Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood, misinterpreted, and generally vilified modern philosophers. Many people charge him with being a nihilist, and others claim him as a nihilist because they are nihilists. This is patently false. Nietzsche was an anti-nihilist and opposed nihilism. The key to Nietzsche, which is the key to understanding the Nietzschean … Continue reading Nietzsche and Self-Overcoming
existentialism
Jean Paul Sartre: “Vertigo” and Freedom
One of the most famous sections in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness is his commentary over the moment of vertigo—dramatized with a person on the edge of cliffside looking down to his death below or his freedom above. One of the easiest, and shortest, sections of his work, the “moment of vertigo” is really the realization of the … Continue reading Jean Paul Sartre: “Vertigo” and Freedom
Jean Paul Sartre: What is “Bad Faith?”
The one theme from Sartre’s magnum opus, Being and Nothingness, that stuck was his commentary on “Bad Faith.” Ignorant atheists who have never read Sartre have employed Sartrean language to refer to religious faith as the bad faith that Sartre is discussing even though it is not. Furthermore, the concept of bad faith is included in Sartre’s many … Continue reading Jean Paul Sartre: What is “Bad Faith?”
Jean Paul Sartre: Being and Nothingness
Jean Paul Sartre was among the most famous of the modern existentialists and phenomenologists, perhaps second only to Martin Heidegger. Sartre’s great text of fame was his “essay on ontology,” Being and Nothingness. In typical French fashion, the text is weighty, dense, and draws heavily from the history of philosophy, especially Christianity, Bacon, Descartes, Hegel, Husserl, … Continue reading Jean Paul Sartre: Being and Nothingness
Simone de Beauvoir: “The Woman Destroyed”
The third story of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed, aptly titled “The Woman Destroyed,” puts to poetic-diary story the essence of Beauvoir’s existential and Marxian feminism. Through the course of the entries we learn that the narrator, Monique, is trapped madly in love with a bourgeois careerist man – “the serious man” – Maurice. Their relationship, if … Continue reading Simone de Beauvoir: “The Woman Destroyed”
Nihilism, Video Games, and the Art of Aesthetical Immersion: Or Why “Life is Strange” Was an Amazing Game
Later this year, my contribution to an anthology on pedagogy dealing with narrative and persona immersion in religion should be published. Drawing on St. Augustine, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Walter Ong, I was arguing that the special relationship between religion, orality, and the synthetic relationship between the monomyth to the human psyche, will ensure … Continue reading Nihilism, Video Games, and the Art of Aesthetical Immersion: Or Why “Life is Strange” Was an Amazing Game
