Political Ontology of Alain Badiou and Sylvain Lazarus

Abstract

The article reviews the concepts of the French anthropologist and political theorist Sylvain Lazarus and the philosopher Alain Badiou, who suggest a new perspective on the subjective foundations of politics as thought. The focus on the subjective foundations of politics can be explained by the initial ambiguity in the works of the French theorists, who interpret the activities of the intellectual activist in different ways. The paper shows that Sylvain Lazarus is more concerned with the intellectual activity of political activists, whom he categorizes as political activists and politicians by the degree of intellectual activity. It was concluded that, according to Lazarus, politicians occupy a priority position. They are presented as professional lone thinkers with revolutionary consciousness, which allows them to think politics from the perspective of a probable revolution. In this regard, the politics, according to Lazarus, is a politics of revolutionary action. It was found that in Alain Badiou’s theory the semantic emphasis is on the participation of intellectuals in politics. Based on Plato’s thought on the development of a philosopher, Badiou formulates the idea of an exemplary subject of politics. The exemplary subject of politics is a philosopher-mathematician who is good at mathematical logic.