On Weltschmerz
Recently I have been thinking that much of my "philosophical pessimistic" thinking has to do with my world-weariness (Weltschmerz).
Basically I do not think that the world is capable of producing phenomenon that satisfies the desires of the human spirit. I believe Zapffe said something along these lines but I cannot remember exactly. We are eternally caged within a dull atmosphere; either bored, uncomfortable/angsty, or flat out suffering. Once in a while there's moments that take us by surprise but these are usually fleeting.
Unless the mind is preoccupied with an activity (such that an individual achieves eudaimonia), they will always feel like there's a puzzle piece missing. The picture of life becomes brilliantly colorful when the emotions run high and the creativity blossoms, but these inevitably fall back to a neutral gray scale.
I don't find suffering as it is normally viewed to be the backbone of my philosophy, in fact, I rather find it awkward to complain about suffering if I'm not currently. It's like if I tell you that most likely your tongue is on the roof on your mouth right behind your teeth...you didn't notice before until I told you, did you? Rather, my "pessimistic" philosophy is based in a world-weariness. The existence of suffering merely adds to this, or maybe is one of the aspects of my Weltschmerz.
I wouldn't say Weltschmerz is suffering, it's just disillusionment and dissatisfaction with the world. Which can definitely be exaggerated to the point that someone feels actual suffering when prior to there was none, just a bit of an itch.
Not to be a downer or anything but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, preferably in a civilized manner.
Basically I do not think that the world is capable of producing phenomenon that satisfies the desires of the human spirit. I believe Zapffe said something along these lines but I cannot remember exactly. We are eternally caged within a dull atmosphere; either bored, uncomfortable/angsty, or flat out suffering. Once in a while there's moments that take us by surprise but these are usually fleeting.
Unless the mind is preoccupied with an activity (such that an individual achieves eudaimonia), they will always feel like there's a puzzle piece missing. The picture of life becomes brilliantly colorful when the emotions run high and the creativity blossoms, but these inevitably fall back to a neutral gray scale.
I don't find suffering as it is normally viewed to be the backbone of my philosophy, in fact, I rather find it awkward to complain about suffering if I'm not currently. It's like if I tell you that most likely your tongue is on the roof on your mouth right behind your teeth...you didn't notice before until I told you, did you? Rather, my "pessimistic" philosophy is based in a world-weariness. The existence of suffering merely adds to this, or maybe is one of the aspects of my Weltschmerz.
I wouldn't say Weltschmerz is suffering, it's just disillusionment and dissatisfaction with the world. Which can definitely be exaggerated to the point that someone feels actual suffering when prior to there was none, just a bit of an itch.
Not to be a downer or anything but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, preferably in a civilized manner.
Comments (69)
That doesn't necessarily remove existential angst, but there's still a difference between desire and existential angst, I'd wager, and different philosophies apply to both in order that one may be happy.
I have dealt with plenty of Weltschmerz. Not sure what the cure is, but meditating seems to help, in my case anyway. Makes it easier to say "no" to stuff.
But there's no reason to expect the world and all (or anything) in it to meet our expectations, and so I think it unreasonable to be disappointed or upset that it fails to do so.
Probably you just feel bad much of the time. I wish I could snap my fingers and make all that bad crap go away, but... It didn't work for me the last time I tried it. Life can sometimes be just one fucking thing after another.
I bet these giant romantics were thrilled to death with their discovery of Weltschmerz. "Ah HA", they burbled, "here is something we can really use!"
Look, I fully get anxiety, depression, doom and gloom (they are real, real, real), and have had episodes of glomming on to one literary diagnosis or another (like existential nausea). The thing is, some of this stuff just isn't healthy, especially if it feeds into Schmerzen that have quite non-literary causes, which in both our cases seems to be the case.
The idea that physical reality just isn't enough to ever satisfy the demands of the mind is, in a word, bullshit. Yes, Virginia, some literary (and philosophical) movements contain multitudes of bullshit. One needs to clean it off the bottom of one's boots before one comes into the kitchen.
I'm not saying mind and physical reality is the same thing. It's just the idea that "Oh Gawd, my huge mind (It's so HUGE, a la Monty Python) just can't be satisfied by what little there is here in this dreary physical world!!!" is unadulterated romantic bullshit.
You might want to be more careful how you talk to yourself. You may, possibly, be feeding yourself a line of baloney. Now, now, don't get all testy. It happens all the time that people tell themselves negative crap, and then they feel even worse afterward. Why don't you try a more positive line. It might work better.
On the other hand, I think there's something legitimate to it as well. Nothing will ever satisfy me, not because there isn't enough stuff, but just because I, as a human, am not the kind of creature that can get to a comfortable place and just stay there. I'll get bored, or the comfortable situation will change.
What I really don't like is when people say, "Oh, you just haven't had enough EXPERIENCES in this wide wonderful world!" People use the term "experience" as a sort of rhetorical foot in the door here, but the fact is that every experience whatsoever goes like this: you feel something, and then it goes away. On the downside, this makes the pleasant experiences seem less worthwhile; on the upside, it makes the bad experiences seem less awful. But overall, that observation seems to push you away from an attitude of "Go get what you need in order to be happy" and more toward "Try not to want stuff so much."
I think that Weltschmerz can be productive, as long as it's a transitional phase. The problem is that you can get caught there because it (sometimes) inflates your ego. I have a lot of Weltschmerz myself, and I find that it only really goes away when I concentrate on "being simple."
I probably sounded a bit like that, judgmental. Sometimes it might be true -- but one would need to know the person to have any idea about that.
I had a long dark stretch, decades ago. I could/would have called it Weltschmerz, had I known the word -- but I did not -- or it hadn't stuck, anyway. We feel what we feel, and if the world feels awful it is awful, and it takes great insight to see the world as not actually awful.
Then a few years ago I emerged into a very sunny period that I am still in -- going on 4 or 5 years now. With any luck, it will last as far as the grave. This time of good feelings isn't due to any virtue or achievement on my part. I am still kind of surprised that I feel this way.
That's actually a pretty common phenomena -- there's a sort of U-shaped curve, if happiness could be plotted, when you plot happiness on the y-axis and age on the x-axis; the right end of the u goes higher than the left end, too. At least so saith the happiness studies I've read so far.
The explanation I've seen posited for this curve is two-fold: life stressors, like career and family, begin around 30, and those go away at around 50-60, and then also you start learning how to accept things as they are, rather than being disappointed by what you thought you wanted. So the little things, such as finding a dollar on the street or bumping into a friend, are more appreciated and not looked down upon, and the grand things aren't really desired -- so you end up being happier.
I just want to make sure there isn't a misunderstanding, I think Weltschermz happens to everyone at varying degrees, not just me or certain individuals.
From my perspective, every action we take is a distraction. Without distraction, we inevitably fall into boredom, which feels like the time you were home sick from school and didn't know what to do, and it was cold, gray, and dreary outside. Without distractions, the world becomes a bit heavy to look upon.
I'm not a depressive individual; oftentimes I am enjoying myself, but when it's all said and done, this enjoyment rests upon very shaky architecture that easily comes crashing down either with the presence of pain or the inevitable lack of interest for a topic we experience that leads to boredom.
I'm not saying we can't enjoy life, but to enjoy life is to exist upon the peak of a parabola, oftentimes difficult to obtain and easy to lose. It's so delicate that is leads me to believe that it is unnatural. The meaninglessness behind all of this is what leads to my Weltschmerz, I think, because it essentially makes all of us little rats in a rat race.
John Steinbeck's term for Weltschmerz was "welshrats". For whatever that's worth.
Thanks for clarifying your situation.
Quoting darthbarracuda
So, in your model of personality, we are basically quiescent. Boredom is our basal state, our gravity, which we actively seek to climb or fly out of, but with difficulty. Peak experiences (up there on top of the parabola) are fleeting. Having obtained the parabolic peak, we often lose it and slide back down into the crevasse of boredom. I'm not criticizing what seems to be your view; it is one of a few basic positions. Freud's system was one of dynamic psychological forces in constant interaction, maybe "struggle". fOther personality theories posit that we are sort of inert until needs arise or until we receive external stimulation. We are, in this view, quite passive. Some personality theorists see us in constant motion, perpetually seeking stimulation except to rest.
Some people posit suffering as a constant and inevitable element in human experience (Schopenhauer1, for one); others find adventure seeking and discovery, outward questing, to be our natural state. Still others see our personalities as social constructs, determined extensively by the society we live within. Behaviorists see (saw) behavior as more learned than inherent. I'm sure that a post-modern behaviorist could not feel Weltschmerz, even if her life depended on it.
1. The mind in question is full of doubt, lacking in ability, lacking in confidence, lacking in patience, and/or lacking in courage to tackle its ambitions (maybe because it's ambitions are too difficult to achieve), and therefore, afraid of failure and believing them to be impossible, doesn't even try. Instead it falls into disillusionment, and attempts to find an alternative, typically much simpler and easier to achieve, and attempts to be satisfied with that, instead of accepting its ambitions and seeking to fulfill them. The result is termed Weltschmerz.
2. The same can also result from an overbearing of certain cultural moral values, which prevent one from attempting to satisfy or pursue their real ambitions - thereby resulting in disillusionment and attempts to change their desire. For example, it is very likely that a world-conqueror in today's world, especially in the West, feels the bearing of our cultural morality which suggests that it is wrong to mobilise others as means to one's own end.
3. The mind lacks ambition, and/or imagination to grow ambition, and lacking ambition, finds itself bored with the world, as everything it desires is easily achievable.
As Spinoza has written, man's essence is striving/desire. Of course one whose essence OR intellect is currently deficient must necessarily project onto the world this deficiency. To one who functions correctly, one's intellect is used as a means to fuel and fulfill one's striving. Strength of intellect guarantees great ambitions which can never be exhausted, as well as means to strive towards the achievement of these ambitions. For such a one, life is indeed a journey, full of pain and full of joy, a challenge and a way to pleasantly surprise oneself by what one can achieve.
If Freud hadn't grown up when and where he did, and provided therapy for a lot of frustrated bourgeois Viennese women, he would probably have come up with a somewhat different theory. (He didn't believe these women had had the rape experiences they related to him. These days, a therapist would practically assume his patients had been raped (one way or another).
Albert Ellis (Rational Emotive Therapy) clearly grew up in a much different environment and time than Sigmund Freud did. Carl Rogers, different time and place, again. B. F. Skinner, ditto.
The various theorists try to account for what they observe, and what they, themselves, believe to be true. Meanwhile, people do what they do, and damn the therapists and theorists.
You live this in practice or does it sound good in a forum? Sometimes I think we are trying to have the best sound bytes for a self-help article. What do we really do vs. what do we want to impress our friends with? I am also talking internally in our minds vs. externally to an audience.
In theory it makes sense, but in reality is truly can be difficult to tame the beast of desire and expectations. It's only natural for humans to be ego-maniacs, and denying this ego can be difficult and sometimes feel artificial.
Sorry, but this reads like 'Think and Grow Rich' 'don't-forget-your-mental-hygeine', self-aggrandizing horseshit.
Think and Grow Rich, and other self-aggrandizing shit is shit precisely because it does not attempt to question its assumptions.
I guess it depends on what is meant by "mental hygiene ". For me ethics has nothing to do with "optimisation", this notion reeks of 'capital', ethics is all about learning to live well (that is relaxed and free from undue anxiety) in the very midst of the shit.
We can try to let go of our assumptions, but I would say there is no questioning of held assumptions without making new ones. We cannot question all assumptions without suffering paralysis.
Well, I'm not sure if living relaxed and free from anxiety is a worthy goal anymore (in-so-far as I see this as an impossibility given human nature). I think if we had achieved this state where we would all be equal, where we all had equal opportunities, where everyone had access to equal amounts of resources, where people didn't have to struggle, and there was no place for anxiety anymore... I would find such a world totally unbearable to live in. I'd much rather die than live in such a world. Life has taste simply because things are unequal and there is struggle. Fighting for equality and all is a worthy goal, but actually achieving it would be the greatest horror. To think that I can do nothing to get ahead of my fellow man is to me incomprehensible. Even the games we play, we keep scores and have a winner and a loser because otherwise they wouldn't be fun anymore.
Like @Ciceronianus the White - with whom I agree with here :O - the whole thing just feels like making a mountain over a molehill of thwarted, unrealistic expectations to begin with. Also, I tend to be of a rather chirpy disposition, so when people say that everything is suffering or whatever, these claims leave me utterly indifferent. Anyway, long story short, this stuff generally tends to strike me as philosophically uninteresting - or at least stifling and narrow of concern - and these are the reasons why.
[In other words, your 'wider world of philosophy' is actually quite insular, and you are blind to this because you spend large portions of your life reading about that insular tradition.]
OH, hey, good topic. Been looking for one.
But... Isn't it the reeking personal psychology (all that stuff between one's ears, between the cradle and the coffin) that does philosophy, that lives a life--one with more or less agency, more or fewer ethics, receiving/perceiving/deceiving/believing/positing/disposing and all that?
Philosophy seems (to me) to be too close to reeking psychology to be sniffy about it. Granted, one can be mired in alls sorts of personal, reeking, psychological shit and still turn out novels, plays, books, articles, monographs, emails, meals, batches of paper work, and so on. But... not everybody is sufficiently compartmentalized to do that.
I'd say that's exactly why SX right. What exactly do we gain in "Woe is me" suffering? Just more anxiety and pain. We double down on suffering by worrying that we need to be without of it. Not content merely with the pain of our many instances of suffering, we enshrine the failure to escape all suffering as our inadequacy we must forever be tortured for.
Philosophically, it is uninteresting because the only insight it offers is how to feel more pain.
Unfortunately it truly is difficult to tame one's expectations, especially when surrounded by a society that continually makes poor decisions regarding existence, which leads to Weltschermz.
The part of me that wonders is asking: How do you feel about the works of Camus, or Sartre?
I just want to hear from you, more than anything. I don't have a critique or anything, nor do I know if I will have one after you respond. I would just like to know what you think at this point, if you don't mind responding.
I agree it is true, as some of the criticisms directed at SX claim, that suffering and anxiety is inherent to the human condition. But for me this misses SX' s point, which I think is a similar point to the one that I was making, that wallowing in this aspect of human experience and treating it as though it is the totality is both one-sided and self-defeating, and as SX notes 'philosophically uninteresting". And equally uninteresting, and ultimately ineffectual because equally artifically one-sided, are the kinds of 'power of positive thinking' strategies designed to 'raise us out of this mire' that the post of yours I initially responded to seemed to be lauding.
You say that to be relaxed and to be free from anxiety is impossible. Firstly, I don't believe it is impossible to be relaxed (as contrasted with being 'all tensed up' over things) it is a matter of how you think and feel about things, about how you cling and about how you let go, about what you feed in yourself and what you don't feed.
Secondly, I didn't say it was possible to be completely free from anxiety, I said "free from undue anxiety". Undue anxiety is brought about by feeding the kinds of obsessive negative totalizing characterizations of life that Schopenhauer, Zappfe and Buddhism (interpreted in certain ways) are famed for. The flip side of this is portraying oneself as an heroic conqueror of adversity. Again I think it all comes down to how you cling and how you let go, to what you concern yourself with and what you don't.
Of course we will never all be equal; we are all uniquely different, and different people have different capacities and to different degrees, so that goes without saying. But the fact that some are better than others at certain things does not necessarily support the idea that some should be treated as privileged over others. Of course, the ideal is that all should be treated as equal, but one complication is that those of great ability may be more indispensable to a society than others. It is a complex issue, and of course people are going to disagree over all aspects of it.
A funny thing is, though, that the topics that SX lists have only an external criterion of significance. That is, if someone doesn't care about them, nothing in the world can make them intrinsically interesting.
Suffering, however, is intrinsically interesting, because it affects you in a way you can't ignore. So you are already dealing with the problem of suffering by being alive, which doesn't require being a continental philosopher, like caring about 'the embodying of bodies' does, since the latter is an intellectual game whose 'sense,' if it can be said to have any, arises only in the context of academic journal articles and white boy graduate students trying to get into 'that cute creative chick with the glasses (also white, or white-bred)' pants.
'Hurr hurr you care about suffering? Read some zizek instead, that's really interesting!' Yeah, I guess if you're the kind of person who 'totally fell in love with Amsterdam' when you visited it. It all just makes me want to eat a bullet, more than usual. I've just found SX totally fucking insufferable lately.
Frankly, there's few things that I feel are 'play' more than the abstraction of suffering that is purveyed by many who talk about it here. Maybe it's not 'hip', but if you want to talk about suffering, then fine, let's talk about poverty, let's talk about war, let's talk about cultural alienation, let's talk about disease, let's talk about systemic disenfranchisement, love lost, friends and family passing. What do you get instead? 'Weltschmerz'. Weltschmerz is what you get. As if this is somehow less abstract, more true to the 'real world' than the fluffy abstractions of 'mainstream philosophy' or what have you. Please. It'd be indistinguishable from parody in any other less self-serious context. The conception of suffering (qua 'human condition' or what have you) that is thrown about here is so bloodless and lazy that the it's no surprise that the threads on the topic are continually monotonous rehashings of almost the exact same ideas phrased differently. The 'life's difficulties' you refer to seem to look suspiciously like the sort of 'life difficulties' espoused by angsty young men who, while perhaps really, honestly are struggling with psychic turmoil, aren't so much doing philosophy than inflecting their attempt to grapple with their issues through it's rhetoric. There's nothing wrong with that, but a spade is a spade is a spade.
As for the 'academic issues' that I want to valorize, they sure are filtered through that set of references you mentioned, but they aren't only drawn from there. There is plenty that harkens back to, and places itself in communication with the ancient problematics like that of the One and the Multiple, the place of the body and the organization of the polis and so on. Not, of course, and an appeal to tradition means much at all. But I'm happy to affirm philosophy as a discipline, one that does require an investment in time, knowledge and understanding - like any other discipline, rather than something can be be sprouted off the top of one's head as if Athena from Zeus. For some reason, this annoys people, because apparently the humanities aren't allowed to have any specialized knowledge, and unlike sciences, is supposed to be graspable by anyone, anywhere, because arts are supposed to be easy and intuitive or some nonsense. It isn't, and too bad for anyone who thinks it is. This is the internet of course, so I'm not really expecting too much different, but I can call it out when I see it.
On a less catty note, I guess it just annoys me when philosophers use "real world" rhetoric, because I feel that they are dishonestly trying to co-opt philosophy for whatever faddish political movement they're a part of.
I don't really have much to say about Camus - I've only read Sisyphus and The Stranger - and it's been a long time since I read either. I think I once took issue with the abstraction of both - the protagonists lack a certain affective depth - which is meant to be the point - but also ends up painting a distorted picture of humanity in the process. They are good thought exercises in that regard.
As for Sartre - he was a philosopher of freedom above all. His 'existentialism' was a product of the marriage he attempted to make between Marxism and phenomenology (the relation between which evolved over time between his works) and was grounded in a rigorous study of both, together with a great deal of political awareness. The anxiety that Sartre talked about was of interest less in it's own regard than as a sign that indicated to man a freedom inherent within him that Sartre was above all interested in theorizing. In some sense the 'existentialist' label was a PR move - one that worked perhaps too well. Everyone knows Sartre today, but who in fact has read the giant tome that is Being and Nothingness? Or the two volume Critique of Dialectical Reason that followed it up? I've only read bits and pieces myself: Merleau-Ponty is where it's at, as far as French phenomenology goes.
I get that your opinion over all of this is that it is caused by decadence. Nietzsche thought Schopenhauer was pissy because he was decadent, for example.
But Weltschmerz is caused because our completely natural disposition towards the world is consistently disappointed. It takes effort to tame this disposition. The fact that it even has to be tamed says something about the world. The disillusionment, which originally was shock or despair, leads to general apathy as one realizes that nothing is going to change. It's a meta-suffering, if you will; the psychological pain resulting in the realization that the world is filled with so much suffering and clearly wasn't meant to be an environment to house entities with egos.
If one were to translate what Nietzsche understood as 'decadence' into modern terms, it'd be precisely this lamentable attempt to reason one's way into despair as the expense of Life. So decadence isn't a bad way to think about it, although even that term is also overwrought and affected.
My mantra for the last 20 years has been: that if YOU set up an expectation for anyone other than yourself, prepare to be disappointed. Rather instead set no expectations for another and allow yourself to be gently surprised.
It works too. I know that when I start to feel a disappointment in another creeping in, I take the time to search back to where it was that I set up that expectation and make note, not to do it again. I am by no means perfect in exercising this mantra at all times but I have found I am healthier, emotionally, when I am aware that I am the one actively responsible, for the way I am feeling.
Good point.
Quoting StreetlightX
Sure, these are also important matters to discuss, I don't think anyone has argued that they shouldn't be discussed. In fact, underlying the sense that has here been called "Weltschmertz" are often these problems. Quoting StreetlightX
So, in your opinion philosophy holds no potential to help angsty young men overcome their psychic turmoil?
Quoting StreetlightX
Well I think of philosophy as a serious discipline, and I agree that it's not something that anyone can sprout off, as most common folk often believe. Serious philosophy requires rigour and submitting oneself to reason itself and its capacity to determine truth from falsity. However, I still disagree with you. I still believe that the problem of personal suffering is essential, and I remind you that many schools of philosophy (Epicureanism, Stoicism, Cyrenaicism, Skepticism, etc.) were aimed at solving precisely this problem, that you deem to be insignificant to philosophy. And yes, this type of philosophy aimed at resolving personal suffering does take effort and dedication - otherwise, we wouldn't see people complaining about Weltschmertz. The fact we do see it happen, suggests exactly the fact that excellence is as difficult as it is rare.
Sure it does, but one mustn't confuse philosophy's being able to be used as a crutch for philosophy being nothing other than a crutch. This sort of instrumentalization of philosophy as a tool for the consolidation of egos denies the autonomy of philosophy as that which subjects us to it's own imperatives, travels according to it's own history, and co-opts thought by disorientating it with respect to it's comfortable zones habitation. If philosophy ends up helping you with your 'suffering', then so be it. But philosophy is no more one's teddy bear for all that. Philosophy doesn't serve anyone, not least the "miserable".
But I don't think it's used as a crutch. A crutch suggests a cripple, and it suggests a temporary aid, not a fix to one's condition. If the crook was straightened, he would no longer be in need of the crutch. I think one job of philosophy is to straighten the crook. You seem to think that helping angsty young men with their psychic turmoil through philosophy is providing them with a crutch.
Notice that this view that "philosophy doesn't serve anyone" is itself a philosophical position, one that I dare say can't be very well defended. Surely you have to agree that we can't say "agriculture doesn't serve anyone", or "tailoring doesn't serve anyone", or "science doesn't serve anyone". These domains all have a practical purpose. Even literature, history, and poetry have practical purposes: namely in allowing us to understand other human beings, society, our own emotions, etc. better. Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther based on his own emotional turmoil for example - it served a very practical purpose, which was sublimation. Had he not killed the protagonist, he may have very well killed himself. I don't see why we should excuse philosophy from serving anyone. Afterall, philosophy is created by human beings, and if we had found it useless, we certainly would have got rid of it. It's man who is the master and maker of philosophy, not the other way around - although I do sympathise and agree that philosophy also changes man, and through the process man does become a "slave" to philosophy/Reason.
I agree that one who does philosophy must submit themselves to the demands of Reason, and must be rigurous in his thought. Otherwise he'd be doing a perversion of philosophy. But these "rules of the game" do not indicate or suggest that philosophy is not useful to man.
What is this "more-than-human"?
In what sense is it "completely natural" to be disposed to think the world will or should comport with our expectations? It seems to me that only a child, and likely a very spoiled, sheltered one at that, could seriously believe that to be the case.
I don't think Epicureanism or Stoicism has anything to do with solving the problem of WORLD-PAIN! (I think it should be written this way; it's such a HUGE pain, after all). The others I haven't spent much time on, but I suspect they wouldn't have anything to do with it, either. I think WORLD-PAIN! is a peculiarly Romantic notion ancient philosophers would have had no time for, and indeed would find baffling. Epicureanism or Stoicism may be remedies for WORLD-PAIN! but Epicureans and Stoics didn't address disappointment or disillusionment with the world, but fear, anger, worry, etc. of the kind encountered by people with no expectation that life would or should be good and satisfying to them, but every expectation that they would encounter pain and suffering in this world if not the next if there was to be one, through war, famine, disease, slavery, the malice of the powerful or the gods, and natural disasters.
It is not easy to tame this. We get comfortable in a situation, only for it to change and for us to experience suffering or disappointment when it does change. We find ourselves desperately wanting the universe to say something back to us, to validate our egos, and it does nothing.
You are simply betraying your biases for certain areas of philosophy. However, meaning of life, what makes the good life, what makes something valuable, what is right or wrong, what makes life worth living, suffering, birth, death, these have always been part of the philosophical tradition. They are not as amenable to logical-sounding concepts such as "a prioricity" "interior anteriority" Existential quantifiers, modal logic, and the rest, but they can still be discussed. One doesn't need to enshrine and entomb language in specific jargon to be philosophical.
Remember, that even if we are to tackle things like poverty, warfare, and other sociological issues, the existential issues of what makes a good life, what are we living for are at the bottom of it. It is the worth or value when all instrumental imperatives are removed.
Yeah, because you've got so much to say about that, I'm sure. I can't wait to listen to your wisdom on these topics. (This is sarcasm; I believe you have literally nothing to say about any of this, and never will).
Then may I retort that your 'more-than-human' sounds suspiciously like something not more than human, but the specific concerns of a grad student who read Nietzsche. Philosophy also puts us in touch with paychecks and conferences! LOL!
I most definitely have a problem with people assuming their idiosyncratic feelings are universals. Just because someone is depressed does not mean everyone is depressed.
However, I have to object that my characterization is not merely an incarnation of my own personal psychology applied to the rest of the world. Rather, it is actually what I observe to be not only my own personal feelings but also the feelings of everyone else. I'm not assuming everyone experiences the same negative feelings I do, I know people experience these same feelings. It is not difficult to see this in public. Stress, heavy eyes, perpetual melancholic behavior, the occasional impulse of anger and violence. A happy person is a delicate person. Happiness, true contentment, is short and sweet, usually obtained by a mixture of satisfied desires and willful ignorance. Our society runs off of unbelievable and unattainable ideals, powered by endless desires. It is, to be tart, a useless rat race, and oftentimes a malignant one at that.
It is the realization that this is what life is which leads to Weltschmerz. I'm not claiming that everyone experiences Weltschmerz, though. Weltschmerz is a meta-emotion, a reaction to the observation of all the other emotions we experience. So it is not surprising that not everyone experiences Weltschmerz because not everyone has taken the time to objectively look at life in all its colors, pretty and ugly alike.
We really ought to make another thread if you three can't play nice.