Mathematics of the Transcendental - by Alain Badiou (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In Mathematics of the Transcendental, Alain Badiou painstakingly works through the pertinent aspects of category theory, demonstrating their internal logic and veracity, their derivation and distinction from set theory, and the 'thinking of being'. In doing so he sets out the basic onto-logical requirements of his greater and transcendental logics as articulated in his magnum opus, Logics of Worlds.

Now available in paperback, Mathematics of the Transcendental provides Badiou's readers with a much-needed complete elaboration of his understanding and use of category theory. The book is vital to understanding the mathematical and logical basis of his theory of appearing, as elaborated in Logics of Worlds and other works, and is essential reading for his many followers.

Review Quotes

[Badiou's] mathematics is precise and correct ... I am impressed by the lucidity of [his] remarks on the philosophical significance of category theory, especially in relation to set theory, and I invite philosophically minded mathematicians to be so too.
Notices of the AMS

Battered photocopies of Badiou's hand-drawn primer on category theory were prized possessions among the small group of people in Paris who gathered to attend his Saturday morning seminars in the mid-1990s, and coupled with the companion volume on Being-There also translated here, Topos remains a vital source of information for one of the most important and most challenging sequences of Badiou's philosophical trajectory. In addition to the distinctive light they shed on the transition from volume one to two of Badiou's Being and Event, both these texts are also of great interest and pedagogical value in their own right: non-specialists won't find a clearer, more accessible and more stimulating philosophical introduction to these crucial fields of contemporary mathematics.
Peter Hallward, Author of Badiou: A Subject to Truth and Professor of Philosophy, Kingston University, London, UK.

This book may be interesting and useful both for a philosophical reader who wants to learn some basics elements of category and topos theory, and for a mathematical reader interested in philosophical interpretations of these theories.
MathSciNet

About the Author

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.

A. J. Bartlett is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Research Unit in European Philosophy at Monash University, Australia. He is the author of Badiou and Plato: An Education by Truths, and with Justin Clemens and Jon Roffe author of Lacan, Deleuze, Badiou, forthcoming.

Alex Ling is Research Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Badiou and Cinema, and Badiou Reframed, forthcoming.