Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Cultural Memory in the Present) - Softcover

Badiou, Alain

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804744718 ISBN 13: 9780804744713

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2003

Synopsis

In this bold and provocative work, French philosopher Alain Badiou proposes a startling reinterpretation of St. Paul. For Badiou, Paul is neither the venerable saint embalmed by Christian tradition, nor the venomous priest execrated by philosophers like Nietzsche: he is instead a profoundly original and still revolutionary thinker whose invention of Christianity weaves truth and subjectivity together in a way that continues to be relevant for us today.
In this work, Badiou argues that Paul delineates a new figure of the subject: the bearer of a universal truth that simultaneously shatters the strictures of Judaic Law and the conventions of the Greek Logos. Badiou shows that the Pauline figure of the subject still harbors a genuinely revolutionary potential today: the subject is that which refuses to submit to the order of the world as we know it and struggles for a new one instead.

About this title

Review

"Badiou introduces the reader to the notion that philosophy stands somewhere beyond the commonplace . . . [and] illustrates the way in which during [St. Paul's] time Paul decided that for God particularities such as nationality or sex are unimportant and therefore everybody is (compared to God) just a human being." Author: Peter Takac Source: Human Affairs: Postdisciplinary Humanities & Social Sciences

From the Author

Alain Badiou holds the Chair of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Several of his books have been translated into English, including Manifesto for Philosophy (1999), Deleuze: The Clamor of Being (2000) and Ethics: an Essay on the Understanding of Evil (2001).

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0804744718
• ISBN 13: 9780804744713
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128