Covering Part 8 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event on “Theory of the Subject,” Alex and Andrew discuss the theory of subject and the event, and Badiou’s wider work.

Guest Andrei Rodin contextualizes Badiou’s project through its relation to the wider philosophy of mathematics. Rodin is a mathematician and philosopher with affiliations in France, including the University of Lorraine and the University Paris-Cité, and in Russia at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint-Petersburgh State University, as well as the Russian Society for History and Philosophy of Science. He is the author of Axiomatic Method and Category Theory.

Concepts related to the Theory of the Subject

Badiou’s Theory of the Subject, the Future Anterior of Truth, Paul Cohen’s Forcing, Comments on Lacan, Event versus Language, Subject, The Outside, The Undocumented Family, State as Preventing the Event, Decolonize Badiou.

Recap of Being and Event

(Parts 1-3) normal and natural, being qua being, entities multiples sets void, ordinal chains, infinity (natural and real), being is the state and state of situation (form through set theory) (Part 4) turning point, there will always be sites that are presented but whose members are represented, gap, normal and abnormal, un- in- ex-, (Second Half of the Book) how things work, fidelity as a procedure that assigning belonging (temporal), quasi existentialism of the decision, against a construction which is an internal model that grinds through itself, construction always hits an impasse (errancy of the excess of the situation), external model, excess (End of the Book), fidelity to the event, not an act of construction, subtraction, the subtractive procedure is forcing (Cohen), the generic is a product of forcing (Cohen), the four truth procedures (love, art, science, politics) are for subjects, the subject is local configuration of event, fidelity, force, generic.

Further Reading

Manifesto for Philosophy (BE Explainer), Number and Numbers (math notes for BE), Conditions (Four Truth Procedures); BE Trilogy: (1) BE is both abstract and set theoretical, (2) LW is in the world and takes the perspective from world that truth interrupts, and IT (3) takes the perspective of truth to asks where everything else comes from (in favor of infinite against finite); Logic of Worlds is less heroic, undoes the eureka theory of event, more temporality and history, subjectivity as process, phenomenology, additional math theories, category theory; Immanence of Truths, back to set theory, transfinite mathematics and large cardinals, in the Gödel-Cohen debate “I choose Cohen”

Interview with Andrei Rodin

WVO Quine, Set Theory, Meta-Mathematics, Category Theory, Computation, ZFC and Paul Cohen, Constructivist Mathematics, Infinities and Georg Cantor, Euclid and Numbers, Big Numbers, Non-Countable Sets, Axioms, David Hilbert, Generic, Forcing

Links

Rodin page, http://philomatica.org/

Rodin papers, https://varetis.academia.edu/AndreiRodin

Rodin texts, http://philomatica.org/my-stuff/my-texts/

Rodin, Review of Badiou’s “Mathematics of the Transcendental,” http://philomatica.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/braspublished.pdf

Rodin, Axiomatic Method and Category Theory, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-00404-4