What is love and what is at stake in a romantic encounter? To this question, Badiou provides an unprecedented answer. Based on the duality of philosophy and psychoanalysis, he convincingly refutes all established answers: the romantic mythology of love as the ecstatic union of lovers, the theological conception of love as an experience of otherness, the moralistic approach of love as an instrumentalized illusion in the service of sexuality, and finally, its postmodern degeneration into a contract and ephemeral adventure. He reveals that love has the structure of an event and constitutes a transcendence of the gap between the two sexes, which, however, does not eliminate the asymmetry of gendered subjective attitudes. He differentiates it from desire and pleasure and maps its relationship with philosophy and politics.

"The prevailing notion today is that everyone is only pursuing their own interest. However, love is the proof of the opposite, as it involves trust in the random and the unknown...".

A. B.