Badiou and the Philosophers: Interrogating 1960s French Philosophy

✍ Scribed by Tzuchien Tho, Giuseppe Bianco (editors)

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 216
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Between 1965 and 1968, the celebrated French philosopher Alain Badiou hosted a televised series in which he interviewed some of the most influential contemporary philosophers of the period, including Michel Foucault, Paul Ricoeur, Michel Henry and Michel Serres. This book presents the first English-language translation of those interviews.
Although Badiou had yet to publish the books that would go on to mark him out as the leading thinker of his generation (Being and Event and Logics of Worlds), his unique approach and highly original ideas are present in each discussion and the interviews present his philosophical origins in a lively and engaging context. More importantly these highly accessible and entertaining interviews provide a snapshot of French philosophy in the 1960s, setting the scene for the very public and political context of philosophy in the period immediately preceding the events of May '68, where philosophy played a crucial role. The book includes a new essay by Badiou in which he reflects on the project 30 years on.

✦ Table of Contents

Editors’ and Translators’ Introduction by Giuseppe Bianco and Tzuchien Tho
1. Philosophy and its history (with Jean Hyppolite)
2. Philosophy and science (with Georges Canguilhem)
3. Philosophy and sociology (with Raymond Aron)
4. Philosophy and psychology (with Michel Foucault)
5. Philosophy and language (with Paul Ricoeur)
6. Philosophy and truth (with Georges Canguilhem, Dina Dreyfus, Michel Foucault, Jean Hyppolite, and Paul Ricoeur)
7. Philosophy and ethics (with Michel Henry)
8. Model and structure (with Michel Serres)
9. Teaching philosophy through television (with excerpts from Jean Hyppolite, Georges Canguilhem, Raymond Aron, Michel Foucault, and Paul Ricoeur. Alain Badiou by telephone and Dina Dreyfus in the studio)
Appendices:
A Short biographies of participants
B The critical value of images (Alain Badiou, 1993)