"But keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them
is in truth the same as to live without philosophizing", said Descartes.
TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY AND TRUTH
There is a life of philosophy beyond classes,
a city of philosophers,
who embrace and give food to it.
speak of...
PHILOSOPHY AND TRUTH
Jean Hyppolite: No, I would not employ the word "error."
It seems to me
too general to speak of an error
at the interior of a philosophical system.
It seems to me, if you like,
difficult, for example,
to take a whole class of philosophers and say:
"There we go! Descartes was mistaken about doubt."
Or, "Descartes was mistaken about this or that ..."
I do not think that
a philosopher is refuted
by another philosopher,
even if they take themselves
to be refuting one another,
I do not think that the refutation of a philosopher
by another philosopher
is something that makes much sense.
Alain Badiou: Do you think that there is philosophical truth?
Are you going to scandalize us here?
Georges Canguilhem: Oh!
I don't think I would scandalize you personally.
But I would say: there is no philosophical truth.
Philosophy is not the sort of speculation
whose value can be measured
by true or false ...
So what is philosophy?
Because we cannot say
that philosophy is true,
this does not mean that it is
a pure language game
or purely gratuitous.
The value of philosophy
is something different from truth value
whereas truth value
is something that is reserved specifically
for scientific knowledge.
Jean Hyppolite: I am in total agreement
with what you said on truth:
"There isn't ..."
Maybe in the past
we could have spoken of a truth in philosophy
and a truth in science
to the degree that the sciences existed.
It is irreversible today
there are no longer plural truths.
to the degree that
there are sciences that are now established.
And there is no contradiction
between what you have said,
that there are only scientific truths,
and what I said
that there is no error,
alas, perhaps, in philosophy.
Georges Canguilhem: Yes, there is no contradiction
but yet it is not
exactly the same thing to say
"there is no error in philosophy"
and to say
that "there is no philosophical truth."
First of all,
that there is no error in philosophy
flatters all the philosophers!
But
it is very clear that
where is no error
there is no truth either properly speaking.
Nor wandering, in such a way that ...
Absolutely agree.
In this way I am also totally persuaded that
there is no contradiction [between us]
and in any case it seems to me that
when I said that
there is no philosophical truth,
I didn't mean by this that,
in the first place,
a philosopher never has the task
of knowing whether she speaks is truthful
and, secondly, that
a philosopher is, because of this,
estranged from the investigation
of nature, or sense or essence,
or as you say, of truth.
I think that we should differentiate
between truth
and the problem of the essence of truth.
This is not the same sort of thing as scientific truth.
The essence of truth concerns a different register.
This is similar to saying that
"the essence of technology is not technology."
We should say more exactly
that the essence of truth is a problematic
where we might, as it were, err,
but this is a problem
an authentic problem with respect
to the specialized truths of current sciences.
Scientific truths today are essentially cultural,
they are no longer cosmological.
Einstein was perhaps the last [of his kind].
There could not be a Newton today.
We can no longer write a history of the sky,
a cosmic problem, it is no longer possible.
Ultimately, no physics either.
This point was one that Bachelard already saw clearly.
[Scientific truth] is something cultural,
and the word cosmic is no longer employed by Bachelard
except in what concerns poetry,
never in what concerns truth.
... in the imaginary
and never in what concerns the rational.
A sense of totality only remains in philosophy
and we could not at all evacuate this from our vision.
No, this is the very definition of philosophy.
Exactly.
The more sciences become cultural
and less cosmic, less totalizing,
the more it will need a philosophy
to unite human beings.
Philosophy will be that much more indispensable
while science gets closer to truth,
rigorous and technical truth,
the truth of a special domain.
The more it will need a return
a return to this essence of philosophy.
Absolutely agree.
Paul Ricoeur: [P]hilosophy has always been
a struggle for clarity,
for clarification
and for coherence.
And in this aim its work is a linguistic work
of a particular and privileged form.
It is in reflection and in philosophical speculation
that all the problems of signs and meanings
from other disciplines are contemplated.
The history of philosophy shows us
that philosophy has always been a struggle
against the defects of language,
against poorly posed questions
and traps of language.
Hence philosophy is in a struggle
with its own language.
Michel Foucault: ... You said above in your emission
that the ends of philosophy,
well, the goal that it aims at,
was the clarification of language and coherence,
the establishment of a coherence.
And in the course of this emission you spoke of
a fundamental polysemy of language.
Is there not something of a contradiction here?
There is a certain opposition
that recuperates a bit of this apparent opposition
between Canguilhem's position and that of Hyppolite's.
Hyppolite said
that there could not have been error in philosophy
and Canguilhem said
that there is only truth in science,
science on the side of coherence,
and philosophy perhaps on the side of polysemy.
Paul Ricoeur: Yes, I think that this contradiction
should be introduced into philosophical work.
On coherence
I would not say that it is a requirement
but a means
that we are obligated to pass through,
a path that is opposed to philosophy
and from which poetry entirely separates us.
a path that is opposed to philosophy
a path that is opposed to philosophy
However this coherence could never be
a formal ideal for philosophy
because what comes to the surface
in the field of philosophy
is first all the inherited languages
and these carry along with them
their piled-up significations,
ordinary language,
the problems inherited
from reflecting on science, on technology.
It seems to me then
that philosophy should be considered
as a space of confrontation
between, on the one hand, the formal task of coherence
and on the other hand, the effort
to get a hold on what is ultimately in question for philosophy,
that is, through this multiplicity of meaning, what is.
That is to say that polysemy would be either on the side
of ontology or on the side of cultural contents
delivered and transmitted by history
and coherence would thus be
on the side of the very form of discourse.
When we spoke before of communication,
this communication with oneself or with others
is the formal map of discourse ...
but I do not think that we could reduce
philosophy to its proper formality.
It seems that philosophy brings us
to a more primitive question, which is primordial.
This is the question, say, of Aristotle: What is?
Is it not being itself that is in question for philosophy?
Dina Dreyfus: You have already discussed
this question between yourselves I suppose.
For me,
there are three questions that are tied together
in this problem that we are treating today;
the first question, the first point,
is an apparent contradiction,
one that I would say is very apparent.
This is between Hyppolite's position,
"there is no error in philosophy"
and Canguilhem's proposition,
"there is no philosophical truth."
In any case, Hyppolite's position
has been interpreted by certain people
as meaning "philosophy is never wrong" ...
I think that it is not what it means.
The second question is then
the elucidation of your own conception, Canguilhem.
And finally, the third question
which is in my view underlying the other ones
is the question
of the signification of the philosophical enterprise.
What does it mean to philosophize?
These three points are related.
I don't think that we could look at one in isolation.
We need to look at them altogether.
We [actually] agree on this seeming contradiction
because I did not sense this difficulty
when I read his [Canguilhem's] text.
It seemed to me
perfectly complementary to what I said.
There are no truths in the plural sense
and only scientists
working today can be faced with error
and that philosophy cannot be wrong.
Having said this, there are great philosophies
and there are philosophies that do not exist.
I am a bit surprised
by the idea that I was poorly understood.
I said that "there are no philosophical truths"
but I did not mean that
"there are no truths in a philosophy."
A philosophy can be wrong
if it ends up in paralogisms.
I wanted simply to say
that a philosophical discourse
on what the sciences understand as truths
cannot by itself be called true.
There is no truth of truth.
For example, for Kant
the transcendental analytic
represents a type of truth.
This is no longer true for us today.
It is no longer truth in the sense
that there is no transcendental
which has its own truth today.
I think that Foucault agrees with this.
We are in an anthropology
that has gone beyond this.
We are no longer in a transcendental.
What currently constitutes
the anthropological base on which
we unfortunately reflect on too often
is precisely a transcendental
that aims to be true on a natural level ...
... but which cannot be!
... which cannot be.
From the moment when we try
to define an essence of the human being
that might be stated starting from this essence itself
and might at the same time
be the foundation of all possible knowledge
and of all possible limit of knowledge,
we will then actually have two levels in truth:
truth and the truth of truth.
Listen! Listen!
Do we hold or do we not hold
that there is a truth
of the philosophical discourse as such?
That is, could we say "true or false",
that a philosophical system is true or false?
Personally, I do not hold this...
Me too. Unfortunately, there is a will ...
You have said, you say, Foucault,
that there is a will towards truth,
there is an aim towards truth.
But even if we aim at truth and we do not reach it,
it is nonetheless the norm of truth
that is in question in this case.
And this is actually what is in question:
Is there a norm of truth for philosophy?
I believe that Canguilhem would not agree.
No. I do not hold that
there is a norm of truth for philosophy.
It seems to me that
there is another type of value for philosophy,
to use a more general term, than that of truth.
Yes, but isn't this because you started off
by thinking the problem of truth
in terms of norms and criteria?
I wonder if the question of truth isn't
the last question that we could ask ourselves
rather than one that is pre-given.
It is not that
by starting from an epistemological model
we could then ask the problem of truth
but we should start from another question,
it seems to me so.
It seems to me that
the fundamental question of philosophy is what is.
So if the first question is "what is?"...
the theory of knowledge is secondary
with respect to the theory of being
and science is itself,
secondary with respect to knowledge.
This is even so in what you call value,
should we not call this truth,
if we define truth
as the most complete possible grasp in discourse of what is?
If you allow that there is a problem of value for philosophy,
the field in which you integrate
scientific value and other values,
this is precisely the field
where a problem manifests
that I earlier called truth,
that is, the treatment of being by its discourse,
and then you would never but have a form,
I would not say a deposed one,
for it is a rather privileged form,
but a derivative form of truth in scientific truth.
I might respond to your question
in a certain way, by rejecting it.
I would reject your definition of truth,
the grasping of discourse and what is.
Because precisely for science what is
is defined progressively
as something true independently of all relation
to a supposed being as a term of reference.
It is in the sense that certain philosophies conserve
a realist definition of truth.
In this confrontation of discourse and being
we can hold that, in drawing conclusions
from what we understand today,
in science, in truth,
we can draw the conclusion that philosophy
can, in remaining faithful
to its fundamental project,
define or at least to glimpse its own value,
its own authenticity,
without assuming for itself the concept of truth.
Here it is clearly understood that [philosophy]
treats truth to the degree that it is the space
where the truth of science confronts other values,
whether they be aesthetic or ethical values.
There you go ... it might not be perhaps very clear
but I never said anything other than this
during my discussion with Alain Badiou.
Could I simply intervene here in saying
that you said that there is neither object
nor nature, nor cosmos, nor universe, for science.
At the present moment, the sciences,
in their extremely specialized aspects,
establish their truth entirely.
To this degree we reserve this totality for ourselves.
In this we are caught up:
nature, cosmos, human beings.
We are held in this totality.
I have said nothing else.
And so, this relation to totality,
this is the question of truth.
I clearly understand that these historical forms
are contemporaneous
with certain forms of science
rather than with others.
Philosophical statements are also then given to aging
insofar as they are correlated
with a state of the sciences
but the very question is to know
that I am, I am in what is, 
and that at the same time I testify to my situation,
I have projects and that it is in this context
that I carry out my projects,
I have projects and that it is in this context
I have projects and that it is in this context
I illuminate something through which a discourse is possible.
This is the network of reality.
Because if we do not call this truth,
but rather call this value,
the relation between different values in play
in our human existence
will find itself entirely cut off
from this question of totality.
In other words, the idea of totality is the way
in which we rationally recuperate
this relation between my being and being.
Yes, it also occurs to me that
I didn't mention something else to you, my dear Badiou.
When I said that totality is not on the side of nature,
cosmos, the world, that we could find it
and this was precisely the business,
the business proper to philosophy.
That values should be brought
to confront each other
at the very interior of a totality
and that precisely it cannot be presumed
and that you cannot, according to me, give it
the signification of being in the sense of the metaphysicians
that you referred to a moment ago.
Well it seems that I could ... 
and I am not saying that I am right in this,
since it would be to contradict my own axiom,
it seems to me that I am charged
with conceiving the proper task of the philosopher
as one that is not specifically expressed
in this mode of judgment
in terms of the values true and false.
Would you agree in saying
that it is no longer possible today
to have a philosophical thought
that resembles that of ancient ontology,
that is to say, to a pre-given theory?
Hence since there is no longer theology
there is then also no longer
any pre-existing objective categories for science ... - There is no theology...
...there are no pre-existing objective categories for science.
And so I am not surprised to see that
among the auditors there might be those who are surprised
... you said, my dear Badiou, that I caused a scandal.
I do not believe that I could scandalize you.
I am even certain that I will not scandalize you,
but you are among those who were surprised
[by the proposition that I aimed toward].
There are those for whom philosophy
is ultimately a substitute for theology
or those who think that
they now have the means to transform philosophy into science.
... into objective categories that substitute
an active revolutionary thought.
These objective categories are already
the degraded forms of their proper question.
And it is this question that we need to uncover.
Absolutely agree! Absolutely agree!
Now this question is related to truth.
How would you call this relation that we have with this question
if it is not a relation of truth?
If not you would end up with a grouping together
of your values and their confrontation with each other
is simply a cultural aggregation.
Cultures precisely make manifest
certain combinations of values
and culture is the historical place
of the confrontation of values.
However what is [actually] in question when we say,
with Descartes, the Descartes of the cogito, "I am"?
Thus the question that is implied in the question "I am,"
this question here, is not tied to the history of a culture.
It constitutes another dimension.
but, if you will allow, you said to me:
It is perhaps another dimension
but, if you will allow, you said to me:
"What corresponds to the question who am I? to being,
could I not call this truth?"
I would answer:
I cannot say that it is truth as a question.
I might go as far as to call truth a response.
Yes, it is the question of truth.
I didn't assert anything to the contrary.
The question of truth is perhaps a philosophical question.
But a philosophy, to the degree that
it proposes as an answer to this question,
cannot be ordered
in relation to another philosophy
that gives a different answer,
according to the criterion of true and false.
In other words, personally,
I cannot say that Kant or the philosophy of Kant is true
or that Nietzsche's is a false philosophy.
There are ridiculous philosophies,
there are rigorous philosophies
but I don't know of a false philosophy
and as such I don't know of a true one.
Yes, but we are interested in philosophy
because each one constitutes an internal relation,
in short, between its questions and its answers
and in so doing determining the field,
in short, of its own truth.
It interests us because
we have the conviction or the hope
that through these finite works
the human mind produces an encounter with the same being,
without which we would be in schizophrenia.
But at the same time we don't have the means
to show that it is the same thing.
This is why all we could say
is that we hope to be in truth
but we cannot assign truth to a philosophical system
produced in the history of our culture.
I would like to bring the question
into perhaps a more elementary
and at the same time more positive terrain.
You have yourselves shown,
in accord with the general inspiration of contemporary epistemology,
that science does not discover the truth
or does not reveal a reality that might precede it
but that it institutes or constitutes,
at times together, the problem of truth
and the effective procedures through which, partially,
this problem can receive a series of ordered responses.
Would you accept then to say
that science is not that
through which human beings discovers truth,
but that science is historically the cultural form
that in some way,
institutes on a terrain of validity,
the problem of the truth.
If you admit that human beings are, in short,
the producer of truth historically
under the form of a scientific practice
then, as in all production,
there is a problem of ends, or telos of production.
And as such I would agree in saying that philosophy
inquires, no doubt,
not on or is not itself a production of truth
but rather it inquires into ends,
on the destination of this particular productive event.
It seems to me that we said,
during the course of our interview,
I think that I said,
at least what I can remember,
that the question of the possibility of science
is not a scientific question.
The why of mathematics
is not a question for the mathematician.
Science constitutes truth, without finality,
without the finality of the truth.
Its finality is the truth,
but there is no finality of truth for science!
And so the interrogation of the finality of truth,
that is to say for example
what we can put into practice [???],
this has always been a fundamental philosophical question,
what we can put into practice [???],
this is precisely philosophical.
But it seems to me that
all modern philosophy since Kant is characterized by the following:
that the knowledge of truth is not sufficient
to totally resolve the philosophical question.
Would you allow me to assert
that the sciences speak a technical language
approaching that of an univocal language
and constitutes in itself truth
in the strict sense of the term?
Yes.
This language has a certain code, that is to say
that it is instituted
from certain expressed conventions
but this language which has a certain code
is itself tied to natural language.
We do not start from data,
we begin from natural language,
which is no doubt spontaneously ontological
in the face of philosophy
which can no longer be so today.
Regardless, natural language is its own proper code
while all the other languages have a code
through their relation with this language.
It thus remains a certain space
in which all the technical problems of truth
which are discovered by science,
which has become more and more cultural and specialized,
encounter one another, a space from where we take off
and where we return.
If I dare to say,
and I hope that philosophy teachers would not think me unworthy,
that true philosophy today is obliged to be a certain vulgarization
in the best sense of the term.
By this I understand that it is obliged to re-translate
what will become untranslatable in the near future
because even the intersections of sciences
are themselves special sciences.
We could not say that biochemistry or computer science,
all these are specializations of intersections.
In this way we have poorly understood your [Canguilhem's] thought,
we believed that you wanted
to establish truth in the sense of scientism,
like "the future of science" or like Straus,
but not at all, on the contrary, there are truths!
And there is a space
where the essence and existence of truth
sprouts up in its completeness,
from the start to the results.
Thus it seems to me that with respect to your question:
philosophy certainly began science
and this was followed by its taking flight
and one day philosophy under a certain form will end
in order to give birth
to another more indispensable philosophical thought ...
But there is something irreversible here,
we cannot remake ontology in the way that Aristotle did,
we can no longer do ontology like Descartes did ...
And at the same time, I can perfectly understand
what is in question in the great philosophies of the past
and what these philosophies were looking for.
To put it in your language,
the space from which they start
and the space towards which they aim
is no longer a space that is forbidden or closed to us.
This is why the history of philosophy
is not the history of science.
You said that there is no error in philosophy
but we might also say that there is no progress,
no question is abolished or expires,
while in the history of science, the history of technology,
there really is something that becomes definitively lost.
In relation to the sciences, I can at the same time understand,
for reasons of development of the sciences,
what we call questions of existence.
This same question
was called the question of being in Greek philosophy.
This recognition of the same place of origin
and the same place of destination of philosophical discourse
is hence what permits us to speak of a problem of truth.
PHILOSOPHY: A CENTER OF THE TOTALIZATION OF THE EXPERIENCE OF AN EPOCH
Would you accept us saying
that a philosophy is something
that is a center of the totalization of the experience of an epoch
which is extended across the ambiguity of relations
that brings itself to operate within the framework
of a code or a language
which on the one hand imports the criteria of rigor,
or even coherence, of science.
From this we would have at the same time
a definition of a philosophical project
and, I believe, know the value and the signification of this project
independently from the notion of truth in the strict sense,
or in the way that you have brought it to bear.
We employ on the other hand
a sort of norm with regard to this project,
a finality from which
this project takes up its meaning and its dignity.
At the same time we might perhaps take into account
the ambiguity and difficulties that are produced
locally in the confrontation between science and philosophy
and this may have come to an end today --
to the degree that in different epochs -- 
and this may have come to an end today --
philosophy could have believed
that this general totalization of the experience of an epoch
in which it was engaged
might be formulated in an analogically rigorous language
in relation to the model or the paradigm
that science provided for it.
Yes, but here at the same time,
we should not let these philosophies
fall into the simple category of cultural products,
products that might serve
as points of historical concentration,
but at the pain of losing
what was in question in these philosophies
and might also serve
as turning points in the history of philosophy.
If we lose the sense of continuity in philosophical questions
and as such of the space
in which these questions are brought about,
we simply end up
doing a sort of cultural history of philosophy
and not a philosophical history of philosophy.
There are two questions in what Badiou said
that puts this relation into question.
To say that philosophy
is the center of the totalization of our epoch
To say that philosophy
is basically to say that -- and this was basically my conception --
it is a dialogue with all the philosophers of the past
as if we could isolate this historical relation of philosophy.
Like philosophy, these are things that are quite different
and it follows that there was in our history
when points of novelty were essential at certain moments,
but this does not make
the dialogue with these past philosophers disappear.
It could be that before the birth of philosophy,
with the pre-Socratics,
there would be a certain means
of posing the problem of philosophy and of being
that were tied together because science was not a factor.
And it could be that there was an epoch
where science appeared almost self-sufficient in itself.
There is an epoch of Newton
who brought about certain types of philosophies
and an epoch where there could not be a Newton
and perhaps not even an Einstein.
Here philosophy is again required
to present itself in a different way
without breaking our dialogue with the past.
But in order to think about an epoch
it is also essential to think of its novelty, do you agree?
Yes, I agree, but it seems that
if philosophy at the heart of its own trajectory
should in sum mediate itself through its own history,
this means that it finds in this history
the instruments that are progressively forged
and these constitute the category of totality.
In other words, it seems to me
that it is the category of totality as such
that founds the continuity of philosophical discourse.
This is what I wanted to get away from,
this is a conception of philosophical problems
drawn from a philosophia perennis in which I do not believe.
I believe in a dialogue of philosophers,
in the mediation of philosophers,
and I believe much more in philosophical thinking
such that I do not hold an independent history
of philosophical problems through philosophical figure.
You see, this is what I am against.
In this sense we cannot repeat any philosophy
but we can understand the questions
and I take my question as an issue of comprehending these philosophies.
Exactly.
It may be true that philosophy
is the totalization of the experience of an epoch
in the sense that this experience
contains within it modes of experience
such as science or technology
(naturally, I am not talking about art),
but science and technology
(naturally, I am not talking about art),
(naturally, I am not talking about art),
are activities that disqualify or depreciate their own past,
and this is even something in their essential functioning ...
The integration at a given moment in mathematics
such as that of Hilbert
or in physics like that of Einstein,
or a form of art like,
for example, the painting of Picasso,
the integration of the modes of experience precisely [possible]
because certain of these modes
carry with themselves a progress.
This integration can never operate in the same way
even if the intention
or the project of totalization remains identical.
As such if there is no homogeneity of philosophies,
that is, of these attempts at integration
through the relation of their procedures
and as such also of their style and their results,
we cannot then confront one with another
under a certain relation
that might be called, more or less, true
and we return again to my proposition from the other day.
Philosophies are distinguished from each other
not because some are truer than others
but because there are philosophies,
as all three of you have spontaneously said,
that are great and others that are not.
WHAT IS A GREAT PHILOSOPHY?
How do you understand this?
In other words,
is there a criterion for greatness or rigor?
I don't think that there could be a criterion.
If there were a criterion
you would end up making me say
what I did not want to say up to this moment.
There are perhaps signs
through which we could recognize
a great, a minor, or mediocre philosopher,
as I mentioned a moment ago.
If it is true that philosophy
should be popularized in a non-vulgar way,
as Hyppolite said,
this popularization of different codes
adopted by the science in their path of constitution,
through all the cultural activities of a given epoch,
it seems to me that there is a fundamentally naïve side,
I would even say a popular side,
of philosophy that we tend too often to neglect
and perhaps a great philosophy is a philosophy
that left behind an adjective in popular language.
Plato gave us something "platonic,"
the stoics delivered something "stoic,"
Descartes delivered something "Cartesian,"
Kant something "Kantian" as well as a "categorical imperative."
In other words, there are philosophers who,
because they totalized the experience of an epoch
and succeeded in disseminating themselves
outside of the philosophical
but in the modes of culture
which would themselves be totalized by another philosophy
and have in this sense a direct impact
on what we could call our common experience,
in our daily lives, our quotidian experience.
As such, it seems to me that this criterion,
this clue, excuse me,
could seem vulgar
but I wonder if it is not
nonetheless philosophically authentic.
Even if we are mistaken
when we say that something is "stoic" or "stoicism,"
even if one is mistaken
in the vulgar acceptance of these adjectives?
One does not need to understand Cleanthes and Chrysippus
and nonetheless know what is stoic and what stoicism is.
It is in any case an attitude
which was promoted and reflected on by a philosopher.
In such a way a great philosophy
is a philosophy that is capable
of being translated in a certain way
into the common language of all.
Simply put, we should also distinguish totalization
which we are all in agreement on
and a totalization,
in order to have a point of impact
which is often a partial totalization
and through the point of impact something almost partial.
In this way the sharp character of philosophical genius --
for we find something here, something that touches genius --
comes into contact with its own epoch,
not through the work of their inheritors,
that is to say, not in what is accumulated
but rather in a deep contact
with what the epoch pronounces in a stammer.
Certainly.
I would not want us to end on such an apparent agreement!
It would be better if we do not agree.
There is a point where I resist your view.
It is a point, if you like,
of bringing us to a sort of a social signification.
It seems to me more important to ask
if a great philosophy
is one that presents the power of coming together
which is the equivalent
with a relation with reality or with being
and I would say that a great philosophy is one
that provides an impression of truth.
This social index is a sort of sign that shows
but which also hides the importance of the stakes.
Oh yes!
We can place the accent on "showing" or "hiding."
Personally, I would rather place emphasis on the showing.
Yes but I would simply say
that we cannot reduce social influence to a single criteria
which is also a relation of each partial segment of totality
which we called earlier
a space of encounters between philosophies
where the question of truth
or even the truth remains its own question.
This presumption of truth can also found
in what is readily felt in popular sentiments:
that a great philosophy puts into words
what is our relation with each other,
something that varies in history
what is our relation with each other,
what is our relation with each other,
but remains fundamentally the same.
what is our relation with each other,
what is our relation with each other,
I would not say otherwise
and this is why I prefer
to let you say what you just did and allow myself to add 
that it is one of general sentiment rather than the social.
I did not want to speak of a social and general criteria,
it is the sign of a certain authenticity.
For myself, I do not want to separate authenticity from truth.
And for me, it seems that my defense
is that I do not see why we employ
the same word and the same concept in two different senses.
But you, Alain Badiou, you are a teacher
and when you define a philosophy
as a center of totalization of the experience in an epoch,
does this afford you some means in the teaching of philosophy?
What do you teach through this title?
In any case we do not teach philosophy
dressed up in this definition.
This would be to give a dogmatic teaching
that actually proceeds from this totalization.
This would be something like the course of Hegel
or a course on scholastic philosophy.
As such in the rigorous sense of the term,
in the basic teaching of philosophy in any case,
we do not philosophize.
So what do we do?
Well I believe that we teach students
the possibility of philosophy.
That is to say that through a series of detours
in the examination of doctrines and texts,
through the examination of concepts
by walking through problems,
we show them what is possible
in the operation of this totalization.
And I would even define the teaching of philosophy
as the teaching of the possibility of philosophy
or the revealing of the possibility of philosophy.
If not there would be no other recourse
than teach a [particular] philosophy
and this is what our teaching aims to guard against.
And from the point of view of teaching
would it be possible to draw some conclusion
on the debate that has been occupying us?
I mean the question of philosophical truth or non-truth.
It is a difficult question on which you do not agree
and I do not believe that we should dissolve this disagreement.
It seems to me that the space of your disagreement
is limited to two agreements which are despite all else essential.
First you all agree that science is one of the places of truth.
In other words, it is fully meaningful
to speak of scientific truth or scientific truths.
And on the other hand you also all agree that
the question of essence of truth
is a properly philosophical question
which does not as such
fall into the field of scientific activity.
Philosophy consists in asking
from a point of view of totalization
what a human being should be,
what relation it has with being in order for the human being
to be something that has truth.
In short, philosophy perhaps does not interrogate the truth
but on the telos of truth
with respect to human existence.
For some this definition supposes that philosophy itself
brings out a sort of fundamental or foundational complicity
with the norm that it aims to investigate
and that it basically carries out in the light of this norm.
For others,
this question supposes on the contrary that philosophy,
in interrogating the space of the truth,
exits from this space and should invent its own forms.
Whether the status of truth
is one that is controllable, actualized, and precise
remains the object of our disagreement;
this is the horizon of our dialogue.
Whether it is an aiming at the true
or an opening towards the true,
this is perhaps what we have asked in our questions
and how we have understood our questions
and have as such formulated our responses.
in the series "TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY"
PHILOSOPHY AND TRUTH
