Table of Contents

Editor's Preface
Alain Badiou
Thinking the Event
Thesis 1: Thought is the proper medium of the universal.
Thesis 2: Every universal is singular, or is a singularity.
Thesis 3: Every universal originates in an event, and the event is intransitive to the particularity of the situation.
Thesis 4: A universal initially presents itself as a decision about an undecidable.
Thesis 5: The universal has an implicative form.
Thesis 6: The universal is univocal.
Thesis 7: Every universal singularity remains incompletable or open.
Thesis 8: Universality is nothing other than the faithful construction of an infinite generic multiple.
Slavoj ?i?ek
‘Philosophy is not a dialogue'
Discussion

About the Author

Alain Badiou, L'École normale superieure, Paris and Slavoj Zizek, Institute of Sociology, Ljubljana in Slovenia

Reviews

"The book is an incisive critique of the role of the intellectual within the areas of violence and hunger, love and death. I am sure it will inspire many to go further into the writings of these two very radical philosophers whose intellectual polemics offer a compelling conversation on contemporary visions of resistance to arbitrary state power and violence through a revitalised view of philosophy's place in the world today." Spectrum "How can philosophy be restored to its true vocation as a form of ethical and political intervention? In this lively, accessible debate two of Europe's most challenging thinkers present their answers to this question - and discover how much agreement as well as discord there is between them." Peter Dews, University of Essex