"A Comment on the Question of Human Rights"

Alain Badiou

[During August and September, Christoph Cox and Molly
Whalen interviewed the French philosopher Alain Badiou
for Cabinet magazine. Shortly before the attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Cox and
Whalen asked Badiou to clarify his conception of human
rights. Shortly after the attacks, Badiou offered the
following response.]

Take the nearest example: the terrible criminal attack
in New York, with its thousands of casualties. If you
reason in terms of the morality of human rights, you
say, with President Bush: "These are terrorist
criminals. This is a struggle of Good against Evil."
But are Bush's policies, in Palestine or Iraq for
example, really Good? And, in saying that these people
are Evil, or that they don't respect human rights, do
we understand anything about the mindset of those who
killed themselves with their bombs? Isn't there a lot
of despair and violence in the world caused by the
fact that the politics of western powers, and of the
American government in particular, are utterly
destitute of ingenuity and value? In the face of
crimes, terrible crimes, we should think and act
according to concrete political truths, rather than be
guided by the stereotypes of any sort of morality.The
whole world understands that the real question is the
following: why do the politics of the western powers,
of NATO, of Europe and the USA, appear completely
unjust to two out of three inhabitants of the planet?
Why are five thousand American deaths considered a
cause for war, while five hundred thousand dead in
Rwanda and a projected ten million dead from AIDS in
Africa do not, in our opinion, merit outrage? Why is
the bombardment of civilians in the USA Evil, while
the bombardment of Baghdad or Belgrade today, or that
of Hanoi or Panama in the past, is Good? The ethic of
truths that I propose proceeds from concrete
situations, rather than from an abstract right, or a
spectacular Evil. The whole world understands these
situations, and the whole world can act in a
disinterested fashion prompted by the injustice of
these situations. Evil in politics is easy to see:
it's absolute inequality with respect to life, wealth,
power. Good is equality. How long can we accept that
what is needed for running water, schools, hospitals,
and food enough for all humanity is a sum that
corresponds to the amount spent by wealthy western
countries on perfume in a year? This is not a question
of human rights and morality. It is a question of the
fundamental battle for equality of all people, against
the law of profit, whether personal or national.