schopenhauer at least sees light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of askesis, and also art. But Camus

But Camus — Wayfarer

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 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 — 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.

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.)

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?"

I guess it requires reading Sickness Unto Death, which I will admit, I'm probably not going to do, so I will bow out at this point.

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 — Wayfarer

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.

I know he's not on the list, but Heidegger gets my vote.

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. — ernestm

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 ? — thedeadidea

I get the robot and bowling shoe, but Kant doesn't read like an obscurantist at all.

I get the robot and bowling shoe, but Kant doesn't read like an obscurantist at all. — jamalrob

Fair point....

I’m not able to do that.

Not buying. It’s a rock.

I know he's not on the list, but Heidegger gets my vote. — emancipate

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. — Joshs

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.

Cioran

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?

So, what in Camus’ Sisyphus corresponds with Nirvāṇa?

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.

But there’s still a transcendent dimension. — Wayfarer

I think that is a matter of interpretation, not a clear fact about Zen.

Of course it's not. Zen is grounded in the literature of Prajñāpāramitā 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.

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!

Zen is grounded in the literature of Prajñāpāramitā which can be literally translated as 'wisdom gone beyond'. This is a matter of fact, not interpretation.

I just voted for my favorite but he is not the most depressing. Nietzsche and the eternal return certainly is.

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.

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. — Wayfarer

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. — Wayfarer

Camus was also interested in the radical existential Christian philosopher Lev Shestov. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lev_Shestov

oh dear I keep having to add new depressing philosophers, lol

I can't think of anything much more depressing than the (near) eternal samsaric dukkha found in Buddhism.