Between Two Manifestos

Abstract

The text focuses on two manifestos for philosophy written exactly two decades after one another by Alain Badiou. It centres on the question what the manifestos brought for philosophy as such and what they tell us about certain internal passages of Badiou's own philosophical project. In the first part some consequences of Badiou's appeal to philosophy to take “one more step forward” are highlighted (Wo Ich war, soll $ werden) concerning time, act, and eternity; in the second part through a comparison of the two manifestos some novelties and strategic reasons for their introduction are shown (materialism and the eternality of Ideas).