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29 Cardozo L. Rev. 1877 (2007-2008)
The Three Negations

handle is hein.journals/cdozo29 and id is 1899 raw text is: THE THREE NEGATIONS Alain Badiou* As you know, for Carl Schmitt, the very essence of politics is to clearly distinguish between friend and enemy. But finally, the difficult question is the relationship between the two, precisely when the distinction is clear. Even in the case of war, the question of this relationship is a complex one. And this complexity is the complexity of the action of negativity. For example, in a foreign war, you must often destroy the forces of the enemy, and destruction is certainly the most radical form of negation. But in many civil wars, it is unclear whether the goal is to destroy the enemy, which is a part of your country, or only to dominate it, like in the class struggle, for example. In this case, the negation of the enemy is not in the radical form of destruction, even if civil wars can sometimes be more bloody and cruel than foreign wars. Another example: You can know that a country is your enemy, sometimes in a strong sense, and nevertheless be allied to this country against another enemy more dangerous in the pure present, even if the first enemy is more dangerous in the future. Tactically, during World War II, Germany was the principal enemy of the United States. So the United States was an ally of the Soviet Union against Germany. But in fact, strategically, the Soviet Union was a more important enemy of the United States than Germany. You have here a very complex political sequence, where a very strong negation is involved, and in some sense, dominated by a weaker negation. But, what exactly is the difference between two or more negations? Is it possible to negate more or less? Is not negation the clearest example of something absolute? After all, it is the sense of the famous principle of non-contradiction. If I say the proposition P, I say something absolutely different from the proposition non-P, that is: if the first is true, the second is false. We see here that a concrete political problem can only be formalized in a new logical framework, where the word negation has different meanings, and where the relationship between negation and affirmation can be exposed in different ways. * tcole Normale Sup~rieure, Paris; Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Cardozo Law School. Amongst Badiou's most recent books in English are BEING AND EVENT (2005), POLEMICS (2006), and THE CENTURY (2007). 1877

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