Metaphysics

Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II

♡+

Alain Badiou

2006

Logics of Worlds (Logiques des mondes), the second volume of the Being and Event trilogy, extends Badiou's ontology from being (addressed through set theory) to appearance (addressed through category theory and the logic of worlds). Where Being and Event asked what being is in itself — the pure multiple, the void, the event — Logics of Worlds asks how being appears in specific situations, how the same ontological material can be differently organised and intensified in different worlds. Badiou develops a detailed phenomenology of worlds, each governed by a 'transcendental' — a set of intensities of appearance that determine how much each thing appears in that world. Bodies, appearing, and the formal structure of truth are analysed with new precision. The theory of the subject is vastly expanded: Badiou identifies four subjective figures — the faithful subject (which follows the consequences of an event), the reactive subject (which denies the event), the obscure subject (which destroys the event's body), and the resurrected subject (which reactivates an old truth). The work concludes with a sweeping defence of the eternal character of truths against relativism and sophistry, affirming that genuine truths, while produced in specific worlds, hold unconditionally. Logics of Worlds is the most technically demanding of Badiou's works and the most complete statement of his systematic philosophy.