What Is Faith?

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"It appeared that all mankind had a knowledge unacknowledged and despised by me, of the meaning of life," he says. "And it's this moment of humility, i think, that he needs to get to to get his way out of crisis." 'If a man lives, he believes in something,' writes Schopenhauer. If one did not believe that one must live for something, he would not live - but faith is the strength of life'

David and Tamler continue their discussion of Leo Tolstoy’s 'Confession.' When we left him last time, the famous author had bottomed out just years after writing two of the greatest novels ever written. Our eventual death, Tolstoy thought, strips life of all meaning and purpose – all answers to the question “so what?”. How does he emerge from this state of suicidal depression? What role does faith or “irrational knowledge” play in his account? What’s the meaning of the cryptic dream at the conclusion of the memoir?

Plus, bombarded with this recommendation, we were going to talk about a certain article that came out in Qualitative Research about masturbating to Japanese shota comics – we even had a guest – but had to scrap it. Instead, we discuss a recent study on conspiracy theories that shows that liberals are just as likely to believe in them as conservatives. Mostly we just talk about the conspiracies.