Alain Badiou is undoubtedly the most exciting and influential voice in contemporary French philosophy and one of the most important theorists at work today. His impact on continental philosophy and the wider philosophy community, politics and the arts in the last twenty years has been immense. Alain Badiou: Live Theory offers a concise and accessible introduction to his work and thought, laying out the central themes of his major works, including his magnum opus, Being and Event, and its long-awaited sequel, Logics of Worlds. Oliver Feltham explores the fundamental questions through which Badiou's philosophy constantly evolves, identifies the key turning points in his ideas, and makes a clear case for the coherence and powerful singularity of his thought when employed in the analysis of political and artistic situations. Feltham examines the thinkers and theorists with whom Badiou has engaged and who have engaged with him, arguing that Badiou's work is compelling precisely because it opens up new genealogies and new polemics in the intellectual landscape. The book includes a brand new interview with Badiou, in which he discusses his current concerns and future plans. This is the ideal companion to study for students and readers encountering this fascinating thinker for the first time.

Modern liberalism begins in the forgetting of the English Revolution. "Anatomy of Failure" seeks to right that wrong by exploring the concept of political action, playing its history against its philosophy. The 1640s are a period of institutional failure and political disaster: the country plunges into civil war, every agent is naked. Established procedures are thrown aside and the very grounds for action are fiercely debated and recast. Five queries emerge in the experience of the New Model Army, five queries that outline an anatomy of failure, isolating the points at which actors disagree, conflict flares up, and alliances dissolve: Who can act? On what grounds? Who is right about what is to be done? Why do we succeed or fail? If you and I split, were we ever united, and to what end? The application of these questions to the Leveller-agitator writings, and then to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke's philosophies, generates "models of political action." No mere philosophical abstractions, the Hobbesian and Lockean models of "sovereign" and" contractual" action have dominated the very practice of politics for centuries. Today it is time to recuperate the Leveller-agitator model of" joint" action, a model unique in its adequacy to the threat of failure and in its vocation for building the common-wealth. "Anatomy of Failure" is ideal for upper-level undergraduates and postgraduates taking courses in Contemporary Political Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Modern European Philosophy, Contemporary French Philosophy, Critical Theory and Radical Political Thought.

In David Hume's science of human nature every self is located by passions that bind it to groups, repel it from other groups, and rank it on a hierarchy: we call this discovery a 'topology of the passions'. These bound and ranked selves and groups form the matter of what he called 'government', a supposedly neutral model of political action designed to avoid the malady of faction and catapult Scotland out of feudalism into a glorious future as a commercial society, assisted by the application of the new discipline of political economy, a discipline blind beyond its functional measures of privileged variables - the growth of trade, interest rates, wage levels - measures that justify the destruction of all obstacles to the wholesale liberation of the commercial passions. To govern - a new kind of action for a new epoch - is to destroy and liberate. But ever since Hume, government has fallen apart because it fails to take into account the complexity of society as a topology of the passions. It is in Hume's History of Britain that we find the germs of another destiny for modernity in his ambivalent account of the revolutionary impact and danger of another model of political action - democratic enthusiasm - wherein to act is to incarnate an idea of commonality.

In David Hume's science of human nature every self is located by passions that bind it to groups, repel it from other groups, and rank it on a hierarchy: we call this discovery a 'topology of the passions'. These bound and ranked selves and groups form the matter of what he called 'government', a supposedly neutral model of political action designed to avoid the malady of faction and catapult Scotland out of feudalism into a glorious future as a commercial society, assisted by the application of the new discipline of political economy, a discipline blind beyond its functional measures of privileged variables - the growth of trade, interest rates, wage levels - measures that justify the destruction of all obstacles to the wholesale liberation of the commercial passions. To govern - a new kind of action for a new epoch - is to destroy and liberate. But ever since Hume, government has fallen apart because it fails to take into account the complexity of society as a topology of the passions. It is in Hume's History of Britain that we find the germs of another destiny for modernity in his ambivalent account of the revolutionary impact and danger of another model of political action - democratic enthusiasm - wherein to act is to incarnate an idea of commonality.

Since the book's first publication in 1988, Alain Badiou's Being and Event has established itself of one of the most important and controversial works in contemporary philosophy and its author as one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Being and Event is a comprehensive statement of Badiou's philosophical project and sees him recast the European philosophical tradition from Plato onwards, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Rousseau, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a history of philosophy rivalling those of Heidegger and Deleuze in its depth. Now publishing in the Bloomsbury Revelations series to mark 25 years since the book's first publication in French, Being and Event is an essential read for anyone interested in contemporary thought.

Modern liberalism begins in the forgetting of the English Revolution. "Anatomy of Failure" seeks to right that wrong by exploring the concept of political action, playing its history against its philosophy. The 1640s are a period of institutional failure and political disaster: the country plunges into civil war, every agent is naked. Established procedures are thrown aside and the very grounds for action are fiercely debated and recast. Five queries emerge in the experience of the New Model Army, five queries that outline an anatomy of failure, isolating the points at which actors disagree, conflict flares up, and alliances dissolve: Who can act? On what grounds? Who is right about what is to be done? Why do we succeed or fail? If you and I split, were we ever united, and to what end? The application of these questions to the Leveller-agitator writings, and then to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke's philosophies, generates "models of political action." No mere philosophical abstractions, the Hobbesian and Lockean models of "sovereign" and" contractual" action have dominated the very practice of politics for centuries. Today it is time to recuperate the Leveller-agitator model of" joint" action, a model unique in its adequacy to the threat of failure and in its vocation for building the common-wealth. "Anatomy of Failure" is ideal for upper-level undergraduates and postgraduates taking courses in Contemporary Political Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Modern European Philosophy, Contemporary French Philosophy, Critical Theory and Radical Political Thought.

This title is a concise and accessible introduction to this key theorist.Alain Badiou is undoubtedly the most exciting and influential voice in contemporary French philosophy and one of the most important theorists at work today. His impact on continental philosophy and the wider philosophy community, politics and the arts in the last twenty years has been immense."Alain Badiou: Live Theory" offers a concise and accessible introduction to his work and thought, laying out the central themes of his major works, including his magnum opus, "Being and Event", and its long-awaited sequel, "Logics of Worlds". Oliver Feltham explores the fundamental questions through which Badiou's philosophy constantly evolves, identifies the key turning points in his ideas, and makes a clear case for the coherence and powerful singularity of his thought when employed in the analysis of political and artistic situations. Feltham examines the thinkers and theorists with whom Badiou has engaged and who have engaged with him, arguing that Badiou's work is exciting precisely because it opens up new genealogies and new polemics in the intellectual landscape. The book includes a brand new interview with Badiou, in which he discusses his current concerns and future plans.This is the ideal companion to study for students and readers encountering this fascinating thinker for the first time.