Towards an Anthropology of Infinitude: Badiou and the Political Subject

Abstract

In the English-language reception of Alain Badiou#39;s work, he has often been one-sidedly positioned as a direct heir to the antihumanist projects of Lacan, Althusser and Foucault. Whilst there is much to this claim, this paper argues that the retention of a notion of the #39;political subject#39; in Badiou#39;s work necessarily also depends upon a commitment to a much-underexamined notion of a minimal philosophical anthropology that puts Badiou in a tradition with thinkers such as Ludwig Feuerbach. It is further argued that Badiou#39;s minimal philosophical anthropology is opposed in essence to apparently similar phenomenological projects because it aligns humanity with infinity and not finitude.nbsp;