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.

"Badiou's approach is unique, rigorous, and interesting..." - Jill Stauffer, Theory & Event "[Badiou] develops, in the central passages of the book, his central notions of situations and events, and devotes many, often arresting pages to elucidating the mechanism by which the latter productively disrupt the former. The structure of experience is not merely open to change, pregnant with contingent revolution. This is a nice model and Badiou deploys it across a broad front." - Hugh Lawson-Tancred for The Liberal "A variety of scholars, including philosophers, mathematicians, and intellectual historians, would do well to examine this volume and seek in it threads that warrant continued examination in an era of nanotechnology and political terrorism."- Francisca Goldsmith, Library Journal, April 1, 2006 Library Journal "Two things are new in this much-anticipated translationof Badiou: the language and the preface. Both are instructive. TranslatorOliver Feltham stayed 'as close as possible to Badiou's syntax' but 'at theprice of losing fluidity.' Thankfully, Badiou addresses such dissonance and hislarger philosophical goals in an indispensable new preface - without which the 37weighty meditations might be lost to the layperson. Recommended..." - Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly

Alain Badiou teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and at the College International de Philosophie in Paris, France. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works. Oliver Feltham is Associate Professor of Philosophyat the American University of Paris, France.

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. MallarmeBook 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. HolderlinBook 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. LeibnizBook 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 namesBook VIII Forcing: Truth and the Subject. Beyond Lacan 35. Theory of the subject 36. Forcing: from the indiscernible to the undecidable 37. Descartes / LacanAnnexes Appendixes Notes Dictionary