Institute of Philosophy SAS
Topic
Existentialism in the Age of Nihilism
PhD. program
Year of admission
2025
Name of the supervisor
Prof. h.c. Jon Stewart, PhD., Dr. habil phil. et theol.
Contact:
Receiving school
Filozofická fakulta UPJŠ
Annotation
A key theme in the existentialist movement of both the 19th and the 20th centuries was that of nihilism or meaninglessness. The existentialists argued that there was no intrinsic value in anything and that any truth claim about values was always based on irrational, ideological, or self-deceived argumentation. They were thus reluctant to argue for the value of anything at all. This undermined their attempts to create a theory of ethics, which by its very nature depends on the assumption of values and claims about what is right or wrong. Is it possible to resolve this problem in the existential tradition? There is clearly a strong ethical or even moralizing element in the works of many existentialist authors, such as Kierkegaard and Sartre, but can this be made into a genuine and consistent theory of ethics given the basic principle of nihilism and meaninglessness? Does this dilemma still exist today in the 21st century, which has also been regarded as an age of nihilism?