ABSTRACT
Existence precedes essence, but embeddedness precedes existence. As embedded existence, life falls apart into pieces, philosophical reflection being one of them. To be a phenomenologist of mind operating under the principle of ontological nihilism is to be at once at home with oneself and one's kind, and alien to these also; one is, to echo Julia Kristeva's title, a "stranger to oneself", but finds that this is no cause for concern. Pure nihilism, pure relativism, is the result of the putting into perspective of the human addiction to meaning as a comedic habit of mind. From outside the deep tension and emotion of the drama, the outsider—the totally divested neutral nihilist—looks at the human world of family romances, politics, culture wars and sees nothing but human apes behaving the way human apes do, living their material lives under the powerful sway of the affectively charged ideas that dominate their thoughts.
