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Single Idea 12324

[filed under theme 2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 4. Aims of Reason ]

Full Idea

Consensus is the enemy of thought.

Gist of Idea

Consensus is the enemy of thought

Source

Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 2)

Book Ref

Badiou,Alain: 'Briefings on Existence', ed/tr. Madarsz,Norman [SUNY 2006], p.56

A Reaction

A nice slogan for bringing Enlightenment optimists to a halt. I am struck. Do I allow my own thinking to always be diverted towards something which might result in a consensus? Do I actually (horror!) prefer consensus to truth?

Related Idea

Idea 17213 In so far as men live according to reason, they will agree with one another [Spinoza]

The 24 ideas from 'Briefings on Existence'

12318 The female body, when taken in its entirety, is the Phallus itself [Badiou]
12320 Ontology is (and always has been) Cantorian mathematics [Badiou]
12331 Logic is definitional, but real mathematics is axiomatic [Badiou]
12338 We must either assert or deny any single predicate of any single subject [Badiou]
12337 There is 'transivity' iff membership ∈ also means inclusion ⊆ [Badiou]
12335 Numbers are for measuring and for calculating (and the two must be consistent) [Badiou]
12334 There is no single unified definition of number [Badiou]
12333 Each type of number has its own characteristic procedure of introduction [Badiou]
12332 The modern view of Being comes when we reject numbers as merely successions of One [Badiou]
12340 There is no Being as a whole, because there is no set of all sets [Badiou]
12342 Topos theory explains the plurality of possible logics [Badiou]
12341 Logic is a mathematical account of a universe of relations [Badiou]
12323 Existence is Being itself, but only as our thought decides it [Badiou]
12321 The axiom of choice must accept an indeterminate, indefinable, unconstructible set [Badiou]
12324 Consensus is the enemy of thought [Badiou]
12322 Must we accept numbers as existing when they no longer consist of units? [Badiou]
12325 Philosophy has been relieved of physics, cosmology, politics, and now must give up ontology [Badiou]
12327 The undecidability of the Continuum Hypothesis may have ruined or fragmented set theory [Badiou]
12326 The primitive name of Being is the empty set; in a sense, only the empty set 'is' [Badiou]
12329 If mathematics is a logic of the possible, then questions of existence are not intrinsic to it [Badiou]
12328 Platonists like axioms and decisions, Aristotelians like definitions, possibilities and logic [Badiou]
12330 In ontology, logic dominated language, until logic was mathematized [Badiou]
12316 For Enlightenment philosophers, God was no longer involved in politics [Badiou]
12317 The God of religion results from an encounter, not from a proof [Badiou]