Ahmed the Philosopher: Thirty-Four Short Plays for Children & Everyone Else (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780231166935)

English-speaking readers might be surprised to learn that Alain Badiou writes fiction and plays along with his philosophical works and that they are just as important to understanding his larger intellectual project. In Ahmed the Philosopher, Badiou's most entertaining and accessible play, translated into English here for the first time, readers are introduced to Badiou's philosophy through a theatrical tour de force that has met with much success in France.

Ahmed the Philosopher presents its comic hero, the "treacherous servant" Ahmed, as a seductively trenchant philosopher even as it casts philosophy itself as a comic performance. The comedy unfolds as a series of lessons, with each "short play" or sketch illuminating a different Badiousian concept. Yet Ahmed does more than illustrate philosophical abstractions; he embodies and vivifies the theatrical and performative aspects of philosophy, mobilizing a comic energy that exposes the emptiness and pomp of the world. Through his example, the audience is moved to a living engagement with philosophy, discovering in it the power to break through the limits of everyday life.

Author: Alain Badiou
ISBN-10: 0231166931
ISBN-13: 9780231166935
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/29/2014
Pages: 216
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.50d