Conditions

Description

Beginning with a sustained critique of the so-called 'end of philosophy', Badiou goes on to propose a new definition of philosophy, one that is tested with respect to both its origin, in Plato, and its contemporary state. The essays that follow are ordered according to what Badiou sees as the four great conditions of philosophy: philosophy and poetry, philosophy and mathematics, philosophy and politics, and philosophy and love. Conditions provides an illuminating reworking of all the major theories in Being and Event. In so doing, Badiou not only develops the complexity of the concepts central to Being and Event but also adds new ones to his already formidable arsenal. The essays in Conditions reveal the extraordinary and systematic nature of Badiou's philosophical enterprise.

Alain Badiou is a world-renowned French philosopher, formerly chair of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, France, and founder of the faculty of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Badiou has authored multiple major works of philosophy, many of which have been published in English by Bloomsbury, including Being and Event (2005), Logics of Worlds (2009), and The Immanence of Truths (forthcoming, 2021). Steven Corcoran is a writer and translator living in Berlin. He has edited and/or translated several works by Jacques Ranciere, including Dissensus (Continuum, 2010), two works by Alain Badiou, Polemics and Conditions, and Alienation and Freedom (Bloomsbury 2017) by Frantz Fanon.

"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. -- The European Legacy, Vol. 16, No. 3