3.5
In Praise of Love
ByPublisher Description
In a world rife with consumerism, where online dating promises risk-free romance and love is all too often seen as a mere variant of desire and hedonism, Alain Badiou believes that love is under threat. Taking to heart Rimbaud's famous line "love needs reinventing,"
is the celebrated French intellectual'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.
Through thought-provoking dialogue edited from a conversation between Badiou and Truong, a vibrant cast of thinkers are invoked: Kierkegaard, Plato, de Beauvoir, Proust, and more, create a new narrative of love in the face of twenty-first-century modernity. Moving, zealous, and wise, Badiou's "paean to the anticapitalist, antiessentialist, unifying power of love" urges us not to fear it but to see it as a magnificent undertaking that compels us to explore others and to move away from an obsession with ourselves (
).
"Finally, the cure for the pornographic, utilitarian exchange of favors to which love has been reduced in America. Alain Badiou is our philosopher of love." —Simon Critchley, author of
Download the free Fable app
Stay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
Rate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
Curate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesStay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building toolRate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tagsCurate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesIn Praise of Love Reviews
3.5
GreenBook
Created 5 months agoShare
Report
abdul k
Created 5 months agoShare
Report
Riss
Created 5 months agoShare
Report
prosebud
Created 5 months agoShare
Report
“French philosopher Alain Badiou, in some 100 pages, ventures to defend our current devolving notion of love as it collapses to consumerism and ennui. In this passionate piece, Badiou traces the philosophy of love from the ideas of Kierkegaard, Plato’s Republic, the poetry of Rimbaud, and asserts that we need to reinvent love. In fact, love reinvents us.
The advent of dating apps has been criticized as commercializing love - which is an organic process and a matter of chance. Emphasis is laid on the risk-averse behaviour that, plaguing most of us, remains a primary hindrance in our journey to love, as love is risky by construction.
By Badiou’s definition of love, we do not become one in love - we multiply. It is the process of expanding our world and vision into accommodating another human being — he calls it becoming Two. Love is selfless. Love isn’t a mutual exchange. This reminds me of the Auden poem “The More Loving One”:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Love, as per Badiou, is an expansion of ourselves, it is a reinvention of our identity and the world around us; it is the widening of our circle to accommodate another person. Love is not a mere meeting of someone; it is a unique trust we place on a chance encounter. It is a construction, it is a choice to live no longer from the perspective of one, but from the perspective of two.
"We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first serious disagreement, the first quarrel, is only to distort love. Real love is one that triumphs enduringly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world."
The declaration of love is what converts this chance into destiny, a sense of fidelity that is an extended victory, essentially declaring that, “you know, I met you by chance but I will extract something eternal from this randomness.”
There is also further discourse around love and its interplay with politics, art and to some extent media. Badiou heralds Beckett’s depiction of love and marriage despite the general bleakness of his works - especially mentioning Happy Days and Enough; he juxtaposes this discourse with the Godard film from where this title is taken, In Praise of Love; he spoke of his perspective of Communism in relation to love.
The perspective presented in this book challenged my skepticism over the notion of love and the implicit “always” which perhaps exists due to the clash between the concept of love and the importance I place on independent identity - which Badiou critiques as one of the biggest challenges to love. Do I fully agree with everything? No. But, did it present me with a new way of thinking? Definitely.”
ClementM
Created 6 months agoShare
Report
About Alain Badiou
Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1937,
is a leading French philosopher. He is the author of
,
,
, and
. He lives in Paris.
is a writer, journalist, and regular contributor to the French daily
.
is an award-winning literary translator. He lives in Barcelona.
Other books by Alain Badiou
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?
Books Similar to In Praise of Love
Save to a list
0
/30
0
/100
Private List