Ideology, the unconscious and dialectics
A conversation/interview (with lots of links and pics) with Jennifer Izaakson, covering inter alia Althusser, Badiou, Heidegger, Deleuze, Butler, Hallward, Fichte, Lacan, Žižek.
7 points about a practical political science
The following is an experiment in “subbing Spinoza”, ie editing an English translation and rendering it into modern language. Of course ideally one would work with the original text but my O-level Latin is not up to that.
Sets, Categories and Topoi: approaches to ontology in Badiou’s later work
This paper outlines the rise of category theory as an alternative foundation for mathematics, offering a sketch of some of the ways in which topos theory generalises traditional set theory.
Introducing the New Cartesian Synthesis
The first of a planned triology of posts outlining developments in contemporary mathematics that involve a New Cartesian Synthesis locking together the algebra of the symbolic register with the geometry of the imaginary.
Idealism and infinity in Fichte’s Jena system
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was one of the key German Idealist philosophers and an important intermediary between Kant and Hegel. Yet his philosophical system has always been at the centre of fierce debate.
Marx, Hegel and the dialectic
The configuration of dialectics and materialism in Marx is intimately connected with his revolutionary practice. If you want to do justice to that tradition, you have to grapple with that intellectual history and those ideas. That’s one reason why the dialectic is still a live issue today.
Praxis makes perfect
March 2006 issue of Socialist Review review of Alex Callinicos’s The Resources Of Critique, Slavoj Zizek’s The Parallax View, and Alain Badiou’s two major works, Being and Event and Logics of Worlds.
Review of Badiou’s The Meaning of Sarkozy
A review of Alain Badiou’s book The Meaning of Sarkozy, first published in the March 2009 issue of Socialist Review. “Badiou is insightful and funny, especially when he gleefully castigates France’s corrupt political elites and idiotic business classes.”
The one and the multiple in Badiou’s ontology
Badiou is one of the few contemporary philosophers to declare that systematic ontology is both possible and necessary, and his major work Being & Event is devoted to laying out just such a systematic ontology.
Force and understanding in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
The Phenomenology of Spirit charts the development of consciousness as it rises from lowly common sense to the absolute. This passes through a series of transitions, and this essay takes a look at just one of them.
Giorgio Agamben: What is a commandment?
notes from CRMEP seminar delivered at Kingston University on 28 March 2011 – audio – draft transcript ARCHE v ARCHE The Greek term arche means both origin (hence “archeology”) and … Continue reading
Badiou on the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia
Alain Badiou wrote a short piece for Le Monde last month on the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. It’s already been translated into English a couple of times (on the … Continue reading
Notes on Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence
Somewhat surprisingly given its prominence in the interpretation of Nietzsche’s work, the motif of eternal recurrence occurs explicitly only a few times in his published books: in certain passages and … Continue reading
Review of Badiou’s Number and Numbers
[first published in Radical Philosophy 156, July/August 2009 – PDF] One of the more astonishing aspects of Alain Badiou’s philosophical position is that the key to what is most distinctive … Continue reading
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