Loyola University Chicago

Department of Philosophy

PHIL 436: Contemporary French Philosophy

Catalog Description

Selected texts of Derrida, Levinas, Foucault, Lyotard, Lacan, Deleuze, and others are discussed.


PHIL 436: Contemporary French Philosophy - Badiou's Logics of Worlds

Dr. Andrew Cutrofello

In this seminar we will study Alain Badiou's monumental Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II. Some familiarity with Badiou's earlier book, Being and Event, is highly desirable though not required. In the first book, Badiou develops an ontological account of the nature of events -- not ordinary happenings, but extraordinary occurrences that "change everything." In Logics of Worlds he extends and corrects this picture by presenting a transcendental account of the way events appear. Our aim will be to understand and assess this model. We will occasionally refer to historical and contemporary touchstones such as Plato's Parmenides, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel's Science of Logic, Nelson Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking, David Lewis's On the Plurality of Worlds, and Timothy Williamson's Modal Logic as Metaphysics. We will also discuss examples pertaining to Badiou's four "generic procedures": politics, science, art, and love.