Badiou and Communicable Worlds

A Critical Introduction to Logics of Worlds

William Watkin

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781350214378
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350177956
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Logic in Philosophy

Logics of Worlds stands as one of the most important texts in contemporary thought. Conceived as the sequel to Alan Badiou's Being and Event, the book expands upon and elucidates the questions that were posed in the first book. As a complex theory of worlds, the text has, for the most part, been misunderstood, but in William Watkin's diligent and critical close ­reading of the book, he makes the case for Logics of Worlds being the essential Badiou book for anyone interested in existence, meaning and the potential for radical change.

For Watkin, this recasting of ontology is followed by a transformation of logic, which is not only a theory of being, but of appearing and allows Badiou to give new meaning to the object, body and relation. To do this, he explores these concepts through architecture, astronomy and renowned thinkers such as Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard. For students of French Continental philosophy, ontology and Badiou himself, Watkin's commentary on the philosopher's text provides a brilliant and incisive new interpretation of this underrated work by the leading Continental philosopher of our time.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Categories of Indifferent Communicability
• The Preface: The Invariant Exception of Truth
• Book I Formal Theory of the Subject (Meta-Physics)
• Book II Greater Logic, 1. The Transcendental
• Book III Greater Logic, 2. The Object
• Book IV Greater Logic, 3: Relation
• Book V The Four Forms of Change
• Book VI Theory of Points
• Book VII What Is a Body?
• One Conclusion: Communicability and Commutativity
• Another Conclusion: Badiou’s Politics of Communicability or Three Functions of Power Structures
• Coda
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index