Episode 8: Pyrrhonism and Eternal Recurrance in HBO's Watchmen

In this episode CMU students Baris Denezli and Elle Norman get deep with their philosophical musings on HBO's Watchmen. Baris applies the radical skepticism of the Greek philosopher Pyrrho to the concept of morality in Watchmen, showing how difficult it is for the audience to judge any character as wholly "good" or "evil," given their complex actions and motivations. Elle references a similar concept from Friedrich Nietzsche, the concept of Nihilism, but she spends more time on another of Nietzsche's ideas, that of eternal recurrence. Elle sees that Dr. Manhattan's unusual perception of time---his ability to live simultaneously in the past, present and future---as having some similarities to Nietzsche's notion of time as a flat circle.