Badiou and the philosophers: interrogating 1960s French philosophy

摘要

Perhaps as a result of the recent ascent of Alain Badiou in Anglo-Saxon humanities, the present volume makes available for the first time the transcripts of a series of educational TV programmes on philosophy, broadcast between 1965 and 1968. Firstly, it has to be noted that this work only gives minimal insight into Badiou's thought (and certainly none as to how he can remain a Maoist up to the present time) and is more of a historical testimonial to his early career as a philosophy teacher in secondary school, albeit one already showing the calibre to become a dominant figure, if one judges by his calm and probing questioning of the spate of great thinkers interviewed here. He thus teases out summaries of major philosophical issues or systems from his illustrious interviewees. And while all philosophers clearly strive for brevity, we are (fortunately) a long way away from sound bytes. Whether this made good television, even by 1960s standards, is debatable. The last chapter is a transcription of a list of questions and remarks that were made at the time with Dina Dreyfuss collecting answers from the various interviews in a montage of contributions. This is probably the most difficult chapter to engage with for the reader, while the rest of the book reads rather well. It is interesting to note, however, that some contemporary viewers complained about the difficulty of the material (for which they got no sympathy from Dreyfuss) and whether radio would not have provided a better medium for the project. From our present perspective, it seems difficult to imagine a material less suitable for television, although some of the interviews are available on YouTube and make interesting viewing and constitute an invaluable historical resource.