Editors’ and translators’ introduction. Sailin’ on: Voyages in French philosophy 1957–1967

In 1964, after having consulted Georges Canguilhem and Jean Hyppolite, Dina Dreyfus asked Alain Badiou to play the role of the “socratic interlocutor” in the television series “Le temps des philosophes.” At this moment, Badiou, a secondary school teacher in Reims, had just published his first novel, Almagestes, whose first chapter, dedicated to his spouse, had appeared in the January issue of Sartre’s journal, Les Temps modernes, preceded by a short intro- duction written by Simone de Beauvoir. While presenting the book on the television show “Lecture pour tous,” Badiou announced that he was already writing the second volume of a trilogy called Trajectoire Inverse, Portulans. Given the excellent reception from the press, and even encouragement from Sartre himself, many of Badiou’s peers, like the ‘sevriénne’ Cathérine Clément, were sure that he would have become “the big novelist that everyone was waiting for, a new Julien Gracq.” This preface reconstructs the context in which this interviews between Badiou and 5 other French philosophers took place. This document is interesting not only to understand the state of French philosophy during the 60s, but as well Badiou's own interpretation of it. It draws the portrait of a young philosopher interested in literature, the formal sciences and politics.