True. On the other hand, though, Kierkegaard's 'Sicknesws unto Death' does explain how God inflicts the same type of thing on even his most devout followers, after telling Abram to sacrifice his own son. What did the poor fellow think while pushing his own son to the top of a mountain? Only Kierkegaard ever explored that in detail.
Reply to ernestm I often reflect that we don't fully appreciate the setting of that story, which was ancient tribal culture in which sacrifice was integral. It was a universal practice in ancient cultures, and the sacrifice of the first-born was the sacrifice of the most precious thing. But modern culture has no corresponding concept. We recognise the value of individual sacrifice through duty or loyalty, but the idea of sacrifice to set things right with God has no analogy in a secular culture, so it doesn't make sense on any level. Not that I'm saying that such sacrifice was ever justified.
I've never studied Kierkegaard in depth, but from the slivers I've read, I'm reasonably sympathetic to his philosophy.
the sacrifice of the first-born was the sacrifice of the most precious thing
hm, well that was K's point, that God requires such things of even the most devout. The Jewish God did not particularly redeem the problem by telling Abram he didnt actually have to do it later, in fact, in K's view, that is even more cruel.
Reply to ernestm But in the Christian view, Christ's sacrifice put an end to all sacrifice, as it was the ultimate sacrifice - God sacrificing his own son. Hence the imagery of the 'blood of the lamb', and 'the lamb of God'. So that put an end to the need for any further actual sacrifice. Christians are called on to 'sacrifice' in the sense of 'sacrificing their own self-interest' out of faith in Christ i.e. in the commandment 'he who looses his life for My sake will be saved. (I don't profess Christianity, but I believe that is the mainstream interpretation.)
Reply to Wayfarer K's point is, that does not redeem God of what He did to Abram. The poor guy was getting his cart ready, and putting something in it for his son to sit on, and fetching a knife to kill his son, and thinking he better sharpen it first, and fetching the things to sharpen it, and all the while, he thought all his devout loyalty to God meant he would have to kill his own son. That was not a nice thing to do to the guy. The book of Job tries to explain it is a bet with Satan causing it, which is even worse, and the only real justification in 60 chapters of argument is "Im God so I can do what I want, couldnt I do far worse if I wanted too?"
Can Kant be the most depressing philosopher... just based on the fact his prose are like reading an obscurantist, over elaborating robot with the charisma of the bowling shoe ?
schopenhauer at least sees light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of askesis, and also art. But Camus
LOL.... Oh man.... Camus is a mind fuck... Reading the Myth of Sisyphus I feel there is some positivity there ... But the picture is so bleak....
It is like writing poetry on the beauty of a disemboweled cat... It really is that absurd.
But to your point Schopenhauer wasn't a pessimist in the euphemistic sense of toxic emotions and depression... He wrote more on the modes of Transcendence then most any other canonical philosopher I know and his latter work that focused on defining a mysticism without God as a full realization of Mysticism without Utopian fancy through Idealism he was after... That is so neglected it is a farce and a stain on his legacy.
That is to say overcoming the human condition is worthy of doing so on the basis of overcoming ones own inequity and suffering alone. It does not need a transcendent principle, the transcendence is the self fulfilling overcoming through giving providence of Discipline and Autonomy of ones being ....
I think only in Schopenhauer is there a possible middle ground for the clear harmony of what I muse in my scrap books of notes as 4 currents of thoughts that I am playing with prosaically.
Humanistic Empathy --> Deification or exaltation of Love
Romanticism --> Deification or exaltation of Imagination
Enlightenment --> Deification or exaltation of Reason
Miltonian Renaissance --> Deification or exaltation of Creation
Of course to labour this as anything but personal truth is folly at this point. I am not a technical or professional philosopher by any stretch.
But Schopenhauer was anything but depressing alone. It was more as a historical point of contention his philosophy was a response to a deep embedded nihilism and dystopian element surrounding the end of the French revolution proper.
the sacrifice of the first-born was the sacrifice of the most precious thing
— Wayfarer
hm, well that was K's point, that God requires such things of even the most devout. The Jewish God did not particularly redeem the problem by telling Abram he didnt actually have to do it later, in fact, in K's view, that is even more cruel.
Actually, K's point was to loosely illustrate the line that divides the ethical life/from the religious. It is crucial to consider how he contrasts Abraham with Aggemmnon.
I would say K is in the middle. He is not as depressing as he is serious.
Can Kant be the most depressing philosopher... just based on the fact his prose are like reading an obscurantist, over elaborating robot with the charisma of the bowling shoe ?
I get the robot and bowling shoe, but Kant doesn't read like an obscurantist at all.
I know he's not on the list, but Heidegger gets my vote.
The world for Heidegger is less depressing than uncanny and astonishing.
Heidegger from Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics:
"Man is that inability to remain and is yet unable to leave his place. In projecting, the Da-sein in him constantly throws him into possibilities and thereby keeps him subjected to what is actual. Thus thrown in this throw, man is a transition, transition as the fundamental essence of occurrence. Man is history, or better, history is man. Man is enraptured in this transition and therefore essentially 'absent'. Absent in a fundamental sense-never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his essentially being away, removed into essential having been and future-essentially absencing and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence. Transposed into the possible, he must constantly be mistaken concerning what is actual. And only because he is thus mistaken and transposed can he become seized by terror. And only where there is the perilousness of being seized by terror do we find the bliss of astonishment-being torn away in that wakeful manner that is the breath of all philosophizing, and which the greats among the philosophers called ev9ouma.cr!l6<;-as witnessed by the last of the greats, Friedrich Nietzsche, in that song of Zarathustra's which he called the "intoxicated song" and in which we also experience what the world is:
0 Man! Attend!
What does deep midnight's voice contend?
"I slept my sleep,
"And now awake at dreaming's end:
"The world is deep,
"Deeper than day can comprehend.
"Deep is its woe,
"Joy-deeper than heart's agony:
"Woe says: Fade! Go!
"But all joy wants eternity,
"Wants deep, profound eternity!"
And only because he is thus mistaken and transposed can he become seized by terror.
Well that means Heidegger believes that terror is due to mistakes. Kierkegaard's point is that fear is a natural reaction to God, who intentionally does bad things to us. That's far worse, lol.
Reply to Wayfarer Don't you feel there's a bit of a Buddhist angle there? Sisyphus achieves ultimate acceptance. If we can learn to fully accept and not judge, can we be happy in any situation?
Reply to andrewk So, what in Camus’ Sisyphus corresponds with Nirv??a?
Certainly in some readings of Zen - ‘Chop wood, draw water’ - there’s a sense of finding the transcendent in the round of everyday life. But there’s still a transcendent dimension. That is what is explicitly rejected in Camus.
Reply to Janus Of course it's not. Zen is grounded in the literature of Prajñ?p?ramit? which can be literally translated as 'wisdom gone beyond'. The denial of anything 'beyond' is basic to Camus and all the French atheist existentialists although not so with theistic existentialism such as Kierkegaard and Gabriel Marcel.
Reply to Wayfarer Even if Zen were grounded in literature, literature is always a matter of interpretation. Surely you realize that? In any case I don't think it is necessarily right to say that Zen is a matter of being grounded in literature; if it were it would be nothing more than a language game.
I would say Zen realization is a matter of direct experience of a certain kind and direct experience is immanent. Now I acknowledge you might interpret it another way; i.e. as transcendent, but that would be just your or someone else's interpretation, not a necessary truth. I must say I do find some of your beliefs perplexing!
Reply to Janus Zen is grounded in the literature of Prajñ?p?ramit? which can be literally translated as 'wisdom gone beyond'. This is a matter of fact, not interpretation.
Reply to Wayfarer I don't deny that it is a matter of fact that the literature exists and is a part of what is generally understood to be the tradition. I also don't deny the fact that there have been orthodox interpretations of that literature that may have been and continue to be accepted by a majority of, if not all, practitioners. But in any case none of that is transcendent, but is, if it is a fact, an immanent fact, a fact about a human institution and its practices.
"Wisdom gone beyond" could be interpreted as meaning that attaining wisdom means going beyond, and in that sense transcending, a previous understanding or even kind of understanding. I would have no argument with an interpretation like that. But that is commonplace in all kinds of education and disciplines and really says nothing about any purported transcendent realm or whatever.
Reply to Janus The point was simply that there is nothing like that in Camus' philosophy. His philosophy was called 'absurdism', that life is fundamentally absurd, and that the individual has to summon the inner strength necessary to live bravely regardless. It is fundamentally different to Buddhist philosophy in which the reality of enlightenment or release is central.
The term 'transcendent' means literally 'beyond' in the sense of no longer subject to the vicissitudes of birth and death. In early Buddhism, the individual Gotama, the Buddha, was understood to have reached such a state; in later Buddhism, including Zen, the individual Buddha is hypostatised into a principle, rather similar in kind to the Western conception of 'godhead' ('god-hood'), as a real presence at once immanent (caring for and leading worldly beings) and transcendent (beyond the world) (although Buddhists strenuously reject any comparison of Buddha and the Christian doctrine of God).
Camus' PhD was on Plotinus, but the influence of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer led him to his so-called 'absurdism' and resolute atheism. However there was an American evangelical pastor in Paris, by the name of Harold Mumma, who late in life wrote a book claiming that he had had several meaningful conversations with Camus before the latter's untimely death, about the possibility of conversion (or re-conversion) to Christianity. But Camus died before anything came of it.
The point was simply that there is nothing like that in Camus' philosophy. His philosophy was called 'absurdism', that life is fundamentally absurd, and that the individual has to summon the inner strength necessary to live bravely regardless. It is fundamentally different to Buddhist philosophy in which the reality of enlightenment or release is central.
I can see how that could be true from one perspective. On the other hand, have you read L'Etranger? Mersault awaits his execution, and he is consumed by anger, by a sense of injustice. he lies on his bunk and looks through the window of his prison cell at the stars, and he is suffused with a realization of eternal peace which is not contradictory to the urgent sense of his own impending death. "He had opened his heart to the sublime indifference of the universe".
However there was an American evangelical pastor in Paris, by the name of Harold Mumma, who late in life wrote a book claiming that he had had several meaningful conversations with Camus before the latter's untimely death, about the possibility of conversion (or re-conversion) to Christianity. But Camus died before anything came of it.
Camus was also interested in the radical existential Christian philosopher Lev Shestov. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lev_Shestov
Reply to Janus The universe of modern science is what can be measured with telescopes and so forth, so of course it would be absurd to consider a universe so construed as a feeling being as it is by its very constitution a collection of objects and physical energy. Camus and Sartre were very much a product of the ‘death of god’ phase of Western culture, so it natural that they assume this ‘unfeeling universe’ of modern science. as the background to their philosophies. But it’s still a cultural construct in some important sense.
Certainly in some readings of Zen - ‘Chop wood, draw water’ - there’s a sense of finding the transcendent in the round of everyday life. But there’s still a transcendent dimension. That is what is explicitly rejected in Camus.
You may be right. I'm still not sure. Camus could have just said that Sisyphus remained brave, that he didn't complain, that he learned to cope with his fate. But he goes beyond that, saying we must imagine Sisyphus happy (heureux - also interpreted as 'fortunate').
You're right that it was the 'chop wood, draw water' image I had in mind, along with that of raking pebbles. I recognise they are Zen images, although I was not thinking specifically of Zen but of Buddhism more generally.
I don't see Camus's atheism as a barrier to his having Buddhist influences or parallels, since a deity is not a necessary part of Buddhism.
However, I admit to not having read Camus's essay - only excerpts - , so i had better go and do that, in order to be better informed about the topic.
Reply to andrewk Really? I would certainly equate irreligious and atheist. But then I suppose with Schopenhauer you have someone bitterly critical of religion but who nevertheless expresses admiration for the ascetic ideal.
Reply to Wayfarer I would look towards someone with a bit more positive of a worldview than Schopenhauer. Thomas Paine was who I had in mind, or indeed any of the number of high-profile deists that were around the end of the eighteenth century. Thomas Jefferson was another.
Further, as far as I can understand what I've read, Siddhartha Gautama was not a theist.
Reply to andrewk Buddhism is of not ‘theistic’ in the Western sense, but in Chinese Buddhism, the Buddha is treated much as a deity and the Bodhisattvas a pantheon. But even in its original and most austere form, Buddhism was still concerned with escaping from or transcending the endless realm of sa?s?ra. There is nothing remotely similar in 20th c European existentialism, (although here are some parallels explored by Edward Conze.)
Deism seemed to me a kind of ossified form of religion which depicted ‘God’ as a kind of remote cosmic engineer, and as such way-station to later scientific atheism.
Well, the problem is posited with a solution. Otherwise, it would be pessimistic.
I mean, even the "solution" is itself pesimissitc. The highest aim of our lives is to essentially dissolve the conditions for future experience. Samsara is seen as so dissatisfying and so permeated with dukkha that not even a "finger-snap" is desirable.
What's the fundamental difference between an atheist killing himself to stop the dukkha, an antinatalist advocating for people not to breed for the same reason, and a buddhist, given a belief in samsara, advocating for and pursuing nirvana?
Is this really the best we can do? Just lay down and die (either physically, or in the buddhist sense), defeated, because life hurts too much? I can't think of anything more pesimissitc.
As I said, if the Buddhist path was simply that life is suffering, then indeed it would be pessimistic philosophy, but it says there is an end to suffering. You're assuming that the goal of the path is non-existence, which it isn't; it is said to be a state of utmost bliss.
As I said, if the Buddhist path was simply that life is suffering, then indeed it would be pessimistic philosophy, but it says there is an end to suffering. You're assuming that the goal of the path is non-existence, which it isn't; it is said to be a state of utmost bliss.
On my reading of the suttas, I fail to see how there is any functional difference between Buddhist parinibbana and the atheist materialist conception of death?
[quote=SN 12.51]“Suppose, bhikkhus, a man would remove a hot clay pot from a potter’s kiln and set it on smooth ground: its heat would be dissipated right there and potsherds would be left. So too, when he feels a feeling terminating with the body … terminating with life…. He understands: ‘With the breakup of the body, following the exhaustion of life, all that is felt, not being delighted in, will become cool right here; mere bodily remains will be left.’ “What do you think, bhikkhus, can a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed generate a meritorious volitional formation, or a demeritorious volitional formation, or an imperturbable volitional formation?”
“No, venerable sir.”
“When there are utterly no volitional formations, with the cessation of volitional formations, would consciousness be discerned?” “No, venerable sir.”
“When there is utterly no consciousness, with the cessation of consciousness, would name-and-form be discerned?”
“No, venerable sir.”
“When there is utterly no name-and-form … no six sense bases … … no contact … no feeling … no craving … no clinging … no existence … no birth, with the cessation of birth, would aging-and-death be discerned?”
“No, venerable sir.”
“Good, good, bhikkhus! It is exactly so and not otherwise! Place faith in me about this, bhikkhus, resolve on this. Be free from perplexity and doubt about this. Just this is the end of suffering.”[/quote]
You can call this end of suffering "the highest bliss", "the deathless", "the unconditioned", or what have you (as some suttas do), and say Buddhism is therefore not pessimistic because it offers a solution to the dissatisfaction of our lives. But I think that's skewing the definition of what it means for something to be a solution. Simply negating a problem is not solving it. Suicide doesn't solve the suffering that brings about the act.
Samsara is seen as so undesirable that the highest we can aim is to merely uproot the conditions that bring further life about. I see this as very pessimistic. It is in the same way that antinatalism is still pessimistic, even though it offers a "solution" to life's suffering (i.e. to turn the earths crust into nothing more than lifeless dust). At least the antinatalist has only the suffering of this earth to uproot, rather than the endless lifetimes through hell, ghost, animal, deva, etc, realms.
At least the antinatalist has only the suffering of this earth to uproot, rather than the endless lifetimes through hell, ghost, animal, deva, etc, realms.
Good point, which is why I claimed that it is actually Nietzsche who is the most pessmistic philosopher (contra almost everyone else's interpretation). The Eternal Recurrence/Return idea of life simply repeating over and over, similar to the Buddhist/Hindu reincarnation story, seems pretty hellish. The problem is that Nietzsche tries to "abundance the hell" out of life.. by embracing the tragedy and having unbridled enthusiasm for life, we can somehow overcome it, and become some sort of ubermensch. This all rings hollow- I likened it to someone who is on a cocaine bender of some sort.
I liken most philosophies about life/existence as either rebellious or conforming. Nietzsche, pretended to be rebellious with his uber life-affirming message, but ends up being simply the most conforming of all. The quietude of antinatalism, the rebellion against furthering the objectives of foisting more challenges on yet more people, is the rebellious stance against existence itself.
The problem is that Nietzsche tries to "abundance the hell" out of life.. by embracing the tragedy and having unbridled enthusiasm for life, we can somehow overcome it, and become some sort of ubermensch. This all rings hollow-
Yeah, you also find the same hollowness and conformity in this sort of drivel:
[quote=Albert Camus]"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."[/quote]
The quietude of antinatalism, the rebellion against furthering the objectives of foisting more challenges on yet more people, is the rebellious stance against existence itself.
But perhaps here you are giving only two choices. Either there is an embracing of the conditions of this life and world (and therefore a continuance of it), or there is a total rebellion against and rejection of it (and therefore, it's cessation). But is there not a third, in-between option - that of changing the conditions of our existence (or future existences)? Where one does not embrace the conditions of this life, and yet doesn't totally rebel against all possible conditions. The antinatalist is saying, "the conditions of my existence, and the existence of all beings are such that no lives are worth starting. Life is not good enough for my standards, and therefore shouldn't exist at all." But instead of dissolving the entire human project into quietude because of this, why not instead bring the world (and the lives that begin in it) up to your standards? Is the task really so utterly hopeless?
I think there are worthwhile, meaningful, and positively good experiences in this life - I'm sure you've had them. Perhaps humour, romantic partnership, music, just the sheer awe (or is that, horror?) over existing at all. Although rare, and containing downsides, is there not a sense in which the antinatalist is throwing these babies (among others) out with the bathwater (or rather, out with the ocean of suffering they drown in)? I don't ask these questions rhetorically by the way. It could very well be that the Buddhists are right in that,
[quote=AN 1, 18]Just as a tiny bit of faeces has a bad smell, so I do not recommend even a tiny bit of existence, not even for so long as a fingersnap.[/quote]
But maybe this line of thought is just defeatism under the guise of rebellion. Maybe not.
Yeah, you also find the same hollowness and conformity in this sort of drivel:
"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
— Albert Camus
But perhaps here you are giving only two choices. Either there is an embracing of the conditions of this life and world (and therefore a continuance of it), or there is a total rebellion against and rejection of it (and therefore, it's cessation). But is there not a third, in-between option - that of changing the conditions of our existence (or future existences)? Where one does not embrace the conditions of this life, and yet doesn't totally rebel against all possible conditions. The antinatalist is saying, "the conditions of my existence, and the existence of all beings are such that no lives are worth starting. Life is not good enough for my standards, and therefore shouldn't exist at all." But instead of dissolving the entire human project into quietude because of this, why not instead bring the world (and the lives that begin in it) up to your standards? Is the task really so utterly hopeless?
I think there are worthwhile, meaningful, and positively good experiences in this life - I'm sure you've had them. Perhaps humour, romantic partnership, music, just the sheer awe (or is that, horror?) over existing at all. Although rare, and containing downsides, is there not a sense in which the antinatalist is throwing these babies (among others) out with the bathwater (or rather, out with the ocean of suffering they drown in)? I don't ask these questions rhetorically by the way. It could very well be that the Buddhists are right in that,
Yes, we've discussed this idea that there are absolute good experiences in the world. I mentioned there being six or seven categories I can think of that these goods can fall within. So, I recognize these exist. There are a couple points here though.
1) Bringing more people into the world to "bring the world up to my/your standards" is using them as a means to this end. This I do not believe to be good to enact on someone as their burden to bear for some idea of progress or future betterment. Using individual lives, who must endure X suffering/adversity/challenges for some abstract notion of betterment, or even for personal betterment, makes no sense and is circular reasoning, in the light of not existing in the first place.
2) Similarly, bringing new people into the world is presenting them with known and unknown sets of challenges. Foisting challenges on someone's behalf, whether that new person identifies with the challenges or not, in an inescapable game, is wrong to do, period. The more so if there is undue suffering for that individual as collateral damage above and beyond the "known" adversities a person might face and have to endure or overcome.
3) There is the negative nature of existence itself. In another thread there was the idea of Adam and Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden. Why did they eat the apple when they already had paradise? Because there is a kernel within the human species that is dissatisfied no matter what. This dissatisfaction cannot be taken out of the equation. Bear in mind, I am using this myth as metaphor.
If we are discussing contingent/relative amounts of suffering (not ones intractable but probable),the Nietzschean crowd will simply say that the unknown amounts of adversity, that we call "the real", is what makes it interesting. If we put this into an ethical stance towards procreation, it is saying that people should experience the unknown amounts of suffering, adversity, tribulations that existence offers. Something about the "game" or the "challenges" of existence itself, is worth it. Again, I don't see in the light of non-existence how making someone go through the challenges of "the real" is worth it, in the light of no one needed anything before being born into it in the first place. What about foisting the challenges of the real matters? There is a self-perpetuating scheme going on here. The scheme is that goods are good, but only worth it, at the cost of the negative. This is "real life" and it is somehow "good" for someone to endure. Again, this is just the status quo. Rather, no one needs to endure anything. Nothingness is not deprived of anything, nor has it ever hurt anyone.
To sum this up, to make new people overcome challenges, and experience undue suffering for the sake of the "goods" of life, is again using people. The hope is the goods are enough to entice them that the endeavor is worth it or that the challenges are necessary. There is a reason why the "real" is the "real". Some things cannot be taken away. This is it. This is reality. Technology might change, but the basic conditions of how we relate to the world, each other, and obtaining the absolute goods that we instinctively seek, are not going to change much, nor would it be good to force people into existence to figure out a solution to this at some future point.
However, you’re not seeing the whole point of the very verse you quote. The deathless, the imperturbable, is not simply ‘as some suttas say’ but the central point. The Buddha is not indicating mere non-existence.
??riputra, foolish ordinary beings do not have the wisdom that comes from hearing the Dharma. When they hear about a Tath?gata’s entering nirv??a, they take the wrong view of cessation or extinction. Because of their perception of cessation or extinction, they claim that the realm of sentient beings decreases. Their claim constitutes an enormously wrong view and an extremely grave, evil karma. 1
The meaning of the last statement is that you’re not able to discern the ‘deathless state’ then the reality of that is ‘what has to be taken on faith’. In other words:
On my reading of the suttas, I fail to see how there is any functional difference between Buddhist parinibbana and the atheist materialist conception of death?
You’re not correctly interpreting the meaning. But I do understand how in the modern world we’ve been ‘inoculated against the spiritual’ so that it means nothing.
The Eternal Recurrence/Return idea of life simply repeating over and over, similar to the Buddhist/Hindu reincarnation story, seems pretty hellish. The problem is that Nietzsche tries to "abundance the hell" out of life..
I accept that Nietzsche's narrative has much of that quality of seeing everything on the brink in order to goad the reader to leave their point of view to take another. But I am not sure what is being presented is a replacement of a view.
He keeps speaking of the next generations as the ones who have to find alternatives.
The Eternal Recurrence is presented as a way to experience the present moment in a different way than the "Christian" preparation for the next phase/life model. The view is not integrated with the "gay science" criteria of health.
It does not look like a system to me. There are these frames of reference and there is an anti-Hegelian taunt to deal with the regions described. He leaves his notebook attempts to piece it all together out of his published writings.
Why should he help his readers? Ecce Homo asks that question over and over again and laughs at their suffering.
Reply to Valentinus
I just take it as a metaphor that we should embrace life fully and our fate. I'm more of the opposite variety- that is to say the Schopenhaurean perspective. Life is an imposition, imposed on the individual. It is to be endured. Nietzsche's implication is that we can't do anything about it, so fully embrace it. I take the stance of rebellion against it. That is to say, recognize it for what it is (pessimism), and turn against its tyranny (antinatalism). Meanwhile we will minutia monger our way through our survival, comfort-seeking, and entertainment motivations. As I've said before:
Each action we take, is a decision we have to make and choose within the motivational constraints of survival, comfort-seeking, and entertainment mediated by genetically and environmentally created personality filters, that is itself carried out and partially informed from a broader socio-cultural context with a historically-developed set of institutions.
Nietzsche's implication is that we can't do anything about it, so fully embrace it.
I am not sure about the inescapable quality. Your point of view is an interesting contrast to the many who have complained that our circumstances are not as changeable as Nietzsche intimated.
Degrees of freedom are the most not integrated things in his writings. The inheritance that cannot be denied is placed side by side with choices an individual can make.
Nietzsche aside, I am not a suitable evaluator of the "antinatalist" position. Being a parent comes with certain presuppositions.
I'm going to go a bit left field and say that the most depressing philosopher is Australian bioethicist Peter Singer; making animals have so many rights that they could get medical treatment ahead of me is a depressing thought!
I'm going to go a bit left field and say that the most depressing philosopher is Australian bioethicist Peter Singer; making animals have so many rights that they could get medical treatment ahead of me is a depressing thought
I must agree, my mother decided to live with a vegan poet for a while, who wanted no fences around cattlefields, because cows should be able to walk wherever they want; and he wanted cars cars not to drive faster than 6mph, in case they hit a cow. It was the most depressing experience in my life to walk down the street with him.
Reply to ernestm
Nah. Camus embraces the end of the tunnel. In fact he knows there is no tunnel. Knowing you are going to die and the everyone will be dead in 100 year, means that you are free to do as you please.
Camus is never depressed
Comments (64)
True. On the other hand, though, Kierkegaard's 'Sicknesws unto Death' does explain how God inflicts the same type of thing on even his most devout followers, after telling Abram to sacrifice his own son. What did the poor fellow think while pushing his own son to the top of a mountain? Only Kierkegaard ever explored that in detail.
I've never studied Kierkegaard in depth, but from the slivers I've read, I'm reasonably sympathetic to his philosophy.
hm, well that was K's point, that God requires such things of even the most devout. The Jewish God did not particularly redeem the problem by telling Abram he didnt actually have to do it later, in fact, in K's view, that is even more cruel.
LOL.... Oh man.... Camus is a mind fuck... Reading the Myth of Sisyphus I feel there is some positivity there ... But the picture is so bleak....
It is like writing poetry on the beauty of a disemboweled cat... It really is that absurd.
But to your point Schopenhauer wasn't a pessimist in the euphemistic sense of toxic emotions and depression... He wrote more on the modes of Transcendence then most any other canonical philosopher I know and his latter work that focused on defining a mysticism without God as a full realization of Mysticism without Utopian fancy through Idealism he was after... That is so neglected it is a farce and a stain on his legacy.
That is to say overcoming the human condition is worthy of doing so on the basis of overcoming ones own inequity and suffering alone. It does not need a transcendent principle, the transcendence is the self fulfilling overcoming through giving providence of Discipline and Autonomy of ones being ....
I think only in Schopenhauer is there a possible middle ground for the clear harmony of what I muse in my scrap books of notes as 4 currents of thoughts that I am playing with prosaically.
Humanistic Empathy --> Deification or exaltation of Love
Romanticism --> Deification or exaltation of Imagination
Enlightenment --> Deification or exaltation of Reason
Miltonian Renaissance --> Deification or exaltation of Creation
Of course to labour this as anything but personal truth is folly at this point. I am not a technical or professional philosopher by any stretch.
But Schopenhauer was anything but depressing alone. It was more as a historical point of contention his philosophy was a response to a deep embedded nihilism and dystopian element surrounding the end of the French revolution proper.
Actually, K's point was to loosely illustrate the line that divides the ethical life/from the religious. It is crucial to consider how he contrasts Abraham with Aggemmnon.
I would say K is in the middle. He is not as depressing as he is serious.
I get the robot and bowling shoe, but Kant doesn't read like an obscurantist at all.
Fair point....
The world for Heidegger is less depressing than uncanny and astonishing.
Heidegger from Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics:
"Man is that inability to remain and is yet unable to leave his place. In projecting, the Da-sein in him constantly throws him into possibilities and thereby keeps him subjected to what is actual. Thus thrown in this throw, man is a transition, transition as the fundamental essence of occurrence. Man is history, or better, history is man. Man is enraptured in this transition and therefore essentially 'absent'. Absent in a fundamental sense-never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his essentially being away, removed into essential having been and future-essentially absencing and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence. Transposed into the possible, he must constantly be mistaken concerning what is actual. And only because he is thus mistaken and transposed can he become seized by terror. And only where there is the perilousness of being seized by terror do we find the bliss of astonishment-being torn away in that wakeful manner that is the breath of all philosophizing, and which the greats among the philosophers called ev9ouma.cr!l6<;-as witnessed by the last of the greats, Friedrich Nietzsche, in that song of Zarathustra's which he called the "intoxicated song" and in which we also experience what the world is:
0 Man! Attend!
What does deep midnight's voice contend?
"I slept my sleep,
"And now awake at dreaming's end:
"The world is deep,
"Deeper than day can comprehend.
"Deep is its woe,
"Joy-deeper than heart's agony:
"Woe says: Fade! Go!
"But all joy wants eternity,
"Wants deep, profound eternity!"
Well that means Heidegger believes that terror is due to mistakes. Kierkegaard's point is that fear is a natural reaction to God, who intentionally does bad things to us. That's far worse, lol.
Certainly in some readings of Zen - ‘Chop wood, draw water’ - there’s a sense of finding the transcendent in the round of everyday life. But there’s still a transcendent dimension. That is what is explicitly rejected in Camus.
I think that is a matter of interpretation, not a clear fact about Zen.
I would say Zen realization is a matter of direct experience of a certain kind and direct experience is immanent. Now I acknowledge you might interpret it another way; i.e. as transcendent, but that would be just your or someone else's interpretation, not a necessary truth. I must say I do find some of your beliefs perplexing!
I just voted for my favorite but he is not the most depressing. Nietzsche and the eternal return certainly is.
"Wisdom gone beyond" could be interpreted as meaning that attaining wisdom means going beyond, and in that sense transcending, a previous understanding or even kind of understanding. I would have no argument with an interpretation like that. But that is commonplace in all kinds of education and disciplines and really says nothing about any purported transcendent realm or whatever.
The term 'transcendent' means literally 'beyond' in the sense of no longer subject to the vicissitudes of birth and death. In early Buddhism, the individual Gotama, the Buddha, was understood to have reached such a state; in later Buddhism, including Zen, the individual Buddha is hypostatised into a principle, rather similar in kind to the Western conception of 'godhead' ('god-hood'), as a real presence at once immanent (caring for and leading worldly beings) and transcendent (beyond the world) (although Buddhists strenuously reject any comparison of Buddha and the Christian doctrine of God).
Camus' PhD was on Plotinus, but the influence of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer led him to his so-called 'absurdism' and resolute atheism. However there was an American evangelical pastor in Paris, by the name of Harold Mumma, who late in life wrote a book claiming that he had had several meaningful conversations with Camus before the latter's untimely death, about the possibility of conversion (or re-conversion) to Christianity. But Camus died before anything came of it.
I can see how that could be true from one perspective. On the other hand, have you read L'Etranger? Mersault awaits his execution, and he is consumed by anger, by a sense of injustice. he lies on his bunk and looks through the window of his prison cell at the stars, and he is suffused with a realization of eternal peace which is not contradictory to the urgent sense of his own impending death. "He had opened his heart to the sublime indifference of the universe".
Quoting Wayfarer
Camus was also interested in the radical existential Christian philosopher Lev Shestov. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lev_Shestov
I fail to see anything ‘sublime’ in it.
Well, the problem is posited with a solution. Otherwise, it would be pessimistic.
Oh well, as with anything you need to have a feel for it I guess...
It has been a long time (1976-77) since I read Shestov, but I do not recall his work as being "Christian".
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans-annotated.html?gtm=bottom&fbclid=IwAR28nXGJUSYpusnKj_yVTMqbItdeKCL7cwUeD0CaDKeY_fd_f9aI_eyvm
You may be right. I'm still not sure. Camus could have just said that Sisyphus remained brave, that he didn't complain, that he learned to cope with his fate. But he goes beyond that, saying we must imagine Sisyphus happy (heureux - also interpreted as 'fortunate').
You're right that it was the 'chop wood, draw water' image I had in mind, along with that of raking pebbles. I recognise they are Zen images, although I was not thinking specifically of Zen but of Buddhism more generally.
I don't see Camus's atheism as a barrier to his having Buddhist influences or parallels, since a deity is not a necessary part of Buddhism.
However, I admit to not having read Camus's essay - only excerpts - , so i had better go and do that, in order to be better informed about the topic.
Deity is not necessarily part of Buddhism, but it's still a religion; non-theistic =/= atheistic
atheistic =/= irreligious
(notwithstanding the attempts of some pop atheist celebrities to argue otherwise).
Further, as far as I can understand what I've read, Siddhartha Gautama was not a theist.
Deism seemed to me a kind of ossified form of religion which depicted ‘God’ as a kind of remote cosmic engineer, and as such way-station to later scientific atheism.
What is depressing about Marx?
I mean, even the "solution" is itself pesimissitc. The highest aim of our lives is to essentially dissolve the conditions for future experience. Samsara is seen as so dissatisfying and so permeated with dukkha that not even a "finger-snap" is desirable.
What's the fundamental difference between an atheist killing himself to stop the dukkha, an antinatalist advocating for people not to breed for the same reason, and a buddhist, given a belief in samsara, advocating for and pursuing nirvana?
Is this really the best we can do? Just lay down and die (either physically, or in the buddhist sense), defeated, because life hurts too much? I can't think of anything more pesimissitc.
As I said, if the Buddhist path was simply that life is suffering, then indeed it would be pessimistic philosophy, but it says there is an end to suffering. You're assuming that the goal of the path is non-existence, which it isn't; it is said to be a state of utmost bliss.
On my reading of the suttas, I fail to see how there is any functional difference between Buddhist parinibbana and the atheist materialist conception of death?
[quote=SN 12.51]“Suppose, bhikkhus, a man would remove a hot clay pot from a potter’s kiln and set it on smooth ground: its heat would be dissipated right there and potsherds would be left. So too, when he feels a feeling terminating with the body … terminating with life…. He understands: ‘With the breakup of the body, following the exhaustion of life, all that is felt, not being delighted in, will become cool right here; mere bodily remains will be left.’ “What do you think, bhikkhus, can a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed generate a meritorious volitional formation, or a demeritorious volitional formation, or an imperturbable volitional formation?”
“No, venerable sir.”
“When there are utterly no volitional formations, with the cessation of volitional formations, would consciousness be discerned?” “No, venerable sir.”
“When there is utterly no consciousness, with the cessation of consciousness, would name-and-form be discerned?”
“No, venerable sir.”
“When there is utterly no name-and-form … no six sense bases … … no contact … no feeling … no craving … no clinging … no existence … no birth, with the cessation of birth, would aging-and-death be discerned?”
“No, venerable sir.”
“Good, good, bhikkhus! It is exactly so and not otherwise! Place faith in me about this, bhikkhus, resolve on this. Be free from perplexity and doubt about this. Just this is the end of suffering.”[/quote]
You can call this end of suffering "the highest bliss", "the deathless", "the unconditioned", or what have you (as some suttas do), and say Buddhism is therefore not pessimistic because it offers a solution to the dissatisfaction of our lives. But I think that's skewing the definition of what it means for something to be a solution. Simply negating a problem is not solving it. Suicide doesn't solve the suffering that brings about the act.
Samsara is seen as so undesirable that the highest we can aim is to merely uproot the conditions that bring further life about. I see this as very pessimistic. It is in the same way that antinatalism is still pessimistic, even though it offers a "solution" to life's suffering (i.e. to turn the earths crust into nothing more than lifeless dust). At least the antinatalist has only the suffering of this earth to uproot, rather than the endless lifetimes through hell, ghost, animal, deva, etc, realms.
Just my two cents.
Good point, which is why I claimed that it is actually Nietzsche who is the most pessmistic philosopher (contra almost everyone else's interpretation). The Eternal Recurrence/Return idea of life simply repeating over and over, similar to the Buddhist/Hindu reincarnation story, seems pretty hellish. The problem is that Nietzsche tries to "abundance the hell" out of life.. by embracing the tragedy and having unbridled enthusiasm for life, we can somehow overcome it, and become some sort of ubermensch. This all rings hollow- I likened it to someone who is on a cocaine bender of some sort.
I liken most philosophies about life/existence as either rebellious or conforming. Nietzsche, pretended to be rebellious with his uber life-affirming message, but ends up being simply the most conforming of all. The quietude of antinatalism, the rebellion against furthering the objectives of foisting more challenges on yet more people, is the rebellious stance against existence itself.
Yeah, you also find the same hollowness and conformity in this sort of drivel:
[quote=Albert Camus]"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."[/quote]
:vomit:
Quoting schopenhauer1
But perhaps here you are giving only two choices. Either there is an embracing of the conditions of this life and world (and therefore a continuance of it), or there is a total rebellion against and rejection of it (and therefore, it's cessation). But is there not a third, in-between option - that of changing the conditions of our existence (or future existences)? Where one does not embrace the conditions of this life, and yet doesn't totally rebel against all possible conditions. The antinatalist is saying, "the conditions of my existence, and the existence of all beings are such that no lives are worth starting. Life is not good enough for my standards, and therefore shouldn't exist at all." But instead of dissolving the entire human project into quietude because of this, why not instead bring the world (and the lives that begin in it) up to your standards? Is the task really so utterly hopeless?
I think there are worthwhile, meaningful, and positively good experiences in this life - I'm sure you've had them. Perhaps humour, romantic partnership, music, just the sheer awe (or is that, horror?) over existing at all. Although rare, and containing downsides, is there not a sense in which the antinatalist is throwing these babies (among others) out with the bathwater (or rather, out with the ocean of suffering they drown in)? I don't ask these questions rhetorically by the way. It could very well be that the Buddhists are right in that,
[quote=AN 1, 18]Just as a tiny bit of faeces has a bad smell, so I do not recommend even a tiny bit of existence, not even for so long as a fingersnap.[/quote]
But maybe this line of thought is just defeatism under the guise of rebellion. Maybe not.
Yep, very Nietzschean to me.
Quoting Inyenzi
Yes, we've discussed this idea that there are absolute good experiences in the world. I mentioned there being six or seven categories I can think of that these goods can fall within. So, I recognize these exist. There are a couple points here though.
1) Bringing more people into the world to "bring the world up to my/your standards" is using them as a means to this end. This I do not believe to be good to enact on someone as their burden to bear for some idea of progress or future betterment. Using individual lives, who must endure X suffering/adversity/challenges for some abstract notion of betterment, or even for personal betterment, makes no sense and is circular reasoning, in the light of not existing in the first place.
2) Similarly, bringing new people into the world is presenting them with known and unknown sets of challenges. Foisting challenges on someone's behalf, whether that new person identifies with the challenges or not, in an inescapable game, is wrong to do, period. The more so if there is undue suffering for that individual as collateral damage above and beyond the "known" adversities a person might face and have to endure or overcome.
3) There is the negative nature of existence itself. In another thread there was the idea of Adam and Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden. Why did they eat the apple when they already had paradise? Because there is a kernel within the human species that is dissatisfied no matter what. This dissatisfaction cannot be taken out of the equation. Bear in mind, I am using this myth as metaphor.
If we are discussing contingent/relative amounts of suffering (not ones intractable but probable),the Nietzschean crowd will simply say that the unknown amounts of adversity, that we call "the real", is what makes it interesting. If we put this into an ethical stance towards procreation, it is saying that people should experience the unknown amounts of suffering, adversity, tribulations that existence offers. Something about the "game" or the "challenges" of existence itself, is worth it. Again, I don't see in the light of non-existence how making someone go through the challenges of "the real" is worth it, in the light of no one needed anything before being born into it in the first place. What about foisting the challenges of the real matters? There is a self-perpetuating scheme going on here. The scheme is that goods are good, but only worth it, at the cost of the negative. This is "real life" and it is somehow "good" for someone to endure. Again, this is just the status quo. Rather, no one needs to endure anything. Nothingness is not deprived of anything, nor has it ever hurt anyone.
To sum this up, to make new people overcome challenges, and experience undue suffering for the sake of the "goods" of life, is again using people. The hope is the goods are enough to entice them that the endeavor is worth it or that the challenges are necessary. There is a reason why the "real" is the "real". Some things cannot be taken away. This is it. This is reality. Technology might change, but the basic conditions of how we relate to the world, each other, and obtaining the absolute goods that we instinctively seek, are not going to change much, nor would it be good to force people into existence to figure out a solution to this at some future point.
However, you’re not seeing the whole point of the very verse you quote. The deathless, the imperturbable, is not simply ‘as some suttas say’ but the central point. The Buddha is not indicating mere non-existence.
The meaning of the last statement is that you’re not able to discern the ‘deathless state’ then the reality of that is ‘what has to be taken on faith’. In other words:
Quoting Inyenzi
You’re not correctly interpreting the meaning. But I do understand how in the modern world we’ve been ‘inoculated against the spiritual’ so that it means nothing.
I accept that Nietzsche's narrative has much of that quality of seeing everything on the brink in order to goad the reader to leave their point of view to take another. But I am not sure what is being presented is a replacement of a view.
He keeps speaking of the next generations as the ones who have to find alternatives.
The Eternal Recurrence is presented as a way to experience the present moment in a different way than the "Christian" preparation for the next phase/life model. The view is not integrated with the "gay science" criteria of health.
It does not look like a system to me. There are these frames of reference and there is an anti-Hegelian taunt to deal with the regions described. He leaves his notebook attempts to piece it all together out of his published writings.
Why should he help his readers? Ecce Homo asks that question over and over again and laughs at their suffering.
I just take it as a metaphor that we should embrace life fully and our fate. I'm more of the opposite variety- that is to say the Schopenhaurean perspective. Life is an imposition, imposed on the individual. It is to be endured. Nietzsche's implication is that we can't do anything about it, so fully embrace it. I take the stance of rebellion against it. That is to say, recognize it for what it is (pessimism), and turn against its tyranny (antinatalism). Meanwhile we will minutia monger our way through our survival, comfort-seeking, and entertainment motivations. As I've said before:
Each action we take, is a decision we have to make and choose within the motivational constraints of survival, comfort-seeking, and entertainment mediated by genetically and environmentally created personality filters, that is itself carried out and partially informed from a broader socio-cultural context with a historically-developed set of institutions.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I am not sure about the inescapable quality. Your point of view is an interesting contrast to the many who have complained that our circumstances are not as changeable as Nietzsche intimated.
Degrees of freedom are the most not integrated things in his writings. The inheritance that cannot be denied is placed side by side with choices an individual can make.
Nietzsche aside, I am not a suitable evaluator of the "antinatalist" position. Being a parent comes with certain presuppositions.
I must agree, my mother decided to live with a vegan poet for a while, who wanted no fences around cattlefields, because cows should be able to walk wherever they want; and he wanted cars cars not to drive faster than 6mph, in case they hit a cow. It was the most depressing experience in my life to walk down the street with him.
Nah. Camus embraces the end of the tunnel. In fact he knows there is no tunnel. Knowing you are going to die and the everyone will be dead in 100 year, means that you are free to do as you please.
Camus is never depressed
That's the most depressing part of Camus, lol.
I fail to see what is depressing about that.