Alain Badiou is arguably the most original and influential philosopher working in France today. Working against the tide of postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou revitalizes philosophy's perennial attempt to provide a systematic theory of truth.

Theoretical Writings presents, in Badiou's own words, 'the theoretical core of [his] Philosophy'. Beginning with the controversial assertion that ontology is mathematics, the chapters step the reader through his key concepts of being, subject and truth via startling re-readings of canonical figures including Spinoza, Kant and Hegel and engagements with poetry, psychoanalysis and radical politics. Theoretical Writings is an indispensable introduction to one of the great thinkers of our time.

Alain Badiou teaches at the École Normale Supérieure and at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris, France. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works including Being and Event, also published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series.

Ray Brassier is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.

Alberto Toscano is Reader in Critical Theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK.

Editor's Note
Author's Preface

Part I. Mathematics is Ontology
1. Mathematics and Philosophy
2. Philosophy and Mathematics
3. The Question of Being
4. TodayPlatonism and the Philosophy of Mathematics
5. The Being of Number
6. One, Multiple, Multiplicities
7. Spinoza¹s Closed Ontology

Part II. The Subtraction of Truth
8. The Event as Trans-Being
9. On Subtraction
10. Truth: Forcing and the Unnameable
11. Kant¹s Subtractive Ontology
12. Eight Theses on the Universal
13. Politics as a Truth Procedure

Part III. Logics of Appearance
14. Being and Appearance
15. Notes Toward a Thinking of Appearance
16. The Transcendental
17. Hegel and the Whole
18. Language, Thought, Poetry

Notes
Postface
Index