by Alain Badiou
In a world rife with consumerism, where online dating promises risk-free
romance and love is all too often seen only as a variant of desire and
hedonism, Alain Badiou believes that love is under threat. Taking to
heart Rimbaud's famous line "love needs reinventing," "In Praise of
Love" is the celebrated French philosopher's passionate treatise in
defense of love.
For Badiou, love is an existential project, a
constantly unfolding quest for truth. This quest begins with the chance
encounter, an event that forever changes two individuals, challenging
them "to see the world from the point of view of two rather than one."
This, Badiou believes, is love's most essential transforming power.
Invoking
a vibrant cast of thinkers, from Kierkegaard, Plato, and de Beauvoir to
Proust, Lacan, and Beckett, Badiou creates a new narrative of love in
the face of twenty-first-century modernity. Moving, zealous, and wise,
"In Praise of Love" urges us not to fear love but to see it as an
adventure, a magnificent undertaking that compels us to explore others
and to move away from an obsession with ourselves.