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Badiou indicts this approach, which reduces politics to a matter of opinion, thus eliminating any of its truly radical and emancipatory possibilities. Against this intellectual tradition, Badiou proposes instead the consideration of politics in terms of the production of truth and the affirmation of equality. He demands that the question of a possible "political truth" be separated from any notion of consensus or public opinion, and that political action be rethought in terms of the complex process that binds discussion to decision. Starting from this analysis, Badiou critically examines the thought of anthropologist and political theorist Sylvain Lazarus, Jacques Ranciere's writings on workers' history and democratic dissensus, the role of the subject in Althusser, as well as the concept of democracy and the link between truth and justice.
Alain Badiou is rapidly emerging as one of the most radical and influential philosophers of our time. Badiou opposes the contemporary reduction of philosophy to nothing but a matter of language and premature announcements of the end of philosophy and thus sets himself against both analytic and continental modes of philosophy.Setting the traditional platonic concerns of philosophy, truth and being, against the modern sophists of postmodernism, Badiou has articulated a powerful systematic philosophy with profound ethical and political consequences.
The works of French philosopher Alain Badiou range from novels, poems, 'romanopéras' and popular political treatises to elaborate philosophical arguments engaging with mathematical theory. Badiou suggests that 'philosophy is always a biography of the philosopher', and throughout all of his writing there is a staunch commitment to emancipatory politics and a radical yet faithful subjectivity. His famous, or infamous, philosophy of emancipation is firmly grounded in his fidelity to the universal idea of a collective life. Introducing Alain Badiou is an elegantly written and crisply illustrated guide to an essential contemporary thinker.
Alain Badiou's work has been described as "the event of contemporary philosophy" (Slavoj Zizek) and Badiou himself as "the most important, powerful and unsettling philosophical voice to have emerged from the Continent in recent years" (Simon Critchley). T.
Finalist, 2024 Translation Prize - Nonfiction, French-American Foundation Alain Badiou began the twenty-first century by considering the relationship between philosophy and notions of “the present.” In this period of his ongoing annual lecture series, the acclaimed philosopher took up the existential problem of how to be contemporary with one’s own time—that is, how to not simply inhabit a passing moment but bring a real present into existence. Images of the Present Time presents nearly three years of Badiou’s seminars, held from 2001 to 2004, partly against the backdrop of the war in Iraq. Given while Badiou was writing Logics of Worlds, the second of the three volumes of Being an...
Alain Badiou’s 1983–1984 lecture series on “the One” is the earliest of his seminars that he has chosen to publish. It focuses on the philosophical concept of oneness in the works of Descartes, Plato, and Kant—a crucial foil for his signature metaphysical concept, the multiple. Badiou declares that there is no “One”: there is no fundamental unit of being; being is inherently multiple. What is novel in Badiou’s view of multiplicity is his reliance on mathematics, and set theory in particular. A set is a collection of things—yet, as he observes, it often is taken to “count as one” operationally for the purposes of mathematical transformations. In this seminar, distinguishing between “the One” and “counting as one” emerges as essential to Badiou’s ontological project. His analysis of reflections on oneness in Descartes, Plato, and Kant prefigures core arguments of his defining work, Being and Event. Showcasing the seeds of Badiou’s key ideas and later thought, The One features singular readings, breathtaking theorizations, and frequently astonishing offhand remarks.
There is little doubt that Alain Badiou is one of the most challenging and controversial figures in contemporary philosophy. This volume of essays brings together leading commentators from both sides of the Atlantic to provide an introduction to Badiou's work through critical studies of his more productive and controversial ideas. Over the course of three decades, his numerous and extensive texts have challenged traditional views on ontology, mathematics, aesthetics, literature, politics, ethics, philosophy, and sexual difference. His texts on Plato, Saint Paul, Pascal, Lacan, Althusser, Heidegger, MallarmeŒ, Pessoa, and Beckett are among the most perceptive and penetrating essays on contemporary philosophical and literary culture. In addition to providing insight into the basic conceptual apparatus of Badiou's philosophy, the essays also offer a more substantial critical assessment of the import of his main theses for different disciplines.
This is a unique collection presenting work by Alain Badiou and commentaries on his philosophical theories. It includes three lectures by Badiou, on contemporary politics, the infinite, cinema and theatre and two extensive interviews with Badiou – one concerning the state of the contemporary situation and one wide ranging interview on all facets of his work and engagements. It also includes six interventions on aspects of Badiou's work by established scholars in the field, addressing his concept of history, Lacan, Cinema, poetry, and feminism; and four original essays by young and established scholars in Australia and New Zealand addressing the key concerns of Badiou's 2015 visit to the Antipodal region and the work he presented there. With new material by Badiou previously unpublished in English this volume is a valuable overview of his recent thinking. Critical responses by distinguished and gifted Badiou scholars writing outside of the European context make this text essential reading for anyone interested in the development and contemporary reception of Badiou's thought.
Beginning with a sustained critique of the so-called 'end of philosophy', Badiou goes on to propose a new definition of philosophy, one that is tested with respect to both its origin, in Plato, and its contemporary state. The essays that follow are ordered according to what Badiou sees as the four great conditions of philosophy: philosophy and poetry, philosophy and mathematics, philosophy and politics, and philosophy and love. Conditions provides an illuminating reworking of all the major theories in Being and Event. In so doing, Badiou not only develops the complexity of the concepts central to Being and Event but also adds new ones to his already formidable arsenal. The essays in Conditions reveal the extraordinary and systematic nature of Badiou's philosophical enterprise.
Alain Badiou is arguably the most important and original philosopher working in France today. Swimming against the tide of postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou's work revitalizes philosophy's perennial attempt to provide a systematic theory of truth. This volume presents for the first time in English a comprehensive overview of Badiou's ambitious system. Beginning with Badiou's controversial assertion that ontology is mathematics, this volume sets out his theory of the emergence of truths from the singular relationship between a subject and an event. Also included is a substantial extract from Badiou's forthcoming work on the logics of appearance and the concept of world, presented here in advance of its French publication. Ranging from startling re-readings of canonical figures (Spinoza, Kant and Hegel) to decisive engagements with poetry, psychoanalysis and radical politics, Theoretical Writings is an indispensable introduction to one of the great thinkers of our time. The volume also features a preface written by the author especially for this collection.