You're listening to the Partially Examined Life, episode 377, part two.

We've been discussing Emil Chorans, a

1949 book, A Short History of Decay.

We were sort of getting down to brass tacks of what is this awfulness that is the thing that we keep

trying to escape from, the thing that we keep throwing ourselves in Kierkegaardian fashion,

in various strategies into work, into ideals, into pretend salvation. Yeah, West, did you want to recap what

you were just saying when we stopped there?

Well, I was emphasizing this idea that we, that there's something ineffable inside us,

something mysterious that can't be communicated to others, so that inevitably we are in

solitude.

And I think he might say, I don't know that he explicitly says it,

but a lot of what we're doing with these absolutes

or these flying into religion or science or philosophy, anything like that.

In a way, we're trying to deny this essential

solitude and essential communicability, right? So he's not a fan of words, for instance,

except maybe in poetry. But yeah. Yeah. And this notion of nothingness or there being sort of an ineffable source that we're

naming, but there's always the source that is closer to the real world, right?

I immediately think of Hegel, right?

And Hegel, I guess in the end, it's this iterative process that you're trying to ultimately

get to comprehend it, right?

But there's still always a source.

And I guess we could pick any number of other philosophers in which there is this fundamental

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