Ray Brassier: Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (2007)

Nihilism is not an affliction to be overcome, but a vector of intellectual discovery which philosophy should try to push to its ultimate conclusion. Rather than trying to safeguard the experience of meaning-construed as the defining feature of human existence-from the incursions of science, philosophy should strive to demystify it and deploy its considerable speculative resources to facilitate science’s labor of disenchantment. Disregarding the orthodox division between analytic and continental traditions, this book tries to forge a link between revisionary naturalism in Anglo-American philosophy and speculative realism in contemporary French philosophy.

Publisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2007
ISBN 0230522041, 9780230522046
275 pages

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Quentin Meillassoux: After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (2006–) [FR, EN, IT, ES, CR]

“Quentin Meillassoux’s debut makes an original contribution to contemporary French philosophy and is set to have a significant impact on the future of continental philosophy. Written in a style that marries clarity of expression with argumentative rigour, After Finitude provides readings of the history of philosophy and sets out a critique of the unavowed fideism at the heart of post-Kantian philosophy.

The centrality of argument in Meillassoux’s writing should appeal to analytic as well as continental philosophers, while his critique of fideism will be of interest to anyone preoccupied by the relation between philosophy, theology and religion.

Meillassoux introduces a novel philosophical alternative to the forced choice between dogmatism and critique. After Finitude proposes a new alliance between philosophy and science and calls for an unequivocal halt to the return of religiosity in contemporary philosophical discourse.”

Publisher Seuil, 2006
ISBN 2020847426

English edition
Preface by Alain Badiou
Translated by Ray Brassier
Publisher Continuum, 2008
ISBN 0826496741, 9780826496744
148 pages

Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

Après la finitude: essai sur la nécessité de la contingence (French, 2006, 6 MB, updated on 2021-3-15)
After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (English, 2008, updated on 2020-5-26)
Dopo la finitudine: saggio sulla necessità della contingenza (Italian, trans. Massimiliano Sandri, 2012, added on 2021-3-15)
Después de la finitud: ensayo sobre la necesidad de la contingencia (Spanish, trans. Margarita Martinez, 2015, 5 MB, added on 2021-3-15)
Poslije konačnosti: esej o nužnosti kontingencije (Croatian, trans. Vladimir Šeput, 2016, added on 2020-5-26)

Alain Badiou: Deleuze: The Clamor of Being (1997–)

“A major new voice from France offers a provocative reevaluation of Deleuze’s philosophy.

The works of Gilles Deleuze–on cinema, literature, painting, and philosophy–have made him one of the most widely read thinkers of his generation. This compact critical volume is not only a powerful reappraisal of Deleuze’s thought, but also the first major work by Alain Badiou available in English. Badiou compellingly redefines “Deleuzian,” throwing down the gauntlet in the battle over the very meaning of Deleuze’s legacy.

For those who view Deleuze as the apostle of desire, flux, and multiplicity, Badiou’s book is a deliberate provocation. Through a deep philosophical engagement with his writings, Badiou contends that Deleuze is not the Dionysian thinker of becoming he took himself to be; on the contrary, he is an ascetic philosopher of Being and Oneness. Deleuze’s self-declared anti-Platonism fails–and that, in Badiou’s view, may ultimately be to his credit. “Perhaps it is not Platonism that has to be overturned,” Badiou writes, “but the anti-Platonism taken as evident throughout this entire century.”

This volume draws on a five-year correspondence undertaken by Badiou and Deleuze near the end of Deleuze’s life, when the two put aside long-standing political and philosophical differences to exchange ideas about similar problems in their work. Badiou’s incomparably attentive readings of key Deleuzian concepts radically revise reigning interpretations, offering new insights to even the veteran Deleuze reader and serving as an entrée to the controversial notion of a “restoration” of Plato advocated by Badiou—in his own right one of the most original figures in postwar French philosophy.

The result is a critical tour de force that repositions Deleuze, one of the most important thinkers of our time, and introduces Badiou to English-speaking readers.”

First published as Deleuze: la clameur de l’être, Hachette, Paris, 1997.

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2000
Theory Out of Bounds series, 16
ISBN 0816631409, 9780816631407
143 pages

Publisher

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