Je suis né en 1937. Bien que mon oeuvre soit principalement philosophique, j'ai écrit à ce jour (février 2018) et publié trois romans, huit pièces de théâtre et de nombreux essais politiques. Beaucoup de mes livres ont été traduits en langue étrangère, certains en une vingtaine de langues. Je suis aussi connu comme un militant politique qui cherche la voie d'un nouveau communisme.
Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and... more Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and anatomizes the anti-philosophyA" 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.
For Alain Badiou, theatre--unlike cinema--is the place for the staging of a truly emancipatory co... more For Alain Badiou, theatre--unlike cinema--is the place for the staging of a truly emancipatory collective subject. In this sense theatre is, of all the arts, the one strictly homologous to politics: both theatre and politics depend on a limited set of texts or statements, collectively enacted by a group of actors or militants, which put a limit on the excessive power of the state. This explains why the history of theatre has always been inseparable from a history of state repression and censorship. This definitive collection includes not only Badiou's pamphlet Rhapsody for the Theatre but also essays on Jean-Paul Sartre, on the political destiny of contemporary theatre, and on Badiou's own work as a playwright, as author of the Ahmed Tetralogy.
The real invariably functions today as a means of intimidation and constraint. That we consistent... more The real invariably functions today as a means of intimidation and constraint. That we consistently fail to overcome this static conception stems from the fact that we do not know what the real actually is, nor do we know how to access it. To address this shortcoming, Badiou looks first to the well-known story of the death of Molière to show how all access to the real necessarily entails division—not only a division of the real from semblance, but also a division of the real itself. Staying with theatre, Badiou then turns his attention to Pirandello to pursue the idea that, since the real is always manifested within semblance, its exposure demands not simply that its “mask must be torn off as semblance,” but moreover that “the mask itself demands that it be taken as real.” Applying these principles to our present situation, Badiou proceeds to isolate the contemporary semblance of real capitalism—the crucial mask that needs to be torn off today—as nothing other than democracy itself,...
Translator's Introduction \ Preface \ Part I: Topos, or Logics of Onto-logy: An Introduction ... more Translator's Introduction \ Preface \ Part I: Topos, or Logics of Onto-logy: An Introduction for Philosophers \ 1. General aim \ 2. First definitions \ 3. The size of a category \ 4. Limit and universality \ 5. Some fundamental concepts \ 6. Duality \ 7. Isomorphism \ 8. Exponentiation \ 9. Universe 1: closed Cartesian categories \ 10. Structures of immanence 1: philosophical grounds \ 11. Immanence 2: sub-object \ 12. Immanence 3: elements of an object \ 13. 'Elementary' clarification of exponentiation \ 14. Logic 1: central object (or sub-object classifier) \ 15. True, false, negation and more \ 16. Central object as linguistic power \ 17. Universe 2: the concept of Topos \ 18. Ontology of the void and of difference \ 19. Mono., Epi., Iso., Equa., and other arrows \ 20. Topoi as logical places \ 21. Internal algebra of 1 \ 22. Ontology of the void and excluded middle \ 23. A classical miniature \ 24. A non-classical miniature \ Part II: Being-There \ Introduction \ A. Transcendental structures \ B. Transcendental connections \ B2. Of transcendental connections and logic in its usual sense (propositional logic and first order logic of predicates)\ B3. Transcendental connections and the general theory of localisations: topology \ C. Theory of appearing and of objectivity \ D. Transcendental projections: theory of localisation \ E. Theory of relations. The status of worlds \ Index
It is reasonable to assume that a philosophy always unfolds its arguments between two imperatives... more It is reasonable to assume that a philosophy always unfolds its arguments between two imperatives – one negative, the other positive – which define, on the one hand, the vice that destroys true thought, and on the other, the effort, or even the ascesis, which makes true thought possible. It is thus that the philosopher, that polyvalent worker, builds the frame for that canvas in which he will convey the sense of the world. Plato, with whom everything begins, also begins these operations of framing. Negatively, you must prohibit every commerce with the poem, especially the descriptive or lyrical poem, restricting yourself to patriotic and warlike rhythms alone. The poets must be chased from the ideal city. Positively, you must submit yourself to a decade of studies of the most profound and most difficult mathematics – in Plato’s day, this was spatial geometry, whose methods had just been invented. Let no one enter this city who is not a student of geometry. Seen from the vantage point of our intellectual situation, these imperatives are both violent and obscure. This is why, after all, ‘‘Platonist’’ is in general not a flattering epithet – not for Heidegger, Popper, Sartre, or Deleuze, nor even for the hard Marxists of the golden age, or for the logicians, whether Viennese or Yankee. ‘‘Platonist’’ is almost an insult, as it was for Nietzsche, who argued that the mission of our age was to ‘‘be cured of the Plato sickness.’’ Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely sceptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort. Those who wish to have done with Plato expose themselves to speculative euthanasia. But why did I call these imperatives of Plato ‘‘violent and obscure’’? It is violent to suppress the intense use of language, the enchanted reinvention of the word, the compact exploration of the infinite power of saying, which poetry, and it alone, succeeds in distilling. And it is violent to oblige us to follow, via the mathematical page, the constraining intricacies of ciphered black signs, leading to conclusions whose connection to the empirical world is so tenuous that popular wisdom regards them as nothing but a useless ordeal, reserved for alain badiou translatedbyalberto toscano
Kautsky, as behoves a declared partisan of the representative and parliamentary political regime,... more Kautsky, as behoves a declared partisan of the representative and parliamentary political regime, puts almost all the emphasis on the question of the right to vote. What is altogether remarkable is that Lenin regards this procedure as ...
Dorothea von Moltke: It is truly a great pleasure to be able to introduce Alain Badiou and Simon ... more Dorothea von Moltke: It is truly a great pleasure to be able to introduce Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley, eminent philosophers both and both with a host of crucial works, which I will not attempt to catalog here. Suffice it to say that-in and through philosophy-their work also centrally engages politics as well as literature. Alain Badiou has been teaching at the Ecole Normale Superieure since 1999. He was very much influenced by the events, I should say the event, of 1968 and against the grain of widespread repudiations by his own generation has remained true to its legacies. He is actively involved with L'Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in the political sphere. He is also the author of several novels and plays. Simon Critchley teaches philosophy at the New School for Social Research and at the University of Essex and is author of many books, most recently Things Merely Are and Infinitely Demanding, which is forthcoming from Verso. But we are here to discuss and celebrate the newly translated, seminal work by Alain Badiou, Being and Event. In their press materials for this book, Continuum Publishers present Badiou as France's most important living philosopher and Being and Event as "accessible and actually a pleasure to read." The former claim is patently true; the second in my view bears some qualification: as most great works of philosophy, it abundantly rewards the considerable effort of reading it. One partial way to characterize the twentieth century in philosophy and in the sciences is as a drive toward formalization in which mathematics has played a significant role as both model and method. Another preoccupation has been the persistent question of ontology or what the Being of beings is. Alain Badiou's work makes a strong claim for seeing these movements as compliementary and as leading to the "nullity of the opposition between analytic thought and continental philosophy." His concepts of the void, the multiple, the event, and truth lie at the core of this claim and will, I am sure, be part of tonight's conversation. Simon Critchley: Thank you, Dorothea, and thanks to Labyrinth Books for having us here this evening. I am going to introduce Alain Badiou, philosopher... Alain Badiou: yes ... (laughter) S:... dramatist, novelist, militant. And we are here to celebrate, to mark the long awaited translation into English of L'etre et L'evenement, which appeared in 1988 in French and was translated, we should mention, by Oliver Feltham, an Australian philosopher working in Paris. And that brings me to my questions. I will say a few words and then I'll tell you the questions. I'm going to raise four questions. I've told Alain what they are. Our plan is very simple so we'll see what happens. But first I want to talk about the reception of Alain's work a little bit. Because the reception in the US is I think a little behind the reception, for example, in the UK where a lot of the work has come out in translation. This work was not done by English people, I'm happy to say, but by Peter Hallward, Alberto Toscano, and others. The reception in Australia, in the UK, in Latin America precedes that in the US. Alain has, for example, been widely discussed in Argentina for many years, without mentioning the reception of Alain's work in France and elsewhere in Europe. The publication of Being and Event will, I hope, will make a difference to the American reception of his work and I look forward to seeing how Alain's influence will grow in the coming years. However, I think for Alain Badiou's work to be understood will require the creation of a new theoretical space or a new intellectual space where a number of things come together: a very strong and constructive idea of philosophy, which is in a certain way novel and unlike what one is used to within a certain- let's call it deconstructive-discourse. A constructive philosophy, then, combined with a radical politics, and an interest in theater, in poetry (I think what Alain and I share in particular is a militant concern for poetry), for cinema, for psychoanalysis and-mis will be one of the topics for our discussion-also for mathematics. …
PrefaceIntroduction: This People Which Is Not One, by Bruno Bosteels1. Twenty-Four Notes on the U... more PrefaceIntroduction: This People Which Is Not One, by Bruno Bosteels1. Twenty-Four Notes on the Uses of the Word "People", by Alain Badiou2. You Said "Popular"?, by Pierre Bourdieu3. "We, the People": Thoughts on Freedom of Assembly, by Judith Butler4. To Render Sensible, by Georges Didi-Huberman5. The People and the Third People, by Sadri Khiari6. The Populism That Is Not to Be Found, by Jacques RanciereConclusion: Fragile Collectivities, Imagined Sovereignties, by Kevin OlsonNotesIndex
Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and... more Alain Badiou takes on the standard bearer of the linguistic turnA" in modern philosophy, and anatomizes the anti-philosophyA" 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.
For Alain Badiou, theatre--unlike cinema--is the place for the staging of a truly emancipatory co... more For Alain Badiou, theatre--unlike cinema--is the place for the staging of a truly emancipatory collective subject. In this sense theatre is, of all the arts, the one strictly homologous to politics: both theatre and politics depend on a limited set of texts or statements, collectively enacted by a group of actors or militants, which put a limit on the excessive power of the state. This explains why the history of theatre has always been inseparable from a history of state repression and censorship. This definitive collection includes not only Badiou's pamphlet Rhapsody for the Theatre but also essays on Jean-Paul Sartre, on the political destiny of contemporary theatre, and on Badiou's own work as a playwright, as author of the Ahmed Tetralogy.
The real invariably functions today as a means of intimidation and constraint. That we consistent... more The real invariably functions today as a means of intimidation and constraint. That we consistently fail to overcome this static conception stems from the fact that we do not know what the real actually is, nor do we know how to access it. To address this shortcoming, Badiou looks first to the well-known story of the death of Molière to show how all access to the real necessarily entails division—not only a division of the real from semblance, but also a division of the real itself. Staying with theatre, Badiou then turns his attention to Pirandello to pursue the idea that, since the real is always manifested within semblance, its exposure demands not simply that its “mask must be torn off as semblance,” but moreover that “the mask itself demands that it be taken as real.” Applying these principles to our present situation, Badiou proceeds to isolate the contemporary semblance of real capitalism—the crucial mask that needs to be torn off today—as nothing other than democracy itself,...
Translator's Introduction \ Preface \ Part I: Topos, or Logics of Onto-logy: An Introduction ... more Translator's Introduction \ Preface \ Part I: Topos, or Logics of Onto-logy: An Introduction for Philosophers \ 1. General aim \ 2. First definitions \ 3. The size of a category \ 4. Limit and universality \ 5. Some fundamental concepts \ 6. Duality \ 7. Isomorphism \ 8. Exponentiation \ 9. Universe 1: closed Cartesian categories \ 10. Structures of immanence 1: philosophical grounds \ 11. Immanence 2: sub-object \ 12. Immanence 3: elements of an object \ 13. 'Elementary' clarification of exponentiation \ 14. Logic 1: central object (or sub-object classifier) \ 15. True, false, negation and more \ 16. Central object as linguistic power \ 17. Universe 2: the concept of Topos \ 18. Ontology of the void and of difference \ 19. Mono., Epi., Iso., Equa., and other arrows \ 20. Topoi as logical places \ 21. Internal algebra of 1 \ 22. Ontology of the void and excluded middle \ 23. A classical miniature \ 24. A non-classical miniature \ Part II: Being-There \ Introduction \ A. Transcendental structures \ B. Transcendental connections \ B2. Of transcendental connections and logic in its usual sense (propositional logic and first order logic of predicates)\ B3. Transcendental connections and the general theory of localisations: topology \ C. Theory of appearing and of objectivity \ D. Transcendental projections: theory of localisation \ E. Theory of relations. The status of worlds \ Index
It is reasonable to assume that a philosophy always unfolds its arguments between two imperatives... more It is reasonable to assume that a philosophy always unfolds its arguments between two imperatives – one negative, the other positive – which define, on the one hand, the vice that destroys true thought, and on the other, the effort, or even the ascesis, which makes true thought possible. It is thus that the philosopher, that polyvalent worker, builds the frame for that canvas in which he will convey the sense of the world. Plato, with whom everything begins, also begins these operations of framing. Negatively, you must prohibit every commerce with the poem, especially the descriptive or lyrical poem, restricting yourself to patriotic and warlike rhythms alone. The poets must be chased from the ideal city. Positively, you must submit yourself to a decade of studies of the most profound and most difficult mathematics – in Plato’s day, this was spatial geometry, whose methods had just been invented. Let no one enter this city who is not a student of geometry. Seen from the vantage point of our intellectual situation, these imperatives are both violent and obscure. This is why, after all, ‘‘Platonist’’ is in general not a flattering epithet – not for Heidegger, Popper, Sartre, or Deleuze, nor even for the hard Marxists of the golden age, or for the logicians, whether Viennese or Yankee. ‘‘Platonist’’ is almost an insult, as it was for Nietzsche, who argued that the mission of our age was to ‘‘be cured of the Plato sickness.’’ Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely sceptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort. Those who wish to have done with Plato expose themselves to speculative euthanasia. But why did I call these imperatives of Plato ‘‘violent and obscure’’? It is violent to suppress the intense use of language, the enchanted reinvention of the word, the compact exploration of the infinite power of saying, which poetry, and it alone, succeeds in distilling. And it is violent to oblige us to follow, via the mathematical page, the constraining intricacies of ciphered black signs, leading to conclusions whose connection to the empirical world is so tenuous that popular wisdom regards them as nothing but a useless ordeal, reserved for alain badiou translatedbyalberto toscano
Kautsky, as behoves a declared partisan of the representative and parliamentary political regime,... more Kautsky, as behoves a declared partisan of the representative and parliamentary political regime, puts almost all the emphasis on the question of the right to vote. What is altogether remarkable is that Lenin regards this procedure as ...
Dorothea von Moltke: It is truly a great pleasure to be able to introduce Alain Badiou and Simon ... more Dorothea von Moltke: It is truly a great pleasure to be able to introduce Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley, eminent philosophers both and both with a host of crucial works, which I will not attempt to catalog here. Suffice it to say that-in and through philosophy-their work also centrally engages politics as well as literature. Alain Badiou has been teaching at the Ecole Normale Superieure since 1999. He was very much influenced by the events, I should say the event, of 1968 and against the grain of widespread repudiations by his own generation has remained true to its legacies. He is actively involved with L'Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in the political sphere. He is also the author of several novels and plays. Simon Critchley teaches philosophy at the New School for Social Research and at the University of Essex and is author of many books, most recently Things Merely Are and Infinitely Demanding, which is forthcoming from Verso. But we are here to discuss and celebrate the newly translated, seminal work by Alain Badiou, Being and Event. In their press materials for this book, Continuum Publishers present Badiou as France's most important living philosopher and Being and Event as "accessible and actually a pleasure to read." The former claim is patently true; the second in my view bears some qualification: as most great works of philosophy, it abundantly rewards the considerable effort of reading it. One partial way to characterize the twentieth century in philosophy and in the sciences is as a drive toward formalization in which mathematics has played a significant role as both model and method. Another preoccupation has been the persistent question of ontology or what the Being of beings is. Alain Badiou's work makes a strong claim for seeing these movements as compliementary and as leading to the "nullity of the opposition between analytic thought and continental philosophy." His concepts of the void, the multiple, the event, and truth lie at the core of this claim and will, I am sure, be part of tonight's conversation. Simon Critchley: Thank you, Dorothea, and thanks to Labyrinth Books for having us here this evening. I am going to introduce Alain Badiou, philosopher... Alain Badiou: yes ... (laughter) S:... dramatist, novelist, militant. And we are here to celebrate, to mark the long awaited translation into English of L'etre et L'evenement, which appeared in 1988 in French and was translated, we should mention, by Oliver Feltham, an Australian philosopher working in Paris. And that brings me to my questions. I will say a few words and then I'll tell you the questions. I'm going to raise four questions. I've told Alain what they are. Our plan is very simple so we'll see what happens. But first I want to talk about the reception of Alain's work a little bit. Because the reception in the US is I think a little behind the reception, for example, in the UK where a lot of the work has come out in translation. This work was not done by English people, I'm happy to say, but by Peter Hallward, Alberto Toscano, and others. The reception in Australia, in the UK, in Latin America precedes that in the US. Alain has, for example, been widely discussed in Argentina for many years, without mentioning the reception of Alain's work in France and elsewhere in Europe. The publication of Being and Event will, I hope, will make a difference to the American reception of his work and I look forward to seeing how Alain's influence will grow in the coming years. However, I think for Alain Badiou's work to be understood will require the creation of a new theoretical space or a new intellectual space where a number of things come together: a very strong and constructive idea of philosophy, which is in a certain way novel and unlike what one is used to within a certain- let's call it deconstructive-discourse. A constructive philosophy, then, combined with a radical politics, and an interest in theater, in poetry (I think what Alain and I share in particular is a militant concern for poetry), for cinema, for psychoanalysis and-mis will be one of the topics for our discussion-also for mathematics. …
PrefaceIntroduction: This People Which Is Not One, by Bruno Bosteels1. Twenty-Four Notes on the U... more PrefaceIntroduction: This People Which Is Not One, by Bruno Bosteels1. Twenty-Four Notes on the Uses of the Word "People", by Alain Badiou2. You Said "Popular"?, by Pierre Bourdieu3. "We, the People": Thoughts on Freedom of Assembly, by Judith Butler4. To Render Sensible, by Georges Didi-Huberman5. The People and the Third People, by Sadri Khiari6. The Populism That Is Not to Be Found, by Jacques RanciereConclusion: Fragile Collectivities, Imagined Sovereignties, by Kevin OlsonNotesIndex
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