Abstract

This essay offers a reading of Badiou’s univocity of being in relation to his understanding of ontological immanence and also his commitment or indeed “fidelity” to ontologically articulating the atheistic premise that “God is dead”—which for Badiou also means “the One is not”. Although Badiou famously deploys set theory to develop his “univocal” mathematical ontology of the multiple in Being and Event, his most sustained and detailed discussion of the univocity of being is in his controversial critique of Deleuze’s ontology in his Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. While references to (Badiou’s reading of) Deleuze will be made, it is not the purpose of this essay to add to the existing scholarship on the Deleuze-Badiou debate. Instead, the chief aim here is to apply Badiou’s accusations and criticisms of Deleuze’s univocal ontology back to Badiou’s own ontological project, and thereby consider how Badiou reconciles his “commitment to radical ontological univocity” with his metaphysical position against “the One” most vividly expressed in his critique of Deleuze’s univocal ontology.