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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Relation of philosophy to the four truth procedures (art, love, science, politics)

Alain Badiou - The Concept of Model
Edited and translated by Zachary Fraser and Tzuchien Tho
The Concept of Model is the first of Alain Badiou’s early books to be translated fully into English. With this publication English readers finally have access to a crucial work by one of the world’s greatest living philosophers. Written on the eve of the events of May 1968, The Concept of Model provides a solid mathematical basis for a rationalist materialism. Badiou’s concept of model distinguishes itself from both logical positivism and empiricism by introducing a new form of break into the hitherto implicated realms of science and ideology, and establishing a new way to understand their disjunctive relation. Readers coming to Badiou for the first time will be struck by the clarity and force of his presentation, and the key place that The Concept of Model enjoys in the overall development of Badiou’s thought will enable readers already familiar with his work to discern the lineaments of his later radical developments. This translation is accompanied by a stunning new interview with Badiou in which he elaborates on the connections between his early and most recent thought. find out more home
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Hegel's Jena Philosophy of Nature - 'The Organics'
by G.W.F Hegel (translated by Erich D. Freiberger)
This never before translated part of Hegel’s work represents a significant contribution to both Hegelian scholarship and modern philosophy as a whole. The translation consists of ‘the Organics’ from 1803/4 and 1805/6 of Hegel’s early Jena Philosophy of Nature. With Erich Freiberger’s new excellent translation of Hegel’s Jena Organics we have moved closer to filling the serious gap that exists in the translation of Hegel’s early works.This work not only allows us to better understand Hegel’s development in general but also gives us deeper insight into how the important concept of organic life functions throughout Hegel’s system. The appearance of this work will also allow philosopher’s to better understand and more clearly distinguish Hegel’s mature Philosophy of Nature from his earlier system. Read more...
The Radical Critique of Liberalism: In Memory of a Vision (part 1)
by Toula Nicolacopoulos
Despite political theorists' repeated attempts to demonstrate their incoherence liberal values appear to have withstood the test of time. Indeed, engagement with them has become the meeting point of the different political philosophical traditions. But should radical critique justifiably become a thing of the past? Should political philosophy now be conducted in the light of the triumph of liberalism? These are the wider questions that the book takes up in an attempt to demonstrate the intellectual power of systemic critique in the tradition of Hegel. The author argues that the most ambitious of the communitarian critiques of liberal thought failed due to a fundamental weakness of their philosophical methodology. Moreover, the re-workings of these critiques by feminists, discourse ethicists, postmodern and postcolonial theorists have been equally unsuccessful because they have not traced the individualist commitment of liberal theory back to its source in liberal inquiring practices. Working through the theories of prominent liberal theorists, including John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Charles Larmore and Will Kymlicka, the book demonstrates that an adequate appreciation of the deep structural flaws of liberal theory presupposes the application of a critical philosophical methodology that has the power to reveal the systemic interconnections within and between the varieties of liberal inquiring practices. Read more...
The Mathematics of Novelty: Badiou’s Minimalist Metaphysics
by Sam Gillespie
The Mathematics of Novelty: Badiou’s Minimalist Metaphysics tackles the issue of philosophical materialism in Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou, enquiring after the source and nature of the ‘novelty’ that both philosophers of multiplicity claim to discover in the objective world. In this characteristically erudite analysis, Sam Gillespie maintains that where novelty in Deleuze is ultimately located in a Leibnizian affirmation of the world, for Badiou, the new, which is the coming-to-be of a truth, must be located exterior to the ‘situation’, i.e. in the void.
Following a lucid presentation of the central concepts of Badiou’s philosophy as they relate to the problem of novelty (mathematics as ontology, truth, the subject and the event), Gillespie identifies a significant problem in Badiou’s conception of the subject which he suggests can be answered by way of a supplementary framework derived from Lacan’s concept of anxiety. Gillespie’s intent to illuminate the relation of philosophy to the four truth procedures (art, love, science, politics) leads him to the polemical conclusion that, as a transformative rather than descriptive or reflective project, Badiou’s philosophy ultimately reclaims the power of the negative from the positivity and pure productiveness of Deleuze’s system, thereby freeing thought from the limits set by experience. © 2008 re.press

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