/lit/ - Literature

>>4192822
There is. The feeling of purposeless is merely a result of once being promised a purpose. Once you realise there is no such thing, this feeling can be done away with. You can learn to live without purpose. It's not something inherently human to require purpose. It's a cultural thing.

>>3211289
>want to have values and beliefs and that kind of thing.
That shit will backfire because after a while you'll break the spell and you become even more depressed because the illusion has once more been taken away. So it will go with Buddhism, Nietzscheanism, Cynicism, Stoicism, Existentialism, all the -isms. So far I've only encountered one philosophy that I can truly fall back on without getting disillusioned and that seems to fit my edgy nihilist personality.

>>2774875
I find it quite reasonable for someone to be preoccupied with his actual own position in philosophical questions. It clearly feels the most urgent, since it is the only thing that brings up questions that are in dire need of being solved or done away with.

I'd simply say start with what intrigues you the most, OP. I've never read much Kierkegaard because, although I like his style, the whole religious thing is incompatible with me. I started with Nietzsche mostly and read some Sartre and Camus.

But, and this probably isn't a commonly held position, I think the single most important (proto-)existentialist is Max Stirner. He proposes a radical worldview based on the self and the self alone. I recommend you look into his thought.

>>2645741
You should read Stirner before judging Stirner's philosophy, not just 4chan. I don't there's ever been someone who has actually read Stirner who wasn't worked up about it.

As to your question, it seems a bit counterintuitive indeed. But I would say one does so for the sheer enjoyment of doing so. Stirner's own intention for writing the book might shed some light on the matter:

"Do I write out of love to men? No, I write because I want to procure for my thoughts an existence in the world; and, even if I foresaw that these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations springing up from this seed of thought — I would nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair and does not trouble me. You will perhaps have only trouble, combat, and death from it, very few will draw joy from it.
If your weal lay at my heart, I should act as the church did in withholding the Bible from the laity, or Christian governments, which make it a sacred duty for themselves to 'protect the common people from bad books'. But not only not for your sake, not even for truth's sake either do I speak out what I think. No —
I sing as the bird sings
That on the bough alights;
The song that from me springs
Is pay that well requites
I sing because — I am a singer. But I use you for it because I — need ears"