Abstract

The key composer in Žižek’s newest work, Living in the End Times, is Eric Satie, famous for his “furniture music”, and who in Žižek’s words represents the “properly communist form of collective intimacy”. For Badiou, music falls under the truth-condition of art. His most consistent example of a musical event is Schoenberg’s atonal serial music. The very possibility of atonal music is a Badiouian event. He portrays the composers who turned away from atonality in the 20th century as being examples of those who have lost fidelity to the event. Žižek and Badiou both share a desire for redemption of Wagner’s music. Žižek has written extensively on Wagner, including his contribution to Opera’s Second Death where he reads Tristan und Isolde and it’s climatic aria Liebestod in the terms of Freud’s Todestrieb. From Nietzsche and Adorno’s deep engagement with Wagner to the pivotal role of jazz in Sartre’s Nausea, the role of music in philosophical thought has revealed much about the philosophies in question. In this essay, I will explore the harmonies and dissonances in Badiou and Žižek’s philosophico-musical thought