belief, fidelity, faith

A TEMPORAL DISTINCTION
Belief, fidelity and faith are principles by which we overcome, commit to, and take advantage of that which escapes us. Each comes into play only when our grasp of any given situation lacks something, and only when what is given in any situation is void of that which we expect to be the case. Ultimately, belief, fidelity and faith make possible a future that otherwise would not come to exist. But in what sense is it possible to distinguish between these three terms, and in what manner might we begin to think through the specificity of each? In this essay I will suggest that, although broadly inseparable within our everyday linguistic and conceptual framework, belief, fidelity and faith are singularly discrete inasmuch as they are temporally specific. My claim is that belief draws on the past of the present, fidelity the present’s presence, and faith the present’s future. In order to substantiate this proposition, I will make reference to the work of three recent French thinkers who employ these terms in their work. Thus my thesis is two-fold. On the one hand, I will make a claim for the temporal specificity of belief, fidelity and faith, and on the other, propose that some recent French philosophy can be distinguished by the simple fact that it privileges one of these terms. Given the brevity of this text, I will not demonstrate how exactly this thesis holds, but rather present three definitions and three philosophical abstractions from which further thought might take its leave. What I am not suggesting is that belief, fidelity and faith are solely reducible to their temporal dissimilarity, or that the philosophers I appeal to are entirely specified within the contexts I provide for them. Nevertheless, I think that considering these three terms in this way provides an interesting platform for further discussion and thought.
BELIEF 
To believe in something always touches upon a history. “I believe in you” is always preceded by a set of assumptions that substantiate my belief. So when I declare that “I believe in you”, I will always believe in you because. ‘Because’ here, stands for that which both legitimates and sustains my belief inasmuch as what I believe comes to resemble something that I have not previously needed to believe, for the very reason that I have, or at least, believe I have, once experienced that thing as a fact. Hence I might claim, “I believe in you because I have witnessed occasions in which you have been that which you now doubt you will be”. Or, “I believe in you because I myself have experienced that which you appear to be and I recognise something of me in you”. Very simply, my belief alludes to the reality of a past, a reality that I currently hold as true. Thus when we find, in any present situation, a lack of evidence to verify the truth of that situation, a void, belief identifies and takes hold of the glimmer of the present’s past to fill that void. This glimmer is both in the present inasmuch as the believer is present in the comportment of his or her believing, but it is also beyond it, inasmuch as it’s source has passed. Thus to believe, is to flood the present situation with the light of the past such that what appears to be true in the situation, is seen as true inasmuch as truth is reflected through the light of one’s belief. To believe then, is to make anew what there is through the affirmation of particular aspects of what there has been.
BELIEF IN DELEUZE 
Perhaps the most recent philosophy that most intimately incorporates the logic of belief is the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze, whose philosophy privileges the significance of Life, is a great believer in the power of the past in the present. In fact, his work is full of references that allude to the redemption of what is present by way of its immanent past. For Deleuze, every situation has the potential to expresses the entirety of its temporal history. The name that Deleuze attributes to this immanent sphere of accumulate Life is the virtual. The power of the virtual, although immanent to the present, remains hidden behind it, it escapes us and as a result, lies beyond our normal capacity to harness its potential. Furthermore, the actuality of our lives as we live them through the present, closes the present in on itself such that the intensity of the virtual appears entirely absent from it. Our task, Deleuze claims, is to identify the elements of the actual present that best express its virtual intensity and invent ways to affirm them in our lives. For him, the traces of the virtual are ‘a concrete cosmic force’, ‘a dynamic process that enlarges, deepens, and expands sensible consciousness’ (48, CC). They contain a power that ‘has neither to be explained nor interpreted’ (48, CC). Deleuze suggests that it is for this reason that that we must cultivate a state of consciousness through which we might access the power of the virtual. Such consciousness will not depend on our knowledge of the world, but our belief in ourselves, “the world, and in becoming” (88, CC). For him the virtual is best expressed in those aspects of the present that elude the present’s hegemony and it is to these that we must give our attention. Our belief in, and affirmation of what he refers to as ‘the more than personal life’, will reveal that although by all accounts elusive, all along and everywhere, the intensity of virtual Life continues to ‘live deep in us with all its strength’ (45, CC). That is why on occasions in which the most intense points of the present reveal signs of Life, it is up to us, no matter how difficult, to believe in them and find ways to further affirm the power of our belief through them. Deleuze tell us that ‘whether we are Christians or atheists, in our universal schizophrenia, we need reasons to believe in this world’ (166, C2). For Deleuze, ‘the link between man and the world is broken. Henceforth, this link must become an object of belief’ (166, C2). For Deleuze, the vitality of the present depends on the affirmation of its elusive immanent virtual past. In a word, Deleuze’s philosophy is a system of belief.
FIDELITY 
Fidelity compensates for a lack of natural affinity. Thus, fidelity always takes the form of a rule and its observation. To accept, to conform, to remain faithful-to, are the preconditions of fidelity. Unlike belief, fidelity does not depend on an experience. One does not need to have known anything about that which one has decided to be faithful to, in order to be faithful. Fidelity, in that case, does not originate from life, but rather from the living-out of the consequences of an abstract decision. Perhaps this explains why the decisions we make to remain faithful to someone or something often seem opposed to the world and our instinctive relation to it. Thus, ‘through thick and thin’, fidelity stands against the world, the experiences we have had of it, as well as those we someday might have. It could be said that fidelity looks only in on itself, towards the affirmation of itself here and now; its survival, in fact, almost certainly depends on it. For is it not the case that to raise questions as to the cause or effects of one’s fidelity is to be, at once, unfaithful? Since if one asks oneself, “what is the reason for my fidelity” or “what do I hope to gain from remaining faithful”, does one not have cause to admit that there are reasons why one’s fidelity is in fact necessary, and as a consequence, acknowledge that one’s natural affinity, by itself, is wholly insufficient? Is not any attempt to provide a natural cause, or give a reason for fidelity, an attempt to obscure fidelity from its convictions? Ultimately, are all attempts to justify one’s fidelity not in themselves acts of infidelity? If this, in fact, is the case, then there is simply no reason why we remain faithful to something if it is truly fidelity that we rehearse. Fidelity, in this sense, must always take the form of self-affirmation; it must dwell within the present of its unfaltering presence. Fidelity then, cannot escape the instant of its originary decision to be faithful. Through the living-out of its sustained convictions, it preserves, within itself, the decisive moment of its birth. Fidelity is, in effect, its own decision, and since every decision is made in the instant of its present, fidelity is inescapably present to itself. Thus it makes no sense to claim that one has once been faithful, or that sooner or later, one will be faithful, only that, one is faithful, that one is being faithful. If fidelity is a decision, then the condition of fidelity is the challenge it creates for us here and now. It is in this sense then, that fidelity is solely of the present.
FIDELITY IN BADIOU 
Undoubtedly the recent most thinker to fully engage with the concept of fidelity is Alain Badiou. Badiou, who privileges the logic of mathematics, premises his work on a conviction that if we want to understand certain fundamental things about the world, then we must first acknowledge the necessity of axiomatic thinking. For him, it is only when we have reached the point at which we have no other choice than to choose the conditions by which our thinking will proceed, will it proceed. Throughout Badiou’s work, we find a number of axioms; the sole condition of all axioms is fidelity. Perhaps the most difficult of all axioms, the axiom of the void, derives from the mathematical assertion of the empty set, which, according to Badiou’s ontological framework, suggests that ‘there exists that to which no existence can be said to belong’ (76 BE). In fact, following Badiou’s own argument, it is more correct to say that within any given situation, and despite appearances, there only exists that to which no existence can be said to belong. This does not mean, of course, that there is no existence whatsoever. Rather, what must be said to exist, is no-thing less and no-thing more than nothing itself. For Badiou, ‘nothing’ is the name of the void’, the ‘absolute neutrality of being’, that which is the spectre of being (73, E). Badiou’s ontology and his entire philosophy of Being only makes sense if we are prepared to abide by the rule of the axiom of the void. For Badiou however, one’s trust in, and allegiance to, the axiom of the void does not end with ontology. The strength of our fidelity to an event, itself a revelation of the void, and which for him is practically nothing, what he describes as being on the edge of the void, is the measure of our ethical potential. For Badiou, prior to an event and its subsequent affirmation, the subject does not exist, ‘he is absolutely nonexistent in the situation ‘before’ the event’, instead there is simply the ‘animal [which] gets by as best it can’ (E, 43). This ‘human animal’ will continue to persevere in its being, ‘which is nothing other than the pursuit of interest, or the conservation of itself’, until it encounters ‘something extra […] something that [it] cannot account for’. To be faithful to an event is to ‘move within the situation that this event has supplemented, by thinking […] the situation ‘according to’ the event. And this, of course – since the event was excluded by all the regular laws of the situation – compels the subject to invent a new way of being and acting in the situation’ (E, 41). For Badiou, our fidelity to an event is caused by the event. There is no faithful subject in general, no faithful disposition; there is only the evental subject. It is in this sense that we can say that fidelity is always in relation to an event and an event is always what is happening now, always what is happening to us. For Badiou, the ethics of fidelity means, ‘let’s be faithful to the event that we are’ (236, BE). For Badiou, fidelity is what is caused by an event, itself coterminous with the evental subject, the only kind of subject there is. For Badiou, fidelity is always of the present.
FAITH 
Faith is what we turn to in the wake of the past and present. We have faith when nothing in our experience of the world has prepared us for what we find we must henceforth somehow grasp. Unlike belief or fidelity, when we have faith in someone or something, our faith is unsubstantiated by the past and present. Such that, if we had experience to qualify our faith, we would not need to resort to faith in order to believe, we would, in actual fact, believe. And if we lacked the experience to qualify our faith, but had nevertheless taken the decision to live by its command, we would be immersed in fidelity. Faith is called upon where there is no evidence to suggest that what we must trust has ever, or will ever, come into effect. Moreover, faith is what we turn to when all evidence points to the contrary of what our faith accepts as true. Very simply, we have faith, not because, but, despite what presents itself as evidently true, such that it makes sense to say that, “despite your persistent failure, I still have faith in your ability to succeed”. Faith in this sense is a kind of wilful conviction, a blinding madness, the power of which increases with the diminishment of reason. Faith disregards the present’s past as much as the present’s presence. Ultimately faith presents the present with a future, inasmuch as it sacrifices what there is, in the name of what there could be. Thus the movement towards faith always begins with an identification of a presence within the present of something not yet present. This presence haunts the present, not from its past, but from what it is yet to discover about what it might be capable. Furthermore, this ‘what might be’ is invariably, if not exclusively, good, or at least, better than what is presented in the present. Such that, “I do not have faith that things will get worse, I believe they will”, “I have faith that things will improve”. In defiance of both the past and the present, faith latches onto a promise, or at least the trace of a promise, of a good hereafter. Faith suspends the experience of the present in anticipation of a time to come.
FAITH IN DERRIDA 
One recent thinker, whose work incorporates the logic of faith, is Jacques Derrida. Derrida’s preoccupation with writing and language has made him suspicious of the present. For him, the being of the present is only possible when dislocated from itself, literally ‘out of joint’, and, as consequence, always in relation to a non-present other. In fact, for him, the very question of a present itself lacks presence without an Other. Ultimately for Derrida, a relation to an elusive other is presupposed in every thought and every question, including the thought of being itself. Thus being, in a sense, is writing insofar as it derives from what is wholly non-present, and can only be affirmed by way of faith. As a consequence, faith for Derrida ‘has not always been and will not always be identifiable with religion, [or] theology’ (8, R). For him, faith is the innermost condition of language; it is rehearsed through the promise of meaning in every act of speech or writing. In the end, there is no language that does not bare the secret of the promise of meaning. Faith, in this respect, is what holds us in relation to being other. This relation brings with it responsibility, a call to responsibility, and a call to fulfil the messianic promise of being’s essential and absolute alterity, its indispensable community. In Specters of Marx, Derrida asserts that communism ‘is always still to come and is distinguished, like democracy itself, from every living present understood as plenitude of a presence-to-itself, as totality of a presence effectively identical to itself’ (123, SM). For Derrida, true communism is a presence to come; it is the advent of the event of life itself as a future reality that is not fully present and not altogether presentable. Derrida’s faith in l’à-venir conditions his entire philosophical enterprise. For him, there can be no thought without faith in the idea that there is more to thought than thought can presently grasp. The act of reading and writing then, the doing of philosophy itself, is the affirmation of this very fact. Like philosophy, ‘faith is not assured, because faith can never be, it must never be a certainty’ (80, GD). Like philosophy, ‘faith […] must remain an initiative of absolute singularity’ (79, GD). For Derrida, faith is the condition of being and of writing. It is a condition that is always for the future, and always for a future yet to come.
If Deleuze’s work tends towards a concept of belief, Badiou’s a concept of fidelity, and Derrida’s a concept of faith, and I am correct in suggesting that belief, fidelity and faith draw exclusively on the past, present and future of the present respectively, then the obvious question arises as to the relationship between Life and the past, Number and the present, and Writing and the future. That is, when these philosophers identify a void, or lack in Life, Number or Writing, is there a specific reason why each turns either to belief, fidelity or faith as its compensation? Perhaps one question we should be asking is, whether in fact the past is a condition of Life, the present a condition of Number, and the future a condition of Writing? I believe that, to date, this question remains to be satisfactorily answered.
Tom Groves is writer and lecturer and is currently studying for a Phd in the Visual Cultures Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. 2008-06-26T09:18:23Z 40 true belief, fidelity, faith

2008-06-28T11:24:38Z