Politics of the One: Concepts of the One and the Many in Contemporary Thought

The essays discuss how to reconcile multiple ontologies without subsuming them to a totalitarian unity. While one school of thought (Deleuze, Negri) seeks to create a new ontology based on the many instead of the one, (which, politically, is close to anarchy), another proposes to understand the ‘one’ as the ‘ultra-one’ of the event (Badiou). In this groundbreaking work, leading thinkers explore these debates and offer alternative concepts. Building on Jean-Luc Nancy’s essay who proposes an ontology of ‘singular plurality,’ contributors aim to synthesize the one and the many and suggest different ways of forming collectives, beyond the dominant representative political forms.

An original and challenging work, Politics of the One addresses new possible ways of bringing people together, integrating philosophy with theoretical and practical problems of politics.