I Know There Are So Many of You

By Alain Badiou

2017

First Published

3.85

Average Rating

Number of Pages

2H26M

Audio Length

The history of humanity has only just begun. The Neolithic Revolution may have endowed us with unparalleled means of communication, subsistence, and knowledge acquisition. However, it is clear in today’s world that inequality, power hierarchies, and violence persist on a greater scale than ever before. In these two lectures, delivered to the large number of young people who gathered in the Lycée Henri-IV and the École nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris to hear him speak, Alain Badiou argues that we are still firmly rooted in the Neolithic era, subjugated by the structures of political power – property, family, and state. He calls for a second revolution to restore to each person their freedom and agency. Through an analysis of recent attempts at political organisation, including the Arab Spring, Occupy, and Nuit debout, Badiou shows that progress toward this goal will only be achieved through an emphasis on sameness, not difference. This rallying cry to the young from one of France’s most renowned radical thinkers will appeal to the many who read and follow his work, and to the millions of young people around the world who are passionate about redressing the deeply entrenched inequalities and divisions in our societies today.

Avg Rating

3.85

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

19%

4 STARS

47%

3 STARS

34%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Alain Badiou

Author · 65 books

Alain Badiou, Ph.D., born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Alain Badiou was a student at the École Normale Supérieure in the 1950s. He taught at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) from 1969 until 1999, when he returned to ENS as the Chair of the philosophy department. He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Collège International de Philosophie, on topics ranging from the great 'antiphilosophers' (Saint-Paul, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lacan) to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century. Much of Badiou's life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968 revolt in Paris. Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses communistes de France (marxistes-léninistes), he remains with Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel at the center of L'Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works. Trained as a mathematician, Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today. Influenced by Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.