Badiou: A Subject to Truth

Rating:
Summary: Decent by Default
Review: Before briefly stating my opinions on the book, let me mention that amazon reviews, capped at 1,000 words, do not provide an optimal forum for in-depth reviews. My review has been criticized as "non-sensical" by the other reviewer on this site who posted from New York. Within the next several days I will put up a website which contains a much longer review of this book. Not only will I show that my claims are not non-sensical, I will also attempt to get it into the other reviewer's tiny mind just how the book fails. The author himself, upset at the amazon review, sent me a letter, to which I will respond in depth on the aforementioned website. If you are interested in understanding Badiou (indirectly) or how Hallward's book lacks significant philosophical worth, look for this upcoming website. For now:

Though indisputably erudite, Hallward's book is not only confusing but confused. The first four chapters seek to situate Badiou in the context of classical philosophy and current French thought, and to clarify the role of mathematics in Badiou's philosophy. The attempt to contextualize Badiou fails horribly. We find out, in particular, that Badiou aligns himself with Plato, Descartes, Sartre, etc; we find out that he rejects the linguistic turn. We find out that he is the "exact contrary" of Heidegger, but it is never explained how or why this is so. In other words, all we get is a cataloguing of Badiou's positions (as if he were a politician) without the argumentation that Badiou uses to ally himself with these positions. The majority of what we get by way of argument-reproduction is the trite phraseology that Badiou cares for strong subjectivity, clarity, universalism, etc. Ok. But why? And how does he defeat the linguistic turn? Why is thought before being?

The explanations clarifying Badiou's equating of mathematics and ontology fail abysmally through internal contradictions. The author fails at points to keep "pure being" and "what can be said of being" distinct; at one page he will call mathematics "true thought", and at another time he will say that it is valueless--it is the event which is true thought. We do not get a clear sense what the precise connection between mathematics and reality is for Badiou: at one point Hallward says that, for Badiou, mathematics as articulating Being implies that it is "prior to" the distinction between the actual and the potential; while at other moments he attempts to understand Badiou as a partial realist and partial formalist (these terms, or at least realism, presuppose the strong divide between reality and mathematics which Badiou seeks to overcome). It is of course possible to make arguments which resolve these tensions in Hallward's text. But the book makes the reader work too hard to thread something coherent from the mess that is presented.

It is only through attentive reading that these gaps and contradictions come out. A cursory reading will leave one very satisfied. But if you want to understand Badiou deeply, this book reads roughly. Unfortunately, there are few other books on the market which cover the range of Badiou that Hallward does. So i'd have to say that it is decent by default.

Rating:
Summary: Best available intro
Review: Hands down the best and most comprehensive book on Badiou to date, and probably for sometime to come. Covers just about everything the guy has written, a fair bit of it unpublished. The emphasis is more on Badiou's 'Being and Event' (1988) and subsequent work, so one weakness here is the relative lack of detailed attention paid to 'Theory of the Subject' and Badiou's other early texts. The concluding stuff on 'absolutism' is maybe a little OTT. But in general this is very solid work, and not many contemporary philosophers have been given such careful treatment so early in their reception. If you're curious about Badiou, or know something about him but are looking for some extra material, then this is an excellent place to start.

And unlike the previous reviewer, I thought the mathematical and contextual dimensions of the book were mostly helpful and about as thorough as is feasible, at least for non-specialist readers. Most of Rasheed Sabar's bizarre objections don't make any sense, or suggest that he hasn't actually read this book - for instance Hallward offers around a dozen obvious reasons why Badiou is opposed to Heidegger, and Badiou himself repeatedly affirms both formalism and realism/platonism without any contradiction or confusion, etc. If you want more info I found a much more informed & reliable review by Adrian Johnston, on the Metapsychology website (http://mentalhelp.net/books/books.php?type=de&id=1819).