Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (Radical Thinkers)

This little book by Alain Badiou is an intervention in the contemporary discourse on Ethics. Badiou targets "negative ethics", arguing that it is limited to forms of damage or violence minimization. For Badiou, such perspectives fail to address illegitimate forms of power or domination keeping people inscribed in existing situations. Badiou proposes an affirmative ethics, one sustained by commitments to Truths. Badiou is interested in those rare moments when a person involved in the busyness of everyday concerns is suddenly transformed by an Event, forcing the person to either follow through with its consequences or surrender. Following a Pauline structure (St. Paul), Badiou names this ethical endurance "Fidelity". The book also includes an excellent interview of Badiou with Peter Hallward, discussing Badiou's influences, philosophy, and politics. This book is one of Badiou's most accessible works making it an ideal entry point for beginners and an enjoyable read for those already acquainted. As philosopher Slavoj Žižek says of Badiou, “A figure like Plato or Hegel walks here among us!”

This was the first book (but not essay) by French Philosopher Alain Badiou I have read. It is made quite clear from the begining both in the long scholarly introduction by the translator Peter Hallward and in Badiou's own introduction that this book was written for French high scool kids as an introduction to ethics. Readers expecting a hard hitting schorlarly work on the nature of evil might be dissapointed and bemused French high schooler's might be scratching their heads as to what exactly this book is about but the rest of us are rewarded with an exciting hybrid. Not quite a high school primer (Badiou expertly dismisses the whole western concept of ethics) but a lot more accessable than Badiou's normal set-theory laden philosophical writing. This is at heart a manifesto for a new kind of ethics one that supports radical politics against the staus quo and encourages action rather than inaction. Badiou recognises the equality and shared nature of all people rather than being preoccupied by difference.Ideas and excitement crackle of the page a worthwhile read.

Fantastic introduction to this author's ideas about ethics, which are highly original and thought provoking. Unique theories, but somewhat controversial. Whether you agree or not with the author, this book will make you think deeply about ethics.

Perfect for weekend readingAimed at HS readers

Badiou is the most unique voice in radical philosophy. To sum this up: to understand what evil really is, is to be willing to die to end it (or resist it).

I stumbled across this book by word of mouth. Throughout the entire book I felt that Dr. Badiou had good arguments, & I would recommend his Ethics book to any aspiring ethicist.

I already have the book. However, I purchased it for my church book store and I will purchase more books from you for them.

This is a very worthwhile text for anyone interested in ethical theory, or drawn to appeals rooted in human rights. It begins with a strong critique of the dominant strands of Western ethical theory (rights based, virtue-based and utilitarian; also deontology, though there are elements of Kantian theory that Badiou respects) -- that if nothing else should serve as a kind of gadfly to provokes theorists to reconsider the upshot of their labors. In a nutshell, Badiou's critique suggests that ethics as we know it merely serves the status quo -- whether by proposing an unrealizable "ought" or by limiting its prescriptions to what is realizable within the status quo and leaving politics and economics untouched. He argues (taking his cue from a rough approximation of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals) that what is really wrong/dangerous/weak in Western ethics is that it takes for granted the existence of evil (reality is such that there will be innocent suffering, people are such that they will inflict suffering on others in the pursuit of their own aims) and defines its good negatively as what would mitigate this evil. These theories have no positive conception of the good. His critical observations are quite powerfully stated and constitute a very reasonable challenge, that ought to be addressed.In the positive side of his "doctrine," things get a little more muddled. It seems like he is trying to do two things: (1) formulate another ethical system that would begin from a positive conception of the good, and define evil as that which hinders or distorts that good; (2) articulate the ethical implications of his thinking regarding "events," developed elsewhere over the period of several years, and only partially clarified in this text (his master work: "Being and Event" has not yet appeared in English translation, but it will appear soon -- I can't say anything about that book though I have read a couple of other things by Badiou that have already appeared in English). The combination of these two aims is, I think, partially successful here but remains pretty vague. It is most successful (and most significant for contemporary thinking about issues like terrorism) in its description of the evils that pervert the good.Roughly what he wants to say is that there can be no ethics within the "situation" -- this is a loose application of the is-ought distinction we find already in Hume: the situation is the world as it is, as it is understood by a present age and while this understanding gives rise to expectations and demands and limitations, it doesn't carry with it an "ethical" dimension. Ethics has to involve something more -- but since Badiou doesn't believe in a transcendent moral reality, he puts this something more into the "future," and not merely the temporal future but the radical possibility of bringing something new into the world -- the something more is the "event" that brings something new into the world, that opens up a new horizon of meaning that is irreducible to the mere situation. It makes possible relations that were not foreseen or foreseeable in the situation as it was. He mentions events like "falling in love": when someone falls in love all of a sudden we have not merely a situation but a relation between elements (two people) of the situation that in the event becomes absolute, for the lovers it is not merely a bare fact but an undeniable "truth" (a word he uses in a sense that is not well defined, but is more or less clear; it is emphatically not "truth as correspondence"). The question then becomes whether and how they will adhere to this "truth." The good, or the positive ethical "precept" for Badiou is "be faithful to the event" or "keep going, don't let this event fade, don't let it become a merely historical fact". The evil would be to either deny this truth, to be unfaithful to the lover, or alternately to treat this truth as an absolute fact -- with the possible consequence in this case that the lover terrorize his beloved, refusing to acknowledge her freedom to break away. He addresses politics (where an event would be a revolution) and science (where the event would be something like a Kuhnian paradigm shift) as other areas where events might generate a truth that can be either held to or despised.So far, so good. There's a lot here that is worth taking seriously and thinking about. The water gets a bit murky though, in a number of places. For example, he wants to insist that the "truths" that arise from "events" are in some way universal or eternal, and what is particular is the question how the individual who finds herself compelled by the truth will live out her fidelity to that truth in the situation. It's hard to see, though, how the truth that emerges from the event of MY falling in love becomes a universal truth - unless he means something very peculiar by "universal" or unless he means that the "same" thing could happen to anyone even though it will be unique to each in the event, or that in loving another person I love what is universal, that which enables them and all human beings to be faithful to events. Some things he said suggested something like that, but other things he said make me think he'd resist such a reading. There's a lot to sort out, and I'm still not sure what to make of his positive ethic -- but it's intriguing enough and there is enough interesting material here to make me want to try and go back again and figure it out. His book on Paul makes a worthwhile companion text to this one, that helped me clear up some (but not all) of the murky areas of this text.

A difficult book to read, but well structured and explanatory from one of the world's best author. It is a must read for those interested in the subject and willing to work a lot {only get out what you put in}.