Michael J. Kelly - Introducing Alain Badiou: A Graphic Guide

PHILOSOPHY ALWAYS CONSTRUCTS ITS OWN SPACE AMID THE MATHEME A SYMBOLIC, OR FORMULAIC, REPRESENTATION OF AN IDEA MEANT TO PROVIDE IT WITH STABILITY AND THE POEM, BETWEEN THE MOTHER AND FATHER AFTER ALL.

Some philosophers have criticized Badiou for supposedly jolting back and forth between maths and literature too easily; but regardless, it doesnt take a psychoanalyst to see the familys intellectual trinity wrapped up in the figure of Badiou, the embodied mediation between his parents.

The family connection to the cole Normale Suprieure does not end for Badiou with his time as a student there. In 1999 he became chair of Philosophy at ENS, after 30 years teaching Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-St Denis) and two years in Reims from 19667. Currently he is the Ren Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School, a small, private college on top of the Alps in the resort town of Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Badiou began his writing career in the early 1960s when he was affiliated with the epistemology circle (epistemology is the study of knowledge), a group of ENS students who published the journal Les cahiers pour lanalyse. It was in this journal that Badiou would publish some of his earliest philosophical texts. The first was called Infinitesimal Subversion in 1968, and a year later Mark and Lack: On Zero.

In 1964 Badiou published his first book, Almagestes.

THIS REFERS TO PTOLEMY AND HIS VIEWS ON ASTRONOMY, REFLECTING BADIOUS LIFELONG INTEREST IN THE THOUGHTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD, ESPECIALLY THOSE OF ST PAUL.

His first book of philosophy is The Concept of Model (Le Concept de modle) published in 1969.

A Sartrean interrupted

Jean-Paul Sartre (190580) was essentially his total intellectual master during the whole of Badious early life as a philosopher, he tells us. The first theoretical text that sparked Badious interest in philosophy, and one relatively contemporary to him, was Sartres Sketch of a Theory of the Emotions (1939).

I WAS WRAPPED UP COMPLETELY IN SARTRE SO MUCH SO THAT DURING MY PREPARATION FOR THE ENTRY EXAM TO THE ENS MY PROFESSOR WAS DISMAYED AT THE AMOUNT OF TIME I SPENT ON PASTICHES OF SARTRES BEING AND NOTHINGNESS (1943).

With two committed Sartreans, Emmanuel Terry and Pierre Verstraeten, he also interrogated Sartres Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960).

The seductiveness of philosophy

Badiou turned away from Sartre, but he remained confident in his desire to become a philosopher. The deeper reason is likely that his family situation and education led him to it, but there is another more tangible one too, perhaps.

THERE IS SOMETHING SEXUALLY SEDUCTIVE ABOUT BEING A PHILOSOPHER. WHY? SIMPLY SPEAKING, IT IS INTERESTING. PHILOSOPHY PREPARES ONE TO BE UNIQUE, TO HAVE THE CONFIDENCE TO SPEAK, TO BE ABLE TO MAKE COMPLICATED ARGUMENTS AS OPPOSED TO SIMPLY PROPOSING TO A GIRL OR GUY.

What better reason can there be for becoming a philosopher, he jokingly asks. More seriously, he believes that the role of the philosopher is to challenge society simply because it is the way it is. To never give up. Finally, to always corrupt the youth!

Badious philosophy