The Mathematics of Novelty. Badiou's Minimalist Metaphysics

The Mathematics of Novelty: Badiou's Minimalist Metaphysics tackles the issue of philosophical materialism in Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou, enquiring after the source and nature of the 'novelty' that both philosophers of multiplicity claim to discover in the objective world. In this characteristically erudite analysis, Sam Gillespie maintains that where novelty in Deleuze is ultimately located in a Leibnizian affirmation of the world, for Badiou, the new, which is the coming-to-be of a truth, must be located exterior to the 'situation', i.e. in the void. Following a lucid presentation of the central concepts of Badiou's philosophy as they relate to the problem of novelty (mathematics as ontology, truth, the subject and the event), Gillespie identifies a significant problem in Badiou's conception of the subject which he suggests can be answered by way of a supplementary framework derived from Lacan's concept of anxiety. Gillespie's intent to illuminate the relation of philosophy to the four truth procedures (art, love, science, politics) leads him to the polemical conclusion that, as a transformative rather than descriptive or reflective project, Badiou's philosophy ultimately reclaims the power of the negative from the positivity and pure productiveness of Deleuze's system, thereby freeing thought from the limits set by experience.

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi

1. Conditions of the New: Deleuze and Badiou 1
I: Deleuzian Novelty 4
II: Badiou's Novelty 7
III: Paradoxes of the Whole 15
IV: Overturning Assumptions 17
V. Conclusion: Axiomatic 21

2. Nothing That Is 25
I. Thinking and Being, They Are the Same 25
II. Foreclosing the Void 29
III. The Problem of Infinite Modes 33
IV. Non-Causal Relations 37
V. Conclusion: Enabling the Event 40

3. Approximately Infinite Universe 45
I. Frege/Russell: Zero Exists 50
II. Cantor: Infinity and Inconsistency 52
II. Badiou: Mathematics is Ontology, the Void is the Name of Being 57
IV. Towards the Situation 61
V. Meta-structure: The State and its Excesses 62

4. Beyond Being: Badiou's Doctrine of Truth 71
I. Contesting Truth 73
II. Towards the Generic 77
III. The Force is With You 82
IV. Towards the Situation (Again) 85

5. Giving Form to Its Own Existence: Anxiety and the Subject of Truth 95
I. Rudimentary Ontology: An Overview 98
II. The Void: Subject or Being? 105
III. Affect defined 117

6. From Reflection to Transformation: What is Philosophy? 125
I. Beyond the World: Why Novelty? 139

Bibliography 151
Index 157