This is the first complete English translation of the work that immediately followed Badiou's magnum opus, "Being and Event" in which Badiou provides an overview of what he sees as the four great conditions of philosophy - this book is therefore central to an understanding of Badiou's whole philosophical project.Alain Badiou is without doubt the most important and influential thinker working in European philosophy today. "Conditions" is the first major collection of essays written after "Being and Event", his extraordinary magnum opus.Beginning with a sustained critique of the so-called 'end of philosophy', the book goes on to propose a new definition of philosophy, one that is tested with respect to both its origin, in Plato, and its contemporary state. The essays that follow are ordered according to what Badiou sees as the four great conditions of philosophy: philosophy and poetry, philosophy and mathematics, philosophy and politics, and philosophy and love. Conditions provides an illuminating reworking of all the major theories in "Being and Event". In so doing, Badiou not only develops the complexity of the concepts central to "Being and Event" but also adds new ones to his already formidable arsenal. The essays contained within "Conditions" reveal the extraordinary and systematic nature of Badiou's philosophical enterprise.

This is the first complete English translation of the work that immediately followed Badiou's magnum opus, Being and Event in which Badiou provides an overview of what he sees as the four great conditions of philosophy - this book is therefore central to an understanding of Badiou's whole philosophical project.

About the Author
Alain Badiou teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and at the College International de Philosophie in Paris, France. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works. Steven Corcoran is the editor and translator of Alain Badiou's Polemics (Verso, 2006) and Jacques Ranciere's Hatred of Democracy (Verso, 2007). He is currently completing his doctoral studies in Continental Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Reviews
"Conditions is the essential complement to Being and Event: a fascinating introduction to both its problematics and also their masterly depth." - Quentin Meillassoux
"Badiou is a prominent and sometimes controversial voice in Continental philosophy, and this collection of essays demonstrates his highly technical and original thought. Recommended for academic libraries." -Scott Duimstra, Library Journal, January 2009
"Conditions is Badiou's most important collection of essays, and publication of this comprehensive translation is long overdue. In addition to fundamental meditations on the status of general categories like philosophy and truth, the essays collected here include some of Badiou's most significant and incisive engagements with the specific "conditions" of his own philosophical orientation, in the fields of literature, mathematics, politics and love." - Peter Hallward, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, UK
"Conditions ... remains Alain Badiou's magnum opus and the most exhaustive exposition of his philosophical system, Being and Event ... [His] stark and crystalline expression of the break philosophy must make with its own self-mourning is a clear and still relevant definition of what it means to think in the twenty-first century." - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
In a captivating sequence of chapters, written in a fluent style from which a rigorous philosophical meta-language is never absent and is often mingled with a poetic sense of words and expressions, Badiou's Conditions develops a systematic quest for the central issue of philosophy's place and purpose. -- The European Legacy, Vol. 16, No. 3



Book Information
ISBN 9780826498274
Author Alain Badiou
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC