ABSURDISM

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ABSURDISM Muqi 05/20/15 (Wed) 21:19:43 15386c No.1589

Absurdism is the greatest existential philosophy in my opinion. There are many writings on the absurd, it is far less in your face than nihilism, truly the sophisticated existential philosophy.

Anonymous 05/24/15 (Sun) 17:39:34 e40e0c No.1597

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>absurdism

Anonymous 05/27/15 (Wed) 20:07:52 e4eec6 No.1626

>>1589

What more to absurdism is there, aside from the notion that "life is absurd"? It doesn't strike me as much of a statement, and at best a colour of nihilism, not a step up from it. At worst it is an attempt at denying nihilism while clinging on to a semblence of, for lack of a bettwe word, positivity.

I'm not sure if you are familiar with the literary archetype of the "humourist", who is defined as a person beyond nihilism, as someone who profoundly realises the futility of existence and, in order to cope with it, detaches himself from it and, from a distance, laughs at it. It's not a novel thought, but it's not a very interesting one either. It strikes me as realisation and the subsequent denial of realisation. You can call it sophisticated if you like, but if that's the crux of absurdism then I don't think I've missed much.

If you think I'm doing it injustice, I'd appreciate a quick crash course though.

Anonymous 05/30/15 (Sat) 02:45:53 17a2bc No.1628

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>>1626

I subscribe to the thought of three existentialists, Camus being one of them. I feel that this bit from The Myth of Sisyphus can exemplify the absurdist position:

>And here are trees and I know their gnarled surface, water and I feel its taste. These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart relaxes-how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I feel? Yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that this world is mine. You describe it to me and you teach me to classify it. You enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanism and my hope increases. At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron.

>All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. What need had I of so many efforts? The soft lines of these hills and the hand of evening on this troubled heart teach me much more.

>I have returned to my beginning. I realize that if through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them, I cannot, for all that, apprehend the world. Were I to trace its entire relief with my finger, I should not know any more. And you give me the choice between a description that is sure but that teaches me nothing and hypotheses that claim to teach men but that are not sure. A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults?

>To will is to stir up paradoxes. Everything is ordered in such a way as to bring into being that poisoned peace produced by thoughtlessness, lack of heart, or fatal renunciations.

Anonymous 05/30/15 (Sat) 07:00:51 e4eec6 No.1629

>>1628

I'm actually quite fond of Camus myself, from a literary standpoint in particular. He expresses notions very eloquently and with fitting imagery, as I see in the passages you've quoted too. I particularly like the line

>you give me the choice between a description that is sure but that teaches me nothing and hypotheses that claim to teach men but that are not sure.

Even so (and this is one of the difficulties I have with getting into existentialist philosophy) it is little more than the exemplification of a specific notion that reminds of nihilism and makes me consider absurdism as something of a reconnotation or coping-mechanism thereof. Hence the question; aside from that notion, what more is there to it? Or is it the gist of it that there IS nothing more to it? Philosophy as realisation of actuality, if you will?

If so, I find it to be an appropriate but unfortunately uninteresting philosophy.

Anonymous 06/04/15 (Thu) 17:54:54 8a6a25 No.1641

>>1628

Those lines are the ones that resonated with me the most, good to see that I am not the only one. Whenever I read a scientific article about anything new I think of those lines. Any truth claim just seems ridiculous to me, it all sounds like poetry to me, beautiful poetry though.

Though I do share the sentiment that absurdism is not constructive or an answer to anything. Yet it is the only thing that ever made enough sense to me.

Anonymous 06/06/15 (Sat) 02:08:48 52aa94 No.1647

>>1589

The only interesting philosophical question is suicide in an absurdist view, if one is given to following Greek-like philosophers and acting in accordance with beliefs. Should we face the absurd? Should we strike out with vigor and revolt against the inherent paradox that is living?

In my view, I am too much of a skeptic to kill myself, or even if I had judged suicide to be the correct act, I would have doubts to whether I had judged correctly, or if my judgement might change. Maybe its that I care that I do not look like a fool after death, or like someone who killed themselves without cause. But I question even that selfish desire as well, so again, my skepticism keeps me from suicide. It also makes me quietist, a charge levied at Camus.

It's sad and absurd that a car crash took him.

Anonymous 06/06/15 (Sat) 03:12:00 17a2bc No.1648

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