The Philosophical Trap You Don’t Know You’re In | John Vervaeke & Ethan Hsieh (Part 1/3)

What if the worldview that feels freeing is actually the thing keeping you trapped?

In Part 1 of this Lectern conversation, John Vervaeke joins Ethan Hsieh to introduce Notes on No-Thing, a course on the Kyoto School of Philosophy and its response to nihilism, nothingness, and the advent of the sacred.

John and Ethan explore Ethan’s own struggle with nihilism and how encountering Keiji Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness helped him move beyond a perceived divide between Eastern mystical traditions and Western philosophy. They discuss how the Kyoto School offers an alternative to familiar Western responses like existentialism and absurdism, opening a path beyond the apparent choice between skepticism, solipsism, and meaninglessness.

The conversation also explores Zen Neoplatonism, Daoism, Chan, Sufism, Jewish mysticism, Meister Eckhart, Spinoza, Iris Murdoch, and the possibility of recovering a genuine relationship with the sacred. In a role-play on everyday nihilism, John challenges the assumption that “nothing matters,” asking whether the standpoint from which we judge reality may itself be inherited, constricting, and largely invisible to us.

Using the image of a clenched fist, John suggests that releasing a deeply embedded worldview can initially feel painful—not because the old worldview was true, but because we have been holding onto it for so long.

This is Part 1 of 3 from the full Lectern conversation on Notes on No-Thing and the Kyoto School’s response to nihilism.

Notes on No-Thing is an introduction to the Kyoto School of Philosophy. The course runs Sept 14th to Nov 9th (No Class on Oct 26th).

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