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The Formulas of L'Étourdit
[excerpt]

 

 

Alain Badiou

translated by Scott Savaiano

 

To resume again...

Jacques Lacan's Anxiety (II)
J
- A MILLER

The Names-of-the-Father
J
- A MILLER

The Formulas of
L'Étourdit
A
LAIN BADIOU

On Giorgio Agamben's
Profanations
M
EHDI BELHAJ
KACEM

The Fundamental Perversion
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

Lacan
as Reader of Hegel
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

1978-2000
R
OBERT GOBER

Catherine Opie
C
ATHY LEBOWITZ
interviews
JOSEFINA AYERZA

[...]

What, in Lacan's eyes, is the true nature of how philosophy operates? What does Lacan identify as "philosophical," in order for his anti-philosophy to assume its full meaning? Philosophy operates, in Lacan's eyes, by affirming that there is such a thing as a meaning or sense of truth (sens de la vérité). But why would philosophy maintain this? Because its objective, the consolation it offers us, and which goes by the name "wisdom," is to be able to assert that there is a truth of the Real. This is its implicit or explicit axiom: there is a sense to truth because there is a truth of the Real. However, in l'Étourdit Lacan argued, contrary to what he judges to be the way philosophy operates, and against even what he himself at times maintained prior to it...

[...]

Because there is no knowing (connaissance) or truth of the Real - because, on the contrary, the condition for there to be truth is that it be inextricably enchained to the Real in the guise of a knowledge function, there has to be a pure encounter with this Real. Let us therefore call "act" this point of encountering the Real.

[...]



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