Images of the Present Time presents nearly three years of Alain Badiou’s seminars, held from 2001 to 2004, which consider the relationship between philosophy and notions of “the present.”

Alain Badiou offers a tour de force encounter with a lesser-known seventeenth-century philosopher and theologian, Nicolas Malebranche, a contemporary and peer of Spinoza and Leibniz. The seminar is at once a record of Badiou’s thought at a key moment and a lively interrogation of Malebranche’s key text, the Treatise on Nature and Grace.

The transcript of Alain Badiou’s year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, this book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou’s own thought. It is the first volume of Badiou’s seminars to be published in English.