Book Review: The Theoretical Uncertainty of Nature in Badiou’s Méditation sur le concept de nature

Abstract

This review examines Alain Badiou’s Méditation sur le concept de nature, focusing on his analysis of nature’s conceptual instability. Badiou’s dialectical analysis of nature and his discussion of Kant and Hegel on nature as totality offer valuable resources for a systematic framing of the problem. However, his refusal of the concept of nature in this volume demands closer scrutiny. I suggest that rather than becoming obsolescent, the instability in the concept of nature persists in contemporary scientific, artistic, and political contexts. Indeed, the concept of nature remains open to its uncertainty between natural history and human action and thus cannot be reduced to a mere negativity.