Badiou and Law

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ALAIN BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM:

OBJECTIVITY AND CHANGE
Talia Morag*
INTRODUCTION
In this paper I propose a reading of Alain Badiou’s Logics of

Worlds, through which I try to localize Alain Badiou in the
contemporary scene of neo-pragmatism. This may sound as an
inherently incorrect attempt. Badiou is a systematic thinker who
proposes a theory of objectivity and change. In this respect, he is
certainly not a pragmatist. What is more, as will be explicated in this
paper, his theory carries an undeniable metaphysical weight, which is
normally rejected by pragmatists.
Nevertheless, Badiou’s theory contains, whether explicitly or
implicitly, some important pragmatic features that permit the
interpretation in which I here engage. This paper is thus meant to
introduce to the scene of neo-pragmatism the Badiouian dialectical
spirit. The pragmatic reading, in turn, will settle and clarify the meaning
of central Badiouian concepts.
When I say “pragmatism,” I do not mean a theory of truth or a
method, but a philosophical attitude, characterized by a few central
theses formulated by Hillary Putnam.1
This paper follows three intertwined paths. The first is
identificatory, that is, the demonstration that Badiou’s philosophy can
indeed be interpreted pragmatically, since it complies with Putnam’s
theses and other pragmatic features. The second is theoretical, that is,
the (pragmatist) interpretation of certain aspects of Badiou’s theory of
objectivity and change.
* University of Sydney. I would like to thank my teachers David Macarthur and Paul
Redding for their comments, inspiration, and support. I would also like to thank Udi Fuchs for
his comments all along the writing process and invaluable help. I thank wholeheartedly Anat
Matar and especially Robert Hockett for their remarks and insightful conversations. Many thanks
to the organizers of and participants in the “Law and Event” Symposium held at the Cardozo Law
School of Yeshiva University in November 2007, in particular David Carlson, Carrie Maylor, and
Mary Cate Ryan.
1 HILARY PUTNAM, Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity, in WORDS AND LIFE (James Conant
ed., 1994).
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2240 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 29:5
The third path is ideological. Four pictures of change are

presented, each with its regulative principle. These pictures are
schematized and ordered in a table at the end of the paper. In order to
follow that path I have elaborated on the issue of world-inclusion,
which is not discussed in Logics of Worlds.
I. DEMOCRATIC MATERIALISM
Regulative Principle of Integration
The first thesis of pragmatism Putnam presents is anti-skepticism.

As Charles S. Peirce put it, doubting an entire system of knowledge is a
mere “make believe.”2 Philosophical doubt is inauthentic. Most of our
knowledge, at any given time, is safe from doubt.
Conversely, real doubt “requires justification just as much as
belief.”3 This is the doubt that poses a challenge to a system of beliefs
in such way that the latter may go though change. Such change is
gradual rather than the full erasing of one theory and the installation of a
new one in its place.
Badiou’s anti-skepticism is his campaign against what he calls
“democratic materialism,” which is, in fact, Badiou’s reading of
contemporary liberalism. I will not justify this reading by comparing it
to other formulations of liberalism, but will offer arguments so as to
strengthen Badiou’s general view.4
The social world, according to democratic materialism, is
composed of homogeneous elements. These are people, individuals,
who are all living human bodies. The homogeneity of the elements of a
social world implies that they should be treated equally by the social
law.
The first democratic value is thus the equality of individuals in
respect of the law. And that value is incarnated in the law of human
rights. All individuals should respect, and in turn be granted those
rights. In other words, the homogeneity of people becomes in the world
of democratic materialism the homogeneity of citizens in the eyes of the
democratic law.
The elements of the world of democratic materialism are bound in
various groups or communities. Each community is, in effect, its own
2 Charles Sanders Peirce, What Pragmatism Is, THE MONIST, Apr. 1905, at 161-81.
3 PUTNAM, supra note 1, at 152.
4 ALAIN BADIOU, LOGIQUES DES MONDES (2006) [hereinafter LOGICS OF WORLDS]. This
view is articulated mainly in the following sections of Logics of Worlds: The first section of the
Preface, at 9-17, the section of lifeless worlds, book 4, section 1, at 442-45, and the conclusion, at
530-37.
2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2241
world. Members of the community-world share the same values, and

the structure of the community-world is organized by social-communal
categories. Each community-world thus has, as it were, its own
language.
If a community respects the law of human rights then its world
becomes included in the world of democratic materialism. Examine this
world-inclusion. The community-world in question and its way of life
are granted legitimacy. As it is democratic materialism that labels the
community legitimate, the democratic law is no longer exterior to the
community but penetrates into the community-world.
The members of the community become citizens of democracy,
obeying the democratic law. In other words, the exterior tag of
legitimacy that the community-world receives from democratic
materialism is a sort of breach in its borders. The inclusion in question
is thus integration. That is, the borders of the community-world do not
survive, as it were, the inclusion within the world of democratic
materialism.
Democratic materialism is the world that integrates all legitimate
world-communities. It is meant to be an exterior point of view from
which all the world-communities are judged: either they are legitimate
or not. This privileged perspective democratic materialism claims to
have at its disposal has two consequences.
The first is cultural relativism. The democratic value of legitimacy
becomes the only objective value by which communities and their
respective ways of life are judged. An ethical comparison between
those ways of life is no longer possible. There is no objective way of
judging which is better or worse than the other.
The particular values of each community can be judged as “good”
only from within that community. From the objective point of view,
exterior to the community-world, its values are seen as mere attributes,
as social categories, ordered by language.
The objectivity of the defining values of each integrated
community-world is thus overrun by the exterior legitimacy tag. In
other words, the values which characterize communities do not have a
place in the ontology of democratic materialism.
This is not pluralism, which would be an objective co-existence of
various values. The ideology of integration into one world regards
comparative value-judgment as objectively meaningless. And so,
democratic materialism results in cultural relativism.
This relativism goes hand in hand with ethical absolutism, which is
the second consequence of the supposed privileged perspective of
democratic materialism. With no objective value from within the
community, the only objective “good” around is that in reference to
which legitimacy is determined—human rights.
Democratic materialism thus identifies ethics with human rights.

This consequence is, in a way, unintentional. The democratic or liberal
attempt to separate the “right” from the “good,” by allowing “everyone”
to choose their own “good,” deprives those “goods” from objectivity
and thus amounts to cultural relativism. The latter, in turn, results in the
identification of the “good” with the “right.” And that is the only Good,
and the only Right, Absolutely.
This absolutism is yet to be realized. Intentional or not, self-
conscious or not, this absolutism functions as the regulative principle of
democratic materialism. Guided by it, democratic materialism is
engaged in two intertwined processes. One is the inquiry into human
rights and the affiliated value of legitimacy, an inquiry that is supposed
to end in their final formulation.
The second is the process of integration of more world-
communities that are non-democratic and thus Objectively not-good.
They must be integrated so as to become Good and to realize the
equality their members should have with the citizens of the world of
democratic materialism.
The vision toward which these processes are directed is what
Badiou calls a lifeless world. Once all individuals are equalized as
citizens under the same Law of human rights, no real change will be
possible. Namely, whatever re-grouping of elements in new
communities takes place, the social order will remain the same. In fact,
since any group, no matter how newly formed, is labeled by the same
legitimacy tag, re-grouping cannot have the significance of genuine
change.
The only modifications are the labeling of more communities, or
the relabeling of existing ones. The proliferation of communities and
their respective languages would result in the refinement of the
available social categories according to increasingly individualistic
nuances.
An objection could be raised at this point: this picture need not
perhaps be called “lifeless.” The modifications in question, those of
personal and communal pursuits of “goods,” which are of great
importance, would still be very much alive and in constant evolution.
Could it be that the derogatory-sounding term “lifeless,” which refers to
the Ideal Law of democratic materialism, privileges the “right” over the
“good”?
But it is the vision of democratic materialism that privileges the
right and grants it primacy. The term "lifeless" merely describes that
very bias, which allows any way of life, as long as it accords with
specific, unchangeable, human rights, those achieved at the end of their
inquiry5. If the term “lifeless” is to imply a certain criticism, it is not

some grand call for change in the law, but an objection to a framework
that hopes for the impossibility of such change.
The absolutism of democratic materialism amounts to a strict
ontology for the social world: it has a natural or factual factor- human
beings, and a separate value factor—the categories of languages
admitted as legitimate, and nothing else. Socially, there are only bodies
and languages, 6 or alternatively there are only individuals and
communities.7 With no possible change to these existential statements,
they have an undeniable metaphysical flavor. They state what is Really
there.
Badiou objects to both relativism and absolutism. I will here
elaborate on his objections and re-present them in pragmatic
terminology, through my characterization of democratic materialism as
an ideology of social Realism, that resorts to and claims for a
metaphysically privileged standpoint.
Cultural relativism, which denies communal values an objective
status, should be rejected as a form of “make-believe” skepticism. One
can never be ethically indifferent to communal values, equalizing them
all under the same global value-tag of legitimacy. For one is always
situated within a certain way of life one judges as “good” and hence as
“better” than others.
This is the skepticism Badiou is profoundly opposed to—the one
which denies the objective reality of the values around which a
community is formed. In fact, as will be shown in Part V, the forming of
a community around an ideal plays a central role in Badiou’s theory of
objectivity.
The second aspect of Badiou’s criticism is his real doubt in the
processes conducted under the absolutist regulative principle of
democratic materialism. Whereas the democratic vision is of peace and
tolerance among the integrated communities, this contemporary pursuit
of democracy does not express itself in a peaceful manner.
The individuals and communities that do not speak the normative
language of democracy must be integrated, whatever it takes, including
the violation of the human rights in the name of which the integration is
conducted.
This violent incoherence is Badiou’s empirical justification for his
real doubt in the contemporary democratic system. But this doubt is not
meant to undermine the entire system. Badiou does not doubt that there
are indeed only bodies and languages. It is the absolutist-arbitrary
feature of this ontology that he wishes to dispose of.
5 See Appendix infra at 1. Democratic Materialism.

6 Preface to LOGICS OF WORLDS, supra note 4, at 9.
7 Id. at 17.
II. BADIOU’S THEORY OF OBJECTIVITY
World and World Inclusion
Badiou’s first philosophical move is characteristic of pragmatism,

for it entails, in effect, the denial that there could be a metaphysically
privileged standpoint from which one could absolutize or relativize.
One is always contextually situated within a system, which Badiou calls
a world. A world can be a country under a certain regime, a scientific
paradigm, or other systems. One can also be situated in a fragment of a
world like a lab class in physics, or a conversation in the University’s
Main Quad.
A world is composed of discrete elements or individuals. Putnam
discusses two logical options to define an object in such a world. 8
According to one logical system, each element is an object. According
to another system, that of the Polish logician Lezniewski,9 any possible
sum of those elements is an object.
According to the Polish logician, then, an object can be scattered in
space and time, and can be composed of, say, the apple I ate yesterday
and my computer. The reasoning of the Polish logician could be that
for any set of elements a common predicate can be found. Each concept
is thus arrived at by the comparison of elements of one set,
independently of other concepts.
Badiou adopts a different logical definition of an object. In a
sense, it is closer to that of the Polish logician. He allows his objects to
be scattered in space and time, in such way that they are commonly
predicated. The logical system Badiou uses is category-theory. In
category-theory, an object is, generally speaking, a conceptually
characterized set of elements from the world in question.
However, the concepts in the Badiouian world, as well as the
comparisons that give rise to them, are dependent on all the other
concepts and comparisons in that world. The approach to objects and
their conceptual characterization rendered by category theory is thus
holistic. There is no way to define an object independently of others.
Holism is an important characteristic of pragmatism.10
Putnam’s point is to show that neither of the two definitions he
considers is metaphysically privileged. Putnam does not advocate any
particular logical theory in relation to objectivity, but discusses a few
general themes (among which are the theses of pragmatism, to be
8HILARY PUTNAM, THE MANY FACES OF REALISM 18 (1987).

9Putnam refers to Lezniewski. See id.
10Putnam discusses holism as a characteristic of pragmatism in HILARY PUTNAM,
PRAGMATISM: AN OPEN QUESTION 13-19 (1995).
gradually demonstrated in this paper). Conversely, Badiou claims that

the logical theory (category-theory) that he uses, does give the “better”
definition of an object. It is not metaphysically privileged, but, as I will
here show—pragmatically privileged.
One important advantage to Badiou’s use of category theory, as I
will explain later, is that it does not give the elements of a world a
“primitive” status, where such a status is obviously metaphysical.
Conversely, the logical systems Putnam considers treat the elements as
prior to the object, which is then defined “over” the elements (that are
thus Elements).
I shall now explicate and interpret the core of Badiou’s theory of
objectivity.11 Since it is (read here as) pragmatic, that is, since it relies
on use, interest, purpose and value, its explanation requires at least one
specific example (and Logics of Worlds, by the way, includes many
examples). Although Badiou’s philosophy is mostly associated with the
social world, I rather exemplify my interpretation through a simpler,
less emotional world (than politics, art or love). Take a clothes store.
Since the definition of an object depends on other objects, my
point of departure will be an assumed object, in such way that it is
possible to later show its coherence with other objects of the world.
Say that here we assume that among the objects of the world, all the
shirts in the store are an object, and the pants are another.
Each element of every object, each shirt and each pair of pants, has
particular intensional features, such as color or style. Each element
thereby defines an atomic component of the object in the sense that all
the other elements share its intensional features to a certain degree.
This is one way of defining an atomic component. I will later
demonstrate a second way.
All the elements of an object belong to all its atomic components.
The degree of belonging of each element to an atomic component is
(related to) the degree of similarity that element has with the element
that designates the component. It is the degree to which an element
shares the intensional features in question.
For example, the flowery Hawaiian shirt defines an atomic
component of the object “shirts” insofar as all the other shirts are
similar to it to a certain degree. Some or none can be exactly like it. A
Hawaiian shirt that has palm trees on it belongs to that atomic
component to quite a high degree, in comparison to the other shirts.
Another shirt is not Hawaiian at all. It is an elegant black shirt
with little grey and pink flowers at its collar. It belongs to the
11 LOGICS OF WORLDS, supra note 4. My account is based on the second and third books of
Logics of Worlds (it is subsections 7, 8, and 9 in section 1, book 1, at 234-44, although
particularly obscure, that include the key concepts of a prototype theory of objectivity that
category-theory can offer philosophy).
component to a certain degree, weaker than that of the other Hawaiian

shirt. Another shirt is of completely solid red color. This shirt belongs
to the component to an even weaker degree.
This degree of belonging has no exact or independent value. It is
comparative. The comparison is double: all the elements of the object
are compared to the defining element of the component, and those
comparisons are compared to each other. As Paul Redding noted, the
element designating the atomic component is a prototype, marking the
component with its intensional features.
The comparison of the elements of an object to the element that
designates the atomic component is evidently a comparison in a certain
respect. This respect reflects interest, use, what one might count as
interesting (what is drawn on the shirts like flowers or palm trees), what
the elements (the shirts) are fit for (which has to do with their style—
Hawaiian, elegant, sportive) and what one might count as important (the
size of what is drawn compared to the size of the shirt, its location on
the shirt). The color of the little flowers, in the shirt-example discussed
here, did not count as important in this evaluation.
Of course, whether it is my interest and emphasis or yours or the
shop keeper’s, who displays the shirts in a certain order, is not relevant
here. Many respects are possible, as there are many intensional
characteristics to any prototype, to any element of an object that is
comparable to the other elements of that object.
The intensional respects in which elements are compared may or
may not be noticed, but in any case, they are noticeable. And to note
one thing is also to ignore another. That is, being noticeable is always
in relation to some interest or emphasis that is thus implied in any
intensional characteristic.
The prototype intensional character of the atomic component
involves interest, use, and emphasis, as is evident in this example as
well as in Badiou’s examples in Logics of Worlds. That is to say, the
atomic organization of an object incorporates value. Objectivity,
therefore, cannot be separated from value. This is the second thesis of
pragmatism according to Putnam—the thesis that there is no
fundamental dichotomy between “facts” and “values” or in other words,
the thesis of entanglement of fact and value.12
Moreover, the intensional definitions of an atomic component are
not essential. They have common characteristics, some necessary—they
have to be a shirt, for example—but they do not have some underlying
mysterious essence. What defines a component is one element and
those that appear identical to it, if they exist, like other flowery
Hawaiian shirts (I shall soon demonstrate the second non-essentialist
12 This thesis is the second mentioned here, but in Putnam’s original text it is the third thesis
mentioned. PUTNAM, supra note 1, at 142.
manner of defining an atom13). Non-essentialism is another important

feature of pragmatism.
It is worthwhile noting, that Badiou uses the term “degree” in a
few senses that can be concluded from his examples. Sometimes he
means simply the intensity of the similarity between elements taken in a
certain conceptual respect. Other times a degree is the level of
importance of an element relatively to other elements of a certain
object, or relatively to all elements in the world, and again—important
in a certain respect.
In any case, as I explained before, degrees do not correspond to
some fixed value (numeric or other). They are comparative, and receive
their meaning only through an order-relation to other degrees. Degrees
of a certain conceptual respect are ordered between a minimum and a
maximum, where those are world-relative, that is, contextual, and are
the only fixed values for a given world. Unless things are identical or
absolutely different, their similarity or difference will be “more or less,”
in comparison to other similarities and differences in the relevant
respect.
Examine the atomic component of the object to which all the pants
belong, designated by an elegant black pair. Another pair is Indian
style. It is red with little stars all over, and so it belongs to the
component to a very weak degree, in the respects here considered (color
and style). Another pair is dark khaki and elegant. Its degree of
similarity to the black pair is quite high and so is its degree of belonging
to the component designated by that black pair of pants.
Take the flowery Hawaiian shirt, considered in the component
described before, and the dark khaki elegant pants, considered in the
atomic component designated by the elegant black pants. Now localize
the first on the second. That is, “relativize” the degree of belonging of
the shirt in question to the shirt atom—to the khaki pants:
The flowery Hawaiian shirt absolutely belongs to the atom it
designates and marks with a certain style and print. Compared with the
khaki pants, it is casual, a bit too noisy perhaps, but also cheerful. This
localization just gave us a new atomic component, with its own
prototype intensional characteristics. Some elements of the world-store,
like the Indian pants, belong to it to quite a high degree.
Take the inverse localization. Compared with flowery Hawaiian
shirt, the khaki pants are elegant, solid and serious. This localization
also gives a new atom, to which the black pants, for example, belong, to
a high degree. Perhaps those black pants are even the prototype of that
atom. In any case, the localization of the Hawaiian shirt on the khaki
pants gives a different atom to the inverse localization. The two
13 Like Badiou, I use the terms “atomic component” and “atom” interchangeably.
elements initially considered are thus incompatible.

What about the compatibility of the black shirt with the flowers at
its collar and the khaki pants? The shirt’s degree of belonging to the
component in question (the one designated by the Hawaiian flowery
shirt) is weak in the respect of the relative size of the flowers and in the
respect of style. Relativized to the pants, its black color becomes
important, and so does the color of the little flowers—as they all belong
to the autumn family of colors like the khaki pants. Its elegance is also
accentuated in comparison to the khaki pants. Another atom is thus
found, that of autumn colored elegant clothing. The black pants belong
to it too, and so do other elements in the store.
If we localize the khaki pants on the black shirt with the flowers,
the color of the pants is accentuated, as well as their elegance. The
atom here found is the same one arrived at by the inverse localization.
The khaki pants and black shirt with the flowers at its collar are thus
compatible.
An object, says Badiou, is a set in which any two elements are
compatible (the identification of an atomic component and of its
respective object with a set of elements is justified below). This
compatibility, for any two elements, takes another two objects into
account, that is, their atomic components (one for each object).
As shown in the above discussion on compatibility, atoms exposed
by localization may or may not have elements that belong to them to the
maximal degree. That is to say, the prototypical features of an atom
may or may not be all manifested in one or more prototypical elements.
Whereas each element may define an atomic component through
its intensional features, an atomic component does not have to be so
defined. It can also be defined through prototypical characteristics
exposed by localizations rather than demonstrated in a specific
element.14
Therefore, elements are not the primitive entity “over” which
atomic components and thereby objects are constructed. But neither are
conceptual prototypical characteristics primitive, since atoms can be
defined by elements. Asking which comes first the element or the
concept seems like a wrong question in a system where fact and value
are entangled.
Not only are objects construed holistically, in such way that
involves entire regions of the world if not all of it, but they are
embedded with interest, use and value. In other words, they are
pragmatically determined, according to the relevant context. What is an
object in one world is not necessarily an object in another world.
14 These two ways of defining an atom are those to be understood in Badiou’s slogan: “if one,
not more than one, and otherwise—none.” LOGICS OF WORLDS, supra note 4, bk. 3, sec. 1,
subsec. 4, at 227 (author’s translation).
This objectivation assumes two worldly logical roles of concepts.

First, concepts are the respect in which elements are similar and
different to one another. Every world has its corresponding grid-like
network of similarities and differences between all the elements of the
world. This grid, which Badiou calls the transcendental, is engraved
with all the concepts in respect of which an element can be similar or
different to another. The world-grid is its holistic regularity, its law.
The other role of concepts is the intensional characterization they
give to prototypical atomic components. The elements of a component
quantize a concept, insofar as each component has a definite number of
elements, with various degrees of belonging.
There is no question of borderline cases for each component, since
the quantization, as was explained before, is done by interest, emphasis
and the like. A pragmatic world-grid decides according to its context if
a degree of belonging to a component is weak, weaker or minimal.
The quantization of the atomic component allows its consideration
as a mathematical set, defined extensionally by its elements. The atomic
component characterized intensionally is also a set in which that same
element and the others in the component are members.
So, the concepts of the world have two aspects. The first aspect
they have is intensional and entails either comparative meaning
embedded in the world-grid or a prototypical meaning that structures
the atomic components of objects. The second aspect of the concepts of
the world is extensional. According to the extensional aspect, the world
is just a system of sets, where the elements retain their number, and the
concepts their labels.
In such a system, emptied, as it were, from intensionality, a label
receives its extensional meaning from its relations of belonging to and
inclusion in or of other sets, tagged by other labels. These relations of
belonging and inclusion constitute what Badiou called the language of
the situation in Being and Event, where a situation is, in fact, the
extensional aspect of a world.
I would like to note here that indeed within set-theory the set is
primitive (and not the elements, built essentially on the empty set). But
even if in set-theory there are only sets, concepts do not have priority
over elements. For it is the pragmatic entanglement of fact and value
that allowed the quantization of sets by categories in the first place. 15
15 Those who are familiar with Badiou’s philosophy will notice that indeed I here “reverse the
order” of Logics of Worlds and Being and Event. For Badiou, the extensional situation and the
contextual world are independently construed, and inter-connect as a matter of a “decision.” I
interpret this decision in the following as a less robust sort of realism, in accordance with the
more natural and non-metaphysical move made here—from the intensional world to the
extensional situation. This pragmatic move will also prove consistent within the Badiouian
framework, whereas the independence of situation and world might imply their possible
separation which in turn results in an inconsistency.
Badiou’s postulate of materialism is the decision that “every atom

is real.”16 That is to say, the extensional system of sets of the world,
which also has its intensional side, is the real carving of the world’s
reality. The quantization of concepts and the construction of objects,
which involves interest, use and value, are as objective as can be. Of
course, since there is a plurality of worlds with their respective
extensional systems of sets, then there is also a plurality of such
objective carvings of reality.
Before I identify the kind of realism Badiou promotes here, I
would first like to examine what it means for a world to be included
within another world. Say the fragment of the world-store I described
above is actually a part of a feature film. The shirts and pants and the
rest of them are not physical elements of the ordinary world. They are
filmed elements.
If the physical actual me is sitting in the movie theater wearing a
shirt, my shirt and a shirt in the movie are not part of the same
extension. Mine is labeled “shirt,” whereas the shirt in the movie is
labeled “filmed shirt.”
From my point of view in the fragment-cinema of the ordinary
world that includes the film-world, the extension of the world of the
filmed store has another label added to it, namely “filmed.”
Intensionally, the difference between the inclusive world and the
included one lies in what Badiou calls the register of appearance. 17
Filmed elements have different intensional characteristics than ordinary
things. For example, they are only two dimensional.
It may happen that my shirt is an elegant black shirt with little
flowers at its collar, just like the shirt in the movie. My shirt is not in
the movie, but it can be compared to the one in the movie.
There can be trans-worldly similarities and differences, in such
way that in the inclusive world, elements from both worlds will be
quantized in the same prototypical component. In this case the
component would be “shirts that look like mine, whether in the ordinary
world or in movies.”
This of course does not mean that the place of my shirt in the
ordinary world’s system of sets is the same place the shirt in the movie
has. Each belongs to components the other does not. And even
regarding the component to which they both belong, they remain
separate elements within that component. The same would equally
apply even in the case where, in fact, it is my shirt that was filmed in
that movie.
Each world has its own extension, even if one can be included in
another. The extensional meaning of an element is by no means a kind
16 Id. at 232.
17 See, e.g., id. at 235.
of Platonic Idea or some sort of thing-in-itself that can wander from

world to world. The rejection of the thing-in-itself is a central view of
any pragmatist philosophy. Extension, or as Badiou often calls it being
qua being is no more than a labeled system of sets that carves a world’s
“small r” reality—a specific world, in a specific context.
The only way to have in Badiou’s worlds something equivalent to
a thing-in-itself would be to have a world of all worlds, a world whose
extension would have some sort of privileged status. Then, perhaps, it
would make sense to say that the same shirt appears in many worlds.
This is, however, not the case. Badiou keeps reminding us that
there is no set of all sets, and so there is no world of all worlds.18 In
Being and Event, the multiplicity of situations and the fact that each
extensional situation has its own language was very clear. If there is no
situation of all situations, there is no meta-language of a privileged
status from which all other languages can be accessed.
In Logics of Worlds it seems sometimes that Badiou talks of the
extension of a world as if there were something special about it, that can
appear in many worlds, as if the extension was somehow dislocated
from its own world.19 But the Ideaic talk of the extension of a world,
should be rejected so as to keep one of Badiou’s most precious
principles against privileged extension (which equals a world of all
worlds or meta-language), and in accord with the pragmatic reading
here proposed. As I described above, extensions of worlds can be
shared by other worlds only by way of inclusion, which carries with it
an additional tag.
In passing, I would like to remark that here we have a typical case
of one metaphysics chosen over another. Badiou’s metaphysical
statement of the inexistence of the Absolute, the set of all the sets, or the
situation of all situations, cancels the metaphysical stand which allows
the Ideaic talk of the same extension appearing in many intensional
worlds.
It seems that in order to free reality from any metaphysical weight,
to keep it a pluralistic reality, with a small r, Badiou’s philosophy takes
a metaphysical stand regarding the Absolute (does it have to?). For such
a philosophy to still be considered within pragmatism, this metaphysics
should have a pragmatic value, and indeed it has. I shall return to this
point in the last Part.
In any case, Badiouian realism, as here presented, is as pragmatic
18 See in particular Badiou’s discussion on the inconsistency of the concept of the Universe in
LOGICS OF WORLDS, supra note 4, bk. 2, sec. 1, subsec. 1, at 119-21.
19 This is apparent in Badiou’s comments about “what happens to a set once it has appeared
in a world.” LOGICS OF WORLDS, supra note 4, bk. 3, sec. 1, at 235 (author’s translation).
Another example is the discussion on Ariane and Blue Beard, and their appearance in various
worlds, even if the thing in itself that appears is reduced to their proper names it still implies
some meta-language. LOGICS OF WORLDS, supra note 4, bk. 2, sec. 1, at 126.
and pluralistic as Putnam’s, albeit much heavier in theory. But this

theory allows for an elaborate explication of a coherence-type holism,
which demonstrates the entanglement of fact and value, so important to
any “small r” realist such as Putnam himself. Badiou’s theory of
objectivity says pluralistically: there are only objects and languages.
III. THE THEORETICAL WORLDS OF PHYSICS
Regulative Principle of Compliant Inclusion
“Small r” realism and the pragmatic emphasis on the role of

interest, value and use, imply that the exposure of new interests or
values may result in real change. The systematic order of each world is
not, generally speaking, written in stone. This immanent option for real
change conforms to Putnam’s third thesis of pragmatism, 20 that is,
fallibalism.
I will explain in detail what fallibalism and real change are about
in Badiou’s theory in Part 5. In this Part I propose a new conception of
change in the theoretical worlds of physics, with the aid of the
Badiouian terminology laid out so far. It is the existence of lifeless
worlds that allows the picture I here propose, worlds to which
fallibalism does not apply. For the worlds of physics, although under
constant change, have, as I will here explain, a lifeless core.
I touched upon the characteristics of a lifeless world in the
description of democratic materialism in the first Part. I will here
shortly re-explain these features in the terminology developed in the
previous Part.
The sets in the extensional system of the lifeless world cannot go
through any significant re-grouping. They can undergo two kinds of
modifications. The first is the quantization of sub-sets within the
existing sets. Intensionally this means that a certain range of degrees of
belonging to an atom becomes an atom in its own right.
This can happen relentlessly when a set includes a (definite)
infinity of elements, that is, a continuity whose quantization is done by
“cutting” more and more segments. Color is one such example in the
world of theoretical physics, where all possible wave-lengths exist in an
ordered continuity. One can always further divide the spectrum to get
more and more shades.
The other kind of modification is the re-interpretation of the
current system that does not change the groupings of the sets but merely
20 Third mentioned in this paper, but second in Putnam’s original text. PUTNAM, supra note
1, at 142.
re-labels them. One such occasion can be when the world is recognized
to be included in a different world, and its extensional system of sets
consequently receives a new additional tag.
According to today’s physics, the theoretical world of Newtonian
physics is a lifeless world. The laws of this world cannot go through
real change. It can only be modified by refinement and re-labeling, as
discussed above.
Accordingly, the theory of Special Relativity did NOT replace
Newtonian physics. The objects and laws of the latter did not change
and they never will. Rather, the world of Newtonian physics was
thereon included in the world of Special Relativity. When examined
from that inclusive world, Newtonian laws received the additional tag
“approximation for low velocities.” The Badiouian event or the
Kuhnian revolution happened on the borders of the Newtonian
paradigm, which remained unaltered.
The transition from the inclusive world to the included one, the
approximation in question, is perfectly smooth and coherent. This
transition could imply perfect reduction. Such a reduction would
breach the borders of the Newtonian world in such way that the reality
of its laws and objects would become dependent on the inclusive world
of Special Relativity. The two theories would basically converge into
one (reduction in a theoretical world and its implied convergence are
analogous to integration in the social world of democratic materialism).
But Newtonian physics did NOT converge into Special Relativity. It
remained a separate world, included in the new one.
The progress of physics, and progress it is, leaves the well-
established parts of the included theory unaltered. The live part of
physics is the inclusive world under construction, which also determines
the contemporary point of view on the included world.
This is why Kuhn talks of replacement of paradigms. A
contemporary paradigm would be the theoretical world that is the most
active, where research is taking place, rather than teaching. It is the
contemporary point of view from which included worlds such as the
Newtonian one are “seen.” But theoretically, the theoretical included
Newtonian world is nevertheless still there, unchangeable, lifeless.
The construction of the world of Quantum Mechanics did not
induce any real change in Newtonian physics either. Its new inclusion
merely re-labeled or re-interpreted it as “approximation for big enough
objects.” The transition here is equally smooth, and the discipline of
physics would not have it any other way. Its regulative principle is of
what I call compliant inclusion, where the borders of coherence are one-
way open—from the inclusive world to the included one.
Compare to the cinematic world, which is one-way visible from the
ordinary world, in the shirts-pants example discussed in the previous
Part. That inclusion did not require the integration of one world in the
other and neither did it even imply an apparent agreement. Indeed, some
things can only happen in movies (or in love or in war or in a
philosophy classroom for that matter).
Conversely, the regulative principle of compliant inclusion does
not tolerate disagreement between affiliated theoretical worlds of
physics. Take the theory of General Relativity that includes the Special
one, and the theory of Quantum Mechanics. They are affiliated worlds,
as they have the same classical core, so to speak.
Their border, however, entails a famous disagreement and is thus
considered undefined. More specifically, there is one experiment that
perhaps will never take place, which does not have a fixed world
address. That is, its description is unsettled and its prediction
respectively ambivalent.
According to the regulative principle of compliant inclusion, the
discipline is now engaged in the construction of a new theory, which
shall include both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and
settle their transition.
The theory under construction, the contemporary live part of
theoretical physics, 21 is apparently headed to be all-inclusive, a
fundamental Theory of Everything, from which the transition to all the
other worlds of physics will be smoothly regulated.
Indeed, the purpose of the faculty of fundamental physics today, is
to find all those fundamental objects and their respective laws, and then
close their department. No more research, only teaching and perhaps
re-labeling. Whether physics is actually dying or not, its purpose is to
arrive at a lifeless state.22
I will discuss in Part V in further detail the manner in which an
inclusive theoretical world of physics is formed. Part 5 will explain a
world’s change in general, that is, in the logical terms of Badiou’s
Logics of Worlds. Badiou’s picture of change will allow an account for
both a theoretical world of physics and a social world.
This is not meant to muddle and confuse two very different types
of worlds. The claim is that the abstract account can be used in various
contexts. In fact, this abstraction, common to all worlds, provides, as I
will attempt to show in Part V, two different pictures for social and
scientific change.
But before I turn to my interpretation of Badiou’s picture(s) of
change, I will first present Putnam’s picture for social change.
Putnam’s picture is not at all meant to describe scientific change.
However, there are still analogies to be made.
21 There are of course other live parts in the worlds of physics that are included in
fundamental physics, insofar as those are not fully established.
22 See Appendix infra at 2. Physics.
As will be explained in the next Part, the scientific picture

presented above is an inspiration to Putnam’s picture of social change.
Moreover, if we look at the abstract structure alone (as can be seen from
the respective diagrams at the end of the paper) both pictures are of
compliant inclusion, although Putnam’s picture of social change has
neither a lifeless core nor an end to its inquiry.
The rest of the paper then, still follows the same paths introduced
before, with an emphasis on the comparison of Putnam (in the next Part)
and Badiou (in Part V). The last Part will conclude the comparison by
referring to one of the original pragmatists—William James.
IV. PUTNAM’S DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY
Regulative Principle of Agreement
Putnam adopts and elaborates Dewey’s ideas of “deliberative

democracy,” which he regards as the enlightenment yet to come. 23
When new interests or needs are exposed, they are to be discussed in a
manner similar to that of scientific discourse. As was noticed by the
early pragmatists, scientific progress is also linked to democratic
“discourse ethics.”
“Consultation and deliberation” within the scientific community
are guided by democratic values such as tolerance, the willingness to
listen to new opinions, the ability to converse openly. One can easily
see how these values are appropriate to the regulation of scientific
inquiry.
The purpose of the scientific discourse, whether achievable or not,
is the “settlement of opinion” or “fixation of belief,” as Peirce says.24
The ideal common to all physicists in the scientific community, is to
reach “the end of inquiry,” total agreement, absolute fixation.25
According to “deliberative democracy,” the democratic values of
the discourse of scientific inquiry can and should also apply to the
ethical inquiry of a social world. And so, as appropriate to a pluralist,
Putnam promotes a number of democratic “moral images,” that are
supposed to guide us in times of real social change. Think for yourself,
23 I base this section mainly on the following texts by Hilary Putnam: HILARY PUTNAM,
MANY FACES OF REALISM (1987); HILARY PUTNAM, PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE (forthcoming); and
HILARY PUTNAM, RENEWING PHILOSOPHY 180-202 (1992).
24 Charles Sanders Peirce, The Fixation of Belief, POPULAR SCI. MONTHLY, Nov. 1877, at 1-
15.
25 It is important to keep physics and philosophy separate here. Whereas philosophically there
is good reason to reject the ideal of the end of inquiry as a possible horizon, this is nevertheless
the regulative principle of the community of physicists. It is a useful principle for that specific
discipline, rather than a philosophically justified one.
says Putnam, speak your criticism, be a part of a community or state,

have a sense of fraternity.
Deliberative democracy is thus a non-rigid democratic regime
whose reforms, no matter how radical, are achieved in a democratic
manner. Democracy is a method of inquiry in the social world. In other
words, the principle that regulates the contemporary state of the social
world is also the principle of its change. Badiou would say that there is
something lifeless in this picture, insofar as there seems to be no way
out of contemporary principles.
Indeed, there is also a dimension of compliant inclusion to
Putnam’s ethical inquiry and social progress. Each moral image in the
co-existing plurality is appropriate for a different occasion, and thus has
an independent reality. A new moral image that may result from
deliberation will re-interpret and thus improve the old ones, now
included in the better one “open society.”
A new moral image could even cancel an older one, as when the
Enlightenment canceled Plato’s image of a ruling class of philosophers.
But it is a new image, not the alteration of a contemporary one.
This is what I mean by saying that inclusive change happens at the
borders of a world. The old image, unless cancelled, remains there
included, and is marked with a new tag or interpretation by the new and
more inclusive image.
Putnam does not advocate any end to this inquiry, some final limit
to the ongoing inclusive social progress he has in mind. 26 Unlike
Badiou, Putnam is not worried by the Absolute. He feels no need to
state its inexistence in order to oppose the end of inquiry. For Putnam,
the concept of the Absolute simply has no role in philosophy.
Democratic consultation and deliberation is aimed at reaching a
fixation of a new belief, a consensual settlement of opinion within the
members of the society. The possibility of agreement, in turn,
presupposes a common underlying interest.
Indeed, when it comes to physics, say, there is ideally such an
interest. The purpose common to the community of physicists is
inscribed in the regulative principle of total inclusion.
Putnam does not claim that all problems of a social world can be
resolved by democratic deliberation, but he is hopeful. Real change of a
society, a change which would entail the progress Putnam advocates,
would be that which results from deliberation and consequent
agreement.
Progressive change then, results from the exposure of an
underlying common interest, which can reconcile the “problematic”
new needs or interests that raised the problem to begin with. That is to
26 See Appendix infra at 3. Deliberative Democracy.

say, these new needs or interests, although “problematic,” cohere in a

certain way with the contemporary situation. It is this coherence that
permits the conservation of the older moral image and that makes the
democratic change inclusive, something that happens on the borders of
a contemporary image.
Badiou is highly suspicious of such coherence and the inclusive
change it entails, when it comes to social worlds. For Badiou, real
change of a social world happens not at its borders, but within that
world.
V. BADIOU’S DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
Regulative Principle—Consequences of an Event
Badiou’s model of change is, I here claim, inspired by the other

science which influenced the original pragmatists, especially Dewey,
that is, evolutionary biology.27 My interpretation here averages the use
of the term “event” from both Logics of Worlds and Being and Event in
a way that I believe to be loyal to both. I will exemplify the Badiouian
change through the clothes-store example.
In a world, a mutation occurs. An imperative, which does not
cohere with the worldly law, is said, and positively defines a previously
negatively defined group of elements. In the world-store for example,
imagine one of the sales-people screaming “let’s dress creatively!”
This imperative brings to the surface a set that was not defined as
such before. In this case it is the set of clothing combinations that look
funny and unusual, like the elegant black pants with the Hawaiian shirt
with the palm trees.
These funny combinations were present before in a sense, but since
they were not acknowledged by the law of fashion of that store, they did
not appear as such. In that sense, they did not exist before the
imperative acknowledged their existence as a positively defined set.
The utterance of the imperative brings the previously inexistent set into
worldly existence. The unfashionable combinations of clothes in the
store are thereby emancipated!
In a social world, this newly defined set is normally said to be of
people previously ignored by the law and the rights it grants others.
Depending on the relevant world and law, this group could be slaves,
the proletariat, women, homosexuals, and other groups of people we
ignore and do not even know about since they do not exist in our current
law.
27 This section is based on books 5, 6, and 7 of LOGICS OF WORLDS, supra note 4.

One may say that Badiou’s picture of social change is just another
moral image, that of emancipation. Indeed, this is the way change
begins, but this is not the real change discussed in Logics of Worlds.
Real change is not the new self-consciousness or enhanced appearance
of a pre-existing set, no matter how “inexistent” it previously was.
In Badiou’s theory, the defining imperative (like the imperative to
be “creative”), which brings about the emancipation of a certain set, is a
trace of an event. The event turns the world-store into a site. The
objective world-store, regulated by its grid, receives a momentary
second aspect, as a collection of elements that does not quantize yet any
concept.
The site is nevertheless quantized as a set and it has an extension,
but as if “before” some intensional quality defines it as such. This set,
in its momentary second aspect of extension without intension, does not
belong to or include any other set. It is not coherent with the
extensional language of the contemporary situation.
Since it counts as a set nevertheless, it is real according to the
postulate of materialism. What kind of reality can an extension have
without intension? Without a worldly intensional concept, one must
admit, this is no small r. The legislative mutation is conditioned by a
metaphysical instant of incoherence.
Characteristically of metaphysics, Badiou’s is supposed to make
something possible, which in this case is real change. If Badiou is to be
considered within pragmatism, such metaphysics would have sense
insofar as it can be useful. This use, I shall soon explain, is ethical.
Like in any evolutionary theory, the fate of the mutation depends
on the environment in which it occurs. If the new definition, the re-
labeling as it were, of the previously ignored set is to have any impact,
then objects in the world have to cohere with it. That is, the worldly
objects have to be defined through the holism of compatibility, in such a
way that also relates to that new positive aspect brought about by the
imperative.
But since the defining imperative does not cohere with the
contemporary worldly law, there are no such objects. In other words,
the localization of the newly defined set on the not-yet conceptualized
site has no result. In yet other words, the newly defined atomic
component of the previously inexistent set is not compatible with any
other component of the site.
Unless a new object is created. Elements of such an object are
those with the capacity to decide their own identity, to take charge of
their own quantization, that is, people.
This is the ethical moment of a world. It is a moment where
people have the chance of self-definition, to identify themselves with a
completely new concept. This new concept has to be of a special kind,
as it is not holistically related to the other concepts of the world. It is a

new principle, an idea or ideal, entailed in the mutative imperative. In
the case of social worlds, this ideal is a new moral image.
If indeed the localization of the newly defined set is done on a
responsive site, then the mutation has induced the quantization of a new
set. Elements of the world abandon their previous social belongings and
re-group into a completely new set. Their entire existence has to be
shifted toward it, as the other concepts they have participated in before
in that worldly context are incoherent with the new ideal. This is not re-
labeling, but a real change in the groupings of the world.
It is this new set which Badiou calls the body. The ideal which
defines this body as a set has positive meaning. It is not some general
negation of the world’s law. It is not a philosophical doubt, but the
world’s real doubt, or rather an objective doubt, a doubt with a body.
This set-body is completely new both in intension, that is the ideal,
and in extension, that is the re-grouping of the elements of the site that
identify themselves with the new ideal. At its moment of birth, the only
worldly object the body is compatible with, is what “inexisted” before
and is now apparent.
Like with any quantization, this too assumes an interest or a need.
Some people in the store, for example, sales persons as well as potential
buyers or those that are “just looking,” have perhaps the need to let their
clothing imagination go wild, and thus identify with the liberation, as it
were, of all those non-fashionable combinations from oblivion. The
ideal they identify themselves with is, say, the independence of one’s
own taste from dictated fashion.
The newborn body is an exceptional object in the world. It has
only one component, the one defined by the ideal embedded in the trace
of the event. The body is thus an unstable object, an individual that
now has to survive in the environment in which it was born.
To maintain itself, the body has to gain a holistic objective
definition. Incoherent to the rest of the objects in the world, the
localization of the newborn body on the environment cannot have a
result—unless there exists in the environment atomic components that
were not previously conceptualized and were not a part of the
extensional system of sets, components that can now become
conceptualized in such way that would relate to the new body. These
not-yet labeled pragmatic carvings of the world’s reality are tensions,
what Badiou calls points.
Each of these tensions divides the entirety of the elements of a
world into two opposing parts, not yet predicated. Before the birth of
the body, these tensions were implicit. It is the localization of the new
body on the site that exposes these tensions and makes them explicit.
The tension that is most relevant to the ideal that quantizes the
body will be the first to become apparent. As it is a point of tension

which divides the world in two, the body’s localization on it, that is the
site’s new characterization relative to the body, is ambivalent.
At the store, some people are “up for a party” and some people are
not. This tension was not apparent before the new body was formed.
The predicate “up for a party” was not a part of the world grid, and did
not define any object. It was not yet relevant.
But now, as the body is localized on the site, the previously
implicit tension is exposed: a few people are smiling, but the first
reaction of most people is to look with disdain and suspicion at the sales
person who uttered the irregular imperative. The environment thus
challenges the body to act.
A couple of people that belong to the new body decide they are
going to take hold of that tension point. One person puts disco music on
the CD player, the other gets dressed quickly with a combination unseen
before and encourages another to have some sense of humor.
The confrontation of the body with the environmental tension
requires the body to form an organ that would quantize a new concept.
It is the atomic component “fun motivation,” to which each element of
the body belongs from here on, to a certain degree. This organ is
effective, as it imposes its localization on the elements of the world.
Each person at the store is obliged to take a stand—is she or he “up
for a party” or not—and is thus predicated relatively to the new body,
that is, to one of its atomic organs. What was before mere tension is
now a new predicate of the world-grid. The localization has modified
the law.
The localization of the organ on the tension is such that it is
compatible with one side of the tension and incompatible with the other.
If the compatibility achieved manages to overcome the incompatibility,
then the point of tension is “won” and the body survives. It now has a
newly defined component which brought about a new concept to the
world, and that evolution has induced a re-labeling of the worldly
objects, by making explicit a previously implicit predicate.
The body stays alive as long as its evolution continues from one
point of tension to another. In the course of its life, the body will create
more and more concepts for its organization, in order to deal with the
tensions of the environment.
As a result, the environment goes through modification of re-
labeling and its law is challenged by the alternative rules of the body
formed around the alternative imperative. Furthermore, if the body
grows, it does so by taking over, as it were, elements of the
environment. The world as a whole has changed. It includes now a new
object (which is, I remind, the new body, and not the emancipated set).
The body does not merely adapt to a constant environment. Rather, it
evolves, brings about new concepts to the world, and in turn modifies
the environment in which it lives.28
This dialectic process of confrontation of an alternative imperative
with contemporary law is what Badiou calls truth. Truth, as long as it
lasts, keeps its body apart from its worldly environment.
Badiou says “there are only bodies and languages, except that there
are truths,”29 which effectively means that there are only objects and
languages, except that there are bodies; or, there is only an objective
environment in the coherent state of the world, except when a true
individual-body brings about the challenge of incoherence; or
alternatively, there is only a stable system of law, except that there is
real doubt that brings about real change.
When it comes to physics, the self-organizing body is the creation
of a new inclusive world. As the body evolves, new concepts are
formed in the inclusive world under construction, and the included
world is gradually re-interpreted.
When the world on the border of which it arose is completely re-
labeled, the new inclusive world is established and arrives at an almost
lifeless state. The body or the inclusive world is still alive, insofar as
one day a new body may generate on its border.
The generation of bodies in the worlds of physics happens on their
borders, which are to become borders of coherence, according to the
regulative principle of compliant inclusion. Coherence is rightly
presupposed, and democratic deliberation is the way to proceed.
But in the social world, there is no way to know if and what kind
of coherence one can expect. The process of change is not of
deliberation in the exploration of new horizons, but of action, where one
and the same world goes through a dialectic split.30
Social change is not a discourse of “be a member of your current
community,” but a practice of “create a new community.” Social change
is not the inclusive imperative to “join the open society,” the one which
is open to those who comply with its laws. The imperative is rather:
“Change the order of your society by committing to your own identity.”
28 I thank Tracy McNulty for her question in the Symposium at Cardozo Law School, which
helped me clarify this point.
29 See, e.g., Preface to LOGICS OF WORLDS, supra note 4, at 12.
30 See diagrams in the Appendix, infra, to compare the change of the theoretical worlds of
physics to that of the social world.
VI. BADIOU, PUTNAM, AND WILLIAM JAMES
Ethics and Metaphysics
The ethics of democratic materialism is identical to its law. The

ethical inquiry into human rights, which is supposed to apply to the
entire society, is conducted by the system of the all-inclusive social
world. In other words, ethics is imposed on the elements of the world,
on people, by the law.
Human rights, as what quantizes people as the citizens of
democracy, are as objective as what they quantize. But can they still be
considered as ethics? Not if one takes ethics to be a “first person”
commitment as both Badiou and Putnam take it to be.
The ethics of dialectic materialism, which Badiou advocates, is the
commitment a person makes to a certain ideal, to an exception to the
law of a certain world. That is to say, whereas the worldly law implies
no ethics at all, the mutative law, the exceptional imperative, is the
available ethics in a given world.
One can be ethical, insofar as one identifies oneself with an
alternative ideal. If that ideal or imperative becomes integrated in the
worldly law, it ceases to be of ethical significance.
Nevertheless, in Badiouian philosophy, ethics and law remain
identical, even if the law in question is an alternative to the
contemporary law. In other words, the “good” and the “right” are still
very much related.
The Badiouian framework allows a person to be present in many
worlds, not only the social world. What happens, then, when the ethics
of a social world conflicts with that of a personal world? A framework
that leaves ethics dependent on the law, whether by affirmation or
negation, is problematic.
I feel that there is a certain trade-off in the choice between Badiou
and Putnam regarding the picture of change. Putnam’s optimism
regarding social change is perhaps too naïve. Also, Badiou’s logical
terminology allows for a demonstration of the difference between social
and scientific change, as developed in this paper.
When it comes to ethics, however, Putnam’s views, too elaborate
to discuss in this particular work, are perhaps more appropriately
complex, where the lack of world-terminology leaves more room to
social and personal overlap.
Finally, the main difference between Putnam and Badiou is their
attitude toward metaphysics. This difference is due to the fact that
Putnam is a neo-pragmatist whereas Badiou is not, even if his
philosophy can be considered within and illuminated by neo-
pragmatism.
Putnam’s fourth thesis of pragmatism is that “practice is primary in

philosophy.” As mentioned by David Macarthur, there are quite a few
hints in the paper where Putnam enumerates those theses, as well as in
other papers, that Putnam refers to metaphysics.
Whereas Putnam perhaps finds interest in the insights metaphysics
may provide, he does not formulate one himself. In particular, in what
regards this current work and its pictures of inclusion, Putnam takes no
stand in regards total inclusion to the Absolute, God and Design.
Badiou, conversely, has two metaphysical elements in his theory.
The first was already discussed, that is the metaphysical instant of the
event. The pragmatic value of the not-yet-conceptualized “capital R”
Real site, was that this formalism enabled the creation of a body around
the new ideal. That is, the metaphysical value was ethical.
The second metaphysical element is Badiou’s clear position
against total inclusion. It is precisely that metaphysical stand due to
which, within Badiou’s philosophy, being qua being cannot have any
metaphysical content, but is the mere formal extension of a given world.
There is no meta-language, there is no set of all sets, there is no world
of all worlds, and there is no Absolute or God or Design.
In fact, Badiou even has a mathematical proof against the
Absolute. I will not here attend to the subtleties of Badiou’s
metaphysical “proof” of the inexistence of God. Such a proof has no
place within pragmatism. But even if the proof has no pragmatic value,
the metaphysical stand it is supposed to support may be still considered
within a pragmatic point of view.
I will conclude my paper with a short presentation of the pragmatic
ethical value that may be found in relation to the metaphysical issue of
the Absolute. I shall thus turn to William James, who is in that respect,
Badiou’s exact inverse.
William James talks about the pragmatic meaning of the belief in
God (the Absolute, Design). I will here address two of the values he
articulates. The first is the possibility to take what he calls a “moral
holiday.”
James says:
[S]ince in the Absolute finite, evil is “overruled” already, we may,
therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were
potentially eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and without
sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility.
In short . . . we have a right ever and anon . . . to let the world wag in
its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and
are none of our business.31
Suffice it to say that James wrote those lines in 1906.
31 WILLIAM JAMES, What Pragmatism Means, in PRAGMATISM: A NEW NAME FOR SOME
OLD WAYS OF THINKING 73 (1907).
Perhaps James’s proposed pragmatic value is more appropriate as

consolation in cases where a certain moral dilemma is so hard to
resolve, that one can never be sure to have made the right choice.
Instead of obsessing over irresolvable issues, one may take a “moral
holiday” from useless anxiety.
Without the Absolute, there is no discourse of some hypothesized
justice “in the long run.” One cannot ignore what one judges as evil
without taking responsibility for one’s inaction. The inexistence of God
requires one to ethically engage in reality. On the other hand, some
people could find that position as a declaration of “no hope.” Such an
attitude could be paralyzing.
Indeed, as Robert Hockett noted, a metaphysical position tends to
be associated with, and even reinforce, attitudes and actions that could
sometimes seem contradictory. Two contradictory metaphysical
statements may result in the same effect. Pragmatically, of course, my
interest here is more on the side of effects.
The second pragmatic value of God according to James is that of
the promise for a future, and a perhaps better future, a “vague
confidence in the future,”32 enough to make us feel safe and have hope.
Such hope in a better future might promote, once more, inaction. But, it
could also motivate and encourage people to engage in the present for a
better future.
Without a God, we are left with the present. Badiou talks about
our ethical obligation as an opportunity to create the present. There is
no use in the hope for future change, simply because change does not
belong to the future. Change is a contemporary exception to the law of
the world, it is the creation of new facts in the name of new values.
Without a God, change comes when we engage in our own design.
32 Id.
APPENDIX
Legend
1. Democratic Materialism
2. Physics
3. Deliberative Democracy
4. Dialectic Materialism

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MORAG.FINAL.

VERSION 5/1/2008 12:13:30 AM

ALAIN BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM:

In this paper I propose a reading of Alain Badiou’s Logics of

2240 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 29:5

The third path is ideological. Four pictures of change are

Regulative Principle of Integration

The first thesis of pragmatism Putnam presents is anti-skepticism.

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2241

world. Members of the community-world share the same values, and

2242 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 29:5

Democratic materialism thus identifies ethics with human rights.

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2243

inquiry5. If the term “lifeless” is to imply a certain criticism, it is not

5 See Appendix infra at 1. Democratic Materialism.

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II. BADIOU’S THEORY OF OBJECTIVITY

World and World Inclusion

Badiou’s first philosophical move is characteristic of pragmatism,

8HILARY PUTNAM, THE MANY FACES OF REALISM 18 (1987).

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2245

gradually demonstrated in this paper). Conversely, Badiou claims that

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component to a certain degree, weaker than that of the other Hawaiian

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2247

manner of defining an atom13). Non-essentialism is another important

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elements initially considered are thus incompatible.

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2249

This objectivation assumes two worldly logical roles of concepts.

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Badiou’s postulate of materialism is the decision that “every atom

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2251

of Platonic Idea or some sort of thing-in-itself that can wander from

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and pluralistic as Putnam’s, albeit much heavier in theory. But this

III. THE THEORETICAL WORLDS OF PHYSICS

Regulative Principle of Compliant Inclusion

“Small r” realism and the pragmatic emphasis on the role of

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2253

2254 CARDOZO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 29:5

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2255

As will be explained in the next Part, the scientific picture

IV. PUTNAM’S DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

Regulative Principle of Agreement

Putnam adopts and elaborates Dewey’s ideas of “deliberative

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says Putnam, speak your criticism, be a part of a community or state,

26 See Appendix infra at 3. Deliberative Democracy.

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2257

say, these new needs or interests, although “problematic,” cohere in a

V. BADIOU’S DIALECTIC MATERIALISM

Regulative Principle—Consequences of an Event

Badiou’s model of change is, I here claim, inspired by the other

27 This section is based on books 5, 6, and 7 of LOGICS OF WORLDS, supra note 4.

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2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2259

as it is not holistically related to the other concepts of the world. It is a

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body will be the first to become apparent. As it is a point of tension

2008] BADIOU WITHIN NEO-PRAGMATISM 2261

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VI. BADIOU, PUTNAM, AND WILLIAM JAMES

Ethics and Metaphysics