Much had been made of Nietzsche’s predictions of the coming nihilism. As a result of the death of the Christian God, Europe is bound for a crisis of values, in which nothing can any longer give us a goal beyond ourselves and our own happiness, and people search for this meaning or justification in all sorts of other spheres of human life: morality, reason, h ... Show More
Yesterday
142: Commands, Symbols & Games - Nietzsche, Cassirer & Wittgenstein on Language
In this episode we're going to explore three very different thinkers who nonetheless converge on their theories of language. We're going to see if we can't extract an intelligible whole out of the ideas generated by this trio: the Nietzschean theory of language as command, the vi ... Show More
1h 37m
May 26
141: Ernst Cassirer - Language & Myth
In this episode, we're venturing into the life and thought of Ernst Cassirer, the last humanist of the Enlightenment tradition. Cassirer is widely known today for his debate with Heidegger at Davos, in which Cassirer appeared as the old style philosopher against the new world sig ... Show More
1h 40m
Mar 2022
How Facing Nothingness Can Transform Your Life
Nothingness is generally considered to be analogous with death and extinction which every healthy living instinct wants to avoid. Many find the notion of nothingness unfathomable. Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani, however, was convinced that the way out of nihilism, that whic ... Show More
20m 59s
Nov 2020
The Absurd – Camus, Kierkegaard & Dostoevsky | Existentialism
This episode explores the concept of The Absurd of Camus, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky as well as the differences between these three existentialists. Camus defined the Absurd as: "The conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human in ... Show More
12 m
