What do you keep living for? Is there a specific person, goal, or idea that you work for? Is there no meaning to life in your opinion?
Context: I’ve been reading Camus and Sartre, and thinking about how their ideas interact with hard determinism.
What do you keep living for? Is there a specific person, goal, or idea that you work for? Is there no meaning to life in your opinion?
Context: I’ve been reading Camus and Sartre, and thinking about how their ideas interact with hard determinism.
First, great choice in reading (Im a fan of Camus as well).
As for the meaning of life thing…
Thats the neat part. You don’t.
Thats why in absurdist fiction like Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. Its not supposed to make sense and the universe is under no obligation to do so for you (the books even postulate that the universe does not want anyone to know so if someone figures it out it winks out of existance and replaced itself with something weirder, some scientists think this has happened before).
That goes back to Camus point about the remedies for the bleakness of early-mid 20th century philosophy. He proposed three options, Nhilism, a leap of faith (looking at you Kierkegaard), or absurdism, the last being what the doctor perscribes, but also requires the most effort because you have to find your question to the ultimate answer your self… Or not, who cares. Lets go spend some time by a lake that thinks its a gin & tonic.
I hope that I can come around to the absurdist perspective sooner or later, it does seem quite appealing to me, but I’m still yet to be convinced by Camus’ argument that the rebellion against the absurd has any more value than your other options. How would you say you find that sort of value?
Lets break down the arguments, and throw up that content warning because were about to do a philosophy.
(Sad dead Dutch/French thinkers)
The first option was to embrace Nhilism, this option is the worst outcome because one of the logical outcomes is if the universe has no meaning, why, as a part of the universe, should you. We’re going to drop this option right here because one of the physical representation of this viewpoint is suicide and thats not a healthy state of mind to be in, plus someone would have to clean up your mess.
The second option is Soren Kierkegaards leap of faith, by putting your faith (synonomys with “meaning of life” in this context) in something other than your self, you are no longer responsible for it. A leap of faiths original intent was to join a religion (cough christianity cough), but this is Lemmy and atheists abound in the 21st century so there isnt much point delving into this option here. The point is that your faith is put into an entity higher than yourself. I would argue that it does not need to be an abastract entity like the abrahamic god, gaia or Tom Cruise anymore, anything that can be used to provide a higher objective meaning works (as irrational as it is). This option could be viewed as suicide in a philosopical sense because you cease seeking meaning, because you claim to have already found it.
The final point, rejection of the absurd, is unfortunatly the last option and also requires the most effort. To use it as a personal philosophy involves the rejection of objective meaning and focusing on subjective meaning in spite of the absurdity of it all. That is the part that I feel takes effort, spite (without anger) is a taxing state of mind to maintain, and it does not provide the structures that tends to come with the package of option two. To quote many of the other thread and to use it as a jumping off point, the phrase “Do no harm”, the first word is Do, an action, something altered in the universe, something changed. If the universe is meaningless, then to revolt is to simply doing something and putting in the effort to make it a subjectivly good something.
This is the point where people would comicly point out that Camus being very French (Algerian), rebelion and revolt are sorta their national past times, and Ive always gotten a chuckle out of that.
Damn this took all day to write and got a little rambly… Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.
I’m not the original poster, but their perspective resonates with mine quite well.
We are biological beings of great fragility and complexity. I subscribe to some ‘spiritual’ ideas, but that stops when we get to the persistence of consciousness after death.
Absurdism simply recognizes our biology. Laughter releases feel-good chemicals. It is our refuge from the inexorable grind of raw-dogging reality.
If I had to choose a religion, it would be Bokononism.
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’ Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.”
The only scripture I can acknowledge