Matt Fradd

There's the Jerry Seinfeld show version of nihilism.

Nothing has any meaning.

Where would you like to go for lunch?

Okay, you can classify...I wouldn't classify these as different philosophies, because it isn't as though they give different arguments here.

They aren't giving arguments.

But I certainly would classify the emotional responses, and I think that those are interesting.

One of the things that they tell you is how far...so much of this stuff is really nuts in a way, and yet it's been absorbed into the popular culture.

Sartre says, you know, everything is meaningless and so, you know, we're all in this state of angst.

Camus is saying, no, everything is meaningless and so you have to worry about whether to commit suicide.

People today are talking about what kind of sandwich they're going to have.

Everything is meaningless, so now, you know, that's cool.

I can decide on my life easier.

I don't have to fret about things anymore.

It's just been absorbed into the culture as a presupposition.

Now, of course, nobody can believe that things are meaningless all the way down.

No, it's like a lot of other contemporary ideas.

Relativism, for example.

People say, oh, everything is relative.

I've had students who've told me that, you know, I said, well, don't you think that what the Nazis did to the Jews was objectively evil?

And they say, no, you know, that may have been right for them, man.