Ethical universalism, transcendence of otherness

A little while back Gaunilo indicated plans to blog on Badiou. Since he has thus forced us into promissory history, perhaps I can help usher in the eschaton (ah naive post-mills) by my own blog on Badiou. Happily, it is not on the text that Gaunilo plans to address, but rather on a lecture given some months back which I attended.

Here's the blurb from the lecture announcement:
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Alain Badiou, Chair of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, will deliver a lecture entitled "Paul and the Moral Problem: Universalism and Differences."

A very important maxim of Paul is: Do not argue about opinions (Rom. 14.1). We can translate this injunction in more technical language: Do not compromise the Truth by entangling it in the web of opinions and differences. Generally speaking, for a philosophy, or for a philosopher like Socrates, it is a necessity to argue about opinions, to criticize opinions. But precisely: Paul is not a philosopher. The Christian subject is not at all in the field of philosophy. We have to understand-and it is very difficult-that faith is neither an opinion, nor a critique of opinion. The Christian subject is an activist of an Event. And Christian militantism must traverse worldly differences indifferently and avoid all casuistry over customs.
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Badiou is tall, white-haired, with a healthy (read:round) belly--though otherwise apparently fit. He wore white pants and a white sweatshirt (and maybe white shoes too!). Hey, kinda like in this picture:

He spoke with a fantastic French accent, and was extremely jovial and energetic. He constantly interjected jokes into his address, and had the room in stitches at times. His humor was magnified by his astute use of his accent (inflecting it in just the right ways to appeal to the American ear), as well as by his repeated bouncing around and his chuckling to himself. This was someone who to me embodied joy and fulfillment, an apparently satisfied person.

Badiou indicated early on that the Pauline/Christian tradition was not one to which he subscribes in any "personal" sense. Yet, he firmly believes the Pauline ethic, as he understands it, offers a productive counterpoint to moral philosophy and the resulting modern, democratic tradition. The latter two are, in Badiou's book, bankrupt, or at least seriously flawed.

I'll try to summarize the gist of his thoughts:

Moral philosophy is about taking account of the Other, which means taking account of differences. Modern, democratic morality affirms the individual, and the existence of multiple, distinct cultures. All cultures are good and have equal rights if they respect all other cultures and respect life. Thus, tolerance and human rights are the two pillars of democratic morality. The definition of freedom that emerges is the ability to express one's own (respect of individual) creative power (respect of life). A correlate is the freedom to satisfy one's own desires (fuel for creative potential); this is the ground of happiness.

To this he responds: "If morality is the peaceful organization of differences, then there is no morality in Paul. Paul is an immoralist!"

For Paul, Badiou maintains, there are no differences. There is no concept of otherness. Sameness is the key (Gal 3:28). To grasp the truth of difference, one must go beyond difference, transcending difference, to become indifferent. What about cultural differences? They do not matter. What about the law? The law has no place--"everything is permissible."

There is only one type of relationship in Paul, that of love. This is an immediate and positive relationship. Badiou reminds us that this is distinct from Levinas, who always prioritizes the Other. (For Levinas, we are always bound to the Other, the Other catches us in her gaze, and we are obligated.) For Paul it is a reciprocal relationship of love. (We might say it is a relationship of equals, but this introduces an overdetermined category ("equality") which for us is too burdened with modern notions.)

If there is an Other in Paul, it is the neighbor. We are to love the neighbor, the immediate Other. War is possible with the neighbor, so we are to love precisely where war/contradiction is possible.

"As you love yourself." Here sameness figures in; the relationship to the Other parallels the relationship to the self. Our notion of the self is grounded in the resurrection, which is the affirmation and love of life. (Yes, he got a little fuzzy here.) This connects with his notion of Event. Christian subjectivity is grounded in this event, rather than in a set of principles (philosophy) or law (morality).

What thus emerges is the hope for a new subjectivity, which fosters a paradigm shift that looks beyond differences. It does not ignore but transcends them. "Truth is beyond opinions, not against them."

Badiou sees Paul's "faith, hope, and love" as paralleling Lacan's "real, imaginary, and symbolic". (Here he broke off into a joke (think French accent)- "Lacan...was for meeee... one of my clooosest friends. This means...of couuuurse...that 'ee was an even cloooser enemyyyy!!" Then he'd crack himself up, and we'd all crack up.)

Ok, so to try to re-hash this and make some sense: it seems to me that Badiou sees in Paul a model of a hopeful, imaginative embrace of life that is grounded in our fundamental common humanity--(recall that, for Badiou, who is not a "believer", the resurrection must be taken as figurative). It must lead to the construction of a model of community that is not fixated on differences. It cannot ignore them (eg, I think of the b.s. of the so-called "colorblind society" of Sowell or Steele or DeSouza), but must somehow acknowledge them and instantaneously move on to something new. This new model is, of course, to be determined. Badiou cited Lacan's statement that "fiction is a house for truth" to emphasize the imaginative, constructive character of this project.

We are to have faith in what is true (The Real), our common humanity. We enact this commonality through love, which embodies the structure of how things are, even if not apparent (The Symbolic). In so doing we function in hope, always creatively stretching forward toward new (The Imaginary) postures of relationship based on this truth.