In this unique essay, first delivered as a lecture during a panel discussion with the artist and philosopher Reza Negarestani, Badiou identifies and \u201cdialecticizes\u201d five Moul\u00e8ne objects with five conceptual formations from the history of Western philosophy. Aristotle\u2019s complex of matter and form is called to mind to describe the inner logic of a routed, hard foam sculpture. A bronze statue with holes next activates Plato\u2019s notion of participation of the concrete world in the \u201cinjured Idea of the Beautiful.\u201d A small metallic and incomplete \u201cangel,\u201d further, engages Leibniz\u2019s affirmation that \u201ceverything that exists is composed of an infinity of things.\u201d Badiou\u2019s musings then bring him to Victor Hugo while considering a broken and repaired plastic chair. A terrible Hand made of concrete, that seems to have \u201cburst out of the earth,\u201d cannot help but manifest something akin to the Freudian unconscious. Finally, a large-scale \u201cred and blue monster\u201d awakens in the philosopher the rudimentary mechanisms of the Cartesian cogito, the famous \u201cI think, therefore I am,\u201d with stunning inversions and variations. Badiou refrains, of course, from claiming that Moul\u00e8ne thinks about any of these philosophers when making his specific works. What he points to, however, in this richly illustrated bi-lingual volume, is that the artist and his art are \u201con the side of philosophy.\u201d \u201cBeing on the side of philosophy,\u201d says the author, \u201cany one of Moul\u00e8ne\u2019s objects is always, by itself, and beyond the secret process of its realization, a material proof, which is met with a contemplative pleasure, the pleasure of the possible existence, here and now, of new truths.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Year: 2019
\nDimensions: 20 x 15
\nLanguage: English\/French
\nMaterial: Hardcover<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[32],"product_tag":[27],"class_list":["post-586","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-jean-luc-moulene","product_tag-book","first","instock","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"yoast_head":"\n