The Adventure of French Philosophy
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 works For Marx and Reading Capital and the scathing critique of “potato fascism” in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. There are also talks on Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy, and reviews of the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Barbara Cassin, notable points of interest on an expansive tour of modern French thought.
Guided by a small set of fundamental questions concerning the nature of being, the event, the subject, and truth, Badiou pushes to an extreme the polemical force of his thinking. Against the formless continuum of life, he posits the need for radical discontinuity; against the false modesty of finitude, he pleads for the mathematical infinity of everyday situations; against the various returns to Kant, he argues for the persistence of the Hegelian dialectic; and against the lure of ultraleftism, his texts from the 1970s vindicate the role of Maoism as a driving force behind the communist Idea.
Hardback, 430 pages
ISBN: 9781844677931
July 2012
$29.95 / £20.00 / $37.50CAN
Reviews
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One of the most important philosophers writing today.
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An heir to Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser.
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A figure like Plato or Hegel walks here among us!
Blog
An exceptional encounter: Alain Badiou and Michel Foucault in conversation
Two giants of French philosophy discuss psychology, Western culture and the Kantian turn in the history of philosophy in this hidden gem of a video. Michel Foucault is interviewed by Alain Badiou, the acclaimed author of many books including Pocket Pantheon, and the forthcoming The Adventure of French Philosophy (2012), which both engage with Foucault's thought.
Discussions
Begin a discussionOther books by Alain Badiou, and Bruno Bosteels
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Marx and Freud in Latin America
The turbulent continent through the eyes of Marx and Freud. -
The Rebirth of History
Testing the winds of history blowing from the Arab revolts.by Alain Badiou
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Polemics
Overturning the dominant narrative of events, from the Paris Commune to the Iraq wars.by Alain Badiou
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Metapolitics
Metapolitics argues that one of the main tasks of contemporary thought is to abolish the idea that politics is merely an object for philosophical reflection.by Alain Badiou
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Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy
The leading continental philosopher takes on the standard bearer of analytical philosophy.by Alain Badiou
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The Actuality of Communism
A new salvo in Verso's burgeoning series on communism, after Badiou, Žižek and Groys.
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Five Lessons on Wagner
A leading radical intellectual tackles the many controversial interpretations of Wagner’s work.by Alain Badiou
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The Communist Hypothesis
by Alain Badiou
A new program for the Left after the death of neoliberalism.
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The Meaning of Sarkozy
by Alain Badiou
The reactionary tradition behind Sarkozy, and the communist hypothesis for the twenty-first century.
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Pocket Pantheon
A journey through twentieth-century philosophy with the titan of French thought.by Alain Badiou
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Ethics
One of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy explodes the facile assumptions behind the recent ethical turn.by Alain Badiou