Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Most philosophies have little bearing on life, more sophistry than useful, while others don’t even try but simply state life has no meaning: Existentialism, Absurdism & Nihilism being the most well known of those. Existentialists, of which there were many proponents in the 20th century like Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger & Jean-Paul Sartre, suggest people can construct their own meanings through self-awareness, responsibility & free will, all rhetorical concepts. Absurdists, like Albert Camus, don’t want people to try and find meaning but instead simply embrace it; and Nihilists argue that it’s pointless to even do that because life is meaningless: that’s from Friedrich Nietzsche. The problem with existentialism is that it’s very subjective, and tends to devolve into dogma where everyone must have the same values. Absurdism is basically fate except it’s not God’s will but chaos that determines outcomes, which relieves feelings of guilt or failure for people wallowing in either; acceptance would indeed be the better alternative. There’s no place to go from Nihilism since there’s no room for optimism or hope; it seems like it would have few adherents because anyone adopting it wouldn’t be around long enough to propagate.