Ahmed the Philosopher: Thirty-Four Short Plays for Children and Everyone Else - Softcover

Badiou, Alain

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231166931 ISBN 13: 9780231166935

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2014

Synopsis

English-speaking readers might be surprised to learn that Alain Badiou writes fiction and plays along with his philosophical works and that they are just as important to understanding his larger intellectual project. In Ahmed the Philosopher, Badiou's most entertaining and accessible play, translated into English here for the first time, readers are introduced to Badiou's philosophy through a theatrical tour de force that has met with much success in France.

Ahmed the Philosopher presents its comic hero, the "treacherous servant" Ahmed, as a seductively trenchant philosopher even as it casts philosophy itself as a comic performance. The comedy unfolds as a series of lessons, with each "short play" or sketch illuminating a different Badiousian concept. Yet Ahmed does more than illustrate philosophical abstractions; he embodies and vivifies the theatrical and performative aspects of philosophy, mobilizing a comic energy that exposes the emptiness and pomp of the world. Through his example, the audience is moved to a living engagement with philosophy, discovering in it the power to break through the limits of everyday life.

About this title

Book Description

In Ahmed the Philosopher, readers are introduced to Alain Badiou's philosophy through a theatrical tour de force. The play presents its comic hero, the "treacherous servant" Ahmed, as a seductively quick-witted philosopher even as it casts philosophy itself as a comic performance. The comedy unfolds as a series of lessons, with each "short play" or sketch illuminating a different Badiousian concept. Yet Ahmed does more than illustrate philosophical abstractions; he embodies and vivifies the theatrical and performative aspects of philosophy, mobilizing a comic energy that exposes the emptiness and pomp of the world. Through Ahmed's example, the audience is moved to a living engagement with philosophy, discovering in it the power to break through the limits of everyday life.

About the Author

Alain Badiou (PhD, Philosophy, Ecole Normale Superieure) holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School; he also teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and the College International de Philosophie in Paris. He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works, including his masterwork, Being and Event (Continuum, 2007), and several Columbia titles, includng Plato's Republic (2013) and Jacques Lacan Past and Present (2016).

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0231166931
• ISBN 13: 9780231166935
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 216