ok we’ll I’ll keep this simple.

- you’re right - you weren’t really committing ad hominem, I went back and reread your posts more carefully. My apologies.

- if disagreeing with a famous philosopher is “arguing with a dead man” then half the people on this forum - or more - do it. It’s called critiquing and it’s pretty common in philosophy, in my experience. You had some pretty nasty things to say about Camus and Sartre (“catalogue of brilliance and bullshit,” “mere footnotes”) - are you insulting dead men?

- of course I don’t understand all of kierkegaard, but you put up a quote that was pretty straightforward and I commented on it.


Ok I’m out of here - help yourself to the last word. Or not.

However, realistically in comparison to the norm, these are a type of suicidal and self-destructive behavior. I can't help but to think the whole philosophy is erroneous as a type of slave mentality wherein the slave self-destructs without his master. This differs from an atheism wherein believing in God is the point of departure for a life of absurdity, and the adherent goes on to live unaffected without religion. — introbert

I think that it'd be easy to justify self-destructive behavior from the point of view of an absurdist. However, I think I'd say that the reason Camus chooses these eccentric personalities is to highlight in what way his ethical stance isn't traditional. But also, there's just something not as gripping as the heroic accountant embracing the absurd task of never-ending calculation. So, yes, I think there's a bit of entertainment in his choices, and that's where you'd get the impression of self-destructive behavior as a sort of substitute for suicidal desire in light of the absurd.

But I don't think that we must read the essay in that way. And, obviously, I think this would count as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of absurdism. It was, after all, meant to overcome the absurd. And isn't self-destructive behavior just suicide, but more exciting?

:clap: :up:

But I don't think that we must read the essay in that way. — Moliere

Without agreeing or disagreeing, if not that way, then in what way must we read the essay?

It is the first instance I meet on this forum a claim that multiple, possibly (but not necessarily) contradicting ways, and definitely different ways are all allowed to interpret a text at the same time and in the same respect.

This is interesting. Carrying this further, which to your credit you don't, if we accept that more than one interpretation of reality can be accepted, AND THEREFORE TRUE, then the acceptance of more than one interpretation contradicts the doctrine that everything is caused and everything causes everything else that comes after it.

Maybe this is why I don't like divergent thinking. With more than one solutions to a problem. Especially when one is lectured that HIS way of reading the text is wrong, but the opposite of his way, has many different acceptable ways of interpreting the text.

Accepting more than one interpretations, that are non-congruent with each other, then obviously many of them are wrong, and only one or zero are right.

So what's the point of accepting more than one explanations, interpretations, etc? I should have thought that philosophy was about finding the truth, which is necessarily singular, and not about pussy-footing around a set of acceptable interpretations.

I should have thought that philosophy was about finding the truth, which is necessarily singular ... — god must be atheist

You have confused philosophy with mathematics. Proposing criteria for judging and methods for "finding the truth" is not itself "finding the truth". Philosophical statements are useful – suppositional – at best; they're not truthful – propositional – themselves (e.g. the problem of the criterion, the hermeneutic circle, reflective equilibrium, language-games, dialectics, etc). In philosophy, perhaps more than any other rational discipline, answers are merely how questions generate more questions ... Thus, Sisyphus' boulder is also known as "the philosopher's stone." :fire: :eyes:

The journey is the destination. — 180 Proof

We must imagine Sisyphus happy!

Thanks everyone for your comments. Despite objections I still hold my ground that in the recent history of nihilism Camus' philosophy is disempowering to the nihilist and ultimately sends them blindly into social institutions that they ultimately empower. Foucault on the other hand empowers and gives tools to the nihilist so there is at least some revolutionary potential.

Any life affirming philosophy is good but without any of the wishy washy philosophy which can seem new age etc.

I will take you up on the offer of having the last word as you put it. I’m here for for honest intellectuall discourse. You’re here for one-up-manship or to claim some sort victory when it comes to debating issues. Whatever it is you are trying to achieve with your last sentence it seems instead of strengthening your argument it weakens it.

Running away like that is nothing more than intellectual cowardice for the fear that you might be shown up somewhere along your reasoning/argument.

Oh and feel free to have the last word on any of the above points I’ve raised. Or not.

Now I’m out of here.

Without agreeing or disagreeing, if not that way, then in what way must we read the essay? — god must be atheist

We must imagine ourselves agreeing with Camus.... :D

I don't think there's any one way to read a text, so there's no way you have to read it. I'm more inclined to say there are things which are obviously wrong: Camus is not writing a math textbook, and other of the multiple -- possibly infinite -- obviously wrong readings that are available to us.

Accepting more than one interpretations, that are non-congruent with each other, then obviously many of them are wrong, and only one or zero are right.

So what's the point of accepting more than one explanations, interpretations, etc? — god must be atheist

Heh, I'll note I disagree with your first assertion, that only one interpretation is the right one. What would it even mean to have a right interpretation? The closest I can imagine is that we have the same interpretation as the writer when they published the text -- the intent of the author is usually the way about making a "right" reading. But the problem with that is we don't have access to Camus' intent -- all we have are his words and the various facts of his life that we might use to bring sense to the words he wrote. We can't check up with him and ask "Did you mean this, or that? Or both?" -- and the "both" could very well be the answer an author gives, disappointing any interpreter hoping to demonstrate that their reading is the correct one.

But to answer your question -- even supposing there's a right interpretation, we wouldn't know if we had the right one. We'd only know if we had a coherent one. It's only by reading a multitude of interpretations and judging their relative merits that you'd be able to select the right one at all. So, at a bare minimum, even presuming there is a correct reading, the point would be to make sure the explanation or interpretation you have on hand is the right one or not.

I should have thought that philosophy was about finding the truth, which is necessarily singular, and not about pussy-footing around a set of acceptable interpretations. — god must be atheist

Is it possible for truth to turn out non-singular, in this process of finding it?

It's only by reading a multitude of interpretations and judging their relative merits that you'd be able to select the right one at all. So, at a bare minimum, even presuming there is a correct reading, the point would be to make sure the explanation or interpretation you have on hand is the right one or not. — Moliere

:up:

:roll:

Nicely put.

I think Camus still makes sense. I don't pretend to understand every nuance, but the notion that humans toil impotently to create or find meaning in a meaningless world remains apropos. For myself I've never quite determined whether rolling that big rock up the hill should be an act of defiance or a form of joyful resignation. Are we engaged in recursive grunt work, or a form of ritual? Is this grind and toil an act of self-creation or of self-sabotage? It's all of this and I guess that's why it's absurd.

Camus' writing often resonates and soars.

“I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.”

- Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus

Are we engaged in recursive grunt work, or a form of ritual? Is this grind and toil an act of self-creation or of self-sabotage? — Tom Storm

Ritual grunt work. Creative self-sabotage. The reflex of respiration is absurd, no? Camus says, in effect, human dignity only manifests in clear-eyed living – without evasions or nostalgias or indifference – in spite of the world's indifference to human life. Makes sense to me.

To answer my own question: yes, of course Camus makes sense. His writing on absurdity is cogent. But to answer my own argument, I still don't think that there is any *sense* to it. This is apart from making sense in terms of being a philosophical system, for it is an extremely impractical form of nihilism in that it does not result in *nothing*. If the nihilist chooses not to kill himself and embrace the meaninglessness it does not end there, the nihilist at the very least becomes anomic and violates societal values. The nihilist reifies the moral argument against him into social institutions that are against lawlessness, intemperance, infidelity, immorality, antiestablishment, anarchism, anti-work etc. And Camus' philosophy ends there. The nihilst is all alone pushing for nothing while the opposite of nothing pushes back. The opposite of nothing is unbeatable by nothing, but as the history of nihilism proceeds there are other writers who have a little more sense to turn their nihilism against the moral institutions that the nihilist will come up against. Not turning nihilism against institutions, as he turned it against life itself, is what does not make sense about Camus, in my humble opinion.

PS I made a few other points against Camus as well, but I'm short on time.

Not sure what you are arguing but if you are saying that nihilism may be difficult for some people, you're right.

If the nihilist chooses not to kill himself and embrace the meaninglessness it does not end there, the nihilist at the very least becomes anomic and violates societal values. — introbert

What are societal values? I didn't think there were any - just an interpretive legal system and assorted sub cultures with their own values. Are you saying the nihilist is up against mainstream culture and its various incoherent set of values?

The nihilist reifies the moral argument against him into social institutions that are against lawlessness, intemperance, infidelity, immorality, antiestablishment, anarchism, anti-work etc. — introbert

Can you explain what you mean in simple language? What moral argument is there against nihilism?

The nihilst is all alone pushing for nothing while the opposite of nothing pushes back. — introbert

Perhaps that is the boulder rolling back down the hill, right?

The opposite of nothing is unbeatable by nothing, but as the history of nihilism proceeds there are other writers who have a little more sense to turn their nihilism against the moral institutions that the nihilist will come up against — introbert

I can't follow what you mean. Can you try it again is simple language? Are you talking about some nihilists creating or forging a set of new values, a la Nietzsche?

Surely the nihilist by definition does not accept moral values as being foundational. Morality is something the nihilist has to choose for themselves, in the absence of god/s or some kid of transcendent notion of The Good.

What are societal values? — Tom Storm

The key ones here are health, order, and rationality (reason).

Can you explain what you mean in simple language? What moral argument is there against nihilism? — Tom Storm

Nihilists consider the things people take very seriously as nothing. The moral argument against nihilism, if there's only one, is simply that it does not recognize the cornerstones and pillars of society.

Perhaps that is the boulder rolling back down the hill, right? — Tom Storm

I'll have to make a sketch of that idea in my notebook. Thanks.

I can't follow what you mean — Tom Storm

I'm not going to be the one to write the next chapter in Nihilism, I just see a direction that it is taking.

Nihilists consider the things people take very seriously as nothing. The moral argument against nihilism, if there's only one, is simply that it does not recognize the cornerstones and pillars of society. — introbert

Thanks for clarifying. I hear you now. There are hard and soft nihilists. A hard nihilist might just choose suicide if the nihilism brings with it despair. My take of nihilism is that it is a place to start. It doesn't mean that others are treated badly or that all society offers is flouted. We are just aware of the arbitrary nature of meaning - there is nothing by way of foundation. Whatever meaning we find is ours to create. Similarly to atheism, a lack of belief in god does not promote evil or no morality or no social contract, it simply redefines how we understand the good and broadens our range. But then I'd argue that even with an organised belief system we are in the same boat anyway - all morality and social systems are constructed from shared meaning and are often, when unpacked, incoherent and hypocritical. All that's holding things together is power, the law, goodwill, fear and convention.

:fire:

I'm not sure if you are being deliberately contrarian, feigning ignorance or are just a little naive, but nihilism is tied with a number of abnormal psychologies and is part of the profile for sociopathy. Just these associations are enough to make nihilism a targeted disposition by moral institutions. That doesn't even consider the natural conflict that occurs on the level of fundamental argument between realists who are part of moral social constructions and nihilists that are incredulous of them. One of the third hand or fourth hand accounts of Camus's work that I read was an interpretation that the protagonist of The Stranger was a sociopath. This profile depicted by Camus serves, Catcher in the Rye like, to provide the non-nihilist reader with an archetype "to catch a body a comin through the rye"

'm not sure if you are being deliberately contrarian, feigning ignorance or are just a little naive, but nihilism is tied with a number of abnormal psychologies and is part of the profile for sociopathy. — introbert

No need to be rude. We have a difference of opinion and suggesting mine is naïve/ignorant/contrarian because it doesn't match yours is not manners, right? Perhaps we won't find common ground then since I have already proposed that nihilism has various expressions and does not necessarily lead to anti-social behaviour. Can you demonstrate that nihilism invariably leads to anti-social (sociopathic) behaviour? I suspect that some forms of nihilism are just a type of anti-foundationalism. Many philosophers get along just fine thinking this way.

All depends on what you mean by antisocial. This forum is a kind of community which depends on people following all sorts of rules and codes. Let's say my nihilism just led me to disregard your feelings as nothing resulting in me being rude to you. If I continued to nihilistically lack compassion and empathy, reject your rational appeals as nothing, respond without sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and spelling (these conventions representing nothing), and descend the conversation into meaningless flaming I would soon provoke moderation. If this was a real world situation those provocations may lead to police getting involved if I had made threats or acted aggressively, from there who knows where that would lead if there is a medicalization of deviance or perhaps a unified church and state. This is really what motivates this post: the potential for totalitarian and authoritarian controls of social codes. Philosophical nihilism plays a role in countering this but the point of the OP is that Camus' philosophical nihilism feeds these regimes with unequipped absurd adventurers

If I continued to nihilistically lack compassion and empathy, reject your rational appeals as nothing, respond without sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and spelling (these conventions representing nothing), and descend the conversation into meaningless flaming I would soon provoke moderation — introbert

This seems like a reductio ad absurdum argument. What citation can you provide to substantiate that this is how nihilism functions in practice? I think most forms of hard nihilism are more likely to end up as silence via apathy.

This is really what motivates this post: the potential for totalitarian and authoritarian controls of social codes. — introbert

We already have 'controls of social codes.' Some of these I am in favor of. One view of morality is that it is created to facilitate social cooperation in order to achieve a preferred form of order. Anyway we've probably exhausted this one. Take care.

What citation can you provide to substantiate that this is how nihilism functions in practice? I think most forms of hard nihilism are more likely to end up as silence via apathy.

https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/38809/Forsythe_Jeremy_E_2021_Masters.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

This link from a graduate thesis paper discusses the history of nihilism (search: "Tzar") and describes the 19th century nihilist movement in Russia that advocated destruction of society (antisocial enough?) to purge society of unworthy social structures to act against oppression and tyranny.

In Camus' The Stanger, a nihilistic protagonist violates social codes, kills a man, and gets executed.


https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CS5dBwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA162&dq=nihilism+and+social+deviance+sociology&ots=NnuonKXok6&sig=St6Q1yrLbxHvc_q4MczkoppMPKI#v=onepage&q=nihilism%20and%20social%20deviance%20sociology&f=false

This interesting article discusses nihilism and violence but mentions Nietzche's evaluation of nihilism as potentially a destructive force of violence.

https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/eac-law-20/125947687


"By nature, legal
responsibility is normative and is expressed through the
existing system of legal norms. Therefore, the first sign of
legal irresponsibility is the lack of legal norms that
regulate legal responsibility. It is worth mentioning that
this feature makes the term “legal irresponsibility” closer
to the concept of “legal anomie”. The latter has already
been used in legal sciences (criminology, criminal law) to
explain legal nihilism in the marginal behavior of the
subject from the internal (psychological) point of view. In
classical understanding, “anomie” is the lack or violation
of the rules of behavior and their internal rejection by the
majority of society (process)"

This article discusses criminality/ legal nihilism but draws an arbitrary distinction

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0803706X.2017.1333145

Article mentions moral nihilism and violence


Still looking and reading...

Still looking and reading... — introbert

Fair enough.

So my argument from earlier has been -

Perhaps we won't find common ground then since I have already proposed that nihilism has various expressions and does not necessarily lead to anti-social behaviour. Can you demonstrate that nihilism invariably leads to anti-social (sociopathic) behaviour? — Tom Storm

I don't think anyone here has demonstrated that nihilism invariably leads to anti-social behaviour. But I'm going to accept part of your argument having thought about it more, that nihilism is often used as a synonym for evil and that it is associated in many people's mind with anti-social activities. Nihilism is a kind of epithet and has totemic power.

But for me, problematically, we can equally point to significant anti-social behaviour and atrocities committed by Islam and Christianity, surely not nihilistic in their intent and typical meaning making systems.

In Nihil Unbound: Naturalism and Anti-Phenomenological Realism philosopher Ray Brassier highlights his understanding of nihilism as a positive and necessary pathway back to truth-

"Nietzsche saw that ultimately the problem of nihilism is the problem of what to do with time: Why keep investing in the future when there is no longer any transcendental guarantor, a positive end of time as ultimate reconciliation or redemption, ensuring a pay-off for this investment? Nietzsche's solution — his attempted overcoming of nihilism — consists in affirming the senselessness of becoming as such — all becoming, without reservation or discrimination. The affirmation of eternal recurrence is amor fati: the love of fate. It's an old quandary: either learn to love fate or learn to transform it. To affirm fate is to let time do whatever it will with us, but in such a way that our will might coincide with time's. The principal contention of my book, and the point at which it diverges most fundamentally from Nietzsche, is that nihilism is not the negation of truth, but rather the truth of negation, and the truth of negation is transformative.”

I'm not a Brassier acolyte - just noting this take:

“Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity."

I think that's what I meant when I wrote -

there is nothing by way of foundation. Whatever meaning we find is ours to create. — Tom Storm

I think this puts too much causal emphasis on philosophy. That is, anti-social persons will be attracted to absurdism, but it's not the expression of absurdism that makes them anti-social. In another time and place the anti-social person will be a moral realist, a Catholic Cardinal demanding the King submit to the Church, insofar that it allows them to take advantage of people to fulfill their own personal desires. The anti-social person does not care for moral realism or anti-realism -- these are the questions of nerds -- the anti-social person, however, recognizes that the nerds, at times, influence people: and that influence is what the anti-socialite wants.

I've pretty much remained consistent in saying that existentialism can justify bad things, but also saying that this isn't the whole story -- in a way I think that this reduction comes from a perspective that is still too rule-bound in their moral thinking. The nihilist is fine with changing rules, but the moral realist is not, and so thinks that the possibility of justifying selfish behavior with moral language is enough to defeat a particular way of talking -- I'd say the absurdist is just pointing out that this is what people often do, that it's absurd, at bottom, and frequently is a guise for selfish, rather than selfless, motives.

Maybe it does suggest more causative power than it has, but perhaps a more realistic diminishing of this effect by saying that the philosophy causes marginal behavior at the margins of society. It is not a mass movement despite the widespread popularity of the work. As I previously alluded to, the work the Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger would only have socially disorganized adolescents as a minority of the readership, so the message that they might have a psychiatric problem would only be resisted by that small minority. For the rest of readers the connection between social disorganization in Catcher and criminality in The Stranger would link psychiatry in the first case and nihilism in the second. These are not likely the intended, but the latent functions of the work that cause a potentially intensification of institutionalization. Obviously my claim in this post approaches conjecture given the difficulty to measure the effect of these works on readership and subsequently institutions.

What if the purpose (meaning) of life is to be purposeless (meaningless)? :snicker:

For the rest of readers the connection between social disorganization in Catcher and criminality in The Stranger would link psychiatry in the first case and nihilism in the second. These are not likely the intended, but the latent functions of the work that cause a potentially intensification of institutionalization. — introbert

Why psychiatry? I'm not sure what you mean here?

Could be. Nature seems to exist for itself, so it is possible that nihilist angst isn't really about meaninglessness but against meanings. This is nuanced as in the case of meaninglessness nothing has meaning but to be against meaning is a skepticism and incredulity about what the world, particularly the social world, has to offer. To live in a state of nature where you hunt your prey and gather the forest's offerings would not require artificial inducements like work ethic and a system of rewards that are a house of cards for the animal in us to want to knock down. Once all the houses of cards with all their meaningless symbols have fallen maybe that would be the end of nihilism.

The major theme of nihilist thinking is anti-totalitarian, anti-tyranny. Psychiatry, like policing or education etc. operates innocently. But the concern for authors like Foucault and Deleuze was an implicit fascism in its workings. If there are casual readings like Catcher in the Rye that will reach far more people than the former authors, the culture they produce will tighten the (proverbial and literal) straightjacket on society instead of enhancing liberty of anomic states like nihilism. Everything is pretty good right now but it is not by placing blind trust in powerful institutions that ultimately protects liberty.