A translation of one of the single most important works of recent French philosophy, Badiou's magnum opus, and a must-have for his growing following and anyone interested in contemporary Continental thought.

A leading continental philosopher from France and author of Theory of the Subject interrogates the "anti-philosophy" of Ludwig Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, arguing that his beliefs compromise truth and logic while rendering philosophy a practice of esoteric aphorisms.

Taking up Alain Badiou's project of systematizing the invariant traits of antiphilosophy as based on a radical "act" capable of discrediting and outstripping the philosopher's relation to truth, the author discusses the cases of Nietzsche's archi-political act of "breaking the history of the world into two halves" and Wittgenstein's archi-aesthetic act of "showing" that which one cannot speak of but which alone matters for the sense of the world. The difference between the antiphilosophical "act" and the philosophical treatment of an (...) "event" is best understood in terms of "suture" and "disaster," two concepts which in the process must be thoroughly revised. Finally, the author discusses the extent to which Badiou's own philosophy falls prey to, and even thrives on, an irresistible antiphilosophical element of its own. (shrink)