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Badiou, Alain
2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Alain Badiou on dreams and reality in history
French philosopher Alain Badiou reflects on the 20th century in an interview with the liberal weekly Élet és Irodalom: "I believe that we can't understand the 20th century without a good grasp of the 19th century. Perhaps one could say that the 19th century was the dream, or conversely the century of Romanticism. The 19th century dreamed of human emancipation, of communism, long parts of it were caught up with the passion of dreams. The 20th century, by contrast, was the century of the real. It sought to force its dream onto the world. In what ensued, however, it very quickly tossed its dreams to the wind. From then on only the real counted, and the world had to be changed through ground-breaking acts of force. 20th-century man really did create a new world. He not only dreamed about it or planned it, he also brought it into being. And this reality took on dreadful forms: nazism and communism are ample proof of that."
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More from the press review on the subject » History, » Philosophy, » Europe, » Global
Alain Badiou wants to see leftist intellectuals dissappear
In an interview conducted by Nicolas Weill, French philosopher Alain Badiou reflects on the end of the French leftist intellectual. "The rally to Mr Sarkozy's camp symbolises the possibility for intellectuals and philosophers to become from now on, classic reactionaries... . Part and parcel of this rally is the corrupt company of the rich and powerful, xenophobia and American policies worship. Before, when an intellectual was on the right, he had complexes. Even Raymond Aron had them! The classic leftist intellectual character was created during period after the war. We are going to see - this is at least what I want - the death of the leftist intellectual, who will founder at the same time as the left as a whole, before being reborn from the ashes like the Phoenix! This renaissance can only come about in one of two ways: either political radicalism of a new order, or reactionary rallying. Nothing in between."
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