Bolzano’s Badiou

Abstract

This article raises a series of points of confluence between Badiou’s philosophy and that of Bernard Bolzano, whom Badiou has identified as a historical predecessor but never directly engaged. These points include their respective critiques of Kant and Hegel, as well as their various concepts of sets, platonist realism, axiomatisation, the infinite, adequate demonstration, structure, and mathematics as the adequate language of being.