Thread by @deontologistics

Here’s the way in which I’ve begun to parse Badiou’s definition of evil: it is complicity against complicity against complicity.

1. Primal complicity is the state of nature, in which complex systems of interacting processes evolve in ways analogous to rational agents without yet realising autonomous agency.

2. Autonomous agency, be it individual/collective, epistemic, pragmatic, or aesthetic, is causal complicity turning on itself and bootstrapping networks of control systems that tighten analogies into homologies, elevating self-control to the level of genuine self-legislation.

3. Evil is anything that retards this process by becoming complicit in the diminution of autonomous agency, or freedom as such. If addiction is a prime example of evil, then knowingly pushing narcotics that bootstrap libidinal akrasia is a prime example of malice.

This is something like a synthesis of Kant and Hegel’s stories regarding the nature and destiny of freedom combined with Deleuze and Badiou’s stories regarding its causal embedding within complex natural and social environments and the possibility of freeing oneself from them.

This is something like a genetic explanation of those alien vectors that the neorationalism and its fellow travellers have traced and in normative philosophy over the last decade or so, after shedding the all too constrictive skin of ‘speculative realism’.

For more details regarding this ongoing intellectual diaspora, consult: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

And finally, a quick shout out to the #Emancinav crew. You know who you are and you’re all brilliant.