Secularizing the infinite… How do we “comprehend” infinition “as such,” this wholly material, completely verifiable and absolutely real relation to a substance which always overflows its idea in me? The idea of infinity in us is without doubt a formal structure. But to have it, to have this idea, seems to presuppose a separated existence, a separation produced as a mere echo of the transcendence of infinity.

There is a point of nearly absolute convergence between Alain Badiou and Emmanuel Levinas, a point which all of their work circulates around: the “structure” of infinity; that totality cannot be constituted, because the infinite doesn’t allow itself to be unified; that the one is not, it inheres and subsists with a minimum of being, an effect, a non-entity ex-isting as a deductive result or function (method.)

I think we should listen when Levinas insists that ontology does not contain the final secret of being. “The ontology of human existence, philosophical anthropology, endlessly paraphrases this abstract thought by insisting, with pathos, on finitude. In reality what is at issue is an order where the very notion of the Good first takes on meaning; what is at issue is society…. Infinity thought concretely, that is, starting with the separated being turned toward it, surpasses itself. In other words, it opens to itself the order of the Good… Separation is the very constitution of thought and interiority, that is, a relationship within independence.” (T&I 103-4)

OK. We’ll leave it there Thanks for this.

Joe