In Praise of Love

In a world rife with consumerism, where online dating promises risk-free romance and love is all too often seen only as a variant of desire and hedonism, Alain Badiou believes that love is under threat. Taking to heart Rimbaud’s famous line “love needs reinventing,” In Praise of Love is the celebrated French philosopher’s passionate treatise in defense of love.

For Badiou, love is an existential project, a constantly unfolding quest for truth. This quest begins with the chance encounter, an event that forever changes two individuals, challenging them “to see the world from the point of view of two rather than one.” This, Badiou believes, is love’s most essential transforming power.

Invoking a vibrant cast of thinkers, from Kierkegaard, Plato, and de Beauvoir to Proust, Lacan, and Beckett, Badiou creates a new narrative of love in the face of twenty-first-century modernity. Moving, zealous, and wise, In Praise of Love urges us not to fear love but to see it as an adventure, a magnificent undertaking that compels us to explore others and to move away from an obsession with ourselves.