This book formulates a new theory of subjectivity in the context of the claimed “death of the subject” in the post-modern and post-human age. The new theory is developed against the conception of the subject as a transcendental ego whose constitutive roles, recognition, and representation lead to the objectivization and totalization of the world and denial of its inner infinity and heterogeneity. Critically scrutinizing ideas from Bergson, James, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Zen Buddhism, and Chinese Zhuangzi, and through an analysis of time and temporality, this book advances a number of new concepts, including “primal sensibility” and “pure experience,” and proposes a porous structure of subjectivity with an ex-egological and ex-subjective zone that allows nothingness and absence to ground presence. Such a theory of subjectivity provides the basis for an understanding of thinking as imagination and self-identity as narrative presentation in the intersubjective world.

In Badiou, Infinity, and Subjectivity: Reading Hegel and Lacan after Badiou, Mohammad Reza Naderi elaborates on the trajectory of Alain Badiou’s philosophy by following a leading thread: the dominance of axiomatic thought and the category of mathematical infinity. According to this primary proposition, axiomatic thought is the only form of thinking adequate to the infinity of being. Using both primary and secondary literature, the author demonstrates two other major propositions: 1) The coherence of Badiou’s intellectual development from the early interventions to the publication of Being and Event, and 2) The formation of a theory Naderi calls “discipline.” By working through three dimensions of disciplinary thinking—interiority, novelty, and beginning—Naderi provides a new framework for understanding the inner structure of what Badiou calls “procedures of truths” and develops a new interpretation that ultimately reveals the inner logic of Badiou’s method.

Badiou and Hegel: Infinity, Dialectics, Subjectivity offers critical appraisals of two of the dominant figures of the Continental tradition of philosophy, Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel. Jim Vernon and Antonio Calcagno bring together established and emerging authors in Continental philosophy to discuss the relationship between the thinkers, creating a multifarious collection of essays by Hegelians, Badiouans, and those sympathetic to both. The text privileges neither thinker, nor any particular topic shared between them; rather, this book lays a broad and sound foundation for future scholarship on arguably two of the greatest thinkers of infinity, universality, subjectivity, and the enduring value of philosophy in the modern Western canon. Assuredly overdue, this volume will attract Hegel and Badiou scholars, as well as those interested in post-structuralism, political philosophy, cultural studies, ontology, philosophy of mathematics, and psychoanalysis.

"The book has its origins in a conference entitled "Subjectivity and Transcendence," which was held at the Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in November 2003... However, the book is not a conference proceedings volume"--Pref.

TOTALITY AND INFINITY -- Copyright -- TABLE OF CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- PREFACE -- SECTION I THE SAME AND THE OTHER -- A. METAPHYSICS AND TRANSCENDENCE -- B. SEPARATION AND DISCOURSE -- C. TRUTH AND JUSTICE -- D. SEPARATION AND ABSOLUTENESS -- SECTION II INTERIORITY AND ECONOMY -- A. SEPARATION AS LIFE -- B. ENJOYMENT AND REPRESENTATION -- C. I AND DEPENDENCE -- D. THE DWELLING -- E. THE WORLD OF PHENOMENA AND EXPRESSION -- SECTION III EXTERIORITY AND THE FACE -- A. SENSIBILITY AND THE FACE -- B. ETHICS AND THE FACE -- C. THE ETHICAL RELATION AND TIME -- SECTION IV BEYOND THE FACE -- A. THE AMBIGUITY OF LOVE -- B. PHENOMENOLOGY OF EROS -- C. FECUNDITY -- D. THE SUBJECTIVITY IN EROS -- E. TRANSCENDENCE AND FECUNDITY -- F. FILIALITY AND FRATERNITY -- G. THE INFINITY OF TIME -- CONCLUSIONS.

Approaching Infinity addresses seventeen paradoxes of the infinite, most of which have no generally accepted solutions. The book addresses these paradoxes using a new theory of infinity, which entails that an infinite series is uncompletable when it requires something to possess an infinite intensive magnitude. Along the way, the author addresses the nature of numbers, sets, geometric points, and related matters. The book addresses the need for a theory of infinity, and reviews both old and new theories of infinity. It discussing the purposes of studying infinity and the troubles with traditional approaches to the problem, and concludes by offering a solution to some existing paradoxes.