Adity Singh

This project aims to derive a concept of freedom from Alain Badiou’s philosophy through a close reading of his oeuvre from Theory of the Subject to Logics of Worlds and beyond. In order to interrogate Badiou on the concept of freedom, he is confronted, along the way, with some of his influences and adversaries. Thus, in the course of this thesis, Kant, Lacan, Rousseau, Marx and Lenin become his interlocutors. The purpose of the intellectual space that is opened by placing these thinkers in dialogue with Badiou is to explore what is at stake, philosophically and politically, in Badiou’s project on the question of freedom. This study will commence by exploring the possibility of subjectivity and freedom in Badiou’s ontology through a close reading of his use of axiomatic set-theory. Following this, the question of the capability of the subject will be discussed in relation to an ethics (guided by Kant and Lacan – focussing on the question of decision, action, and the universal) and a politics (guided by Rousseau, Marx and Lenin – focussing on the question of the collective, the state and emancipation) respectively. Finally, through a close study of Badiou’s theory of appearance, the fundamental question concerning the determination of the human individual in the world will be posed, and the consequent possibility of freedom offered in Badiou’s philosophy will be considered. It will be argued that for Badiou, freedom can be defined as the assumption of a necessity. The aim is to illustrate how Badiou’s work gives hope to the existence of a subject which is paradoxically free because it lives for an imperative – a necessity imposed by a truth whose construction it participates in.