doi: 10.1111/1467-8675.
12204
What is an Event?
Probing the Ordinary/Extraordinary Distinction
in Recent European Philosophy
Wolfhart Totschnig
The distinction between the ordinary and the extraordi-
nary is part of our everyday thinking. We employ it in
various forms, opposing the normal and the exceptional,
the conventional and the groundbreaking, the old and the
new, be it with respect to political events, or artworks,
or scientific ideas.
In recent European philosophy, this distinction has
taken center stage. It has done so mainly under the term
“event,” which has become established as a term of art
to designate an extraordinary occurrence, an occurrence
that transcends or disrupts the normal course of affairs.
The most prominent exponents of this development are
Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida,
and Alain Badiou. In the thinking of these philoso-
phers, we find, expressed in the notion of event and
related notions, a common focus on the extraordinary, a
common insistence on what goes against or beyond the
status quo.
Why has the distinction between the ordinary and the
extraordinary gained such philosophical prominence?
As a general statement, we can say that it has become
the anchor and vehicle of certain philosophical hopes.
The hopes involved are quite diverse—the hope of over-
coming metaphysics (Heidegger), the hope of realizing
freedom (Arendt), the hope of disrupting the economy
of exchange (Derrida), the hope of reaching into the in-
finite (Badiou). But we can see a common denominator.
The hopes are based on the attribution of a special role or
power to the human being—the role of “founder and pre-
server of the truth of be-ing”1 (Heidegger), the power of
making a new beginning (Arendt), the role of creator of
eternal truths (Badiou), the power of giving and forgiv-
ing without conditions (Derrida). In order to pin down
the commonality, and to make explicit the connection
with the ordinary/extraordinary distinction, I would like
to subsume these views under the following description:
In their various ways, Heidegger, Arendt, Derrida, and
Badiou ascribe to the human being the power to do the
extraordinary, the capacity to act against or beyond the
prevailing rules and practices.
The force that the ordinary/extraordinary distinction
here exerts is twofold. On the one hand, it sets humans
apart from other animals. Whereas the behavior of other
animals is taken to be completely governed by natural
instincts, humans are seen as capable of resisting and
transcending the natural or social determinations they
Constellations Volume 24, No 1, 2017.

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are under. And on the other hand, it marks a division
within human agency. Only some human deeds are con-
sidered to be extraordinary in the sense described. Most
of what we do, like the behavior of other animals, is
taken to be merely reproducing established practices.
In other words, it is thought that the capacity to resist
and transcend these practices is exercised only rarely,
or only by a few. Each of the four philosophers has their
own way of making such a distinction between ordinary
and extraordinary human agency—authenticity vs. in-
authenticity (Heidegger), action vs. behavior (Arendt),
justice/gift vs. law/economy (Derrida), fidelity to an
event vs. reproduction of the current situation (Badiou).
In the present paper, I would like to raise a challenge
to the ordinary/extraordinary distinction as it is em-
ployed here, a challenge inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s
conception of repetition and difference. Is it not the
case that every occurrence in some ways reproduces
and in some ways deviates from the past, that every
happening or doing is in some respects old and in some
respects new? Put differently, is it not true that conven-
tionality and novelty are a matter of degree, that nothing
is completely out of the ordinary and nothing entirely
commonplace?
This is the challenge formulated in general terms. It
can be fleshed out in two ways, corresponding to the two
aspects of the ordinary/extraordinary distinction. On the
one hand, it can be leveled against the division within
human agency, against the dichotomy of ordinary and
extraordinary human deeds. Is not even the most “revo-
lutionary” action, even the most “exceptional” artwork,
even the most “groundbreaking” discovery, based on
and informed by the tradition from which it departs?
Conversely, is not even the most unremarkable act, even
the most conventional piece of art, even the most uno-
riginal writing, in some respects new since it has never
been done exactly like that before? Is not every human
doing thus partly ordinary and partly extraordinary?
On the other hand, the challenge can be leveled
against the separation of humans from other animals.
The point that no happening or doing is exactly like
any other holds for all animal activity, not only for the
actions of humans. In fact, it holds for all natural pro-
cesses. Nature never exactly repeats itself, as the saying
goes, but at every turn, with every living being and ev-
ery act of every living being, produces variations. And
 What is an Event?: Wolfhart Totschnig
these variations are not just insignificant variants of an
unchanging paradigm but accumulate, through natural
selection, into new paradigms, into new species and new
modes of behavior. Humans thus have no monopoly on
producing unprecedented things. To make the extraor-
dinary happen rather seems to be the very principle of
nature itself.
In light of this view, which I shall call “the Deleuzian
challenge,” it seems that the distinction between ordi-
nary and extraordinary deeds—or between ordinary and
extraordinary occurrences, respectively—cannot be rig-
orously made. Every happening or doing appears to be
partly within and partly out of the ordinary. As em-
ployed by the named philosophers, as an opposition of
kinds rather than a difference in degree, the distinction
thus seems untenable.
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether
the ordinary/extraordinary distinction as we find it in
Heidegger, Arendt, Derrida, and Badiou can be de-
fended against the Deleuzian challenge. In other words,
I want to explore whether the dichotomy of ordinary
and extraordinary human deeds can be given a rigor-
ous definition. Or, in still other words, I want to find
out what exactly the special human power of doing the
extraordinary may consist in.
I will proceed by a series of attempts, a series of
possible conceptions of the ordinary/extraordinary di-
chotomy. The more obvious conceptions with which
I shall begin will each turn out to be insufficient and
thus lead to the next attempt. Through this process, I
will finally arrive at three alternative solutions—the so-
lutions, as I shall call them, of subjective experience,
of transcendence, and of negation. All of these solu-
tions withstand the Deleuzian challenge, but the first
two have, as I will show, significant downsides, which
shall leave the third to carry the day.
1. Unusualness
Let me begin by restating, in a general form, the question
I would like to pursue: How is the distinction between
ordinary and extraordinary deeds or occurrences to be
conceived? What defines the exceptional vis-à-vis the
normal, the new vis-à-vis the old, the original vis-à-vis
the conventional?
At first glance, the answer may seem close at hand.
It appears to be contained in the word itself: The ex-
traordinary is out of the ordinary. That is, it does not fit
into the usual course of affairs, it does not conform to
the prevailing rules and practices.
It is easy to see, however, that this literal explanation
does not suffice to define the term, neither in its every-
day nor in its philosophical usage. Not every unusual
occurrence is considered extraordinary. A happening or
doing may fail to conform to the rules and practices

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3
of the day by accident or error, and then it will be re-
garded as an unfortunate mishap, as something that is to
be censured and corrected rather than as an event to be
magnified. Of course, what for some is an unfortunate
accident or error may for others be a great innovation.
Much of modern art, for instance, was at first seen as
an aberration by many. Still, it remains that unusualness
does not by itself make an occurrence an event.
So “extraordinary” means more than “unusual.” It
carries the further meaning of importance or signifi-
cance. Wherein, then, lies the significance of an ex-
traordinary occurrence, of an event?
2. Rupture
There seems to be an obvious answer to this question,
and it can be put in one word: rupture. Extraordinary
occurrences not only do not satisfy but disrupt the usual
course of affairs. An event not only does not fit into but
breaks with the status quo. Occurrences that are out of
the ordinary by accident or error would thus be excluded
from the definition of “extraordinary,” for they do not
disrupt the usual course of affairs. They are corrected or
simply ignored and thus leave the status quo unscathed.
The characterization of the extraordinary as rupture
indeed appears to fit the bill nicely if we look at a cou-
ple of historical episodes that are easily recognized as
examples of events—the French Revolution, the advent
of abstraction in art, Einstein’s invention of relativity
theory. These occurrences shattered the rules and prac-
tices prevailing in their respective domains. The French
Revolution broke with the ancien régime, the pioneers
of abstraction broke with the tradition of figurative art,
relativity theory broke with Newtonian physics.
Not surprisingly, then, the terminology of break and
rupture is very prominent in the four philosophers’ con-
ceptions of the extraordinary. This is particularly true
for Arendt. She explicitly defines the notion of event
in terms of rupture: “Events, by definition, are oc-
currences that interrupt routine processes and routine
procedures.”2 But we also find this terminology in the
other three philosophers, if not in the form of explicit
definitions. Badiou characterizes the event as a rupture
with the current situation,3 Heidegger the achievement
of authenticity as a breaking away from “the they,”4
Derrida giving and forgiving as interrupting the econ-
omy of exchange.5
3. The Deleuzian Challenge
This strategy of referring the distinction between the
ordinary and the extraordinary to a distinction between
continuity and disruption is confronted, however, with
the difficulty I outlined at the beginning of the paper,
the Deleuzian challenge. It seems that the distinction
4 Constellations Volume 24, Number 1, 2017
between continuity and disruption cannot be rigorously
made, that there is no such thing as a total break and
no such thing as perfect continuity. Any occurrence,
be it as subversive as it may, is always contaminated
by what has come before, such that there is never
a complete disruption. Conversely, the “status quo,”
be it as entrenched as it may, is always pervaded by
(micro-)events, by little disturbances and partial rup-
tures, such that there is never a static order.6
That this is so can be seen in the examples I have ad-
duced. For the French Revolution, Arendt herself makes
the point in On Revolution. She emphasizes that the
French Revolution did not abandon the idea of an ab-
solute sovereign—Sieyès “simply put the sovereignty
of the nation into the place which had been vacated by
a sovereign king”—and was hence, in this crucial re-
spect, continuous with the ancien régime.7 In the case
of the advent of abstraction in art, we do not find a clean
break either. What we see, rather, is a long history of
painters and sculptors taking more and more “liberties”
when representing an object or scene—Monet, Matisse,
Kandinsky, Picasso, Miró, to name but a few of the most
prominent. Any work of any artist we may cite from
this history is but one episode among many, more a mo-
ment in a gradual development than a radical innovation.
Einstein’s relativity theory, finally, shares an important
feature with Newtonian physics, namely determinacy—
a feature which quantum mechanics would, not much
later, call into question. For this reason, physicists con-
sider Einstein’s theory a “classical” theory, despite its
famed originality, which strikingly confirms the point
at issue.
I call this challenge Deleuzian because it finds theo-
retical support in the model of the emergence of novelty
that Deleuze proposes in Difference and Repetition. In
this book, Deleuze seeks to develop a conception of
difference as primary, as not based on a notion of iden-
tity. That is, he seeks to reverse the traditional—and
in particular Platonic—conception, which understands
difference in terms of identity, as a lack of identity or
a lack of resemblance.8 Difference, Deleuze contends,
“is behind everything, but behind difference there is
nothing.”9 Put more fully, difference is not the mere
result of the comparison of pre-existing identities but,
to the contrary, the fundamental ground from which the
appearance of identity arises. “All identities are only
simulated, produced as an optical ‘effect’ by the more
profound game of difference and repetition.”10
What does this reversal of the relationship between
difference and identity have to do with the distinction
between continuity and disruption? As the last words of
the preceding quotation and the title of the book indicate,
Deleuze develops his conception of difference in tandem
with a particular conception of repetition. This conjunc-
tion of difference and repetition may at first sight appear

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paradoxical since repetition is commonly understood to
mean repetition of the same, i.e., repetition of identity.
Deleuze’s central contention is precisely that repetition
is not reproduction of the same but production of dif-
ference. Every repetition—of a certain social practice,
or personal habit, or artistic motif, or animal species,
or philosophical idea—is in fact a variation. It modifies
what is being repeated in some—be it minimal—way
and thus introduces a little difference. There is hence
no identity, no fixed form or content, to social practices,
personal habits, artistic motifs, etc. They are repeated
and thereby altered and so, as it were, in flux. Their
apparent identity—as when we speak of “this practice”
or “this motif”—is but “an optical ‘effect’ [of] the more
profound game of difference and repetition.”11
The upshot for our purposes is that, according to
Deleuze, every happening, while reproducing estab-
lished practices, introduces a minimal difference and
thus modifies the status quo. On this model, every oc-
currence is a little bit exceptional, and none is fully
normal. Every occurrence is mostly within but at the
same time a little bit out of the ordinary.
4. An Extended Process
I take the Deleuzian model to be, on the face of it,
very plausible. It represents a challenge with which any
attempt to make a categorical distinction between con-
ventional and ruptural occurrences must contend.
We can find in Arendt and Badiou a possible re-
sponse to the challenge.12 The conceptions of the event
of these two philosophers coincide in key aspects,
which is striking given the glaring discrepancy in their
backgrounds, approaches, and idioms. The shared core
conception that is defined by these aspects can be
seen as trying to parry the Deleuzian objection, even
though neither Arendt nor Badiou presents it in this
way.
The strategy, in a nutshell, is to conceive of the event
as an extended process rather than as a momentary rup-
ture. The basic argument can be stated thus: Admittedly,
when we look at a particular occurrence, we will always
find various aspects in which it is a continuation of the
past and other aspects in which it—be it minimally—
diverges from the past. Insofar as it diverges from the
past, it potentially constitutes a break. But whether it
actually does constitute a break will depend on subse-
quent developments. The divergence opens up a new
route, a new possibility, but this possibility needs to be
realized. In other words, if what is deviant in the oc-
currence is not taken up, carried on, worked out, the
status quo will survive unscathed, and things will be
as if nothing unusual had happened. Conversely, if it
is taken up, an originally negligible deviance may give
rise to a radically new world.
 What is an Event?: Wolfhart Totschnig
Such a conception of the extraordinary is central to
Badiou’s philosophy. Badiou conceives of the event as
an occurrence in which a new principle or idea—a new
“truth,” as he primarily calls it13 —makes its original ap-
pearance in the world and subsequently comes to define
a new era in its particular domain (a new mode of poli-
tics, a new form of art, a new science, a new life shared
in love, respectively). That an occurrence manifests a
new “truth” is thus the principal feature, but it does not
suffice to make an occurrence an event. The new princi-
ple or idea must, first, be recognized as such and, then,
be pursued and carried out. Badiou conceives of this
process of carrying out as the gradual experimentation
and implementation of the new idea by an avant-garde
of dedicated individuals, i.e., by what he calls “a sub-
ject.” In this way, through the sustained efforts of the
“subject” devoted to it, the new “truth” may become the
foundation of a new world—of a new politics, a new
art, etc.—and the original occurrence thereby receive
the status of an event, of an extraordinary, groundbreak-
ing happening.14
In Arendt’s thought, we find a very similar concep-
tion of the event, although there it is less prominent. In
order to see the similarity, we need to put together two
elements of her thought that may appear to be uncon-
nected. First, in On Revolution, Arendt posits as a crucial
feature of a “new beginning”—an expression which she
uses as a synonym, or near synonym, of “event”—that
it manifests a new principle:
What saves the act of beginning from its own arbitrari-
ness is that it carries its own principle within itself, or,
to be more precise, that beginning and principle, prin-
cipium and principle, are not only related to each other,
but are coeval. The absolute from which the beginning
is to derive its own validity and which must save it, as
it were, from its inherent arbitrariness is the principle
which, together with it, makes its appearance in the
world. The way the beginner starts whatever he intends
to do lays down the law of action for those who have
joined him in order to partake in the enterprise and to
bring about its accomplishment. As such, the princi-
ple inspires the deeds that are to follow and remains
apparent as long as the action lasts.15
So Arendt, like Badiou, maintains that a new
beginning/event is characterized by the fact that it intro-
duces a new principle, a new idea. And also like Badiou,
she emphasizes that the appearance of a new princi-
ple is (only) the starting point of an extended process
through which that principle comes to be actualized.16 In
the above quotation, this aspect is merely adumbrated:
The principle “inspires the deeds that are to follow,”
it “lays down the law of action for those who have
joined [ . . . ] in the enterprise [in order] to bring about its
accomplishment.” We find the point stated more explic-
itly in The Human Condition. Arendt there remarks that

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5
“action”—which, in her idiom, means the kind of in-
novative political activity that produces an event—falls
into two stages, beginning and carrying out.17 (This is
the second element I announced.) She sees this distinc-
tion of stages suggested by the duality of the ancient
Greek verbs archein and prattein and the corresponding
Latin verbs agere and gerere:
Here [i.e., in Greek and Latin] it seems as though each
action were divided into two parts, the beginning made
by a single person and the achievement in which many
join by “bearing” and “finishing” the enterprise, by
seeing it through.18
Arendt phrases the remark in a guarded manner (“it
seems as though”), but she leaves no doubt that she
endorses this implication of the ancients’ vocabulary. I
believe that this point indeed represents an important
clarification of her conception of action.19 To act, for
Arendt, means to make a new beginning, but it is not,
as the term “beginning” may suggest, something that
is exhausted in the moment. Action begins with a be-
ginning in the narrow sense, with an initiatory act, but
this beginning is just a beginning. It must be contin-
ued, developed, expanded, augmented.20 And only if it
is thus carried out will it come to constitute an event
as Arendt defines it, i.e., an “occurrence that interrupts
[the] routine processes and routine procedures” of the
day.21
Let me sum up the gist of Arendt and Badiou’s con-
ception for the purposes of this paper. For these two
philosophers, whether an occurrence is an event de-
pends on what happens after the fact. In other words, an
event is made such retroactively. It becomes an event
through the endeavor of which it will have been the be-
ginning. It will—mind the pun—eventually have been
extraordinary.
The three examples bear out this conception. If
we look at the beginning of the French Revolution,
we do not find a particular occurrence that we can
identify as an event, as extraordinary. If the insurrec-
tion of the tiers état had been rebutted, if the storm-
ing of the Bastille had been an isolated incident, we
would be dealing with precisely that, an unsuccess-
ful insurrection, an isolated revolt, an unusual but ul-
timately unimportant occurrence, a little accident in
the eyes of the regnant regime. There would have
been no event but only a minor glitch, a footnote in
the history books rather than a chapter heading. Thus,
there is nothing in these occurrences themselves—in
the insurrection of the tiers état, or the storming of
the Bastille, or any other particular occurrence dur-
ing that time—that would render them extraordinary.
What made these occurrences an event is rather their
aftermath, i.e., the fact that they gave rise to a new
political age.
6 Constellations Volume 24, Number 1, 2017
The situation is analogous in the case of relativity
theory. Einstein’s papers of 1905 and 1915 might have
been discarded as too odd by his contemporaries, in
which case there would have been no event but merely
a curiosity. What made them an event are again the
consequences they happened to have, that is, the fact that
they would spark a radical reorganization of physics, the
abandonment of the Newtonian framework.22
The example of abstract art barely needs spelling
out any more. Any of the early abstract paintings can
be—and has been—taken as a simple aberration or fail-
ure. What made them an event is the impact they had as
a series, the fact that they would inspire a new under-
standing of art.
So the conception I have distilled from Badiou and
Arendt fits the phenomena well. And, furthermore, it
constitutes a response to the Deleuzian challenge, which
may be summarized in the following way: Admittedly,
there is no clear line between the ordinary and the ex-
traordinary when we look at particular occurrences by
themselves. Viewed in isolation, the storming of the
Bastille does not stand out from other popular revolts.
But this does not mean that the distinction between
normal occurrences and events is not well defined. In
order to see the extraordinary, the disruptive, the new of
an event, we need to focus on the extended process of
which it is the beginning.23
5. The Deleuzian Challenge Reloaded
Appropriate as this response may seem at first glance,
the Deleuzian opponent is not likely to be satisfied
with it upon closer scrutiny. It has been claimed that
what makes an event is its aftermath—the process, the
extended action, that it initiates. However, every oc-
currence can be seen as the beginning of a process.
Every occurrence, even the most commonplace, will
have effects—that is, there will be other occurrences
that would not have come about without it. Hence, if
the event is to be defined by its aftermath, it must be
defined by the kind of aftermath it has, by the kind of
process it sets off. Now, it has indeed been specified
what kind of process is at play. It has been said that the
process initiated by an event is the actualization of a
new principle, of the new idea that appeared in the orig-
inal occurrence. Herein lies the reason for its disruptive
effects. The process implements a new principle and
therefore runs against the established institutions and
practices, which are governed by a different principle.
In the case of the French Revolution, the new princi-
ple is obviously liberté, égalité, fraternité; in the case
of abstract art, it is the idea of abstraction; and in the
case of relativity theory it is the principle of relativity,
i.e., the principle that all reference frames are equivalent
as to the laws of physics.

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So we find the distinction between continuity and
disruption, and with it the distinction between the or-
dinary and the extraordinary, referred to a distinction
between old and new ideas. This is where the Deleuzian
objection comes in again. Is the distinction between old
and new ideas not just as vague as the distinction be-
tween continuative and disruptive occurrences? Is not
every principle or idea a modification or elaboration
of some other idea(s) and thus partly new and partly
old, in some respects innovative and in some respects
traditional? Is it not the case that ideas no less than
occurrences are inscribed in a process of gradual trans-
formation?
The three examples seem to be cases in point. Let us
consider, first, the idea of universal equality that inspired
the French Revolution. There are several ways in which
this idea can be traced back to earlier ideas. The idea of
political equality is arguably as old as politics itself—
that is, it dates back to Greek antiquity at least, to the po-
litical practice of the polis and its theoretical expression
in Aristotle’s Politics. The chief difference between the
ancient and the modern idea of political equality is that
the former did not apply to all human beings but only
held for the small group of citizen peers, not for slaves,
women, and foreigners.24 The modern understanding of
equality can thus be seen as the universalization—that
is, as a simple extension—of the ancient notion. And
maybe even that is saying too much. Given that the im-
plementation, if not already the formulation, of the idea
of equality proclaimed by the French Revolution was
anything but universal, one may argue that this idea is
just as exclusionary as the ancients’, the difference be-
ing merely that the line between those who are equal
and those who are not is drawn somewhat differently.
And this is but one way of putting the modern idea of
equality into historical context. Another way is to relate
it to the Christian idea of equality before God, of which
it would then be a secularized version. It thus seems that
the idea of the revolution was not revolutionary at all.
We find a similar situation in the case of Einstein’s
relativity theory. The principle underlying it, the prin-
ciple of relativity, which states that the laws of physics
should have the same form in all admissible reference
frames, was not invented by Einstein. It was first put
forward by Galileo. Einstein’s groundbreaking move—
or non-move, rather—was to hold on to it in the face
of the mounting empirical evidence that the speed of
light is constant, evidence with which the principle was
incompatible within the Newtonian framework of ab-
solute space and time. He was thus led to the conclu-
sion that space and time are relative to one’s state of
motion. The theory that emerged, the theory by which
the Newtonian doctrine of absolute space and time was
dethroned, came to be known as the special theory of
relativity. Having developed this theory, Einstein made
 What is an Event?: Wolfhart Totschnig
a second groundbreaking move, which was to gener-
alize the principle of relativity by applying it not only
to inertial reference frames but to all reference frames.
The theory that came out of that second decision was
accordingly called the general theory of relativity. With
this theory, gravity was shown to be a manifestation of
the curvature of space, which involved the rejection of
the Euclidian conception of space as flat. The history
of Einstein’s relativity theory thus appears to confirm
the point at issue with astounding clarity. The shift from
Newtonian physics to relativity theory was one of the
greatest, most drastic scientific revolutions, and yet its
starting point was not a radically new idea but the vin-
dication and then generalization of a principle that goes
back to the 17th century.
As for abstraction in art, lastly, we may point to
certain practices of ornamentation in which the idea of
abstraction is, as it were, prefigured.
Thus, the notion of a total break turns out to be just
as dubious when it comes to principles or ideas as it is
when it comes to occurrences or deeds.
6. The Objection from Unrecognizability
There is in fact another, more straightforward route to
the same conclusion. The Deleuzian objection to the
notion of event that I have expounded until now is of
an empirical nature. We just could not find the total
breaks or absolute novelties suggested by this notion.
The more straightforward objection that I have in mind
does not bother with such matters of observation but
presents a general argument to the effect that a total
break or absolute novelty is impossible. The argument
is this: If we encountered an absolute novelty, we would
not be able to recognize it as such, that is, we would not
be able to appreciate its absolute newness. We would
either relate it somehow to what we are familiar with,
wrongly seeing in it but a variation of known occur-
rences and patterns, or else we would experience it
as something unrecognizable, as a blank spot in our
field of vision or, maybe, as a peculiar je ne sais quoi
that we cannot pinpoint or describe, so that it would
remain without effect and quickly be forgotten. For
this reason, the very idea of an absolute novelty seems
misbegotten.25
7. Subjective Experience
The two objections I have laid out—the Deleuzian and
the one from unrecognizability—are, I take it, very per-
suasive. Nonetheless, I believe that there is not only one
but three ways of salvaging the ordinary/extraordinary
distinction as philosophically relevant.
The first can be found in Heidegger’s distinction
between authenticity and inauthenticity in Being and

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7
Time. These terms refer to two basic, antithetical modes
of life. The inauthentic life is a life mired in “the they,”
in the customs and beliefs of everybody, in the accepted
societal rules and practices, whereas the authentic life
is a life that is, in a sense that will have to be specified,
“one’s own.” I must note that Heidegger does not ex-
actly use the terms “ordinary” and “extraordinary” for
this dichotomy. Nor do we find in this context the notion
of event as extraordinary occurrence, since Heidegger
developed this notion only later in his work. However,
he characterizes inauthenticity as the average, authen-
ticity as the exceptional.26 It is fair to say, then, that the
inauthentic life as Heidegger describes it, the life “lost
in the they,” is a figure of the ordinary, whereas the au-
thentic life, which has broken away from the “the they,”
is out of the ordinary, or extraordinary.
Now, what does the breaking away from “the they”
consist in, and how does it come about? It is provoked,
Heidegger says, by the anticipation of one’s own death,
by the realization that one’s lifetime is limited. This
realization singularizes the individual, it separates her
from “the they,” it isolates her from the other people.
As Heidegger puts it, in the confrontation with her in-
evitable death, the individual is “completely thrown back
upon [her] ownmost potentiality-of-being. Thus immi-
nent to [herself], all relations to other [individuals] are
dissolved.”27 The anticipation of one’s death is such an
isolating experience for two reasons. First, because the
individual’s death is her death, and only hers. It is her
“ownmost possibility,” an eventuality that she “has to
take upon [herself].”28 For “nobody can do somebody
else’s dying for them.”29 And second, because the indi-
vidual’s death is the possibility of her utter and definite
separation not only from the other individuals but from
the whole world, from everything. As Heidegger formu-
lates it, it is a “nonrelational possibility,” i.e., the pos-
sibility of not relating to anything.30 Bringing together
and summing up the two aspects, we can say that the an-
ticipation of her death isolates the individual because it
is the isolating experience of her eventual isolation. The
authentic life is the life that follows in the wake of this
experience, the life of the individual who has accepted
her finitude and thereby come into her own, whereas
the inauthentic life is the life that lacks the experience,
the life of the individual who represses the fact of her
finitude and therefore remains lost in “the they.” Only
when isolated by the anticipatory experience of death
does the individual come to devise her own life, to de-
cide what she wants to do with the time that has been
given to her, to “choose the choice of being-a-self.”31
What I want to highlight about this distinction be-
tween ordinary inauthenticity and extraordinary au-
thenticity is that it derives from and is based on the
experience of an absolute disruption, namely (the an-
ticipation of) one’s own death. For the individual, her
8 Constellations Volume 24, Number 1, 2017
death is indeed an absolute disruption, it completely
severs all existing ties (barring speculations about an
otherworldly continuation of life or experience). And
interestingly, this particular notion of an absolute dis-
ruption withstands—or, rather, avoids—the two ob-
jections. It avoids the Deleuzian challenge because it
does not belong to the latter’s field of application. The
Deleuzian challenge concerns the idea of an absolute
disruption in the worldly course of affairs. An individ-
ual’s death is not that kind of disruption. It is an absolute
disruption only for the individual in question, not for
the rest of the world. (To be sure, it may—and normally
does—disrupt the rest of the world in various ways,
but not absolutely.) Put differently, it is a disruption
of experience, not within experience. And in contrast
to an absolute disruption in worldly affairs, an abso-
lute disruption of experience is not only conceivable
but, through anticipation, intimately familiar. The ob-
jection from unrecognizability, then, is avoided for the
same reason, namely because we are not dealing with
an absolute novelty within our experience but an abso-
lute disruption of our experience, an absolute disruption
which is not absolutely new to us but, again, intimately
familiar and so everything but unrecognizable.
Heidegger’s distinction between the ordinary and the
extraordinary is thus well defined. It is grounded in the
(anticipatory) experience of the absolute disruption of
death and the concomitant experience of an absolute
isolation from the rest of the world. However, it is not
about worldly events, it is not a distinction between or-
dinary and extraordinary occurrences or deeds. Rather,
it is about personal experiences and modes of life. To
put it bluntly, it is a subjective rather than an objective
matter. Heidegger indeed emphasizes that the shift from
inauthenticity to authenticity, despite being transforma-
tive for the individual in question, does not objectively
change the world, at least not immediately. “The ‘world’
at hand does not become different as for its ‘content,’
the circle of the others is not exchanged for a new one.”
Rather, the world comes to be seen or lived in a dif-
ferent way by the individual in question: “The being
toward things at hand [ . . . ] and the concerned being
with others is now defined in terms of their ownmost
potentiality.”32
So the question arises: What about the ordinary/
extraordinary distinction as we find it in Arendt, Der-
rida, and Badiou, the distinction between ordinary and
extraordinary occurrences or deeds? Can that distinc-
tion be salvaged? I want to show that it can, and that
there are even two alternative routes to take.
8. Transcendence
The first we find in Badiou and Derrida. I would like to
call it the route of transcendence.

C 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
To repeat, Badiou (and similarly Arendt) conceives
of the event as an occurrence in which a new princi-
ple or idea—a new “truth”—makes its first appearance.
The new “truth” is subsequently realized—in the double
sense of recognized and implemented—by a “subject,”
thus becoming the foundation of a new world. Now, the
question to be addressed to Badiou from the perspec-
tive of the Deleuzian challenge is this: Wherein lies the
novelty of a new “truth?” Will the new idea not upon ex-
amination turn out to be merely a variation of old ideas?
Badiou’s answer to this question (but not Arendt’s) is
the following: The idea that appears in an event is new
precisely because it is not a variation of old ideas, but
“subtracted from” or “diagonal to” the current state of
knowledge. The new idea “avoids” all current concepts,
Badiou says, it represents a “radical exception” to the
status quo.33
This affirmation provokes a series of follow-up ques-
tions: Why does the “truth” that appears in an event have
the characteristic of being diagonal to the current state
of knowledge? How are such ideas even conceivable,
and how do they come to appear in certain occurrences
which thereby receive the status of “events?” I have to
leave these questions aside because answering them is
not essential for my purposes and would require an ex-
tensive exposition of Badiou’s peculiar set-theoretical
ontology. What is essential for my purposes is that, by
characterizing a new “truth” as “subtracted” or “diago-
nal,” Badiou escapes the Deleuzian challenge (assuming
his notion of subtraction/diagonality to be sound) but,
by this very token, runs into the objection from unrec-
ognizability. If the new idea is so new that it eludes all
existing concepts, how can it, first, be recognized and,
then, guide people’s actions? Although Badiou does
not explicitly raise and address this objection, the pro-
gression of his argument shows that he is aware of it.
He admits the first part of the objection, declaring that
“truths” as he conceives them are “indiscernible,” i.e.,
indeed unrecognizable.34 He denies, however, the in-
ference that the objection draws from this fact, the in-
ference that, if something is unrecognizable, it cannot
influence or orient our actions and must therefore re-
main without effect. He acknowledges that the individ-
uals who dedicate themselves to a “truth” cannot know
that “truth,” given that it is indiscernible. Their relation
to the “truth” is hence not knowledge but belief.35 They
believe that there is a truth, a truth that is “transcendent”
to them and to the world as they know it.36 They seek to
realize this “truth” in the world in which they live and
thereby, step by step, come to create a new world.37
The fact I want to underline is that Badiou’s con-
ception of new “truths” as radical exceptions leads
him to employ the religious terminology of belief and
transcendence.38 By itself, this is not surprising, given
that theology is the traditional domain of notions like
 What is an Event?: Wolfhart Totschnig
radical exception and indiscernible truth. It is a bit sur-
prising, though, that Badiou, a militant atheist, does not
shy away from taking this route.
In Derrida, we can observe a similar trajectory from a
notion of radical exception to religious terminology. For
his thought as for Badiou’s (and Arendt’s), the notion of
event as extraordinary occurrence is central. Derrida is
especially interested in the possibility or impossibility
of a break with the economy of exchange, with the all-
pervasive logic of quid pro quo, of expecting a return
for invested time and effort. He sees the idea of such a
break in the ideas of certain interpersonal acts, namely
in the idea of a gift, in the idea of forgiveness, or in
the idea of hospitality. A gift, for instance, constitutes
a break with the economy of exchange insofar as it is
an act of generosity that does not expect any recom-
pense, neither a “return gift,” nor gratitude, nor even
mere acknowledgment.39 Or forgiveness constitutes a
break with the economy of exchange insofar as it is an
unconditional act of releasing someone from guilt, an
act that does not presuppose anything in advance (regret,
or the promise to better oneself) nor expect anything in
return.40 In this way, Derrida maintains, gift and forgive-
ness (and similarly hospitality) evade or interrupt the
reigning social logic of exchange. They are thus events,
extraordinary occurrences. Yet precisely because an act
of (for)giving is such a subversive or disruptive deed, it
can never be made explicit, it can never be known. For
the moment it is made explicit, it inevitably enters into
the logic of exchange, as it then calls for acknowledg-
ment or some other form of reciprocity, and thus ceases
to be a gift:
To be able to receive the gift, in a certain way the other
must not even know that I’m giving it, because once
the person knows, he or she enters the circle of thanks
and gratitude and annuls the gift. Likewise, one could
say that even I must not know that I’m giving. [ . . . ] If
I present myself as the giver, I’m already congratulat-
ing myself, thanking myself, feeling self-gratified for
giving, and, consequently, the mere consciousness of
giving annuls the gift.41
Derrida concludes from this situation that “an event
is always secret, [ . . . ] secret [not] in the sense of some-
thing private, clandestine, or hidden, but [ . . . ] as that
which doesn’t appear.”42 I should note at this point
that gift, forgiveness, and hospitality are not the only
acts that Derrida considers events. Other instances of
events are acts of promising and of rendering justice and,
more generally, every act that involves an incalculable
decision or invention. The claim about unknowability
holds for these instances too, but for somewhat different
reasons. For brevity’s sake, I will leave this complica-
tion aside.
The point I want to make is that Derrida, like Ba-
diou, conceives the event as a break so complete that it

C 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
9
cannot be known. And also like Badiou, he is thereby led
to religious terminology. Events as he conceives them
have a “messianic” quality, he says, they “may come at
any time, without my knowledge.” And our relation to
such events is therefore one of faith, of “a certain faith
without knowledge, faith beyond knowledge.”43 That is,
we can and should have faith that unconditional acts of
(for)giving are possible and do occur, but we can never
be sure.
What are we to think of the conception of the ex-
traordinary as transcendent and unknowable that we
find in Badiou and Derrida? The conception is con-
sistent. And it is not contradicted by the facts. Indeed,
it cannot be contradicted by the facts since it is not con-
cerned with facts but, precisely, with occurrences that in
some way go or point beyond the facts. In both Badiou
and Derrida, what makes an occurrence an event is that
something extraordinary is suggested by the occurrence
without appearing fully (a transcendent “truth,” an ut-
ter break with the economy of exchange), something
which, because of its extraordinariness, cannot appear
fully. This conception can be seen as responding to the
two challenges I have raised by defyingly embracing
them. It embraces yet defies the Deleuzian challenge
by declaring the extraordinary to be transcendent to the
processes of differentiation through repetition that we
observe and know about. And it partly embraces the ob-
jection from unrecognizability by acknowledging that
such a transcendent extraordinary will necessarily be
unrecognizable, yet insists that something unrecogniz-
able can nonetheless, through “belief” or “faith,” orient
our actions and thus have effects in the world.44
But as in the case of Heidegger’s conception, the op-
ponent has reason not to be satisfied with the solution.45
Given the inherent dubiousness of calls to faith in
transcendent truths or messianic ruptures, the oppo-
nent may demand an immanent defense of the ordi-
nary/extraordinary distinction, a defense that does not
sidestep but refute her objections.46
9. Negation
I believe that indeed there may be such a defense. It
would take its starting point from Arendt’s and Badiou’s
assertion that an event consists in the appearance of a
new principle or idea which then comes to be gradually
carried out. But, unlike Badiou, the defense I have in
mind would not conceive the novelty of the new idea
as a matter of transcendence to the current conceptual
framework. Rather, it would conceive this novelty as a
matter of negation. An idea constitutes a total break with
its past when it negates the idea(s) of that past. Such a
negation cannot be understood as a gradual modification
or extension but is indeed a radical departure.47
Take, for example, the idea of a natural equality
among human beings, as opposed to the idea that some
10 Constellations Volume 24, Number 1, 2017
individuals or groups are by nature subordinated to oth-
ers. Very generally speaking, the idea of natural sub-
ordination was held in antiquity, finding expression
in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics, while the
idea of natural equality characterizes modernity, having
been put forward—in, of course, significantly different
ways—by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Now, there
is no process of gradual transformation that leads from
the former to the latter. By varying or extending the idea
of natural subordination, one will only arrive at other
forms of natural subordination and never at the idea of
natural equality. To put it metaphorically, the distance
from the former to the latter is a leap, not a step.
But what about the two objections? Has it not been
shown that, when it comes to ideas no more than when
it comes to happenings, there is no such thing as a total
break—unless, of course, as we have just seen, by postu-
lation of transcendence? Well, the route of negation—as
I would like to call it—is able to counter the objec-
tions. The objection from unrecognizability, to reiter-
ate, claims that there cannot be a total break because we
would not be able to recognize it, let alone to carry it out.
A negation is—precisely—an exception to this claim.
A negation represents a total break but is nonetheless
recognizable and intelligible because it is related to that
with which it breaks, namely by negation. And as for
the Deleuzian challenge, we can say that the model of
negation allows us to see our examples in a (yet again)
different way. The modern idea of equality is not a
mere extension of the ancient notion or a simple trans-
position of the Christian notion into this world but a
negation of essential aspects of these notions, namely
the aspect of natural subordination and the aspect of
otherworldliness, respectively. Similarly, the idea of ab-
straction negates the idea that the purpose of art is repre-
sentation. The remark about practices of ornamentation
made above is then simply beside the point, since or-
namentation is not the same practice as art. Einstein’s
relativity theory, finally, also appears in a different light.
The conception of space and time as relative can be seen
as the negation of the Newtonian conception of space
and time as absolute. Einstein’s great move, then, does
not lie in holding on to and generalizing the principle
of relativity, but in not shying away from the drastic
implication of doing so, i.e., from giving up the age-old
absoluteness of space and time. Thus, in all three exam-
ples, the new ideas at play involve a negation of the old
fundamental ideas and to that extent constitute a radical
break.
Maybe Arendt’s notions of event and new begin-
ning are to be understood on this model.48 Arendt does
not say so explicitly. She does not explain what the
novelty of a new beginning/principle consists in. But
Badiou’s model of transcendence seems rather alien to
her thought. And as far as I can see, there is no other

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way to vindicate the notion of event as extraordinary
occurrence against the Deleuzian challenge.
Conclusion
The reader may be surprised to see the argument arrive
at a solution that is reminiscent of Hegelian dialectics.
This may occasion surprise not only because it seems
to be a “step back” in the history of philosophy, to a
conception that predates the philosophical constellation
that has been the focus of this paper. More important,
it may seem that the pursuit of a rigorous notion of
the extraordinary has led to a point where the notion is
no longer what it was at the outset. For the model of
negation seems to divest the notion of an aspect which,
for the discussed philosophers, is an integral part of
it, namely contingency. As used by Hegel and subse-
quently Marx, the model of negation gives history—the
history of successive disruptions—a fixed direction, a
fixed goal, a telos. In other words, it constrains action
to a certain path, the path of successive negations, a
path that is supposed to have its endpoint—the end of
history—in a state where there is nothing left that needs
to be negated. One may hence object that, even though
it contains a notion of radical break, it in fact elimi-
nates the extraordinary as moment of contingency, of
indeterminacy, of an open future.49
But the model I suggest is not meant to be a reacti-
vation of Hegelian dialectics. To attribute a central role
to negation is not tantamount to giving up contingency
and embracing determinism. If we look at the exam-
ples more closely, we see that the new idea negates a
particular aspect of the old ideology or doctrine. It is
not a complete negation. The modern idea of equal-
ity negates the aspect of natural subordination inher-
ent in the ancient view but upholds—or more precisely,
extends—the idea of political equality. Relativity theory
negates the absoluteness of space and time but upholds
other aspects of the Newtonian framework, for example
determinacy. So each era—in politics, science, or art—
is defined by a complex of ideas. Each of these ideas
may be negated while maintaining (or merely modi-
fying rather than negating) the others. And which of
them is negated, and when, and if at all, is a matter of
historical contingency, and the course of events is thus
in no way predetermined.
Let me conclude, then, by summarizing the concep-
tion I propose: An event, or extraordinary occurrence, is
an occurrence in which a new idea appears, an idea that
is new in that it negates one of the current ideas. Be-
cause of this negativity, the subsequent realization of the
new idea results in a radically—and not just gradually—
different world. The human power to do the extraordi-
nary consists in the capacity to initiate and carry through
such a process.
 What is an Event?: Wolfhart Totschnig
NOTES
I would like to thank Penelope Deutscher, Bonnie Honig,
Mary Dietz, Dagmara Drażewska, ˛ Deborah Goldgaber, Virgil
Brower, David Johnson, Rodrigo Cordero and the reviewers for
Constellations for their comments on previous versions of the
paper. Furthermore, I would like to thank Diego Rossello for
inviting me to present a draft of the paper in the Seminario de
teorı́a y filosofı́a polı́tica of the Pontificia Universidad Católica
de Chile. Without their critique and encouragement, this project
would not have come to fruition.
1. Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom
Ereignis), Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, ed. (Frankfurt am
Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), trans. by Parvis Emad and
Kenneth Maly as Contributions to Philosophy (From enown-
ing) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), §5, 16/12.
In this and all subsequent references, the second page number,
the one after the slash, refers to the English translation.
2. Hannah Arendt, “On Violence,” in Crises of the Re-
public (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 109. To
cite two similar passages from other writings: An event, Arendt
says, “break[s] into the continuous sequence of historical time”
(On Revolution, New York: Penguin, 1965, 205), it “bursts into
the context of predictable processes” (“Introduction into poli-
tics,” in The Promise of Politics, Jerome Kohn, ed., New York:
Schocken Books, 2005, 111).
3. See, for instance, Alain Badiou, L’éthique: Essai sur
la conscience du Mal (Paris: Hatier, 1993), trans. by Peter
Hallward as Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil
(London: Verso, 2001), 39–42/42–46 and 60–66/67–74; Saint
Paul: La fondation de l’universalisme (Paris: Presses Univer-
sitaires de France, 1997), trans. by Ray Brassier as Saint Paul:
The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 2003), 2/2 and 11/11; Logiques des mondes: L’être
et l’événement 2 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2006), trans. by Al-
berto Toscano as Logics of Worlds: Being and Event 2 (London:
Continuum, 2009), 81–82/73 and 89–90/79–80.
4. See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max
Niemeyer Verlag, 1993), trans. by Joan Stambaugh as Being
and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit (Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1996), §27, 129/121, and §55,
271/250.
5. As for the gift, see Jacques Derrida, Donner le temps:
1. La fausse monnaie (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1991), trans. by
Peggy Kamuf as Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 18–27/7–14. As for
forgiving, see Jacques Derrida, “Le siècle et le pardon,” in Foi
et savoir (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2001), trans. by Michael
Hughes as “On forgiveness,” in On Cosmopolitanism and For-
giveness (London: Routledge, 2001), 107–123/31–49.
6. Andrew Gibson has recently offered a study of
the theme of the extraordinary in recent French philosophy
(Intermittency: The Concept of Historical Reason in Recent
French Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2012). His primary term is not “extraordinary” but “intermit-
tency,” which he defines as “the occasional interruptions of di-
urnal history by unprecedented, unexpected and unparalleled
events for the good” (1). In his glosses on the philosophers
he discusses (Badiou, Rancière, Lardreau, and others), he uses
terms such as “break,” “interruption,” and “newness” to char-
acterize “intermittency.” By raising the Deleuzian challenge, I
mean to show that these terms are not unproblematic and can-
not be used to define the extraordinary—or “intermittency”—
unless they are further spelled out.
7. Arendt, On Revolution, 155–56.
8. Accordingly, he characterizes his undertaking as
the project of “overturning Platonism.” See Gilles Deleuze,

C 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
11
Différence et répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1968), trans. by Paul Patton as Difference and Rep-
etition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 82–
89/59–64.
9. Ibid., 80/57.
10. Ibid., 1/xix.
11. For a more comprehensive account of Deleuze’s
model of the emergence of novelty, and in particular of
Deleuze’s distinction between the virtual and the actual which
I, for brevity’s sake, leave aside, see Daniel W. Smith, “The
Conditions of the New,” in Essays on Deleuze (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 235–255.
12. Michael North, in his recent book Novelty (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2013), subtitled A History of the
New, finds in the history of thinking about the new, from the
ancient atomists to the theorists of modern art, only two ba-
sic models, namely recurrence (i.e., the reemergence of things
forgotten or suppressed) and recombination (i.e., the reconfig-
uration of existing elements). And he notes that both models
are “equivocal” because they seem not to offer any real nov-
elty but only variations of the old (7). I intend to show in
the present paper that the realm of conceptions of novelty is
far from exhausted by the two models identified by North.
Tellingly, North mentions Deleuze and Badiou in the introduc-
tion to his book. He remarks that “certain strains of continental
philosophy, especially those following from the work of Gilles
Deleuze and Alain Badiou, get much of their polemical punch
from the claim that these thinkers can adequately explain how
the world generates genuine novelty” (2). But oddly, despite
this acknowledgment of Deleuze’s and Badiou’s relevance for
his topic, North does not discuss their conceptions in the book,
apart from a brief and unspecific mention of Badiou in a later
chapter (154–55).
13. “Truth” is Badiou’s primary name for the concept,
but he also, on occasion, uses the words “idea” (Logiques
des mondes, 532–37/510–14) and “principle” (L’être et
l’événement, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1988, trans. by Oliver
Feltham as Being and Event, London: Continuum, 2005,
281/254; L’éthique, 30/31–32).
14. The main works in which Badiou develops this con-
ception are the ones cited in the preceding endnote: L’être et
l’événement, L’éthique, and Logiques des mondes. He employs
two (slightly) different terms for the process of gradual experi-
mentation by which a “truth” is implemented, namely “generic
procedure” and “truth procedure.” In L’être et l’événement he
mainly uses the former term, whereas in L’éthique and subse-
quent works he mainly uses the latter.
15. Arendt, On Revolution, 212–13.
16. Patchen Markell has argued that, for Arendt, new be-
ginnings are not about the “degree of qualitative difference [an
occurrence] manifests with respect to what has come before”
but about “its character as an irrevocable event, and therefore
also as a new point of departure” (“The Rule of the People:
Arendt, archê, and Democracy,” American Political Science
Review 100, no. 1, February 2006, 1–14). He states, con-
sequently, that a new beginning in Arendt’s sense does not
necessarily involve disruption: “[N]othing about beginning re-
quires a break with the terms of an existing order.” I agree with
Markell’s initial description but not with the statement at which
he arrives. Indeed, what makes an occurrence a new beginning
or event is that it constitutes a new point of departure. But
Markell does not explain how an occurrence comes to be a new
point of departure. The answer to this question lies in the new
principle that appears in the occurrence and calls for being re-
alized. And this new principle does break with the terms of the
existing order, otherwise it would not be a new principle and
the occurrence not a new point of departure.
12 Constellations Volume 24, Number 1, 2017
17. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 189–90. See also
“What is Freedom?” in Between Past and Future: Eight Ex-
ercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin, 2006), 164.
Arendt does not (exactly) call the second stage “carrying out”
but uses a variety of similar expressions: “to pass through,” “to
achieve,” “to finish,” “to bear,” “to carry something through.”
18. Arendt, The Human Condition, 189.
19. Arendt’s phrase “to act in concert,” which she uses
to emphasize that action in her sense is never the affair of
a single agent but always involves a plurality of actors join-
ing forces, has by her readers generally been taken in a syn-
chronic sense, as referring to the coming together of a group
of people in the same time and place to deliberate jointly and
settle on a course of action. We find this synchronic under-
standing of Arendtian action especially with readers influ-
enced by Habermas’s philosophy as well as with Habermas
himself—with readers, that is, who focus on the aspect of
mutual persuasion. See Jürgen Habermas, “Hannah Arendts
Begriff der Macht,” in Philosophisch-politische Profile
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981), 228–248, trans. by
Frederick G. Lawrence as “Hannah Arendt: On the Concept
of Power,” in Philosophical-political Profiles (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1983), 171–187; Maurizio
Passerin d’Entrèves, The Political Philosophy of Hannah
Arendt (London: Routledge, 1994), ch. 2; Jeffrey C. Isaac,
“Oases in the Desert: Hannah Arendt on Democratic Politics,”
American Political Science Review 88, no. 1 (March 1994),
156–168; Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Han-
nah Arendt (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); Albrecht
Wellmer, “Arendt on Revolution,” in The Cambridge Compan-
ion to Hannah Arendt, Dana Villa, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 220–241. Arendt’s analysis of action
into two stages shows that the phrase also—and maybe even
primarily—has a diachronic sense. To act in concert can mean
to participate consecutively in the same ongoing enterprise,
to contribute to the same extended undertaking without ever
meeting face to face.
20. The verb “to augment” is used by Arendt in her anal-
ysis of the Roman notion of auctoritas in “What is Authority?”
(in Between Past and Future, 121–24) and On Revolution (200–
203). Drawing on this notion, Arendt characterizes action as a
process of augmentation, as the augmentation of the initiatory
act, the act of foundation. The ensuing deeds, she says, “re-
main tied back to the foundation which, at the same time, they
augment and increase” (ibid., 202). And in On Revolution—
but not in “What is Authority?”—Arendt specifies that what
is being augmented is the principle appearing in the act of
beginning—the “spirit” of the foundation, as she also puts it in
this context (ibid., 201). These passages on auctoritas and aug-
mentation further corroborate my account of Arendtian action
as an extended, principled process.
21. See section 2 above. Oliver Marchart, in an insightful
book that examines the alterglobalization movement under the
lens of Arendt’s notions of action and new beginning, claims
that “Arendt oscillates between an understanding of revolution
as a historical event of the greatest magnitude and a deconstruc-
tive notion of action that does not care about scale” (Neu begin-
nen: Hannah Arendt, die Revolution und die Globalisierung,
Wien: Turia & Kant, 2005, 147, my translation). Arendt’s anal-
ysis of action into beginning and carrying out shows, I believe,
that the poles between which Marchart sees her oscillating are
in fact two sides of the same process. Action always begins on
a small scale, but the endeavor may then grow to revolutionary
proportions.
22. For a detailed and thrilling account of the develop-
ment of relativity theory, from Einstein’s original insights to

C 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
the collaborative exploration of their implications, see Kip S.
Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous
Legacy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company), 1994.
23. Boris Groys, in his study On the New, which
was originally published in German and has recently been
translated into English, develops a theory of innovation that
stands in opposition to both Deleuze and the other four philoso-
phers (Über das Neue: Versuch einer Kulturökonomie. Frank-
furt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999, trans. by
G. M. Goshgarian as On the New, London: Verso, 2014). He
describes cultural innovation—i.e., innovation in the domains
of art and thought—as a “revaluation of values” and hence as
an economic operation. He distinguishes between two spheres,
the sphere of culture, which comprises the objects and ideas
that are considered valuable and which are therefore preserved
in museums, archives, and libraries, and the sphere of the pro-
fane, which comprises everything else, i.e., everything that is
considered ultimately worthless and hence disposable. Now,
innovation, according to him, consists in the appreciation of
something that hitherto was considered worthless (that is, in its
promotion from the profane into the cultural sphere) and the
concomitant devaluation of something that used to be consid-
ered valuable (that is, its expulsion from the cultural into the
profane sphere). Groys’s theory fits many instances of innova-
tion amazingly well—Renaissance art appreciated the pastoral
and devalued the purely sacred, Marx appreciated the prole-
tariat as a historic subject and devalued speculative philosophy,
Freud appreciated dreams and lapses as keys to the unconscious
and devalued conscious rationalizations, abstract art appreci-
ated simple geometric forms and devalued mimesis, etc. But his
thesis that innovation always follows—and is reducible to—
this economic logic of revaluation between the cultural and the
profane seems too sweeping. While his analysis of the logic
of revaluation is intriguing, it cannot account for the structural
transformations that the philosophers discussed in the present
paper, and especially Arendt and Badiou, focus on.
24. As Aristotle famously, and strikingly, expresses it in
book III of the Politics, “justice seems to be equality, and it is,
but not for everyone, only for equals” (trans. by C.D.C. Reeve,
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998, 1280a).
25. Such an argument is presented by Andreas Kalyvas
in his discussion of Arendt’s notion of new beginnings, namely
in order to show that this notion is not to be understood in
terms of absolute novelty (Democracy and the Politics of the
Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 224–25).
26. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, §27, 127/119.
27. Ibid., §50, 250/232. See also §40, 187–88/176, and
§53, 263/243. For clarity’s sake, I am replacing, in this and the
following quotations, “Da-sein” and the corresponding pro-
noun “it” with “individual” and “her,” respectively.
28. Ibid., §50, 250/232. See also §52, 258–59/239.
29. Ibid., §47, 240/223, my translation. In the original,
the sentence reads “Keiner kann dem Anderen sein Sterben ab-
nehmen.” Stambaugh, and similarly Macquarrie and Robinson
in their translation, renders it as “No one can take the other’s
dying away from him.” This literal translation misses, I think,
the idiomatic force of the original sentence.
30. Ibid., §50, 250/232 and passim.
31. Ibid., §54, 270/249.
32. Ibid., §60, 297–98/274, translation slightly modified.
33. Badiou, L’être et l’événement, 365–72/331–38;
Logiques des mondes, 42/34.
34. Badiou, L’être et l’événement, 361–77/327–43.
35. Ibid., 434–38/396–400.
36. “Every truth is transcendent to the subject,” Badiou
remarks in L’être et l’événement (435/397). It must be noted
 What is an Event?: Wolfhart Totschnig
that he elsewhere, namely in his L’éthique, insists that a “truth”
constitutes an immanent rupture (39–42/42–45 and passim). I
believe that this is an instance of misleading labeling. Badiou
characterizes “truths” as immanent because, according to his
ontological conception of them, a “truth” is a part of this world,
albeit an indiscernible part. It remains, though, that “truths,” as
he conceives them, are transcendent to our knowledge of this
world. They are thus transcendent for all practical purposes
and immanent only by ontological postulation. On this note, it
is interesting that, in his book on Deleuze, Badiou avows that
the label of immanence is of little importance to him: “[A]ll in
all, if the only way to think [truths] as distinct infinities [ . . . ]
is by sacrificing immanence (which I do not actually believe
is the case, but that is not what matters here) and the univocity
of Being, then I would sacrifice them” (Deleuze: La clameur
de l’être, Paris: Hachette, 1997, trans. by Louise Burchill as
Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2000, 136/91–92).
37. To give a little more detail: Badiou conceives this
process as a series of “inquiries” conducted by the dedicated in-
dividuals. Each inquiry consists in determining whether a par-
ticular element of the existing world is—or not—“connected”
to the event. If such a connection is found, that means that
the element in question is a part of the “truth” that appeared
(indiscernibly) in the event. The complete “truth,” then, would
be the result of the entire process. That is, it would be the
ensemble of all the elements that are connected to the event
(L’être et l’événement, 363–65/329–31). But this completion
is never achieved because the series of inquiries is, as Badiou
emphasizes, inherently infinite, given that the number of ele-
ments to be investigated is infinite. As he puts it, the “truth”
is “always to-come” (ibid., 370/336). It hence always remains
transcendent to and indiscernible for the process of creation
which it inspires.
38. Tellingly, Badiou found that Saint Paul—his con-
version on the road to Damascus and subsequent activism in
Christ’s name—was a prime example for his conception and
devoted an entire book to expounding this affinity. Particu-
larly relevant in our context is that he there affirms, draw-
ing on Paul’s notion of grace, that the event, and hence its
“truth,” “exceeds the order of thought” (Saint Paul, 88–89/
84–85).
39. Derrida, Donner le temps, 18–43/7–27; “Une cer-
taine possibilité impossible de dire l’événement,” in Dire
l’événement, est-ce possible? (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001),
trans. by Gila Walker as “A Certain Impossible Possibility
of Saying the Event,” Critical Inquiry 33, no. 2 (winter 2007),
92–93/448–49.
40. Derrida, “Le siècle et le pardon,” 107–125/31–51;
“Une certaine possibilité impossible de dire l’événement,” 94–
95/449–50.
41. Derrida, “Une certaine possibilité impossible de dire
l’événement,” 93/449, translation slightly modified.
42. Ibid., 105/456–57.
43. Ibid., 111–112/461. See also Jacques Derrida, “Arte-
factualités,” in Échographies de la télévision: Entretiens filmés
(Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1996), trans. by Jennifer Bajorek as
“Artifactualities,” in Echographies of Television: Filmed Inter-
views (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), 19–21/11–13.
44. As Derrida puts it when discussing the gift, the event,
even though it cannot be experienced as such, can still be
desired and intended: “For finally, if the gift is another name
for the impossible, we still think it, we name it, we desire it.
We intend it. And this even if or because or to the extent that
we never encounter it, we never know it, we never verify it, we
never experience it in its present existence or its phenomenon”
(Donner le temps, 45/29).

C 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
13
45. Brent Adkins has offered a comparative study of
Deleuze’s and Badiou’s notions of event (“Deleuze and Badiou
on the nature of events,” Philosophy Compass 7, no. 8, August
2012, 507–516). At the very end of his paper, Adkins touches—
and merely touches, strangely—on what he rightly considers to
be the “crucial” difference between the two notions, the issue
that “goes to the heart of both,” namely “the question of the
new.” He states the difference in the following terms: Whereas
“for Badiou the new must be ex nihilo, miraculous, in order to
be new,” “for Deleuze, the bar is not so high,” since for Deleuze
“any and every change in intensity is something new, a point
at which difference is produced.” Adkins then concludes his
paper with the remark that this “aporia has been one of the
defining events” in recent European philosophy (514). What
I seek to show in the present paper is that we are not dealing
with an aporia here, but with two opposing theoretical models,
which can and should be laid out and weighed against each
other.
46. In two insightful papers, Daniel Smith has con-
trasted Derrida’s and Badiou’s embrace of transcendence with
Deleuze’s philosophy of immanence (“Deleuze and Derrida,
immanence and transcendence: Two directions in recent French
thought” and “Mathematics and the theory of multiplicities:
Deleuze and Badiou revisited,” both in Essays on Deleuze,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012, 271–311). At
the end of the papers, after laying out the contrasts, Smith
takes sides with Deleuze, while noting that his predilection
is rather a matter of philosophical taste than of confirmation
and refutation (284–86 and 310–11). For another, equally in-
sightful presentation of the antagonism between Badiou and
Deleuze which, however, comes down on the side of Badiou,
see Ray Brassier, “Stellar void or cosmic animal? Badiou and
Deleuze on the dice-throw,” Pli 10 (2000), 200–216. Brassier
seems to agree with Smith that the choice is a matter of taste
since he characterizes the antagonism between the two philoso-
phers as a “conflict of philosophical interest” which “effec-
tively remains insuperable or undecidable until a decision is
forced” (216).
47. In Negativity and Politics (London: Routledge,
2000), Diane Coole has proposed to distinguish between nega-
tion and negativity, whereby negativity “is also affirmative and
de(con)structive of the positive-negative dualism.” Negativ-
ity comes in many forms, she says: “dialectics, non-identity,
difference, différance, the invisible, the semiotic, the virtual,
the unconscious, will to power, the feminine” (2). Ultimately,
negativity—or “the negative”, as she also calls it—is undefin-
able, it “resists any positive formulation” (3), it is “irreducibly
polymorphic and polynomial” (230). Coole still provides a
general description of it. She characterizes it as “a generativity
that has political resonance” (10), “a productivity that engen-
ders and ruins every distinct form as a creative-destructive
restlessness” (230). This is a very hazy concept. What lurks
behind it, I have the impression, is the Deleuzian model of the
production of difference through repetition. That model is in-
deed to be distinguished from the model of negation. But why
should we call it “negativity”? I think that this term should, just
like its cognates “negative” and “negation,” be employed only
with reference to notions and ideas, where it has a well-defined
meaning.
48. Such an interpretation is suggested, maybe, by An-
dreas Kalyvas when he claims that Arendtian new beginnings
“represent a radical rupture with the past, even if it is a relative
[rather than absolute] one” (Democracy and the Politics of
the Extraordinary, 234). Kalyvas does not explain this claim,
which provokes the question how the adjectives “radical”
and “relative” go together when talking about rupture. The
model of negation can answer this question. As I said, a
14 Constellations Volume 24, Number 1, 2017

negation is a radical break yet related to that with which it
breaks.
49. It is exactly for this reason that Arendt explicitly
rejects the Hegelian/Marxian model. She holds that this model
abolishes human freedom, which lies in the human capacity
to make a new beginning. See On Revolution, 54–55 and 61–
66; The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt, 1981), 39–
51.
Wolfhart Totschnig is assistant professor at the Instituto
de Humanidades of the Universidad Diego Portales in
Santiago, Chile.


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