Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy

Praise

“The story of Wittgenstein’s career is that of coming to believe that philosophy’s salvation lies in its aspiring to the condition of poetry. For Badiou, as a Platonist, that is a counsel of despair.”
—New Statesman

“Wittgenstein’s Anti-Philosophy is another attempt to shore up the division between Anglo-American and European philosophy. But in doing so the ancillary effect is a text that also brings the two traditions into an unlikely conversation.”
—Times Literary Supplement

“Though Badiou’s studies fall outside the mainstream of research into Wittgenstein’s philosophy, they are thought-provoking and contain bold statements and innovative interpretations.”
—Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

“Antiphilosophy and the valorization of the mystical is anathema to Badiou, it smacks of religious faith, but he is not immune to the power of Wittgenstein’s thought and he worries at it like a dog with a bone. The two philosophers share a tight cogency in their writing that does not suffer foolish words gladly and Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy is, in its own way, as carefully packed as the Tractatus. It is a book to read slowly, to re-read and ponder what drove Wittgenstein to argue and formulate so compellingly the notion that the only truth worth its name is that which results in an affirmative when a proposition is compared with empirical reality.”
—Irish Left Review