Devote an approximately equal amount of space to explaining the nature of the problem and defending your solution.

Devote an approximately equal amount of space to explaining the nature of the problem and defending your solution.

Badiou argues that the transformations in society up to the 1960s have effectively torn the young free from all traditional forms of life or cultural symbolism that provided them with a fixed or certain place in the world. While this has granted them an unprecedented set of individual freedoms, he argues that this also signifies the loss of anything like a true goal or principle for living, reducing us to fragmented, self-centered individuals who either seek to burn our lives away in selfish hedonism or to build up our lives for personal success within the dominant corporate order. Against this trend, he argues that we must decide, in indifference to our lived circumstances, to discover what we do not yet know we are capable of by living for an Idea; specifically, he argues, we should work to invent a new version of the traditional communist idea of universal equality. Is this claim plausible? Can and should we reject our lived circumstances and free individuality to embrace and live for the pure thought of equality? Or have the irreversible changes to our social circumstances effectively consigned the idea of collectively willed liberation to the dustbin of history, leaving in its wake the primacy of the individual? In short, can we or can we not think our way to new forms of living the true life in a time without ideas, or to new forms of collective living in a time of fragmented individuality? In an essay, explain Badiou’s account of both the current situation and the way out of the impasse and explain whether you agree with his view or not, and why. Whichever side you take, consider the strongest counter-argument you can think of for the other side and respond to it.

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