Manifeste pour la philosophie

By Alain Badiou

Book Overview

Introduction
Manifesto for Philosophy

1. Possibility


2. Conditions


3. Modernity


4. Heidegger Viewed as Commonplace


5. Nihilism?


6. Sutures


7. The Age of Poets


8. Events


9. Questions


10. Platonic Gesture


11. Generic


The (Re)turn of Philosophy Itself


Definition of Philosophy


Chapter Notes


Notes on the Translation


Bibliography


Contributors


Index

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791442209
• ISBN13: 9780791442203
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Philosophy or Sophistry?

If anything, Badiou's book poses a serious challenge to the dominance of Heidegger in continental philosophy today. Philosophy can never announce its own end, the end of philosophy. Neither can philosophy pretend to lose itself in the linguistic turn, in the shift from logic and reason to poetry. Philosophy, Badiou argues, must be distinguished from sophistry. Just as Plato founded philosophy from the thralls of sophism of his age, we too must recapture the 'Platonism' of philosophy in an age of anti-Platonism. Badiou's middle course between Plato, on one hand, and the likes of Heidegger and Deleuze, on the other hand, proposes the ideal of philosophy that is not-yet and, more importantly, not reducible to extreme conclusions, i.e., the rejection of philosophy as a dead endeavor. Philosophy is not the antithesis of sophism, and in this the true opposed to the false, but Badiou contends that sophism is a necessary partner of philosophy. In this schema, philosophy must be distinguished from sophism; that is, we must uphold a conception of truth, or rather, of truths. Philosophy seeks the truth in the plural, truth as multiple but which is nevertheless truth and not relative 'truth.' In 'Manifesto,' Badiou engages with the dominant currents of philosophy today in order to reimagine the possibility of philosophy despite the skeptics. In the anglo-american vs. continental split in contemporary philosophy, one is often left to choose two impossible alternatives: logic or poetry. In 'Manifesto' Badiou opens up another way, a way that is a return to that which has always been with us all along.