Four basic existential positions:
- the individual (what Badiou calls the “human animal,” the ordinary human being oriented by utilitarian motives and engaged in “servicing the goods”);
- the human (the individual aware of the precariousness and mortality of its position);
- the subject (a human being that overcomes its subordination to the “pleasure principle” by way of a heroic fidelity to a Truth-Event);
- the neighbor (not the Levinasian version, which is closer to the second position, but the Freudo-Lacanian one, the abyssal inhuman Ding whose proximity causes anxiety).
The individual is a positively attuned human (living an ordinary life),in contrast to the negatively attuned human (aware of the precariousness and mortality of its condition);
the subject is a positively attuned agent engaged in an over-human truth-process, in contrast to the neighbor attuned to the negative stance of anxiety.
Different figures can be located along these lines―for example, Christ is a “human subject,” combining precarious mortality with a fidelity to Truth. 826