Abstract

Sean Sayers has written extensively on Hegelian and Marxist philosophy from a Hegelian‑Marxist perspective. He has worked in the areas of social philosophy, ethics, theory of knowledge, metaphysics and logic. He has also written on Freud and psychoanalysis, and is currently working on issues in aesthetics. He studied at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and holds a PhD from the University of Kent. His work has been translated into Chinese, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish. He has held visiting appointments in Colorado, Massachusetts, Sydney, Istanbul, Shanghai, Wuhan, and Beijing. He is currently Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Peking University (2016-18).

His books include Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes (2011), Plato's Republic: An Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 1999), Marxism and Human Nature (Routledge, 1998, paperback 2007), Reality and Reason: Dialectic and the Theory of Knowledge (Blackwell, 1985), and Hegel, Marx and Dialectic: A Debate (with Richard Norman 1980; reprinted Gregg, 1994). He has also co‑edited Socialism, Feminism and Philosophy: A Radical Philosophy Reader (Routledge, 1991), Socialism and Democracy (Macmillan, 1991) and Socialism and Morality (Macmillan, 1990). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and books. He was one of the founders of the journal Radical Philosophy (1972), and of the Marx and Philosophy Society (2003). He is founder and editor-in-chief of Marx and Philosophy Review of Books (2010).

In this paper he will critique Alain Badiou's notion of the communist 'Idea'.