Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophies This. So if you've been listening to the

podcast lately, and you wanted an example of characters that confront nihilism at a deep level,

or characters that try to be authentic on the other side of nihilism, at the level that

Nishitani is talking about when he talks about a religious quest, well, let's just say you could

do worse than reading some of Fyodor Dostoevsky's most famous books,

from crime and punishment to the idiot, to brothers Karamazov,

to the one we're talking about today, written earlier in his career than any of those.

The one we're talking about today is called Notes from Underground written in the year 1864,

arguably his deepest exploration into nihilism.

And there's plenty of resources out there that

could give you a summary of a book like this, so that's not what I'm going to be doing today.

And I guess you could always read a summary if you didn't want to read the actual book. But I will

say this, if you were going to read a book in the near future, the notes from Underground is a pretty

short one. And in keeping with what I've been talking

about lately, where there are some insights about life and reality that are really only

things that can be directly experienced by immersing yourself in them, then, I don't know,

might be fun to read some Russian literature at some point in your life if you haven't yet.

Might be something that speaks to you in a unique way.

Nonetheless, I feel the need to say here. There will be some inevitable spoilers in this episode, if that's something that speaks to you in a unique way. Nonetheless, I feel the need to say here.

There will be some inevitable spoilers in this episode, if that's something that matters to you.

But mostly what this will be is an innocent conversation among us friends about the nihilism

that goes on for the main character of this book, as well as Kajini and Shimoni

...