I've only come across Badiou obliquely because of my interest in the 
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Like all the academic theorists who try to 
tackle Lacan he misses the mark because he is a little to attached to 
the project of an ontology. His most famous philosophical work "Being 
and Event" is a work on mathematical philosophy - mathematics is 
ontology. I'm not so sure, the way Lacan takes up the impossibility of 
philosophically grounding one (he nods towards Plato's "Parmenides" and 
Frege's "Foundations of arithmetic") and the question of what supports 
number point in other directions.

I thought the article you pointed to was interesting in that it 
re-evoked theology. Have you thought of re-examining Nightingales 
comments on the subject. Not one for soft thinking she takes up the 
theological position that evil comes from God. Here she is not declaring 
it to be a good but just rigorously asserting her more Spinozist notion 
of God. Which to put it crudely is nature as it exists, not as it might 
be or will be. It is a more existential than ontological definition. As 
Lacan drives home to say something is possible or impossible (questions 
of being) tells as nothing of it's existential status just the way it is 
articulated in the ontological net. There are some really interesting 
passages in her letters from her Egyptian trip were she is working 
through translating various hieroglyph inscriptions and notes that the 
dualism between good and evil (a position she feels is a little 
childish,  a degeneration of rigorous thought) is a later idea in 
Egyptian thought. I'm sorry I don't have the text at hand but she also 
refers to an obscure Ancient Greek  thinker (?) to float a notion of 
evil as the necessary unformed confusion out of which good emerges - 
evil not as the opposite of good but its prerequisite. In other places 
she takes up Plato's "Hippias Minor" where Socrates, much to his own and 
his interlocutor's distress, demonstrates that the evil of  the world 
comes not from the bad men (those who are dissolute, easily dissuaded, 
who simply pursue there own easy enjoyment) but good men (those who are 
resolute and doggedly pursue the good).

Sorry not much about Badiou

          Gary Gallagher



Savina Schoenhofer wrote:
> The latest edition of Educational Philosophy and Theory is devoted to 
> an examination of the philosophy of Alain Badiou in relation to 
> aspects of education.  Acknowledging that I don't remember having read 
> any references to this philosopher previously, and wanting to grasp a 
> little of his views, I read an interview with him in /The Cabinet - 
> /here is a link to that interview:
> http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/5/alainbadiou.php  No doubt this 
> is a very limited exposition of his thinking, but "good" and "evil" is 
> something I am interested in and am intrigued by his take on those ideas.
>  
> I'm curious to know what folks on this list think about his work in 
> general, and in particular, about its relevance to issues in the 
> discipline of nursing...this interview clearly relates to ethical 
> considerations in nursing.
>  
> Savina Schoenhofer