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For Alain Badiou, Friedrich Nietzsche is the “prince” of anti-philosophy. French leftist thinkers celebrated Nietzsche in the second half of the twentieth century, but when a backlash emerged in the 1990s, Badiou refused to join the attack. Instead, he devoted his 1992–1993 seminar to an astonishingly original reading of Nietzsche—to whom he had previously shown indifference or scorn—in which he appears almost enamored with the author of The Anti-Christ and Ecce Homo.
This book presents Badiou’s seminar on Nietzsche’s late works, which for the first time addresses what would become one of his central concepts: anti-philosophy and its adversarial yet intimate relationship with philosophy. For Badiou, Nietzsche is the key modern anti-philosopher, his antagonist—and occasional ally—in the battle to redefine the work of philosophy. Badiou takes for granted Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is dead,” yet rejects his assertion that philosophy too is past its expiration date. Badiou engages a century-long tradition of grappling with Nietzsche’s paradoxes, considering thinkers such as Heidegger, Deleuze, and Derrida. Examining Nietzsche’s impassioned writings on Wagner, he reflects on the nature of art and aesthetics. Provocative and profound, this seminar shows Badiou’s ongoing project of reasserting the value of philosophy from a new angle.
— Peter Hallward, author of Badiou: A Subject to Truth
This book supplies a completely novel interpretation of the importance of Nietzsche’s philosophy for the contemporary world. In Badiou's examination of his late writings, Nietzsche ceases to be just a worthy antagonist for Badiou’s thought and becomes instead a valuable ally in his philosophical project. What emerges here is a breathtaking exploration of Nietzsche that departs from all the received wisdom.
— Todd McGowan, author of Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity
In this remarkable seminar, the “Prince of philosophy” turns his attention to the “Prince of anti-philosophy.” Badiou’s reading of the final Nietzsche is at once rigorous and enchanting: he traces how Nietzsche configures event, act, and art—only to push this configuration to the point of detonation. That detonation, in turn, illuminates another configuration: that of Badiou’s own philosophy. Within it, the anti-philosophers—Saint Paul, Wittgenstein, Lacan, and of course Nietzsche—occupy a privileged place: not as adversaries, but as sites where the relation between philosophy and its conditions—politics, science, love, and art—appears in a strikingly illuminating way.
— Alenka Zupančič, author of The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two
Alain Badiou is one of the most important philosophers of our time. He is emeritus professor of philosophy at the École normale supérieure in Paris. His seminars published by Columbia University Press include Images of the Present Time (2023) and Parmenides (2025).
Bruno Bosteels is dean of humanities and Jesse and George Siegel Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University.
Susan Spitzer is a frequent translator of Badiou’s works.
Editors’ Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminars of Alain Badiou
Author’s General Preface to the English Edition of the Seminars of Alain Badiou
Introduction to the Seminar on Nietzsche (Bruno Bosteels)
About the 1992–1993 Seminar on Nietzsche
Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
Session 8
Session 9
Session 10
Session 11
Session 12
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index