Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil

by Alain Badiou, Peter Hallward (Translator)

Overview

Alain Badiou, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy, shows how our prevailing ethical principles serve ultimately to reinforce an ideology of the status quo and fail to provide a framework for an effective understanding of the concept of evil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781680186
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	01/15/2013
Series:	Radical Thinkers
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Alain Badiou teaches philosophy at the École normale supérieure and the Collège international de philosophie in Paris. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works, including Theory of the Subject, Being and Event, Manifesto for Philosophy, and Gilles Deleuze. His recent books include The Meaning of Sarkozy, Ethics, Metapolitics, Polemics, The Communist Hypothesis, Five Lessons on Wagner, and Wittgenstein’s Anti-Philosophy.

Peter Hallward teaches at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London. He is the author of several books including Absolutely Postcolonial, Badiou: A Subject to Truth, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation, and Damming the Flood.

Table of Contents

	Translator's Introduction	vii
	Notes on the Translation	xxxvi
	Preface to the English Edition	liii
	Introduction	1
1	Does Man Exist?	4
2	Does the Other Exist?	18
3	Ethics as a Figure of Nihilism	30
4	The Ethic of Truths	40
5	The Problem of Evil	58
	Conclusion	90
Appendix	Politics and Philosophy: An Interview with Alain Badiou	95
	Bibliography	145
	Index	163

Editorial Reviews

This is a fiery little book.”—Choice

“His reasoning is powerful and surprising, making some of the best writing in current European philosophy, and his credentials are impeccable.”—Amazon.com

“Badiou is at his strongest in pointing to the inconsistencies of a facile multiculturalism, the pluralism of the food court and the shopping mall, which wilts in the face of any genuine expression of cultural hostility to liberal values.”—Radical Philosophy

“His lively, stimulating and sometimes completely batty book is an attempt to make us think differently about what matters to us ... it is hard not to feel some sympathy for Badiou’s intuition that ‘morality’, ‘evil’ and indeed much of our standard moral vocabulary often serve as almost deliberate disguises for mediocre policy-making, social complacency and a general lack of adventurousness about life”—Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

His lively, stimulating and sometimes completely batty book is an attempt to make us think differently about what matters to us ... it is hard not to feel some sympathy for Badiou's intuition that 'morality', 'evil' and indeed much of our standard moral vocabulary often serve as almost deliberate disguises for mediocre policy-making, social complacency and a general lack of adventurousness about life

Times Literary Supplement

Badiou is at his strongest in pointing to the inconsistencies of a facile multiculturalism, the pluralism of the food court and the shopping mall, which wilts in the face of any genuine expression of cultural hostility to liberal values.

Radical Philosophy

This is a fiery little book.

Choice

[A]ims at the very heart of politically correct 'radical' intellectuals,undermining the foundations of their very mode of life!

Slavoj Zizek