Pints With Aquinas
Philosopher DESTROYS Nihilism TikToks | Dr. J. Budziszewski | Last Call Ep. 16
28 May 2026
Chapter 1: What is nihilism and how is it defined?
What is nihilism? The proper response to a lack of meaning or truth in society is to create it for ourselves.
The only reason that we can even do what people call creating meaning is that there are some meanings already there. But we can't make something up from absolute scratch. That's just crazy.
Destroyed. Dr. Budziszewski. Fantastic name. Did you ever think of changing it because you got so tired of everybody butchering it?
Oh, my God. No, no. But for the first 25 years of my life, I pronounced it wrong. You pronounced your name wrong? I pronounced it wrong. My parents had Americanized the name. And I learned the Polish pronunciation. I reverted.
but who cares, nothing has meaning anyway. Speaking of which, today we're gonna take a look at nihilists on the internet and see what you have to think about them. Okay. I'd love to understand what nihilism is. You don't believe that something has inherent meaning. And so for me, that's incredibly liberating because it means that we are devoid of circumstance.
just inherently believe that things don't have inherent meaning and that we choose the meaning things have i have the belief that when i die people will come to my funeral people will argue over my belongings and two months three months two years after i die i will never be mentioned again if people are not going to even care to show up to my funeral why would i let them have any say over my life
and the whole time we're catering it to a lot of beliefs that other people have about us and we don't take actions and we put things off for years decades because of judgment that isn't real it's made up and it's just hard to unlearn that believing that things don't have inherent meaning and then that we have the choice to ascribe whatever meaning we want to things has been very liberating for me
All right. So there you go. He's a nihilist and he's happy about it. Maybe what we can do is first go like what was right about what he was saying?
Well, I'm glad you asked that question because anything, no matter how crazy, if it's going to be plausible, if anybody is going to fall for it, there has to be some grain of truth in there. Liars know that too. You know, they think they always try to pack as much truth into the lie as possible because then that makes the rest of it more plausible.
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Chapter 2: How does Dr. Budziszewski differentiate between passive and active nihilism?
Well, this is interesting, right? Because we're watching these and I can see how they're appealing to people, but I haven't heard an argument yet. I haven't heard either one. So I wanted to ask you, are you aware of Nietzsche or Camus or any other philosopher making an argument for... I have seen them, not what I consider an argument.
I think that if somebody gives a reason for something that collapses into absurdity the moment it's out of his mouth, he hasn't really given a real argument. that collapses into incoherence the moment it's out of its house. What I mean by incoherence is this. Everybody knows what inconsistency is. If I said to you, that point of view is silly. You know, that point of view is not silly.
I have contradicted myself. It can't be both things in the same sense at the same time. If, on the other hand, I say something like this. Everything that everybody says is meaningless and no one can ever recover the intention of the speaker. I want you to understand this. This is on the test. All right, that is incoherent. I'm pulling out the rug from underneath my own claim.
And the absurdist philosophers, the nihilistic thinkers, I use the philosophers here too generously, then the absurdist thinkers, the nihilistic thinkers are all falling into absurdity. I'd like to see, how can you give a good argument, for example, for incoherence? If the argument itself is incoherent, you've really lost it.
Do you think that if God didn't exist, nihilism would actually follow? Or, it's so hard to say that, just saying if God didn't exist, that's like saying if a circle weren't round, but what do you think?
If God didn't exist, there'd be nothing. We wouldn't be here arguing about it. There would be no universe in which we could even discuss the meaning of things or whether they have a meaning or anything like that. But there have been people who have tried to somehow maintain the idea that The universe sort of makes sense in some way. I can form syllogisms.
I can say this conclusion follows from this premises. But there's no ultimate reason why it makes sense. Which means really ultimately my sense doesn't make sense. And they don't realize what thin ice they're skating on. Now that I think That, I think, is partly where nihilism came from. It's certainly where it came from in the case of Nietzsche.
He stops believing in God, he stops believing in a first cause, a reason why everything makes sense, a first sense, a first meaning, a first cause, and then he can't make sense of any of the subsequent causes and effects and meanings and inferences either.
From what I remember, Nietzsche doesn't have an argument for atheism.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Nietzsche's views on nihilism?
nihilism, and absurdism, the difference between them is literally the same difference between the red pill, the black pill, and the white pill. Existentialism is like taking the red pill because it's seeing existence for what it is with a neutral emotional tone. Like it's the equivalent of recognizing the terror of life while also shrugging and saying, it is what it is.
Now nihilism is like taking the black pill because it's seeing existence with a bad attitude. The people who take this pill come with a kind of cynicism that drives them to say things like, What's the f***ing point? Life is meaningless and we should all just jump off a building. Now, last but not least, absurdism.
This is like taking the white pill because it's seeing existence with a good attitude. And this is an outlook reflective of a theme in The Myth of Sisyphus, where the character Sisyphus is being cursed with his meaningless objective to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity. And what he decided to do in spite of this ridiculous consignment is to get on with it.
And to get on with it with a smile on his face. Ha! I really think that a lot of this, if one doesn't have an argument for nihilism and chooses to embrace it, I think it's a response to pain.
Oh yeah, sure. Well, that was also true of many sort of forms of what you might call proto-nihilism, like Buddhism. Buddhism really says, Our existence is an illusion because we're an illusion. What was that a response to? It was a response to suffering. The Buddhist view is that suffering results from desire. Desire results from the illusion that we exist.
The solution to that problem is to get rid of that illusion. It's annihilation. People think that nirvana is bliss. No, nirvana is you don't exist anymore. The illusion that you are even here having experiences of happiness or unhappiness is gone. But if we aren't even really real, how can you recommend to that somebody? You'll be better off if you believe this.
Well, who is the you if the you is an illusion? Who is the you who's having that? Now, there is one interesting thing about this. He did comment on the fact that people, he distinguished these different things that he called different philosophies. They're not different philosophies. They don't claim different things. They all claim the universe is absurd.
But he distinguished them according to the emotional response that you have to them. Now, it is true that people have different responses. I like to sometimes distinguish, for example, there's the kind of despair that guys like Sartre had. You know, it's the kind of existentialism, the kind of absurdism that guys like Sartre had.
Existence is meaningless and the problem for me is to fight off despair. Camus said the basic problem of philosophy is why shouldn't I commit suicide? I wouldn't say that Camus was a very cheerful guy about this.
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Chapter 4: How does absurdism compare to nihilism and existentialism?
I don't believe you. And I think the same thing is true here. You might be able to come up with a one minute video on why nihilism could be good for you and a nice idea to consider. But I do not believe that you'll be able to live consistently with that worldview and be happy.
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. Nobody can live that way consistently.
You can live that way with regard to other people. Yeah, maybe that was okay for the Nazis. You can't live that way for yourself. Somebody steals your stereo and you say, ah, I'm morally indignant. That was objectively wrong.
Thank you for being here. You've just written a book. I want to tell everybody about it. We'll put a link to it below. Why should they get it? Not where should they get it, because that's what the link's for, but what's it about?
Oh, the book is called Pandemic of Lunacy. There is a lunacy. It's much worse than the COVID pandemic. It's not a pandemic of viruses that transmit themselves body to body. It's a pandemic of loony ideas that transmit themselves mind to mind. And this one that we just were talking about, that existence has no meaning or that we can make up our own meaning for existence.
These are actually two of the lunacies that I discuss in my book, along with 28 others. So read my book. It's called Pandemic of Lunacy, How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy.
Thank you, Dr. Budziszewski, for being here.
Thank you.
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