Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy

by Alain Badiou

Book Overview

Alain Badiou (1937- ) is one of the most high profile and controversial philosophers writing in France today. A leading light in the generation of thinkers who come of intellectual age in 1968, his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826473202
• ISBN13: 9780826473202
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Continuum
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

comment on Sam's review:

re: mortality in Badiou (addressed in Sam's review above). Is it not the ethical subject that is supposed to be immortal, not the human animal? The ethical subject can exceed the human subject -- can be, for example, more than one person. I think. Great synopsis, though.

At last French philosophy goes beyond post-modernist confabulations

I picked up this book because I liked the title, although I was suspicious that it would be one more post-modern ranting, because the philosopher is a contemporary Frenchman. However, the essays collected in this work represent a new ray of hope of combining whatever is positive in post-structuralist and post-modern criticism with essential debates on the ethical and the political. Badiou is both a critic of these traditions and in some sense continues these traditions. His presumptions on the question of the subject (as consituted rather than constituting), etc., remain quite post-structuralist. His basic system of 'situation' and 'event' makes it seem as if humans respond only in fidelity to events and the situation as such cannot directly elicit a response without reference to an event. And it does not resolve how a subject is consituted by fidelity of response when the fidelity of response itself presupposes a subject. Yet his philosophical ontology based on set theory is welcome and refreshing. And above all his open-minded humility towards inquiry makes him a stark contrast to dogmatically minded 'endists' of all hues who have permeated much of conteporary discourse. The essays in the book do not form a system or a whole, but references to his basic philosophical system based on the theory of sets abound. His elaboration of concepts of situation and event based on set theory and his new theory of subjectivity as fidelity of response, in spite of its logical shortcomings open the way for the ethical and political which recent French philosophy had almost closed.

Philosophy at last coming back to life.

In this collection of essays, Alain Badiou addresses the problem of the current end-state in philosophy and attempts to re-invigorate it with something of its older, classical character. He identifies the source of malaise in the major branches of modern philosophy and pleads for an interruption to these practices in order to take a different position and find a way to allow a notion of truth, as opposed to meaning, to re-emerge as a legitimate philosophical concern.This is not philosophy looking for employment in the face of redundancy. Philosophy has always been a counterbalance to excess and should be so now, in the current political climate. ?Interruption? is a key word here, for it is only through this kind of breaking that the word suggests a radical shift back towards truth and not meaning, things and not words.But philosophy must take a position if this interruption is to take place. Truth is not to be conditioned by any prevalent habits of thought. This is an absolute, for any condition thrust upon it will turn it once again into a familiar pattern that is the province of an existing body of knowledge, and so be removed from philosophical speculation. But this in itself says something about truth, since what now counts as knowledge is defined in statistical terms which smooth over difference and plane down truth to a categorical sameness. Truth must therefore be of a singular character, and the problem is how to universalise it, given that this is a pre-requisite of philosophy. How does the singular maintain its character, faced with the current trends of thought that tend to fold everything into preformed packages?Statistics are subjectless, but the singular truth, arising in an event, happens to (or calls into being) a subject. Indeed, the subject has long been a casualty in philosophy, and its re-emergence through the notion of event is overdue and welcome. Truth occurs in an event to a subject, and it cannot fold itself into preformed or known categories. It proceeds in the subject in an act of faith on the one hand, but (being unknown and therefore unsayable) proceeds by chance and adhering to the lessons of the event. What is unnameable thereby becomes a kind of tabula rasa upon which the singular event and subject force their existence, generating something new in the face of the unknown. This is a crude and much oversimplified account of truth as Badiou outlines it in his essays. He is to be commended for attempting to revitalise philosophy and recognising the need for such a radical departure. But it is not as radical as it at first appears. His notion of the indiscernible is strongly reminiscent of Jasper?s notion of Existenz, while his concept of the ?count-as-one?, the structure of event or situation, is not so different from the notion of an ?actual entity? as formulated by Alfred North Whitehead in process philosophy. The problem is that Badiou is unable to free himself entirely from the tradition which he seeks to interrup

the essays

Here gathered is a diverse selection of writings from varied provenances, given as articles and talks. Together they don't exactly cohere, but that's hardly the point. Badiou is a potent writer and thinker. He campaigns for the primacy and universalim of truth in a clear fashion not seen from many continental philosophers. Perhaps, most exciting about Badiou's writings is that he considers them something along the lines of an intervention. He makes not philosophy for philosophy's sake but applies his acumen with the intent to persuade the reader: change your life (or at least your thinking)! Badiou's heroes and formulae make an odd collection (Saint Paul, Mao, Lacan, Plato, Game Theory, set theory), so the introduction to the collection provides helpful context. One can find philosophical engagements with cinema, poetry, truth, psychoanalysis, politics, art, marxism, and terrorism, to name some topics; it's really a grab bag. As a volume, it's weaker than his manifesto, but it may be more accessible. Nonetheless, it makes worthy reading.