/lit/ - Literature

or exacerbate it

evade it.

kierkeegard was a fag.

>>2224290
at least kierkegaard was a philosopher.

>>2224292
yeah but the theism takes that point away. Camus was bold and realistic.

>>2224292
so is the rambling alcoholic bum in my alley

doesn't make him any less of fag

very good question

"The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together.”

God doesn't link them together. it's about justification for man, not justification for God.

>>2224300
don't worry maybe one day you'll be able to understand theism aswell.

>>2224345
I did.

Existentialism is just as intellectually suicidal as religion.

Søren Kierkegaard died the year before Freud was born.

He never experienced the second world war, nor the painful lucidity of western thought afterwards. His country was never occupied by the fascist armies of the catholic right-wing, nor did his writings ever endanger his life. He never had to watch as his country's brightest intellectuals were systematically executed in the december snow at Fort Mont-Valérien, nor see the disastrous collapse of Communism's emancipatory dream into the Soviet's lethal nightmare.

Albert Camus experienced all of these things, and he understood very clearly the importance of having the courage to resist and not submit to the ignorance and naivety of the absurd.

Is it theism if you basically believe that entropy is not the ultimate force in the universe, even if it appears to be?

Meh, im a pragmatist, so whatever works for you
but as far myself, i cannot accept the existence of the christian god

Ideology annuls the absurd by staking a claim of ownership on it.

"The Universe is not absurd because a perfect clockmaker designed it. It seems absurd to you because you choose not to see, you fail to submit to the call of your conscience".

This is a standard religious ideological interpolation of my own device. As you can see, it personifies the inhuman and makes nature into an expression of (its vision of) social order so that social order becomes the natural order and also the only possible version of itself.

In short, you can create meaning through fabricating a absolute narrative; cf. God, "tooth and nail".

In my opinion, the truth of the physical world (what Žižek calls "the desert of the real") in its disparity of meaning and appearance is not readily cognizable without scientific means, hence absurdity and the impulse to "socialize" it through ideology.

>>2224408
that's a belief that stems from deep misunderstanding and misinterpretation of physics, but not theism, no.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2522

"
The Christian message is the message of a new Reality in which we can participate and which gives us the power to take anxiety and despair upon ourselves. And this we must, and this we can communicate.
"


The Bible does not expound itself in such a way that the men to whom it expounds itself can be idle listeners. It expounds itself in such a way that these men—in accordance with their collective and individual capacities, and finally and decisively "according to the measure of their faith"—are drawn into the service of this exposition.
- Karl Barth, God Here and Now

>>2224848
Not force in a technical, force x distance sort of definition, just a belief in a not totally entropy-tending universe, or something underlying entropy.

>>2224848
Not force in a technical, mass x acceleration sort of definition, just a belief in a not totally entropy-tending universe, or something underlying entropy.

I love Kierkegaard so much. I became an atheist after I started getting into Kafka and obviously other things that changed my mind; Heidegger is a huge example of the vanity of ideology to me. I like how Kafka and Levinas conceived of a moral demand without redemption, but Kierkegaard was my introduction to philosophy. He was a great writer. He understood Christianity better than the apostles. When I was reading the Sickness Unto Death, I felt like I was reading Gertrude Stein, but it was great rationalist psychology. I disagree with him about there being a "true self," but it's really like standing between two mirrors and trying to not see something. His writing about the offensiveness of love and the offensiveness of the idea of sin have completely colored my thought. Please, read Kierkegaard, and compare him to the non-French philosophers he influenced, except for maybe Sartre and Derrida and Levinas. Camus was right about him but I don't see much value in Camus.

>>2224890
I knew you didn't mean a technical definition of force, my statement is still true.

an universe than tends to a maximum entropy is a tautology and the opposite a logical imposibility.

>>2224912

>I don't see much value for Camus

Camus was pretty spot on about shit. I can see how someone who comes from reading Camus might either hate Kierkegaard or enjoy him. I happen to like Kierkegaard cause he talked sense on religion and his stuff like Two Ages is pretty top tier.

Read both goddammit. You won't regret if you go into it with an open mind.

>>2224921
>an universe than tends to a maximum entropy is a tautology
So it's just because of the definition of matter. Things disperse from high-concentration to low because there is room to disperse.
>the opposite a logical imposibility.
What do you mean?

>>2224924
I started the Stranger and was just like, "Man, this is boring." I thought I'd enjoy the Myth of Sisyphus so I bought it, but haven't cracked it yet.

I get that he was a really hard line nihilist, but I don't know why he necessitates his own philosophy called "Absurdism." It's not that I disagree with him really, as edgy as that sounds, but just that I don't know what makes him different.

>>2225485
I wouldnt call him a nihilist, Nietzshe's form of it or the more common form.

The best way to see what he adds to philosophy is his break with Sartre. Sartre believed that you must create meaning, the existence before essence bit, and that doing this is the most important thing possible.

Camus believed that creating your own meaning was a facade, and that the only justifiable action to the absurd/void (realizing values are not objective and that we must use values) is to accept the absurd/void and live on. He would look at Sartre's view of the absurd as a coping mechanism, and not really looking at the truth the absurd creates.

>>2225567
Perfect summation. I like Sartre for responsibility and Camus for purpose (or lack thereof). Acceptance of the meaninglessness of life without the resignation that should accompany it. I agree with that one guy about his constant blabbering about "the absurd" though. I think he was trying too hard to make his work distinct.

>>2225567
>>2225567
That's a naive interpretation of Sartre. He saw no solution to the meaninglessness of life. What he tried to prove by existence preceding essence was that the human being was fundamentally free, and this he considered a somewhat redeeming quality. However, he was still quite disgusted/revolted by it, by the indifference of the world towards human autonomy, by the indifference of things in themselves; this indifference ultimately reducing all meaning that we try to create to nothingness.

>>2225805
Yawn

>>2225567
I agree with that, but I arrived at it by more entertaining means, by reading about the Continentals who came after him and the things they added that weren't so obvious. He still seems like just a stepping stone.

>>2225805
It is true Sartre had never accepted the bases of absurdism and the lack of purpose in human life. It upset him more than Camus who viewed it as something beautiful, that's why Sartre needed to find meanings in his life; committing himself to the USSR in the 1950's, writting bad pamphlets, and such.

>>2224389
PTSD does not validate or elucidate someone's views.

>>2224834
>what Žižek calls "the desert of the real"
>mfw

>>2224288

Evade it, or rather, retreat.

Nihilist and/or absurdism as a stage in someones thinking is best compared to swimming in an underwater cave. You can only stay there for so long, and if you don’t find another exit you’ll have to get back up go get air again. Kierkegaard did this, he came up again and embraced christianity. Nietzsche kept searching for the hole, thought he found it but drowned anyway. Camus eventually retreated, like Kierkegaard. Into some form of humanism and socialism. Even of Stirner could be said that his Einzige is just a conceptual construct in an otherwise absurd or meaningless world, although he kind of reads like a zen master at times (the self as creative nothingness etc).

I am currently trying to grow gills. It takes some kind of special talent to go on living in an undefined world without some fixed set of values. I've been doing some research into this and I seem to be coming back to the old masters of the void: Lao Tze, Bodhidharma, the Skeptics, etc.

These are the kind of people who make their home out of emptiness/meaninglessness and who seem to thrive without some set frame of reference.

Tips as to other authors/thinkers of this kind would be very much appreciated, by the way.

>>2224389

This.

Kierkegaard wouldn't have been so quick to acquiesce with the absurd if he had experienced what the next 100 years would bring.

>>2227932

Camus turned into some activist piece of shit too.

>>2228047
I don't think so, he left the communists at the end of the war. Would you care to explain ?

>>2228047
>Camus turned into some activist too.
Fixed that for you. Calling Camus a piece of shit is redundant.

>>2227990
i want to get this tattooed on my leg

faith IS the absurd. to believe or disbelieve is a leap of faith since no one can provide the kind of evidence to convince the other side. if we were to understand absurdity it wouldn't be absurdity.

just a rephrasing of the question yes or no to religion. this thread is whack.

>You all fail to overcome the absurdity

>>2228063

>In the 1950s Camus devoted his efforts to human rights. In 1952 he resigned from his work for UNESCO when the UN accepted Spain as a member under the leadership of General Franco. In 1953 he criticized Soviet methods to crush a workers' strike in East Berlin. In 1956 he protested against similar methods in Poland (protests in Poznań) and the Soviet repression of the Hungarian revolution in October.

Quote from wiki, just a day in the life of Camus political meddling. Actual absurdism and nihilism can't into humanist values.

>>2228093
That's the whole point of philosophy, phrase everything so complicated a normal person has a hard time to decipher it. Else any bum from the street could answer it.

>>2228215
funny you should say that. pic related. check out the nice einstein quote.

>>2228183

>implying you can overcome the absurdity

>>2227992
>>2224389

Yes that's right, Kierkegaard died before the last paragraph was written. Now, ah, see NOW we understand existence! It has been fully footnoted, annotated, fleshed out and nothing has been left outside. We have progressed to the end of becoming.

>>2228196
It doesn't mean Camus has accepted any system of thought or ideology. He simply believes that, while absurdism can't be solved, human life is precious and worth fighting for. He is a proof that absurdism doesn't necessarily lead to nihilism.

>>2228196
It doesn't mean Camus has accepted any system of thought or ideology. He simply believes that, while absurdism can't be solved, human life is precious and worth fighting for. He is a proof that absurdism doesn't necessarily lead to nihilism.

>>2228215
>wah i'm dumb and can't understand complicated words! my mommy says kids do it on purpose so they suck >:(

I think the Absurd does more to stake the claim that a god can exist instead of no god existing.

Anyone?

>>2228481
I think absurdism lends itself much more to something like theologican noncognitivism or ignosticism than to atheism.

>>2228481
Only in the sense of Job, ultimately it does neither as God doesn't mean shit either way

>>2228481
it doesn't.

>>2228491

Yes, that's more so what i was going for then just the idea of "god" of any religion.

>>2228476
http://dev.null.org/postmodern/

a postmodernism generator for you. sounds like something you'd enjoy reading.

why are some people calling camus a nihilist why

it's like you read the sparknotes for the stranger in high school.

>>2228509
this

>>2228508
the thing about overcomplication is legit in some cases, but in the case of 'all philosophy', as that poster said, its the equivalent of a 3 year old complaining because he doesn't know what hypothermia means.

Oh kierkegaard, your convoluted run-on sentences are even better in Danish than in English.

Listen to this guy!

The crowd is untruth. And I could weep, in every case I can learn to long for the eternal, whenever I think about our age's misery, even compared with the ancient world's greatest misery, in that the daily press and anonymity make our age even more insane with help from "the public," which is really an abstraction, which makes a claim to be the court of last resort in relation to "the truth"; for assemblies which make this claim surely do not take place. That an anonymous person, with help from the press, day in and day out can speak however he pleases (even with respect to the intellectual, the ethical, the religious), things which he perhaps did not in the least have the courage to say personally in a particular situation; every time he opens up his gullet—one cannot call it a mouth—he can all at once address himself to thousands upon thousands; he can get ten thousand times ten thousand to repeat after him—and no one has to answer for it; in ancient times the relatively unrepentant crowd was the almighty, but now there is the absolutely unrepentant thing: No One, an anonymous person: the Author, an anonymous person: the Public, sometimes even anonymous subscribers, therefore: No One. No One! God in heaven, such states even call themselves Christian states.

>>2228541 cont'd
One cannot say that, again with the help of the press, "the truth" can overcome the lie and the error. O, you who say this, ask yourself: Do you dare to claim that human beings, in a crowd, are just as quick to reach for truth, which is not always palatable, as for untruth, which is always deliciously prepared, when in addition this must be combined with an admission that one has let oneself be deceived! Or do you dare to claim that "the truth" is just as quick to let itself be understood as is untruth, which requires no previous knowledge, no schooling, no discipline, no abstinence, no self-denial, no honest self-concern, no patient labor! No, "the truth," which detests this untruth, the only goal of which is to desire its increase, is not so quick on its feet. Firstly, it cannot work through the fantastical, which is the untruth; its communicator is only a single individual. And its communication relates itself once again to the single individual; for in this view of life the single individual is precisely the truth. The truth can neither be communicated nor be received without being as it were before the eyes of God, nor without God's help, nor without God being involved as the middle term, since he is the truth. It can therefore only be communicated by and received by "the single individual," which, for that matter, every single human being who lives could be: this is the determination of the truth in contrast to the abstract, the fantastical, impersonal, "the crowd" - "the public," which excludes God as the middle term (for the personal God cannot be the middle term in an impersonal relation), and also thereby the truth, for God is the truth and its middle term. Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen, Spring 1847

>>2228543
>>2228541

What's wrong with it? He presents a point that resonates even more today with the advent of the internet. The public doesn't get any smarter because it has all this knowledge available. It rather dictates what it wants to see and chooses to watch the things it knows which are easier for the public to understand. The crowd isn't looking to find the truth of any matter because it's distracted by all the useless information it's hit by. Even if it stumbles upon the truth. It won't question the truth as being the actual truth etc etc

More to learn in those two paragraphs then in the rest of this thread.

>>2228584
I know, it wasn't meant as something bad, I really DO love his convoluted run-on sentences, they make reading them challenging, but once you've comprehended them, they are as precise as they need to be. Wonderful.

>>2228595

Ah. I thought the posts were meant to be snarly but such is the internet leaving little in the way of detecting sincerity.

I agree on the run-ons. After you read it, it has so much ideal that you wouldn't have it any other way.

>>2228526
i only agree with you becuase you said "in some cases." and by overcomplication you meant complication.

there probably aren't as many of these exceptional "cases" as some people think. usually it's just masterbatory.

my opinion

camus ainy shiiiiiiit

Camus is a boss, I always carry a vintage paperback of the Stranger with me to read in public.

Kierkegaard is meh. Im not hapy to hav such a terible filosofer asociated with my name.

>>2228509

Well it's watered down nihilism at best. Pic related. Camus was a nihilist in the way that Nietzsche was one: Quite successful in destroying the old and but then coming up with a less than fulfilling alternative. It's like tearing down a cathedral and then building some shitty shack and saying 'lol idk it'll work i guess'. Bunch of goddamn vandalists.