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Bibliografia[editar | editar código-fonte]
MARX, K., O Capital - Crítica da Economia Política. São Paulo: Nova Fronteira, volumes 1,
2 e 3, 1983.
_________, O Capital - Crítica da Economia Política. São Paulo: Nova Fronteira. Livro 3, vol
4. ISBN 8520007252
_________, Teorias da Mais-Valia. São Paulo: Brasiliense, vol. 1, 2 e 3.
FAUSTO, R., Marx: Lógica e Política I, II e III, São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1987 (vol. I) e 1989
(vol. II); São Paulo: Editora 34, 2002 (vol. III).
GRESPAN, J. L. S., O negativo do capital – O conceito de crise na crítica de Marx à
Economia Política. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1999.
Dissolução da União Soviética
Origem: Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre.
Histórico[editar | editar código-fonte]
Parte da série sobre a
União Soviética
Antecedentes[editar | editar código-fonte]
Ver artigos principais: Previsões de colapso da União Soviética, Era Gorbachev
(1985-1991), Revoluções de 1989 e Tentativa de golpe de Estado na União Soviética
em 1991
That’s a classic move, for philosophy, but in what sense does it offer
anything new?
There I’m making a classic move, it’s true, declaring that there is a link
between philosophy and happiness. That’s obviously an argument that appears
in ancient thought, in Plato and the Stoics. But what we ought to take from
this move – the startling thing about this move – is the idea that philosophy
can shake up and displace the spontaneous, or rather, the socially dominant,
conception of happiness. Spontaneity is largely codified: it’s what society
makes us think is self-evident. That’s also why when philosophy takes
happiness as one of its problems, it enters into conflict with the socially
dominant view. Such as it was framed by the Sophists in Plato’s day, and such
as it is framed by the magazines or the psychology manuals today. And when
philosophy discusses or debates happiness, it is addressing a problem that we
have in common, unlike many other philosophical problems. Indeed, if you
ask questions like "What is being qua being?", "Is there a mathematical
truth?", and so on, ultimately those are questions that you will only be
discussing with your counterparts. It’s not that I look down on these questions,
their history, and their theoretical necessity; no, quite the contrary, they are a
theoretical armoury and arsenal that are indispensable for addressing
questions of a more general order. But philosophy cannot stop there: it has to
address more widely shared problems like love, happiness etc. Ultimately
philosophy has to concern itself with questions that relate to general
aspirations, or else it will be left as an academic discipline where colleagues
discuss problems inscribed within the space of philosophy alone. So this is
where philosophy sets itself up on a front line, in conflict with the dominant
ideas.
When you embark on a close analysis of the conception of happiness, you also
enter into the question of its exceptional status. How is it that real happiness –
which is not reducible to ordinary satisfactions – is not the general law of
existence, but is constituted by choices and moments that inscribe it within an
exceptional status? At root the common consciousness also shares this
conception of the rarity of happiness, even if it masks or hides it. Hence, I
think, the extreme (I wouldn’t hesitate in calling it lyrical) importance of love
in this matter. Love, passion, meeting someone, are thought of as exceptional
moments of existence, and everyone is well aware that these moments
signpost what we can truly call happiness. Clearly it’s entirely desirable not to
be unhappy. But real happiness takes a lot more than just not being unhappy.
Happiness can’t just be a simple negation of unhappiness: it is a present, a gift
from life that goes beyond the order of satisfaction. A gift from life that we
must be ready to accept, a risk that we must be ready to take. It is a major
existential choice: either a life that’s only open to satisfaction, or a life that
takes on the risk of happiness, including as an exception. That’s also a
political question: there are those who only agree on rejecting unhappiness
(the conservative argument of the so-called "New Philosophers") and those
who’ll take a risk in search of happiness. According to this conservative
argument, people can only agree on rejecting unhappiness, and not with a
view to happiness. Saint-Just declared on the contrary – in an entirely
revolutionary manner – that happiness was a new idea in Europe.
Is that why you, like Benjamin, link the idea of happiness to the idea of a
different time?
Yet you yourself have written that this work, this organisational practice,
requires a certain "discipline"…
Let’s be clear, I was obviously using this word as a provocation. Just as I use
the word "communism" because it is the most hated word in the contemporary
political lexicon. I understand that we are trying to preserve the evental power
of politics. But I think that the construction of an enduring political time
requires the discipline of an exception, a temporal continuity ensuring that the
energy that comes from the political rupture does not die away. So we have to
keep on inventing, and these inventions suppose creations – creations that
obey a discipline. Here we ought to understand the word discipline in the
sense that a painter, experimenting and creating, imposes a discipline on
himself, by himself. Just as a mathematician imposes an implacable discipline
on himself as he resolves a problem. Once you’ve positioned yourself in an
exceptional situation, you are necessarily compelled to create your own rules,
your own principles, and it is in this sense that discipline is indistinguishable
from freedom. And this discipline constantly has to be reinvented.
And again, why do you use the word "fidelity"? Isn’t that more an ethical
concept than a political one?
The word fidelity has a negative meaning – not to betray. For me, though,
fidelity shouldn’t be defined by non-treason, by its negation. To be loyal to an
event – fidelity is always fidelity to an original rupture, and not to a dogma, a
doctrine or a political line – is to invent or propose something new that, so to
speak, brings back the force of the rupture of the event. This is anything but a
principle of conservation: it is a principle of movement. Fidelity designates
the continuous creation of the rupture itself. A conservative fidelity, on the
contrary, consists of saying that such-and-such person has to be considered an
enemy, has to be excluded, if not even eliminated, because they do not
conform to the sense of the initial event. Only this conformity supposes that
fidelity entails a sort of objectivity in the same sense as the event, and which
is neutral and indifferent to the subjective engagement that the fidelity to an
event requires. In this sense, fidelity is more a logical than an ethical concept:
it means being logical or coherent with an initial subjective engagement that
now proceeds by way of a collective discussion among people who consider
each other political friends. In that sense it’s not really much different from
the community of mathematicians who have not only a shared problem but
also procedures that allow them to define and determine true from false. The
essence of politics is not only a clash with enemies; for this also requires the
prior, essential condition of agreement among friends. Fidelity means that
those who enter into this common discussion have the duty to consider
whether there is a contradiction among their own ranks. In no case should this
contradiction ever be identified with the contradiction with their enemies.
Notes
[1] Alain Badiou addresses this question more specifically in À la recherche
du réel perdu (Fayard, 5 euros), where he delves into the reactionary uses of
the word ‘real’, and also offers a fine reading of Pasolini’s poem The ashes of
Gramsci
While happiness is a classic philosophical topic, Badiou begins by noting that his own
philosophical engagements might suggest that one look elsewhere for relevant insights,
given his own preoccupation with ‘materials rarely associated with happiness’ (33). In
addition to set theory, these include, ‘the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions, of
Robespierre, Lenin, or Mao, all and each marked with the infamous seal of the Terror…
recourse to numerous poems thought to be more hermetic than pleasurable … true love
… regarding which moralists and prudent persons have always noted that the sufferings
it provokes and the banal reports of its fragility render its vocation for happiness
doubtful’ (33-34). In addition, he notes that his philosophical masters such as Descartes,
Pascal, Hegel, and Kierkegaard seem far from being ‘jolly souls’ (34). More
specifically, his philosophical centre stands far removed from what he suggests is
ordinarily recognised as happiness, including ‘a quiet life, the abundance of little
everyday satisfactions, interesting work, an appropriate salary, an iron constitution, a
happy couple, memorable holidays, lovely friends, a well-appointed household, a
comfortable car, a sweet and faithful domestic pet, trouble-free children who are
successful at school.’ (34)
As Bartlett and Clemens point out in their introduction, the small book closest
to Happiness in spirit is Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. In that text, no
ethical theory is presented, and there is no role for such a theory in Badiou’s system.
Instead he rejects ethics as we know it with its departure from the centrality of truths.
For him, rather, ethics amounts to an exhortation to ‘Keep going’ with regard to
subjective fidelity to the eventual happening of truth. When I picked this book up, I
expected this to be essentially his account of happiness as well. In a way, it is. Though,
it is also more.
As readers acquainted with Badiou are aware, truths occur through the four procedures
of science, politics, love, and art. The role of philosophy is to announce and organise
these procedures. Awareness of a truth produced does not need to accompany a truth
procedure. Philosophy provides this understanding. What then is the affect of
philosophy? Badiou has always emphasised the intensity and transformative dimension
of the eventual happening of truth through the procedures. What is new in Happiness is
the claim that philosophy is itself productive of happiness. In fact, the philosopher,
insists Badiou, is the only one capable of happiness or ‘the true life.’
Badiou sees the contemporary world of the West as inhospitable to these four
dimensions of desire whether in philosophy or revolution. According to Badiou, against
revolt, the world tries to teach us that all has been achieved, that we are already free.
Against logic, we are presented with the illogical organisation of communication where
words and images fragment and lose sense through their rapid circulation in a kind of
‘spectacle without memory’ (44). Against the universal, we inhabit a world of
specialised and disjointed knowledges, whose false universality is the abstract world of
money. Finally, against risk, the world presents itself as one in which it is necessary to
calculate present and future security, however tenuous such security actually is.
To move more positively toward happiness and beyond antiphilosophy, Badiou asks
whether it is necessary to ‘change the world.’ Instead of following the stoic line of
adjusting to what is the case, Badiou returns to the category of the event, the emergence
of what was seemingly impossible, the new subjectivity that emerges, the joy of this
experience and the disciplined fidelity to it. Happiness does not come from doing ‘what
you want.’ When the world provides the means for ‘doing what you want,’ the
emergence of a new subjective stance is blocked.
Happiness is full of promissory notes. It introduces what Badiou says will be his last
‘big book,’ Being and Event: The Immanence of Truths. Instead of emphasising the way
in which his truth procedures differ, he will outline their similarities. For Badiou, this is
a practice of philosophy that he compares to the philosopher returning to the cave in
Plato. While in Plato, the philosopher would rather remain in contemplation of the Idea
and must be forced to return, Badiou suggests that to remain apart with one’s truth is to
be deprived of ‘the happiness that only this sharing procures’ (96). The forthcoming
book will, he says, be ‘a type of speculative science of happiness’ (99). At stake is
whether there is a philosophical subjectivity which he deems the ‘true life’ and gives the
name happiness. At the end of his last forthcoming book, Badiou concludes, ‘I will be
able to say: philosophy is me. And it is also, equally all of you, who read me, and think
with me, or against me as well’ (122).
While the book is filled with schematisms which are sometimes tedious (three
dimensions of this, four versions of that) only a few of which I’ve sketched here, the
book has a genuine intimacy to it. Badiou writes in the first person and, it seems,
primarily for those who know him well, sometimes moving quite quickly over things he
knows the reader, like an old friend, long-time colleague, or lover, has heard many
times before. At the same time the text displays his urgency to say more, to be clear, to
keep going, to re-invent, and to express the “true life” through a generalised fidelity to
his still ongoing project. It is enough to make at least the familiar reader look forward to
the forthcoming finale.
30 August 2019
URL: https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/17323_happiness-by-alain-badiou-
reviewed-by-michael-principe/
Ricardo Cappelli
Ricardo Cappelli é secretário da representação do governo do
Maranhão em Brasília e foi presidente da União Nacional dos
Estudantes
Ricardo Cappelli. "Uma para barrar o autoritarismo e ampliar nosso diálogo com a
3
O Movimento Direitos Já! fez um histórico ato virtual suprapartidário no último dia 26
de junho. Apenas três dias depois, a OAB lançou uma campanha pela democracia,
ADVERTISING
Lula para Tremembé. Está unida na defesa do jornalismo, vítima cotidiana de agressões.
durante a pandemia.
Foi ela que derrotou Guedes e impôs o auxilio emergencial de 600 reais por três meses.
de alguns de seus integrantes? Afirmar isso é uma grande bobagem. É fugir da disputa.
Vamos deixar que fiquem sob a influência exclusiva dos liberais? Seria um grande
equívoco
Brasil estaria dividido entre golpistas neoliberais e “não golpistas portadores de uma
moral superior”.
Votaram contra a saída de Dilma o PT, o PDT, o PCdoB e o PSOL. Apenas 136 votos.
eventual segundo turno em 2022, vamos pedir o apoio deles contra Bolsonaro?
Por este raciocínio, o PSB estaria excluído até da Frente de Esquerda. O PDT e o PT
estão em guerra. Considerando que o PSOL não participa nem da “Frente PT-PCdoB”
pedidos no Congresso, por que não andam? É uma baita ilusão achar que a esquerda vai
conseguir algo sozinha. A disputa real é dura, não é uma competição de bravura.
Além de inconsequente, este discurso não é razoável. Quem fez do banqueiro Henrique
Meireles presidente do BC? Quem nomeou o “Chicago Boy” Joaquim Levy ministro da
Fazenda? Dialogar com liberal agora é crime? É preciso ter um mínimo de respeito pela
do “novo colégio eleitoral”. Sem entrar no mérito da decisão, vivíamos naquela época
A condenação de Lula é um absurdo. Bolsonaro vai indicar dois ministros para o STF.
próximas eleições. Seria bom revisitar o conceito de hegemonia. Exigirá menos fígado
e mais frieza.