Philosophy and the Politics of the Real

Abstract

This essay is an attempt at the rethematisation of the relationship between philosophy and politics in the perspective opened up by A. Badiou’s conception of philosophy. According to this conception, politics constitutes one of the four conditions of philosophy. The essay starts by clarifying why politics taken as a condition of philosophy is not to be confused with the political conditioning of philosophy. Rather, what is at issue here is an ”intraphilosophical“ condition of philosophy which forces it to conceive of politics as the real from which philosophy itself receives its condition. Special attention is paied to the issue of the politicisation of philosophy. Politicisation is conceived here in terms of the following alternative: either politics is always already determined through a given philosophical notion, or, on the contrary, it is politics itself that instance that determines the philosophical concept. The way out of this impasse is elaborated in terms of the Kantian reflective judgement.