Time & Perspective Quote by Alain Badiou

Evil, for Badiou, isn’t a monstrous substance lurking in certain people; it’s a failure of nerve. The line flips the usual moral melodrama on its head by making evil feel almost banal: a moment, a lapse, a collapse in stamina. That word choice matters. “Moment” shrinks evil down to something temporal and repeatable, closer to betrayal than to demonic possession. It also implicates the speaker directly: “I lack the strength.” No scapegoats, no abstract “human nature.” Just a subject who folds.

The subtext is Badiou’s larger project in Ethics: to attack the feel-good, consensus version of morality built around avoiding harm. For him, “the Good” isn’t a checklist of polite behavior; it’s something that “compels” you, a demand that arrives through what he calls an event (political rupture, love, scientific breakthrough, artistic invention) and reorganizes what you thought was possible. Good is active and risky; it costs something. Evil happens when you refuse that cost while still knowing, on some level, what’s being asked.

The quote also carries a quiet warning about fatigue. If goodness is fidelity to a truth you didn’t invent but recognized, then evil can look like cynicism, compromise, or the soothing story that nothing really matters. Badiou’s intent is bracing: ethics isn’t about being nice, it’s about endurance. The real enemy isn’t temptation; it’s attrition.