Alain Badiou: Thinking the Infinite

Two-Day Conference on Mathematics and Philosophy

National Gallery in Prague (Trade Fair Palace), April 11th and 12th, 2018

Conference speakers: Alain Badiou, Fernando Zalamea, René Guitart, Evelyne Barbin, Pierre Cartier, Charles Alunni, Oliver Feltham, David Rabouin, Jelica Šumič Riha, Frank Ruda, Nick Nesbitt, Jana Berankova, Michael Hauser, Tzu Chien Tho, Norman Madarasz, Roland Bolz, Norma Hussey

VIDEO RECORDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE

Alain Badiou’s magnum opus Being and Event opens with the claim that ‘mathematics is ontology’. Much of his philosophical work from the 1980’s until today consists of a profound reexamination of the conceptual field of classical philosophical ontology with the aid of contemporary mathematics. This conference is prompted by the perception that the first generation of thinkers reacting to Badiou too often did not adequately come to terms with the mathematical substance of this work. If on the one hand, contemporary mathematicians only rarely intervene in the field of continental philosophy, philosophers, on the other hand, often lack the advanced mathematical education that would enable them to grasp the full scope of Badiou’s thought. This conference, organized together with Alain Badiou himself, intends to fill this gap in the reception of Badiou’s philosophy.

If Spinoza already claimed that mathematics is what permits the human being to think beyond the final causes of Aristotle and if Jacques Lacan spoke about the matheme as capturing the “impasse of the real”, Badiou set out to restore the very relationship of philosophy and mathematics itself. In Being and Event, he based his understanding of Being on the premises of set theory, the inexistence of the One, and the existence of the generic set. In Number and Numbers, Badiou defied the dominance of a reductive numerical convention in contemporary capitalism by claiming that “numbers are a form of Being”. And in Logics of Worlds, Badiou based his understanding of what there is on contemporary logic(s). Finally, the soon-to-be-published Immanence of Truths will address the contemporary mathematics of the higher infinite. Clearly, contemporary mathematics has been a constant companion to Badiou, and it would be difficult if not impossible to understand the core of his thought without understanding the dialogue that he has established with mathematics.

The conference Alain Badiou: Thinking the Infinite intends to unite mathematicians and philosophers eager to engage with Badiou’s ontological and mathematical postulates. The conference will include a keynote lecture by Alain Badiou, in which he will demonstrate the logical necessity of grasping Being through mathematics. It will also include a series of roundtables, whose goal will be to create a dialogue between mathematicians and philosophers. Is the identification of ontology with mathematics more than a simple philosophical extravagance? Why has physics been sutured to mathematics? And how can we define the relationship between mathematics and philosophy today?

APRIL 11TH, 2018

MATHEMATICS, HISTORY, AND PHILOSOPHY

Session chair: Alain Badiou

10:00 – 12:00
Pierre Cartier, Is History of Mathematics a Part of a General History?
Évelyne Barbin, Le dépaysement historique pour penser les mathématiques

MATHEMATICS AND ONTOLOGY?

Session chairs: Nick Nesbitt, Charles Alunni

14:00 – 16:15
Tzu Chien Tho, Sets, structures and Sizes: Mathematical Ontology Revisited
Oliver Feltham, Writing Multiplicity: One or Several Ontologies?
Jana Berankova, Immanence of Truths: the Absolute between the Singular and the
Universal

16:30 – 18:15
Norma Hussey, A New Hope; for the Subject and for the Symbolic
Roland Bolz, Mathematics is Ontology? Reflections on Badiou's use of Set Theory in Being and Event
Michael Hauser, Ontological Limits of Mathematics

APRIL 12TH, 2018

FREGE AND CANTOR IN BEING AND EVENT

Session chair: Michael Hauser

10:00 – 11:45
Nick Nesbitt, From Logic to Axiomatics: Badiou, Cavaillès, and the Critique of Frege
Frank Ruda, The Frege-Frage, or: The Stakes of the Void
Jelica Sumic Riha, Le dire de Cantor, selon Badiou et Lacan

SETS AND / OR CATEGORIES?

Session chairs: Jana Berankova, Jana Glivicka

13:30 – 16:00
Norman Madarasz, Beyond Recognition: Badiou’s Mathematics of Bodily Generation
David Rabouin, Espace et multiplicités: deux voies dans l’ontologie
Charles Alunni, Relation-objet et onto-logie. Ensembles ou catégories

16:15 – 19:30
Fernando Zalamea, Prendre sérieusement pour la philosophie Paul Cohen et Alexander Grothendieck : le pendule analyse/synthèse, ensembles/catégories, dans L’être et l’événement et la Logique des mondes
René Guitart, Univers algébriques et dualités, pour la dialectique matérialiste de Badiou
Alain Badiou, La différence philosophique entre la théorie des ensembles et la théorie des catégories