
Ethics
An Essay on the Understanding of Evil
Alain Badiou(Author)
Verso Books (Publisher)
Published on 17. May 2001
Book
Hardback
214 pages
978-1-85984-297-3 (ISBN)
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Description
Ethical questions dominate current political and academic agendas. While government think-tanks ponder the dilemmas of bio-ethics, medical ethics and professional ethics, respect for human rights and reverence for the Other have become matters of broad consensus. Alain Badiou, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy, explodes the facile assumptions behind this recent ethical turn. He shows how our prevailing ethical principles serve ultimately to reinforce an ideology of the status quo, and fail to provide a framework for an effective understanding of the concept of evil. In contrast, Badiou summons up an "ethic of truths" which is designed both to sustain and inspire a disciplined, subjective adherence to a militant cause (be it political or scientific, artistic or romantic), and to discern a finely demarcated zone of application for the concept of evil. He defends an effectively super-human integrity over the respect for merely human rights, asserts a partisan universality over the negotiation of merely particular interests, and appeals to an "immortal" value beyond the protection of mortal privileges.
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Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 142 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
342 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85984-297-3 (9781859842973)
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Book
01/2013
Verso Books
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Persons
Alain Badiou teaches philosophy at the Ecole normale superieure and the College international de philosophie in Paris. He is the author of several seminal works, including Theory of the Subject, Being and Event and Manifesto for Philosophy. His recent books include The Meaning of Sarkozy, and The Communist Hypothesis.