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From the publisher:

This book is both an introduction to the thought of the prominent French philosopher Alain Badiou (b. 1937) and a philosophical rethinking of the twentieth century. The author seeks to give voice to the century itself, its various practices, and the voices of its activists-political, artistic, poetic, theatrical, scientific, psychoanalytic, and others. According to Badiou, the main passion that drove the century was "the passion of the real": The twentieth century was inspired not by dreams, illusions, and utopias, but by the courage to face the real, to become part of the event, to move to direct realisation, to invent something new - first of all, a "new man" instead of an "old man". That is why the entire twentieth century is in the paradigm of War, an epic face-to-face encounter, the coexistence of incompatible things. All the activists of the century live and work in the figure of antagonism, from within which it is necessary to find a new organisational discipline of thought, a new "brotherhood", a new "we". Today, staying true to the passion of the twentieth century, we need to ask, following Badiou: "What does 'we' mean in times of peace, not war?"

The book is equipped with several additional texts that reveal more deeply the philosopher's views on some of the features of the century: a thorough conversation with the author about his theses around The Century, a panorama of contemporary French philosophy, fundamental aspects of emancipatory politics, the idea of communism, the relationship between democracy and corruption, etc. The book is intended for philosophers, cultural critics, historians, literary critics, and art theorists."

Alain Badiou is one of the most inventive and interesting philosophers in France today, a thinker who, in these times of cynical obedience and academic specialisation, is exceptional in every sense. With a knowledge of a multitude of disciplines, from mathematics to psychoanalysis, and inspired by Plato and Kant as well as Mao and Malarmé, his work reclaims in the most diverse and exciting terms a now forgotten understanding of philosophy - philosophy as an activist process of emancipation and transformation

Peter Holward

A figure of the level of Plato and Hegel walks among us

Slavoj Žižek