The Existentialists....

[Suki]

I read Albert Camus "the stranger" when I was just 16. I found it to trouble me greatly. Thinking that all our pain and suffering and struggles and petty worries and big worries.....were all for naught. The absolute sense of alienation and lonely separateness void of connectivity and meaning was somewhat intimidating for me and disturbing. But I wondered why? Is it because that existentialists tap into something we all have felt at some time....such as loneliness, aloneness and indifference? I found Camus to be a powerful writer.

Rousseau....a materialist....does materialism define us? Or do we define matter? So far matter has all the advantages...as long as we don't throw in advanced unknown elements such as our knowledge of energy, time and space in say 50-100 million years....as a species we have been on Planet Earth a short time.....who is to say what we become in 50 million years if we survive at all? And what was the purpose of it all in the first place? MUST there be a purpose? Lol. There is order that is a fact. There is time limits also a fact. Is this the only state of life?

Who can know? Some religious thought tries to address this. But let us stick to philosophy....struggle and challenge is what we need. For without it were is the journey. I happen to think shared struggle is meaningful.

What do you think of Existentialism?

I am all ears.

Suki.

[J--J]

Hiya Suki
Funny you should ask...this is a topic I am just starting to get my teeth into just now too...I am getting a book by Kafka as a starting off point;will let you know what I think when I know more.

I don't think, though, that Existentialism has to be all doom and gloom - from what I am finding out it is possible to have a very positive and creative reaction to the realsiation that we are truly free.

from http://www.unm.edu/~kfinstad/exist.html

"The most basic tenet common to the many uses of the term is that man is entirely free and wholly responsible for himself. In this light, man's imperfection is suddenly obvious, to which follows a sense of anguish and helplessness. To the existentialist, this is roughly the point of awareness.

Existential awareness can logically lead in several opposing directions--all of which are captured by the term. For some, anguish leads to loneliness and despair, possibly resulting in nihilism. For others, meaningless prevails, and life is simply inconsequential. For others still, the perceived "imperfection" of man is merely a changeable facet of his/her character, for with total freedom and total responsibility comes limitless potential (the existentialist here touches the concept of humanism). The human condition, then, is not absolute nor entirely understood; improvement (but not "enlightenment") can come through the emphasis of different or new human attributes. The individual is free to be who s/he chooses."

[El_Jibaro]

[i]Then there is no difference from a belching cow and a great philosopher .

That is the bottom line.

Ecclesiastes 3:21

Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?"

If we are only animals, then we would share the same fate.

And if so, then there is no reason to live a righteous life.

1 Corinthians 15:19

And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world.

------------------------------
PS: If GOD doesn't exist, then a heroine addict taking his last "trip" via overdoze is better off than the rest of humanity, since, assuming HE doesn't exist, anyday soon everything will end in a big nuclear holocaust...[b]

[Suki]

Originally posted by J--J
Hiya Suki
Funny you should ask...this is a topic I am just starting to get my teeth into just now too...I am getting a book by Kafka as a starting off point;will let you know what I think when I know more.

I don't think, though, that Existentialism has to be all doom and gloom - from what I am finding out it is possible to have a very positive and creative reaction to the realsiation that we are truly free.

from http://www.unm.edu/~kfinstad/exist.html

"The most basic tenet common to the many uses of the term is that man is entirely free and wholly responsible for himself. In this light, man's imperfection is suddenly obvious, to which follows a sense of anguish and helplessness. To the existentialist, this is roughly the point of awareness.

Existential awareness can logically lead in several opposing directions--all of which are captured by the term. For some, anguish leads to loneliness and despair, possibly resulting in nihilism. For others, meaningless prevails, and life is simply inconsequential. For others still, the perceived "imperfection" of man is merely a changeable facet of his/her character, for with total freedom and total responsibility comes limitless potential (the existentialist here touches the concept of humanism). The human condition, then, is not absolute nor entirely understood; improvement (but not "enlightenment") can come through the emphasis of different or new human attributes. The individual is free to be who s/he chooses."

Sure J_J my Scottish friend...lol. We truly are responsible for everything we do....but I do believe in God. But the God I believe in believes all life has meaning and purpose...and we are eternal beings...trapped temporarily in earthly bodies...we have free will and shape our lives...and what creates suffering is our attachments....and our lack of realization...our essential ignorance of our spirituality...and all of us have that soul...and so on..but back to philosophy. Matter. Hmmmm. It contains life if it has living cells...but do rocks have living cells? No. If they don't are they considered alive then? Like Plants and animals. Humans are special in that they are highly complex and use culture, language and social rules to define ourselves with...how we use those gifts and if we choose certain lifeways are all good as long as it is a chosen path? I think as humans we can choose stinky stuff...drug addiction, abusiveness, lying, cheating and etc. all for many reasons....yet how do we change? And more importantly why do we change? Lol

J_J this is certainly a challenging subject.

And Jibaro is welcome as well...if he would stick to philosophy....religion is another forum.

Unless he can link philosophy with religion then I would certainly welcome the commentary.LOl

Suki

[J--J]

I just spent the last hour writing a reply to these posts...I clicked 'send' and got an error 404 page and lost the lot.Well that will teach me not to use a WP. I could cry...

Will try again later folks...

[J--J]

Hi Suki
Jibaro - to pick up on your first point there -

If matter is all there is...
Then there is no difference from a belching cow and a great philosopher .
That is the bottom line.

At the level of the bottom line,the reductive level where you are just looking at particles and their positions, there are only quantitative differences between the two events.But that is not the whole story....

Maybe there is more to matter than what we think of as matter(or maybe even less!).I think there probably is something wrong with our 'folk concept' of matter that we all have in our heads, defined by Descartes as that which has "extension but no spirit". It may turn out that our present metaphysics is all wrong, and there is no such thing as matter as popularly concieved.Last I heard (and I hope I have this in he right context -is there a physicist in the house who can check?) elemental particles of matter like quarks and electrons are now thought to be mathematically point like, having no extension as such. So that is one of Descartes assumptions gone.

So yes there may be more that needs to be added (and removed) from our current thinking on the nature of matter before we can really undestand such things as subjective human experiece and so on, but my question is why do we feel the need to ascribe the missing elements to a special being outside the universe, a god? Are there any good reasons to resist the economy of asssuming that whatever pieces of the puzzle are missing in our understanding, they will turn out to be properties of the universe itself?

Suki - I dont know what we really are , and whether there is a God or not, but I do believe that what ever is the case, it will be so by natural means. I would like to think that at least some of what you said is true...but in the end I have to admit I don't know.

I agree with you that humans are special because we have language and culture, and empathy. Animals have small, limted versions of these things too...but it seems to be mostly 'programmed' specifically in their case...like the bower bird and its beautiful flower petal gardens for example - we have a much greater capacity for creativity ; in our case its dynamic and we are free to come up with new ideas all the time.

As for what we are doing with our freedom, I think we are overall actually making progress in terms of how people are treated and their standards of living.I don't believe much in stories of 'Golden Ages' from the past - they always seem to be discredited when you study them closely. We live in risky times, there are always local setbacks, throwbacks, new horrors to deal with and so on...but I think that there is a 'core culture' that is actually advancing. And I think that as long as we have freedom of speech and freedom of information and enquiry, and a good cultural 'memory', we will continue to learn from our mistakes and make further advances.Armageddon permitting, of course .

[Suki]

I think a 'generic' culture of modernity is taking over...one in which you consume or die...but I still think there is enough space in this world to allow people who do not want any part of that 'culture' to be left alone...anyway, back to the existentialist thinking. Lol. Meaning is meaning. I agree 100% with your statement about why look for external validation? One has innate value just living and being a human being....why expect external miracles...all the miracles we already are born with it...lol.

There is a Puerto Rican Phd Physicist that teaches at a university in Virginia on this forum you could ask him that interesting question, his name is Ran....I like the guy and he joined us recently...Dr. Edward Colon. Lol. You have excellent timing J_J.

Suki.