obect can then euall run"·t · bl d "·t t bl Th thI IS ue, an I IS no ue en one sas eee onl shows e blue, but not the role of thisblueWe copare seeing the colour with

hearing the word blue when we have heard therest of the sntences

I should like to shew that we could be led toant to descrie soethins ein blue, both bsaing it was lue, an sai it was not lue

7 Ws Remr on the undtion themti, 207

7



W I T T G N S T I N S N T I P H I O S O P H

However, two oter axios reulate te appliationof tis variaility

Axio 2 ilosoy] will siify at aot esaid, y reseti learly wat a e said (4. 1 5 ) .

isursive soidity is te said resetatio of tesayale. e Wittenstein of te Ts sees itslaity te adjustmet of an ontoloy of ojets ad

a loi of eleetary propostios. e resulti lanuae is an aorisi lo iis But a we tetruly si ify te usayable r do we otain merelyte losed ota e of otoloy is questio leadsWittestei to replae te otoloal disositio

wit a experietal atropoloial luralism, toela t etoi of amatio wit tat of teapoxiative assli Bu do we en ot omletelylos sit of te questio of te ne? o we stllkow er to siuate te plae of epty words,od, te ystial, te diviewords wose referet, iasmu as it is o te order of te at, is teoly availae valu

t i s o dout at is oit at axiom 3 os itolay sumed up my attiude to losoywe said ilosoy out really to e witte only

as pe ps" (a oet ade y Wittesteii te 40s) . 8 A oeti ompositio is a asselaetat makes auae sa wat i does not sa, o tatsows mateally e usaid of te sayi. e lae ofte at is us sumoed at te edes of liuisti

8 Wigensein, Culture ad Value, 2 5

1 77



W I T T G S T I S A T I H I O S O H Y

effect of this etaphsical pronounceent ill be thatat e point of nohere there ill resound the uncontainated poer of the eptiest ord , hich is God,or salvation Caught in the ordeal of the excessiveaphorism or he endless uestion, ever antiphilosophends up in moral (or, hich is the sae, aesthetic)theolog: onl e saving act interrupts e critical

chatterAs Wagne sas at the end ofPrsl: "Redeption to

the RedeeerHeidegge in the ords of his last ill : "Onl a God

can save U ."

Wittgenstein, in 9 3 7 : "irst ou ust beredeeed Then evethnB ill be different, and itill be no onder' if ou can do things that oucannot do no

At bottom, there are three linked theses aboutlanguage comon to both Wittgenstein and Heidegger :

Logic sas nothing, and atheatics is not athought Philosoph, therefore, as far as its

(Fnft Mn Vtt Kstenn 1 95 0) n Fench U l tans Fans Fde (Ps Gad 1 962 te "pths ht edt nwhee10 See An d F L Wr (ndn Ves 20 1 0) p. 1 4 1 "hee st be edeptn f the Redeee hsef enng the nneepenngb mens f the c f n nn pf th whch hs csedp n tsef. he st ths t nscbes nd r n the epc fPrls cnsttte f te chacte f Psf hsef1 1 Mtn Hedegge "On Gd Cn Se Us n T Hd Cr�

ed Rchd Wn (Cbde MA MIT ess 993 pp. 91 1 1 6 1 2 Qted n Mn pp 38 34

9



DX

Css, bo tphosophy, 14, 21,

6-64, 646

d ustcs/phosophy s,70o sophsts, 14, 154, 21,

0-C, Sty, 42 , 5 9-60Chstty

d tphlosophs, 8 - 90,1 11 1 5

Wtt st o 74, 8-86,8 8-9 1 , 1 5 1 5 4, 1 5 7

Cohn, Pul, 17n7-18Co tto d Phosoph,

2 , 70Coent ivent Ies philosophes?

(Soulz) , 5 4 1 8

Coplete Woks (Plto, d. J . Coop),47Conditions (do) , 14 , 16 , 24 , 5Cossions (Ross) , 682 , 87Cossions (St st), 157Conseuenes Pagatis (Roty), 2,

4 1 , 4 , 5 8 , 6 1 4cotpoty, 2 5 , 27-2 8 , 6-7,

58 , 67-69Cy, c, 4 "coodss, 485 2 , 62 , 1 46Cultue and Value (Wtt st), 82

"p sqtuds (Sss), 1 uz, Gs, , 4 , 47octus, 0, 2

d, Jcqs, 16, 165, 16scts, R, 5-6, 77

od, 42 , 69, 75 , 1 17 , 1 64 , 175wy, Joh, 42od, Co, 4 1 , 5 1 7Dend Phses i n Dispute The

(yotd), 14

o s, 69ostosy, Fyodo, 9, 84, 86

Ee Hoo (Ntzsch) , 87co No Spr, 1 , 762its (c), 488

"E dso y dob losod do (Gz) , 76"Ethcs, to, d th ctts

(od), 5 7t vesus ct, 58-62 , 82

Five Lessons on Wagne (do),1 7 9 0

Fotu, Fos, 489Focut, Mch, 1 65Fud, Sud, 5-9 , 99 , 2 1 -22 ,

2 2 1

Gz, Cos, 76os, 1 4, 1 5 , 1 8 , 2 1 2 , 2

Gtt, Fx, 47

, Go , 5 8 , 5 8 Heidegge At and Politis (cou

bth) , 22 , Hd, Mt, 22 , 1 -2 ,

1 78 1 79 , 1 789, 1 79 ctus, 69, 75

Holzege (d ) , 1 789, 1 79 "hotooy (c), 5tt, Rowd, 154, 156

n a pas de ppot sexuel (Css),1 5 4, 2 4 , 0- 1 , 6 -64

Johsto, d, 76, 582

ust Gaing (yotd d hbd) ,14

t, Iu, 7, 42 , 4 , 96, 1 1 1"Kp Phosophy P (Roty) ,

4 1 , 4 K d, S, 5 , 69, 71 , 8 ,

8 7, 94, 95

82



DX

Rbaud, Artur, 1 Rort, Rcardon ae, 1n4

on conteporaet, 58on ewe, 4on Wttgensten, 4 1 4, 5 5

Rousseau, JeanJacues, 8, 8n, 8,4

Ru Dr ourna), Russe, Bertrand, , 8n4, 15

ant Augustine, 15ant Pau, 1 , ass, Louis, 1 n 1cc, �ortz, 1 5 5 r Fririh Nizh

ed trans �ddeton) , 8n ,n

minr Jqu n ed J AMer), 8n8, 158"sense o te word, 1 1 -1 1 5 , 1 set ter, 1, 11"ence, sopsse, santet

Badou), 5n8oer, oette, nophi h Pato), 4n, 1 1 8

sopsts sopstcsand antposop, -5, 4, ,

, 1 , 48 , 5Deeuze on, 4nodern sopstcs, 1 -, 1 5n4,

1 n8, 4-45and Pato, 1 -1 , -4roe o, , 1 1 8

andWttgensten, 1 8n8 , 1 8-1 ouez, Antona, 5n 1 8speec act, 1 state o aars, 8-1 1 , 1 -1 ,

1 01 1 , 1 - 1 5 opropostions

"subject, n u 1414"sustance, n

u-10

rinB wih h NBai e),n

iBki (act), n5

tautooges, 1 8-1 , 1 -1 ters, transators note on, 5-baud, Jeanoup, 14nhoriWriinB (Badou), 5 8n o h ubj (Badou), - 1 ,

s Piosop c Is N ot One

onston) , n

A hrow Di Nr Aboih Chn(�aar), 54n 1 8 , 1 5

osto, Leo, 84u LBioPhioopiu

(Wttgensten)and antposop, 1 -1 , 4-55 ,

5 n 1 , , 1 1copared to aar, 15ru niBaion 1 , 4, ,

1-1 n , 1 1 , 1 "subject n, 14-14"substance n, -1 sntax o, 18, 1-1,

1-18

transators note on ters, 5-iiBh h o (Netzsce) , n

UnBubn (reud), , nunsaabe saabeand rsanit, 88"asad (Lacan), and stca eeent, 1 5 5

808Netzsce Wttgensten on,

-and sensennsense 1 1 5-1 1 and wrtng, 1 5 1-1 5 , 1 -1 8,

118 o stca eeent; poetr

zn, Angena, n

85

Badiou - Wittgenstein's Anti Philosophy (2011)

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