Badiou and Philosophy

289 Pages·2016·5.08 MB·English

by  Bowden S.

Critical Connections
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contemporary critical theorists and a wide range of research areas,
such as critical and cultural theory, gender studies, film, literature,
music, philosophy and politics.
Series Editors
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Editorial Advisory Board
Nick Hewlett
Gregg Lambert
Todd May
John Mullarkey
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Marc Rolli
Alison Ross
Kathrin Thiele
Frederic Worms
Titles available in the series
Agamben and Colonialism edited by Marcelo Svirsky and
Simone Bignall
Laruelle and Non-Philosophy edited by John Mullarkey and
Anthony Paul Smith
Badiou and Philosophy edited by Sean Bowden and Simon Duffy
Forthcoming titles
Ranciere and Film edited by Paul Bowman
Virilio and Visual Culture edited by John Armitage and Ryan Bishop
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Badiou and Philosophy
Edited by Sean Bowden and Simon Duffy
EDINBURGH
Universitv Press
J
© editorial matter and organisation Sean Bowden and Simon Duffy, 2012
© the chapters their several authors, 20 12
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in I III 3 Adobe Sa bon
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRo 4 YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780748643.523 (hardback)
ISBN 978074864351 6 (paperback)
ISBN 9780748643530 (webready PDF)
ISBN 9780748668335 (epub)
ISBN 978 074866834 2 (Amazon ebook)
The right of the contributors
to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Contents
Acknowledgements V11
Abbreviations Vlll
Contributors x
Badiou's Philosophical Heritage
1. I
Sean Bowden and Simon Duffy
I. Philosophy's Mathematical Condition
2. What Is Post-Cantorian Thought? Transfinitude and
the Conditions of Philosophy 19
Tzuchien Tho
3· The Set-Theoretical Nature of Badiou's Ontology
and Lautman's Dialectic of Problematic Ideas 39
Sean Bowden
4· Badiou's Platonism: The Mathematical Ideas of Post-
Cantorian Set Theory 59
Simon Duffy
5· Sets, Categories and Topoi: Approaches to Ontology
in Badiou's Later Work 79
Anindya Bhattacharyya
II. Philosophical Notions and Orientations
6. The Black Sheep of Materialism: The Theory of the
Subject 99
Ed Pluth
Badiou and Philosophy
VI
A Critique of Alain Badiou's Denial of Time in his
7·
Philosophy of Events 113
James Williams
8. Doing Without Ontology: A Quinean Pragmatist
Approach to Badiou 132
Talia Morag
9· Towards a New Political Subject? Badiou between
Marx and Althusser 157
Nina Power
1lI. Philosophical Figures
10. 'The Greatest of Our Dead': Badiou and Lacan 177
Justin Clemens and Adam J. Bartlett
Badiou and Sartre: Freedom, from Imagination to
II.
Chance 203
Brian A. Smith
12. Badiou's Relation to Heidegger in Theory of the
Subject 225
Graham Harman
13. One Divides into Two: Badiou's Critique of Deleuze 244
Jon Roffe
Bibliography 262
Index 271
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to express their gratitude to the following
people: Miriam Bankovsky, Ian Buchanan, Sandra Field, Paul
Patton and James Williams. A special mention is also due to Carol
Macdonald and all the team at Edinburgh University Press.
An early version of Chapter 3 was published as 'Alain Badiou:
Problematics and the Different Senses of Being in Being and
Event', Parrhesia, 5 (2008), pp. 32-47. The editors gratefully
acknowledge the permission of Parrhesia and its editors to repub
lish some of this material.
Abbreviations
BE Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (London:
Continuum, 2005)
C Conditions, trans. Steven Corcoran (London: Continuum,
2009)
CH The Communist Hypothesis, trans. David Macey and
Steven Corcoran (London: Verso, 2010)
CM The Concept of Model: An Introduction to the Materialist
Epistemology of Mathematics, trans. Zachary Luke Fraser
and Tzuchien Tho (Melbourne: re.press, 2007)
D Deleuze: The Clamour of Being, trans. Louise Burchill
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000)
E Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter
Hallward (London: Continuum, 2001)
LW Logics of Worlds, trans. Alberto Toscano (London:
Continuum, 2009)
M Metapolitics, trans. Jason Barker (London: Verso,
20°5)
MP Manifesto for Philosophy, trans. Norman Madarasz
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999)
MS Meaning of Sarkozy, trans. David Fernback (London:
Verso, 2008)
NN Number and Numbers, trans. Robin Mackay (Cambridge:
Polity, 2008)
PP Pocket Pantheon, trans. David Macey (London: Verso,
2009)
SM Second Manifesto for Philosophy, trans. Louise Burchill
(Cambridge: Polity, 2011)
TC The Century, trans. Alberto Toscano (Cambridge: Polity,
2007)
TO Briefings on, Existence: A Short Treatise on Transitory
V111
Abbreviations IX
Ontology, trans. Norman Madarasz (New York: SUNY
Press, 2006)
TS Theory of the Subject, trans. Bruno Bostec1s (London:
Continuum, 2009)
TW Theoretical Writings, trans. Alberto Toscano and Ray
Brassier (London: Continuum, 2004)
Contributors
Adam J. Bartlett lectures in the School of Culture and
Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He
is the author of Badiou and Plato: An Education by Truths
(Edinburgh University Press, 20II), and has contributed to
and edited, with Justin Clemens, Alain Badiou: Key Concepts
(Acumen, 2010) and, with Justin Clemens and Paul Ashton, The
Praxis of Alain Badiou (re.press, 2006).
Anindya Bhattacharyya recently completed his MA at Kingston
University, London, under the supervision of Professor Peter
Hallward. He is currently completing a study of Badiou's ontol
ogy and has published a number of reviews of Badiou's work in
Radical Philosophy and the Socialist Review. He is a full time
journalist and activist with The Socialist Worker.
Sean Bowden is an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow
at Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of The Priority
of Events: Deleuze's Logic of Sense (Edinburgh University Press,
20II) and has published a number of articles and book chapters
on Badiou, Deleuze and Simondon.
Justin Clemens is a Lecturer in English at the University of
Melbourne, Australia. In addition to the edited collections with
Adam]. Bartlett, he is the editor, with Oliver Feltham, of Alain
Badiou, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return of Philosophy
(Continuum, 2003)' He is also the author of The Romanticism of
Contemporary Theory (Ashgate, 2003) and, with D. Pettman, of
Avoiding the Subject (Amsterdam University Press, 2004).
x