Manifesto for Philosophy

SUNY Series: Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory

by Alain Badiou, Norman Madarasz (Translator)

Manifesto for Philosophy: Followed by Two Essays: "the (Re)Turn of Philosophy Itself" and "Definition of Philosophy" (Suny Series, Intersections, Philosophy and Critical Theory)

An excellent introduction to the work of one of the most important philosophers writing today, Manifesto for Philosophy will undoubtedly quicken the discourse that has become too comfortable with its own death" - Joan Copjec, author of Read My Lacan against the Historicists

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Alain Badiou, Ph.D., born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Alain Badiou was a student at the École Normale Supérieure in the 1950s. He taught at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) from 1969 until 1999, when he returned to ENS as the Chair of the philosophy department. He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Collège International de Philosophie, on topics ranging from the great 'antiphilosophers' (Saint-Paul, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lacan) to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century. Much of Badiou's life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968 revolt in Paris. Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses communistes de France (marxistes-léninistes), he remains with Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel at the center of L'Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works.

Trained as a mathematician, Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today. Influenced by Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.

Reviews

[Jonathan Widell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am still thinking... I think we are only hearing a distant rumbling on the horizon. Badiou is so...I don't know, he would be absolutely demented if he were not so frigging brilliant. He has later described his Manifesto for Philosophy as a sort of companion to his magnum opus Being and Event. He said that after he had written a similar companion to his second magnum opus, Logic of Worlds.

The Manifesto for Philosophy is so much more and so much less than a companion to anything. I can't believe what Badiou is saying in this book. You know, I got the impression from his Second Manifesto that he was only attacking our contemporary pop philosophers who tell people they are philosopher to sell stuff. This "first" manifesto shows that he has a lot bigger fish to fry. Badiou argues that as soon as philosophy sells out on Truth, it becomes sophistry. Those who say they are philosophers are sophists, just the kind of sophists Plato was fighting in his dialogues, thousands of years ago. And that is where we are, according to Badiou: instead of Truth, we have "language games", "deconstruction" and so on. But no Truth. We are back to square one.

The Manifesto has some themes in common with Being and Event but it is nothing like a dumbed down version of Being and Event. What Badiou introduces here is his famous four truth procedures or generic procedures, which he traces back to Plato. They are the following: "science (more precisely the matheme), art (more precisely the poem), the political (more precisey the political in its interiority, or politics of emancipation) and love (more precisely the procedure which makes truth out of the disjunction of sexuated positions)." That is what he says in one of the two essays tagged to the Manifesto, Definition of Philosophy.

Badiou's style is difficult. He sounds just like a mathematician that he is while he should be talking like a normal guy to laypeople. He is not funny. He is much more. The fun resides in the things one sees and feels when he takes us on his intellectual roller coaster ride. I am not talking of the classical roller coasters but of the new ones with vertical loops. No wonder Badiou talks of "terror" and "disaster" in his reply to sophists in his essay "The (Re)Turn of Philosophy itself", which is one of the two essays at the back.

[David Barrera Fuentes · Rating 4 out of 5]

La matriz de las ideas que ya había leído en Badiou sobre lo "acontecimential" (qué horrible palabra) de la política, pero ampliada a las otras tres condiciones que definen el campo filósofico. Texto breve, denso y hermoso, pero que a veces da la ligera sensación de que repite ese gesto francés tan desagradable de intentar "definir" campos de conocimiento de una vez y para siempre, tipo: la filosofía es esto, como algunos (post)estructuralistas hicieron con la literatura. Fuera de eso, me encanta la actitud badiouana de estar "solo contra el mundo" y de insistir en la necesidad de una política maoísta y de un gesto maoísta en cada una de las condiciones que él define en la filosofía. Se trata, en otras palabras, de tratar las "contradicciones en el seno" no solo del pueblo, sino que de la ciencia, la poesía y el amor.

[Lulu's Life · Rating 4 out of 5]

O diyor felsefenin kurtuluşu, ben diyor düşüncenin yenilenmesi, ama ikimiz de bunun matematik ile sıkı fıkı olmakla mümkün olacağında hemfikiriz.. Eh bir de felsefe, matematik, sanat ve AŞK birlikte ve mümkün olursa oh ne ala! 💫

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an excellent response to all the e-scatological postmodernists out there. Philosophy is not dead, as some say, nor is it reduced to narrow, Anglo concerns.

[Antonia Faccini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pues creo que sí es una buena introducción a Badiou. De manera muy sintética plantea la pregunta por una verdad que se acople a la multiplicidad del ser o del “acontecimiento”, a las matemáticas como ontología fundamental y en todo ello hace manifiesto al gran guía de su filosofía: Platón.

Muy interesante el concepto de “sutura”, de reducir a la filosofía a una de sus condiciones genéricas. El capítulo sobre los poeta es bellísimo.

[Irene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nope. Definitivamente no hay que publicar todo lo que se escribe. Un corrector/a al texto original, quizá, habría podido salvarlo (o igual no, yo qué sé).

[Álvaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

I'm ambivalent as of now. Intriguing, interesting, but I need to read Being and event to make up my mind about how I feel overall.

[Amir matin Ghariblu]

از آغاز کرونا تا اکنون پس از ژینا اینقدر «نخوان» نبوده ام که حالا هستم ، کمی غر و ناله اینجا می‌گذارم که نامه گمشده هم پیشاپیش به مقصدش رسیده؛ همین! آواره میان ادارات، پرسه در خیابان ها، وراجی در گوشه کافه آخر هفته، و نبرد نابرابر در ناکجاها که نباید گفت، منهای آخری همه‌شان علنا بوی آشغال می‌دهند، این صد و اندی یا شاید هم دویست صفحه که هر چند دور از نجابت است اما هیچ دوباره نگاهش هم نکردم که ببینم چه ازش دستگیرم شده فقط ته‌تغاری اطو کشیده این دو هفته اخیر است که وقت و بی‌وقت چند قطعه اش میان هر روزه‌ام در همان آوارگی ادارات و کافه و خیابان هل داده شده. تمام.

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The text is good, but the translation is not so great.

[Utku Unguder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alain Badiou 20. Yüzyıla hakim olmuş felsefi düşüncelere tabiri caizse savaş açtığı kitaplarından biri. Badiou bu savaşında matematikten çok yararlanıyor. Platonculuğun günümüz dünyasına felsefe için tek çıkış olduğunu iddia ediyor. Badiou’nun külliyatında yerine tam hakim olmamakla birlikte neye karşı olduğunu anlamamız açısından önemli bir eser olduğunu düşünüyorum. Badiou okuyacaklar diğer kitaplarına kesinlikle yönelmeliler. Tabii esas kitabı varlık Ve olay Türkçede yok ama olsun. Okumadan önce postyapısalcı filozoflar Ve düşünceler ile analitik felsefe hakkında biraz görüşe sahip olunursa daha verimli olacağını düşünüyorum. Badiou bunlara karşı çıkıyor Ve neye karşı çıktığını bilmek önemli. Felsefenin işlevini bilime, sanata, şiire terk etmeye karşı yazılmış bir manifesto

[Goran Lausic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Increíble, texto súper desafiante, pues no solo hace una reflexión critica del estado actual de la filosofía, sino que plantea un tratado metafísico donde basándose en el ideal platónico redefine lo que es el concepto de filosofía y esboza las verdades detrás de toda la teoría del conocimiento.

[Monokl Kitap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alain Badio’nun yoğun ve kapsamlı kitabı, felsefi sisteminin en temelidir.

[Acontecimal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meu quase-orientador é muito foda.

[Icarovsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

apesar da minha edição ter um posfácio extremamente brega, gostei muito. uma defesa ferrenha de platao e das condições para a filosofia: o poema, o matema, a política inventada e o amor. genial.

[Salahuddin Hourani]

ملاحظة لي: لم اقرا الكتاب بعد -العلاقة بين الفلسفة وكيف انها تفسر وتوضح لنا العشق والحب والفنون والسياسة والعلم

[amgds · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this might be a way back in but unfortunately French philosophy just isn't for me any more despite its 'rationalist' turn.

[John Russon · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as I can tell, this book (not unlike Levinas's Totality and Infinity, but with a different theme) simply develops a Heideggerean theme (here, "Ereignis") while simultaneously claiming to be anti-Heideggerean. Much of the development of the idea here is good, but the self-congratulatory, polemical remarks against Heidegger are really unhelpful. Though no justification for it is given in the book, Badiou's identification of the 4 different domains of significance is provocative and interesting.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting summary of where Badiou was when he finished Being and Event. It's a little confusing at this point, since some of the terms here are translated differently than later translators have chosen to do. For example, here we find "eventful" and "post-eventful" which would later be (better) rendered "evental" and "post-evental". For this reason, this seems to stand on its own much less well than Badiou's later Second Manifesto for Philosophy, which I found beautiful and provocative on its own terms. (Badiou himself is, of course, much further along in his project by then.)

Not a good place to start. I like St Paul or Ethics for that.