Absurd Being

A place to take a moment to reflect on what it all means

Existentialism

Patreon

All of my content is free, and I want to keep it that way, but you are welcome to support me on Patreon.
I also offer personalised, one-to-one philosophy tutoring/coaching through Patreon which you are welcome to contact me about.

About Me

Absurd Being is the website of Nathan Hohipuha, a New Zealander living and teaching English at a university in South Korea.

Those of you with sharp eyes may have noticed something odd in the picture above. The guy eating his glasses, between Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus is actually me. Hi. Really difficult to get all five of us together like that by the way...

What am I Currently Working On?

PHILOSOPHY

I've had to put my The Visible and the Invisible YouTube series on hold for a couple of weeks, but I'm just about to get back into it this week with video #15. Only two more to go after this one.


In terms of writing, I have a new article in the works about the difference between facts and the truth, which will conclude with something hopefully unexpected about both.


BOOKS IN PROGRESS

Werner Heisenberg - Physics and Philosophy

Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest


BOOKS JUST FINISHED

Something Deeply Hidden Physicist Sean Carroll's book Something Deeply Hidden is a very good exploration of quantum mechanics for the layperson. Carroll is undoubtedly an expert in his field and this book is both accessible and interesting. I did find his relentless plugging for the Many Worlds Interpretation a little distracting (mainly because I find it so absurd), but I guess one can hardly explain a topic without advocating for the explanation one finds most plausible.


The Three Body Problem The first book in Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem trilogy is a unique take on the idea of first contact. Liu blends physics, mathematics, astronomy, Chinese history, and the discovery of aliens into an intriguing tale about one woman's act of betrayal that has, or will have, devastating consequences for humankind.


Last Updated: Aug 14, 2024

Latest

The Philosophy of Reality The big news (for me at any rate) is the (self-)publication of my first book, The Philosophy of Reality, which contains my theory about the way phenomenology, ontology, and metaphysics are related. I've written an article about the book, including some excerpts, here, made a video in which I discuss it a little more here, and put it up on Amazon which you can find here.


The Visible and the Invisible You've seen my Merleau-Ponty series on his Phenomenolgoy of Perception. In this new series we turn to MP's The Visible and the Invisible, the book he was writing at the time of his death, and the one in which the French philosopher pivots to ontology and introduces the notions of chiasm and flesh.


Gilles Deleuze French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) is one of the most important philosophers of the modern era. His writings, agree or disagree with them, display a tremendous intellect and both a remarkable depth and breadth of thought, straddling disciplines, philosphers, and theories with apparent ease. This video series focuses on his book and doctoral thesis Difference and Repetition.


Watsuji Tetsuro Watsuji Tetsuro (1889-1960) was a Japanese philosopher whose thought wasn't religious/Buddhist enough to earn him a place in the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy centred around the ubiquitous Nishida Kitaro. His philosophy engaged with Western thinkers, and he was especially sympathetic to Heidegger's brand of phenomenology. This video series works through his book Rinrigaku.


Edmund Husserl Edmund Husserl, German philosopher and founder of phenomenology, created the philosophy that has mainly occupied me in my studies. However, his approach to phenomenology completely differed from that of the 'students' who came afterwards. We finally investigate the master himself in this video series on Ideas 1.

What can you expect to find on the Absurd Being site?

Blog: This is an archive of all the articles I have written. From Feb 2018 the article links redirect to my WordPress blog.


Videos: On this page you can find links to all of my YouTube videos. The videos themselves are usually extremely detailed, chapter by chapter breakdowns of difficult existentialist texts. If you've always wanted to tackle Heidegger or Sartre but were intimidated by their mammoth, dense tomes, these videos will keep you on track right to the last page.


Philosophy: This website is first and foremost a site about philosophy. It contains articles explaining/discussing philosophers and their philosophies. For those of you who may have already recognised something vaguely 'philosophical' in the site name, I have a strong existentialist leaning which will be reflected in the content.


Buddhism: Given that Buddhism is the most interesting and least 'religious' religion, I have dedicated a separate page to it.


Atheism: I am a strict atheist and have written quite a bit about Christianity from this perspective. All of my thoughts on Christianity make their way here.


Science: This section primarily reflects my interest in neuroscience, consciousness, and physics.


Novels: I have a keen interest in writing fiction that could probably best be categorised as fantasy/sci-fi. All of my novels have philosophical or religious themes and are primarily intended to stimulate thought in the reader. As I complete various writing endeavours, I will be posting excerpts to this page.


Recent Articles

Aug 14, 2024     Reflections on Time - Infinity     New

The word ‘infinity’ is used to refer to something endless or without boundaries. If you believe that the universe has no outer boundary, so that you could travel outwards forever and never reach the end or return to where you started, this would make the universe infinite in space or size. If you subscribe to the multiverse theory, on the other hand, it might be the number of universes that you would take to be infinite. Another thing that is commonly taken to be infinite is time, in the sense that time extends endlessly forwards into the future and endlessly backwards into the past. It is this sense of infinity – the temporal kind – that we will be concerned with in this article....


July 09, 2024     My First Book - The Philosphy of Reality

Some of you may have noticed that I have been a little quiet on here recently. A part of the reason for this is that I have been working hard on getting my first book ready for (self-)publication. I’m happy to report that the battle is finally over, and The Philosophy of Reality is up and looking good on Amazon. It is basically the sum total of my thinking over the past decade, during which time I have been making long-form, in-depth, explanatory video series on key philosophical texts while writing articles containing more original ideas, some of which have gone into certain parts of my book. To give you a little idea of what The Philosophy of Reality is about, in this article I will reproduce the blurb I’ve written for it along with three excerpts, one from each of the main sections that make up the book...


Dec 17, 2023     Evolution from a Metaphysical Perspective

Let me begin this article by clarifying that I will NOT be doubting evolution as the theory that life forms change over time and different species share common ancestors. No scientific theory (I also won't be wasting any time refuting the silly objection that evolution is just a theory that has yet to be proven) has as much supporting evidence for it, from the fossil record to carbon dating to homologies (including anatomical, vestigial, and molecular features) to developmental biology to genomics, and on and on. With that said, evolutionary theory is not perfect, although what it lacks, strictly speaking, doesn’t fall within the mandate of what the theory (or science, in general) studies...


Nov 04, 2023     Time and Its Three Tenses

Like my last article, this one takes its cue from an article I read in the magazine, Philosophy Now. The article in question was written by Letizia Nonnis, a philosophy undergraduate at the University of Roehampton, and was entitled “Kant on Time.” My aim here is to take up some of the key points Nonnis extracts from Kant regarding time and discuss them in more detail, leading, hopefully, to a deeper understanding of this horribly misunderstood aspect of reality...


Sep 30, 2023     Exploring Moral Relativism

This article explores moral relativism through an article in the online philosophy magazine Philosophy Now written by Paul Stearns, a philosophy professor at Blinn College, Texas, entitled ‘Right and Wrong about Right and Wrong.’ Note that the moral relativism which Stearns is arguing against here is not the claim that there are no universal standards from which we can judge the behaviour of people in different times or cultures from our own...


Note: All information on this website is the property of Nathan Hohipuha and may not be taken for use without prior consent.
Disclaimer: This site is privately owned and operated. All content represents the personal opinion of the author. In the case of factual or interpretative errors I would gratefully accept suggestions for correction.
Differing opinions on the topics discussed herein would also be received with interest.
Nathan can be contacted at absurdbeing@gmail.com