Alain Badiou

Overview
Alain Badiou (born January 17, 1937) is a contemporary French philosopher whose work, at the broadest level, might be called a recombination of Martin Heidegger's ontology and Georg Cantor's set theoretical revolutions in the study of infinity. His opus, Being and Event (1988), marks his most sustained attempt to configure a language that would move mathematical infinity into the physical, social world.

Being and Event
The principle concept of this text is event. For Badiou, a true event exceeds linguistic determination and thus holds radical potential within the given contemporary situation that births it. If a person within the situation is able to recognize the potency of the event and practice fidelity to it, such an act will found that person's subjectivity and launch a truth procedure.

Truth Procedures
Badiou claims that there are four truth procedures: politics, science, art, and love.

By practicing a truth procedure, a Badiouian subject opens a generic set (a term Badiou appropriates from mathematician Paul Cohen) within their situation. Generic sets are resistant to statist knowledge and are untotalizable, i.e. infinite, though the subject and their temporally determined acts are finite.