*Forgive any formatting as I'm on mobile.
As I read in themes, I'm currently focusing on philosophy to try and understand it, see where I fit in the world and also reconstruct my own atheist/nihilistic worldview.
I just got done with Existentialist Cafe and got a really nice overview of all the main players in the Existentialist camp but want to finally take the leap into nihilism and absurdism proper. I've read The Stranger and Myth of Sisyphus and like Camus a lot so far but also wanna tackle Satre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty eventually but wonder if I need to read Husserl and specifically Heidegger and Nietzche since they are controversial because of their politics. Would I be able to get away with just reading synopses of their work? I do currently have Being and Time in my list of books to get.
Also, aside from Nietzche, who else should I read regarding nihilism? I'm currently working through The Trouble with Being Born by Cioran and wanna find some more by him but also have The Antidote by Burkeman and Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Ligotti in my backlog. I did read The Book by Alan Watts the other day and though it felt like reading my stoned friend's wild ramblings on society and how we exist in it, some coherent stuff did come through. But I don't know if it was what I was after. I did appreciate it for introducing me to some concepts like ego and self but maybe I should have saved it for another day?
Sidenote but I'm planning on moving back and force between philosophy and socialist theory so socialist philosphers are also welcome. Generally I'm open to all suggestions.
Thanks in advance!
Everything I'm going to say is basically wrong so keep that in mind as I continue. Regarding Nihilism, I too have thumbed through some Ligotti, Camus, and Cioran. I took to interpreting the post-colonial as a sort of socialist inclined Nihilism. Fanon with Guattari or Foucault makes for a worldview that certainly is not terribly cheerful about things as they are arranged in soceity. There are those writers who bring you closure to their wounds, and then there are those who see the soul wound embedded there in the world and lurch us into an awareness of this abject void. Recently I've begun wondering if Yogachara Buddhism has something insightful with the persona of Maitreya - this world is in such a dark age that we can no longer achieve enlightenment within this Dispensation. An apocalyptic Buddhism not unlike the Apocalyptic period of Second Temple Judaism, the so-called Christian Gnostics, and the Sufis who took after Plotinus...