Philosophy And The Event

This concise and accessible book is the perfect introduction to Badiou’s 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. In all these domains, events occur that bring to light possibilities that were invisible or even unthinkable; they propose something to us. Everything then depends on how 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, reflects on their central themes and arguments and looks forward to the questions he plans to address in his future writings. 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.

The world into which we are born as the horizon of all our behavior is a world both of things and of events. But what are events? Though familiar to all of us, they are philosophically obscure. However central they may be to the question of being in Western thought, from Aristotle to Heidegger, events have always been assigned a derivative status, indeterminate, at the margins of philosophy. Claude Romano seeks to change all that, to describe precisely what sort of phenomenon an event is and to establish how it can be grasped via a phenomenology. He seeks, above all, to understand a human being as one to whom events can occur, who is able to face them and to appropriate them through experience. "Evential hermeneutics" is the name he gives this approach, which conceives human being as an undergoing of events for which there can be no substitution and as thereby becoming himself. Romano at once forces us to think human existence--or rather, human adventure--in the light of events and helps us understand how and why the event has been neglected in the ontological tradition.

An investigation of the “occurrent arts” through the concepts of the “semblance” and “lived abstraction.” Events are always passing; to experience an event is to experience the passing. But how do we perceive an experience that encompasses the just-was and the is-about-to-be as much as what is actually present? In Semblance and Event, Brian Massumi, drawing on the work of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and others, develops the concept of “semblance” as a way to approach this question. It is, he argues, a question of abstraction, not as the opposite of the concrete but as a dimension of it: “lived abstraction.” A semblance is a lived abstraction. Massumi uses the category of the semblance to investigate practices of art that are relational and event-oriented—variously known as interactive art, ephemeral art, performance art, art intervention—which he refers to collectively as the “occurrent arts.” Each art practice invents its own kinds of relational events of lived abstraction, to produce a signature species of semblance. The artwork's relational engagement, Massumi continues, gives it a political valence just as necessary and immediate as the aesthetic dimension.

Two controversial thinkers discuss a timeless but nonetheless urgent question: should philosophy interfere in the world? Nothing less than philosophy is at stake because, according to Badiou, philosophy is nothing but interference and commitment and will not be restrained by academic discipline. Philosophy is strange and new, and yet speaks in the name of all - as Badiou shows with his theory of universality. Similarly, Zizek believes that the philosopher must intervene, contrary to all expectations, in the key issues of the time. He can offer no direction, but this only shows that the question has been posed incorrectly: it is valid to change the terms of the debate and settle on philosophy as abnormality and excess. At once an invitation to philosophy and an introduction to the thinking of two of the most topical and controversial philosophers writing today, this concise volume will be of great interest to students and general readers alike.

A new translation of two essential works on Deleuze, written by one of his contemporaries. From the publication of Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event to his untimely death in 2006, Franois Zourabichvili was regarded as one of the most important new voices of contemporary philosophy in France. His work continues to make an essential contribution to Deleuze scholarship today. This edition makes two of Zourabichvili's most important writings on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze available in a single volume. A Philosophy of the Event (1994) is an exposition of Deleuze's philosophy as a whole, while the complementary Deleuze's Vocabulary (2003) approaches Deleuze's work through an analysis of key concepts in a dictionary form.This new translation is set to become an event within Deleuze Studies for many years to come.Key Features: Distinguishes Deleuze's notion of the event from the phenomenological, ontological and voluntarist conceptions that continue to lay claim to it todayWith an introduction by Gregg Lambert and Daniel W. Smith, two of the world's leading commentators on Deleuze, explaining the key themes and arguments of Zourabichvili's work

Heidegger’s second magnum opus after Being and Time, laying the groundwork for his later writing, in a translation of “impeccable clarity and readability” (Peter Warnek). Martin Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, written in the late 1930s and published posthumously in 1989, is now widely viewed as his second magnum opus, after Being and Time. Here, Heidegger lays the groundwork for a new conception of thought and being, rooting them both in the event of appropriation. Here, Heidegger establishes the language and intellectual framework necessary for all of his later writings. Contributions was composed as a series of private ponderings that were not originally intended for publication. They are nonlinear and radically at odds with the traditional understanding of thinking. This translation presents Heidegger in plain and straightforward terms, allowing surer access to this new turn in Heidegger’s conception of being.

Alain Badiou is one of the leading philosophers in the world today. His ground-breaking philosophy is based on a creative reading of set theory, offering a new understanding of what it means to be human by promoting an “intelligence of change”. Badiou’s philosophical system makes our capacity for revolution and novelty central to who we are, and develops an ethical position that aims to make us less anxious about this very capacity. This book presents a comprehensive and engaging account of Badiou’s philosophy, including an in-depth discussion of The Theory of the Subject, Being and Event and Logics of Worlds. In a clear and careful analysis, Ed Pluth considers exactly how Badiou’s theoretical “anti-humanism” is linked up to what is, for all intents and purposes, a practical humanism. Central to this is an account of Badiou’s theory of the subject, and his attempt to develop an “ethic of truths”. The role of set theory, Marxism, and Lacanian psychoanalysis in Badiou’s philosophy is also given close attention. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy, as well as to all those keen to develop a critical understanding of one of the most controversial and important thinkers of the twentieth century.

A translation of one of the single most important works of recent French philosophy, Badiou's magnum opus, and a must-have for his growing following and anyone interested in contemporary Continental thought.