The absurd is essentially bound to value, the caring that there is this foundational indeterminacy in our existence. Why does one care at all? Caring is in the nature of the absurd, — Astrophel

the absurd … hangs on affectivity of caring — Astrophel

What I attempt to say is that while K and D are true existentialists for dealing with ethical dilemmas, Camus is a nihilist because he doesn't bother to debate about this issue. — javi2541997

Interesting conversation here.

I think I’m realizing why my favorite existentialists were always Nietzsche and Camus. Nietzsche was the most metaphysical and Camus was the least ethical.

I like the science, be it gay or otherwise. Existentialism disallows any pretense, at least more so than any other approach to inquiry. We start in the absurd, facing the abyss, where everything human is false, and any move may make the situation worse.

I always threw out ethics with reason and truth and all the rest that was suspended and upended by the existentialists, and I paid less attention to whatever ethics were recovered and more attention to what wisdom or truth could be recovered. Ethics was like their vehicle for delivering metaphysics and secondary to me.

But I think you are both right, that the ethical is essential to existentialism, and Camus stripped it down too far, being the closest to a nihilist of the bunch.

You both have me at an existential crisis with my understanding of existentialism! I thought I knew what meaninglessness meant, but now…

Great conversation.

Interesting conversation here. — Fire Ologist

Thank you! :smile:

But I think you are both right, that the ethical is essential to existentialism, and Camus stripped it down too far, being the closest to a nihilist of the bunch. — Fire Ologist

Maybe we (if @Astrophel wants to be included) could be wrong, but yes, I personally believe that ethics are the key element for existentialism. Why? For the following points:

1) We all have to face dilemmas often. Discerning about what is the 'right' way to act makes us feel despaired. Some philosophers, like Kierkegaard, for instance, prefer to name this issue as anxiety. But the important element of the dilemma is that we actually care about life, we give it a meaning and this is why we suffer from anxiety about what is the right way to behave. A nihilist could not care about the way to act accordingly...

2) There is even more anxiety when we think about what will come afterwards. I mean, is there a Trial of the Soul?
If I lie, or I cheat, does my soul get rotten? Etc. For a nihilistic, this is all absurd and doesn't care that much.

Ethics was like their vehicle for delivering metaphysics and secondary to me. — Fire Ologist

Honestly, I do not know what comes first. I think ethics is a very relevant element in existentialism, but I don't know which is the proper approach, whether ethics, metaphysics, or meta-ethics.

Honestly, I do not know what comes first. I think ethics is a very relevant element in existentialism, but I don't know which is the proper approach, whether ethics, metaphysics, or meta-ethics. — javi2541997

I think these interlink.

A metaphysic often implies an ethic, and vice-versa.

I've been chewing on how to write out a "map" of existentialism/nihilism/absurdism, at least for myself -- because I believe I have a grasp of these intuitively but I don't know how to make that grasp explicit.

I think said map would probably include all three when we make it explicit, though. And probably changes a bit depending on which authors we are considering, or emphasizing (or the readings of authors we are emphasizing, in the case of some)

Yes, they are linked to each other. Well, those approaches have a common concern and the latter is life. I also have my problems with discerning each of them. Sometimes, they feel closer than separated. Nonetheless, I still remain with the same thought that existentialism cares more about life than nihilism or other types of absurdism. If we compare different texts, I guess the differences are apparent.

One example of Dostoevsky:

But the martyr sometimes likes to divert himself with his despair, as it were driven to it by despair itself. Meanwhile ... you divert yourself with magazine articles and discussions in society, though you don't believe your own arguments, and, with an aching heart mock at them inwardly.... That question you have not answered, and it is your great grief, for it clamours for an answer

- The Brothers Karamazov, Book II, Chapter 6.

And then, a very different text by Camus but with a similar concern at the same time:

Sisyphus is stuck in an eternally pointless task. Now, if the world and everything in it are also pointless, the lesson is that the task of Sisyphus is identical to every thing that we will ever be doing in life. We are no different from Sisyphus; and if his punishment makes the afterlife a hell for him, we are already living in that hell.

https://friesian.com/existent.htm

This is very interesting! :smile: And we could spend hours and hours debating on this topic. Yet I think it is plausible how a text by an existentialist suffers from despair about doubting what is the right way to act. While a nihilistic jokes about this.

Yes, they are linked to each other. Well, those approaches have a common concern and the latter is life. I also have my problems with discerning each of them. Sometimes, they feel closer than separated. Nonetheless, I still remain with the same thought that existentialism cares more about life than nihilism or other types of absurdism. If we compare different texts, I guess the differences are apparent. — javi2541997

Cool.

I have more positive feelings towards absurdism than the thread has so far expressed. I'm a lover of Camus -- at least what I've read, and I think he's the only one I'd say is an absurdist as opposed to an existentialist (though I'd classify him as an existentialist, in a historical sense)

This is very interesting! :smile: And we could spend hours and hours debating on this topic. Yet I think it is plausible how a text by an existentialist suffers from despair about doubting what is the right way to act. While a nihilistic jokes about this. — javi2541997

That's insightful! Though Nietzsche, with The Gay Science, would be an obvious example to bring up in terms of how you parse him into those categories. He can be read as both at once, or neither: he's no nihilist as much as an anti-nihilist, and is joyful in the meta-ethical anti-realist sense that @Tom Storm expressed (at least as I understand him), and uses that joy to counter the sad and somber nihilism that he associates with Christianity(socialism, etc.)

The notion of "suffering" makes sense as a uniting theme, even if there are more joyful existentialists (or, if we prefer, post-existentialists -- thinking Derrida and Levinas now more than categorical classifications)

Both K and N explicated some kind of doubt about what we believe we're doing and why, and the latter existentialists -- so I interpret them -- attempted answers to those questions. In this sentence I mean "existentialists" in the historical sense, rather than philosophical sense (the group of people we usually associate with the word, and the interpretations of their works)


Well -- that's enough rambling for now.

Is it not the case that Camus and Nietzsche, start with nihilism, more or less as foundational - there is no inherent meaning, value or purpose - and then devise a response to this, which is essentially subjective or personal? Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this, but no matter what one does to rehabilitate the implications of nihilism, it remains in some way a nihilist project.

The notion of "suffering" makes sense as a uniting theme, even if there are more joyful existentialists (or, if we prefer, post-existentialists -- thinking Derrida and Levinas now more than categorical classifications) — Moliere

Good point! I agree with you, Moliere. :up:

Both K and N explicated some kind of doubt about what we believe we're doing and why, and the latter existentialists -- so I interpret them -- attempted answers to those questions. In this sentence I mean "existentialists" in the historical sense, rather than philosophical sense — Moliere

True! Existentialists often considered themselves as 'weak' in philosophy because most of their writings were parts of novels, and not essays about philosophy in the proper sense of the technique. I was reading some notes about Dostoevsky's life, and he considered himself 'weak' in philosophy. But, paradoxically, his characters and the Christian dilemmas they pass through, were an inspiration to the existentialists of the 20th century!

Furthermore, I forgot a very important fact you mentioned in the comment, and it is the historical background. Indeed, existentialism depends a lot on this. Why X happens and how we should act, causes the circumstances we currently live in. This is another matter between the Russian authors and Kierkegaard.

The circumstances of our existentialism are the main cause of our despair or are we the ones who make those circumstances because of our choices?

Is it not the case that Camus and Nietzsche, start with nihilism, more or less as foundational - there is no inherent meaning, value or purpose - and then devise a response to this, which is essentially subjective or personal? Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this, but no matter what one does to rehabilitate the implications of nihilism, it remains in some way a nihilist project. — Tom Storm

I don't think they start there as much as reject nihilism -- but I'd still interpret them, personally, as meta-ethical nihilists. But I'm kind of mix-and-matching here -- meta-ethical antirealism is a very analytic position, and in analytic philosophy you often try to strip terms of their emotional valences in order to set out a clear set of logical relations between propositions so they can be evaluated.

Neither Camus or Nietzsche wrote in this style, so I'm kind of introducing an interpretive device to their works in calling them meta-ethical nihilists -- I think it's the appropriate categorization, but it's not the categories which Camus or Nietzsche are using.

For Nietzsche it's Christianity and its attendant slave-morality, in light of the death of God, that brings about the most decadent kind of nihilism. Even though his project is descriptive here I can't really read Nietzsche other than preferring master-morality over slave-morality, given his general criticisms of all the examples of slave-morality he puts forward.

That master-morality preceded slave-morality, and so in a way you can read Nietzsche as restoring the good, old religion in the face of the decadent religion of the last man: Though what he calls "good" isn't what Christian's call "Good", obviously, and has more to do with aristocratic self-overcoming in their pursuit of power to a point of overcoming even the overman -- the overman overcomes himself.

So meta-ethically I'd still classify him as a moral antirealist because he's not really the sort to propose true moral propositions -- but that's not the sort of nihilism he's rejecting either.
****

With Camus I think he considers the possibility of nihilism because of the absurd encounter, and begins with the only question that one need answer in light of the absurd: to kill oneself or not. But then through the process of thinking that question he arrives at a position where that even if there are no values (or God) suicide is not permitted at a logical level -- which seems to me to count as a pretty strong ethical belief.

For him there's the possibility of nihilism, the absurd encounter, but then heroic rebellion and acceptance of the absurd is the logical conclusion one should follow rather than the path of suicide -- a kind of ultimate nihilism where nothing matters, even subjectively, and so one kills oneself to escape the inescapable nothing.

****

So given all that I'd say yes, you're right, but there's more, and thanks for the prodding because it's helping me to think through these authors and try to make some distinctions in drawing out a "map"

The notion of "suffering" makes sense as a uniting theme, even if there are more joyful existentialists (or, if we prefer, post-existentialists -- thinking Derrida and Levinas now more than categorical classifications) — Moliere

When you mentioned Levinas and Derrida, my thoughts went to exactly the place where this issue is expressed so well, if mysteriously, as you can expect with someone like Levinas. It is this essay by Derrida called Violence and Metaphysics and it is a kind of review by Derrida of Levinas' Totality and Infinity. This issue is the way Levinas labors to explain this impossible impasse that occurs when inquiry confronts metaethical boundaries. One has to hold on tight for a discussion that wants to go where language's possiblities have no place, which is, as Levinas puts it, "prior to the unveiling of Being in general, as the basis of knowledge and meaning of Being, there is a relation with the extant which is expressed; before the ontological level, the ethical level.: Derrida concludes, "Ethics is therefore metaphysics. The absolute overflowing of ontology----as the totality and unity of the same: by the other occurs as infinity because no totality can constrain it."

Levinas finds the moral dimension in our existence in the encounter with the other person, the face that reveals "what cannot be an object or a simple 'objective reality'. Philosophy cannot forget that we exist, says Kierkegaard, and our existence is the setting for ethical experiences. Camus' biggest trouble lies with his own lack ethical experience. He would simply say to Levinas, What "Other" are you talking about? because he doesn't understand anything beyond what is in plain sight, and what is in plain sight has NO Other. E.g., the Arab nurse in The Stranger "has a bandage wrapped around her face, which has no nose; she is virtually faceless."

I think Camus' absurd is a manifestation of his plain, journalistic psychological constitution. Ethics is NOTHING in this plain description of our affairs. Ethics is literally nothing without metaphysics and Camus simply notes this to be the case. This is Levinas' point. I would add that Wittgenstein knew this, too. The world and ethics is "mystical" for him. Ethics is transcendental in its essence.

I always threw out ethics with reason and truth and all the rest that was suspended and upended by the existentialists, and I paid less attention to whatever ethics were recovered and more attention to what wisdom or truth could be recovered. Ethics was like their vehicle for delivering metaphysics and secondary to me. — Fire Ologist

AS I try to argue, before one can talk about the nature of ethics, one has to first observe actual ethical cases: what makes something ethical at all! It is not the rules, as Kierkegaard thought, for rules are in practical matters as well, I mean, there is nothing of what ethics is in a rule or principle. It must be somewhere else that we find "the ethical" in these daily affairs (for at this point there is no metaphysical assumption in place). What remains is the good and the bad. It is such an odd thing to say in this climate of confidence in natural science, but there is a metaethical dimension of ethics. The ethical "good"?? What IS this? This is nothing to someone like Camus, and I dare say most people who think such matters through, these days.

There is a nihilism that runs through popular culture because those who give this culture its voice, our intelligencia, are devoid of metaethical understanding, for ethics cannot be "seen". Pain, being bad, is not, in its badness, observed like one observes a cup or a lamp shade. The badness is all the same there, what G E Moore called a non natural property.

To understand Camus, one needs to see what he is NOT. And he is not a metaphysician. He's just a very talented naturalist.

and not essays about philosophy in the proper sense of the technique. — javi2541997

I think existentialism and phenomenology are terms that overlap. Heidegger didn't like the term, I don't think Sartre objected. But the whole movement was an attempt to return to existence from rationality as a grounding for philosophy. You might find the way Heidegger originally puts this in Being and Time. A brief passage:

By this time we can see phenomenally what falling, as fleeing, flees in the face of. It does not flee in the face of entities within-the-world; these are precisely what it flees towards—as entities alongside which our concern, lost in the “they”, can dwell in tranquillized familiarity. When in falling we flee into the “at-home” of publicness, we flee in the face of the “not-at-home”; that is, we flee in the face of the uncanniness which lies in Dasein—in Dasein as thrown Being-in-the-world, which has been delivered over to itself in its Being. This uncanniness pursues Dasein constantly, and is a threat to its everyday lostness in the “they”, though not explicitly.

You don't have to have read Being and Time to get the basic idea. Dasein is our human existence. When we go about our daily affairs so thoughtlessly, it is as if those affairs are blindly carried out and run themselves. Heidegger calls this verfallun, our throwness and lostness in the world, this just going-along never stopping to "resolutely" determine our own destiny. Lost in the "they" as we get caught up in "idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity." When one is in this sort of default condition of existing, one is fleeing AWAY from what one really IS. And this is freedom and awareness. When one becomes aware of one's freedom, one no longer can be a mere player on a stage, for the performance has now lost its spontaneity. The question (the piety of thought!) undoes one's "tranquilized" existence of just going along.

See where Heidegger gives nihilism itself analysis:

The saturation of existence by nihilative behavior testifies to the
constant though doubtlessly obscured manifestation of the
nothing that only anxiety originally reveals. But this implies that
the original anxiety in existence is usually repressed. Anxiety is
there. It is only sleeping. Its breath quivers perpetually through
Dasein, only slightly in those who are jittery, imperceptibly in the
“Oh, yes” and the “Oh, no” of men of affairs; but most readily in
the reserved, and most assuredly in those who are basically
daring.

Heidegger had little interest in the world in which people were not very aware of their own existence. Those who are, he calls "daring." Sound familiar? See what Kierkegaard said a hundred years earlier:

Innocence is ignorance. In innocence the human being is not characterized as spirit but is psychically characterized in immediate unity with its natural condition. Spirit is dreaming in the human being. This view fully accords with that of the Bible which, by denying that the human being in its innocence has knowledge of the difference between good and evil,* condemns all Catholicism’s fantasies concerning [Adam’s] merit.15 In this state there is peace and repose, but at the same time there is something else, something that is not dissension and strife, for there is nothing against which to strive. What, then, is it? Nothing. But what effect does nothing have? It begets anxiety. This is the profound secret of innocence, that at the same time it is anxiety. Dreaming, spirit projects its own actuality, yet this actuality is nothing, but innocence always sees this nothing outside itself.

What Heidegger calls repressed, sleeping, Kierkegaard calls dreaming. Camus had read all of this, of course. It is in the way the "nothing" is treated that makes all the difference. Raise one's head out of the sand of mindless participation, and realize that one is there, thrown into existence, and indeterminacy all around, saturating being in the world, here lies absurd faith, or absurd pessimism. Camus wants to treat this as a true nothing, but he just doesn't see that this not possible, literally. Why? because one literally has never even witnessed this nihilism, one is NEVER free from what Heidegger called attunement: the affectivity of judgment, the caring. There has never been witnessed a true nihilism. Such a thing is just an abstraction from the palpable world of valuing things. Even as the self proclaimed nihilist announces her position, she stands in a performative contradiction, caring as she does about the very saying.