Why do many people say Camus "solved" nihilism?
From where I stand he didn't, he just dodged the question of the meaninglessness of existence and says we should revolt instead of suicide. Yet he admits that all our values have no external anchor so then what good are they? He's against suicide when it seems like a solution to the issue.
To me the problem of suicide is quite real as many say life is worth it but those then to be ad hoc explanations of the fortunate or those in first world countries with such luxuries as internet and the like. Most people starve, live in war torn areas, or live where illnesses are pretty common. It just seems stupid to me to just assume life is worth it and we should strive.
Though these days any back talk against life being "worth it" is met with charges of depression or being sent to a mental ward. I keep seeing Camus pop up whenever I bring this up and each time I shut them down when I explain that he didn't overcome nihilism so much as dodge it.
To me the problem of suicide is quite real as many say life is worth it but those then to be ad hoc explanations of the fortunate or those in first world countries with such luxuries as internet and the like. Most people starve, live in war torn areas, or live where illnesses are pretty common. It just seems stupid to me to just assume life is worth it and we should strive.
Though these days any back talk against life being "worth it" is met with charges of depression or being sent to a mental ward. I keep seeing Camus pop up whenever I bring this up and each time I shut them down when I explain that he didn't overcome nihilism so much as dodge it.
Comments (76)
Basically going from “Life is meaningless nothing matters....” to “Life is meaningless! Nothing matters!” It is an attempt to change your attitude to the same set of facts. Which is not logical by nature.
Quoting Darkneos
Not most people. I would be willing to bet that most people consider themselves “of the fortunate”. And that most people would say life is worth it. Despite the circumstances.
You seem to be looking for some objective argument that destroys nihilism. Some internal inconsistency or some grave logical error inherent in the belief. There is no such thing. Upside is: There is nothing compelling you to choose the set of premises that lead to nihilism. If you’re a nihilist it’s because you choose to be one.
And that's the real point underneath it all. If someone finds life worth living then it is, precisely because they find it so, because there is nothing more to the value of it than whether or not someone finds it valuable.
If someone doesn't, they're not obliged to do so, but since it's as much a matter of one's reaction to circumstances as to the circumstances themselves, an alternative to changing difficult-to-change circumstances is to change one's reactions instead. That's not always easy either, but if someone feels like trying that instead of dying, if that's worth the effort to them, then it's worth it period, because that's all worth is.
Who?
I think nihilism can make a lot of sense, but I have usually found it an empowering and uplifting notion rather than a depressing one. 'Nothing matters' doesn't have to come with a 'how awful' stamp unless you have already made the assumption that transcendent purpose is critical.
Sure, it can be argued that nihilism is circular - as in - if nothing matters than nor does nihilism. But many presuppositions we use in life are circular - eg, logic. You can't use logic to defend the use of logic. Will we now abandon logic?
Values and life goals are pretty much the reasons why anyone is alive at all.
Life is not a joyride, it's hell unless you're in the developed world.
no such thing as Karma, or good and evil for that matter. Doing evil doesn't make evil comes to you and doing good doesn't mean much either.
Justice and fairness are pretty much the same thing.
The universe doesn't allow anything, it just is.
This as well. If nothing matters, then it doesn't matter that nothing matters.
On the contrary, to be free means the possibility of help is real. I'm an atheist. I don't know if there is a heaven and if good would necessitate it. I do know there is a hell
I've made that joke a thousand times. Actually if nothing matters then everything matters.
As I already said:
Quoting Tom Storm
That's not very accurate, is it? If you are saying that you are more likely to have a happy life if you live somewhere where there are resources, then perhaps. But the variables are so much more complex. There are very happy poor people living in impoverished places. There are vey many wealthy people in developing or poor nations. There are rich people in wealthy countries who live miserable hellish lives.
I'm not sure I follow your thoughts. I had no idea Camus was back in fashion. I doubt that many people actually square off to nihilism, but some people are depressed...
The main reason Camus comes up so often is that he remembered for an attention grabbing somewhat hokey statement about the main philosophical question in life being, why not commit suicide? Given that Camus died young in a car crash with a bus ticket in his pocket, you can't help feeling that he was right about one question. Life is absurd.
You can say that again. Camus, despite what his detractors, if any, say, was, in my opinion, a success story, no? Plus, built into his philosophy is the expected harsh criticism leveled, if that's the case here, against Absurdism. What could be more absurd then faulting a philosophy that, at its heart, is optimistic even as it hurls itself directly into the crosshairs of an unfeeling enemy that gives no quarter to man, woman, or child and picks us off one by one with deadly accuracy. :joke:
It must be great to be like that.
Quoting Gregory
If you are a true nihilist then the idea of 'laws' and 'obeying' and 'duty' and 'freedom' are all empty pointless terms so none of this would apply, surely?
The "law of explosion" is the problem with nihilism (recent posts on my thread on truth\beauty are talking about this). You can't really understand anything from a "God perspective" . Many people get so depressed that they can't feel anything and then think they are God. This leads too or comes from drug abuse in many cases. "Beware of wisdom that is not earned" said Jung because drugs are illness, an attempt to control reality. Is nihilism any different from this? Isn't nihilism simply a putting of reality into one basket and saying "fuh you" to it? Go ahead and point of the if nihilism is true than nihilism doesn't matter. The problem isn't with infinite regress though. It's with the law of explosion. Nihilism is objective realism in disguise. I've never been a nihilist so maybe my approach is flawed, yet I don't see traditional logical approaches to it as helpful
Quoting Gregory
Can you step this out in simple terms?
Nihilism is a dogmatic response to dogmatism. That's what I am getting at
Nihilists take the assertion "life is good" as a 100% true position and respond with the 100% objective response "life is meaningless". I like your "fake it till you make it" comment
Nihilism has hard and soft variants. In philosophy I always understood nihilism to refer to the idea that there is no transcendent meaning or purpose to human life. This is not the same thing as saying there is no individual meaning. As most neophyte existentialists like to say, the meaning that matters is the one you make for yourself.
Anther type of nihilist is psychological. The person who thinks life is pointless and feels a sense of despair and depression. This form of nihilism is often more about a person’s mental health than a coherent belief system. It is usually a subjectivist claim about a personal state.
For my money I don’t really think there are practicing nihilists, just people who use the term badly. I don’t think we can easily find examples of people who actually live without any meaning. Even not having meaning ends up being a big producer of meaning.
Actually i think most powerful people are nihilists
I wouldn't know.
"Why do many people say Camus "solved" nihilism?"
My theory is that he posed it as a mathematical theorem, and then he solved the theorem.
Debate still continues whether his theorem expressed in mathematical terms was a precise description of the "Nihilism problem". I say not. But many say yes.
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Seriously speaking, I hear a lot of people talk and nobody I know or overheard on the bus or watched on the tube or talked or listened to has ever said "Camus "solved" nihilism".
Who are in the circle of people in which you move? I really am curious what demographic has a social chitter-chatter over nihilism as solved by Camus.
I still stand by my last point. Nothing mattering would just evaporate any reason for living.
This would seem to be true. But I have met too many nihilists who enjoy life. I have rarely met anyone for whom nothing matters, even those who say they are nihilists. Generally what they do is draw a circle around a range of subjects they say don't matter, but they still enjoy, let's say; work, food, sex, alcohol, movies, whatever.
The person who is a nihilist and dismisses all human experiences too is generally someone with a mental illness, with the classic symptoms of anhedonia (an inability to experience pleasure). I am unsure if we would count someone with chronic anhedonia as a nihilist.
I'd love to see this theorem stated somewhere.
My understanding of Camus' solution is:life has no transcendent meaning but you can create your own meaning and joy. It helps if you realize all of life is intrinsically absurd - this will keep you sane. The ultimate expression of this absurdity is that we all die in the end. One of the best statements of Camus' philosophy is found in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life a kind of existentialist epic poem.
Anyone?
I'm not aware of a lot of philosophers even talking about Camus anymore. It's more about science, post modernism, ethics, New age, ect. nowadays
to have free will only makes sense if you can abuse it to the point you go to Hell. Freedom without the potential of self damnation doesn't make logical sense. I can't put it into a mathematical theorem though. Nothing in philosophy can it seems
(1) Nazis after World War 1 were really into Fitche, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, but those thinkers weren't Nazi. Nazism tarnished itself right from the start with cruelty and strange sexual practices and ended in serious drug abuse and mass murder.. Fitche and Heidgger had anti-Semitic moments and this is sad, but their philosophies have no necessary relation to hate and murder. I see much of Fitche's works as proto-Husserlian phenomenology
I know only one guy who thinks Camus solved the problem of nihilism, but this guy also happens to be miserable as hell. So I'm discinclined to believe he actually believes Camus solved any problem, other than perhaps the one with taxes (by dying early enough).
Beyond that, I haven't seen anyone actually claim that Camus solved the problem of nihilism. I do think that Camus' work can be useful for reflection on existential issues.
Well, one of them was a party member, and stayed a member until the bitter end, in 1945. That makes him a Nazi, I'm afraid, the silly goose. Guess which one?
Quoting Gregory
You should read the Black Notebooks for examples of those "moments."
Yes, I've read the Wikipedia article on him and Nazism. There was a book written awhile ago that said that his philosophy is inherently Nazi. I think a Nazi is necessarily Heidegarrian, but a Heidegarrian is not necessary a Nazi
That's a sensible conclusion.
"...solved...".
Camus objected to Sartre, not by disagreeing that "Existentialism" is what happens when the grounds for one's being has to be discovered in the context of experience, but that such a realization gave one a key to the rest of the world.
Perhaps we are to assume he was too busy being estranged from life, experiencing absurdity to truly see other people.
Camus doesn't matter. The relevant one is Jean Genet. Life is not a pleasure, but suicide consists of a low level of serotonin in the nervous system. You will live it as you see fit, but on a neurological level it is what it is. You has a very simple point of view on the "underdeveloped" world. Since the 1990s, in Southeast Asia the world of yesterday (underdeveloped) is considered to be in Europe and the United States. In any case, you are more likely to commit suicide in Japan, Sweden or Canada than in a shitty country. The Jews wanted to survive in the hell of the concentration camps with one idea fixed in their minds: revenge.
I like some of your points here. No doubt that a person with a reason for living will more likely endure even in a concentration camp. Therapist Dr Victor Frankl devised Logotherapy as a consequence of his time in a concentration camp (he wanted to understand why some people survived and others did not) and his ideas are far more relevant that what we can offer.
Camus used suicide as a frame for his version of existentialism. It's a device.
I don't see the connection between there being no meaning or value and not having any personal meaning or values. The entire point of Camus is that if there is no transcendent meaning then we are radically free to choose our own. Millions of people have done this with no problems.
Do you say that from own experience? Don't forget most of us non-academy guys have poverty just a few generations back. My grandfathers and grandmothers was from the scandinavian plebeys, born late 1800-s. They for sure enjoyed life. But using the Rosling measurements they sure grew up in the lowest of those 4 clasiifications. Food on the table was the level of life.
Also, most people, if you read both Rosling and Pinker is NOT on that poverty grade any longer.
Myself born in working class with no mothers curling or enthusiasming have absolutely no need of "goals in life" or "meanings". If we go further than have a job and make sure the kids are fine. As long as all catastrophies are taken care of, give me an Ipad or a book, and I do need no more "goals"
I am born in working class but stumbled into university since I did good in school, I have no problem understanding complex problems, so I ended up, doing the work I was alotted, living in a semi-posh neighbourhood. Kids here do definitely get curled. And they do have that "meaning of life" karma hammered into them from the semi-posh parents. I can see that a lot of these kids end up as "entrepeneurs" or "social justice warriors". It seem like, the more you are spoiled the more you have to be a utilitarian. Know what's best for the world. And MUST have those meanings and goals.
While the good folks I grew up with and people I have met travelling in "poorer countries" seem to enjoy life a lot. Without all that fancy meaning.
As I said, values and life goals are the only reason people live. The folks you met haven't even pondered nihilism so I don't get what you thought was going to overturn what I said.
Have you read him?
Making meaning, despite all absurdity, is Camus' solution. That's not the same thing as saying he resolved it. But he does see this as a pathway to a rewarding life. I'm saying we are radically free to choose our own meaning, but admittedly that reads more like Sartre.
No, that's not the right chronological order.
It's fair to say that Frankl was "prepared" for the concentration camps. He already studied existential problems prior to being incarcerated. He wasn't "thrown in at the deep end", he already knew how to swim.
Which is why his theory is of little use to someone who has fallen on hard times before they were even able to develop some kind of resilient theory of life.
What would be relevant is the outlook developed by someone who was thrown in at the proverbial deep end and who didn't yet know how to swim, but who learnd to swim anyway. On their own.
I'm still looking for such a person.
Like the saying goes -- A tree with strong roots can hope to withstand a harsh storm, but it can scarcely hope to grow them once the storm is already on the horizon.
Really? And you have empirical data to back this up?
Err... what order? I was simply saying that Logotherapy was developed with this in mind. I was not trying to classify it in any context other than the obvious.
Of course not. But I think it would be safe to bet that of the many millions of atheists who have lived, millions of them have done just this.
And I'm pretty sure that most of them were not thrown in at the deep end, but instead didn't have many hardships when growing up, or their parents taught them resilience, or both.
A truly inspiring individual would be somenone who didn't have those perks, but who still made it in life.
Sure. My point is, it's backwards, which makes it useless. It can be useful only if one learns it before one falls on hard times.
These are the people I'm interested in. How did they make it in life?
If they were the proverbial trees with weak roots when they had to face the storm, how did the weather it?
Sorry can you be clearer on this? Do you mean how does someone with no belief in a divine plan or purpose have the resilience and inward psychological strength to face life's considerable challenges - (especially in the face of poverty, sickness and death)?
Jeez, Baker - the point I made has nothing to do about chronology. Logotherapy was developed as a tool to help people deal with adversity and was born in the experiences of the concentration camp. It's used in so many ways and has some application in helping people recover from substance use and anxiety.
Quoting Tom Storm
Indeed, which is where your mistake is.
Frankl didn't go into the camp unprepared. He didn't invent logotherapy from scratch while he was in the camp.
Yes, such is its intention, but I'm pointing out its major shortcoming: it "works" only for people who already believe it.
No idea. Absurd can be kind of mysterious can't it? With Camus I always thought the word 'absurd' was really just his rage masquerading as alienation. Camus seemed to detest all the trappings and rituals of the middle class culture he knew - education, marriage, family, work, religion. There is a point where rage can have a blunting affect (as suggested by the character Meursault in The Stranger) which can make everything seem.... unreal... absurd. Now this can be used in two ways (maybe more) as a source of terror and retreat, or as a fulcrum for transformation.
Are you saying that if there is no authoritative source that determines what matters in some overarching general sense, then, simply on account of that, nothing could possibly matter to you personally? Seriously?
Baker, I'm assuming you're jesting, right?
I am not talking about the gestation of Logotherapy in Frankl's mind. I am talking about it as a psychotherapeutic product in the existential psychology tradition today. As Frankle himself said (and it was the original title of Mans' Search for Meaning) - Logotherapy is a journey from "From Death Camp to Existentialism."
I have no real comment on Logotherapy's efficacy and developmental history - it has been memorably accused of being authoritarian by some existentialists - esp May. In essence L says, if you can identify a reason for living (meaning) you are likely get through adversity. In counselling this is also called identifying a client's strengths and or protective factors. In other words meaning is made from within by looking without.
Most certainly not. You keep missing my point.
My point is that hardship will be easier to overcome if the person is prepared for it. And that without such a preparation in advance, a person is less likely to overcome hardship.
Can you relate to that?
That could useful if I were talking about how hardship is overcome but I'm not.
That's too bad.
Good for them. Why just hurt yourself when you can hurt others first. :lol:
I'm kidding! That's sarcasm, folks. See, a little humor can go a long way. I turned a factual tragedy into an opportunity for laughter. Now, I'd have much rather preferred to prevent such tragedies if I had the ability to do so, but seeing as I do not, at least some positivity was spawned from negativity. Which proves life is indeed what you make of it. You listen and believe depressing philosophy, and internalize it rather, it becomes your reality. No people still die, people still starve, etc., but unless your doing something about it, rather especially if you're doing something about it, you can at least know your elevated mood during your work is both derived from suffering while it also alleviates it. Even if not on a small scale.