The Seminar of Alain Badiou: Nietzsche’s Anti-Philosophy, Seminar I (1992-1993)

435 Pages·1993·1.35 MB·English

by  Alain Badiou

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TRANSLATED BY WANYOUNG KIM

ALAIN BADIOU - 1992-1993
Seminar I, Nietzsche’s
Anti-Philosophy
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Acknowledgments

Nicholas Cook for his support

And my professors at Purdue, especially
Dan Smith, for his careful readings of Deleuze Leonard
Harris, for empathetic inspiration Jacqueline Marina,
for her help with agnostic theism Dan Kelly, for
philosophical encouragement
And many others in and around the department
Along with, especially Creston Davis, Jason Adams
and Daniel Tutt of The Global Center for Advanced Studies
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TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

Philologist, poet and musician, Nietzsche is often understood from the standpoint
of his socio-political aesthetic along with his autobiographical and psychological
commentary, historically and philosophically. If as the cultural trope goes,
“Madness is with genius closely aligned” rarely, if ever are figures of his literary
stature or intellect examined in their own right as psychological philosophical
subjects, with a nod at William James. When we examine Nietzsche’s emphasis
upon psychological interpretation in politics and philosophy especially in Beyond
Good and Evil, where it is mentioned that Drive (Trieb) interprets the world, some
are unfortunately hard-pressed to resist the urge to turn psychological
interpretation back upon its own head by examining Nietzsche of so-called
‘pathologies’ or categories, the terms of a psychologistic reduction. Life as
Nietzsche states is pure Chaos, which Badiou calls “Becoming” in flux—and as
such, human behavior often resists psychoanalytic analysis as philosophical
interpretation. We not only create the world but our own analysands, as the very
masters of ourselves. It is important to indicate that editing and translating is
interpretation, along with the composition of art, literature, music or poetry
Nietzsche advocated as self-reflexive vitality of mastery, that is, self-mastery, in
interpretation.
While knowledge acquired for translating of this book begins with a 5000-
mile flight, that is a pilgrimage to Kierkegaard’s graveyard in Copenhagen by an
agoraphobe1, the seminars of this book happen to have been given during the time
I was conceived and born. Having translated these 360 pages while in a
postmortem state, perhaps I’m qualified to say: I believe that the true meaning of

1 It is notable that in Danish, Kierkegaard means ‘Church-yard’ or graveyard.
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Friedrich Nietzsche is, you can only build upwards from the passive nihilism of Hinduism
to the Active nihilism of Buddhism to the affirmation of Christianity. The self-alienated
totality of the West is what Nietzsche calls “Life-Denying” as it claims to be Life-
Affirming. Nietzsche’s description concerns not a genuine Christendom as he describes in
Anti-Christ, but his nearly corpus-wide critique of a hypocritical and debased or decadent
Christendom similar to what Kierkegaard also described in later life in the Corsair Affair2.

2 See Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzsche and cf. Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon Christendom
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As such, the ‘Anti’- of ‘Anti-Christ is not a strict binary or diametrical opposition,
but we must know that in Deleuze, as well as Hegel, dialectical opposition resolves
itself in higher synthesis. To someone affirming in the flux of life (similar in
structure to faith in Becoming), the question remains if Being “falsely” analyzed or
squeezed into overly narrow categories of interpretation or Totalization as
“Other” point at all to possible oppression of binary oppositions as a thing and its
negation, or through identifying with overly concrete signifieds. Creation resists
the passive nihilism in Becoming one with Void, yet its fluidity is integrated with
the concreteness of active nihilism, creating as master of oneself in and despite the
merely perceived shallowness of the inevaluable depth as Void. This will bring in
the importance of faith as a veridical perception of substance that one can foist
onto to or grasp, in order to create. What resists interpretation psychoanalytically
or hermeneutically is not grounds for being a passive nihilist of Nietzsche’s Camel
stage as oppression3. We may see how Nietzsche, with respect to his role as an
observer, both at the interior as well as exterior of Christianity, may well be called
a pastor as well as a minor prophet, even a saint. With the fervency of a third, or at
least a third-and-half generational Protestant Christian background (Nietzsche’s
father, grandfather and great-grandfather being Lutheran ministers, or those
whom Nietzsche refers to as priests, and Nietzsche himself having

3 See The Three Metamorphoses in Chapter Six and Zarathustra
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studied with a Protestant theologian ‘free-thinker’ and philologist named
Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl), Nietzsche is undoubtedly qualified to identify genuine
Christ-Being, as he mentions in Anti-Christ, as well as critique the hypocrisy of
Christendom. Having had this third-generational Protestant background on my
own mother’s side, with a great-grandmother converted to Protestantism by
missionaries in 1890 [the very year of the “collapse’ of Nietzsche’s mental faculties
shortly after a year of writings including Anti-Christ and Case of Wagner],
perhaps I can closely identify with Nietzsche’s gazing upon “half-Christian”
hypocrisy of Western ideals, or “world-denying modes of thought with an Asiatic,
supra-Asiatic and more-than-Asiatic eye,” §56, Beyond Good and Evil, translated
by Ian Johnston. My grandparents are Protestant, but I have an agnostic Buddhist
father being descended from a long line of Mahayana Buddhists. I mentioned
Kierkegaard earlier; whom I was reading alongside Nietzsche since youth.
However, my delving into the Protestantism of Nietzsche only began Summer
2012, after I had paid homage to Kierkegaard at his tombstone , and began
conversing with a dear friend at adolescence, reading the Nietzschean corpus.
Love, that is, the Works of Love led me outside the house in July 2012, not only
across the Atlantic to Denmark, but to New York City, to the eighth floor building
where I write. The floor’s degree of earthquake proof security is something my
instincts ponder, along with the sheer fragility of existence, akin to dread, that is
angst provoking my consciousness of the Eternal.
Søren Kierkegaard was hailed by Nietzsche himself as someone whose
“psychological problem” he agreed to take up, in response to Georg Brandes’ letter
on January 11, 1888, calling him “one of the profoundest psychologists that ever
lived.” As mentioned in Sickness Unto Death, faith (Tro, synonymous to trust in
Danish), is indeed a doctor of the soul. It was faith, that is, Kierkegaard who has
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cured me of my agoraphobia.
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The Act of final Crucifixion that Nietzsche speaks of in final letters, before
his own death, can be identified with chronic pain. Christ himself suffered a form of
what Simone Weil calls affliction, the chronic version of acute psychological as
well as physical pain, and Nietzsche is a true Christian, mystical at that, as far as
he relates the chronic nature of his psychological suffering to that of Christ.
However, even chronic pain can be transcended in the case of an anhedonic.
What I have translated as “Rupture” regarding Nietzsche’s break in two sections
of world history, is perhaps especially interesting with regard to psychical
trauma. Even in cases of the worst rupture we see in his works, including
Zarathustra [§15, “The polytheistic deities died laughing”], Nietzsche always
describes the importance of laughter or the comic. Gaiety or mirth involves joy
amidst the tragic, the tragic as tragi-comedic. It’s in those who are left-handed,
including Nietzsche himself, having most likely suffered trauma in the womb, in
whom we find the heartiest laughter, as a fully subconscious or sense of humor,
deeply engrained. Perhaps this is what we may relate to Badiou’s “primordial
tragedy,” mentioned in Chapter Eleven. In addition to being described clinically as
one of the more mature coping mechanisms, we find laughter as a way for the
soul’s striving strength to overcome suffering and hardships. However, will to
power is not merely active, that is, active nihilist, but a synthesis of active
(willful) and passive (willing); for most of the body’s joy, to be sublimated or raised
high above the Self, is located in the Drives. See Untimely Meditations, regarding
the phrase (in “Schopenhauer as Educator”). “Your true self does not lie buried
deep within you, but rather rises immeasurably high above you, or at least
above what you commonly take to be your ‘I’.” Hence, ‘Life’ persists in and past
pathology, perhaps past death.