Being and Event is the centrepiece of Alain Badiou`s oeuvre; it is the work that grounds his reputation as one of France`s most original philosophers. Long-awaited in translation, Being and Event makes available to an English-speaking readership Badiou`s groundbreaking work on set theory - the cornerstone of his whole philosophy. This book makes the scope and aim of Badiou`s whole philosophical project clear, enabling full comprehension of Badiou`s significance for contemporary philosophy. In Being and Event, Badiou anchors this project by recasting the European philosophical tradition from Plato onwards, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Rousseau, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a history of philosophy rivalling those of Heidegger and Deleuze in its depth.This wide-ranging book is organised in a precise and novel manner, reflecting the philosophical rigour of Badiou`s thought. Unlike many contemporary Continental philosophers, Badiou - who is also a novelist and dramatist - writes lucidly and cogently, making his work accessible and engaging. This English language edition includes a new preface, written especially for this translation. Being and Event is essential reading for Badiou`s considerable following and anyone interested in contemporary Continental philosophy.

Table Of Contents
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 Æ
6. Aristotle Book II Being: Excess, State of the Situation, One/Multiple, Whole/Parts, or Î/Ì?
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. MallarméBook V The Event: Intervention and Fidelity. Pascal/Choice; Hölderlin/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. HölderlinBook VI Quantity and Knowledge. The discernable (or constructible): Leibniz/Gödel
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. LeibnizBook 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 namesBook VIII Forcing: Truth and the Subject. Beyond Lacan
35. Theory of the subject
36. Forcing: from the indiscernible to the undecidable
37. Descartes / LacanAnnexes
Appendixes
Notes
Dictionary

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