Product Description

"Logics of Worlds" is the long-awaited sequel to Alain Badiou's much-heralded masterpiece, Being and Event. Tackling the questions that had been left open by Being and Event, and answering many of his critics in the process, Badiou supplements his pioneering treatment of multiple being with a daring and complex theory of the worlds in which truths and subjects make their mark a?? what he calls a materialist dialectic. The radical recasting of ontology in Being and Event is followed and complemented here by a thoroughgoing transformation in our very understanding of logic, conceived as a theory not of being but of appearing. Unafraid to resurrect and reinvent the classical themes of philosophy, Badiou gives new meaning to concepts such as object, body and relation, mobilising them in arresting studies that range from the architectural planning of Brasilia to contemporary astronomy, and confronting himself with towering philosophical counterparts (Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Lacan, Deleuze). The book culminates in an impassioned call to 'live for an Idea'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68796 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 640 pages

About the Author
Alain Badiou teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and at the College International de Philosophie in Paris, France. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works. Alberto Toscano is a lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the editor and translator, with Ray Brassier, of Alain Badiou's Theoretical Writings (London: Continuum, 2004).

Customer Reviews

A spectacular phenomenon
After a long wait the English translation of the Logics of Worlds is available. And there is no doubt it was worth it. Although the subtitle 'Being and Event II' seems like a bit of a marketing gimmick, it at least makes clear that this is Badiou's first great book since B&E; maybe his last too.

Whereas B&E was a study of ontology and 'inconsistent multiplicity' the Logics of Worlds focuses on phenomenology, or as Badiou terms it: how things 'appear'. This means his use of mathematics is more arbitrary than in B&E. In 'volume I' the unfolding of his meta-ontology tracked the devastating consequences in the grounding and axiomisation of set-theory in the 19th/20th century; instead, in the Logics of Worlds the historicity of the mathematics is absent and Badiou simply seeks to utilize mathematical logic to explain how 'worlds' come to consist, or how order prevails in the phenomenological realm.

The most interesting shift is thus towards eternal logics: from the pseudo-Platonism of B&E to something close to a full-blown reworking of the Platonic forms here. Badiou also re-appropriates and contorts many philosophical terms and debates: negation becomes 'reversal' for instance.

The Logics of Worlds is a compelling and precarious endeavor, full of potential pitfalls and aporias. Yet what is truly refreshing is the intent of the book. Unlike so much of what passes as philosophy nowadays - popular whimsy, dry analytical textbooks, defeatist anti-philosophy; this is an adventurous and brave work of philosophy that takes many risks and is obviously the result of decades of thought and study.

In other words, like Being and Event the Logics of Worlds is as much a spectacular phenomenon as a book as it is a passage through to the higher realm of Ideas.

interminable wait...
I'm also frustrated by the wait. Continuum are now listing the publication date as 1st February 2009. Maybe we'll finally see it then...