Badiou’s Ethics of Singularity, The Federalist 10, and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

The relationship between ethics and politics is a curious one. It highlights an even deeper relationship between theory and practice. In a debate with Cornel West at Princeton University in March, 2006, French Philosopher Alain Badiou highlights three classical conceptions of ethics: the Theological, the Natural conception, and the Formalist. Perhaps this should be our beginning. Theological ethics, Badiou articulates, is an ethics of submission. The difference between good and evil is a transcendental one ruled by God and not by human beings. You have to obey the law—as divine law is the most important concept. In the Natural conception, the dichotomy of good and evil is a human one. There is a certain sensibility that guides action. Badiou suggests this conception is based on pity in understanding the suffering of one or another, “you have an immediate pity for the suffering of the human animal” Badiou says. Natural ethics is an ethics of sensibility where the most important concept is that of the victim. In the formal conception, the difference of good and evil depends on the form of action. This form is subjective. The form is not the content or the goal of action of but the subjective intention of action. If one acts exclusively, taking into consideration a moral duty, he or she is right. If one acts taking into consideration personal interests, he or she is wrong. The formalist ethics, Badiou says, is based on “purely subjective liberty.” The most important concept here is that of the formal imperative—what Kant calls the Categorical Imperative—a standard of rationality which all moral requirements are derived.

It is here that Badiou breaks from classical ethics as articulated above in that he believes there is no abstract or divine law which says to or for us which is good or evil. There is no general or natural feeling between victims which says what we have to do. And there is no formal imperative which allows us to separate good will and bad will. In other words, to fix an orientation to action or judgment, there is no general rule, no immediate sensibility, or pure form. One must think about the immediate situation and find a new rule of action. It is within this that Badiou introduces an “Ethics of Singularity”—the singular situation that guides action. Furthermore, Badiou says knowing the immediate situation is not enough. One must know the day’s geopolitical situation. Where I feel Badiou’s Ethics of singularity falls short but doesn’t necessarily lose potency is in his taking for granted the concept of the state—particularly the liberal state theoretically birthed within a sense of republicanism but also the notion of private ownership.

In the Federalist No. 10, Madison writes, “The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is not less and insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of Government.” Madison goes on further to add,

“…the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results: and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.”

I contend that it is critical to keep Madison’s reasoning for factions within a state in context with the social developments of the day—particularly the economic. Historian Joyce Appleby has argued that the development of the free market was one of the few true novelties in history, changing the relationship of not only person to person, but of person to government—and that the roots of liberal social thought did not lie in past politics or classical theories of government, but to the first writings on the free-market economy (Appleby 1992, 166-167). Appleby also quotes English economist Charles Davenant, as he went further and connected the setting of prices and the law of self-preservation, in so saying that the “Naturall [sic] course of trade, each commodity will find its price,” going further, that “the supreme power can do many things, but it cannot alter the Laws of Nature of which the most original is, that every man should preserve himself” (Appleby 1992, 169). In many senses, there was something moral represented in every economic act. If we explore these premises (of Madison and Appleby), we can see how the market has the ability to cause social tensions and affect political life. We can also reasonably agree that those who were more suited to understand the mechanics of the market are able to exact better ends from their means and acquire more than those who do not.

Taking this notion of private property and the market—seen by many as having its own moral force—growing to influence political life from at least the late 17th century—we can begin to see a place where the classical articulation of formal of ethics—the formal imperative lies—in the free-market as it had the jurisdiction to play into Madison’s reasoning for factions and various political interests coming out of the dynamics of ownership. This situation proposes an interesting scenario on a society premised on republicanism. If the free-market is seen as a natural entity within which those who are more aware of its machinery can benefit and acquire more than those who do not, from where will the protections from faction emerge but within government and from where but governmental institutions can protections be secured? What is to keep the masters of the market from gaining overwhelming control of the very institutions that were created to check power? And what is to keep people engaged in the political process as they are crowded out by powerful interests? Concerning the formal imperative, Badiou walks away from it because there is no general principle that separates good will from bad. In fact, he calls this scenario of formal imperative (in this case, the market being seen as a moral arbiter where standards of rationality emerge) “subjective liberty.”

This republican spirit fused with commercialism is certainly not new to history. Late 16th century Venice as depicted by William Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice allows us to see some of the social effects of Republicanism when mingled with commercialism. The first interesting parallel of 16th century Venice to what would become the United States is that there existed strong religious sentiments. Each professing doctrines of how life should be lived while on earth with special attention to the hereafter. Many authors of high esteem have produced work of such high caliber on this era of history that I dare not speak after them, but I do feel it necessary to make a point of connection. My argument here is that of Allan Bloom’s, which is to say that in the United States, like in Venice, republicanism had to overcome a religious question. This dealt mainly with how to teach people to deal with the here and now rather than to the hereafter (Bloom 1996, 15). This commercial spirit was perhaps a moderating factor from which toleration had to emerge so all involved in the society could benefit (though some more than others). In other words, the State had to become tolerant to be able to embrace in a stable order, men of widely differing beliefs (Bloom 1996, 15). In the play, the main conflict is between Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, and Antonio, a Christian merchant whose love for his friend Bassanio, who needs money in order to embark on a voyage to find a good match for himself, leads him to sign a contract with Shylock. Shylock does not care for the man or his interest, but through them he can profit for himself. What he does is neither noble nor generous, but it is not unjust (Bloom 1996, 19). As Badiou says, in this formal conception, where there is no formal law/imperative to separate good will from bad, shows us a point where the ethical tensions between Shylock and Antonio originate. Under the contract signed by Antonio, Shylock would extract a pound of flesh if the debt could not be repaid. It is Antonio’s basic understanding or gravitation towards life that leads him to contract with shylock in the first place, who doesn’t appear to have that same view.

This is the point where the formal imperative collapses if one was had to begin with. However, the two men are linked by money. Antonio must borrow from Shylock and this is done under contract not bound by good faith (Bloom 1996, 20) leading us to a testament as to how opposed the two men are in conceiving of the same humanity they operate under. “I will buy with you, sell with you, talke with you, walke with you, and so following: but I will not eate with you, drinke with you, nor pray with you” (Act I, Scene III). Upon this point we can begin to realize the depth of James Madison’s words in the Federalist 10. If republicanism, as understood to be where all can live in liberty and security, was to overcome the religious question, a mechanism was needed to involve those who would rather focus on the hereafter to be involved in the here and now. The development of the free-market effectively or abortively provided such a mechanism and established the foundation for simple toleration under various intentions (as we see with Shylock and Antonio). Under consumerism, people are allowed to gain and claim ownership and are almost compelled to engage society in order to preserve their lot. It is upon this dynamic that we see the possible development of faction. It is perhaps under these influences that Madison puts forth the argument that the causes of faction cannot be removed, but the effects must be controlled.

Madison defines faction as
“…a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

We are now left to consider when a faction consists of less than or more than the majority. To cure the problem of faction by a majority, Madison suggests that the principle of a Republic, that of which the scheme of representation takes place, instead of a Democracy. He says the effect of this difference is

“[T]o refine and enlarge the public view, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”

Madison believes that under these conditions, the public will pronounced by representatives will provide more positive ailment than if the people themselves gather for the purpose. To be sure, Madison was aware of the possibility that there could be those of “factitious tempers” or “sinister designs” could by intrigue, corruption or other means obtain the confidence of the people and betray the public interest. To this he reveals that a larger Republic is better than a smaller one where representatives will be limited to a certain number and will be chosen by a larger number of people. His reasoning is as such,

“Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; […] if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it do discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.”

Tempted, I feel as though there is room to extrapolate to republican governments this notion of formal ethics under a formal imperative as an attempt to establish what is good or bad. For Madison’s Republic, it is stocked in the very principle of republicanism which takes for granted that which compels people to engage, en masse, in political society. In other words, perhaps Madison did not or could not articulate an organizing principle for his Republic that would connect all involved and was only left with that spirit of consumerism we visited in 16th century Venice which is, by his words, is the cause of faction and consequently, its remedy if somehow rerouted. Perhaps it is on this point where Badiou’s Ethics of Singularity has promise. He calls for one or a society in order to fix an orientation to action or judgment to look at the immediate situation and find a new rule. For Madison, Shylock and Antonio, they each have their beliefs of the organizing principles of society and humanity—whether in the Republican principle, general view of humanity or that of contract or societal law—each strand of formal imperatives seems to be guided by this unifying factor which still does not express how one could or should distinguish good from bad. This is where Badiou says one must also know the geopolitical orientation of the world. In a sense, Badiou asks of us to believe in the world and our relation to it. And for this, we must believe in the concrete lives of people. It is through this action that we can find the goodness or badness in the situations we are confronted.


Appleby, Joyce. 1992. Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination. Harvard University Press, March 1.
Bloom, Allan. 1996. Shakespeare's Politics. University Of Chicago Press, December 1.

Legal Theory and Cosmopolitanism: Identity and Its Discontents

“And when one day our human kind becomes full-grown, it will not define itself as the sum total of the whole world's inhabitants, but as the infinite unity of their mutual needs.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre

The philosophy that led sociologist C. Wright Mills to his many insights of American life in the first half of the 20^th century was arguably his belief in the Sociological Imagination.—The practice of tying the individual experience with institutions and a focus on the relationship between biography and history to bring about a fuller understanding of the individual and/or the society which she is a part of. To be sure, this notion of attaching the concept of empathy to distant individuals to bring about organic understanding is not particularly new, though perhaps forgotten in our times of curious contradiction.

Historian Lynn Hunt argues that the epistolary advent of the novel in the 18^th century had physical effects (citing Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa and Rousseau’s Julie) which created new concepts on the organization of social and political life. It is with these broadening feelings of empathy that feelings or rights in our time have grown to become largely “self-evident.” Prior to the beginning of the epistolary novel, Dr. Hunt argues, attention hadn’t been focused on how individual minds understand and reshape social and cultural contexts.

Reaching further back still, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, last of the “five good emperors”, starts his Meditations (originally written as entries in a personal notebook) by listing all the people whom he learned something worthwhile from: “From my father I observed mildness of temper and unchangeable resolution in the things which he had determined after due deliberation….” Above all, perhaps, Aurelius’ Mediations are replete with the finite nature of human life and the infinite nature of the universe. When one realizes this cosmology, Aurelius argues that the proper course one should take is the labor to common interest and to value everything with just reference to the whole. Since his death in 180 AD, the Meditations have been read and have influenced millions of people including Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

I briefly cite these examples (with an admitted bias to Marcus Aurelius) to show that examining the relationship between the individual and society has brought tremendous insight and principles of advancement through human history—particularly in the rights and privileges we all know and experience on some level today. In many ways, our Arts and Humanities education is directed to studying or at least developing concepts which enable us to think about others. Our economy, as we are seeing, is inextricably tied to those of other countries as we share in the weal and woe of development, coexistence, and stability.

There is much to be said about this concept of empathy and the recognition of the dynamic biographical history of individuals in relation to the socio-cultural contexts in which they live—particularly if there have been instances overtime that have led to a leveling of society which benefits all. In attempts not to lineate the many facets and forms of empathy that exist, there are institutions such as the legal and its schools of thought that arguably, in their attempts to discern by ascribing a theoretical equality of all individuals, disregard or singularize the individual experience in relation to socio-cultural history. In order to further carry my position, I will be citing Eric A. Posner’s essay analyzing Boumediene v. Bush, “Boumediene and the Uncertain March of Judicial Cosmopolitanism.”

In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that noncitizens detained at Guantanamo Bay have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus and that the review procedures established by the Detainee Treatment Act do not provide a sufficient substitute for habeas corpus. Posner argues that Justice Kennedy’s opinion (which he wrote for the majority) is largely due to a commitment to protecting the interests of noncitizens overseas—a commitment he calls “judicial cosmopolitanism.” Posner’s conclusion and critique of Justice Kennedy rests on the idea of an American political community of which people outside are denied certain rights. This harkens back to a disagreement I have with many ideal theorists (mainly Rawls) whose conception of a political community rests on a closed state that one is born into and can never leave. Furthermore, he cites logistic difficulties in granting habeas corpus rights dealing with cost, difficulty, and a dangerous setting for the military to comply with requirements of a habeas hearing.

Posner argues that Justice Kennedy places all weight on the logistical concern and perhaps none on the political community concern. While the case against a logistics argument is admittedly weak as stated by Posner (since Guantanamo Bay is about 500 miles away from Florida), Justice Kennedy notes that the habeas court will give deference to the government where deference is justified and the argument that habeas hearings are logistically unreasonable is, until experience proves otherwise, foreclosed. Posner then further criticizes Kennedy for not taking the “natural” assumption that “nonresident aliens just don’t have the rights Americans have.” Which almost begs the question, just what is an “American right” and what makes it so exclusive that all should not possess them if our goal in the legal system is to distinguish truth and fairness from fallacy—particularly in a time where crimes are committed against America are coming from those all over the world?

His conclusion for Justice Kennedy’s reasoning?

…Justice Kennedy is a Cosmopolitan.

Here, by Posner, and taken in a similar route by Rawls and others, we have the curious avenues one can take to articulate theories of justice. By taking the identity of an individual and her place in society and either disregarding it and placing them in an either/or situation so long as rights are concerned, as Posner does, or singularizing them (as with Rawls) by limiting the individual to a closed society and only able to belong to that community, we have curious makings of a habit of unwillingness to deal with human complexity. If we are to uphold a just and fair legal system in a post 9/11 world where even our presidential candidates are being called terrorists by fellow citizens, while our government sends billions for oil to many people who would do us harm, and where labeling carries a certain disregard for and singularizes identity. It is becoming clear in more ways than one that our current conceptions of human ecology and identity may not serve us justly for the future.

Cosmopolitan Judging and Habeas Corpus

Eric Posner has recently posted an essay analyzing Boumediene v. Bush, critical of what he calls "judicial cosmopolitanism" in the decision. The essay is typical of Posner--learned, nimble, and provocative. I do not find it convincing since he is, as he himself admits, working on the premise that Boumediene's major contribution to jurisprudence was to extend constitutional rights to noncitizens on foreign soil. The Court made no such pronouncement, and Posner acknowledges that the decision can be read much more narrowly.

If one separates his analysis of Boumediene to his critique of cosmopolitan judging, then we have the makings of a new debate in constitutional law. For better or worse, conservatives seem to line up in the "American exceptionalism" and positivist camps, adhering to originalism in constitutional construction. Liberals seem (also for better or worse) to be more interested in global human rights and the symbiotic relationship between American constituitonal law and global law. Posner's essay, while not particularly deep, is an excellent introduction to these ideas, and offers a conservative, thoughtful critique of cosmopolitan judging.

One effect of continually appointing strict originalists and positivists to the bench (people like Scalia and Alito) is that their palpable disdain for foreign law in an increasingly global era has lessened the influence of the Supreme Court internationally. The Court used to be the gold standard for constitutional law, but it is now in decline. Not that this signals an immediate need to admit foreign law into Supreme Court opinions--and certainly not as controling law--but we must be honest about the consequences of judicial parochialism as well as judicial cosmopolitanism.

Cosmopolitanism and the Revenge of Logicalitiness

Or vice versa. Before I write another post complaining about coalition-building within political parties and how this affects true constitutional change, I thought I'd post a link to this article by Jonathan Rauch on the Republican's war on cosmopolitanism, logic, reason, science, and other things now pegged "elitist." Rauch's satire works brilliantly as both comedy and biting commentary.

It feels good to take a breather from the madness.

Cosmopolitan Education and Pedagogy: Liberal Education in the 21st Century

It is to John Locke whom we owe modern conceptions of “dignity” (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/nc05.htm). Locke essentially conceptualizes it as an enabler for someone to hold special standing and/or an entitlement to respect. Nowadays it seems that everyone is in possession of this “enabler”; you get it just by being born, by simply showing up. This dignity that is widespread among humanity, once only ascribed to landed nobility—negating the plebian, serf, servant and slave, is perhaps one of the driving forces of liberalism today. Couple this notion (and Protestantism) with Immanuel Kant’s first articulation of the philosophical concept of Autonomy and we begin to see how liberalism is a peculiar creature of the west.

One cannot accurately engage liberalism without coming to a realization that implies an inherent pluralism in terms of human flourishing. In other words, a liberal perspective on life is conceptually an autonomous one—one that gives ample recognition and encouragement to personal development as one sees fit under the assumption that there will be equal recognition (because of inherent dignity) for everyone’s ability to also do the same so long as one’s own personal development does not encroach on the ability of another to also flourish. This liberal abstraction meets certain bulwarks as we begin to consider the institution of the public school, and dynamics of identity.

This Liberal idea of autonomous identity can be cause of political strife if we consider the debate over what should be taught in schools regarding identity claims and the seeming acceptance or recognition of some, and not others—Christian let’s say and not lesbian and gay. Again, this liberal idea of identity has resulted in substantial national and ethnic political debate over just what the truth is and at times resulting on a turn on the liberal state’s premise of acknowledging a person’s identity and protecting each person’s ability to flourish. Conflicting claims to identity-flourishing are not easily solvable by experts or ad hoc committees,-- and when considering claims of morality, which arguably lead to notions of identity, there aren’t any experts or supreme authorities to settle these moral arguments once and for all (take the debate on evolution and intelligent design for example and the gradation of opinions therein).

So, then, with these often conflicting metaphysical projections in the liberal state, educating children in many ways requires preparing them for an autonomous relationship with the dignity and autonomy of others. Because one, we as humans are not capable of developing on our own. Two, we are inextricably tied to others via relationships (parents, friends, lovers, family, children, neighbors, etc.). And perhaps third, because the things we come to value that concern the arts, the culture, money, food from other places, depend on the network of society. To be sure, we should not assume that the school has the primary role in educating children—we can rightly assume that parents have the central role. While it is true that the state may disagree with parents on how to teach children, the parents do not lose their roles. The state, in my own and the view of other philosophers, should intervene to protect the child’s growth into autonomy by promoting the notion of choices among options so that one, the child is aware of the choices of others by virtue of their equal dignity and autonomy, and two, the child’s parents still have the role of primary instruction when it comes to raising their children, and three, for the child to make the decisions that would lead her into autonomy.

Another problem then occurs if we accept this notion of choices among options within the school setting. How does this doctrine, then, suggest proper pedagogical methodology? In particular, if we hold true to the choices among options doctrine, we then should not omit some options. In the West, we have a peculiar way of asserting Euro-influenced methodologies essentially negating the other options other groups of people have come to raise and educate their children. For example, Harvard Economics Professor, Roland Fryer mentioned recently on CNN’s Black in America that African-American students perform lower than children in third-world countries. In many ways we could argue that all the options aren’t being afforded to children via routes to autonomy because those options have been restricted to a Euro-American sensibilities and politics of pedagogy while giving arguably proper avenue to place some responsibility on parents (or the lack thereof) which may lead to other critical forces causing such disparity. How, then, should the liberal state decide on a curriculum teleologically aimed at autonomy? Better yet, how can the liberal stat ensure it?

There is immediately the problem of what we can all agree the truth is (take religious education which preaches certain things about homosexuality and abortion). There is also the conflict of how much weight to place on different topics often among the same topic. Consider what I call the Lincoln paradox: In American history, just how much focus should be placed, pedagogically, to his decision to emancipate the slaves? Lincoln is generally depicted as a pariah of social justice given his time, but of what mention is equally often given of the political benefits of the emancipation for Union forces and of how he did not view blacks as equal to whites? The issue is not what the facts are, but which ones we should focus on as we teach children about events, ideas, and subjectivities—not just what happened, but what narratives those lessons are wed in. Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that since children are not readily able to absorb truth in all of its complexity, we must begin with simplified truths and perhaps what is even untrue. For example, we are taught untruth when we learn physics: We learn Newton and Maxwell before we learn Einstein and Schrödinger. Newton and Maxwell, he says did not know about relativity or about interdeterminancy of fundamental physical laws and so their physics which assumes absolute space and infinite divisibility is just not true. Perhaps this argument does not hold as much water when we move from concrete mathematical principles to the subjectivities of the mind, but maybe there is something to it all.

This “subjectivity problem” in education is highly critical because subjectivity arises generally from some interaction with the world (or lack thereof) and there are notions of intersubjectivity as noted by Sartre and also W.E.B. Du Bois’ thesis of double consciousness which unquestionably play a role in how people become aware of choices among options. And since subjectivity is a necessary child of autonomy certain claims of truth are made based on identity and of moral reasoning which are both plural by liberal nature. To these problems, Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests that a compromise should at least be considered. He states that when identity claims are at stake, parents are permitted to insist that their children not be taught what is contrary to their beliefs and in turn the state insists that the child be told what others believe in the name of a desire for the sort of mutual knowledge across identities that is a condition for living productively together.