Badiou and Indifferent Being: A Critical Introduction to Being and Event

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The first critical work to attempt the mammoth undertaking of reading Badious Being and Event as part of a sequence has often surprising, occasionally controversial results. Looking back on its publication Badiou declared: I had inscribed my name in the history of philosophy. Later he was brave enough to admit that this inscription needed correction. The central elements of Badious philosophy only make sense when Being and Event is read through the corrective prism of its sequel, Logics of Worlds, published nearly twenty years later. At the same time as presenting the only complete overview of Badious philosophical project, this book is also the first to draw out the central component of Badious ontology: indifference. Concentrating on its use across the core elements Being and Eventthe void, the multiple, the set and the eventWatkin demonstrates that no account of Badious ontology is complete unless it accepts that Badious philosophy is primarily a presentation of indifferent being. Badiou and Indifferent Being provides a detailed and lively section by section reading of Badious foundational work. It is a seminal source text for all Badiou readers.

Reviews

A remarkable achievement and a distinctive contribution to our knowledge of Badious thought. For all the skill, and sometimes brilliance, of previous explications, no-one had quite captured the tenor, the character or (a heretical word, perhaps) the feel of Badious ontology; not, at least, in language. * Journal of Badiou Studies *
Watkins is a very important book. Much of the commentary on Badiou has tended to move his politics to the centre of his thought. With meticulousness, clarity and rigour, Watkin works rather through Badious philosophization of mathematics, liberating the philosopher qua philosopher, the thinker whose awesome achievement has been to recast and transform our understanding of a major set of traditional philosophical terms. This book returns us to what is most gripping about Badiou, his stark, courageous and deeply uncontemporary asceticism. -- Andrew Gibson, former Research Professor of Modern Literature and Theory, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

Author Bio

William Watkin is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Philosophy at Brunel University, UK.