In Praise of Love by Alain Badiou
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Let me confess straight away: I am in thrall to Alain Badiou, a French philosopher who was born in 1937 and therefore in 2013 is 76.

I make no pretence to objectivity in this review.

I share his interests, love and politics, culture and philosophy, and his analysis accords with my predisposition.

What has he done? He’s defined a worldview with which I wholeheartedly agree in 104 pages of passionate, pristine prose.

Reading it has been the most amazing and life-changing experience of my postgraduate, autodidactic life.

Unbeknown to me, I have been searching for this man all of my life.

Socrates:"Anyone who doesn’t take love as their starting-point will never discover what philosophy is about."

I Think, Therefore You Don’t Exist

Descartes:"I think, therefore I am."

Notice anything about this sentence?  The first person pronoun is used twice. There is no "you"! There is no "we". There is no "us". There is no narrative. There is no love. There is only "solitary consciousness".

Boring! Philosophy, lift your game!

Immanuel Kant later postulated that we could never truly “know” the Other or the exterior, objective world.

And that type of approach resulted in solipsism! You don’t exist, except in my mind!

When I hold you in my arms, I know intuitively that that’s not true.

Half of these philosophers lacked adequate personal experience in sex, desire and love, or felt guilty about it.

Help! We need a philosopher to sort this out. Better still, a French one. One from the Continent.

Let’s give this gentle homme a chance…

Random Encounter

Let’s assume that you exist. "You think, therefore you are."

See, that wasn’t that hard, was it?

Now, let’s assume that it’s just the two of us on Earth. Somehow, we meet each other at a party. We enjoy our "Encounter". It’s a "Magical Moment". It’s an "Act of Randomness".  Later, we will describe it as our "Random Encounter".

What am I going to do with you? What are you going to do with me?

How do we describe our relationship?

Is This Love or Desire?

I venture the word "Desire".

Alain Badiou: "Desire is immediately powerful...Desire focuses on the Other, always in a somewhat fetishist manner, on particular objects, like breasts, buttocks and cock."

Suddenly, you say, "I don’t like the sound of that. What about Friendship, what about Love?"

Me: OK, but what is Love?

Alain Badiou:  "Love is a quest for truth.

I mean truth in relation to something quite precise: what kind of world does One see when One experiences it from the point of view of Two and not One? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of Difference and not Identity? That is what I believe Love to be."

You: Can you have both Love and Desire?

Alain Badiou: "If you declare your Love to each other, Love includes and embraces Desire."

Me: Pardon?

Alain Badiou: "Love, particularly over time, embraces all the positive aspects of Friendship, but Love relates to the totality of the Being of the Other."

You: What do you mean by "the totality of the Being"?

Alain Badiou: "I mean the totality of your Being. All of it, everything. All of you. You. Your heart, your soul, your mind, your body."

Me: What about Sex?

Alain Badiou: "The Surrender of the Body becomes the material symbol of that totality."

You: "Sorry, what do I have to Surrender?"

Alain Badiou: "Surrendering your body, taking your clothes off, being naked for the Other, rehearsing those hallowed gestures, renouncing all embarrassment, shouting, all this involvement of the body is evidence of a Surrender to Love. It crucially distinguishes it from Friendship. Friendship doesn’t involve bodily contact, or any resonances in pleasure of the body."

Me: So, if I declare my Love, she will Surrender??

Alain Badiou: "Within the framework of a Love that declares itself, this Declaration, even if it remains latent, is what produces the effects of Desire, and not Desire itself. Love proves itself by permeating Desire."

I look at you. You nod.

Commitment

You: Tell me you love me then.

I look at Alain. I look back at you. I say, "I love you."

Alain Badiou:  "A declaration of "I love you" seals the act of the Encounter, is central and constitutes a Commitment."

Me: What am I committing myself to here?

Alain Badiou: "You’re committing to Love, which I describe as a   ‘Two Scene’".

Difference and Identity

Alain Badiou: "Starting out from something that is simply an Encounter, a trifle, you learn that you can experience the world on the basis of Difference and not only in terms of Identity.

"In Love, at the absolute Difference that exists between two individuals, one of the biggest Differences one can imagine, given that it is an infinite Difference, yet an Encounter, a Declaration and Fidelity can transform that into a creative Existence."

You: "We don’t have to be mirror images of each other. We don’t have to be identical. Like Doppelgänger."

A Two Scene

Me: What do you mean by a ‘Two Scene’?

Alain Badiou: "Love involves a separation or disjuncture based on the simple Difference between two people and their infinite subjectivities.

"This disjuncture is, in most cases, Sexual Difference.

"When that isn’t the case, Love still ensures that two figures, two different interpretive stances are set in opposition.

"In other words, Love contains an initial element that separates, dislocates and differentiates. You have Two. Love involves Two. A ‘Two Scene’.

"Precisely because it encompasses a disjuncture, at the moment when this Two appear on stage as such and experience the world in a new way, Love can only assume a risky or contingent form.

"That is what we know as "the Encounter". Love always starts with an Encounter.

"Love is evidence we can encounter and experience the world other than through a solitary consciousness.

"The issue of Separation is so important in Love that one can also define Love as a successful struggle against Separation."

Me: "So it’s a bit like a three-legged race? We have to stick together. We can’t continually pull away or in opposite directions. We have to work out a mutually acceptable way of moving ahead, without One dragging the Other against their Will."

Truth Procedure

Me: "How are we supposed to deal with our Differences?"

Alain Badiou: "The answer comes down to ‘Truth’".

"I believe that Love is what I call a "Truth Procedure", that is, an experience whereby a certain kind of Truth is constructed.

"This Truth is quite simply the Truth about Two: the Truth that derives from Difference as such. And I think that Love - what I call the 'Two Scene' - is this Experience.

"In this sense, all Love that accepts the challenge, commits to enduring, and embraces this Experience of the world from the perspective of Difference produces in its way a new Truth about Difference."

Construction

Alain Badiou: "Love isn’t simply about two people meeting and their inward-looking relationship: it is a Construction, a life that is being made, no longer from the perspective of One but from the perspective of Two. And that is what I have called a ‘Two Scene’."

You: "So Love is more than Love at first sight?" You looked at me as you said it.

Alain Badiou: "Love cannot be reduced to the first Encounter, because it is a Construction.

"The enigma in thinking about Love is the duration of time necessary for it to flourish. In fact, it isn’t the ecstasy of those beginnings that is remarkable.

"The latter are clearly ecstatic, but Love is above all a Construction that lasts."

Me: So Real Love transcends the Randomness of the first Encounter and outlasts it.

Point by Point

Alain Badiou: "I go along with the miracle of the Encounter, but I think it remains confined, if we don’t channel it towards the onerous development of a Truth that is constructed Point by Point".

Me: What do you mean when you say "Point by Point"?

Alain Badiou: "A 'Point' is a decision point, a point when you have to decide how you are going to deal with a situation, a particular moment around which an Event establishes itself, where it must be re-played in some way, as if it were returning in a changed, displaced form, but one forcing you 'to declare afresh'.

"A Point, in effect, comes when the consequences of a Construction of a Truth, whether it be political, amorous, artistic or scientific, suddenly compels you to opt for a radical choice, as if you were back at the beginning, when you accepted and declared the event.

Me: So having a made a Commitment, something might happen, a challenge, a problem, a dispute, that requires a decision, you have to negotiate and agree a resolution? You make a new Commitment or you refresh the original Commitment?

Alain Badiou: "Yes. We could say that Love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first serious disagreement, the first quarrel, is only to distort Love.

"Real Love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world."

A Work of Love

Me: "You say the Truth Process is ‘onerous’. It sounds like hard work. Isn’t the act of falling in Love enough?"

Alain Badiou: "‘Onerous’ must be taken here as something positive.

"There is a work of Love: it is not simply a miracle.

"You must be in the breech, on guard: you must be at one with yourself and the Other.

"You must think, act and change. And then, surely, Happiness follows, as the immanent reward for all that work."

Me: So Happiness is an Earthly reward for the effort we put into our Love. We earn our Happiness from Love’s Labours.

Jealousy

Me: Does being Jealous prove that you’re in Love? Or does it mean you’re just obsessive?

Alain Badiou: "Good question. On this point, I disagree profoundly with all those who think that Jealousy is a constituent element of Love.

"The most brilliant representative of the latter is Proust, for whom Jealousy is the real, intense, demonic content of amorous subjectivity.

"Jealousy is a fake parasite that feeds on Love and doesn’t at all help to define it. Must every Love identify an external rival before it can declare itself, before it can begin? No way! The reverse is the case: the immanent difficulties of Love, the internal contradictions of the Two Scene can crystallize around a third party, a rival, imagined or real.

"The difficulties Love harbours don’t stem from the existence of an enemy who has been identified. They are internal to the process: the creative play of Difference."

Combative Love

Alain Badiou: "Selfishness, not any rival, is love’s enemy. One could say: my Love’s main enemy, the one I must defeat, is not the other, it is myself, the 'myself' that prefers Identity to Difference, that prefers to impose its world against the world re-constructed through the filter of Difference.

"We must demonstrate that Love really does have universal power, but that it is simply the opportunity we are given to enjoy a positive, creative, affirmative experience of Difference."

Me: So it’s OK to have differences of opinion as long as you recognise and permit Difference and don’t seek to impose the Identity of One on the Other. Differences of opinion are actually healthy?

Alain Badiou: "Christianity substitutes devout, passive, deferential Love for the Combative Love I am praising here, that earthly creation of the differentiated birth of a new world and a Happiness won Point by Point.

"Love on bended knee is no Love at all as far as I am concerned, even if Love sometimes arouses Passion in us that makes us yield to the Loved One."

I Believe in Miracles

You: Why does falling in Love seem like such a miracle? Is Love more than a chance meeting with the Other?

Alain Badiou: "Love remains powerful, subjectively powerful: it’s one of those rare Experiences where, on the basis of Chance inscribed in a moment, you attempt a Declaration of Eternity.

"The moment of the miraculous Encounter promises the Eternity of Love, though what I want to suggest is a concept of Love that is less miraculous and more hard work, namely a Construction of Eternity within time, of the Experience of the Two, Point by Point."

I Will Always Love You

Me: Is Love forever?

Alain Badiou: "If 'I love you' is always, in most respects, the heralding of 'I’ll always love you', it is in effect locking Chance into the framework of Eternity.

"The Declaration of Love marks the transition from Chance to Destiny, and that’s why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright.

" ‘Always’ means ‘eternally’. It is simply a Commitment within time."

Me: For an Atheist, Love can’t endure beyond death.

Alain Badiou: "There is no fabulous world of the afterlife. But Love, the essence of which is Fidelity in the meaning I give to this word, demonstrates how Eternity can exist within the time span of Life itself.

"Happiness in Love is the proof that Time can accommodate Eternity.”

Fidelity

Me: What do you mean by 'Fidelity'? Does it mean more than the simple promise not to sleep with someone else?

Alain Badiou: "The initial Declaration of 'I love you' is a Commitment requiring no particular consecration, the Commitment to construct something that will endure in order to release the Encounter from its randomness.

"By Fidelity, I mean: I shall extract something else from what was mere Chance.

"I’m going to extract something that will endure, something that will persist, a Commitment, a Fidelity.

"And here I am using the word 'Fidelity' within my own philosophical jargon, stripped of its usual connotations. It means precisely that transition from Random Encounter to a Construction that is resilient, as if it had been necessary.

"In Love, Fidelity signifies this extended victory: the randomness of an Encounter defeated day after day through the invention of what will endure, through the birth of a world."

Me: So the Construction of Love gives birth to a new world comprised of and between the Two. And Fidelity is designed to ensure that that world endures.

Politics

Me: You talk about Politics in the same way you talk about Love.

Alain Badiou: "Real politics is that which gives enthusiasm. Love and Politics are the two great figures of social engagement.

"Politics is enthusiasm with a collective; with Love, two people. So Love is the minimal form of communism.

"By 'communist' I understand that which makes the ‘held-in-common’ [ed: 'shared'?] prevail over selfishness, the collective achievement over private self-interest.

"Love is communist in that sense, if one accepts, as I do, that the real subject of a love is the becoming of the couple and not the mere satisfaction of the individuals that are its component parts. Yet another possible definition of love: minimal communism!"

Me: How do Politics and Love differ?

Alain Badiou: "Politics constitutes a Truth Procedure, but one that centres on the Collective.

"Political action tests out the Truth of what the Collective is capable of achieving.

"What are individuals capable of when they meet, organize, think and take decisions?

"In Love, it is about two people being able to handle Difference and make it creative.

"In Politics, it is about finding out whether a number of people, a mass of people in fact, can create equality.

"The problem Politics confronts is the control of Hatred, not of Love. And Hatred is a passion that almost inevitably poses the question of the Enemy.

"In other words, in Politics, where Enemies do exist, one role of the organization, whatever that may be, is to control, indeed to destroy, the consequences of Hatred."

Fraternity

Alain Badiou: "What on earth is 'Fraternity'? No doubt it is related to the issue of Differences, of their friendly co-presence within the political process, the essential boundary being the confrontation with the Enemy.

"And that is a notion that can be covered by internationalism, because, if the Collective can really take Equality on board, that means it can also integrate the most extensive divergences and greatly limit the power of Identity.

"The theatre is a community and the aesthetic expression of Fraternity. That’s why I argue that there is, in that sense, something communist in all theatre."

Art and Theatre

Alain Badiou: "Only art restores the dimension of the senses to an Encounter, an insurrection or a riot. Art, in all its forms, is a great reflection on the Event as such.

"Theatre is politics and love, and more generally, about the two intersecting.

"The theme of Love as a Game is crucial in the Theatre, and that it’s all precisely about Declarations. It is also because this Theatre of Love, this powerful Game of Love and Chance exists, that I have this love for the Theatre.

"The relationship between the Theatre and Love is also the exploration of the abyss separating individuals, and the description of the fragile nature of the bridge that Love throws between two solitudes."

Harmony

Me: The reconciliation of your Love and your Politics meant a lot to you.

Alain Badiou: "I realised that conviction in Love and Politics is something one must never renounce.

"That was really the moment when, in between Politics and Love, my life found the musical chord that ensured its harmony."

Endurance

Marxism has always endeavoured to construct a worldview on the foundation of Labour that fulfilled and rewarded the Worker.

To achieve this goal, it had to overcome the Alienation inherent in Capitalism.

Communism in practice never succeeded, because it simply replaced one oppressor with another, the State.

While Badiou still claims to be a Communist, he seems to be a Communist in the Atheist sense of trying, in the absence of God and an Afterlife, to create a Heaven on Earth.

An essential component of this worldview is Love, both at a personal and a political level.

It’s fascinating that his philosophy attributes great value to work and effort.

In Love, as in Politics, as in Employment, if we want something, we have to work for it.

Success is the reward for Effort.

In both Politics and Love, the reward is a Happiness that will last and endure.

Epigrams

The following epigrams are either the express words of Badiou or my paraphrase of his propositions.

1 Love includes and embraces Desire.

2 Love is what we construct on the foundation of our Differences.

3 Love is the birth of a new world constructed and shared by two different people.

4 We deal with our Differences, point by point, one at a time, for the duration of our Love.

5 It is our effort that makes Love endure.

6 Happiness is the reward for the effort we put into our Love.

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