Nihilism Audiobook (Free)

When someone is labeled a nihilist, it’s not usually meant being a compliment. Most of us associate nihilism with destructiveness and violence. Nihilism means, actually, ‘an ideology of nothing at all.’ Is nihilism, then, believing in nothing at all? Or is it the belief that existence is nothing? Or the fact that the beliefs we have total nothing? If we are able to learn to identify the many varieties of nihilism, Nolen Gertz writes, after that we can learn to distinguish what’s meaningful from what is meaningless. In about Nihilism this addition to the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Gertz traces the history of nihilism in Traditional western philosophy from Socrates through Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Although the term ‘nihilism’ was initially utilized by Friedrich Jacobi to criticize the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Gertz demonstrates the concept can illuminate the thinking of Socrates, Descartes, among others. It is Nietzsche, however, who is most connected with nihilism, and Gertz targets Nietzsche’s thought. Gertz goes on to consider what isn’t nihilism-pessimism, cynicism, and apathy-and why; he explores theories of nihilism; he considers nihilism as a way of understanding aspects of everyday routine; and he reflects on the future of nihilism. We need to understand nihilism not merely from an individual perspective, Gertz tells us, but also from a political one.