In this book, Livingston develops the political implications of formal results obtained over the course of the twentieth century in set theory, metalogic, and computational theory. He argues that the results achieved by thinkers such as Cantor, Russell, Godel, Turing, and Cohen, even when they suggest inherent paradoxes and limitations to the structuring capacities of language or symbolic thought, have far-reaching implications for understanding the nature of political communities and their development and transformation. Alain Badiou's analysis of logical-mathematical structures forms the backbone of his comprehensive and provocative theory of ontology, politics, and the possibilities of radical change. Through interpretive readings of Badiou's work as well as the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Livingston develops a formally based taxonomy of critical positions on the nature and structure of political communities. These readings, along with readings of Parmenides and Plato, show how the formal results can transfigure two interrelated and ancient problems of the One and the Many: the problem of the relationship of a Form or Idea to the many of its participants, and the problem of the relationship of a social whole to its many constituents.

In this book, Livingston develops the political implications of formal results obtained over the course of the twentieth century in set theory, metalogic, and computational theory. He argues that the results achieved by thinkers such as Cantor, Russell, Godel, Turing, and Cohen, even when they suggest inherent paradoxes and limitations to the structuring capacities of language or symbolic thought, have far-reaching implications for understanding the nature of political communities and their development and transformation. Alain Badiou's analysis of logical-mathematical structures forms the backbone of his comprehensive and provocative theory of ontology, politics, and the possibilities of radical change. Through interpretive readings of Badiou's work as well as the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Livingston develops a formally based taxonomy of critical positions on the nature and structure of political communities. These readings, along with readings of Parmenides and Plato, show how the formal results can transfigure two interrelated and ancient problems of the One and the Many: the problem of the relationship of a Form or Idea to the many of its participants, and the problem of the relationship of a social whole to its many constituents.

University Of California Publications In Zoology, V43, No. 8. Additional Editors Are S. J. Holmes And A. H. Miller.

In The Logic of Being, Paul Livingston examines the relationship of truth and time from a perspective that draws on Martin Heidegger's inquiry into the question of being, as well as twentieth-century analytic philosophy of language and logic. In his influential earlier work The Politics of Logic, Livingston elaborated an innovative ""formal"" or ""metaformal realism."" In the Logic of Being, he now extends this concept into a ""temporal realism"" that accounts for the reality of temporal change and becoming while also preserving realism about logic and truth. Livingston employs a formal and phenomenological method of analysis to articulate and defend a position of realism about being, time, and their relationship, on which all of these are understood as structured and constituted in a way that does not depend on the human mind, consciousness, or subjectivity. This approach provides a basis for new logically and phenomenologically based accounts of the structure of linguistic truth in relation to the appearance of objects and of the formal structure of time as given. Livingston draws on philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Davidson and Heidegger in this exploration of truth and time. In it, readers and scholars will discover innovative connections between Continental and analytic philosophy.

In The Logic of Being, Paul Livingston examines the relationship of truth and time from a perspective that draws on Martin Heidegger's inquiry into the question of being, as well as twentieth-century analytic philosophy of language and logic. In his influential earlier work The Politics of Logic, Livingston elaborated an innovative ""formal"" or ""metaformal realism."" In the Logic of Being, he now extends this concept into a ""temporal realism"" that accounts for the reality of temporal change and becoming while also preserving realism about logic and truth. Livingston employs a formal and phenomenological method of analysis to articulate and defend a position of realism about being, time, and their relationship, on which all of these are understood as structured and constituted in a way that does not depend on the human mind, consciousness, or subjectivity. This approach provides a basis for new logically and phenomenologically based accounts of the structure of linguistic truth in relation to the appearance of objects and of the formal structure of time as given. Livingston draws on philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Davidson and Heidegger in this exploration of truth and time. In it, readers and scholars will discover innovative connections between Continental and analytic philosophy.