Please provide a summary! I definitely did not watch all 50 parts.
I should've perhaps landed on a firm definition of nihilism. For the purposes of this piece, what I have in mind is the view that there are no ethical/moral values (including emotional ones like compassion), that "nothing really matters", that truth is either impossible or irrelevant. I wrote a lot more about this term in my book on Jacob Frank, who often gets called a nihilist. Do you think that tracks?
This is really good, Jay. (Hopeful pessimist that I am, I was not triggered.) I do worry though that the "conservative cure" may indeed be worse than the nihilism disease if it's as authoritarian as it appears.
Thanks, too, for the link to the link to Wayfarer piece about the "new theism." I look forward to your discussion and analyses of these converts to so-called Strong Religion. The piece conveniently omits discussion of their radically reactionary politics, which is central to at least two of the so-called Four Horsemen. (Douthat is not really "radical" though perhaps reactionary; and I need to learn more about David Bentley Hart, who seems to be an outlier in some important ways.)
Thanks. And I share that worry -- as well as a kind of uncertainty about, well I guess the opposite of Strong Religion is Weak Religion, which suggests 'strong religion' is maybe not the right term. Hart is better than the others politically, but I've found a lot of his work deeply saturated in his religious tradition. The book is a bit more focused on being anti-anti-religion.
Thanks for another good essay. How would you define nihilism? Did you watch all 50 parts of Vervaeke's course? I did! (Had to brag after all that.)
Please provide a summary! I definitely did not watch all 50 parts.
I should've perhaps landed on a firm definition of nihilism. For the purposes of this piece, what I have in mind is the view that there are no ethical/moral values (including emotional ones like compassion), that "nothing really matters", that truth is either impossible or irrelevant. I wrote a lot more about this term in my book on Jacob Frank, who often gets called a nihilist. Do you think that tracks?
I've been hoping you would write about this theme since we had lunch. Thanks Jay x
Thanks for inspiring! I feel like I've just scratched the surface though.
This is really good, Jay. (Hopeful pessimist that I am, I was not triggered.) I do worry though that the "conservative cure" may indeed be worse than the nihilism disease if it's as authoritarian as it appears.
Thanks, too, for the link to the link to Wayfarer piece about the "new theism." I look forward to your discussion and analyses of these converts to so-called Strong Religion. The piece conveniently omits discussion of their radically reactionary politics, which is central to at least two of the so-called Four Horsemen. (Douthat is not really "radical" though perhaps reactionary; and I need to learn more about David Bentley Hart, who seems to be an outlier in some important ways.)
Thanks. And I share that worry -- as well as a kind of uncertainty about, well I guess the opposite of Strong Religion is Weak Religion, which suggests 'strong religion' is maybe not the right term. Hart is better than the others politically, but I've found a lot of his work deeply saturated in his religious tradition. The book is a bit more focused on being anti-anti-religion.