In this collection of essays, Alain Badiou takes the reader through a keen yet poignant journey through the pantheon of late twentieth-century philosophy. Through the course of the collection – each essay homage to a figure that helped to shape his own way of thinking – Badiou reveals and engages with his own intellectual roots. Through tributes to his teachers, allies and opponents – Althusser, Sartre, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida, among others – Badiou conveys the richness and depth of this philosophical tradition, a tradition that has largely been lost in our contemporary world of pop-philosophers and political pundits.