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
149: The Laṅkāvatāra Sutra
In this episode, we're going to discuss what is likely the founding text of the Zen tradition, the Laṅkāvatāra Sutra. According to some of the earliest sources on Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen in China, the "Lanka" was the teaching whose "abstruse principle" he passed down to h ... Show More
1h 55m
Sep 2
147: Keiji Nishitani - Religion & Nothingness, part 1
UPDATE: I accidentally uploaded part two to Spotify instead of part one. This has been fixed. To those who got to listen to the entire two-parter already already, lucky! But, the audio should now be part one. Join me for a deep dive into Nishitani's opus, Religion and Nothingness ... Show More
1h 46m
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
Jan 2022
215. The Problem with Atheism
In this week’s compilation, we explore the idea of what happens when the religious instinct gets brushed aside – and the things that fill that void instead. Things that, depending on who you ask, may be actively contributing to the breakdown of a society founded on the Abrahamic ... Show More
1h 11m
Feb 2024
Class 6: Nietzsche and the Death of God
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?”—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to th ... Show More
50m 59s