每次我看完一部电影或者书，上豆瓣来查询看法、评论的时候，都会忍不住暴怒起来。比如说，有人评论黑泽明的《罗生门》不如警匪片，《本杰明巴顿的奇妙生活》很无聊，《毕业生》味同嚼蜡；类似的愚蠢观点事实上总是在我们身边，但是，我们似乎在言论自由这一政治正确框架下，畏于批评这样的傻逼们。
仅仅一句“站在巨人的肩膀上说巨人矮”是不足够的。要承认的是，在这个社会里，事物的廉价已经到了可以随意堆砌、丢弃的地步，而即时的快感总是那么强烈；总是有一些人，在浅薄的事物里花费了太多时间，在庸俗里变得庸俗，直到最后失去尊敬与体会之心，而且并不自知。
甚至于，对美的审视，这种原本应为一种人类天赋的能力，也已经沦为了炫耀和浅浮的妄言。于是在任何美的、严肃的事物和感情可以在被认知与体会之前，他们已经转过了眼去，并且为自己的犬儒洋洋自得。
我希望你能走更多的路，读更多的书，遇到更多持不同意见的、诚实的人们。如果你不能，我希望你有勇气重新开始。
在理解网络互连与人类社会相似性之前，我认为有必要澄清一些本体论式的问题：人类社会的存在是由看不见的网络编织的，君主与臣民间的连接并不是电缆，而是社会关系；在互联网的历史中，每一台电脑与另一台电脑中存在可见的物理连接形式，但是信息的传递关系，同样类似于人类的社会关系，是不可见的。如果说推动人类社会协作和组织的核心是生存资源争夺。在网络社会，就是信息的发布权在推动网络社会形态的变化。
下面我们开始。
今天，Opera发布了Opera Unite服务，根据软件的文档，这一浏览器最大的特点就是将每台电脑变成服务器：你可以用opera unite在自己浏览器中开设公共memo pad，聊天室，提供文件共享服务，甚至直接用opera unite发布主页。
而十几年前，这些服务是由ISP提供的。当时最早的服务提供商，如网易（见《南方人物周刊》丁磊专访）就是靠主页托管服务、邮箱服务奠定了它的商业基石。在十几年前，聊天室程序、邮件程序、主页托管程序，都是可以卖大钱的东西。服务提供商的技术优势，恰如基督教会具有的魅惑技能，以技术赋权（神赋君权）的形式，在网络的这一历史阶段里，扮演了人类历史上开明君主的社会功能：每一台子机都是其下的臣民（或者，某种意义上的公民），而每一台子机又通过主机成为二级的信息传递通道，直到最底层的信息消化阶层，造就了一片金字塔结构的网络连接关系。并且此时的服务商，同样具有社会管理的暴力功能，不时按其意愿清扫其认为子机提供的不恰当内容。而零星的个人主机推行的独立服务，恰如马耳他岛上的骑士团，在一片皇家争夺中中据守自己的封地。这些零星的个人主机，衍生的仍然是金字塔状社会。
也恰恰如人类历史的演化图，网络社会的金字塔结构出现之后几年，迅速出现了子机间的联通尝试。napster, bearshare，甚至soulseek，这些名字我们都记得。它们的共同点是，主机的存在，已经取消了技术赋予的道德上的管理权，它的存在，就是为了子机间的互通；这是一个物理形态上以主机为核心的放射状社会结构，而在其信息的交流结构上则是网状的。主机仍然具有一些君主式的权利(kick, ban, filter），但是它的存在的目的已经与1st gen的主机明显存在不同。可以说，这种2nd gen的主-子机网络结构，虽然在物理上仍然是主机核心的，却已经具有了理想意义上公民社会的特征，主机即成为了现代意义上的public servant角色。这种架构，是所有类似于facebook的web 2.0网站的生存基础。
今天发布的opera unite，按照其设计意图，将会把网络社会结构带领入类似于无政府主义的社会结构：每一台子机，都可以变成独立主机，发布信息。也就是说，每一台机器都成为了（至少有权成为）核心主机。虽然这一架构的物理形式仍然是以opera unite的服务为核心的，但是它在信息传递上，成为了点状结构。其实我们真的需要在msn, yahoo chat room, omegle, emule甚至picasa之外再多一个opera来掺信息共享的浑水吗？未必，但是opera unite的提供的以上服务的整合功能，在技术上赋予了任何一台主机成为皇帝的权利，但人人都是信息皇帝，诡异地成为了其反面——由于人人都不再具有信息特权，则只能通过协作和互通有无来进行信息的传递。也就是说，真正提供了无政府主义的存在的可能性。（想想看，人人只要卖力，就能吃上自己种的面包，那么面包店还有存在的必要吗？用于管理面包店的政府，还有存在的必要吗？）
opera今日之发布，若与十几年前网易提供主页托管的历史开始，几乎完全重演了一遍马克思的社会演化理论和技术（经济？）决定论的正确性。但此时我们必须寻求另一个理论支点，来完成这一形而上的讨论：opera提供这一本体论上可能性，未必意味着人类确实可以在网络上建成无政府主义社会。我们必须回到梭罗，他说：“改革的动力，恰恰就在每个人的心里”。一个个人首先要把自己改造成为一个自觉的无政府主义者，才能参与入这一社会；一个1st gen互联网时代的习惯用户，在面对如今网状信息传递结构的时候，究竟会发生什么？我们走着瞧吧。
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无责任冥想，实际网络物理关系图与信息传递关系图要复杂的多，比如，点状结构下的金字塔结构。
我一点都不喜欢谈政治，或者更精确地说，我不喜欢在互联网上谈政治；我不仅自己不喜欢谈政治，还看不得别人谈政治。
我恨互联网，我恨每次上twitter，铺天盖地而来的泛政治信息。我恨左派傻逼，我恨右派文人。每次打开网络连接，我就由衷地觉得无聊透了。这无聊从网线里传出来，密密麻麻地爬到我屏幕上，跟蚂蚁似的组成俩大字儿：没劲。后面跟一个轻描淡写的句号，而不是感叹号。
人人都守着自己的立场解读传了不知道多少手的消息，人人都准备洗脑别人或者接受洗脑。在网络上人人都是福尔摩斯，揣摩着中南海和成都公交燃烧背后的阴谋（视频为什么是镜像的？这一定有阴谋！）
一旦你小心翼翼地发表一点个人言论，比如，罗京是个大傻逼。你立即就会被迫走上政治的舞台，被截然对立的立场拉拢或者打击。信息的操纵者和吸收者们在每一个层面发挥着作用，屏幕前的你找到一个最舒服的位置，然后一逞口舌之瘾。
这就是你的政治自由？得了吧伙计，这是K粉，杜冷丁，你打针上了瘾。你以为你在信息中找到了出口，其实你只是被这种即时的快感吸收。log off之后，现实还现实，只不过从左半身不遂变成了右半身不遂。
真正精明的isp应该打出这样的广告：新媒体（飞机爆炸、汽车着火、深圳高管出事，直接送达你桌面）、草根博客（发布你的屎）、社交网络（more sex!），劲舞团（想操90后吗？）还有数不清的即时快感，让左派们吸取环球时报，让右派们膜拜哈耶克；让人肉搜索起来，让你从上到下地摇摆起来！我要黑莓、诺基亚；摩托罗拉网络功能不太行；我要智能炒股，炒美国的股，跑到柬埔寨都能炒美国的股；我要上博客推荐首页，我要拥有自己的粉丝团；我就是下一个王三表，我就是新一代意见领袖。
只需每月200包月费，预交一年就能免费得到一个无线路由器，配备上最新的手持设备或者膝上设备，让你随时在20乘20的空间内享受虚拟性爱，虚拟粉丝，虚拟政治自由；还等什么，快来使用1和0的special K，让你自己立即麻醉起来！
The Tank Man, 6, 5, 2009, NYT
Terril Jones had only shown the photograph to friends.
While working as a reporter in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he shot many photographs and recorded several hours of video. It wasn’t until weeks afterwards, when he had returned to Japan, that he discovered the magnitude of what he had captured — an iconic moment in history from an entirely unique angle.
His version of the tank man has never been published until now.
For 20 years the negatives rested in Mr. Jones’ belongings, following him across the world throughout his career as a journalist. He contacted The New York Times after reading the accounts of the other four photographers in Wednesday’s Lens blog.
Mr. Jones’ angle on the historic encounter is vastly different from four other versions shot that day, taken at eye level moments before the tanks stopped at the feet of the lone protester. Wildly chaotic, a man ducks in the foreground, reacting from gunfire coming from the tanks. Another flashes a near-smile. Another pedals his bike, seemingly passive as the tanks rumble towards confrontation.
The photograph encourages the viewer to reevaluate the famous encounter. Unlike the other four versions, we are given a sense of what it was like on the ground as the tanks heaved forward, the man’s act of defiance escalated by the flight of others.
Mr. Jones shared his experience in an e-mail message to The Times:
I was extremely high strung by June 5 when I took this photo. I had been running on little sleep since students began a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square on May 13, and I had been trading shifts with other A.P. reporters, staffing the square 24/7 for nearly three weeks.
Adrenaline and the drive to stay close to the action took me back to the street on June 5. I was in front of the Beijing Hotel and I could hear tanks revving up and making their way toward us from Tiananmen. I went closer to the street and looked down Changan Avenue over several rows of parked bicycles when another volley of shots rang out from where the tanks were, and people began ducking, shrieking, stumbling and running toward me. I lifted my camera and squeezed off a single shot before retreating back behind more trees and bushes where hundreds of onlookers were cowering. I didn’t know quite what I had taken other than tanks coming toward me, soldiers on them shooting in my direction, and people fleeing.
I stayed in Beijing for another month, until after Tiananmen Square and the Gate of Heavenly Peace were reopened to the public. It was only some time after I returned to Tokyo that, as I was going through my negatives, I printed this photo and noticed that I, too, had captured the so-called “tank man,” but from a completely different angle. He is small but unmistakable as he stands in the center of Changan Jie, clearly positioning himself for a confrontation with the approaching army. I was stunned to see him in my photo because his image had become a global icon of the events in Beijing. But I made the discovery several weeks after the fact, and the A.P. had already sent out a defining photo of that moment. So I filed away my picture, along with a couple of hundred more, and six hours of videotape that I had taken over three weeks of growing demonstrations.
I never published them, and only showed them to a few friends and fellow reporters. But they were never far from my mind.
I’ve always regretted not staying in place longer 20 years ago, despite the gunshots, and taken more photos, so that I might have realized what was unfolding before my eyes. But while I missed the timeliest opportunity to share this photo in 1989, today is an appropriate time to pull it out finally from its decades-old wraps.
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延伸阅读，请看江泽民对华莱士采访中评价The Tank Man：“他相信人民的军队不会开枪，所以他敢于阻拦”（大意）
一则谎言，一个小人；两个英雄。
首先转载朋友tomshiwo的文章，《一条音轨的死亡》
by tomshiwo
“一条音轨的死亡其实就是它不再发声，进而变为图像，就如在新闻联播的时候关掉声音，看到两具僵硬的躯体的唇的波动，这种波动的幅度与情绪是如此精确，以至于即使忽略其后的声带运动也可以自成一种机械美感。几十年的震颤与上下颌的开闭，却总可以与波动间歇的图像情绪相匹配，丰收，竣工，盛世一个节奏，英雄，典型，伟人一个节奏，敌人，叛徒，暴乱另一个节奏。节奏的稳定似乎成了音轨的核心价值，而非声带与声带的所指————也许根本不存在一个人的声带？而只是一部人形的收录机在那里象征，排他，用堆积庄重与静穆的能指的方法来结构复杂的事实。那几条老音轨、那几个老节奏持续进行着一种意识形态混音，政治DJ一般不断释放着欢乐迷醉的和谐伦理，供人民从中采样、摇摆、休眠————相当于对权力合法性的问题每24小时做一次直接、有效的解释与解决。
然而今天有一条音轨死亡了。不是关上电视让它在7点到7点半间暂时死亡，而是一个人变成了他的遗照。但这种真实却是古怪的，因为很难不带有“人形收录机宣告报废”的意象。那个非人的音轨与其代表的不死的立场似乎永恒的在中国人的晚饭时间发生，虽然其后紧接着的广告与天气预报在声音质地上仿佛否定了前一个半小时，但人民却如此热衷于这种衔接的逻辑：同一条音轨从虚无到真实的顺势而下。这便是当代中国生存游戏的一部分，因为可以降低聆听与思辨的压力，便对从中心发射出来的声音犬儒且依赖————从新闻联播到广告再到天气预报，如果联合起黄金时段的电视剧，几乎满足了当下中国人对于祖国的所有幻觉与欲望。
今天有一条音轨死亡了。有人竟然哀悼这个“声音”，多么的多此一举！因为“声音”是不灭的，换上一条新的音轨，节奏还可以继续稳定与准确。还有人说他会在天堂里播音，但可曾想过他曾经播音的地方要比天堂不知虚幻上多少！所以，这只是一个人的死亡，一个真实声带的死亡，一颗螺丝钉的死亡。也许唯一有趣的是这个死亡带来的葬礼使得众多音轨们暂时变成了声带们，他们为同伴守灵，祈祷，默哀，但此过程只能进行到明晚7点之前。”
——————————–下面是我写的———————————————————-
罗京死了。对于我来说，这一切更与童年记忆有关。
他年富力强，适合各个年龄、各个阶层的人欣赏。他就像是孩子们精力充沛的父亲、青年人精明干练的对象、老年人满意放心的孩子。甚至，在他面前，一个五大三粗的青年人，也会不由得感到他唤起了自己童年时，对严肃又温柔的父亲的向往。 你们全都不可救药地爱上他了，而且这完全是性驱力的，别提什么国家、民族、大义，这完全是荷尔蒙的结果，全都是关于性的！
他那个秃头，那个时而严肃时而有节制地微笑时而发出胜利号角一样召唤的声音，简直就是我噩梦。我相信，不仅对我，也对无数人来说，要是党会说话，他说话的声音肯定跟罗京一样；要是党有脑袋，他肯定也是个秃顶。
那句螳臂挡车的歹徒，跟我幼年看到的电视上播出审判大会的记忆融合在一起，带来深深的恐惧，但同时令人恶心的是，你明明知道这是一个圈 套，但仍然免不了感到一种甜腻的受保护感：他面带慈祥，用明朗的声音宣布胜利，用爽朗的大笑面对危险，用激昂的不屑面对敌人，他明明是在对我说，是他保护 了我，他让我不受阴谋、爆炸、颠覆的危害。
他只用语音、语调，甚至不必吐出一个完整的词，就能给我带来相应的情感、思维；很多人夸他专业好，很多人发问，他走了，还有谁能接替他？还有谁能替他传达声音？没有了！太可怕了！人民群众不希望他走，人民群众爱上他了！
现在他终于死了，死了！！而且是癌症死的！每次听到他的声音，我就隐隐感觉到不安，想要躲避，直到最近，看到马格南图片社拍的照片，我才突然想起来，他的 声音总是伴随我童年记忆里电视上模糊的审讯室，被枪指着、被手摁着的脑袋。电视里给我展示着敌人的下场，他的声音宣布着又一次胜利，从那以后我就感到自己 内心有什么东西被锁上了。每次我想要突破这个锁，就听到一个模糊不清的声音跟我讲述什么，带着电视信号扭曲的兹兹声，只有声调、声音，而听不清楚具体的内 容。但我能从这声调里分辨出来他的情感，并且同时感到安全和恐怖。
有两种犬儒主义。第一种，是不知道自己在干吗，仍然去干的，比如技术官僚，他不知道自己的技术要被用来干嘛。但他一律服从命令；第二种，是知道自己在干吗，并且努力去干，以赢得最大的利益的。
第一种人，构建了整个体制，他们是体制上无忧无虑的螺丝钉。有人说，批判罗京？他不过是在做自己工作，那不是连我们这样做自己工作的人也要受批判？这种人完全不敢相信有一种除了体制和社会以外的，更高的衡量价值在
第二种，是体制上促进齿轮转动的关键部分。他们驱动整个体制运行，并且知道怎么给自己带来最大的好处，好让最后自己变成机器上最核心的、最重要的一部分
罗京成功地变成了这个核心里最重要的一部分，用他最擅长的语调和语音，使所有人都感染了斯德哥尔摩病毒。这些人在他死之后，由于失去了加害者而伤心欲绝。
我一直默默期待他的死亡。不为别的，就为解开我头脑里那个从来都赶不走的声音。
后记：
转了一篇朋友写罗京的日记，自己写了两笔感受，结果现在这他妈成了个事儿了：有人暗地里留言给我，有人发信给我，有人到处转帖，有人替我摇旗呐喊。 幸亏我这儿留言很紧密：验证码特别难看清，而且一输就得俩单词。许多人不知道怎么玩儿而知难而退。自从昨天恢复了统计插件，就这一篇博刷刷的24小时两千 多浏览。阿弥托佛，我写了那么多读书笔记都没这么高浏览。
骂两句死人还成事儿了，你真不知道这么多人是吃饱了撑的还是本来就没什么事儿闲的。
人死不死，关你屁事。你要流泪你要感动自己闷家里哭去。我有恨的权利，这是一项基本人权。还有，删除不顺眼的评论，也他妈是我基本人权。花钱上网没必要给自己添堵，我的地盘我做主。
Message sent from blackberry using opera mini.
I hate high technology.
————电脑上发出的分割线———–
换了个黑莓。。最便宜的8707。历经无数次莫名其妙的出错、刷机、装软件、出错、刷机、装软件、调试、功能不能正常使用、调试、刷机、出错（循环50遍）之后。
我终于既能在黑莓上看rss，又能上q，还能看地图，并且手机端直接发邮件，甚至进而发blog了。。
我操。
我觉得高科技这玩意儿，就跟需要极大耐心的法术一样：反复折腾，反复找用料、反复施法，尽管如此还是会神秘地出错，哪次突然行了！哎！好，那就再也别动丫了。。
我决定再也不动丫了，这一百年里我都再也不动它系统、软件了。
1.
《汤因比论汤因比》三联中文版，p143
民族主义是目前世界上最强大的思想意识。例如，你在美国征兵，这是与美国人的生活方式完全相悖的。但在内战和第二次世界大战中，美国人为了民族主义的缘故而容许征兵。如果你看看非洲，欧洲人的民族主义错误和悲剧正在那里以非常粗鲁的形式重演着。“西方人很强大，”非洲人可能论证道，“他们在军事上和文化上征服和控制着我们，民族主义是他们的生活方式，所以民族主义一直是其强大的秘诀——因此，让我们也成为民族主义者吧，我们将像他们一样非常强大。”这种想法恰恰充满了逻辑上的错误，但它或许可以解释为什么非洲人如此不加鉴别地成为民族主义者。他们没有认识到民族主义在西方文明中所产生的毁灭性影响。他们把它看做一件强大的法宝，当他们采纳西方观念或者尽力模仿西方的时候，并不理解自己在干什么。
（接下来就译得是扯淡了，看不懂了。。）
2.
Louis Althusser, 意识形态与意识形态国家机器：
(Un exemple : l’idéologie religieuse chrétienne)论基督教意识形态
L’idéologie religieuse chrétienne dit à peu près ceci. Elle dit : Je m’adresse à toi, individu humain appelé Pierre (tout individu est appelé par son nom, au sens passif, ce n’est jamais lui qui se donne son Nom), pour te dire que Dieu existe et que tu lui dois des comptes. Elle ajoute : c’est Dieu qui s’adresse à toi par ma voix (I’ Écriture ayant recueilli la Parole de Dieu, la Tradition l’ayant transmise, l’Infaillibilité Pontificale la fixant à jamais sur ses points « délicats »). Elle dit : voici qui tu es : tu es Pierre ! Voici quelle est ton origine, tu as été créé par Dieu de toute éternité, bien que tu sois né en 1920 après Jésus-Christ ! Voici quelle est ta place dans le monde ! Voici ce que tu dois faire ! Moyennant quoi, si tu observes la « loi d’amour », tu seras sauvé, toi Pierre, et feras partie du Corps glorieux du Christ ! Etc., etc.
… Surprenant, car si nous considérons que l’idéologie religieuse s’adresse bien aux individus pour les « transformer en sujets », en interpellant l’individu Pierre pour en faire un sujet, libre d’obéir ou de désobéir à l’appel, c’est-à-dire aux ordres de Dieu ; si elle les appelle par leur Nom, reconnaissant ainsi qu’ils sont toujours-déjà interpellés en sujets ayant une identité personnelle (au point que le Christ de Pascal dit : « C’est pour toi que j’ai versé telle goutte de mon sang ») ; si elle les interpelle de telle sorte que le sujet répond « oui, c’est bien moi ! ».
Louise Althusser, l’Idéologie et l’Appareils Idéologiques d’État, POSITIONS (1964-1975), pp. 67-125. Les Éditions sociales, Paris, 1976
www.lacan.com
Nietzsche wrote that a philosophy is always the biography of the philosopher. Maybe a biography of the philosopher by the philosopher himself is a piece of philosophy. So I shall tell you nine stories taken of my private life, with their philosophical morality… The first story is the story of the father and the mother.
My father was an alumnus of the École Normale Superieure and agrégé of mathematics: my mother an alumna of the École Normale Supérieure and agrégée of French literature. I am an alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure and agrégé, but agrege of what, of philosophy, that is to say, probably, the only possible way to assume the double filiation and circulate freely between the literary maternity and the mathematical paternity. This is a lesson for philosophy itself : the language of philosophy always constructs its own space between the matheme and the poem, between the mother and the father, after all.
Someone saw that very clearly, my colleague, the French analytic philosopher Jacques Bouveresse, from the Collège de France. In a recent book in which he paid me the horror of speaking of me, he compared me to a five-footed rabbit and says in substance: “This five- footed rabbit that Alain Badiou is runs at top speed in the direction of mathematic formalism, and then, all of a sudden, taking an incomprehensible turn, he goes back on his steps and runs at the same speed to throw himself into literature.” Well, yes, that’s how with a father and a mother so well distributed, one turns into a rabitt.
Now the second story : about mother and philosophy.
My mother was very old and my father was not in Paris. I would take her out to eat in a restaurant. She would tell me on these occasions everything she had never told me. It was the final expressions of tenderness, which are so moving, that one has with one’s very old parents. One evening, she told me that even before meeting my father, when she was teaching in Algeria, she had a passion, a gigantic passion, a devouring passion, for a philosophy teacher. This story is absolutely authentic. I listened to it, obviously, in the position you can imagine, and I said to myself: well, that’s it, I have done nothing else except accomplish the desire of my mother, that the Algerian philosopher had neglected. He had gone off with someone else and I had done what I could to be the consolation for my mother’s terrible pain — which had subsisted underneath it all even until she was eighty-one.
The consequence I draw for philosophy is that, contrary to the usual assertion according to which “the end of metaphysics” you know, is being accomplished, and all that, philosophy precisely can not have an end, because it is haunted, from within itself, by the necessity to take one more step within a problem that already exists. And I believe that this is its nature. The nature of philosophy is that something is eternally being bequeathed to it. It has the responsibility of this bequeathal. Your are always treating the bequeathal itself, always taking one more step in the determination of what was thus bequeathed to you. As myself, in the most unconscious manner, I never did anything as a philosopher except respond to an appeal that I had not even heard.
The third story is about the famous notion of engagement.
I arrive in Paris in 1955, during the beginning of the war in Algeria. The horrors of this war that are today coming into the open - mass murders, torture, razzia, systematic rapes - are well known to everyone. Nevertheless, we are a small number in 1955, a very small number to want stop these horrors, to be against the war in Algeria. We demonstrate, from time to time, boulevard Saint-Michel, shouting “Peace in Algeria!”, and when we get to the end of the street, the police are waiting for us, striking us with their cloaks, and we were joyfully knocked senseless. What is strange is that we could not say anything but this: we have to do it again. And yet, I can tell you this, the “pelerine” cloak is not particularly gay. I even think I prefer to be clubbed. But we had to do it again, because that’s what the pure present is: wanting the end of this war, as few as we were to share this wanting. I drew the conviction that philosophy exists if it takes charge of the quick of the contemporary. It is not simply a question of engagement, or a question of political exteriority, but that something of the contemporary is always raw, and philosophy must testify to this raw or take place within it, however sophisticated its intellectual production be.
The story number four is about love and religion.
Before coming to Paris, I lived in a province, I am a provincial who came to Paris a bit late. And one of the traits that characterized my provincial youth is that a majority of the girls were still raised in religion. These girls were still kept or reserved for an interesting destiny. Which gave an important figure to the masculine parade: the different manners to shine in front of these girls still pious, the principal of these being to refute the existence of God. This was an important exercise of seduction, both because it was transgress! ve, and rhetorically brilliant when one had the nieans of doing it.
Before conquering their virtues, the souls had to be yanked out of the Church. Which of the two is the worst, that’s for the priests to decide. But out of this conies the idea, that I had very early, that the most argumentative, the most abstract philosophy also always constitutes a seduction. A seduction whose basis is sexual, no doubt about it. Of course, philosophy argues against the seduction of images and I remain Platonist on this point. But it also argues in order to seduce. We can thus understand the Socratic function of corruption of the youth. Corrupting youth means being seductively hostile to the normal regime of seduction. I maintain and I repeat that is the destiny of philosophy to corrupt the youth, to teach it that immediate seductions have little value, but also that superior seductions exist. In the end, the young man who knows how to refute the existence of God is more seductive than the one who could only propose to the girl. a game of tennis. It’s a good reason to become a philosopher.
This is what has become the place of the question of love, as a key question of philosophy itself, exactly in the sense it already had for Plato in Symposium. The question of love is necessarily at the heart of philosophy, because it governs the question of its power, the question of its address to its public, the question of its seductive strength. On this point, I believe I have followed Socrates’s very difficult direction: “the one who follows the path of total revelation must begin at an early age to be taken by the beauty of bodies”.
The fifth story is a marxist one.
Naturally, my family tradition was to the left. My father had bequeathed to me two images: the image of the anti-nazi resistant during the war, and then the image of the socialist militant in power, because he was mayor of a big French town, Toulouse, for thirteen years. My story is the story of a rupture with this sort of official left.
There are two periods in the history of my rupture with the official left. The last, well known, is May 68 and its continuation. The other, less known, more secret and so even more active. In 1960 there was a general strike in Belgium. I will not give the details. I was sent to cover this strike as a journalist - I was often a journalist, I have written, it seems to me, hundreds of articles, maybe thousands. I met mine workers on strike. They have reorganized the entire social life of the country, by constructing a sort of new popular legitimacy. They have even edited a new money. I assisted at their assemblies, I spoke with them. And I was from then on convinced, up till this day I am speaking to you, that philosophy is on that side. “On that side” is not a social determination. It means: on the side of what is spoken orpronounced there, on the side of this obscure part of common humanity. On the side of equality.
The abstract maxim of philosophy is necessarily absolute equality. After my experience of mine workers strike in Belgium, I have give a philosophical order to myself : “transform the notion of truth in such a way that it obeys the equalitarian maxim, this is why I gave the truth three attributes:
1) It depends on an irruption, and not on a structure. Any truth is new, this will be the doctrine of the event.
2) All truth is universal, in a radical sense, the anonymous equalitarian for-all, the pure for-all, constitutes it in its being, this will be its genericity.
3) A truth constitutes its subject, and not the inverse, this will be its militant dimension.
All that, in a still total obscurity, is at work when I meet in 1960 the Belgium mine Workers.
The story number six is a very moral story.
After 68, during what we can call the red years, when we invented new things, when we created bonds with peoples that we did not know, when we were in the conviction that an entirely other world than that of our academic destiny awaited us, we entered into a political enterprise with a good many people, - and some of them, me included, continue this new political enterprise.
But what really struck me, the experience I wish to speak of here, is the experience of those who, starting with the middle of the 1970s, renounced this enterprise. Not only did they renounce this enterprise, but they entered into a systematic renegation that, starting with the new philosophers, from the end of the 1970s, little by little establish themselves, spread and dominate. And this is planted in philosophy like an arrow. It is a question in itself: How is it possible that one can cease being the subject of a truth? How is it possible that one return to the routine of the world This question nourishes my conviction that what is constitutive of philosophy is to stay not only within the vividness of the event, but within its becoming, that is, within the treatment of its consequences. Never to return to structural passivity : That is properly constitutive of philosophy as thought. It is what I simply called fidelity. And fidelity forms a knot, it is a concept that brings together the subject, the event and truth. It is what traverses the subject with regard to an event capable of constituting a truth.
Here again I think of Plato. At the end of Book IX of the Republic, Socrates responds to the objection that the ideal city which he had traced the plan of would probably never exist. This is a massive objection that the young people make: “All that is magnificent, but we don’t see it coming!”. Socrates responds more or less like this: that this city exists or may one day exist is of no importance, because it is only its laws that must dictate our conduct. That is the principle of consequence. And it is not a question that is inferred from a problem of existence or inexistence. It’s our philosophical duty : to continue.
It’s my story seven which is an erotic story. This is what is expended by all biographers. Will you be disappointed? I will stay within the discreet erotic genre. A “soft” story.
Just like everyone, in the 50s and 60s, we were tormented by sexuality. This torment is certainly stil very perceptible in my first novels, Almagestes, in 1964 and then Portulans in 1967. But literature is a filter here. In the end, this trouble is foreign to philosophy strictly speaking., in conformity to its great classical tradition. I would say that I learned little by little why. It is certain that sexual situations are fascinating, and it is also certain that the formalism of these situations, the erotic formalism is extraordinarily poor. And all its force depends on a repetitive injunction, with variations of little amplitude. I would say then that little by little in life a relation of charmed connivance is established with this formalism. Finally neither transgressive fascination, nor the repression of the superego are really at their place in this affair. All that is delicious, and, after all, without great consequence for thought. I have come to conclude philosophically, that as acute as this pacifying charmed connivance might be, at least for me, desire is not a central category for philosophy, and cannot be. Or rather desires only touches philosophy - just as well as jouissance - as bodies are seized in love. That is why, from this long crossing through sexual torment the final result is, as I had already said for other reasons, that love, and not desire, must instantly return into the constitution of the concept.
The story number eight is a formal story, or a story concerning forms.
I said, on the subject of the erotic injunction, “formalism”, and I said it as a philosopher. Because I deeply believe that what permits a singular truth - amorous as well as political — to touch philosophy is, in the end, its form. In this sense, I would sustain that the only philosophy is formalist. Perhaps in the sense of Plato when he says: “the only veritable thought is in forms” — what is often translated by “Idea” is better rendered by “form”. And I believe that the creation of concepts lies in this: philosophy conceives the singularity of theorms of truth. And there again, we have a Platonic program. Why Platonic? Dialectics is the science of forms. And form is, in philosophy, singularity. It is, as Socrates says in Phaedo, “the unique form of what remains identical to itself.”
From this we have an intimate tie between philosophy and mathematics (a tie strongly thematized by Plato himself.) If the philosophic concepts are in the end the form of the concepts of truth, then they must support the proof of formalization. Whatever this proof be. All the great philosophers have submitted the concept to an overwhelming, speculative form of formalization. I think this is why mathematics must have remained a passion for me? I scrutinize this precisely - in mathematics: What is thought capable of when it is devoted to, pure form? As the literality of form? And the conclusion I have progressively drawn is that what it is capable of, when it is ordained as pure form, is thinking being as such, being as being. Which gives my provoking formula according to which effective ontology is nothing else than constituted mathematics. Which, obviously, in the eyes of the psychoanalyst, means that my desire is only there to sublimate the image of my mathematician father.
The final story, the story number nine, is about my masters.
Philosophy is a question of mastery, and this in a triple sense. First because it belongs in effect to what Lacan called the discourse of the master. Then because it supposes, in its very subjectivity, the encounter with a master. Finally and lastly, because if we look closely at it, philosophy always ends up by constituting a discourse that is ordained to a principal signifier, a master signifier, such as is, in my thought, the signifier “truth. In the three cases, philosophy is a question of mastery; So, biographically, who were my masters?
During the decisive years of my education, I had three masters: Sartre, Lacan and Althusser. They were not masters of the same thing.
What Sartre taught me was simply, existentialism. But what does existentialism mean? It means that you must have a tie between the concept on the one hand and on the other the existential agency of choice, the agency of the vital decision. The conviction that the philosophic concept is not worth an hour of toil if, be it by mediations of a great complexity, it does not reverberate, clarify and ordain the agency of choice, of the vital decision. And in this sense, the concept must be, also and always, an affair of existence. That is what Sartre taught me.
Lacan taught me the connection, the necessary link between a theory of subjects and a theory of forms. He taught me how and why the very thinking of subjects, which had so often been opposed to the theory of forms, was in reality intelligible only within the framework of this theory. He taught me that the subject is a question that is not at all of a psychological character, but is an axiomatic and formal question. More than any other question!
Althusser taught me two things: that there was no object proper to philosophy — this is one of his great theses —, but that there were orientations of thought, lines of separation. And, as Kant had already said, a sort of perpetual fight, a fight that was constantly begun again, in new conditions. He taught me consequently the sense of delimitations, of what he called the demarcation. In particular the conviction that philosophy is not the vague discourse of totality, or the general interpretation of what there is. That philosophy must be delimited, that it must be separated from what is not philosophy. Politics and philosophy are two distinct things, art and philosophy are two distinct things, science and philosophy are two distinct things. Finally, I was able then to keep all my masters. I kept Sartre despite the disregard he was object of for a long time. I kept Lacan despite what must really be called the terrible character of his disciples. And I kept Althusser despite the substantial political divergences that opposed me to him starting with May 68. Crossing through the possibility of oblivion, the dissemination of disciples and the political conflict, I succeeded in conserving my fidelity to three disparate masters.
And I maintain today that in philosophy masters are necessary; I maintain a constitutive hostility to the tendency towards democratic professionalization of philosophy and to the imperative that is rampant today and humiliates youth: “Be little, and work as a team.” I would also say that the masters, must be combined and surmounted, but finally, it is always disastrous to deny them.
It’s the end, now. And when I am at my wits’ end, my trick is to pass the stick on to the poet. I have chosen the poet of my adolescence. Saint John Perse. With him, I can speak of another dimension of life, the companions, the companions of existence.
The companions of the poet are different from the companions of the philosopher. The companions of the philosopher are the different societies within which the question of a truth is at least posed. The companions of the poet are often the companions of his solitude, which is why Saint John Perse enumerates them as companions in exile, at the moment when he himself must go into exile. And aftet the enumeration of his companions, he returns to his solitude, and he says that:
Stranger, on all the beaches of this world, with neither audience nor witness, press to the ear of the West a seashell without memory:
Precarious host on the outskirts of our cities, you will not cross the sill of Lloyds, where your word is not honored and your gold has no title…
‘I shall inhabit my name’ was his response to the questionnaires of the port;
And on the tables of exchange, you have nothing but trouble to produce,
Just as these great moneys in iron exhumed by lightning.
“I shall inhabit my name”: this is precisely what philosophy tries to render possible for each and every one. Or rather, philosophy searches for the formal conditions, the possibility for each and every one to inhabit his name, to be simply there, and recognized by all as the one who inhabits his name, who, by right of this, as inhabiting his name, is the equal of anyone else.
That is why we mobilize so many resources. That is also what our monotonous biography can be used for: to constantly begin again the search for the conditions by which the proper name of each one can be inhabited.
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