Towards a New Concept of Existence
[excerpt]

 

 

Alain Badiou

 

To resume again...

A Reading of the Seminar From an Other to the other
J
- A MILLER

Towards a New Concept of Existence
A
LAIN BADIOU

35 Propositions from Logiques des mondes
A
LAIN BADIOU

Desublimation
G
ÉRARD WAJCMAN

The Element of Sacrifice in Romantic Love
R
USSELL GRIGG

Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Revolutionary Marxism
I
AN PARKER

Materialism, or the Inexistence of the Big Other
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

Janine Antoni
J
OSEFINA AYERZA

Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens
J
OSEFINA AYERZA

Monasterio image [...] As all of you know perfectly well, the fundamental problem is to distinguish on the one hand, being as such, being qua being, and, on the other hand, existence, as a category which precisely is not reducible to that of being. It is the heart of the matter. This difference between being and existence is often the result of the consideration of a special type of being. It is the case for Heidegger, with the distinction between Sein and Dasein. If we take into account the etymological framework, we can see that "existence," which depends on Dasein, is a topological concept. It means to be here, to be in the world. And in fact, I also shall propose to determine the very general concept of "existence" by the necessity of thinking the place, or the world, of everything which is. And this place is not deducible from being as such.

But clearly for Heidegger, Da-sein, and finally, existence, is a name for human being, for historical destiny of thinking, for crucial and creative experience of the becoming of being itself. I shall propose a concept of being-here and of existence without any reference to something like consciousness, experience, or human being. I shall construct before you a pure relational concept of the slight distance between a multiplicity and the same multiplicity here, in its place, in a world.

The Thing is: das Ding, maybe das Ur-Ding. That is this form of being which certainly is after the indifference of nothingness, but also before the qualitative difference of object. We must formalize the concept of "thing" between, on the one hand, the absolute priority of nothingness and, on the other hand, the complexity of objects. A thing is always the pre-objective basis of objectivity. And that is the reason for which a thing is nothing other than a multiplicity. Not a multiplicity of objects, not a system of qualities, a network of differences, but a multiplicity of multiplicities, and a multiplicity of multiplicities of multiplicities.

[...]



Art: Pablo Ortiz Monasterio
Dispara, México City - C-print, 1990
courtesy Rose Gallery, Santa Monica.


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