Zach's Strange Corner of Thought
You Made A Wrong Turn Awhile Back!
Citations:
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, HarperPerennial/Modern Thought, New York, 2008. Buy here!
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Nihilism is typically defined as a belief in nothing. Depending on a person’s flavor of nihilism, nihilists don’t believe in objective morality, no good or evil. There is no objective knowledge, no truths and no falsehoods. There is no reason to even exist, because we are all going to be dead in the end. The universe is, and beyond that nothing: no order, no structure, no design, no purpose. Is it truly all for naught? Nothing matters.
Arguably the best thinker on nihilism was 19th century German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche said there were many different stages to nihilism, but all of them relied on a willing towards nothing. Nietzsche believed liberal democracies, modernity, and capitalism inaugurated a new, higher form of nihilism: Theoretical Nihilism.
Friedrich’s proclamation of the Death of God is the realization that all the highest values have been devalued.
Citations:
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Untimely Meditations. Edited by Daniel Breazeale. Translated by Reginald J. Hollingdale, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Buy here!
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Buy here!
Heidegger, Martin. “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God Is Dead.’” The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 2004. Buy Here!
Ceika, Jonas. How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle: Nietzsche and Marx for the 21st-Century Left. Watkins Publishing, 2022. Buy Here!
Fincher, David, director. Fight Club. 20th Century Fox, 1999. Buy Here!
Liv Agar:
WallStreetBets, Gamestop, & Nietzsche’s Account of Nihilism
Aperture:
Nihilism: The Belief in Nothing
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In the late 1970s, as the revelations of the brutality of the Gulags in the USSR became common knowledge, some Leftists attempted to use French Philosopher Michel Foucault’s writings on the prison system to explain away the reality of the Gulag. They would claim, “Everyone has their own Gulag, the Gulag is here at our door, in our cities, our hospitals, our prisons, it’s here in our heads.” While Foucault agreed that the technologies of the Gulag share a history with other forms of incarceration in the West, the politics which lead to the creation of the Gulags were very different than other forms of incarceration. Foucault believes the the problem of the Gulag is a unique to socialist states, and therefore, it requires a critique of the very principles of socialism.
Drawings from the Gulag by Danzig Baldaev.
Citations:
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Buy here!
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Buy here!
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Psychology professor Dr. Jordan B. Peterson–who will only be referred to as DADDY—often pronounces his deep disdain for po-mo no-mos, i.e., post-modern neo-marxists. Despite there being no such thing as a po-mo no-mo (because the philosophies of post-modernism & neo-marxism are opposed to one another), one po-mo no-mo Daddy often brings up is another type of Daddy, French philosopher Michel Foucault. I react & respond to a video by Daddy where he is heavily criticizing Foucault to answer the question: Who’s Your Daddy?
Sources:
Bite-sized Philosophy video:
Jordan Peterson – Mental Illness, a Social Construct – Foucault
Daddy’s Youtube Video:
2016 Lecture 07 Maps of Meaning: Part 1: Osirus, Set, Isis, & Horus
Other videos about Daddy:
Contrapoints:
Jordan Peterson
Cuck Philosophy:
Jordan Peterson doesn’t understand post-modernism
The Living Philosophy:
Jordan Peterson’s Shadow
Eternalised:
Jordan Peterson vs. Friedrich Nietzsche | Is God Dead?
Citations:
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. History of Madness, translated by Jean Khalfa, Routledge, London, 2009. Published in French in 1961. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard, Vintage Books, 2006. Published in French in 1964. Buy Here!
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 1975. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: an Introduction. 1976. Buy here!
Maps of Meaning. 2002. Buy here!
12 Rules for Life. Buy Here!
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This video is about what happens when you’re all up in your feelz!
Content Warning: Depression, fear, anger, anxiety, self-harm, suicide.
These emotions or moods specifically alter our ways of interpreting the world around us. Moods attune humans to their worlds (which they are inherently a part of). Through being attuned, we are disposed to this or that way of encountering entities within-the-world. Dispositions are the state-in-which-one-is-found. Utilizing the philosophy of German Philosopher Martin Heidegger, I reflect on my own experiences—especially in the past year—of being attuned in very extreme and often destructive ways. This description of moods is existential, not categorical. Humans as both living beings, and reflective or beings-of-contemplation, are qualitatively different types of beings than inorganic entities, specifically a human’s unique temporality and interpretative possibilities. As such, human emotions must properly be viewed existentially, with these characteristics in mind.
Citations:
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, HarperPerennial/Modern Thought, New York, 2008. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Buy here!
Vandergriendt, Carly. “What’s the Difference between a Panic Attack and an Anxiety Attack?” Healthline, Healthline Media, 19 Oct. 2021.
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In a previous video, we examined the difference between a scientific hypothesis and scientific theory. We discovered many people were making the mistake of confusing scientific theories with scientific hypothesis. But, why was this mistake made? Because the word theory also has a philosophical sense.
In this video we’ll look at what a philosophical theory is, what a philosophical hypothesis is, and whether nonscientific philosophical theories have an validity?
Citations:
Aristotle, and Joe Sachs. “II. English Glossary.” On the Soul and on Memory and Recollection, translated by Joe Sachs, Green Lion Press, 2001. Buy Here!
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Practical Nihilism
What if all your beliefs are actually nothing? No justification, no proof, no authority? This willing-towards-nothing is itself a nihilism. Dogmatism, religion, philosophy, all a willing-towards-nothing. Obviously, the tradition of the West doesn’t believe it’s willing towards nothingness. It fervently, without reservation, believes these values (God, the Forms, a Pure world, a world which is realer than this world of mere appearances). This nihilism is practical because it is performed through action, not reflection. Practical nihilism is a willing towards nothingness, but a nothingness that is still rich with meaning because even a willing-towards-nothing creates values. But these values, which supposedly transcend and seem above us, are nihilistic because they are profoundly anti-life.
Citations:
Friedrich, Hegel Georg Wilhelm. The Science of Logic. Cambridge University Press, 2010. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Buy here!
Plato. Phaedrus. Plato Complete Works. 247c-e. Buy here!
Heidegger, Martin. “‘The Word of Nietzsche: God Is Dead.’” The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2013. Buy here!
Hughes, Peter. “Nietzsche & Nihilism.” Ethical Society. 22 Nov. 2009.
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