Books by Alain Badiou

Parmenides: Ontological Figure, Being 1 (The Seminars of Alain Badiou)

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou’s 1985 seminar on Parmenides initiated his ongoing dialogue with the pre-Socratic philosopher and set out some of the foundational ideas of his own major philosophical works, including Being and Event. The seminar provides both a new understanding of the importance of Parmenides in establishing the fundamental terms of philosophy and a vital account of the intimate relationship between philosophy and mathematics.

For Badiou, Parmenides inaugurates the history of philosophy by linking being, thinking, and nonbeing in a “Borromean knot”―a linkage in which the relationship between any two terms requires the mediation of a third. Badiou traces the permutations of this connection among fundamental concepts as it was transmitted to later thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel, and Heidegger. He also argues that Parmenides’s account of philosophy establishes a new kind of formal reasoning that, like mathematics, breaks with the Greek mythic and poetic traditions and their assumption that truth derives from sensory experience. An important prehistory for Being and Event, this seminar demonstrates Badiou’s unparalleled ability to recast the fundamental questions of philosophy.

The One: Descartes, Plato, Kant (The Seminars of Alain Badiou)

by Alain Badiou

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.

Images of the Present Time (The Seminars of Alain Badiou)

by Alain Badiou

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 and Event, these lectures address some of the same questions of existence in a particular world in a more personal and conversational tone, with reference to literature, philosophy, and contemporary politics and culture. He proposes a new concept of living in a real present as the twisting together of something from the past and something of the future.

Featuring some of the philosopher’s most inspiring and approachable work, Images of the Present Time is an important book for all readers interested in the practical as well as conceptual possibilities of Badiou’s thought.

There’s No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship: Two Lessons on Lacan (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)

by Alain Badiou, Barbara Cassin

Published in 1973, "L'Etourdit" was one of the French philosopher Jacques Lacan's most important works. The book posed questions that traversed the entire body of Lacan's psychoanalytical explorations, including his famous idea that "there is no such thing as a sexual relationship," which seeks to undermine our certainties about intimacy and reality.

In There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin take possession of Lacan's short text, thinking "with" Lacan about his propositions and what kinds of questions they raise in relation to knowledge. Cassin considers the relationship of the real to language through a Sophist lens, while the Platonist Badiou unpacks philosophical claims about truth. Each of their contributions echoes back to one another, offering new ways of thinking about Lacan, his seminal ideas, and his role in advancing philosophical thought.

Heidegger: His Life and His Philosophy (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)

by Alain Badiou, Barbara Cassin

Martin Heidegger was an ordinary Nazi and a loyal member of the provincial petty bourgeoisie. He was also a seminal thinker of the Continental tradition and one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers. How are we to make sense of this dual life? Should we factor Heidegger's domestic and political associations into our understanding of his thought, or should we treat his intellectual work independently of his abhorrent politics? How does any thinker reconcile the mundane with the ideal or the pursuit of philosophical inquiry with the demands of civic engagement?

In Heidegger, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin immerse themselves in the philosopher's correspondence with his wife Elfride to answer these questions as they relate to Heidegger and all thinkers vulnerable to the politics of their times. They focus on Heidegger's tormented relationship with his wife, with Hannah Arendt, and with numerous other women, bringing an unusual level of intimacy to his personal and intellectual worlds.

Confrontation: A Conversation with Aude Lancelin

by Alain Badiou, Alain Finkielkraut

Everything in their respective positions divides them: Alain Badiou is the thinker of a revitalized communism and Alain Finkielkraut the mournful observer of the loss of values. The two opponents, gathered here for their first-ever debate, have irreconcilable visions. Yet neither is a stranger to controversy, and in this debate they make explicit the grounds of their personal dispute as well as addressing, in a frank and open exchange, their ideas and theories.
Guided by Aude Lancelin, the two philosophers discuss subjects as diverse as national identity, Israel and Judaism, May 1968, and renewed popularity of the idea of communism. Their passionate debate is more than just the sum total of their disagreements, however, for neither of them is satisfied with the state of our society or the direction in which its political representatives persist in taking it. They agree that there needs to be change and their confrontation in this volume shows the importance of asking difficult questions, not only of each other, but also of our political systems.

Handbook Of Inaesthetics

by Alain Badiou

Didacticism, romanticism, and classicism are the possible schemata for the knotting of art and philosophy, the third term in this knot being the education of subjects, youth in particular. What characterizes the century that has just come to a close is that, while it underwent the saturation of these three schemata, it failed to introduce a new one. Today, this predicament tends to produce a kind of unknotting of terms, a desperate dis-relation between art and philosophy, together with the pure and simple collapse of what circulated between them: the theme of education.
Whence the thesis of which this book is nothing but a series of variations: faced with such a situation of saturation and closure, we must attempt to propose a new schema, a fourth type of knot between philosophy and art.
Among these “inaesthetic” variations, the reader will encounter a sustained debate with contemporary philosophical uses of the poem, bold articulations of the specificity and prospects of theater, cinema, and dance, along with subtle and provocative readings of Fernando Pessoa, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Samuel Beckett.

Infinite Thought (Impacts)

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou is already regarded as one of the mostoriginal and powerful voices in contemporaryEuropean thought. Infinite Thought brings together arepresentative selection of the range of AlainBadiou's work, illustrating the power and diversity ofhis thought.

Infinite Thought : Truth and the Return to Philosophy

by Alain Badiou, Feltham

Alain Badiou is already regarded as one of the most original and powerful voices in contemporary European thought. Almost alone among his peers, his work promises a radical renewal of philosophy.
Influenced by Plato, Lucretius, Heidegger, Lacan and Deleuze, Badiou is a critic of both the analytical and the postmodern schools of thought. His work spans the range of philosophy, from ethics, to mathematics to science, psychoanalysis, politics and art. His writing is rigorous and startling and takes no prisoners.
Infinite Thought brings together a representative selection of the range of Alain Badiou's work, illustrating the power and diversity of his thought. The pieces, including the final interview, are chosen for their accessibility to readers new to the work of a philosopher who is doing no less than changing the way we think about the world.

Badiou by Badiou (Memory in the Present)

by Alain Badiou

An accessible introduction to Badiou's key ideas In this short and accessible book, the French philosopher Alain Badiou provides readers with a unique introduction to his system of thought, summed up in the trilogy of Being and Event, Logics of Worlds, and The Immanence of Truths. Taking the form of an interview and two talks and keeping in mind a broad audience without any prior knowledge of his work, the book touches upon the central concepts and major preoccupations of Badiou's philosophy: fundamental ontology, mathematics, politics, poetry, and love. Well-chosen examples illuminate his thinking in regards to being and universality, worlds and singularity, and the infinite and the absolute, among other topics. A veritable tour de force of pedagogical clarity, this new student-friendly work is perhaps the single best general introduction to the work of this prolific and committed thinker. If, for Badiou, the task of philosophy consists in thinking through the truths of our time, the texts collected in this small volume could not be timelier.

The Immanence of Truths: Being and Event III

by Alain Badiou

The Being and Event trilogy is the philosophical basis of Alain Badiou's entire oeuvre. It is formed of three major texts, which constitute a kind of metaphysical saga: Being and Event (1988). ), Logics of the Worlds (2006) and finally The Immanence of Truths, which he has been working on for 15 years.

The new volume reverses the perspective adopted in Logics of Worlds. Where in that book, Badiou saw fit to analyze how truths, qua events, appear from the perspective of particular worlds that by definition exclude them, in The Immanence of Truths Badiou asks instead how the irruption of truth transforms the worlds within which they by necessity must arise. An emphasis on regularity and continuity has given way to an attempt, one unquestionable in its philosophical power and implications, to formalize rupture and reconfiguration.

The Being and Event trilogy is a unique and ambitious work that reveals how truths can be at once context-specific and universal, situational and eternal.

In Praise of Love

by Alain Badiou

The renowned French philosopher’s “ode to love’s power to unite in the face of eternity, and its optimism in the face of pain” (Publishers Weekly).

In a world rife with consumerism, where online dating promises risk-free romance and love is all too often seen as a mere variant of desire and hedonism, Alain Badiou believes that love is under threat. Taking to heart Rimbaud’s famous line “love needs reinventing,” In Praise of Love is the celebrated French intellectual’s passionate treatise in defense of love.

For Badiou, love is an existential project, a constantly unfolding quest for truth. This quest begins with the chance encounter, an event that forever changes two individuals, challenging them “to see the world from the point of view of two rather than one.” This, Badiou believes, is love’s most essential transforming power.

Through thought-provoking dialogue edited from a conversation between Badiou and Truong, a vibrant cast of thinkers are invoked: Kierkegaard, Plato, de Beauvoir, Proust, and more, create a new narrative of love in the face of twenty-first-century modernity. Moving, zealous, and wise, Badiou’s “paean to the anticapitalist, antiessentialist, unifying power of love” urges us not to fear it but to see it as a magnificent undertaking that compels us to explore others and to move away from an obsession with ourselves (Publishers Weekly).

“Finally, the cure for the pornographic, utilitarian exchange of favors to which love has been reduced in America. Alain Badiou is our philosopher of love.” ―Simon Critchley, author of The Faith of the Faithless

Greece and the Reinvention of Politics

by Alain Badiou

One of the world’s leading radical philosophers analyses the failure of the Syriza experience in Greece

Over the last six years, Greece has provided the world with “an open-air political lesson.” The country’s deep economic and social crisis has exposed the fundamental contradictions of the European Union, and indeed the capitalist world as a whole. It has been a test case for movements seeking to put an end to the authoritarian anarchy of neoliberal capitalism. The Greek resistance to EU institutions and financial-market hegemony offered a beacon of hope. Yet the “movementist” politics of 2011 could not build anything lasting, and Syriza’s efforts as a party of government soon led to impasse. For Alain Badiou, it is not enough to mourn this defeat—we must understand why such a vigorous opposition could fail.

Greece and the Reinvention of Politics argues that an opposition of real consequence must revive the “communist hypothesis,” the vision of an alternative state structure. The “orienting maxims” that this hypothesis provides light the way for effective political action. Written in the storm of the crisis, the interventions collected in this book offer a path out of our contemporary powerlessness.

The Age of the Poets: And Other Writings on Twentieth-Century Poetry and Prose

by Alain Badiou

The Age of the Poets revisits the age-old problem of the relation between literature and philosophy, arguing against both Plato and Heidegger’s famous arguments. Philosophy neither has to ban the poets from the republic nor abdicate its own powers to the sole benefit of poetry or art. Instead, it must declare the end of what Badiou names the “age of the poets,” which stretches from Hölderlin to Celan. Drawing on ideas from his first publication on the subject, “The Autonomy of the Aesthetic Process,” Badiou offers an illuminating set of readings of contemporary French prose writers, giving us fascinating insights into the theory of the novel while also accounting for the specific position of literature between science and ideology.

Rhapsody For The Theatre

by Alain Badiou

For Alain Badiou, theatre—unlike cinema—creates a space in which philosophy can be lived. It is, of all the arts, the most closely related to politics: both depend on a limited number of texts or statements, which are collectively enacted by a group of actors or militants who test the limits of the structure inn which they are confined, be it the medium of drama or the nation-state. For this reason, the history of theatre is inseparable from the history of state repression and censorship. This definitive collection of Badiou's work on the theatre includes not only the title essay "Rhapsody for the Theatre," originally published as a pamphlet in France, but also essay on Jean-Paul Sartre, on the political destiny of contemporary drama, and on Badiou's own work as a playwright.

Philosophy for Militants

by Alain Badiou

An urgent and provocative account of the modern 'militant', a transformative figure at the front line of emancipatory politics. Around the world, recent events have seen the creation of a radical phalanx comprising students, the young, workers and immigrants. It is Badiou's contention that the politics of such militants should condition the tasks of philosophy, even as philosophy clarifies the truth of our political condition. To resolve the conflicts between politics, philosophy and democracy, Badiou argues for a resurgent communism - returning to the original call for universal emancipation and organizing for militant struggle.

Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy

by Alain Badiou

Pocket Pantheon is an invitation to engage with the greats of postwar Western thought, such as Lacan, Sartre and Foucault, in the company of one of today’s leading political and philosophical minds. Alain Badiou draws on his encounters with this pantheon—his teachers, opponents and allies—to offer unique insights into both the authors and their work. These studies form an accessible, authoritative distillation of continental theory and a capsule history of a period in Western thought.

Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy (Pocket Communism)

by Alain Badiou

Pocket Pantheon is an invitation to engage with the greats of postwar Western thought, such as Lacan, Sartre and Foucault, in the company of one of today’s leading political and philosophical minds. Alain Badiou draws on his encounters with this pantheon – his teachers, opponents and allies – to offer unique insights into both the authors and their work. These studies form an accessible, authoritative distillation of continental theory and a capsule history of a period in Western thought.

Philosophy for Militants (Pocket Communism)

by Alain Badiou

An urgent and provocative account of the modern ‘militant’, a transformative figure at the front line of emancipatory politics. Around the world, recent events have seen the creation of a radical phalanx comprising students, the young, workers and immigrants. It is Badiou’s contention that the politics of such militants should condition the tasks of philosophy, even as philosophy clarifies the truth of our political condition.

To resolve the conflicts between politics, philosophy and democracy, Badiou argues for a resurgent communism – returning to the original call for universal emancipation and organizing for militant struggle.

Second Manifesto for Philosophy

by Alain Badiou

Twenty years ago, Alain Badiou's first Manifesto for Philosophy rose up against the all-pervasive proclamation of the "end" of philosophy. In lieu of this problematic of the end, he put forward the watchword: "one more step".
The situation has considerably changed since then. Philosophy was threatened with obliteration at the time, whereas today it finds itself under threat for the diametrically opposed reason: it is endowed with an excessive, artificial existence. "Philosophy" is everywhere. It serves as a trademark for various media pundits. It livens up cafés and health clubs. It has its magazines and its gurus. It is universally called upon, by everything from banks to major state commissions, to pronounce on ethics, law and duty. In essence, "philosophy" has now come to stand for nothing other than its most ancient enemy: conservative ethics.
Badiou's second manifesto therefore seeks to demoralize philosophy and to separate it from all those "philosophies" that are as servile as they are ubiquitous. It demonstrates the power of certain eternal truths to illuminate action and, as such, to transport philosophy far beyond the figure of "the human" and its "rights". There, well beyond all moralism, in the clear expanse of the idea, life becomes something radically other than survival.

The Century

by Alain Badiou

Everywhere, the twentieth century has been judged and condemned: the century of totalitarian terror, of utopian and criminal ideologies, of empty illusions, of genocides, of false avant-gardes, of democratic realism everywhere replaced by abstraction.
It is not Badiou's wish to plead for an accused that is perfectly capable of defending itself without the authors aid. Nor does he seek to proclaim, like Frantz, the hero of Sartre's Prisoners of Altona, 'I have taken the century on my shoulders and I have said: I will answer for it!' The Century simply aims to examine what this accursed century, from within its own unfolding, said that it was. Badiou's proposal is to reopen the dossier on the century - not from the angle of those wise and sated judges we too often claim to be, but from the standpoint of the century itself.

Trump

by Alain Badiou

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States sent shockwaves across the globe. How was such an outcome even possible? In two lectures given at American universities in the immediate aftermath of the election, the leading French philosopher Alain Badiou helps us to make sense of this extraordinary occurrence. He argues that Trump's victory was the symptom of a global crisis made up of four characteristics: the triumph of a brutal form of global capitalism, the decomposition of the established political elite, the growing frustration and disorientation that many people feel today, and the absence of a compelling alternative vision. It was in this context that Trump could emerge as a new kind of political figure that was both inside and outside the political order, a member of the Republican Party who, at the same time, represents something outside the system. The progressive political challenge now is to create something new that offers people a real choice, a radical alternative based on principles of universality and equality.
This concise account of the meaning of Trump should be read by everyone who wants to understand what is happening in our world today.

Malebranche, Theological Figure, Being 2

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou is perhaps the world's most significant living philosopher. In his annual seminars on major topics and pivotal figures, Badiou developed vital aspects of his thinking on a range of subjects that he would go on to explore in his influential works. In this seminar, Badiou offers a tour de force encounter with a lesser-known seventeenth-century philosopher and theologian, Nicolas Malebranche, a contemporary and peer of Spinoza and Leibniz.

The seminar is at once a record of Badiou's thought at a key moment in the years before the publication of his most important work, Being and Event, and a lively interrogation of Malebranche's key text, the Treatise on Nature and Grace. Badiou develops a rigorous yet novel analysis of Malebranche's theory of grace, retracing his claims regarding the nature of creation and the relation between God and world and between God and Jesus. Through Malebranche, Badiou develops a radical concept of truth and the subject. This book renders a seemingly obscure post-Cartesian philosopher fascinating and alive, restoring him to the philosophical canon. It occupies a pivotal place in Badiou's reflections on the nature of being that demonstrates the crucial role of theology in his thinking.

Happiness

by Alain Badiou

'All philosophy is a metaphysics of happiness…or it's not worth an hour of trouble' claims Alain Badiou in this lively intervention into one of the most persistent themes in philosophy: what is happiness? And what do I need to do to be happy? The desire to be happy is one of our most universal goals and yet there doesn't seem to be any easy answers or formulas for achieving happiness. And the concept has become so commodified and corrupted to be almost unrecognizable as something worth pursuing. In light of this, should we just give up the aspiration to be happy altogether? Alain Badiou thinks not.

While eschewing futile procedures for magically becoming 'happy', Badiou does passionately maintain that in order to be truly happy we need philosophy. And, bolder still, that a life lived philosophically is the happiest life of all!

Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II (Bloomsbury Revelations)

by Alain Badiou

Logics of Worlds is the sequel to Alain Badiou's masterpiece, Being and Event. Tackling the questions that had been left open by Being and Event, and answering many of his critics in the process, Badiou supplements his pioneering treatment of multiple being with a daring and complex theory of the worlds in which truths and subjects make their mark - what he calls a materialist dialectic. Drawing on his most ambitious philosophical predecessors - Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Lacan, Deleuze – Badiou ends this important later work with an impassioned call to 'live for an Idea'.

Logiques des mondes. L'Etre et l'Evénement, 2

by Alain Badiou

Logiques des mondes, auquel Alain Badiou travaille depuis une quinzaine d''années, est conçu comme une suite de son précédent «grand» livre de philosophie, L''être et l''événement, paru aux Éditions du Seuil en 1988. Mais que veut dire «suite»? En 1988, le propos ontologique consistait, avec l''appui des mathématiques, à établir que l''être, pensé comme tel, n''est que multiplicité indifférente. Le problème devient alors le suivant: comment, sur fond de cette indifférence, comprendre, non seulement qu''il y ait des vérités, mais qu''elles apparaissent dans des mondes déterminés? Qu''est-ce que le corps visible, ou objectif, d''une vérité? Cela ne se laisse pas déduire de l''ontologie. Il faut construire une logique de l''apparaître, une phénoménologie. Telle est la visée du présent livre : une «Grande Logique» qui, rendant raison de l''ordre des mondes, autorise la pensée des vérités comme exceptions à cet ordre. Le matérialisme contemporain soutient qu''il n''y a que des corps et des langages. La dialectique matérialiste, ici argumentée dans ses moindres détails, affirme, elle : oui, il n''y a que des corps et des langages, sinon qu''il y a des vérités. Ce n''est que sous l''effet de ce « sinon que » qu''est encore possible une vie qui ne soit pas indigne. Une vie où l''individu démocratique s''incorpore à ce dépassement de sa propre existence qu''on appelle un Sujet.

Théorie du sujet

by Alain Badiou

Le propos fondamental du livre d’Alain Badiou est d’établir que le noyau de toute philosophie compatible avec le marxisme est une théorie du sujet. Mais laquelle ? Ni le sujet comme conscience (thèse de Sartre), ni l’hypothèse du sujet « naturel », désirant ou substantiel, ne peuvent convenir. C’est du côté du sujet clivé tel que Lacan – notre Hegel– en fait théorie, qu’il faut chercher une issue. Alain Badiou trouve là de quoi refondre, non pas le thème, forclos, d’un sujet de l’Histoire, mais celui des sujets politiques.
L’opération ne se peut faire sans étendre le concept lacanien su jet, lié dès l’abord à deux types d’effets : l’occupation d’une place vide d’un côté, l’excès sur cette place vide de l’autre. Instrument de cette distinction : le couple algèbre/topologie. Il en résulte que le réel, pensable – comme le fait Lacan – sous le concept algébrique de l’objet cause, doit également être reçu sous celui, topologique, de consistance : ontologie en partie double.
Le cœur de la question est atteint quand entre en dialectique avec la notion lacanienne du manque, la catégorie nouvelle de destruction.
Qu’on ne s’attende pas à ne trouver ici qu’une discussion de théories. Mallarmé y voisine abondamment avec Mao Tsé-toung, Hölderlin avec Hegel, et le théorème de Gödel avec la situation des ouvriers immigrés.
Alain Badiou, philosophe, dramaturge et romancier, préside, à l'École
normale supérieure, le Centre international d'étude de la philosophie
française contemporaine (CIEPFC).

L'être et l'évènement

by Alain Badiou

Product Description Articuler pour notre temps une philosophie qui, quant à la pensée de l'être, ouvre une autre voie que celle de Heidegger et, quant à la doctrine du sujet, se tienne au-delà de Lacan : tel est l'enjeu.De l'hypothèse que la pensée de l'être s'accomplit dans les mathématiques et de la portée ontologique de la théorie des ensembles de Cantor se déduit une appréhension de l'être comme multiple.Reste qu'existe un site de « ce qui n'est pas l'être » : c'est celui de l'événement, terme surnuméraire pour un franchissement indécidable au savoir et dont la vérité est toujours par avance indiscernable.Le sujet, dès lors, loin d'être le garant ou le support de la vérité, en est bien plutôt une instance locale, improbable, qui tire du devenir aléatoire d'une vérité dans l'événement son peu d'être. Il n'en tisse pas moins une fidélité qui s'inscrit dans l'art, la science, la politique et l'amour. About the Author Philosophe, professeur émérite à l'École normale supérieure, auteur d'une œuvre considérable et de multiples (essais, théâtre et roman), Alain Badiou est l'un des penseurs français les plus influents. Il a notamment publié un Manifeste pour la philosophie (Seuil, 1989), Le Siècle (Seuil, 2005) et La Vraie Vie (Fayard, 2016).

Can Politics Be Thought? (a John Hope Franklin Center Book)

by Alain Badiou

In Can Politics Be Thought?—published in French in 1985 and appearing here in English for the first time—Alain Badiou offers his most forceful and systematic analysis of the crisis of Marxism. Distinguishing politics as an active mode of thinking from the political as a domain of the State, Badiou argues for the continuation of Marxist politics. In so doing, he shows why we need to recapture the emancipatory hypothesis of Marx's original gesture in order to actualize its radical potential. This volume also includes Badiou's “Of an Obscure Disaster: On the End of the Truth of the State,” in which he rebuts claims of Communism's death after the fall of the Soviet Union.

German Philosophy A Dialogue

by Jean-Luc Nancy, Alain Badiou

Two eminent French philosophers discuss German philosophy—including the legacy of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno, Fichte, Marx, and Heidegger—from a French perspective.

In this book, Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Nancy, the two most important living philosophers in France, discuss German philosophy from a French perspective. Written in the form of a dialogue, and revised and expanded from a 2016 conversation between the two philosophers at the Universität der Künste Berlin, the book offers not only Badiou's and Nancy's reinterpretations of German philosophers and philosophical concepts, but also an accessible introduction to the greatest thinkers of German philosophy. Badiou and Nancy discuss and debate such topics as the legacies of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, as well as Nietzsche, Adorno, Fichte, Schelling, and the unavoidable problem of Heidegger and Nazism. The dialogue is contentious, friendly, and often quotable, with strong—at times passionate—positions taken by both Badiou and Nancy, who find themselves disagreeing over Kant, for example, and in unexpected agreement on Marx, for another.

What does it mean, then, to conduct a dialogue on German philosophy from a French perspective? As volume editor Jan Völker observes, “German philosophy” and “French philosophy” describe complex constellations that, despite the reference to nation-states and languages, above all encompass shared concepts and problems—although these take a range of forms. Perhaps they can reveal their essential import only in translation.

In Praise of Politics

by Alain Badiou, Aude Lancelin

Against the backdrop of an alarming rise in authoritarianism and the crisis of liberal democracy, few would consider extoling the virtues of politics today. Yet in this lively dialogue with journalist Aude Lancelin, leading French thinker Alain Badiou argues that it is precisely through politics that humanity can still achieve its most ambitious aims.
As power becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of the state and global corporations, the role of the citizen is reduced to little more than ritual. But Badiou emphasizes that politics is concerned not just with power and the state, but also with justice. So the central question of politics is “What is a just power?”, and the debate over politics is fundamentally about the norms to which power is subject and its relationship to a community – a community that is able to take control of its own destiny and provide its own direction, based on a shared standard of justice.
This engaging dialogue, in which Badiou articulates his view of politics with exceptional clarity, will be of great value to anyone interested in radical politics today.

For a Politics of the Common Good

by Alain Badiou, Peter Engelmann

This volume of conversations between Alain Badiou and Peter Engelmann focuses on the concrete political situation in the world of today. Here the validity and applicability of Badiou’s ideas are tested in relation to the great social and political problems of our time, including terrorism, migration, the surge in support for nationalist and populist parties and the growing gap between rich and poor. Badiou argues that in the age of today’s globalized capitalism, with its division of labour on a global scale and the worldwide interconnection of information through the Internet, there are no longer any national solutions. Because nations and states lose meaning in favour of transnational corporations in globalized capitalism, resistance to capitalism must by definition be global too. Only a politics that defines itself as a politics for all and does not act in the interests of one particular group – whether a nation, religion or community of shared values – can lead the world out of the current crisis of globalized capitalism.

Matter and Form, Self-Evidence and Surprise: On Jean-Luc Moulène's Objects

by Alain Badiou

The eminent French philosopher “dialecticizes” five of the artist Jean-Luc Moulène's objects with five conceptual formations from the history of Western philosophy.
In this unique essay, first delivered as a lecture during a panel discussion with the artist and philosopher Reza Negarestani, Alain Badiou identifies and “dialecticizes” five of the artist Jean-Luc Moulène's objects with five conceptual formations from the history of Western philosophy. Aristotle's complex of matter and form is called to mind to describe the inner logic of a hard foam sculpture. A bronze statue with holes activates Plato's notion of participation of the concrete world in the “injured Idea of the Beautiful.” A small metallic and incomplete “angel” engages Leibniz's affirmation that “everything that exists is composed of an infinity of things.” Badiou's musings go on to pair a broken and repaired plastic chair with Victor Hugo; a terrible hand made of concrete with the Freudian unconscious; and a large-scale “red and blue monster” with rudimentary mechanisms of the Cartesian cogito, the famous “I think, therefore I am,” with unexpected inversions and variations.
Badiou refrains, of course, from claiming that Moulène thinks about any of these philosophers when making his specific works. What he points to, however, in this richly illustrated bilingual volume, is that the artist and his art are “on the side of philosophy.”

Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Cultural Memory in the Present)

by Alain Badiou

In this bold and provocative work, French philosopher Alain Badiou proposes a startling reinterpretation of St. Paul. For Badiou, Paul is neither the venerable saint embalmed by Christian tradition, nor the venomous priest execrated by philosophers like Nietzsche: he is instead a profoundly original and still revolutionary thinker whose invention of Christianity weaves truth and subjectivity together in a way that continues to be relevant for us today.
In this work, Badiou argues that Paul delineates a new figure of the subject: the bearer of a universal truth that simultaneously shatters the strictures of Judaic Law and the conventions of the Greek Logos. Badiou shows that the Pauline figure of the subject still harbors a genuinely revolutionary potential today: the subject is that which refuses to submit to the order of the world as we know it and struggles for a new one instead.

Pornographic Age, The

by Alain Badiou

Offering a piercing indictment of what we have let ourselves become, this short, critical work is a damning critique of the current age and of the democratic systems that characterize it. Alain Badiou argues that any truly radical politics must begin with dismantling the obscene (or pornographic) qualities of neoliberal capitalism. In The Pornographic Age he asks us to hold up a mirror to ourselves and confront the debasement of the political realities in which we live, the shock of which must galvanize us into action. It is only through this realization, this crucial confrontation with the perversity with which we conduct our daily lives that we can prompt true revolution. Including an afterword from international Badiou scholars A. J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens and a commentary by William Watkin, this book is a philosophical call to arms: Badiou’s radical indictment of the current age is an exciting, no-holds-barred exploration of both how we live and how we might live.

The End: A Conversation

by Alain Badiou, Giovanbattista Tusa

The notion of ‘the end’ has long occupied philosophical thought. In light of the horrors of the twentieth century, some writers have gone so far as to declare the end of philosophy itself, emphasizing the impossibility of thinking after Auschwitz.
In this book the distinguished philosopher Alain Badiou, in dialogue with Giovanbattista Tusa, argues that we must renounce ‘the pathos of completion’ and continue to think philosophically. To accept the atrocities of the twentieth century as marking the end of philosophy is intolerable precisely because it buys into the totalizing doctrines of the perpetrators. Badiou contends that philosophical thinking is needed now more than ever to counter the totalizing effects of globalized capitalism, which prescribes no objective for human life other than integration into its system, giving rise to a widespread sense of hopelessness and nihilism.
This book will appeal to the many followers of Badiou’s work and to anyone interested in contemporary philosophy and radical political theory.

What is a People?

by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Ranciere, Georges Didi-Huberman, Sadri Khiari

What Is a People? seeks to reclaim "people" as an effective political concept by revisiting its uses and abuses over time. Alain Badiou surveys the idea of a people as a productive force of solidarity and emancipation and as a negative tool of categorization and suppression. Pierre Bourdieu follows with a sociolinguistic analysis of "popular" and its transformation of democracy, beliefs, songs, and even soups into phenomena with outsized importance. Judith Butler calls out those who use freedom of assembly to create an exclusionary "we," while Georges Didi-Huberman addresses the problem of summing up a people with totalizing narratives. Sadri Khiari applies an activist's perspective to the racial hierarchies inherent in ethnic and national categories, and Jacques Rancière comments on the futility of isolating theories of populism when, as these thinkers have shown, the idea of a "people" is too diffuse to support them. By engaging this topic linguistically, ethnically, culturally, and ontologically, the voices in this volume help separate "people" from its fraught associations to pursue more vital formulations.

Together with Democracy in What State?, in which Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaid, Wendy Brown, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Kristin Ross, and Slavoj Žižek discuss the nature and purpose of democracy today, What Is a People? expands an essential exploration of political action and being in our time.

Theoretical Writings

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou is arguably the most original and influential philosopher working in France today. Working against the tide of postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou revitalizes philosophy's perennial attempt to provide a systematic theory of truth.

Theoretical Writings presents, in Badiou's own words, 'the theoretical core of [his] Philosophy'. Beginning with the controversial assertion that ontology is mathematics, the chapters step the reader through his key concepts of being, subject and truth via startling re-readings of canonical figures including Spinoza, Kant and Hegel and engagements with poetry, psychoanalysis and radical politics. Theoretical Writings is an indispensable introduction to one of the great thinkers of our time.

Plato's Republic: A Dialogue in Sixteen Chapters

by Alain Badiou

Plato's Republic is one of the best-known and most widely-discussed texts in the history of philosophy. But how might we get to the heart of this work today, 2,500 years after its original composition? Alain Badiou breathes life into Plato's landmark text and revives its universality. Rather than producing yet another critical commentary, he has instead worked closely on the original Greek and, through spectacular changes, adapted it to our times. In this innovative reimagining of Plato's work, Badiou has removed all references specific to ancient Greek society―from lengthy exchanges about moral courage in archaic poetry to political considerations mainly of interest to the aristocratic elite―and has expanded the range of cultural references. Here, philosophy is firing on all cylinders: Socrates and his companions are joined by Beckett, Pessoa, Freud, and Hegel, among others. Together these thinkers demonstrate that true philosophy endures, ready to absorb new horizons without changing its essence.

Moreover, Badiou―who is also a dramatist―has transformed the Socratic dialogue into a genuine oratorial contest. In his version of the Republic, the interlocutors do much more than simply agree with Socrates. They argue, stand up to him, put him on the spot, and show thought in motion. In this work of dramatic scholarship and philosophy, we encounter a modern version of Plato's text that is alive, stimulating, and directly relevant to our own world.

Plato's Republic: A Dialogue in Sixteen Chapters

by Alain Badiou

Plato's Republic is one of the best-known and most widely-discussed texts in the history of philosophy. But how might we get to the heart of this work today, 2,500 years after its original composition? Alain Badiou breathes life into Plato's landmark text and revives its universality. Rather than producing yet another critical commentary, he has instead worked closely on the original Greek and, through spectacular changes, adapted it to our times. In this innovative reimagining of Plato's work, Badiou has removed all references specific to ancient Greek society―from lengthy exchanges about moral courage in archaic poetry to political considerations mainly of interest to the aristocratic elite―and has expanded the range of cultural references. Here, philosophy is firing on all cylinders: Socrates and his companions are joined by Beckett, Pessoa, Freud, and Hegel, among others. Together these thinkers demonstrate that true philosophy endures, ready to absorb new horizons without changing its essence.

Moreover, Badiou―who is also a dramatist―has transformed the Socratic dialogue into a genuine oratorial contest. In his version of the Republic, the interlocutors do much more than simply agree with Socrates. They argue, stand up to him, put him on the spot, and show thought in motion. In this work of dramatic scholarship and philosophy, we encounter a modern version of Plato's text that is alive, stimulating, and directly relevant to our own world.

Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy (Bloomsbury Revelations)

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou (1937- ) is one of the most high profile and controversial philosophers writing in France today. A leading light in the generation of thinkers who come of intellectual age in 1968, his work deftly draws on a wide range of intellectual traditions and thinkers from Plato and Lucretius, through Heidegger to Lacan and Deleuze.

Now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series, Infinite Thought is a vivid demonstration of that range. Here Badiou introduces his own thought on the full gamut of intellectual concerns, from politics, psychoanalysis and art to truth, desire and the definition of philosophy itself. As well as Badiou's reflections on the fall of communism and the 'War on Terror', the book also includes an interview with the author.

Translated and edited by Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens.

The Incident at Antioch/LÍIncident dÍAntioche A Tragedy in Three Acts/Tragedie en trois actes

by Alain Badiou

The Incident at Antioch is a key play marking Alain Badiou's transition from classical Marxism to a "politics of subtraction" far removed from party and state. Written with striking eloquence and extraordinary poetic richness, and shifting from highly serious emotional and intellectual drama to surreal comic interlude, the work features statesmen, workers, and revolutionaries struggling to reconcile the nature and practice of politics.

This bilingual edition presents L'Incident d'Antioche in its original French and, on facing pages, an expertly executed English translation. Badiou adds a special preface, and an introduction by the scholar Kenneth Reinhard connects the play to Paul Claudel's The City, Saint Paul and the early history of the Church, and the innovative mathematical thinking of Paul Cohen. The translation includes Susan Spitzer's extensive notes clarifying allusions and quotations and hinting at Badiou's intentions. An interview with Badiou encompasses the play's settings, themes, and events, as well as his ongoing literary and conceptual experimentation on stage and off.

Cinema

by Alain Badiou

For Alain Badiou, films think, and it is the task of the philosopher to transcribe that thinking. What is the subject to which the film gives expressive form? This is the question that lies at the heart of Badiou’s account of cinema.

He contends that cinema is an art form that bears witness to the Other and renders human presence visible, thus testifying to the universal value of human existence and human freedom. Through the experience of viewing, the movement of thought that constitutes the film is passed on to the viewer, who thereby encounters an aspect of the world and its exaltation and vitality as well as its difficulty and complexity. Cinema is an impure art cannibalizing its times, the other arts, and people – a major art precisely because it is the locus of the indiscernibility between art and non-art. It is this, argues Badiou, that makes cinema the social and political art par excellence, the best indicator of our civilization, in the way that Greek tragedy, the coming-of-age novel and the operetta were in their respective eras.

Philosophy in the Present

by Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou

Two controversial thinkers discuss a timeless but nonetheless urgent question: should philosophy interfere in the world?
Nothing less than philosophy is at stake because, according to Badiou, philosophy is nothing but interference and commitment and will not be restrained by academic discipline. Philosophy is strange and new, and yet speaks in the name of all - as Badiou shows with his theory of universality.
Similarly, Zizek believes that the philosopher must intervene, contrary to all expectations, in the key issues of the time. He can offer no direction, but this only shows that the question has been posed incorrectly: it is valid to change the terms of the debate and settle on philosophy as abnormality and excess.
At once an invitation to philosophy and an introduction to the thinking of two of the most topical and controversial philosophers writing today, this concise volume will be of great interest to students and general readers alike.

Polemics

by Alain Badiou

Polemics is a series of brilliant metapolitical reflections, demolishing established opinion and dominant propaganda, and reorienting our understanding of events from the Kosovo and Iraq wars to the Paris Commune and the Cultural Revolution. At once witty and profound, Badiou presents a series of radical philosophical engagements with politics, and questions what constitutes political truth.

Manifesto for Philosophy: Followed by Two Essays: "the (Re)Turn of Philosophy Itself" and "Definition of Philosophy" (Suny Series, Intersections, Philosophy and Critical Theory)

by Alain Badiou

An excellent introduction to the work of one of the most important philosophers writing today, Manifesto for Philosophy will undoubtedly quicken the discourse that has become too comfortable with its own death" - Joan Copjec, author of Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists

Deleuze: The Clamor of Being

by Alain Badiou, Louise Burchill

The works of Gilles Deleuze -- on cinema, literature, painting, and philosophy -- have made him one of the most widely read thinkers of his generation. This compact critical volume is not only a powerful reappraisal of Deleuze's thought, but also the first major work by Alain Badiou available in English. Badiou compellingly redefines "Deleuzian, " throwing down the gauntlet in the battle over the very meaning of Deleuze's legacy.
For those who view Deleuze as the apostle of desire, flu, and multiplicity, Badiou's book is a deliberate provocation. Through a deep philosophical engagement with his writings, Badiou contends that Deleuze is not the Dionysian thinker of becoming he took himself to be; on the contrary, he is an ascetic philosopher of Being and Oneness. Deleuze's self-declared anti-Platonism fails -- and that, in Badiou's view, may ultimately be to his credit. "Perhaps it is not Platonism that has to be overturned, " Badiou writes, "but the anti-Platonism taken as evident throughout this entire century."
This volume draws on a five-year correspondence undertaken by Badiou and Deleuze near the end of Deleuze's life, when the two put aside long-standing political and philosophical differences to exchange ideas about similar problems in their work. Badiou's incomparably attentive readings of key Deleuzian concepts radically revise reigning interpretations, offering new insights to even the veteran Deleuze reader and serving as an entree to the controversial notion of a "restoration" of Plato advocated by Badiou -- in his own right one of the most original figures in postwar French philosophy.
The result is a critical tour de force that repositions Deleuze, one of the mostimportant thinkers of our time, and introduces Badiou to English-speaking readers.

Theoretical Writings (Continuum Impacts, 63)

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou is arguable 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.

Being and Event (Bloomsbury Revelations)

by Alain Badiou

Since the book's first publication in 1988, Alain Badiou's Being and Event has established itself of one of the most important and controversial works in contemporary philosophy and its author as one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Being and Event is a comprehensive statement of Badiou's philosophical project and sees him recast the European philosophical tradition from Plato onwards, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Rousseau, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a history of philosophy rivalling those of Heidegger and Deleuze in its depth.

Now publishing in the Bloomsbury Revelations series to mark 25 years since the book's first publication in French, Being and Event is an essential read for anyone interested in contemporary thought.

Saint Paul: A Screenplay

by Alain Badiou, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ward Blanton

Presented here for the first time in English is a remarkable screenplay about the apostle Paul by Pier Paolo Pasolini, legendary filmmaker, novelist, poet, and radical intellectual activist. Written between the appearance of his renowned film Teorema and the shocking, controversial Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, St Paul was deemed too risky for investors. At once a political intervention and cinematic breakthrough, the script forces a revolutionary transformation on the contemporary legacy of Paul. In Pasolini’s kaleidoscope, we encounter fascistic movements, resistance fighters, and faltering revolutions, each of which reflects on aspects of the Pauline teachings. From Jerusalem to Wall Street and Greenwich Village, from the rise of SS troops to the death of Martin Luther King, Jr, here—as Alain Badiou writes in the foreword—‘Paul’s text crosses all these circumstances intact, as if it had foreseen them all’.

This is a key addition to the growing debate around St Paul and to the proliferation of literature centred on the current turn to religion in philosophy and critical theory, which embraces contemporary figures such as Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek and Giorgio Agamben.

Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (Radical Thinkers)

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy, shows how our prevailing ethical principles serve ultimately to reinforce an ideology of the status quo and fail to provide a framework for an effective understanding of the concept of evil.

Logics of Worlds (Being and Event, 2)

by Alain Badiou

Logics of Worlds is the sequel to Alain Badiou's much-heralded masterpiece, Being and Event. Tackling the questions that had been left open by Being and Event, and answering many of his critics in the process, Badiou supplements his pioneering treatment of multiple being with a daring and complex theory of the worlds in which truths and subjects make their mark - what he calls a materialist dialectic. The radical recasting of ontology in Being and Event is followed and complemented here by a thoroughgoing transformation in our very understanding of logic, conceived as a theory not of being but of appearing.
Unafraid to resurrect and reinvent the classical themes of philosophy, Badiou gives new meaning to concepts such as object, body and relation, mobilising them in arresting studies that range from the architectural planning of Brasilia to contemporary astronomy, and confronting himself with towering philosophical counterparts (Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Lacan, Deleuze). The book culminates in an impassioned call to 'live for an Idea'. Now in paperback, the book is accessible to a wider audience.

Topics in Stereochemistry, Volume 11

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy, shows how our prevailing ethical principles serve ultimately to reinforce an ideology of the status quo and fail to provide a framework for an effective understanding of the concept of evil.

Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the “linguistic turn” in modern philosophy, and anatomizes the “anti-philosophy” of Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Addressing the crucial moment where Wittgenstein argues that much has to be passed over in silence—showing what cannot be said, after accepting the limits of language and meaning—Badiou argues that this mystical act reduces logic to rhetoric, truth to an effect of language games, and philosophy to a series of esoteric aphorisms. in the course of his interrogation of Wittgenstein’s anti-philosophy, Badiou sets out and refines his own definitions of the universal truths that condition philosophy. Bruno Bosteels’ introduction shows that this encounter with Wittgenstein is central to Badiou’s overall project—and that a continuing dialogue with the exemplar of anti-philosophy is crucial for contemporary philosophy.

Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the “linguistic turn” in modern philosophy, and anatomizes the “anti-philosophy” of Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Addressing the crucial moment where Wittgenstein argues that much has to be passed over in silence—showing what cannot be said, after accepting the limits of language and meaning—Badiou argues that this mystical act reduces logic to rhetoric, truth to an effect of language games, and philosophy to a series of esoteric aphorisms. in the course of his interrogation of Wittgenstein’s anti-philosophy, Badiou sets out and refines his own definitions of the universal truths that condition philosophy. Bruno Bosteels’ introduction shows that this encounter with Wittgenstein is central to Badiou’s overall project—and that a continuing dialogue with the exemplar of anti-philosophy is crucial for contemporary philosophy.

Metapolitics

by Alain Badiou

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.

Mathematics of the Transcendental Onto-logy and being-there

by Alain Badiou

In Mathematics of the Transcendental, Alain Badiou painstakingly works through the pertinent aspects of Category Theory, demonstrating their internal logic and veracity, their derivation and distinction from Set Theory, and the 'thinking of being'. In doing so he sets out the basic onto-logical requirements of his greater and transcendental logics as articulated in his magnum opus, Logics of Worlds. This important book combines both his elaboration of the disjunctive synthesis between ontology and onto-logy (the discourses of being as such and being-appearing) from the perspective of Category Theory and the categorial basis of his philosophical conception of 'being there'.

Hitherto unpublished in either French or English, Mathematics of the Transcendental provides Badiou's readers with a much-needed complete elaboration of his understanding and use of Category Theory. The book is an essential aid to understanding the mathematical and logical basis of his theory of appearing as elaborated in Logics of Worlds and other works and is essential reading for his many followers.

The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings

by Alain Badiou

In the uprisings of the Arab world, Alain Badiou discerns echoes of the European revolutions of 1848. In both cases, the object was to overthrow despotic regimes maintained by the great powers—regimes designed to impose the will of financial oligarchies. Both events occurred after what was commonly thought to be the end of a revolutionary epoch: in 1815, the final defeat of Napoleon; and in 1989, the fall of the Soviet Union. But the revolutions of 1848 proclaimed for a century and a half the return of revolutionary thought and action. Likewise, the uprisings underway today herald a worldwide resurgence in the liberating force of the masses—despite the attempts of the ‘international community’ to neutralize its power.

Badiou’s book salutes this reawakening of history, weaving examples from the Arab Spring and elsewhere into a global analysis of the return of emancipatory universalism.

The Adventure of French Philosophy

by Alain Badiou

The Adventure of French Philosophy is essential reading for anyone interested in what Badiou calls the “French moment” in contemporary thought.

Badiou explores the exceptionally rich and varied world of French philosophy in a number of groundbreaking essays, published here for the first time in English or in a revised translation. Included are the often-quoted review of Louis Althusser’s canonical works For Marx and Reading Capital and the scathing critique of “potato fascism” in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. There are also talks on Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy, and reviews of the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Barbara Cassin, notable points of interest on an expansive tour of modern French thought.

Guided by a small set of fundamental questions concerning the nature of being, the event, the subject, and truth, Badiou pushes to an extreme the polemical force of his thinking. Against the formless continuum of life, he posits the need for radical discontinuity; against the false modesty of finitude, he pleads for the mathematical infinity of everyday situations; against the various returns to Kant, he argues for the persistence of the Hegelian dialectic; and against the lure of ultraleftism, his texts from the 1970s vindicate the role of Maoism as a driving force behind the communist Idea.

The Meaning of Sarkozy

by Alain Badiou

In this incisive, acerbic work, Alain Badiou looks beyond the petty vulgarity of the French president to decipher the true significance of what he represents—a reactionary tradition that goes back more than a hundred years. To escape the malaise that has enveloped the Left since Sarkozy’s election, Badiou casts aside the slavish worship of electoral democracy and maps out a communist hypothesis that lays the basis for an emancipatory politics of the twenty-first century.

The Communist Hypothesis

by Alain Badiou

"We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy - the form of state suited to capitalism - and to the inevitable and "natural" character of the most monstrous inequalities." Alain Badiou Alain Badiou's 'communist hypothesis', first stated in 2008, cut through the cant and compromises of the past twenty years to reconceptualize the Left. The hypothesis is a fresh demand for universal emancipation and a galvanizing call to arms. Anyone concerned with the future of the planet needs to reckon with the ideas outlined within this book.

Ahmed the Philosopher: Thirty-Four Short Plays for Children and Everyone Else

by Alain Badiou

English-speaking readers might be surprised to learn that Alain Badiou writes fiction and plays along with his philosophical works and that they are just as important to understanding his larger intellectual project. In Ahmed the Philosopher, Badiou's most entertaining and accessible play, translated into English here for the first time, readers are introduced to Badiou's philosophy through a theatrical tour de force that has met with much success in France.

Ahmed the Philosopher presents its comic hero, the "treacherous servant" Ahmed, as a seductively trenchant philosopher even as it casts philosophy itself as a comic performance. The comedy unfolds as a series of lessons, with each "short play" or sketch illuminating a different Badiousian concept. Yet Ahmed does more than illustrate philosophical abstractions; he embodies and vivifies the theatrical and performative aspects of philosophy, mobilizing a comic energy that exposes the emptiness and pomp of the world. Through his example, the audience is moved to a living engagement with philosophy, discovering in it the power to break through the limits of everyday life.

Lacan: Anti-Philosophy 3 (The Seminars of Alain Badiou)

by Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou is arguably the most significant philosopher in Europe today. Badiou’s seminars, given annually on major conceptual and historical topics, constitute an enormously important part of his work. They served as laboratories for his thought and public illuminations of his complex ideas yet remain little known. This book, the transcript of Badiou’s year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, is the first volume of his seminars to be published in English, opening up a new and vital aspect of his thinking.

In a highly original and compelling account of Lacan’s theory and therapeutic practice, Badiou considers the challenge that Lacan poses to fundamental philosophical topics such as being, the subject, and truth. Badiou argues that Lacan is a singular figure of the “anti-philosopher,” a series of thinkers stretching back to Saint Paul and including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, with Lacan as the last great anti-philosopher of modernity. The book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou’s own thought. This seminar, more accessible than some of Badiou’s more difficult works, will be profoundly valuable for the many readers across academic disciplines, art and literature, and political activism who find his thought essential.

Jacques Lacan, Past and Present A Dialogue

by Alain Badiou, Élisabeth Roudinesco

Prompted by the thirtieth anniversary of the French philosopher Jacques Lacan’s death, this exchange between two prominent intellectuals is rich with surprising insights. Alain Badiou shares the clearest, most detailed account to date of his profound indebtedness to Lacanian psychoanalysis. He explains in depth the tools Lacan gave him to navigate the extremes of his other two philosophical “masters,” Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser. Élisabeth Roudinesco supplements Badiou’s experience with her own perspective on the troubled landscape of the French analytic world since Lacan’s death—critiquing, for example, the link (or lack thereof) between politics and psychoanalysis in Lacan’s work, among other issues. Their dynamic dialogue draws readers into an intimate, at times contentious, yet ultimately productive debate that reinvigorates the work of a pivotal twentieth-century thinker.

Five Lessons on Wagner

by Alain Badiou

A leading radical intellectual tackles the many controversial interpretations of Wagner’s work
For over a century, Richard Wagner’s music has been the subject of intense debate among philosophers, many of whom have attacked its ideological—some say racist and reactionary—underpinnings. In this major new work,Alain Badiou, radical philosopher and keen Wagner enthusiast, offers a detailed reading of the critical responses to the composer’s work, which include Adorno’s writings on the composer and Wagner’s recuperation by Nazism as well as more recent readings by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and others. Slavoj Zizek provides an afterword, and both philosophers make a passionate case for re-examining the relevance of Wagner to the contemporary world.

Reflections On Anti-Semitism

by Alain Badiou, Eric Hazan, Ivan Segre

Dissecting how facile accusations of “anti-Semitism” are used to stifle dissent

Since the inception of the “War on Terror,” Israel has become increasingly important to Western imperial strategy and ever more aggressive in its policies towards the Palestinians. A key ideological weapon in this development is the cynical and unjustified accusation of “anti-Semitism” to silence protest and dissent.

For historical reasons, this tactic has been deployed most forcefully in France, and in the first of the two essays in this book French writers Alain Badiou and Eric Hazan demolish the “anti-Semitism is everywhere” claim used to bludgeon critics of the Israeli state and those who stand in solidarity with the banlieue youth.

In “The Philo-Semitic Reaction,” Ivan Segré undertakes a meticulous deconstruction of a rampant reactionary trend that identifies Jewish interests with the “democratic” West. Segré’s aim is to uphold a universalist position and to defend Jewish tradition from Zionist ideological distortion.

What Is To Be Done?: A Dialogue on Communism, Capitalism, and the Future of Democracy

by Alain Badiou, Marcel Gauchet

The fall of the Berlin wall was seen by many as the final triumph of liberal democracy over communism. But now, in the wake of the great financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath, things look a little different. New questions are arising about capitalism and democracy, new social movements are challenging established institutions and new political possibilities are emerging. Is democracy an inevitable hostage of capitalism, or can it reinvent itself to meet the challenge of globalization?
In an exclusive, previously unpublished dialogue, Alain Badiou, a key figure of the radical left and a leading advocate of the communist idea, and Marcel Gauchet, a major exponent of anti-totalitarianism and a champion of liberal democracy, confront one another. Together, they take stock of history, interrogate one another�s views and defend their respective projects: on the one side, the revival of �the communist hypothesis,� and on the other, the radical reform of a contested democratic model.

Conditions

by Alain Badiou

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. Now available in paperback, 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.

Mathematics of the Transcendental

by Alain Badiou

In Mathematics of the Transcendental, Alain Badiou painstakingly works through the pertinent aspects of category theory, demonstrating their internal logic and veracity, their derivation and distinction from set theory, and the 'thinking of being'. In doing so he sets out the basic onto-logical requirements of his greater and transcendental logics as articulated in his magnum opus, Logics of Worlds.

Previously unpublished in either French or English, Mathematics of the Transcendental provides Badiou's readers with a much-needed complete elaboration of his understanding and use of category theory. The book is vital to understanding the mathematical and logical basis of his theory of appearing as elaborated in Logics of Worlds and other works and is essential reading for his many followers.

The True Life

by Alain Badiou

'I'm 79 years old. So why on earth should I concern myself with speaking about youth?' This is the question with which renowned French philosopher Alain Badiou begins his passionate plea to the young.
Today young people, at least in the West, are on the brink of a new world. With the decline of old traditions, they now face more choices than ever before. Yet powerful forces are pushing them in dangerous directions, into the vortex of consumerism or into reactive forms of traditionalism. This is a time when young people must be particularly attentive to the signs of the new and have the courage to venture forth and find out what they're capable of, without being constrained by the old prejudices and hierarchical ideas of the past. And if the aim of philosophy is to corrupt youth, as Socrates was accused of doing, this can mean only one thing: to help young people see that they don't have to go down the paths already mapped out for them, that they are not just condemned to obey social customs, that they can create something new and propose a different direction as regards the true life.

Badiou and His Interlocutors: Lectures, Interviews and Responses

by Alain Badiou

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.

The One Descartes, Plato, Kant

by Alain Badiou

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.