Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Nihilism

  • The Scariest Passage in Kant

    Substack latest. With Halloween upon us, it is appropriate that I should present to my esteemed readers for their delectation if not horror the scariest passage in Kant's magnum opus:

  • Could there have been nothing at all?

    I am of two minds. Substack latest.

  • Civilization Versus the New Nihilists

     Victor Davis Hanson Put the question to your friends and acquaintances: Which side are you on? If they are not on the side of civilization, cut them off.  Make them pay a price for their willful self-enstupidation. Why should they get the benefit of your friendship? If enough of us ostracize enough of them, this…

  • The Truth of Life and the Art of Life

    We must face reality to learn the truth of life. But the art of life requires that we sometimes turn away, look away, shrug our shoulders, peremptorily dismiss, ask not why, and acquiesce in a jaded ignoramus et ignorabimus. Prudent folk often acquiesce in such an unreflective understanding.  They sense the difference between the true…

  • “You’ve Ruined my Life, Professor Craig!”

    Here, with William Lane Craig's response.

  • The Revolt of the Worthless

    Across the land the erasure of history via the destruction of monuments and memorials is proceeding apace. The worthless and unaccomplished are attacking the memories of people of great worth and accomplishment. Where are the authorities to whom we have entrusted the preservation of civilization? In abdication, mainly. They lack the will to put a…

  • Idolatry without God

    "I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have false gods before me." If God exists and you worship anything in his place, then that thing is a false god and you are an idolater.  But if God does not exist, and you worship anything at all, then you are also an idolater.  Or…

  • The Consistent Nihilist

    The consistent nihilist will hold that it doesn't matter that nothing matters. He is Nietzsche's Last Man for whom nihilism ceases to be an issue.  This distinguishes him from the militant or 'evangelical' nihilist for whom it matters that nothing matters and who feels called to preach this truth and set people straight. It also…

  • The Body: Temple or Amusement Park?

    As I noted earlier, the celebrity chef, 'foodie,' and gastro-tourist, Anthony Bourdain, hanged himself in his hotel room recently.  I speculated that the man was spiritually adrift. "If Bourdain had a spiritual anchor, would he have so frivolously offed himself, as he apparently did?" When I wrote that I was unaware of the above quotation.…

  • The Greatest Temptation

    I am repeatedly visited by the thought that the greatest temptation is the temptation to see the world as nothing but a system of finitudes and relativities with nothing beyond it or behind it.  It is just a play of phenomena of no ultimate significance. There is the temptation to sink into a placid nihilism:…

  • The Nihilism of the Left

    Leftists are so far gone that they are willing to protract their nihilism unto the destruction of the very secular values that they supposedly champion. Pascal Bruckner: Generations of leftists saw the working class as the messianic leaven of a radiant humanity; now, willing to flirt with the most obscurantist bigotry and to betray their…

  • E. M. Cioran and Skepticism

    I brought Cioran into my latest Pyrrhonian post to lay bare the contrast between the Christian's pursuit of a "peace that surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) and the Pyrrhonian's peace which is beneath understanding inasmuch as it is predicated upon not understanding — and not caring any more about understanding. I then asked whether this…

  • The Sense That Nothing Matters

    Many are tempted by the thought that nothing ultimately matters, and in some this thought becomes an oppressive mood that paralyzes and renders life unlivable.  Leo Tolstoy's "My Confession" is perhaps the best expression of this dark and oppressive nihilism.  But the sense that nothing matters contains an insight which is as it were the…

  • Nihilism: The Telos of the Liberal Mind

    Here, by Steven Hayward, with a tip of the hat to an old friend, Ingvar Odegaard.  My comment: Whites who speak of 'white privilege' would do well to reflect as well on 'black privilege.'  One of the 'privileges' of blacks these days, apparently, is the right to riot and loot when a decision of the…