Against "political philosophy" -- Politics as thought -- Althusser -- Politics unbound -- A speculative disquisition on the concept of democracy -- Truths and justice -- Rancière and the community of equals -- Rancière and apolitics -- What is a thermidorean? -- Politics as truth procedure.

The subtractive : preface by Francois Wahl -- Philosophy itself -- The (re)turn of philosophy itself -- Definition of philosophy -- What is a philosophical institution? -- Philosophy and poetry -- The philosophical recourse to the poem -- Mallarm's method : subtraction and isolation -- Rimbaud's method : interruption -- Philosophy and mathematics -- Conference on subtraction -- Truth : forcing and unnameable -- Philosophy and politics -- Philosophy and love -- What is love? -- Philosophy and psychoanalysis -- Subject (...) and infinite -- Antiphilosophy : Lacan and Plato -- Writing of the generic -- Writing of the generic : Samuel beckett. (shrink)

Contra those proclaiming the end of philosophy, Badiou aims to restore philosophical thought to the complete space of the truths that condition it.

This volume, assembled with the collaboration of the author, presents for the first time in English a comprehensive outline of Badiou's ambitious system.

Badiou explores the exponentially rich and varied world of French philosophy in a number of groundbreaking essays, published her for the first time in English or in a revised translation. Included are the often-quoted review of Louis Althussers's canonical works For Marks and Reading Capital and the scathing critique of 'potato fascism' in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guttari's A Thousand Plateus. There are also talks on Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy, and reviews of the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Barbara (...) Cassin, notable points of interest on an expansive tour of modern French thought.Guided by a small set of fundamental questions concerning the nature of being, the event, the subject, and truth, Badiou pushes to an extreme the polemical force of his thinking. Against the formless continuum of life, he posits the need for radical discontinuity; against the false modesty of finitude, he pleads for the mathematical infinity of everyday situations; against the various returns to Kant, the argues for the persistence of Hegelian dialectic; and against the lure of ultraleftism, his texts from the 1970s vindicate the role of Maoism as a driving force behind the communist Idea. (shrink)

A leading continental philosopher from France and author of Theory of the Subject interrogates the "anti-philosophy" of Ludwig Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, arguing that his beliefs compromise truth and logic while rendering philosophy a practice of esoteric aphorisms.

Uses the thoughts of such great minds as Kierkegaard, Plato, and Beckett to examine the concept of love and redefine it in the face of twenty-first century modernity.

Hegel once wrote that Truth could not be expressed within a single sentence. His statement could surely be taken as justification for the length of his ...

Explores the link between mathematics and ontology.

La beauté d’un corps qui nous attire ne saurait être atteinte par nos étreintes et nos caresses. Autrement dit, la fascination devant la beauté ne ressortit, en aucune façon, à une pulsion érotique. « Le beau – dit Simone Weil – est ce qu’on désire sans vouloir le manger. Nous désirons que cela soit. » C’est dire que pour jouir de la beauté, dont Platon considère que, par rapport à d’autres entités, elle est celle qui « se manifeste avec le (...) plus d’éclat », il ne faut pas s’en approcher ni vouloir se l’approprier. (shrink)

Overture -- Jacques Lacan -- Georges Canguilhem and Jean Cavaillès -- Jean-Paul Sartre -- Jean Hyppolite -- Louis Althusser -- Jean-François Lyotard -- Gilles Deleuze -- Michel Foucault -- Jacques Derrida -- Jean Borreil -- Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe -- Gilles Châtelet -- Françoise Proust -- A note on the texts.

The unity of the sociology now termed classical was not that of a theory or discourse about social organization, social actors or the ways in which social wholes change; it was the study of society defined as a set of interdependent mechanisms ensuring the integration or combination of mutually opposed elements: the individualism of the actors and the internalization of institutional norms in the service of collective integration. The primary historical reason for the decline of this classical sociology is that (...) its most stable foundation, the opposition between haves and have-nots along with that between men and women, was slowly undermined by a series of great social movements based at once on a quest for liberation and on the idea of equality It was the crisis in the earlier representations of social life which provoked, beyond the decline of the earlier sociology, the creation of a new intellectual space in which a constellation of forms of thought arose which constitute today what may be called contemporary sociology, and which is a sociology of ultramodernity. It is no longer in terms of objective situations or evaluations, economic or otherwise, that the social actor is explained. It is the cultural actor, his image of himself and his demands that govern a rapidly increasing part of social life. Th roughout the world and in all sectors of social life, actors are making a comeback. Reversal of the conception and role of institutions leads us to see them as instruments for the defence of individuals against norms. Today’s sociology is better explained by its future than by its past. The new sociology is already constituted as a set of questions and sensibilities, more widespread across the planet than any other previous form of social thought. But this de facto existence of the new sociology is not – not yet – accompanied by suffi cient self-refl ection. (shrink)

Le passé comme le futur n’ayant pas la moindre existence, l’itinéraire que nous proposons est celui qui va de la croyance à ce qui en nous et autour de nous serait pure répétition, éternel retour, à la reconnaissance de chaque moment présent comme absolument nouveau, comme inespéré et surprenant.

Sont successivement examinés : la correction des copies, la prise de notes, l’exposé oral, la tenue d’un journal, la lecture, l’écriture et ce que j’appelle la pause critique.

À l’instar de Diderot qui, après sa Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient, a écrit ses Additions à la Lettre sur les aveugles, nous proposons une suite à nos « Nouveaux dialogues entre Hylas et Philonous » (publiés dans L’Enseignement philosophique, 65 e année, n° 2, décembre 2014- février 2015, p. 3-22). Reprenant l’examen du sujet principal (la perception) qu’ils avaient naguère abordé dans ces dialogues (qui étaient au nombre de trois, comme les tout premiers conçus (...) autrefois par Berkeley et dont les nôtres étaient le contre-pied), puis le prolongeant (cet examen) dans d’autres directions, Hylas, interprète de nos pensées, et Philonous, interprète des objections que nous ne cessons de formuler contre elles, réfléchissent, dans le quatrième dialogue, sur la prétendue capacité que nous aurions de penser nos sensations ; dans le cinquième dialogue, sur l’opposition entre être et être un être ; enfin, dans le sixième dialogue, sur les raisons que l’on a de se réjouir non seulement de voir que tout est éphémère, mais également de vieillir et de mourir. (shrink)

PT. 1. PHILOSOPHY AND CIRCUMSTANCES: Introduction -- Philosophy and the question of war today: 1. On September 11 2001: philosophy and the 'War against terrorism' -- 2. Fragments of a public journal on the American war against Iraq -- 3. On the war against Serbia: who strikes whom in the world today? -- The 'democratic' fetish and racism: 4. On parliamentary 'democracy': the French presidential elections of 2002 -- 5. The law on the Islamic headscarf -- 6. Daily humiliation -- (...) Openings/Affirmations: 7. The power of the open: A discourse on the necessity of fusing Germany and France -- 8. Third sketch of a manifesto of affirmationist art -- Notes to part one -- PT. 2. USES OF THE WORD 'JEW': Introduction -- 1. Israel: the country in the world where there are the fewest Jews? -- 2. The destruction of the European Jews and the question of evil (fragments from Ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil, translated by Peter Hallward) -- 3. A dialogue between a Jew from Darzia and an Arab from Epirus -- 4. Saint Paul and the Jews (excerpt from Saint Paul: the foundation of universalism, translated by Ray Brassier) -- 5. Against negationism -- 6. Local angel -- 7. Intervew at the Daily Haaretz -- 8. The master-signifier of the New Aryans (by Cécile Winter) -- 9. The word 'Jew' and the sycophant -- Notes to part two -- PT. 3. HISTORICITY OF POLITICS: LESSONS OF TWO REVOLUTIONS. 1. The Paris commune: a political declaration on politics -- 2. The cultural revolution: the last revolution? -- A brief chronology of the cultural revolution (translated by Bruno Bosteels) -- Notes to part three. (shrink)

Alain Deligne est philosophe et Professeur émérite de littérature française à l'Université de Münster (Allemagne). Ses travaux portent sur l'idéalisme allemand (Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher), sur la traduction, la littérature ainsi que sur l'image. Il est coéditeur de catalogues sur la caricature ainsi que de la revue Ridiculosa et l'auteur de la première monographie française sur C. G. Carus (La Terre qui vit - Peinture et savoirs, 2003), et de la première monographie allemande sur Weil (Ein zeitgenôssischer Philosoph, 1998). Du jeune (...) Éric Weil, recommandé par Albert Einstein à Ernst Cassirer, on connaissait son doctorat sur Pomponazzi (1932), son essai sur Plotin et Ficin (1933) et son grand article sur l'intérêt pris à l'histoire (1935). Mais nous ignorions tout d'autres écrits précédents ou contemporains. Grâce au travail d'édition bilingue d'Alain Deligne, nous avons maintenant accès à ses exposés d'étudiant, conférences, articles, interventions radiophoniques ou ses travaux en vue de futures études (1922-1936). Nous pouvons ainsi mieux saisir ce qu'Éric Weil allait devenir : le fondateur d'un système ouvert de compréhension (Logique de la philosophie, 1950) et rester : un philosophe curieux de toutes les formes de savoir. À cette fin, il fallait, sur la base d'archives, restituer ses multiples intérêts en philosophie, sciences, histoire de l'art, germanistique, Renaissance italienne et occultisme. Sa pensée plonge ses racines dans les débats politiques de la République de Weimar pré-hitlérienne. Depuis l'exil parisien de 1933, Éric Weil en affrontera toute la violence."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In order to address to the relation between philosophy and mathematics it is first necessary to distinguish the grand style and the little style. The little style painstakingly constructs mathematics as the object for philosophical scrutiny. It is called the little style for a precise reason, because it assigns mathematics to the subservient role of that which supports the definition and perpetuation of a philosophical specialisation. This specialisation is called the ‘philosophy of mathematics’, where the ‘of’ is objective. The philosophy (...) of mathematics can in turn be inscribed under the area of specialisation that supports the name ‘epistemology and history of science’, an area to which corresponds a specialised bureaucracy in the academic authorities and committees whose role it is to manage the personnel of researchers and teachers. But in philosophy, specialisation is invariably the means by which the little style insinuates itself. In Lacan terms, this occurs through the collapse of the discourse of the Master, which is rooted in the signifier of the same name, the S1 that gives rise to a signifying chain, onto the discourse of the University, that perpetual commentary which adequately represents the second moment of all speech, that is, the S2 which only exists by making the Master disappear under the commentary which exhausts it. The little style of the philosophy of mathematics, and of its epistemology, strives for such a disappearance of the ontological sovereignty of mathematics, its instituting aristocratism, its unrivalled mastery, by confining its dramatic and almost incomprehensible existence to a generally dusty compartment of academic specialisation. (shrink)

Teaching business ethics and corporate social responsibility should neither be misconstrued as a plea for moral rectitude, nor as a limited utilitarian recipe for managing public interest issues or stakeholders — as it too often is. Rather, teaching CSR should allow students to recognize corporations as social institutions so that they can gauge their impact on a social scale and better weigh the values that inform them.However, this vision of CSR training has not found many supporters in North American schools (...) of management, even as the demand for ethics education continues to increase. Our paper endeavours to clarify the bipolar origins of the rising concern around ethics in the business world and how demand for more ethical corporate management is impacting demand for ethics education in management programs. We have noted that despite the intensity of demand, there is a great deal of skepticism and strong resistance to the integration of ethics and social responsibility into the education of management students. Therefore, while providing a preliminary assessment of ethical training in North American schools of management, we raise questions regarding current objectives and those that could be pursued. With these factors in mind, teaching choices that inspired the development of a new course in economic and social ethics can be presented and justified. (shrink)

One of the most crucial questions in the philosophy of law deals with the very nature of legal reasoning. Does this reasoning belong to logic or to rhetoric? This debate, increasingly centered on rhetoric, is not merely a question of language use; it covers and indicates a more basic choice between formal legalism — focusing on rational deduction from the law — and pragmatic judiciarism — focusing on reasonable debate in the court.Today, it is necessary to circumscribe the respective fields (...) of logic and rhetoric in the language of law, while showing how they are sometimes complementary in the resolution of legal problems.But, even when we have acknowledged the need for a rhetoric accompanied by logic, we have to define that rhetoric cautiously. I confront a narrow rhetoric, often called argumentation, with a wider one of interrogative nature. There are two conceptions of rationality at stake. Their comparison enables us to raise the question of the foundation of law, as a locus to use arguments, as well as to solve social problems. (shrink)

In this age of globalization, societies and people across the world are asking themselves the same questions about modernity: where are we going ?

La tradition sociologique a habituellement considéré la mobilité, qu’elle soit sociale ou spatiale, comme le déplacement entre des positions établies, l’essentiel étant d’analyser le système formé par ces positions. On trouve cependant, dans la sociologie même, les moyens pour élargir cette perspective. Des travaux sur la mobilité sociale, on tire une interrogation sur l’accès aux ressources qui prend en compte diverses formes de mobilité. Simmel développe l’analyse du rôle de la proximité et de la distance dans la construction du social. (...) Des travaux contemporains qui portent sur les déplacements ou sur la télématique s’inscrivent dans la même perspective. Tocqueville introduit la notion d’une mobilité individuelle, notamment spatiale, consommatoire, et qui n’a d’autre objectif qu’elle-même. Ces trois orientations permettent à la sociologie de contribuer à une théorie de la mobilité généralisée, qui croise l’interrogation sur la modernité.Sociological tradition used to consider mobility – whether social or spatial – as a movement from an established position to another, but it put more emphasis on the positions system than on the movement itself. Yet sociology itself provides the means to widen the scope. Studies on social mobility have eventually resulted in the larger problématique of resource acquisition involving various forms of mobility. Simmel developed an in-depth analysis of the influence of presence vs absence in the set up of social relationships, interrelated with current studies dealing with movements and telematics. Earlier Tocqueville had introduced the concept of individual mobility, notably spatial, consumption-focussed, and with a life of its own ; which eventually resulted in the philosophy of self-reference. These three orientations enable sociology to contribute to a theory of generalized mobility intersecting with the questioning on modernity. (shrink)

The very diversity of cultures impels the economist to respect a principle of modesty when it comes to specifying the degree of universality to which the science of economics can lay claim. In considering this issue, this paper: a) criticizes the ambition of certain forms of economic thought to arrive at truths which are universal, and b) explores the modes by which contemporary economic science participates in a renewed pursuit of a universalist doctrine. It concludes that the logic of economic (...) rationality implies a representation of the world that is incompatible with the diversity of cultures. At the same time, such diversity should not be raised to the status of absolutes. Combining difference and unity is a major challenge for current economics. (shrink)

Is it only yesterday's humanism, whether religious or secular in origin, that is dying - and is it really dying? - or is it more profoundly the very paradigm of humanity? At least it is worth asking the question. Do we not hear on every side today that everything is ‘constructed’ and ‘formated’? No inherited moral standard now seems acceptable, nor any reference to any sort of human nature or naturality. The only idea that henceforth finds acceptance is that of (...) the infinite plasticity of the human, leaving individuals free to shape themselves as they wish beyond any commonly received standard, since only defiance of the norm seems to be the source and proof of freedom. (shrink)

The sociology of knowledge is faced with a problem of historical temporality that it has carefully avoided up until now. The subject has been avoided or ignored because a discussion of it in depth would run the risk of questioning all modern scientific thought. The problem is that of the concept of absolute time as it is used in evolutionist theory. In this category of theory I include not only social evolutionism, abused for a long time and recently reanimated by (...) the “socio-biologists,” but also biological, paleontological, geological and other types of evolutionism, that is, those qualified as “scientific.”. (shrink)