Editors’ Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminars of Alain Badiou
1. On October 19, 2015, in a session from his final seminar on “The Immanence of Truths,” Badiou describes two distinct but equivalent paths of entry into his work: the first “systematic approach” involves reading, preferably in order, his three or four great works (depending on whether one counts Theory of the Subject as part of that sequence or as the prelude to a trilogy). The second “methodical” but not systematic path [le voyage ordonné] involves beginning with his Manifesto for Philosophy and Second Manifesto for Philosophy, to establish the fundamental structure, ligatures, and knots of his thought, followed by, in no particular order, the seminars—now expected to extend to twenty volumes.
Introduction to the Seminar on Malebranche
1. Nicolas Malebranche, Treatise on Nature and Grace, trans. with an introduction and notes by Patrick Riley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). [All notes are the translator’s.]
2. Alain Badiou, L’Un. Descartes, Kant, Platon. 1983–1984 (Paris: Fayard, 2016).
3. Alain Badiou, The Seminar: Lacan (Antiphilosophy 3), 1994–1995, trans. Susan Spitzer and Kenneth Reinhard and introduction by Kenneth Reinhard (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).
4. Alain Badiou, Parménide. L’être 1—Figure ontologique. 1985–1986 (Paris: Fayard, 2014).
5. Alain Badiou, Heidegger. L’être 3—Figure du retrait. 1986–1987 (Paris: Fayard, 2015).
6. Alain Badiou. L’Infini. Aristote, Spinoza, Hegel. 1984–1985 (Paris: Fayard, 2016).
7. Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject, trans. Bruno Bosteels (London: Continuum, 2009); Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005).
8. See, for example, Being and Event, 149: “This infinity—once subtracted from the empire of the one, and therefore in default of any ontology of Presence—proliferates beyond everything tolerated by representation, and designates—by a memorable inversion of the anterior age of thought—the finite itself as being the exception.”
9. Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992). Badiou composed a long review article on Deleuze’s book, now collected in Alain Badiou, The Adventure of French Philosophy, trans. Bruno Bosteels (London: Verso, 2012), 241–68. Badiou devoted an important chapter to Leibniz and the “indiscernible” in his Being and Event, 315–23.
10. Alain Badiou, Parménide, 8.
11. See The Adventure of French Philosophy, in particular the essays “The Fascism of the Potato” and “An Angel has Passed.”
12. Bruno Bosteels has written extensively and insightfully on Badiou’s work produced between 1969 and 1982, and remains the foremost authority on this period of Badiou’s thought.
13. Badiou, Being and Event, 212.
14. Malebranche, Treatise on Nature and Grace, Discourse 1, 112. Henceforward cited as TNG.
15. This expression will play a key role in Being and Event’s conceptuality. See Being and Event, 175ff.
16. Malebranche, Traité de la nature et de la grâce, Discourse 2.17, “Addition,” in Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, ed. Antoine-Eugène Genoude and Henri de Lourdoueix (Paris: Sapia, 1837), 319.
17. TNG, Discourse 2.17, 144.
18. Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (London: Verso, 2001), 48.
About the 1986 Seminar on Malebranche
1. Alain Badiou, Le Séminaire, l’Un. Descartes, Platon, Kant. 1983–1984 (Paris: Fayard, 2016). [All notes are those of the translator.]
2. Alain Badiou, Le Séminaire, Parménide. L’être I—Figure ontologique. 1985–1986 (Paris: Fayard, 2014).
3. Alain Badiou, Le Séminaire, Heidegger. L’être 3—Figure du retrait. 1986–1987 (Paris: Fayard, 2014).
4. Martial Gueroult. Malebranche (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1955–59), 3 vols.
Session 1
1. Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth, ed. and trans. Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
2. Malebranche, The Search After Truth, 115–17.
3. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2004), 133.
4. Yves Marie André, La vie du R. P. Malebranche, prêtre de l’Oratoire: avec l’histoire de ses ouvrages (Geneva: Slatkine reprints, 1970).
5. All references to Malebranche’s works in French will be to Nicolas Malebranche, Oeuvres completes de Malebranche, 2 vols., ed. Antoine-Eugène Genoude and Henri de Lourdoueix (Paris: Sapia, 1837).
6. Malebranche, Discourse 1.1, in Treatise on Nature and Grace, trans. with an introduction and notes by Patrick Riley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 112.
7. Martial Guéroult, Malebranche, 3 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1955–59).
Session 2
1. Malebranche, Traité de la nature et de la grâce, Discours 2.17, “Addition,” in Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols., ed. Antoine-Eugène Genoude and Henri de Lourdoueix (Paris: Sapia, 1837), 2:319.
2. Malebranche, Treatise on Nature and Grace, trans. Patrick Riley (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), Discourse 2.55, 164.
3. This passage from Bossuet’s “Oraison funèbre de Marie-Thérèse” is cited and translated by Patrick Riley in his “Introduction” to Treatise on Nature and Grace, 70.
4. Madame de Sévigné, Lettres, tome 2, ed. Emile Gérard-Gailly (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 798 [my translation].
5. Badiou here paraphrases the first proposition of Malebranche’s Treatise on Nature and Grace: “God…cannot have had any other plan in the creation of the world than the establishment of his Church,” TNG, Discourse 1.1, 112.
1. Nicolas Malebranche, Oeuvres complètes, tome 2, ed. Antoine-Eugène Genoude and Henri de Lourdoueix (Paris: Sapia, 1837), 297. These lines are drawn from an “addition” to the “Avertissement” to Malebranche’s Treatise that is not reproduced in Patrick Riley’s English translation.
2. Malebranche, Treatise on Nature and Grace, trans. with an introduction and notes by Patrick Riley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), Discourse 1.1, 112. Hereafter cited as TNG.
3. TNG, Discourse 1.13, 116.
4. TNG, Discourse 1.14, 116.
5. TNG, Discourse 1.14, 116.
6. TNG, Discourse 1.22, 119–20.
7. TNG, Discourse 1.2, 112.
8. Malebranche, Oeuvres complètes, Discours 1.1, “Addition,” 2:297.
Session 4
1. TNG, Discourse 1,3, “Addition”; Oeuvres complètes, 2:299.
2. TNG, Discourse 1.3, “Addition”; Discours 1.3, 2:299.
3. Discours 1.3, 2:305: “God has but two laws: order, which is his inviolable law…” [my translation]. This remark is found in the “Addition” to Treatise 1.20, not included in the published English version of the text.
Session 5
1. TNG, Discourse 1.24, 121.
2. TNG, Discourse 2.8, 141.
3. TNG, Discourse 1.30, 124.
4. TNG, Discourse 1.37, 126.
5. Discourse 1.38, “Addition”; Oeuvres complètes, 2: 309.
6. Discourse 1.39, “Addition”; Oeuvres complètes, 2: 309.
7. TNG, Discourse 1.41, 128. [Only the phrase “Dieu défait et refait sans cesse” appears in the English translation—Tr.]
8. TNG, Discourse 1.44, 129–30.
9. TNG, Discourse 2.6, 140–41.
1. TNG, Discourse 2.4, 140.
3. TNG, Discourse 2.6, 140.
4. TNG, Discourse 2.11, 142.
7. TNG, Discourse 2.17, 144.
8. TNG, Discourse 2.16, 144.
9. TNG, Discourse 2.17, “Addition,” Oeuvres complètes, 2:319.
10. TNG, Discourse 2.17, “Addition,” Oeuvres complètes, 2:322.
Session 7
1. TNG, Discourse 3.1, 169–70.
3. TNG, Discourse 3.2, 170.
5. TNG, Discourse 3.3, 170.
6. TNG, Discourse 3.8, 173.
7. TNG, Discourse 3.24, 184.