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.

This is the first complete English translation of the work that immediately followed Badiou's magnum opus, "Being and Event" in which Badiou provides an overview of what he sees as the four great conditions of philosophy - this book is therefore central to an understanding of Badiou's whole philosophical project.Alain Badiou is without doubt the most important and influential thinker working in European philosophy today. "Conditions" is the first major collection of essays written after "Being and Event", his extraordinary magnum opus.Beginning with a sustained critique of the so-called 'end of philosophy', the book 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 contained within "Conditions" reveal the extraordinary and systematic nature of Badiou's philosophical enterprise. ### Review "Conditions is the essential complement to Being and Event: a fascinating introduction to both its problematics and also their masterly depth." — Quentin Meillassoux "Badiou is a prominent and sometimes controversial voice in Continental philosophy, and this collection of essays demonstrates his highly technical and original thought. Recommended for academic libraries." —Scott Duimstra, *Library Journal* , January 2009 " *Conditions* is Badiou's most important collection of essays, and publication of this comprehensive translation is long overdue. In addition to fundamental meditations on the status of general categories like philosophy and truth, the essays collected here include some of Badiou's most significant and incisive engagements with the specific "conditions" of his own philosophical orientation, in the fields of literature, mathematics, politics and love." — Peter Hallward, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, UK "Conditions ... remains Alain Badiou's magnum opus and the most exhaustive exposition of his philosophical system, Being and Event ... [His] stark and crystalline expression of the break philosophy must make with its own self-mourning is a clear and still relevant definition of what it means to think in the twenty-first century." - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews “Conditions is the essential complement to Being and Event: a fascinating introduction to both its problematics and also their masterly depth.” – Quentin Meillassoux “Badiou is a prominent and sometimes controversial voice in Continental philosophy, and this collection of essays demonstrates his highly technical and original thought. Recommended for academic libraries.” –Scott Duimstra, *Library Journal* , January 2009 “ *Conditions* is Badiou's most important collection of essays, and publication of this comprehensive translation is long overdue. In addition to fundamental meditations on the status of general categories like philosophy and truth, the essays collected here include some of Badiou's most significant and incisive engagements with the specific "conditions" of his own philosophical orientation, in the fields of literature, mathematics, politics and love.” – Peter Hallward, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, UK “Conditions ... remains Alain Badiou's magnum opus and the most exhaustive exposition of his philosophical system, Being and Event … [His] stark and crystalline expression of the break philosophy must make with its own self-mourning is a clear and still relevant definition of what it means to think in the twenty-first century.” - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews In a captivating sequence of chapters, written in a fluent style from which a rigorous philosophical meta-language is never absent and is often mingled with a poetic sense of words and expressions, Badiou's *Conditions* develops a systematic quest for the central issue of philosophy's place and purpose. (Sanford Lakoff) ### About the Author Alain Badiou teaches at the cole Normale Suprieure and at the Collge International de Philosophie in Paris, France. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works. Steven Corcoran is a writer and translator living in Berlin. He has edited and/or translated several works by Jacques Rancire, including *Dissensus* (Continuum, 2010), and two works by Alain Badiou, *Polemics* (Verso, 2006) and *Conditions* (Continuum, 2008).

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.

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.

For over a century, Richard Wagner’s music has been the subject of intensedebate 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 adetailed reading of the critical responses to the composer’s work, whichinclude Adorno’s writings on the composer and Wagner’s recuperationby Nazism as well as more recent readings by Philippe Lacoue-Labartheand others. Slavoj Žižek provides an afterword, and both philosophersmake a passionate case for re-examining the relevance of Wagner to thecontemporary world. ** ### Review “A figure like Plato or Hegel walks here among us!”—Slavoj Žižek (in praise of Alain Badiou) “An heir to Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser.”— *New Statesman (in praise of Alain Badiou)* “Shaking the foundations of Western liberal democracy.”— *Times Higher Education Supplement (in praise of Alain Badiou)* ### About the Author **Alain Badiou** teaches philosophy at the École normale supérieure and the Collège international de philosophie in Paris. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works, including *Theory of the Subject* , *Being and Event* , *Manifesto for Philosophy* , and *Gilles Deleuze*. His recent books include *The Meaning of Sarkozy* , *Ethics* , *Metapolitics* , *Polemics,* *The Communist Hypothesis* , *Five Lessons on Wagner* , and *Wittgenstein’s Anti-Philosophy*. **Slavoj Žižek** is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include *Living in the End Times* , *First as Tragedy, Then as Farce* , *In Defense of Lost Causes* , four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.

Alain Badiou is a philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, and professor emeritus at the École normale supérieure in Paris. He has published many philosophical works, including Being and Event and Logics of Worlds, and the play Incident at Antioch: A Tragedy in Three Acts. Élisabeth Roudinesco is director of research at the Université Paris Diderot and director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes-Études, Sorbonne. She is the author of Jacques Lacan, Why Psychoanalysis?, and Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida. Jason E. Smith is a Cornell Society for the Humanities Fellow. His writing and research center on contemporary art and aesthetics, modern continental philosophy (Spinoza, Hegel, and the twentieth century), and post-1968 political thought (primarily French and Italian). His work has appeared in Artforum, Critical Inquiry, Grey Room, Parrhesia, and Radical Philosophy, and he has published, with Jean-Luc Nancy and Philip Armstrong, Politique et au-delà. He recently edited and contributed to a special issue of Grey Room devoted to the films of Guy Debord and is working on a monograph on the same subject.

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.

Following on from Alain Badiou’s acclaimed works Ethics and Metapolitics, 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. With the critical insight and polemical bravura for which he is renowned, Badiou considers the relationships between language, judgment and propaganda—and shows how propaganda has become the dominant force. Both wittily and profoundly, Badiou presents a series of radical philosophical engagements with politics, and questions what constitutes political truth.

<i>The Adventure of French Philosophy</i> is essential reading for anyone interested in what Badiou calls the &amp;ldquo;French moment&amp;rdquo; in contemporary thought.<br><br>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&amp;rsquo;s canonical works <i>For Marx</i> and <i>Reading Capital</i> and the scathing critique of &amp;ldquo;potato fascism&amp;rdquo; in Gilles Deleuze and F&#233;lix Guattari&amp;rsquo;s <i>A Thousand Plateaus</i>. There are also talks on Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy, and reviews of the work of Jean-Fran&#231;ois Lyotard and Barbara Cassin, notable points of interest on an expansive tour of modern French thought.<br><br>Guided by a small set of fundamental questions concerning the nature of being, the event, the subject, and truth, Badiou pushes to an...

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.