What's Left of Philosophy 141 TEASER | Badiou: Political Subjects and Infinite Truths
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Sep 4, 2026 A lively exploration of Alain Badiou’s vision of politics as a site where truths and transformative events emerge. The discussion moves through radical equality, insurrection against state hierarchies, Nazism and totalitarianism, Saint Paul’s revolutionary faith, and the role of love, mathematics, infinity, and Platonism in shaping political subjects.
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Badiou Makes Equality Politics’ شرط
- Badiou treats radical equality as the condition of genuine political truth because everyone can think and be traversed by truth.
- The Haitian, Russian, and 1848 revolutions demanded egalitarian participation rather than mere inclusion within existing institutions.
Badiou Rejects Arendt’s Anti-Politics Argument
- Hannah Arendt treats Nazism as anti-political because totalitarianism suppresses plurality, while Badiou explicitly calls it a politics.
- This disagreement reveals a deeper dispute over whether Marxist or totalitarian politics is inherently anti-democratic and anti-political.
The Moral Risk In Badiou’s Equality
- Badiou’s egalitarianism risks appearing moralistic, as though equality were simply an intuition that identifies authentic political events.
- The discussion contrasts this with Bhaskar Sankara’s definition of socialism as being an egalitarian.