French Literature Reviews - 2026
Alain Badiou, In Praise of Philosophy
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas
“In this book, philosophy is not presented primarily as a doctrine or a system, but as transmission, movement, and school. The philosopher is not a solitary figure; he is inseparable from his students, his disciples, and his adversaries. Only at the end of the road does he arrive at the written and stable forms of his work.
Ultimately, we are dealing with a theater rather than a treatise, dialogues rather than monologues, a lecture rather than a book. The obvious model is Plato's Socrates, who, in founding philosophy as a discipline, ensured that it could establish itself anywhere within the multiplicity of the world.
Praise, yes, of philosophy as the public creation of a thought which, inventing and transporting itself anywhere, speaking to anyone about any subject, invents the theatralization of being, as being.” A.B.
What philosophy for the coming century? A mock Platonic dialogue featuring the “speaker” Toceras grappling with interlocutors from different countries and philosophical cultures—the British John After, the Greek Amantha, the Senegalese B'adj Akil, the Chinese Xi La Pong, and others—this praise unravels the threads of a history of thought revisited through an inventive and liberating play of forms, in light of the five major questions explored by Alain Badiou: democracy, freedom, universality, language, and embodiment.
This work situates itself within the long intellectual tradition of philosophical dialogue, drawing upon the legacy of Plato to reimagine how thought is communicated and debated. By staging conversations between characters representing diverse global perspectives, the text engages with enduring questions concerning the transmission of ideas and the public role of the thinker. Readers interested in contemporary continental philosophy and modern approaches to classical dialogue forms may find this publication relevant.
The volume addresses five central themes: democracy, freedom, universality, language, and embodiment, reflecting topics explored by Alain Badiou. Rather than presenting a closed system of doctrines, the writing approaches philosophy as an active, relational practice that unfolds through discourse and exchange. The text uses a dramatic framework to revisit the history of ideas, engaging with questions that have long occupied theorists of culture, politics, and human expression.