Ahmed the Philosopher

Alain Badiou

Published by Columbia University Press 2014

Ahmed the Philosopher

Thirty-Four Short Plays for Children and Everyone Else

Alain Badiou
Translated by: Joseph Litvak

https://doi.org/10.7312/badi16692

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Ahmed the Philosopher, readers are introduced to Alain Badiou's philosophy through a theatrical tour de force. The play presents its comic hero, the "treacherous servant" Ahmed, as a seductively quick-witted philosopher even as it casts philosophy itself as a comic performance. The comedy unfolds as a series of lessons, with each "short play" or sketch illuminating a different Badiousian concept. Yet Ahmed does more than illustrate philosophical abstractions; he embodies and vivifies the theatrical and performative aspects of philosophy, mobilizing a comic energy that exposes the emptiness and pomp of the world. Through Ahmed's example, the audience is moved to a living engagement with philosophy, discovering in it the power to break through the limits of everyday life.

An exuberantly comic introduction to the thought of one of the world’s greatest living philosophers.

Author information

Badiou Alain :

Alain Badiou (PhD, Philosophy, Ecole Normale Superieure) holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School; he also teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and the College International de Philosophie in Paris. He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works, including his masterwork, Being and Event (Continuum, 2007), and several Columbia titles, includng Plato's Republic (2013) and Jacques Lacan Past and Present (2016).Alain Badiou (PhD, Philosophy, Ecole Normale Superieure) holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School; he also teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and the College International de Philosophie in Paris. He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works, including his masterwork, Being and Event (Continuum, 2007), and several Columbia titles, includng Plato's Republic (2013) and Jacques Lacan Past and Present (2016).

Reviews

Ethan Philbrick:
Badiou's plays offer the Anglophone world not only theatrical opportunities to produce Badiou's work in English, but also — and this is especially the case for Ahmed the Philosopher — provocative pedagogical tools for bringing an experiment in 'philosophical joy' into the university classroom.

Martin Harries, University of California, Irvine, author of Forgetting Lot's Wife:
An outline of philosophy as a series of commedia dell'arte lazzi, Badiou audaciously stages his thought under the theatrical cover of the improvisations of Ahmed, a philosopher, punster, and thinker from the banlieux of Paris. These skits – slapstick, profound, scatological – insist on the political significance of Badiou's thought even at its most abstract. Joseph Litvak deftly translates these Brechtian fables into an American idiom without surrendering the peculiarities of the French context to which, as Litvak's excellent introduction and notes suggest, they very much belong. Richly stage-worthy, intellectually provocative, and at times as funny as Harry Frankfurt – really the only comparison among contemporary philosophers who comes to mind – this volume is also perhaps the best introduction to Badiou's thought available in English.

Emily Apter, New York University:
With Alain Badiou's acclaimed Ahmed the Philosopher now available in this expert English translation, a new public will discover what many in the Francophone world already knew: Badiou, premier theorist of the politics of the subject and the logics of worlds, is also a brilliant playwright! A 'red' Molière by way of Aristophanes who has invented an experimental language that combines slang and philosophical concepts in a new theatrical idiom.

Kenneth Reinhard, director, UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory:
Joseph Litvak's translation of Ahmed the Philosopher is smart, eloquent, and truly a delight to read. The play is a timely work, addressing questions of great political and social seriousness and contemporary relevance with an ironic yet never bitter eye.

Martin Puchner, author of The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy:
This is a terrific translation of an intriguing play. In it, Badiou translates the most fundamental elements of his philosophy, including his critique of multiculturalism, his theory of the event, and his ruminations on love, into a vivid, dramatic form. The text makes an excellent introduction to Badiou.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface to the English Translation of Ahmed Philosophe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Translator’s Introduction Badiou the Comedian/Ahmed the Philosopher Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Ahmed the Philosopher
List of Scenes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
1. Nothing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
2. The Event Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
3. Language Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
4. Place Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
5. Cause and Effect Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
6. Politics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
7. The Multiple Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
8. Chance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
9. Poetry Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
10. The Subject (1) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
11. The Big and the Little Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
12. Infinity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
13. Time Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
14. Truth (1) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
15. The Nation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
16. Death Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
17. The Subject (2) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
18. Morality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
19. Society Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
20. God Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
21. Truth (2) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
22. Philosophy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
23. Decision Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
24. The Same And The Other Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
25. The Family Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
26. Terror Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
27. Purposiveness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
28. Mathematics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
29. Nature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
30. The Idea Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
31. The Absurd Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
32. Repetition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
33. Origin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
34. Contradiction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
Notes

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 216

eBook

Published: April 29, 2014
ISBN: 9780231536585