More than 150 years ago, Kierkegaard wrote a brilliant essay mourning the loss of passion in the world. His words are truer now for the modern world. This short work by Alain Badiou is a passionate defence of the universal phenomenon of love in the ennui of the modern world. In a world where everything including love has fallen under consumerism, where everything is calculated as an investment.

He invokes other thinkers who talked about love, like Lacan, Kierkegaard and Plato. He also makes the case for his view of love as a quest for truth. Love makes you look at the world through the perspective of difference. He argues that love is not just an experience but an event in reality. It starts with an encounter and then becomes a truth-procedure that leads from subjective experience to universal value. He also challenges the romantic conception of love. He argues for love as something that takes shape over time. Love is a construction that is being made from the perspective of two.

He distinguishes this with the conception of love in religion where one forgets oneself, leading to the experience of God. Love leading to transcendence. Love here takes the form of yielding to a God. As a Marxist, he wants to separate love from that. Bring it back to Earth.

Love and Politics is another interesting chapter. Politics is a collective affair. Love is like politics in the sense that love has a same structure as communist politics, but in a two-fold way.
“Real politics is to engage to resolve problems within a collective with enthusiasm. It's not simply to delegate problems to the professionals. Love is like politics in that it's not a professional affair. There are no professionals in love, and none in real politics.”

And finally love as a struggle.
”To love is to struggle, beyond solitude, with everything in the world that can animate existence.”

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