Badiou and the German Tradition of Philosophy

Description

The oeuvre of Alain Badiou has gained international success and recognition, but most of the secondary literature focuses on internal problems of Badiou's philosophy, rather than its position within a broader philosophical genealogy. This book unites philosophers from Germany, Slovenia, the UK, Australia and France, to trace the relation between elements of Badiou's philosophy and the German philosophical tradition, namely the three significant movements of German Idealism, Phenomenology, Marxism and the Frankfurt School. This is a discussion that has not yet been established, although the parallels and decisive differences between poststructuralist French philosophy and German philosophy are apparent. Through these paradigms - Badiou's reception of German Idealism, Marxism, Adorno and the Critical Theory, and Heideggerian phenomenology - the authors shed light onto Badiou's inheritance of and engagement with these specific traditions, but also highlight the links between these philosophies to open up new questions for contemporary continental thought. With an original chapter from Alain Badiou himself, looking back at his influences and antagonisms within the German tradition, this book is essential for readers interested in the exploration of Badiou's legacy. It illustrates the continuation of poststructuralist philosophy, Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School, assessing the place of classic continental philosophy to tackle how we might benefit from these intellectual exchanges today.

Jan Voelker is Assistant Professor, Berlin University of the Arts, Germany.

Badiou and the German Tradition of Philosophy is one of the most inspiring anthologies on the thinker in question. * Continental Thought & Theory * Collectively, the essays succeed admirably in positioning the essential concepts and operations of Badiou's philosophy in relation to the distinct traditions of German idealism, phenomenology, and negative dialectics ... [These] essays will be both illuminating and rewarding for all those who have an interest in the legacies of these philosophical movements, or in the contemporary possibilities for a new, formally motivated thinking of the central categories of philosophical thought that figure within them. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews * Alain Badiou's relationship to German philosophy has always been productively ambivalent. This stunning collection of essays by some of the most interesting younger philosophers writing today examines this relationship in strikingly original ways. Much more than an account of the influence of these thinkers on Badiou, or of his critical reflections on them, this book presents a sequence of primary reflections on the nature of philosophy itself as it must be rethought by the encounter of Badiou and the German Idealist tradition and its aftermath. * Kenneth Reinhard, Professor of Comparative Literature, UCLA, USA * Jan Volker's collection traces out a rich yet largely unexplored seam in Alain Badiou's oeuvre. It is both ambitious it what it seeks to exploit from this German run and sure in what it achieves. In properly dialectical fashion, the collection deftly exposes to us what this relationship between the French exposition and the German site is not, marking for us an aporia that must be passed through - the better to more fully comprehend Badiou's affirmative recommencement of philosophy. Thus the true value of the collection lies in its effective construction of this unknown relation between Badiou's French adventure and the German tradition. -- A.J. Bartlett, translator of Badiou's 'Metaphysics of the Transcendental' and 'Happiness'