Ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil

Alain Badiou explodes the facile assumptions behind the recent ethical turn by governments of the West. He shows how our prevailing ethical principles serve to reinforce an ideology of the status quo and ultimately fail to provide a framework for an effective understanding of the fundamental concepts of good and evil. In contrast, Badiou summons up an ethic of truths which is designed to sustain and inspire a disciplined, subjective adherence to a militant cause (be it political, scientific, artistic or romantic) and to discern a finely demarcated zone of application for the concept of evil.