If you've been listening for a year or more, you know that Halloween is a very special holiday for me. To be honest, finding "spooky" Nietzsche content was a bit difficult last year, such that I probably covered just about everything you could say about Nietzsche's thoughts on ghosts, witches, the fear of the dark, or why we celebrate scary or morose holidays such as Halloween. So, this year, for our Halloween special, I decided to take a detour to an author who came along shortly after Friedrich Nietzsche, and addressed many of the same themes that concerned Nietzsche: H.P. Lovecraft. In celebration of the spookiest time of year, Mynaa & I discuss the philosophical meaning behind H.P. Lovecraft's fiction and the cosmic  horror that underlies his work, and the connections we see to Friedrich Nietzsche and Peter Zappfe. Like Nietzsche, Lovecraft perceived the end of the our metaphysical and moral faith, murdered by a rising scientific materialism that left no room for concepts like the salvation of mankind or the centrality of the earth in the grand scale of the cosmos. Mankind instead confronted an increasingly meaningless world - a world which Lovecraft depicted in fantastical terms: in which human beings who were largely impotent in the story were torn asunder by entities who are entirely indifferent towards them.

After the discussion, I included some readings of Lovecraft's stories. I picked "The Tree" because it is underrated, a perfectly paced campfire-story-type tale, and one set in Ancient Greece! Then, "From Beyond", a story that encapsulates the Lovecraftian angst about the progress of scientific knowledge.  I figured this could be a fun departure from the normal scholarly rigor to get into the spirit of the season. Happy Halloween!