/lit/ - Literature

>this zoom zoom going through babby's first existential crisis again

>>19620021
I have been desperately searching for a single argument, anon.

Please provide me direction or an argument. I'm well aware that it's a "cringe baby's first existential crisis". I would appreciate something more than "grow up", "hah, he doesn't know"

>>19620097
There are no arguments against his philosophy. I mean, what did you expect when you posed that question here? This is a board full of lost souls who jump onto whichever bandwagon fits them best. It's filled with Christians, Guenonposters, people who literally believe in magic because some guy who looks and sounds profound told them to... I could go on forever. Zapffe would have a field day with this place. It's full of people who shamelessly indulge in anchoring, distraction, isolation and sublimation. No one here except the people who already agree with you will want to discuss this with you. The rest of the posters will resort to the usual copes. Telling you to kill yourself, posting about Jesus or God, calling you a teenager, implying you're edgy or immature or something equally childish. Don't bother. Read Zapffe and similar philosophers if you think they're right. Why waste time on /lit/ where all you'll get is optimist copes?

tfw i am Norwegian and can read Zapffe in Norwegian

>>19620340
Are you the guy discussing Zapffe in the other thread?

>>19620321
You're right, I think there's something to be gained from pessimism but I'm sceptical of accepting it as the truth with a capital 'T'

I don't know what to replace my obsessive /lit/ habit with, though. Definitely not going to Plebbit.

>>19620004
>still not have an english translation
/lit/ clandestine translation when? I'd do it but I don't speak german

Bump

are you also the michaelstaedter guy

you act like him

>>19621309
No, I'm not sure who you're talking about but I'm glad to know another sympathetic soul is on this board.

>>19621322
there are a few people who have a nihilist/sceptic/pessimist philosopher they relentlessly shill, and every thread they make is of the format "Does anyone have a solid argument against him? Of course not" or similar over the top reverence

antinatalist shills are the worst, i don't even care about their stupid reddit philosophy, they're all aggressive shills who don't read books and just want to talk about "ideas" they got from a youtube video.

>>19621329
Well, I'm fairly educated and well-read

I'm still unable to find another angle to view the world from after understand Zapffe. I'm interested to hear your take on the problem

>>19621347
Like others have said, there isn't a good response to Zapffe because a "good response" to Zapffe would be tantamount to a good response to the age-old question of cosmic indifference and man's insignificance.

The whole axis of Zapffe and other existential pessimists is the contrast between man's being and the uncaring, cruel calculus of nature that brought us into existence.

The lynchpin for getting around this is first to accept it. To first understand that there is no obvious answer to this conundrum and there is likely no resolution that will ever result from looking at this whole ordeal as a dialectic between man versus man's insignificance. The best you can get is an emotional appeal to persistence that someone like Camus leans so heavily on.

Getting over this hump amounts to looking elsewhere. To put it crudely, looking at man's status in the context of the cosmos is unnatural. The meaning or life affirmation that humans crave must be a meaning that is profoundly meaning, and NOT cosmic or even divine in origin.

Life affirmation might be the key word here. Some spark or experience within the human condition that is self-affirming, that provides a sense of meaning (for lack of a better word) and a source of pride in the mystery we call life.

The question that has a chance of being solved is the reconciliation between the human value placed in the human experience and the indifferent universe it takes place in, as well as the status of that meaning past the individual door of death.

Read a good book. Take in a beautiful work of art. Bear witness to a beautiful sunrise. Listen to your favorite piece of music. Enjoy the smell of coffee.

And then reflect on what these moments show you. Try and tap into the sense of life-affirmation that bearing witness to beauty from any source grants you. Think about whatever this reveals to you about the deeper alchemy of life

The ability to self-assert the value of simply being might be what you're looking for. And if that is something that really exists, or it's just a cope is any guess

But some more food for thought: the knee-jerk reaction here is to double back onto the cosmic insignificance of man and to say nothing could possibly matter. And again you'd be right. But this would be another appeal to the cosmic perspective as opposed to the human perspective, from which any life-affirmation must emerge. Maybe a stolid assertion of life's value in the face of cosmic insignificance and even more profoundly, in the face of death, itself forms a heroic and life-affirming condition

But these answers are not satisfactory to either of us, I'm sure. Trying to resolve the conflict between an uncaring and mathematically-cold world and some comparatively insignificant candid belief in the value of life is something that has been on my mind a lot recently too

The only response that has made some progress for me is what I've told you. The human perspective is the only one that matters, necessarily

>>19621481
i meant to write "a meaning that is profoundly human", not "a meaning that is profoundly meaning". Sorry i'm a little toasted right now

there are no rebuttals against reality

>>19620340
I am now hating you for this in two threads.
Please translate it all for me.

>>19620097
Zapffebro, its the holidays. Put down the flaming sword and engage in some distraction with us.

>>19621309
No, Michaelbro is more sunny.

t. Bahnsen-bro, the ride never ends

Every few months a new Le ebin blackpilled author gets pushed here with the common expression: "omg how can he be refuted!?!! Existing is cope. Ahhh niggerman help me I'm going insaaaneee"
Be it ligotti, brassier, mainländer, cioran and now apparently Zappfe they all can suck a fat one and you depressed fucks might finally kill yourself so the rest of us can continue enjoying existence without the whiny background noise.

>>19622554
people have been talking about zapffe on /lit/ for like 10 years

>>19622554
Lmao based

>>19620004
We've had this thread like 3 times in the last week bro, I don't know. Get some rest.

>>19620004
how many fucking times do i have to tell you to read nietzsche?

>>19623347
Zapffe refuted Nietzsche, anon

Bump

>And humans will persist in dreaming of salvation and affirmation and a new Messiah.
>Yet when many saviours have been nailed to trees and stoned on the city squares...
>...then, I shall come...
>because I am...
>The Last Messiah!

Are you fucking kidding me?

>>19624169
What?

You're unable to cope with his tragic insight?

>Is it possible for ‘primitive natures’ to renounce these cramps and cavorts and live in harmony with themselves in the serene bliss of labour and love?
>Insofar as they may be considered human at all, I think the answer must be yes.
>Think, for example, of african americans: they are, in their niggerish way of life, closer to the wonderful biological ideal than we unnatural people.

What the fuck?

>>19624211
Where did you find this?

>>19624169
>>19624211
These are both from "The Last Messiah".
The first quote is from the ending chapter, where Zappfe shouts "I AM the LAST Messiah".
The second quote is from the IV chapter where he talks about animals and "primitive" humans, such as african americans or tribes from the jungle.

>>19624221
>>19624234
Oops, forgot to quote you.

>>19624211
>"African Americans"
Really anon.

>>19624234
Well, how do you feel after reading it?

There's no going back, huh?

>>19620004
>Does a solid argument against Aenesidemus? How did one compilation of thinkers manage to destroy every truth in existence, remain unrefuted, and still not have an English translation?

>>19622554
not an argument

>>19624776
This

>>19624234
Zapffe is not referring to himself although he did remain childless by choice

>>19624776
>>19624807
Here's an argument: You don't know anything. You might be dreaming. This might be a simulation. Your assignment of value is arbitrary and available for you to change. You like this philosophy because you choose to be sad.

>>19620004
>obscure philosopher writing in a language nobody can read
>kek no one has an argument everyone is just coping

>>19620004
There's nothing to respond to. He sets up his premises without justification, then riffs on them. Profound to sadsacks I'm sure, but otherwise only interesting as a clinical case.

>>19624824
Just a bit of trolling anon...didn't have to ruin it like that!

https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah
Isnt this an english translation

I preferred it when Wagner and Tocqueville were spammed.

>>19625313
Let him cope anon don't spoonfed him.

>>19620321
>>19620004
Every single "fact" gleaned from a pro-scientific, pro-industrialist, and pro-secularist viewpoint is false and relies on a parochial assessment on the nature of scientific studies themselves, which is about creating provisional models for the purposes predictions. These provisional models do not necessarily conform to the nature of reality. They are merely instruments.
Therefore, when Zapffe talks about self-consciousness, he already presumes it to be an emergent property and our self-awareness as not fitting within the framework of the natural world. However, there may well be more nuanced and convoluted interactions underlying mind and what we consider or project to be matter.
The idea that we can only reach truth through a detached and scientific method is the most toxic and destructive viewpoint in the world. Not a single good word has come from philosophers like Zapffe or pretty much every other Enlightenment philosopher.
The idea that your mystical experiences within solitude or the reverie experienced in nature points to no deeper elements underlying reality is so asinine that even engaging in debate with morons like you is futile.
You are idiots who masquerade as somehow having profound knowledge but ultimately fear letting go of all your preconceptions and simply meditating, which would thereby lead to gleaning new kinds of information that is not readily accessible to the scientific method.
You are icchantikas and in deep misery, and therefore in some sense putting you out of your miserable lives may be the most compassionate. If you truly believe life to be a kind of sideshow with no deeper metaphysical meaning, then I sincerely recommend you consider suicide. Otherwise, drop your preconceptions, adopt a real mystical tradition, get more solitude and a kind of regular meditation practice, and start looking at things outside of your shitty, disgusting modernist lens.
Refuting Zapffe simply involves rejecting the epistemological foundations of science.

Thaddeus Metz
Look him up on meaningful life

<span class="fortune" style="color:#2dfc53">

Your fortune: Your heart grew three sizes![/spoiler]

Today's biology defines us as biosystems whose mission in life is to survive, endure, and pass along copies of our genes. People aren't aware of the fact that we're all robots of our genes...All of our behaviors and emotions are not our own. If you can realize this and have a determination to overwrite your default software settings, you're your own man.

>>19625518
>rejecting the epistemological foundations of science.
You don't even need to accept a realist framework for science to still believe in it, or more importantly use and benefit from science. (And it's kind of embarrassingly naive to accept scientific realism anyway, like even Popper isn't with you.)

>>19625673
Correct. Instrumentalism is the best approach.
We're not really deriving "laws" from studying the repetitious patterns of natural phenomena. Rather, we're creating provisional models for the purposes of predictions, much like using a tool.
That's why machine learning models are making a lot of headway in fusion particle experiments. They don't rely on laws to makes predictions but just learning latent patterns from a lot of (clean) data.

For example, many people say Neuroscience shows the brain *causes* mental states. This is false. To be precise, it is more that mental states *supervene* on brain states, something which many people in the past knew. The supervenience of mental states on brain states do not say much more on their ontological relations.

>>19620004
Logocentrism

>>19625518
Ha!
>Someone provides an argument
>Zapffe-ists, abandon thread!

>>19621481
underrated post

He is just cope for incels.

>>19625577
Listen, this sounds like cardiomegaly. It isn't good. You should get on a halter monitor immediately.

>>19626370
One can only refute so much cope. Long appeal to idealism =/= profound. It just passes the buck for all of the suffering.<span class="fortune" style="color:#d0aa01">

Your fortune: Krampus is coming to your house![/spoiler]

>>19620004
his philosophy is just another cope
>Verification not required

>>19620097
>I have been desperately searching for a single argument, anon.
Worldviews are not deterministic, but follow from human freedom. Ultimately it is a personal choice, no arguments can make the choice for you.
You choose how to perceive the world, and since your phenomenal world is itself at least partially made by your own mind, you can at least partially change the world - as you perceive it.
Neech had this brilliant idea that some philosophies come from an upset stomach. Using common parlance, a philosopher's worldview tells of him as much as of the world (since the world we phenomenally perceive is either partially or wholly Mind-constructed). Basically the boo-hoo woe is me philosophies come from people who got into bad circumstances and decided to stay there.

Do not outsource your life to petit-bourgeoise Norwegian richfags that get boo-hoo attacks due to low insolation and lack of body movement, while a literal Nigger from Congo is happy from the sun and tasty oily fish he just fried and ate.

>>19627322
>Do not outsource your life to petit-bourgeoise Norwegian richfags that get boo-hoo attacks due to low insolation and lack of body movement, while a literal Nigger from Congo is happy from the sun and tasty oily fish he just fried and ate.
it's that these hell and heaven can exist side-by-side is what makes the world debased, though

>>19621481
>The whole axis of Zapffe and other existential pessimists is the contrast between man's being and the uncaring, cruel calculus of nature that brought us into existence.
But how do you know it is uncaring? Especially since philosophers mostly agree, for once, since Kant, that the world we perceive is at least partially constructed by our own minds, and the "real deal" world is either inaccessible or an incoherent notion itself. The uncaring cruelty is not a physical fact, but a mental perception added into the phenomena. It comes from your mind only, and only you can make changes to that.

Basically find your balls and make the leap of faith. Or grovel and bemoan under the bed, I dunno. The only certainty you will ever have is your personal choice, the "muh uncaring universe" might a drug induced delirium for all you know.

>>19627355
Debased according to what value? How did you reach upon a value that the whole world must agree to (to not be debased) yet that comes from the worlds itself?
If not from the worlds, then from where?

>>19624169
>The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'SAVE US!'...and I'll look down and whisper 'No.
Pretty cringe, bruv.

>Zapffe turned around, grinning
>"It was me! I am the Last Messiah"
Into the trash it goes