Images of the Present Time (The Seminars of Alain Badiou)

Finalist, 2024 Translation Prize - Nonfiction, French-American Foundation

Alain Badiou began the twenty-first century by considering the relationship between philosophy and notions of “the present.” In this period of his ongoing annual lecture series, the acclaimed philosopher took up the existential problem of how to be contemporary with one’s own time―that is, how to not simply inhabit a passing moment but bring a real present into existence.

Images of the Present Time presents nearly three years of Badiou’s seminars, held from 2001 to 2004, partly against the backdrop of the war in Iraq. Given while Badiou was writing Logics of Worlds, the second of the three volumes of Being and Event, these lectures address some of the same questions of existence in a particular world in a more personal and conversational tone, with reference to literature, philosophy, and contemporary politics and culture. He proposes a new concept of living in a real present as the twisting together of something from the past and something of the future.

Featuring some of the philosopher’s most inspiring and approachable work, Images of the Present Time is an important book for all readers interested in the practical as well as conceptual possibilities of Badiou’s thought.

Alain Badiou is emeritus professor of philosophy at the École normale supérieure in Paris. His seminars published by Columbia University Press include Lacan (2018) and Malebranche (2019).

Kenneth Reinhard is research professor of comparative literature and English at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Susan Spitzer is a frequent translator of Badiou’s works.