‘No theme requires more pure logic than love”: On Badiou’s Amorous Axiomatics

Abstract

In thinking the relation of love and affect, one experiences a strong intuition that they are locked in a passionate mutual embrace, and that they carry out their clandestine coupling in the dark alleys of the ineffable. The work of Alain Badiou, however, challenges such an “anti-philosophical” position, and posits that the truly philosophical way to approach love is through logic. In this essay I offer a timely explication of Badiou's thoughts on love, which is occasioned by the recent challenge posed by critical discourse to rethink love and is animated by the conviction that such a rethinking entails locating love in the domain of thought rather than in a domain beyond cognition and representation. At a time when love is threatened by accusations of being nothing more than a "cruel optimism," Badiou's thought is a philosophical defense of love by underscoring its kinship to thought and to truth.