Abstract

Alain Badiou’s intellectual relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre is an ambivalent and complicated one, encompassing a profession of discipleship that commences the former’s philosophical itinerary, a subsequent detachment, and an inevitable return. The wavering and strained nature of this relationship is brilliantly conveyed in the very title of Badiou’s essay, “Commitment, Detachment, Fidelity”, in which the author admits that his initial exposure to Sartre’s thought amounted to nothing less than “the philosophical lightning strike” before proceeding to expound upon a progressive distancing from his first master. This detachment from Sartre, however, should not be understood as a rejection...