Nihilism: The Question of Truth - Fr. Steven Allen
Channel: Yanni McQueen
Date: 2019-01-13

Orthodox Survival Course, Class 27 : Nihilism, I. Introduction: The Question of Truth 

Now, at the end of this long journey together, that we summarized in our last class, we have arrived at the dead end of the Western philosophical and spiritual "project," which is the philosophy of "Nihilism." Nihilism as a body of thought and, more importantly, as a demonic spiritual power, is the inner content of the ongoing Revolution of the current age and therefore we need to understand it as best we can, not only intellectually but spiritually, and we need practically to be able to recognize its manifestations - thought patterns, keywords, social implications, political programs, etc. - whenever we see them, so that we can relate what is going on around us to an overall pattern of understanding, so that can work from a unified and coherent understanding of our situation.

I do not have to "reinvent the wheel" in order to guide us through this subject, since Fr. Seraphim Rose, in 1962 when he was still a layman, wrote a 128 page monograph on this subject, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, and this will form an excellent guide to our study. For nine dollars, one can, from St. Herman Press, purchase the second edition of the book, which contains an additional essay on the "Philosophy of the Absurd," and the text of the first edition is online at http://www.oodegr.com/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm#I._. What I propose to do is to let Fr. Seraphim guide us through this subject step by step, and therefore I shall summarize what he wrote, in the order that he wrote it