About Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (; French: [alɛ̃ badju]; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard. Badiou's work is heavily informed by philosophical applications of mathematics, in particular set theory and category theory. Badiou's "Being and Event" project considers the concepts of being, truth, event and the subject defined by a rejection of linguistic relativism seen as typical of postwar French thought. Unlike his peers, Badiou believes in the idea of universalism and truth. His work is notable for his widespread applications of various conceptions of indifference. Badiou has been involved in a number of political organisations, and regularly comments on political events. Badiou argues for a return of communism as a political force. == Biography == Badiou is the son of the mathematician Raymond Badiou (1905–1996), who was a member of the Resistance in France during World War II. Alain Badiou was a student at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and then the École Normale Supérieure (1955–1960). In 1960, he wrote his diplôme d'études supérieures thesis (roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) on Spinoza under Georges Canguilhem (the topic was "Structures of Demonstration in the First Two Books of Spinoza's Ethics", "Structures démonstratives dans les deux premiers livres de l'Éthique de Spinoza"). He taught at the lycée in Reims from 1963 where he became a close friend of fellow playwright (and philosopher) François Regnault, and published two novels before moving first to the faculty of letters of the University of Reims (the collège littéraire universitaire) and then to the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) in 1969.
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