Manifesto for philosophy

the long version

One of the most provocatively innovative thinkers writing in French today, Alain Badiou constantly unsettles his reader by not only absorbing but also reversing and displacing the major motifs of modernist 'antiphilosophy' from Nietzsche through Derrida. In the limpid, programmatic texts presented in readable translations here, Badiou sketches his project -- spelled out in his magnum opus, LʹEtre et lʹévénement -- to reestablish systematic philosophy as a 'Platonism of the multiple, ' articulated around the four conditioning discourses of science (notably the mathematics of set theory), politics (in a post-Marxist mode informed by the events of May '68), art (especially poetry from Holderlin to Celan), and love (as conceptualized by Lacan). The most significant challenge to 'antiphilosophy' in a long time, Badiouʹs thought promises either to displace its currently dominant forms or to deepen and refine their self-understanding. It is, in short, a force worth reckoning with.-- Publisher review.