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    In Praise of Love
    In Praise of Love
    In Praise of Love
    Ebook70 pages59 minutes

    In Praise of Love

    By Alain Badiou, Nicolas Truong and Peter Bush

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    About this ebook

    The renowned French philosopher’s “ode to love’s power to unite in the face of eternity, and its optimism in the face of pain” (Publishers Weekly).
     
    In a world rife with consumerism, where online dating promises risk-free romance and love is all too often seen as a mere variant of desire and hedonism, Alain Badiou believes that love is under threat. Taking to heart Rimbaud’s famous line “love needs reinventing,” In Praise of Love is the celebrated French intellectual’s passionate treatise in defense of love.
     
    For Badiou, love is an existential project, a constantly unfolding quest for truth. This quest begins with the chance encounter, an event that forever changes two individuals, challenging them “to see the world from the point of view of two rather than one.” This, Badiou believes, is love’s most essential transforming power.
     
    Through thought-provoking dialogue edited from a conversation between Badiou and Truong, a vibrant cast of thinkers are invoked: Kierkegaard, Plato, de Beauvoir, Proust, and more, create a new narrative of love in the face of twenty-first-century modernity. Moving, zealous, and wise, Badiou’s “paean to the anticapitalist, antiessentialist, unifying power of love” urges us not to fear it but to see it as a magnificent undertaking that compels us to explore others and to move away from an obsession with ourselves (Publishers Weekly).
     
    “Finally, the cure for the pornographic, utilitarian exchange of favors to which love has been reduced in America. Alain Badiou is our philosopher of love.” —Simon Critchley, author of The Faith of the Faithless
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 27, 2012
    ISBN9781595588890
    In Praise of Love
    Author

    Alain Badiou

    Alex Kirstukas has published and presented on Verne's work for both academic and popular audiences and is a trustee of the North American Jules Verne Society as well as the editor of its peer-reviewed publication Extraordinary Voyages. Kirstukas' first published translation was Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne and published by the Wesleyan University Press in 2017.

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      Book preview

      In Praise of Love - Alain Badiou

      INTRODUCTION

      A philosopher must never forget the countless situations in life when he is no different from anyone else. If he does, theatrical tradition, particularly comedy, will rudely remind him of that fact. There is, after all, a stock stage character, the philosopher in love, whose Stoic wisdom and well-rehearsed distrust of passion evaporate in their entirety the moment a dazzlingly beautiful woman sweeps into the room and blows him away forever.

      I realised this a long time ago. I have suggested that a philosopher (and this neutral noun naturally encompasses both male and female varieties) must be an accomplished scientist, an amateur poet and a political activist, but also has to accept that the realm of thought is never sealed off from the violent onslaughts of love. Philosophy requires its practitioners of either gender to assume the roles of savant, artist, activist and lover. I have called them the four conditions of philosophy.

      That was why I immediately agreed when Nicolas Truong invited me to join him in conversation in the Theatre of Ideas series he organises at the Avignon Festival. It looked as if it would be a delicious cocktail of theatre, crowds, conversation, love and philosophy. Besides, it was going to be held on 14 July (2008) and I was excited by the idea of celebrating love, a cosmopolitan, subversive, sexual energy that transgresses frontiers and social status at a time normally devoted to the Army, the Nation and the State.

      Let’s now blow our own trumpet a little: Nicolas asked the questions, and I performed the ambiguous role of a philosopher of love, we worked well together and it was a success. No doubt about it: it was a hit.

      The text you are about to read is an elaboration of what we said on the day. It retains the spontaneous rhythm, clarity and energy but is more rounded and incisive. I believe that, from start to finish, it is what it says it is: praise of love, sung by a philosopher who thinks, like Plato, whom I quote: Anyone who doesn’t take love as a starting point will never understand the nature of philosophy. So here you have Alain Badiou, the philosopher lover, tussling with Nicolas Truong, a wise interrogator, a philosopher, and, of course, a lover.

      I

      LOVE UNDER THREAT

      In The Meaning of Sarkozy, a book that has subsequently become famous, you argue that we must re-invent love but also quite simply defend it, because it faces threats from all sides. In what ways is it threatened? How, in your view, have the arranged marriages of yesteryear been re-packaged in the new clothes of today? I believe that recent publicity for a dating website has particularly struck you. . .

      That’s right, Paris is plastered with posters for the Meetic internet dating-site, whose ads I find really disturbing. I could mention a number of slogans its hype uses. The first misappropriates the title of Marivaux’s play, The Game of Love and Chance, Get love without chance! And then another says: Be in love without falling in love! No raptures, right? Then: Get perfect love without suffering! And all thanks to the Meetic dating-site. . . that offers into the bargain – and the notion takes my breath away – coaching in love. So they supply you with a trainer who will prepare you to face the test.

      I believe this hype reflects a safety-first concept of love. It is love comprehensively insured against all risks: you will have love, but will have assessed the prospective relationship so thoroughly, will have selected your partner so carefully by searching online – by obtaining, of course, a photo, details of his or her tastes, date of birth, horoscope sign, etc. – and putting it all in the mix you can tell yourself: This is a risk-free option! That’s their pitch and it’s fascinating that the ad campaign should adopt it. Clearly, inasmuch as love is a pleasure almost everyone is looking for, the thing that gives meaning and intensity to almost everyone’s life, I am convinced that love cannot be a gift given on the basis of a complete lack of risk. The Meetic approach reminds me of the propaganda of the American army when promoting the idea of smart bombs and zero dead wars.

      So do you think there is a connection between zero dead wars and zero risk love, in the same way that sociologists, Richard Sennett and Zygmunt Bauman, see an analogy between the No commitment to you that finance capitalism tells the casual worker to the No commitment for my part the lover tells his or her partner as they float in a world where relationships are made

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