A new century, new threats to love . . .

Love without risks is like war without deaths - but, today, love is threatened by an alliance of liberalism and hedonism. Caught between consumerism and casual sexual encounters devoid of passion, love - without the key ingredient of chance - is in danger of withering on the vine.

In In Praise of Love, Alain Badiou takes on contemporary `dating agency` conceptions of love that come complete with zero-risk insurance - like US zero-casualty bombs. He develops a new take on love that sees it as an adventure, and an opportunity for re-invention, in a constant exploration of otherness and difference that leads the individual out of an obsession with identity and self.

Liberal, libertine and libertarian reductions of love to instant pleasure and non-commitment bite the dust as Badiou invokes a supporting cast of thinkers from Plato to Lacan via Karl Marx to form a new narrative of romance, relationships and sex - a narrative that does not fear love.

About the author
Born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, Alain Badiou is a leading French philosopher. With Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek, he has reclaimed for the radical left the concepts of being, truth and the subject. A lifelong communist, he is the author of The Meaning of Sarkozy, Being and Event, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil and The Communist Hypothesis.