"'A significant book, one which one cannot fail to find staggering.' - Jean Francois-Lyotard 'One of the most important philosophers writing today.' - Joan Copjec 'A book of exceptional scope and rare courage of thought that tackles the whole of Philosophy, from Parmenides to Heidegger.' - Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe"

Alain Badiou teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and at the College International de Philosophie in Paris, France. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works.

New Author's Preface; Translator's Preface; Introduction. Book I Being: Multiple and Void. Plato/Cantor; 1. The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology; 2. Plato; 3. Theory of the Pure Multiple: paradoxes and critical decision Technical Note: the conventions of writing; 4. The Void: Proper name of being; 5. The Mark AE; 6. Aristotle; Book II Being: Excess, State of the Situation, One/Multiple, Whole/Parts, or I/i?; 7. The Point of Excess; 8. The State, or Metastructure, and the Typology of Being (normality, singularity, excrescence); 9. The State of the Historico-social Situation; 10. Spinoza; Book III Being: Nature and Infinity. Heidegger/Galileo; 11. Nature: Poem or matheme?; 12. The Ontological schema of Natural Multiples and the Non-existence of Nature; 13. Infinity: the other, the rule and the Other; 14. The Ontological Decision: 'There is some infinity in natural multiples'; 15. Hegel; Book IV The Event: History and Ultra-one; 16. Evental Sites and Historical Situations; 17. The Matheme of the Event; 18. Being's Prohibition of the Event; 19. Mallarme; Book V The Event: Intervention and Fidelity. Pascal/Choice; Holderlin/Deduction; 20. The Intervention: Illegal choice of a name for the event, logic of the two, temporal foundation; 21. Pascal; 22. The Form-multiple of Intervention: is there a being of choice?; 23. Fidelity, Connection; 24. Deduction as operator of ontological fidelity; 25. Holderlin; Book VI Quantity and Knowledge. The discernable (or constructible): Leibniz/Godel; 26. The concept of quantity and the impasse of ontology; 27. Ontological destiny of orientation within thought; 28. Constructivist thought and the knowledge of being; 29. The folding of being and the sovereignty of language; 30. Leibniz; Book VII The Generic: indiscernible and truth.; The event - P.J.Cohen; 31. The Thought of the Generic and Being in Truth; 32. Rousseau; 33. The Matheme of the Indiscernible: P.J.Cohen's strategy; 34. The existence of the indiscernible: the power of the names; Book VIII Forcing: Truth and the Subject. Beyond Lacan; 35. Theory of the subject; 36. Forcing: from the indiscernible to the undecidable; 37. Descartes / Lacan; Annexes; Appendixes; Notes; Dictionary.