This seminar will examine philosophical nihilism through an engagement with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as thinkers responding to him, including Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Luce Irigaray, Karl Jaspers, Pierre Klossowski, Karl Löwith, Lev Shestov, and Keiji Nishitani, and more recent work by Ray Brassier, Arthur Kroker, Keith Ansell Pearson, and Nandita Biswas Mellamphy.