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...

Since the book’s first publication in 1988, Alain Badiou’s Being and Event has established itself as 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...

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 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...

‘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 don’t seem...

The history of humanity has only just begun. The Neolithic Revolution may have endowed us with unparalleled means of communication, subsistence, and knowledge acquisition. However, it is clear in today’s world that inequality, power hierarchies, and violence persist on a greater scale than ever before. In these two lectures, delivered to the large number of young people who gathered in...

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...

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...

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

A new century, new threats to love . . . Love without risks is like war without deaths – but, today, love is threatened by an alliance of liberalism and hedonism. Caught between consumerism and casual sexual encounters devoid of passion, love – without the key ingredient of chance – is in danger of withering on the vine. In In...

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 -...

Plato's Republic is one of the most well-known and widely discussed texts in the history of philosophy, but how might we get to the heart of this work today, 2500 years after it was originally composed? Alain Badiou invents a new genre in order to breathe fresh life into Plato's text and restore its universality. Rather than producing yet another...

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...

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...

Alain Badiou is arguably the most original and influential philosopher working in France today. Working against the tide of postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou revitalises 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 guide the reader...

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 characterise 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...

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...

In A Political Life: 1937 - 1985, the renowned philosopher and polymath Alain Badiou tells the story of the first five decades of his life, from 1937 to 1985, setting it within the political history of the twentieth century. Born in Morocco on the eve of catastrophic conflict, Badiou’s childhood and youth were marked by the Second World War and...

What kind of philosophy do we need for the 21st century? To answer this question, Alain Badiou imagines a dialogue between Tocéras, an earnest and engaging professor, and various interlocutors from different countries and philosophical cultures – John After from Britain, Amantha from Greece, B’adj Akil from Senegal, Xi La Pong from China, and several others. Their conversation takes readers...

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 The End, the distinguished philosopher Alain Badiou, in dialogue with Giovanbattista Tusa, argues that we must renounce ‘the pathos...

Against the backdrop of an alarming rise in authoritarianism and the crisis of liberal democracy, few would consider extolling 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...

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...

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...

The question of migration has come to dominate the news agenda in many countries, but what does the word ‘migrant’ really mean today and how should we respond to those who are labelled ‘migrants’? In this short book, Migrants and Militants, Alain Badiou argues that our way of thinking about migration should be governed both by an ethical duty to...

What is the relation between politics and the world? It might seem that global capitalism has created one world, but this is an illusion because capitalism creates a world of objects and money that divides human existence into regions separated by fences and walls built to keep some people out. In place of this falsely unified world of global capitalism,...

On 13 November 2015, Paris suffered the second wave of brutal terrorist attacks in a year, leaving 130 dead and many more seriously injured. How are we to make sense of these violent acts, and what do they tell us about the forces shaping our world today? In this short book, the influential philosopher Alain Badiou argues that while these...

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...

What is the relation between politics and the world? It might seem that global capitalism has created one world, but this is an illusion because capitalism creates a world of objects and money that divides human existence into regions separated by fences and walls built to keep some people out. In place of this falsely unified world of global capitalism,...

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...

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...

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...

For Alain Badiou, Friedrich Nietzsche is the prince of anti-philosophy. French leftist thinkers celebrated Nietzsche in the second half of the twentieth century, but when a backlash emerged in the 1990s, Badiou refused to join the attack. Instead, Badiou devoted his 1992-1993 seminar to an astonishingly original reading of Nietzsche—to whom he had previously shown indifference or scorn—in which he...

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...