Badiou and Plato: An
Education by Truths, A.J.
Bartlett, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011 (ISBN: 9780748643752)
vii+248 pp.
Every so
often a book comes along that, in its utter relentlessness, forces its reader
out of the complacency of his or her habits of thought. A.J. Bartlett’s latest
offering, Badiou and Plato: An Education
by Truths, stages just such an encounter. Written in a dense, elliptical
style, Bartlett draws on categories from Alain Badiou’s Being and Event to present a vigorous and systematic reading of
Plato’s body of work. With philosophical flair Bartlett shows that the question
of education is at the heart of philosophy.
Readers of Badiou will immediately recognize the six categories Bartlett utilizes in his reading of Plato: state, site, event/intervention, fidelity, subject, and the generic or indiscernible. Those unfamiliar with Badiou’s mathematically charged lexicon will find it harder going. Badiou is committed to a philosophical language that spans the registers of mathematical formality and poetic diction, and this decision is taken up by Bartlett and reflected in his style. That being said the fact that Bartlett’s is an interventionist reading – directed at a particular textual corpus, namely, the writings of Plato – provides narrative depth and helps contextualize Badiou’s philosophical project.
