Alain Badiou Knihy

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 the 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 of Worlds. Where in that book, Badiou saw fit to analyze how truths, qua events, appear from the perspective of particular worlds that by definition exclude them, in The Immanence of Truths Badiou asks instead how the irruption of truth transforms the worlds within which they by necessity must arise. An emphasis on regularity and continuity has given way to an attempt, one unquestionable in its philosophical power and implications, to formalize rupture and reconfiguration. The Being and Event trilogy is a unique and ambitious work that reveals how truths can be at once context-specific and universal, situational and eternal.

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, we need to assert a fundamental principle - namely, that there is one world of living subjects. This, in Badiou's view, is the categorical imperative of all true politics.The one world of living subjects is the place where an infinity of differences and identities exist. Hence foreigners are not a problem but rather an opportunity and a gift. They bear witness to the youth of the world in its infinite variety, and it is with this youth that the politics of the future rests. Foreignness is the means by which existence is re-evaluated, and all true politics is a new dawn of existence.This collection of essays by Badiou, in which he draws out the political implications of recent events and social movements, will be of value to anyone interested in the great social and political questions of our time.

V této knize se předkládá nová interpretace sv. Pavla, v němž Alain Badiou objevuje zakladatele emancipačního evropského univerzalismu. V jeho podání se ze sv. Pavla stává navýsost aktuální postava, která přináší univerzalitu, jež může sloužit jako hráz proti dnešní záplavě partikularismů (nacionalismu, rasismu, sociálního vyloučení). V novém světle tak ožívají základní pojmy křesťanství, jehož jedinečnost se v multikulturní Evropě často přehlíží. Alain Badiou je profesorem na Ecole Normale Supérieure v Paříži. Patří k nejobjevnějším francouzským filosofům dneška. Ve svých pracích se snaží dát nový význam velkým pojmům filosofické tradice, jako je univerzalita nebo pravda.

In Can Politics Be Thought?-published in French in 1985 and appearing here in English for the first time-Alain Badiou offers his most forceful and systematic analysis of the crisis of Marxism in which he argues for the continuation of Marxist politics.

"French philosopher Alain Badiou (b. 1937) introduces the concept of democratic materialism to refer to the belief that there are only bodies and languages, then employs a fair amount of science in what he calls a somewhat fastidious examine of it. He covers formal theory on the subject (meta-physics); the greater logics: the transcendental, the object, and relation; the four forms of change; the theory of points; what a body is; and what it is to live."--Provided by publisher.

In Praise of Theatre is Alain Badiou’s latest work on the ‘most complete of the arts,’ the theatrical stage. This book, certain to be of great interest to scholars and theatre practitioners alike, elaborates the theory of the theatre developed by Badiou in works such as Rhapsody for the Theatre and the ‘Theses on Theatre’ and enquires into the status of a theatre that would be adequate to our ‘contemporary, market-oriented chaos.’ In a departure from his usual emphasis upon canonical figures of the stage such as Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett, Badiou devotes In Praise of Theatre largely to a consideration of contemporary practitioners, including Jan Fabre, Brigitte Jacques and Romeo Castellucci. In addition, the book features an incisive analysis of the precarious status of the theatre today, in which Badiou describes not only the current threats to the theatre from the right, but the far more insidious threat from the left.

»Nichts ist leichter, nichts abstrakter, und nichts nutzloser, als die auf sich selbst reduzierte Kapitalismuskritik. Wer viel Lärm um diese Kritik macht, landet wieder und wieder bei weisen Reformen dieses Kapitalismus. Man schlägt einen regulierten und anständigen Kapitalismus, einen nicht-pornographischen Kapitalismus, einen ökologischen und immer demokratischeren Kapitalismus vor. Man fordert schließlich einen für alle bequemen Kapitalismus: einen Kapitalismus mit menschlichem Antlitz. Aus diesen Schimären wird nichts herauskommen ... Die einzige gefährliche und radikale Kritik ist die poetische Kritik an der Demokratie. Denn das Symbol der gegenwärtigen Zeit, ihr Fetisch, ihr Phallus, ist die Demokratie.«