Abstract
Abstract Various critiques of important (early) analytic thinkers made by Alain Badiou in the late 1960s have been largely overlooked by continental philosophers and entirely overlooked by analytic philosophers. This paper looks in detail at Badiou’s 1969 essay ‟Mark and Lack,” providing an exposition and clarification of his direct and sustained critique of Gottlob Frege’s supposed ideological (rather than scientific) philosophical commitments. Badiou’s intellectual context is analyzed in some detail, not only explaining his theoretical debt to his then-master Louis Althusser, but also clarifying his understandings of the notions of ‟the scientific” and ‟the ideological” in light of the projects of Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem. A philosophical exposition of Badiou’s point-by-point critique of Frege’s conception of logic follows. Finally, the paper concludes with an analysis of the more general relevance of Badiou’s half-century-old critiques in light of developments in contemporary analytic metaphysics, especially those indebted to W. V. O. Quine and Donald Davidson. In essence, Davidson’s Fregean reconfiguration of Tarski’s work on truth (more explicit than, but not unrelated to, Quine’s work) places contemporary analytic metaphysics within the scope of what Badiou directly criticizes. It is suggested that Badiou’s critique find a place in discussions of analytic metaphysics.
Highlights
Various critiques of important analytic thinkers made by Alain Badiou in the late 1960s have been largely overlooked by continental philosophers and entirely overlooked by analytic philosophers
The paper concludes with an analysis of the more general relevance of Badiou’s half-century-old critiques in light of developments in contemporary analytic metaphysics, especially those indebted to W
Attempting to defend and to solidify the role played in the French Communist Party by philosophers and intellectuals, Althusser famously argued that “philosophy represents politics in the domain of theory or, to be more precise: with the sciences—and, vice versa, philosophy represents scientificity in politics, with the classes engaged in the class struggle.”[5]. His basic (Leninist) idea was that spontaneous ideological associations held by those at work within the sciences always compromise the actual practice of science
Summary
In the mid-60s, Badiou unquestionably remained under the influence of his former teacher, Louis Althusser, as many commenters—and Badiou himself—have often noted.[3]. Frege famously establishes the definition of the number 0 “on purely logical grounds”: “0 is the Number which belongs to the concept ‘not identical with itself.’”18 He establishes a well-defined successor function that allows the whole number series to be derived from operations performed on the defined number 0: “there exists a concept F, and an object falling under it x, such that the Number which belongs to the concept F is n and the Number which belongs to the concept ‘falling under F but not identical with x is m.”19 As Freud generally and Lacan formally defines the complex structure of the speaking subject, Frege defines number in terms of a foundational lack or void (the number 0) and an enchaining or repetition function that sutures the discernibly structured onto that foundational lack or void (the successor function).[20] This general parallel interests Miller, but what perhaps especially draws him to set Freud-Lacan side by side with Frege is a further and more particular (potential) parallel.
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