Being in the World According to Badiou Brian O'Keeffe Proponents of the "ontological turn" have apparently brokered a concordat between thinkers. For whatever the diversity of cultures and civilizations studied by archeologists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers (and even literary comparatists), the matter of mutual interest remains the world, and what it means to be in the world. Ontology—philosophical ontology—reminds us that while there are many worldviews, there is but one world. Despite the plethora of possible existences, we all partake of the same way of being—there's no other way to be, and the alternative is nugatory, namely non-being. Ontology starts with "what is," with the marvelous, albeit mundane constat that there is something rather than nothing, and with the meaning of being—being as such, being qua being. It's hard to disagree with philosophical ontology, whatever our disciplinary affiliations in anthropology, sociology, history, and so forth, though whether that enjoins such disciplines to subordinate themselves to philosophy's prerogative to offer the last (or first) word on being-in-the-world is perhaps the crux of the matter—and why there's some way to go before that concordat is definitively established. Moreover, that prerogative perhaps depends on whether philosophy can immunize itself from other disciplines, such that whenever it addresses life, existence, or the human being, there's no risk that philosophy blurs the difference between itself and other disciplines. Philosophical ontology's privilege is secured if one accepts that it can deploy concepts of being, man, existence, life, and world. That security would presumably ensure that it remains capable of not being anthropology, sociology, zoology or biology. It would further ensure that it's capable of speaking the truth about being, man, existence, life, and world. For without that capacity, philosophy declines into an ignorant muddle. It must therefore be able to tell us what the case is truly, absolutely, or categorically, including—if this happens to be the case—the world, and the meaning of being-in-the-world. For some, philosophy is less secure than it might wish. For others, the bid to destabilize philosophy, or check its privilege, is injurious, menacing philosophy's sovereign purchase on Concepts, Ideas, even Truth itself. Required is accordingly an effort to buttress philosophy, and especially ontology—prima philosophia. One way is to reserve the right to speak of Being, to keep that concept (if it is one) always in the philosophical back-pocket. But sometimes the corollary is a philosophical discourse of supercilious abstraction—the insinuation that other discourses and [End Page 25] disciplines are incapable of the abstract complexity required if one wishes to to get at what being really is. Yet once philosophy shifts from a lean ontology concerned only with being and non-being and towards a description of life as it's verily lived, much depends on whether philosophy can convincingly get at the textures of le vécu and moreover whether it can inspire us with a sense of the meaning of life, or the point of existence. Philosophy has responded variously: it has recommended that we aspire to eudemonistic excellence, or that we live a life of deontological steadfastness to a moral code. It has recommended that we give ourselves an existential project, and—as in existentialism—has addressed the anxieties that obtain when we are each daunted by the unfettered liberty to be. As for the world in which such liberties (or absurdities) can be explored, philosophy has given us a habitable, gemütlich world, full of recognizable and useful objects—Heidegger's world, to certain extent. Sartre has given us a less cozy world, one shorn of familiarity (particularly once language falters in its ability to name, and thus recognize a given object). Recall Nausea, and Roquentin's ontological queasiness as he contemplates the world's gnarled, pebbly, flaccid, viscous, and shitty materiality. If Heidegger and Sartre come to mind, it's because we have these imposing texts—Being and Time, Being and Nothingness—that squarely confront the question of being. This duo of ontological treatises can now be complemented by a third, equally imposing account, namely Alain Badiou's Being and Event and...