In Praise Of Love
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A new century, new threats to love . . .
Love without risks is like war without deaths - but, today, love is threatened by an alliance of liberalism and hedonism. Caught between consumerism and casual sexual encounters devoid of passion, love - without the key ingredient of chance - is in danger of withering on the vine.
In In Praise of Love, Alain Badiou takes on contemporary 'dating agency' conceptions of love that come complete with zero-risk insurance - like US zero-casualty bombs. He develops a new take on love that sees it as an adventure, and an opportunity for re-invention, in a constant exploration of otherness and difference that leads the individual out of an obsession with identity and self.
Liberal, libertine and libertarian reductions of love to instant pleasure and non-commitment bite the dust as Badiou invokes a supporting cast of thinkers from Plato to Lacan via Karl Marx to form a new narrative of romance, relationships and sex - a narrative that does not fear love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this free-ranging, thought-provoking dialogue, French intellectual, philosopher, and playwright Badiou sings a paean to the anticapitalist, antiessentialist, unifying power of love. Edited from a conversation between Badiou and Truong at the Avignon Festival's Theatre of Ideas, Badiou's ruminations center on some of the themes addressed in his previous work, The Meaning of Sarkozy. Specifically, Badiou's discussion of love is rooted in his fight against "zero risk" economic theories of interaction and relationship replacing the volatile emotional contours of love and friendship. His description of the latter draws from sources as rarefied as Jacques Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas to classic French litterateurs like St phane Mallarm and Paul Claudel. The book's ode to love's power to unite in the face of eternity, and its optimism in the face of pain is wonderful for readers of pop philosophical writers like Mark Grief, Laura Kipnis, and Simon Critchley especially those recently dumped.
