Badiou's 'Being and Event': A Reader's Guide

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Author’s Note 1. Context 2. Overview of Themes 1. POINTS OF DEPARTURE: AGAINST THE CULTURAL TIDE 2. TRUTH, MATHEMATICS AND THE SUBJECT Discussion points 3. Reading the Text PART I. BEING: MULTIPLE AND VOID. PLATO/CANTOR 1. The one and the many: Plato to Deleuze 2. Cantor: ‘theory of the pure multiple’ 3. Plato and the unpresentable 4. Plenum and void: why Aristotle hated a vacuum Discussion points PART II. BEING: EXCESS, STATE OF THE SITUATION, ONE/MULTIPLE, WHOLE/PARTS OR ∈/⊂?’ 1. Inclusion, belonging and the count-as-one 2. State, subject, representation 3. Spinoza: foreclosing the void Discussion points PART III. BEING: NATURE AND INFINITY. HEIDEGGER/GALILEO 1. The Greek inauguration: poetry or mathematics? 2. Hölderlin: poetry, nature, history 3. Mallarmé: poem as event 4. Versions of infinity: Galileo to Cantor 5. Rule-following and the axiom of choice 6. Hegel: how not to think about the infinite Discussion points PART IV. THE EVENT: HISTORY AND ULTRA-ONE 1. History, politics, evental site 2. Representing history: truth and event Discussion points PART V. THE EVENT: INTERVENTION AND FIDELITY. PASCAL/CHOICE; HÖLDERLIN/DEDUCTION 1. Pascal: mathematics, miracles and ‘infinite thought’ 2. Fidelity, choice, ‘State of the Situation’ 3. Logic and truth: against anti-realism Discussion points PART VI. QUANTITY AND KNOWLEDGE. THE DISCERNIBLE (OR CONSTRUCTIBLE): LEIBNIZ/GÖDEL 1. Reckoning with the infinite: on the limits of naturalism 2. Orientations: mathematics, ontology and multiple-excess 3. Leibniz: logic, language and the plenitude of being Discussion points PART VII. THE GENERIC: INDISCERNIBLE AND TRUTH – THE EVENT: P. J. COHEN 1. Forcing, the generic and subtractive ontology 2. Subject, situation and post-evental truth 3. Rousseau’s Social Contract: subject, citizen, general will 4. Truth beyond knowledge: indiscernibility, generic extension Discussion points PART VIII. FORCING: TRUTH AND THE SUBJECT. BEYOND LACAN 1. Truth, indiscernment and the impasse of being 2. Descartes and Lacan: the subject at stake Discussion points 4. Further Reading 1. OTHER BOOKS BY BADIOU AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2. ARTICLES BY BADIOU IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 3. ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BOOKS AND ARTICLES ABOUT BADIOU