summary of In Praise of Love by Alain Badiou:

Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love is both a defense and a reimagining of love in the modern age, offered as a philosophical counterpoint to contemporary tendencies to reduce love to either consumer choice or risk-averse calculation. Based on a series of conversations with journalist Nicolas Truong, Badiou rejects the commodification of romance in online dating and capitalist culture, which frame love as a matter of convenience, compatibility, or personal satisfaction. Instead, he argues that love is an event—an encounter between two people that ruptures the logic of self-interest and opens up a new way of seeing and inhabiting the world together. For Badiou, the true significance of love lies not in fleeting passion or mere desire but in the sustained commitment to constructing a shared life, a “two scene” in which difference is negotiated, celebrated, and lived out over time. He insists that love entails risk, vulnerability, and exposure to the unknown, but precisely in this risk lies its transformative power, challenging the individual to transcend solipsism and affirm the reality of the other. Drawing connections between love, politics, and philosophy, Badiou portrays love as a force of truth and fidelity that resists the cynicism of modern culture and its obsession with safety, efficiency, and predictability. Ultimately, In Praise of Love reclaims love as an essential human adventure—an existential commitment to encounter and endurance—that should be embraced not with fear but with courage, creativity, and joy.