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lib. arb. I.v.12). In her presentation for the “Lesser Evils” workshop at Bard, Karen Sullivan presented Augustine’s
teachings against lying as one of the only cases in which a compromise for the lesser evil is not even possible.
“A lie is an offence against truth, perversion of speech”, and the imperative against it should in no case
be breached, even to save innocent people. Having such universal effect, lying is worse than killing; the latter is
tolerated under certain conditions of the lesser evil principle.
21. Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2001), quoted in Peter Paik Yoonsuk, “The Pessimist
Rearmed: Žižek On Christianity And Revolution”, Theory & Event 8, no. 2 (2005). Karen Sullivan made a
similar point in her discussion of Augustine.
22. Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, missing reference, 163, 183.
23. Adi Ophir in the Lesser Evils workshop at Bard.
24. Bentham’s preface to the Panopticon opens with a list of the benefits to be obtained from this inspection
house: “Morals reformed – health preserved – industry invigorated – instruction diffused – public burthens
lightened – economy seated […] all by a simple idea of architecture”.
25. Bentham believed the panopticon could correct itself instantly. Ophir to the contrary observed that “closed
systems which are run by imperfect agents and in which the costs of exit are high tend to produce greater
rather than lesser evils…” The term biomorality comes from Žižek, of Lost Causes (London: Verso, 2008), 50.
26. Engels argues for the positive effect of the deal for the ten-hour day on completely different grounds: “Were
the Ten Hour Day Bill a final measure, England would be ruined, but because it necessarily involves the passing
of subsequent measures, which must lead England into a path quite different from that she has traveled up till
now, it will mean progress”. If English industry were to succumb to foreign competition the revolution would
be unavoidable.
27. Karl Marx, Capital, http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/261/1294/frameset.html. See “The Working Day”, especially
sections 6 and 7.
28. Hal Draper, “The Myth of Lenin’s ‘Revolutionary Defeatism’”, http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1953/
defeat/chap1.htm.
29. Herbert Marcuse, Towards a Critical Theory of Society, Vol. 2 (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2001), 169. Joshua
Simon’s contribution to the “Lesser Evils” workshop at Bard was a reading of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte, where he made similar points about Marxism’s relation to Fascism.
30. In the Bard workshop, Adi Ophir compared this to Bentham’s own statement: “’The principle of utility, (I
have heard it said) is a dangerous principle: it is dangerous on certain occasions to consult it.’ This is as much as
to say, what? that it is not consonant to utility, to consult utility: in short, that it is not consulting it, to consult
it’”. Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), ch. 1, “Of The Principle Of
Utility”.
31. Feher, Nongovernmental Politics, 21.
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