Although a frustrating incalculable for the engineers of government, religion must be acknowledged as that without which the techniques and technologies of human subjectivity would not exist. I am not here arguing for the adoption of certain religious practices or beliefs, but simply qualifying the centrality of the political by insisting on the necessity of the religious. I maintain that the asymmetry characteristic of all civilizations stems from ruptures that I describe as religious, or evental—terms that I maintain are equivalent. To probe the intricacies of asymmetrical warfare in the twenty-first century is to ask, “Whence and whither the Event?”
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Paul has emerged as central to some of the most prominent European intellectuals today, notably Alain Badiou in Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. On the one hand, Badiou claims his philosophy to be a post-metaphysics in accord with postmodern critiques of traditional ontologies. He thus empties Paul of either historical or supernatural content. And yet, Badiou reconstructs what amounts to a secular political theology that strikingly reproduces the dogmatism of metaphysics. As his title announces, Badiou resurrects Paul in the name of universalism. Universalism claims to be, and indeed often is, an attempt to safeguard and respect everyone equally. But in Badiou universalism restages the erasure of difference and multiplicity in human experience that launched metaphysical critique in the first place. As secular venture what he ironically demonstrates is how tenacious traditional metaphysical unity remains even in apparently post-theological discourses. Geoffrey Holsclaw’s “At a Distance to the State: On the Politics of Hobbes and Badiou” appears in Telos 160 (Fall 2012). Read the full version online at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue here. |
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Amid the contested status of the State, juxtaposing the political thought of Thomas Hobbes and Alain Badiou will facilitate a renewed questioning of the State itself. Hobbes stands near the beginning of the tradition of those using “State” as a term for the impersonal form of political authority between ruler and ruled, understanding politics as culminating in the State. Badiou, on the other hand, while assuming the basic conviction of the impersonal nature of the State, theorizes a space for politics at a distance to the State. This encounter is promising not only because of their differences, but because of their similarities. Both take mathematics as the key to their philosophical method. Both envision the primary situation as a tumultuous “multitude” or “multiplicity.” And both understand politics as the creation of a “One.” Yet their overriding difference is manifest in the position of the State in relation to the production of the One, and therefore politics itself. For Hobbes, politics culminates in the formation of the One within the State, or rather, as the State. For Badiou, politics occurs as the pronouncement of a One at a distance to the State. After showing how Badiou moves through and beyond Hobbes, this essay explores the upshot of Badiou’s understanding of politics in relation to other political theories, particularly how recent proposals from within a pragmatist-Hegelian framework hold a hidden alliance with Hobbesian contract theory. 
