Philosophy and the Event

Alain Badiou is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of our time. This concise and accessible book is the perfect introduction to his thought. Responding to Tarby's questions, Badiou takes us on a journey that interrogates and explores the four conditions of philosophy: politics, love, art and science. Events occur in all of these domains: an event brings to light a possibility that was invisible or even unthinkable, it proposes something to us. Everything then depends on the way in which the possibility opened up by the event is grasped, elaborated and embedded in the world - this is what Badiou calls a 'truth procedure'. The event creates a possibility but there then has to be an effort - a group effort in the case of politics, an individual effort in the case of love or art - for this possibility to become real and inscribed in the world. As he explains his thinking on politics, love, art and science, Badiou takes stock of his major works and reflects on their central themes and arguments. Focusing on the unresolved questions in his philosophical undertaking, Badiou outlines how he plans to address these in the third volume that will follow Being and Event and Logics of Worlds. The book concludes with a short introduction to Badiou's philosophy by Fabien Tarby. For anyone wishing to understand the work of one of the most widely read and influential philosophers writing today, this small book will be an indispensable guide.