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Parmenides: Ontological Figure, Being 1
- GenresPhilosophy
272 pages, Hardcover
Published May 20, 2025
3 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Alain Badiou
368 books1,018 followersAlain Badiou, Ph.D., born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Alain Badiou was a student at the École Normale Supérieure in the 1950s. He taught at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) from 1969 until 1999, when he returned to ENS as the Chair of the philosophy department. He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Collège International de Philosophie, on topics ranging from the great 'antiphilosophers' (Saint-Paul, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lacan) to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century. Much of Badiou's life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968 revolt in Paris. Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses communistes de France (marxistes-léninistes), he remains with Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel at the center of L'Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works.
Trained as a mathematician, Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today. Influenced by Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.
Trained as a mathematician, Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today. Influenced by Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.
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August 19, 2025
I loved the idea that part of what makes Parmenides the founder of philosophy is that he made the decision for philosophy. He said that we have being and non-being, that thought though essentially equivalent to being is the bridge between them and that the path of non-being, though some may try to follow it, is forbidden. The turn toward being and thought is an originating choice that takes us forward into the philosophical project. We can understand through thought that there is a concept of non-being, but we can't really think about it or talk about it. Mr. Badiou tells us that the connection between being, non-being and thought is essentially a Borromean knot- the geometrical figure on the cover of the book that consists of three rings that are interconnected in a fashion such that if any one of them is removed the other two fall apart.
I have never been a fan of ontology. I'm generally content to take existence as a given without trying to drill down deeper into it, but I do understand why, if you are going to do philosophy, ontology is in a real sense fundamental. And if, oh well, we have to do ontology, then Parmenides and Alain Badiou are better than most places as a starting point. There is some strikingly deep thinking here buried in the obscurity and the blather. Parmenides is either a genius or he is an idiot who is a master only in the sense of being a master of the obvious and the absurd, whose poem is surely a big joke. When I started this book, I was more on the idiot/joke side. Now I'm more on the genius side.
I agree with Mr. Badiou that there is a fundamental connection between math and philosophy. It's an idea that merits more exploration. But I wasn't so convinced that Parmenides was thinking the same way. Maybe he was; maybe he wasn't. And there's more than one way to do the connection. As I was reading, I was thinking that quantum physics might be an even better analogy than the Borromean knot. I was further unconvinced by the claim that Heidegger's turn to Nazism was related to his unwillingness to see the connection of Greek philosophy to math. So not everything in this book is perfect but even the imperfect parts are thought provoking.
I'm definitely going to have to read Plato's Parmenides and The Sophist now. I'd like to read Arpad Szabo's book on early Greek mathematics, but it costs $200 on Amazon and isn't available at the LA Public Library. I'm still not up to really digging into Heidegger or Hegel, who both write at a level of obscurity that makes Parmenides feel like a nursery rhyme.
I have never been a fan of ontology. I'm generally content to take existence as a given without trying to drill down deeper into it, but I do understand why, if you are going to do philosophy, ontology is in a real sense fundamental. And if, oh well, we have to do ontology, then Parmenides and Alain Badiou are better than most places as a starting point. There is some strikingly deep thinking here buried in the obscurity and the blather. Parmenides is either a genius or he is an idiot who is a master only in the sense of being a master of the obvious and the absurd, whose poem is surely a big joke. When I started this book, I was more on the idiot/joke side. Now I'm more on the genius side.
I agree with Mr. Badiou that there is a fundamental connection between math and philosophy. It's an idea that merits more exploration. But I wasn't so convinced that Parmenides was thinking the same way. Maybe he was; maybe he wasn't. And there's more than one way to do the connection. As I was reading, I was thinking that quantum physics might be an even better analogy than the Borromean knot. I was further unconvinced by the claim that Heidegger's turn to Nazism was related to his unwillingness to see the connection of Greek philosophy to math. So not everything in this book is perfect but even the imperfect parts are thought provoking.
I'm definitely going to have to read Plato's Parmenides and The Sophist now. I'd like to read Arpad Szabo's book on early Greek mathematics, but it costs $200 on Amazon and isn't available at the LA Public Library. I'm still not up to really digging into Heidegger or Hegel, who both write at a level of obscurity that makes Parmenides feel like a nursery rhyme.
Displaying 1 of 1 review