Eternalised

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man is a short story published in 1877 by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is practically a complete encyclopedia of Dostoevsky’s most important themes.   Most of Dostoevsky’s major characters always have “something ridiculous” about them, but they are simultaneously highly self-conscious and capable of deep insight into themselves and the world.    The story opens wi...

Man and His Symbols is the last work undertaken by Carl Jung before his death in 1961. The principle aim of “Man and His Symbols” is an introduction to Jung’s work and ideas.  It is an examination of man’s relation to his own unconscious, emphasising the importance of dreams in the life of the individual.   The book was first published in 1964 and is divided into five parts, four of which were wri...

Man’s Search for Meaning was published by Viktor Frankl in 1946. Frankl is the founder of logotherapy. The most important force in a man’s life is his desire to find meaning.   While Freud speaks of a “will to pleasure” and Adler speaks of a “will to power,” Frankl focuses on a “will to meaning”, as the primary motivational force in man.   The book sold over 10 million copies at the time of Frankl...

No Exit (Huis Clos) is one of Jean Paul Sartre’s most interesting existentialist short stories. The book is the source of one of Sartre’s most celebrated phrases: “Hell is other people”.   Sartre brilliantly emphasises that hell is not so much a specific place, but a state of mind. It is connected with his idea of the Look, which explores the experience of being seen, as we are always under t...

The Plague was published in 1947 and is widely considered as Albert Camus’s most successful novel. It tells the story of a plague epidemic in the Algerian coastal town of Oran, where thousands of rats are found dead all over the city.   Camus’ absurdist philosophy is at the background of the novel. He stresses the powerlessness of the individual to affect his destiny in an indifferent world.    Il...

The Metamorphosis is a book written by Franz Kafka and published in 1915. It has been called one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century as well as a classic absurdist fiction novella.   It starts off with one of the most iconic opening lines in literature: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”   Franz Ka...

The eternal recurrence is a central notion of Nietzsche’s thought. It supposes that you’d have to experience the same life, with the same events and same experiences, repeated for eternity.    Nietzsche suggests that most people would consider this a curse and that it would require the most impassioned love of life: to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation...

The Gay Science is one of Nietzsche’s most beautiful and important books. He describes it as “the most personal of all his books”.   Gay Science has the overtones of a light-hearted defiance of convention; it suggests Nietzsche’s “immoralism” and his “revaluation of all values”.  In Nietzsche’s own words, one must strive to be an “artistic Socrates”, a philosopher with both an intellectual conscie...

Jean Paul Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, gave a name for existential angst. He considered it as one of his best works. It is a philosophical novel with existentialist vibes, that delves into the pure absurdity of the world with Sartre's wild imagination and explores the randomness and superfluity of the world.   Some of the most important themes include the sensation of "nausea", cont...

The Antichrist was written in 1888 one year before Nietzsche’s descend into madness and immediately after his Twilight of the Idols. Both books should be read under the aspect of the last words of his final original book, his autobiography Ecce Homo: “Dionysus against the Crucified.”   The German title can be translated as either “The Anti-Christ” or “The Anti-Christian”. It was likely meant...

Fear and Trembling is a book by Søren Kierkegaard written under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio. Through the biblical story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Kierkegaard, as a great explorer of human psychology, looks into the anxiety that must have been present in Abraham when God commanded him to offer his son as a human sacrifice.    Kierkegaard coined the term angst to refer to the dizzying awa...

The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius remains one of the great works of spiritual and ethical reflection, as well as one of the key works of Stoicism.   It is perhaps the only document of its kind ever made, the private thoughts of the world’s most powerful man. Today Marcus Aurelius is considered as the quintessential Stoic.    The Meditations can be best seen as “spiritual exercises” written as ref...

Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophise with a Hammer is one of Nietzsche’s last books, written in 1888.    As Nietzsche was starting to become recognised, he felt that he needed a short text that would serve as an introduction to his thought.   In a letter, he wrote: “This style is my philosophy in a nutshell – radically up to criminal…”   The book offers a lightning tour of his whole philos...

The Stranger or The Outsider is a 1942 novel by French author Albert Camus. Though it is a work of fiction, it is often cited as an example of Camus’ philosophy of Absurdism.   The Stranger has had a profound impact on millions of readers. Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man fa...

Modern Man in Search of a Soul was published in 1933 and is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of Carl Jung. The writing covers a broad array of subjects such as gnosticism, theosophy, Eastern philosophy and spirituality in general. The first part of the book deals with dream analysis in its practical application, the problems and aims of modern psychotherapy, and also Jung’s theory of ps...

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment first published during 1866, remains the most widely known Russian novel as well as one of the greatest achievements in world literature.   The book is disguised as a murder mystery, in which the reader knows from the start who has committed the crime. This in-depth exploration of the psychology of a criminal is at the heart of the novel, delving deeply into psych...

Existentialism is a philosophy that explores the problem of human existence, with an emphasis on the individual who starts in an apparently meaningless world, and who seeks to create meaning in a world without inherent meaning.   Existentialism is most commonly associated with several 19th and 20th century philosophers: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Martin Heidegger, J...

Sigmund Freud was a neurologist most popularly known as the founding father of psychoanalysis. He popularised and structured the concept of “the unconscious”.  Some of his most popular concepts include: id, ego and super ego, Oedipus complex, free association, repression, libido and the psychosexual stages of development. ☕ Donate a coffee ⭐ Support on Patreon ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⌛ Timestamps (0:00)...

Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist sometimes referred to as “the French Freud” and is regarded as an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis. The Imaginary, the Symbolic, the Real and the Mirror Stage are some of Lacan’s most notable ideas.  His teachings explore the significance of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious, proposing a “return to Freud” ☕ Donate a cof...

Martin Heidegger is known as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. He is best known for his work in existentialism and phenomenology.    His early work as a phenomenologist and university professor culminated in his masterpiece and one of the most significant works of contemporary European philosophy: Being and Time.  The fundamental concept of Being and Time is the idea of...

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche provided the basic foundations of 19th century Existentialism. It is a philosophy that emphasises the existence of the individual as a free and responsible agent determining their own development.    They both ended up savagely criticising Christianity, recognising that God no longer exists in the minds of most people. People live falsely religious lives and follow a herd...

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For All and None was Nietzsche’s favourite of his creations. It is indeed one of the most fascinating and creative pieces of work in western philosophy.    It presents the journey of Persian prophet Zarathustra, who spends his time in solitude in the mountains for ten years and grows weary of his wisdom, beginning his down-going to humanity to teach them what he has...

H.P. Lovecraft was an American writer who is known for his creation of what became the Cthulhu Mythos and the creator of the literary philosophy known as Cosmicism, emphasising the Cosmic Horror of the unknown and the insignificance of human beings in the vast realms of space and time.  This episode explores the peculiar philosophy of Cosmicism and its similarities with absurdism, existentialism,...

Soren Kierkegaard wrote one of the most remarkable theistic existentialist works of the 19th century, The Sickness unto Death is famed for the depth and acuity of its psychological insights.   Writing under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard explores the concept of ‘despair’. Despair is a deeper expression for anxiety which is a not-wanting-to-be-oneself. It is a "misrelation" that...

The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus and is considered as one of the most popular existentialist works of the 20th century. It gave rise to the philosophy of Absurdism, sharing some concepts with Existentialism and Nihilism.   The fundamental concern of the book is the notion of the Absurd, which is best described as “the conflict between the human tendency to seek inheren...