Badiou's Versus Levina's Works - Essay Example

There are some of the differences and similarities between Badiou’s and Levina’s thinking. Badiou holds the view that philosophy is based on four fundamental conditions that include: art, science, politics and love. Each of these four conditions is fully independent from the other as ‘truth procedures’. Badiou insists that philosophy has to avoid a situation where it will be in a position to give its whole intellectual endeavors to any of the truth procedures a situation referred to as suturing.

If by any chance this is allowed to occur (which was the mainly the case during the 19th and the 20th centuries), the outcome that results from it is what he referred to as a ‘philosophical disaster’. Hence according to Badiou’s thinking, philosophy is a way of thinking concerning the compossibility of the said truth procedures through investigating the relations between the unique truth procedures. For instance, the relation between art and love in the case of a novel or it may be done through the more conventionally philosophical role, whereby the categories are addressed such as truth or subject (Barker 64).

According to Badiou, the four truth procedures are genuinely addressed by philosophy as opposed to suturing desertion of philosophy. Theoretical term is a distinct character that is associated with philosophy i.e. aesthetics as opposed to art, metapolitics as opposed to politics and ontology as opposed to science. Truth in the case of Badiou is considered as a philosophical category. In philosophy, several conditions are ‘truth procedures’ that is to say that the resultant product of their pursuance is truth and it is only philosophy that can refer to these several truth procedures as so.

For instance, the lover does not regard her feelings as a question of truth but she only sees it as a question of love. It is only a philosopher who sees the love of a true lover as a revelation of truth. Badiou’s concept of truth is a very meticulous one and is heavily against the direction of much of the modern European thought. At once, he accepts the conventional contemporary notion that truths are said to be indisputably invariant that is, they are always everywhere, eternal and do not change.

Throughout his work, Badiou’s notion of truth has uncoupled self evidence and the idea of invariance which does not simply denote self evidence besides uncoupling the notion of relativity from the notion of constructedness i.e. constructedness does not result to relativism (Levina and Bradley 67). Levina’s work is centered primarily on the ethics of the other. According to him, the other is unknown and consequently cannot be objectified into the self as in the case of traditional metaphysics.

He prefers to see philosophy as the “wisdom of love” rather than the love of wisdom. Levina derives the basis of his philosophy in ethics from the understanding of the interaction with each other. According to him, this encounter is a privileged phenomenon whereby the proximity of the other person is felt intensely. The revelation of the other person is not to negate in a phenomenal of calmness. Also the face’s revelation entails a demand which is before the expression or knowledge of one’