Alain Badiou Quotes
Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, a former student of Louis Althusser, and one of the leading figures of post-Maoist French philosophy. His Being and Event grounds an austere mathematical ontology, in which mathematics is the language of being qua being and truth emerges only through the rare event that exceeds what a situation can count. The quotes below are attributed to Alain Badiou, organized by topic.
Browse Alain Badiou by topic
Alain Badiou on Happiness
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“The quote is a variation on Louis de Saint-Just , "Happiness is a new idea in Europe".”
Miscellaneous quotes
Alain Badiou on Knowledge
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“Meditation One: The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology”
Since its Parmenidean organization, ontology has built the portico of its ruined temple out of the following experience: what presents itself is essentially multiple; what presents itself is essentially one. The reciprocity of the one and being is certainly the inaugural axiom of philosophy - Leibniz formulation is excellent; 'What is not a being is not a being' - yet it is also its impasse; an im -
“We find ourselves on the brink of a decision, a decision to break with the arcana of the one and the multiple in which philosophy is born and buried, phoenix of its own sophistic consumption.”
Meditation One: The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology -
“Meditation One: The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology”
We find ourselves on the brink of a decision, a decision to break with the arcana of the one and the multiple in which philosophy is born and buried, phoenix of its own sophistic consumption. -
“Everything turns on mastering the gap between the presupposition (that must be rejected) of a being of the one and the thesis of its 'there is'.”
Meditation One: The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology -
“Meditation One: The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology”
Everything turns on mastering the gap between the presupposition (that must be rejected) of a being of the one and the thesis of its 'there is'. -
“Chapter One, "Does Man Exist?”
According to the way it is generally used today, the term 'ethics' relates above all to the domain of human rights, 'the rights of man'- or, by derivation, the rights of living beings. We are supposed to assume the existence of a universally recognizable human subject possessing 'rights' that are in some sense natural: the right to live, to avoid abusive, to enjoy 'fundamental' liberties (of opini -
“Chapter One, "Does Man Exist?”
In the political domain, deprived of any collective politcal landmark, stripped of any notion of the 'meaning of History’; and no longer able to hope for or expect a social revolution, many intellectuals, along with much of public opinion, have been won over to the logic of a capitalist economy and a parliamentary democracy.
Alain Badiou on Life
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“Chapter One, Section III: "Man Living animal or immortal singularity?"”
Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil(2000)
Alain Badiou on Mind
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“This book founds a doctrine which is effectively post-Cartesian, or even post-Lacanian, a doctrine of what, for thought, both un-binds the Heidegerean connection between being and truth and institutes the subject, not as support or origin, but as fragment of the process of a truth.”
Introduction -
“If one category had to be designated as an emblem of my thought, it would be neither Cantor's pure multiple, nor Godel's constructible, nor the void, by which being is named, nor even the event, in which the supplement of what-is-not-being-qua-being originates. It would be the generic .”
Introduction
Alain Badiou on Politics
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Attributed to Alain Badiou:
“The communist hypothesis is the only one worth defending.”
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“In the political domain, deprived of any collective politcal landmark, stripped of any notion of the 'meaning of History’; and no longer able to hope for or expect a social revolution, many intellectuals, along with much of public opinion, have been won over to the logic of a capitalist economy and a parliamentary democracy.”
Chapter One, "Does Man Exist? -
“It must be said that today, at the end of its semantic evolution, the word 'terrorist' is an intrinsically propagandistic term. It has no neutral readability. It dispenses with all reasoned examination of political situations, of their causes and consequences.”
Miscellaneous quotes | From Philosophy and the 'war against terrorism' in Infinite Thought: truth and the return of philosophy . London: Continuum, 2003. ISBN 0826467245 .
Alain Badiou on Truth
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“Mathematics is ontology.”
Introduction -
Attributed to Alain Badiou:
“Truth is what punches a hole in knowledge.”
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Attributed to Alain Badiou:
“Be faithful to the event that has touched you.”
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“It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating properties'), thereof one must be silent. It must on the contrary be named.”
Miscellaneous quotes | Original French: Il est donc tout simplement faux que ce dont on ne peut parler (au sens ou il n'y a rien à en dire qui le spécifie, qui lui accorde des propriétés séparatrices), il faille le taire. I -
“Truth is a new word in Europe (and elsewhere).”
Miscellaneous quotes | Original French: La vérité est un mot neuf en Europe (et ailleurs). From L'être et l'événement . Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1988. ISBN 2020098628 . The quote is a variation on Louis de Saint-Just , "Ha
Alain Badiou on Virtue
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Attributed to Alain Badiou:
“There is no ethics in general, only the ethics of singular truth procedures.”