In Praise of Love by Alain Badiou, Nicolas Truong, Translated by Peter Bush

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Everyone needs love. Everyone is potentially able to love; yet, especially in our fast-paced era, a time of uneasiness and uncertainty, not everyone understands love. Love may often be accompanied by pervasive feelings of insecurity. Multiple dating and matchmaking websites have emerged to take advantage of people’s anxieties around love. Striking, around the streets of Paris, are eye-catching advertisements with words such as “Get love without chance!” or “Be in love without falling in love!” They are produced by Meetic, the largest dating website in Europe. The message they try to convey is direct, “Come on, we can offer you a guarantee of love.”

Yes, Meetic promise to offer you “coaching in love”. You may agree, this sounds attractive, right? They will provide you with all the information you need to precisely sift out the person you want for your ideal love interest, such as their photo, date of birth, hobbies, and zodiac sign. The proposal appears uncomplicated, safe, effortless even, meeting your expectations and needs of an appropriate person for your feelings and affections. However, in the public interview that is the source of this book, Alain Badiou states that drawing on his 71 years of life experience, such a view of love is wrong. So, what is love from Badiou’s point of view? Are there other incorrect views of love? And how do people find true love? In unlocking the book In Praise of Love today, we will try to answer these questions.