Alain Badiou on 'The true life'
In his book The True Life, the great French thinker Alain Badiou addresses an inspired and heartening plea to the young. Badiou is not only a sharp, radical thinker, but also an extremely generous and inspiring speaker, which is another reason to look forward to his public discussion with the Brussels author and philosopher Laurent de Sutter.
New paths
The young are facing a new world. Now that ancient traditions and hierarchies are increasingly losing in importance, the possibilities seem endless. According to prominent French philosopher Alain Badiou, the young must become aware of this new situation and must find the courage to use their freedom together. The Greek philosopher Socrates was once accused of corrupting the young. If philosophy can do that, then, according to Badiou it must encourage the young to avoid the well-trodden paths and instead to explore new ones – to steer clear of the empty market ideology or any nostalgia for the old gods and inequalities and instead to seek the true life.
About the author
Alain Badiou (b. 1937) is a French philosopher, playwright and novelist. Many consider him to be France's last major maître à penser. He has published dozens of books, including such major works as L'être et l'événement (1988), Logiques des mondes (2006) and L'immanence des vérités (2018), as well as shorter essays for a wider audience such as L'Ethique (1993) and Eloge de l’amour (2009; Eng. trans. In Praise of Love, 2012). Together with Slavoj Zizek, Jacques Rancière, Toni Negri and Giorgio Agamben, the post-marxist Alain Badiou is one of the great defiant thinkers of our time.
Badiou and Passa Porta
Alain Badiou has been a welcome guest at Passa Porta for years already. During the Passa Porta Festival 2013, he presented his one-of-a-kind translation of Plato's Republic at the KVS, and in 2018 at De Munt he talked about Richard Wagner with Olivier Py, Laurent de Sutter and Peter De Graeve. La vraie vie was translated into Dutch for the Polis publishing house by Passa Porta employee Piet Joostens, who had previously compiled a first Dutch-language file on this thinker for the literary magazine Yang (2004).
Org. Uitgeverij Polis, VUB (weKONEKT.Brussels, Frans jaar), Bozar Agora: Evens Foundation, Kultuurkaffee, Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Passa Porta
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