Table of Contents

Editors’ Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminars of Alain Badiou
Author’s General Preface to the English Edition of the Seminars of Alain Badiou
Introduction to Alain Badiou’s seminar The One (1983–1984) (Kenneth Reinhard)
About the 1983–1984 Seminar
Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
Session 8
Session 9
Session 10
Session 11
Session 12
Session 13
Session 14
Session 15
Session 16
Notes
Index

About the Author

Alain Badiou is emeritus professor of philosophy at the École normale supérieure in Paris. His seminars published by Columbia University Press include Lacan (2018), Malebranche (2019), and Images of the Present Time (2023).

Jacques Lezra is professor and chair of Hispanic studies at the University of California, Riverside.

Susan Spitzer is a frequent translator of Badiou’s works.

Kenneth Reinhard is research professor of comparative literature and English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews

Alain Badiou’s seminars are essential to understanding the evolution of his thought. This much-awaited collection of Badiou’s teachings enables the English-speaking world to experience the ‘true heart’ of his philosophy.
*Sigi Jöttkandt, author of First Love: A Phenomenology of the One*

The publication of Alain Badiou’s seminar The One is a major event for the philosopher of the event. When reading it, one has a sense of thinking alongside a great thinker as he formulates one of his central ideas—the distinction between the One and the count-as-one. Come to this seminar for Badiou’s most in-depth analysis of how the One functions and leave with the incredible bonus of magisterial interpretations of Descartes, Plato, and Kant. This is Badiou at his very best and at his most accessible. The perfect introduction to his foundational work Being and Event.
*Todd McGowan, author of Enjoyment Right & Left*

Badiou’s seminar is a space of conceptual experimentation and system creation, bringing together rigorous critique of contemporary ideology with innovative returns to major figures from the history of philosophy. This book, which also provides incisive introductory material, demonstrates the power of Badiou’s method. His readings of Descartes, Plato, and Kant not only are genuinely inventive, they also attest to the creation of one of the most significant philosophical endeavors of our era, Badiou’s own.
*Frank Ruda, author of For Badiou: Idealism without Idealism*

In this daring and challenging work, Badiou, one of the most fascinating and intellectually provocative thinkers of our time, provides a remarkable examination of the impasses of the metaphysics of the One in Descartes, Plato, and Kant. Badiou adapts their grappling with the equivalence of being and one to his own project of thinking the proper object of philosophy: the triad of events, truths, and subjects setting out from the idea that being is detached from the One. Knitting together mathematics and philosophy, Badiou makes a compelling demand for what he calls The Critique of Evental Reason.
*Jelica Šumič Riha, Institute of Philosophy, ZRC SAZU, Slovenia*

Badiou’s lectures on Descartes, Plato, and Kant are fascinating as providing a glimpse into the gestation of his original thought in and through his engagement with these crucial predecessors. At the same time, his unusual readings can be lively, gripping, rich in stimulating asides and provocative allusions to other philosophers. In short, this seminar stands on its own and can be immensely appreciated quite independently of its role in Badiou’s philosophical development, or even by one who is coming to Badiou for the first time.
*Marx & Philosophy Review of Books*

Will interest all readers of postwar French thought, not least because it contributes to the Anglo-American re-evaluation of that period as momentous in the history of philosophy and intellectual history. And as a thoroughgoing exploration of these three philosophers’ work, it’s a remarkable achievement.
*H-France*

Students of Badiou will certainly want to acquaint themselves with it, but generally anyone interested in contemporary French philosophy, especially metaphysics, will find it considerably worthwhile.
*Choice*