What would you say the best way to understand nihilism is?

Well, it's got a long history as a concept.

And so in preparation for this, I sort of revisited the history of nihilism and the four different types of nihilism that have been identified philosophically.

And it relates to the fundamental term is the nihil, the nothing, the negation.

And it sort of rebranded itself philosophically, though there are those who've argued that the lineage of this goes back to antiquity, but as an identifiable philosophical entity.

In the late 18th and particularly early 19th century, some say as a reaction to Kantian philosophy, to strands of idealism, to views that there were eternal, timeless values that could be found in in all places and times and spaces.

So the rejection of that, I think probably philosophically also the work of Schopenhauer plays a large role because of his influence on Friedrich Nietzsche later in the 19th century.

We said, well, what the hell have we been doing?