Ethics and aesthetics in the philosophy of Alain Badiou

Abstract

The supposed impossibility of achieving a form of rational agency for action is the prevailing critique against contemporary theories of representaion. Alain Badiou’s philosophy appears to solve this problem by assigning a subject-form and not a substantial subject as such as rational agency and by filling in the space of truth left empty by the declaration of the end of philosophy with a new universality of truth subject to temporality. Yet this apparent duality of form and content pertaining to subjectivity, and the manner in which time and history are constructed in Badiou’s theory of truth signal the return of a certain transcendence, and the very abolishment of the time which appears to be thus constructed. This thesis aims to make a critical discussion on Alain Badiou’s philosophy through his fifteen theses on art, as the return of classical philosophy and to rise the ethical stakes involved in putting forth a philosophy based upon truth.