On Badiou's In Praise of Love

April 30, 2020

Blog 8: On Badiou's "In Praise of Love"

It's half past midnight and I have just finished reading Alain Badiou's "In praise of love" in one sitting. I had a mind to write my initial impressions but have come to type these letters now to reflect more closely on the nature of my philosophical drives. It is captivating for Badiou's rather different translation of Book V of the Republic to let socrates speak:

Anyone who doesn't take love as their starting point will never discover what philosophy is about.

And I'm led to reflect more deeply on this because this is precisely what I got into this whole philosophy business (or hobby) in the first place! It was in fact Jackie's inquisitiveness and curiosity, while in the throes of love, that has seeded in me the origin of my awakening– love was the seed, the thoughts and actions that ensued, its conditions. And I think that what led me to this book, that analysis of that Rick and Morty episode on online dating by Wisecrack (see embed video below), got Badiou wrong. I was led to believe that Badiou was philosophizing saying that love is about tenacity and endurance. And boy that was definitely not what Badiou is saying at all! Well he does say it, but only in part. And taking the part to represent the whole is a dangerous affair. With Wisecrack, it appears to serve their purposes in explaining the critique given by the episode of Rick and Morty– to shit on online dating apps just as Badiou did on online dating sites. But this is where Wisecrack stops Badiou rather abruptly. Where they emphasize love's longevity (which primarily attracted me), they fail to mention this longevity as more than just the mood of escaping the "happily ever after" framework.

What they fail to mention is the more profound beginnings Badiou alludes to, of which Husserl christens philosophy as the science of conceptions that requires a perpetual beginner– that is that love is "minimal communism"; love is a "two-scene", love is ultimately a "truth process". These concepts, albeit fairly new to me, resonate in me because they help clarify the kind of universality of love that I got to realize by this artful project. I came here on Wisecrack's quote thinking I can see if I can identify with this love as tenacity, trying to justify what I went through with Jackie as being precisely that– of a particular instance. But I was wrong; and glad to be.

Love, as I understand him, is an affirmation of the eternal that is juxtaposed in the temporal life. Just like philosophy, love is a perpetual beginner. As Badiou quotes Sarkovsky, Love requires reinvention. In such a way, perhaps I can add that love is itself a philosophy. Moreso, the philosophy of love is indeed the philosophy of philosophy qua loving wisdom.

I wonder about my thomistic friends/professors in SMC who reaffirm Aquinas' mantra that Love is to will the Good of the other, with the underlying Christian theme of the givenness of love, which has been ever so powerful on me as my Catholicism buds with the help of Augustine's Confessions.

And it seems to me that my general point, my purpose and driving force behind my pursuit in philosophy– into questions of ontology, phenomenology, existentialism– all is driven from this fundamental seed of love. And I've expressed in numerous blogs how I'm grateful to Jackie for implanting philosophy into me but perhaps I can recant this now and offer a clearer thought– Jackie helped the conditions for my philosophical soul to emerge, like fertilizer or water or sunlight. She became my conception of the "Good", as Iris Murdoch's conception of a good love speaks.

And it's now clear to me, at least in this moment, that most thematically, I end up thinking about love in the philosophy I read. Iris Murdoch x Simone Weil's conception of love as a distinct form of attention held up by our moral/ontological commitments to the good or lack thereof (making "bad love" as a neglect of the Good, fitting in the Christian framework). Aquinas/Augustine frameworks of love in terms of the transcendent Lord and Christ for us. The existentialist counterargument of a secular (in one extreme) or humanist existential form of love.

And I think Badiou was able to help push these thoughts I've reflected on love further. And in good timing. With the chains of love that I've been bounded on are loosened and my existential crisis averted, I can now see more authentically how this fits into my life and how Badiou's conception seems to be at least a more clear definition of this sense of love that I have experienced, and perhaps haven't given up on (or have? his distinction between friendship and love becomes murky to me when considering a love lost but recovered as friendship?).

Either way, the 108 or less pages that I read from front to back was clear and stimulating enough for me to be able to think those thoughts he has written to impart onto my own consciousness. There is much thought to be thunk that stimulates my brain and soul to meditate on further. For as a Christian I'm obliged to read other secular works in the light of Christ, and hence in the light of love (qua agape); and I can begin to sketch those details in my head already. But in the intermediary of this now, I can understand the framework in the appreciation of its technicality– of the work's ability to synthesize conceptions of love with its own past conceptions and also fused with my own notions. It is profound but not overly so, because it takes its stance on love with much care and especially with its reflection on theater and how philosophers at the end of the day are actors (albeit sometimes unaware of it).

The overall performance of it, and the phenomenological underpinnings, leads to the description of love phenomenologically, of which despite Heidegger only mentioned in passing in a citation of Derrida's book on him, that strengthens the hermeneutic project that the hermit Heidegger had begun on his own, that has affected the generations and beyond after him. This talk on love goes down to the level of questioning being itself, of which I'm particularly interested in as an academic and truth-pursuing exercise. I keep saying I agree with Badiou on most parts because I'm reticent to dive into its metaphysical commitments, but am thankful for the lines he draws on what he is talking about and his explanation of how he uses the jargon he uses, which he humbly acknowledges but can't seem to not use.

The name of my game is being, that of which medicine has practically and metaphysically supplements. The way Badiou talks about love as truth seeking and how it is "two not one" and all, helps me interpret it phenomenologically in my own way– that I see love as yet another manifestation, or dimension of being. And as the conclusion which I think I'm to arrive at but have yet to trace a line to– that being is time (as Heidegger claims in "Time and Being")– becomes more clear, the more that I'm renewed to pursue it again with Socrates' requirement in mind for philosophy. Not merely a sense of wonder but also with love as the basis and starting point of that sense of wonder.

Dogmatism beware, as I tread and tiptoe between the lines of blasphemy and doxa; I risk the failings of both in pursuit of the truth that love, philosophy, human consciousness, takes as its meaning. And in the end, it seems that Christianity may win at the end, as I think I'll inevitably admit as descript: love is given. And what is given, must imply the giver. This win, which drives the whole "comedy" gamut of Christianity, that love wins at the end, is not mutually exclusive, I think, with the human flourishing, of exploring concepts as they circulate and exist in our space and time, because ultimately I still see this whole adventure as part of the journey towards revelation and truth via Faith, Hope and Charity, either way. I can only hope that grace can nudge me in the right direction before it's too late (and I mean too late not temporally as in after x amount of years and x amount of days, but rather the orientation of the soul willingly losing its trajectory).