Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
- DIFFERENT/CIATION
- 2 Real Essences without Essentialism
- 3 Deleuze, Kant, and the Theory of Immanent Ideas
- 4 The Precariousness of Being and Thought in the Philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou
- 5 Counter-Actualisation and the Method of Intuition
- 6 Inconsistencies of Character: David Hume on Sympathy, Intensity and Artifice
- 7 A Fourth Repetition
- LIFE, ETHICS, POLITICS
- EPILOGUE
- List of Contributors
- Index
5 - Counter-Actualisation and the Method of Intuition
from DIFFERENT/CIATION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
- DIFFERENT/CIATION
- 2 Real Essences without Essentialism
- 3 Deleuze, Kant, and the Theory of Immanent Ideas
- 4 The Precariousness of Being and Thought in the Philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou
- 5 Counter-Actualisation and the Method of Intuition
- 6 Inconsistencies of Character: David Hume on Sympathy, Intensity and Artifice
- 7 A Fourth Repetition
- LIFE, ETHICS, POLITICS
- EPILOGUE
- List of Contributors
- Index
Summary
In his article, ‘Un, multiple, multiplicité(s)’ (2000), Badiou reiterates his earlier objections to Deleuze: (1) Deleuze's conception of ‘set’ is anachronistic because it is pre-Cantorian. It ignores the extraordinary immanent dialectic that mathematics has bestowed (dotē) this concept since the end of the nineteenth century; (2) Deleuze's concept of multiplicity remains inferior (because of its qualitative differentiation) to the concept of multiple emerging from the history of contemporary mathematics; and (3) the qualitative determination of multiplicities makes it impossible to subtract them from their equivocal re-absorption into the One (of classical ontology). In the same article, Badiou complains that those who attacked his interpretation of Deleuze (that is, Arnaud Villani and José Gil) (1998) missed their mark because they failed to take into account the ontological alternative he provides in L‘être et l'évènement (hereafter EE):
If our critics intend (entendent) to demonstrate, as they should within the doctrine that they inherit from the free indirect discourse, that what we say on Deleuze is homogeneous with L'être et l'évènement, it would still be necessary, as at least Deleuze attempted, to synthesize what is singular about it (Badiou 1988: 196).
It is not my intention to revisit the question of whether Deleuze is, or is not, committed to a unitary conception of Being. Instead, I want to focus my attention on Badiou's own ontology. In particular, I want to examine the implications that Badiou's mathematical ontology has for his theory of the event.
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- Deleuze and Philosophy , pp. 74 - 84Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2006