Alain Badiou is arguably the most significant philosopher in Europe today. Badiou’s seminars, given annually on major conceptual and historical topics, constitute an enormously important part of his work. They served as laboratories for his thought and public illuminations of his complex ideas yet remain little known. This book, the transcript of Badiou’s year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, is the first volume of his seminars to be published in English, opening up a new and vital aspect of his thinking.
In a highly original and compelling account of Lacan’s theory and therapeutic practice, Badiou considers the challenge that Lacan poses to fundamental philosophical topics such as being, the subject, and truth. Badiou argues that Lacan is a singular figure of the “anti-philosopher, ” a series of thinkers stretching back to Saint Paul and including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, with Lacan as the last great anti-philosopher of modernity. The book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou’s own thought. This seminar, more accessible than some of Badiou’s more difficult works, will be profoundly valuable for the many readers across academic disciplines, art and literature, and political activism who find his thought essential.
Table of Content
Editors’ Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminar of Alain Badiou
Author’s General Preface to the English Edition of the Seminar of Alain Badiou
Introduction to the Seminar on Lacan (Kenneth Reinhard)
About the 1994-95 Seminar on Lacan
Abbreviations of Lacan’s works cited in the text
Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
Session 8
Session 9
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
About the author
Alain Badiou is emeritus professor of philosophy at the École normale supérieure in Paris. His seminars published by Columbia University Press include Malebranche (2019).Kenneth Reinhard is professor of comparative literature and English at the University of California, Los Angeles.Susan Spitzer is a frequent translator of Badiou’s works.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
38,434 Ebooks in this category
