Being and Event

A work on set theory - the cornerstone of the author's whole philosophy. This book includes a series of analyses of such key figures as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Rousseau, and Lacan. It develops the basis for a history of philosophy rivalling those of Heidegger and Deleuze in its depth.

This English language edition includes a new preface, written especially for this translation. "Being and Event" is essential reading for Badiou's considerable following and anyone interested in contemporary Continental philosophy.

New Author's Preface
Translator's Preface
Introduction. Book I Being: Multiple and Void. Plato/Cantor
1. The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology
2. Plato
3. Theory of the Pure Multiple: paradoxes and critical decision Technical Note: the conventions of writing
4. The Void: Proper name of being
5. The Mark AE
6. Aristotle
Book II Being: Excess, State of the Situation, One/Multiple, Whole/Parts, or I/i?
7. The Point of Excess
8. The State, or Metastructure, and the Typology of Being (normality, singularity, excrescence)
9. The State of the Historico-social Situation
10. Spinoza
Book III Being: Nature and Infinity. Heidegger/Galileo
11. Nature: Poem or matheme?
12. The Ontological schema of Natural Multiples and the Non-existence of Nature
13. Infinity: the other, the rule and the Other
14. The Ontological Decision: 'There is some infinity in natural multiples'
15. Hegel
Book IV The Event: History and Ultra-one
16. Evental Sites and Historical Situations
17. The Matheme of the Event
18. Being's Prohibition of the Event
19. Mallarme
Book V The Event: Intervention and Fidelity. Pascal/Choice
Holderlin/Deduction
20. The Intervention: Illegal choice of a name for the event, logic of the two, temporal foundation
21. Pascal
22. The Form-multiple of Intervention: is there a being of choice?
23. Fidelity, Connection
24. Deduction as operator of ontological fidelity
25. Holderlin
Book VI Quantity and Knowledge. The discernable (or constructible): Leibniz/Godel
26. The concept of quantity and the impasse of ontology
27. Ontological destiny of orientation within thought
28. Constructivist thought and the knowledge of being
29. The folding of being and the sovereignty of language
30. Leibniz
Book VII The Generic: indiscernible and truth.
The event - P.J.Cohen
31. The Thought of the Generic and Being in Truth
32. Rousseau
33. The Matheme of the Indiscernible: P.J.Cohen's strategy
34. The existence of the indiscernible: the power of the names
Book VIII Forcing: Truth and the Subject. Beyond Lacan
35. Theory of the subject
36. Forcing: from the indiscernible to the undecidable
37. Descartes / Lacan
Annexes
Appendixes
Notes
Dictionary.