Translated and with an introduction by Jason Barker

In this follow-up to his highly acclaimed volume Ethics, a searing critique of liberalism, Alain Badiou discusses the limits of political philosophy.

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. Badiou indicts this approach, which reduces politics to a matter of opinion, thus eliminating any of its truly radical and emancipatory possibilities.

Against this intellectual tradition, Badiou proposes instead the consideration of politics in terms of the production of truth and the affirmation of equality. He demands that the question of a possible “political truth” be separated from any notion of consensus or public opinion, and that political action be rethought in terms of the complex process that binds discussion to decision.

Starting from this analysis, Badiou critically examines the thought of anthropologist and political theorist Sylvain Lazarus, Jacques Rancière’s writings on workers’ history and democratic dissensus, the role of the subject in Althusser, as well as the concept of democracy and the link between truth and justice.

“One of the most important philosophers writing today.” — Joan Copjec


Praise for Ethics
“Scarcely any other moral thinker of our day is as politically clear-sighted and courageously polemical, so prepared to put notions of truth and universality back on the agenda…. Badiou has launched a transformative new intervention, which deserves to provoke a persisting response.” — Terry Eagleton

“Badiou is at his strongest in pointing to the inconsistencies of a facile multiculturalism, the pluralism of the food court and the shopping mall, which wilts in the face of any genuine expression of cultural hostility to liberal values.” — Radical Philosophy

“A book that aims at the very heart of politically correct “radical” intellectuals, undermining the foundations of their very mode of life!” — Slavoj Zizek

Alain Badiou is the author of many books, including Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return of Philosophy, Handbook of Inaesthetic, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil and Polemics. He teaches philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. His The Meaning of Sarkozy is forthcoming from Verso.

160 pages

Series
Wo es War

Cloth
ISBN-13: 978 1 84467 035 X
£18 / US$27 / CAN$38

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 84467 567 8
£11.99 / US$15.95 / CAN$23