Being and Event

Alain Badiou is a world-renowned French philosopher, formerly chair of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, and founder of the faculty of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard. Badiou has authored multiple major works of philosophy, many of which have been published in English by Bloomsbury, including Being and Event (2005), Logics of Worlds (2009), and The Immanence of Truths (forthcoming, 2021).Oliver Feltham is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the American University of Paris, France.

Since the book's first publication in 1988, Alain Badiou's Being and Event has established itself of one of the most important and controversial works in contemporary philosophy and its author as one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Being and Event is a comprehensive statement of Badiou's philosophical project and sees him recast the European philosophical tradition from Plato onwards, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Rousseau, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a history of philosophy rivalling those of Heidegger and Deleuze in its depth.Now publishing in the Bloomsbury Revelations series to mark 25 years since the book's first publication in French, Being and Event is an essential read for anyone interested in contemporary thought.

A translation of one of the single most important works of recent French philosophy, Badiou's magnum opus, and a must-have for his growing following and anyone interested in contemporary Continental thought.

Published to mark the 25th anniversary of the book's original publication

New Author's PrefaceTranslator's PrefaceIntroduction Book I Being: Multiple and Void. Plato/Cantor1. The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology 2. Plato 3. Theory of the Pure Multiple: paradoxes and critical decision Technical Note: the conventions of writing 4. The Void: Proper name of being 5. The Mark Æ 6. Aristotle Book II Being: Excess, State of the Situation, One/Multiple, Whole/Parts, or Î/Ì?7. The Point of Excess 8. The State, or Metastructure, and the Typology of Being (normality, singularity, excrescence) 9. The State of the Historico-social Situation 10. Spinoza Book III Being: Nature and Infinity. Heidegger/Galileo 11. Nature: Poem or matheme? 12. The Ontological schema of Natural Multiples and the Non-existence of Nature 13. Infinity: the other, the rule and the Other 14. The Ontological Decision: 'There is some infinity in natural multiples' 15. Hegel Book IV The Event: History and Ultra-one16. Evental Sites and Historical Situations17. The Matheme of the Event18. Being's Prohibition of the Event19. MallarméBook V The Event: Intervention and Fidelity. Pascal/Choice; Hölderlin/Deduction20. The Intervention: Illegal choice of a name for the event, logic of the two, temporal foundation21. Pascal22. The Form-multiple of Intervention: is there a being of choice?23. Fidelity, Connection 24. Deduction as operator of ontological fidelity 25. HölderlinBook VI Quantity and Knowledge. The discernable (or constructible): Leibniz/Gödel26. The concept of quantity and the impasse of ontology27. Ontological destiny of orientation within thought28. Constructivist thought and the knowledge of being29. The folding of being and the sovereignty of language30. LeibnizBook VII The Generic: indiscernible and truth.The event - P.J.Cohen31. The Thought of the Generic and Being in Truth32. Rousseau33. The Matheme of the Indiscernible: P.J.Cohen's strategy34. The existence of the indiscernible: the power of the namesBook VIII Forcing: Truth and the Subject. Beyond Lacan35. Theory of the subject36. Forcing: from the indiscernible to the undecidable37. Descartes / LacanAnnexesAppendixesNotesDictionary