Philosophy and the politics of the real

This essay is an attempt at the rethematisation of the relationship between philosophy and politics in the perspective opened up by A. Badiou's concep tion of philosophy. According to this conception, politics constitutes one of the four conditions of philosophy. The essay starts by clarifying why po litics taken as a condition of philosophy is not to be confused with the po litical conditioning of philosophy. Rather, what is at issue here is an "in traphilosophical" condition of philosophy which forces it to conceive of po litics as the real from which philosophy itself receives its condition. Spe cial attention is payed to the issue of the politicisation of philosophy. P oliticisation is conceived here in terms of the following alternative: eith er politics is always already determined through a given philosophical noti on, or, on the contrary, it is politics itself that instance that determine s the philosophical concept. The way out of this impasse is elaborated in t erms of the Kantian reflective judgement.