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A review by studeronomy
Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism by Alain Badiou
3.0
The question isn't whether leftist politics or the universal human subject work in practice—the question is whether they work in *theory*! I first read Badiou's St Paul in graduate school; this was my second reading. The first chapter, "Paul: Our Contemporary," is stunning. It sets up the ethical and political stakes of the argument in the clearest possible terms. This was written in the France of the 1990s but feels fresh in 2021: immigration woes; a reactionary, populist, identitarian right wing; lamentations about the end of liberalism; etc.
As the book progresses, especially when he digs into the antidialectics of Pauline thought, I start to feel pretty...lost and confused. I probably should have read a little more slowly and reread the most confusing passages a few more times, but I'm not an academic anymore so who got time for that? If you're the sort of reader who finds post-structuralism exhausting, don't read this book. By the time we get to the last couple chapters, however, the stakes and the argument begin to clear up once again.
There are moments of real beauty in this translation, particularly as the book concludes: "Differences, like instrumental tones, provide us with the recognizable univocity that makes up the melody of the True" and "Every name from which a truth proceeds is a name from before the Tower of Babel. But it has to circulate in the tower." Love that stuff.
If you regularly lie awake at night wondering about the balance between universality and particularity, and how the possibility of Truth emerges from that balance, this one is for you.
As the book progresses, especially when he digs into the antidialectics of Pauline thought, I start to feel pretty...lost and confused. I probably should have read a little more slowly and reread the most confusing passages a few more times, but I'm not an academic anymore so who got time for that? If you're the sort of reader who finds post-structuralism exhausting, don't read this book. By the time we get to the last couple chapters, however, the stakes and the argument begin to clear up once again.
There are moments of real beauty in this translation, particularly as the book concludes: "Differences, like instrumental tones, provide us with the recognizable univocity that makes up the melody of the True" and "Every name from which a truth proceeds is a name from before the Tower of Babel. But it has to circulate in the tower." Love that stuff.
If you regularly lie awake at night wondering about the balance between universality and particularity, and how the possibility of Truth emerges from that balance, this one is for you.