Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, playwright, and committed Maoist whose work attempts to reconstruct a universalist philosophy of truth in the face of postmodern relativism. Being and Event, his major philosophical work, uses Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory to develop an ontology in which being is pure multiplicity and truths emerge as radical breaks—"events"—that interrupt a given situation and demand fidelity.

Badiou identifies four truth procedures—science, art, politics, and love—each of which can produce genuine truths through fidelity to a transformative event. His political philosophy defends a communist hypothesis: the idea that equality is possible, that emancipatory politics retains its force. His polemics against democratic materialism and his defence of the universality of truth against culturalist and identitarian thought make him one of the most provocative and contested figures in contemporary continental philosophy.