Hello everyone, I'm Steven West. This is Philosophies This.

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Today's episode is on the very interesting and dark Emil Chiron. I hope you love the show today.

So I wanted to begin today by giving a bit of a disclaimer about the thinker we're about to cover.

Emil Chiron, born in Romania, 1911, most of the time categorizes one of the great existentialists of the 20th century.

And as an existentialist, not a surprise, he's not going to spend a lot of his time talking about things like metaphysics, building elaborate systems, talking about epistemology, aesthetics.

No, in fact, even more so than other existentialists out there. He actually thought all these things were mostly a waste of time.

What Chiron wants to talk about is existence, the human condition, more specifically the dark, inconveniently ugly aspects of existence that society often tells us to sweep under the rug,

but nonetheless you find yourself sitting there on the couch after work on a Tuesday in your front room, and at some level you know that those things are still there, under the rug hidden, but always still present.

Because of this, we have to talk about some pretty dark stuff this episode.

Not a surprise, but his fascination with this protected class of dark topics is going to cause a lot of people to label him a pessimist.

And he no doubt was in some respects.

But the point of this disclaimer at the top of the show is to let you know that, yes, 95% of you are going to disagree with the way he thinks about the human condition.

But just know that my ambition, as someone trying to present his ideas, is that by the end of this, hopefully what I can get across is that despite what might seem on the surface, like a very dark pessimistic outlook, beneath the surface,

a meal Chiron might be one of the most optimistic thinkers I've ever had the pleasure of studying.

I guess the best thing I can say to primus for talking about Chiron's work is that it's far from depressing.

You know, sometimes when you have a problem in life, you want somebody to come in and give you advice and fix the problem so it'll go away.

You want to philosopher like Plato to come in and give you an answer for how to live with more wisdom.

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