A Third Math Topic: Imaginary (or Fake) Numbers

[The Ghost of RubangB]

@theprof,

I actually got lucky pretty young and studied a bit of existentialism in a high school AP Composition and Literature class. We had one short unit on Sartre and Camus, and I told the class "Oh, this is brilliant. That's what you call it. I didn't know there was a name for how I felt," and my teacher (a huge Christian as it turned out later) tried to tell me that it was impossible to be an existentialist, because it's a self-defeating philosophy. You can't believe in nothing and believe in existentialism at the same time. The entire class agreed with her (Catholic school groupthink). They didn't differentiate between existentialism and nihilism, but I can't blame them, they hadn't studied nihilism yet.

I like to explain it like this:

Existentialists believe in themselves... if they feel like it.

Since then I've only taken one basic philosophy course and haven't taken any more writing courses (but I might take screenwriting if I can get in) but I've read up on Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Camus, and Sartre. I looooove me some Sartre. I haven't had time to get into Kierkegaard yet though.