Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre

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Paul Newman as the Existential Hero/Anti-Hero Cool Hand Luke
Ed Newman

Like all good stories the film is a sequence of scenes which serve to define Luke’s character for the viewer. His “never give up” attitude is demonstrated early in his fight with Dragline. And though his “achievements” win the admiration of his bunkmates or “co-workers” in this hard labor camp, he is non-plussed about all of it...

So, is this "never give up" mentality something he derived from an excursion into existential philosophy? Is his battle with the human condition analogous to Sisyphus and the boulder.

Who knows? He is a fictional character, so you would have to ask the author, Donn Pearce. Did he imagine Luke as the embodiment of a "philosophy of life"?

Or, instead, are his behaviors more applicable to the manner in which I construe dasein here. He lived a particular life and as a result of a particular accumulation of personal experiences this is just how he came to view himself out in the world with others? Something he did not give much thought regarding...as those like Camus and Sartre did in their own works.

In other words, one can imagine someone in a prison bull gang today "in reality" acting as he did. Okay, Mr. Serious Philosopher, deconstruct him.

Also, another crucial point in the film is that everyone has their breaking point. Eventually the Captain and the bosses did break Luke:

Dragline [mimicking Luke]: "Don't hit me, boss...don't hit me. I'll do whatever you say." You an original, that's what you are. Them mullet-heads didn't even know you was fooling.
Luke: Fooling them, huh? You can't fool them about something like that. They broke me. But they didn't get my mind right. Not with no sticks. No sir.
Dragline: All that time you were planning on running again.
Luke: I never planned anything in my life.

...as A. Hardt points out in this 2011 forum discussion:

"Through my multiple viewings of Cool Hand Luke, my analysis of the message of the film has switched back and forth between an existentialist one, and one of determinism. The existentialist references are the most common within the film; Luke is constantly discrediting the meaning in his actions. After Captain lists Luke’s significant war achievements, Luke responds by saying, “I was just passing time.” Also, when Dragline consults Luke about the 50 eggs in an hour bet, Luke says about the extremely difficult task, “Yeah well, it would be something to do.”

Back to that again: determinism.

Or, instead, is this just another rendition of the "free will determinism" that some seem to espouse here. The external world is there lining up only as it ever could have, but "internally" you are still in possession of something akin to autonomy?

In other words, from my own frame of mind, to what extent is Luke "constantly discrediting the meaning in his actions" more or less the equivalent of this...

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

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Paul Newman as the Existential Hero/Anti-Hero Cool Hand Luke
Ed Newman

From these and other examples, it seems that Luke has come to believe that his life is inherently meaningless, and in order to create meaning, he must give himself seemingly impossible tasks to complete to the amazement of those watching. When the chain gang is ordered to pave an entire road in one day, Luke recognizes the meaninglessness of this menial task, and by doing so he is able to accept it and even make the task into a game for the other workers, thereby achieving a form of satisfaction.

Okay, but what does not change is this: that in the end "the ruling class" or "the deep state" or "the powers that be" or "the system" or whatever you want to call those who own and operate our lives still prevail. So, you may well admire how much Luke does accomplish with so little, but how relevant is that to the lives that most of us live?

We create our own existential meaning because, well, what else is there? The bottom line still basically revolves around the reality of class and race and gender...demographics. Also, you either live a fulfilling life basically of your own choosing, or you struggle to survive from paycheck to paycheck...more or less embodying a life that can be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

In other words, so what if life is inherently, essentially meaningless? After all, few of us live our lives philosophically. So, it's not like we can pin down whether or not Luke is someone to admire [as I did] or [as my friend from work insisted] is someone who is basically "just a loser".

In my recent watching of Cool Hand Luke I noted once more that in addition to being something of an existential hero/anti-hero, it’s very clear that Luke is also something of a Christ-figure. In one of the reviews at imdb.com the writer points out that director Stuart Rosenberg consciously viewed the character of Luke in this manner, hence the deliberate use of Christian imagery in the film, most strikingly after the egg-eating scene where Luke is lying on the table, hands outstretched. The other prisoners have left his side, amplifying with a slightly long lingering shot the sense of Christ’s abandonment at the Cross.

In fact, toward the end Luke brings God directly into the plot: https://youtu.be/OmPe77m7aCs?si=Ko9-ihwbTRfcGwML

What to make of it? Well, again, each of us as individuals will take out of it it what we first put into it...our own rooted existentially in dasein "self".

And if there is no God?

Same thing of course. Only considerably more problematic.

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Simone’s Existentialist Ethics
Anja Steinbauer on Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.

Beauvoir’s Existentialism is scattered through her many works, both literary and theoretical, including her classic feminist text The Second Sex. However, it finds it’s clearest and most rigorous form in her relatively underrated book The Ethics of Ambiguity. The title is intriguing and unattractive at the same time: The fact that an Existentialist talks explicitly about ethics (rather than simply stressing our inescapable freedom) is a rare treat, but surely an ethics that bonds itself to ambiguity is hardly promising to propose any useful answers to moral problems?

So, how do I differentiate ambiguous ethics from fractured and fragmented ethics? Well, for one thing, I would never speak of human interactions as either morally authentic or inauthentic. My own moral philosophy is [in my view] considerably more cynical and pessimistic. In fact, the only constructive -- if that's the right word -- aspect of my own perspectivist assessment is that at least as a moral nihilist I have access to considerably more options. Or, rather, I did when I was younger.

This is exactly as Beauvoir intended. She accepts Sartre’s Existentialist tenets that there is no human nature and that human freedom is absolute, i.e. that in any situation whatever we always have a choice.

On the other hand, come on, there are any number of contexts we can find ourselves where there are few if any viable options. And while there may not be an essential, objective human nature, existentially actual individual lives can unfold in very, very, very different sets of circumstances producing very, very, very different moral and political narratives producing very, very, very different human behaviors.

So, to what extent did those like Satyr take that into account?

In other words, human life is not on autopilot, nor is there an instruction manual telling us how to make the right decisions.

Tell that to any number of these...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...guys and gals.

This means that there is a good deal of ambiguity, and, in short, Beauvoir tells us to face up to it and live with it. Given this ambiguity there would seem to be very little opportunity for moral theorising.

Tell that to any number of these...

viewforum.php?f=8

...guys and gals.

On the other hand...

Not so, objects Beauvoir to this standard Existentialist conclusion. We must not expect absolute solutions and lasting answers: “Man fulfils himself in the transitory or not at all.” But this doesn’t mean that all ways of living, and all courses of action, are equally good. The way forward is to look at the nature of our relationship to other people.

But if there is no essential, objective human nature how would one go about pinning down the nature of human relationships? If, for example, different people have conflicting assessments regarding any particular moral conflagrations and all courses of action are said not to be equally good then which behaviors can be deemed more rather than less rational, more rather than less virtuous?

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Simone’s Existentialist Ethics
Anja Steinbauer on Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.

Sartre’s Existentialism leads to a clear individualism, in which the fact that there are other people presents a constant threat of falling into ‘bad faith’. Others judge us and impose limits on us to the unbearable degree that “hell is other people”.

Okay, but what we choose to do is still no less embedded out in a particular world understood in a particular way. And no less entangled in both actual options and the Benjamin Button Syndrome. That's why I have always been curious as to how Sartre and de Beauvoir might have responded to my own far more fractured and fragmented moral philosophy. While we all came to reject God and religion, they always struck me as more inclined to believe that their own moral and political prejudices really were closer to being a more reasonable and virtuous -- authentic -- frame of mind.

Same with some of the No God folks here. They seem convinced that using the tools of philosophy -- of science? -- we don't need religion to establish and then to sustain an optimal moral and political agenda. Scrap immortality and salvation perhaps but ideologically and/or deontologically we can still come to embody the "most rational of all worlds".

By contrast, Beauvoir’s own individualism is more nuanced, in a Kantian way: “Is this kind of ethics individualistic, or not? Yes, if one means by that that it accords to the individual an absolute value and recognises in him alone the power of laying the foundations of his own existence.…The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals…. His freedom can only be achieved through the freedom of others.”

There's certainly a part of me that would like to believe this. Still, however "nuanced" any particular individual is in confronting this...

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

...given a particular social, political and economic context, it doesn't make the points I raise in my signature threads go away.

Individuals are still indoctrinated as children to embrace all manner of hopelessly conflicting assessments of "reality". And they still share the same historical and cultural and experiential parameters as adults.

Then this part...

"The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals…His freedom can only be achieved through the freedom of others."

...is still no less a "general description philosophical contraption" that, in my view, doesn't even come close to creating a truly "one-size-fits-all" Kantian rendition of moral obligations.

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Simone’s Existentialist Ethics
Anja Steinbauer on Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.

And here we finally have it: “No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.” Beauvoir’s ethics views the existence of others as an opportunity. In fact it is the only opportunity we have to give reality and meaning to what we do and therefore to what we are: We must invite others to join our projects.

By it's very nature, human interaction necessitates ethics. As social, political and economic relationships unfold in any particular community, when has there ever been a community where disagreements did not emerge in regard to "the right thing to do"?

And what is the role of philosophy here if not to take into account all of the vast and varied sets of circumstances that precipitate moral conflicts and make the attempt to propose the least dysfunctional rules of behavior? And here, over and again, going back centuries now, the stark limitations of philosophy have been exposed time and again. After all, if philosophers and ethicists and political scientists were able to accomplish this, how then can one explain the fact that so many conflicts continue to this day?

Beauvoir gives examples of how many of us make poor use, or no use at all, of our freedom.

Indeed, it has always been my own contention that moral objectivism itself is basically a commentary on how most of us seek to circumvent freedom by reducing everything down to the equivalent of an either/or moral philosophy. As William Barrett once suggested, "[t]he terror of confronting oneself in such a situation [confronting rival goods] is so great that most people panic and try to take cover under any universal rules that will apply, if only to save them from the task of choosing themselves."

In fact, most men and women don't panic at all. They simply accept what their family, community, culture, nation, etc., have instilled in them as the one true path is the one true path.

Then, historically, the part where "or else" comes into play.

Now, fit yourself in here...

She even explains how freedom for children differs from adult freedom. Children can do what they like to an extent, without being morally judged for it, because they are largely free of responsibilities to others. Not so adults, yet some adults still try and live in the naïve freedom of childhood. Others try to control or manipulate people in an attempt to limit their freedom – a tactic that according to Beauvoir is ironically doomed to end in self-deception and the limiting of one’s own freedom. A mature and constructive use of our freedom, our only chance of fulfilling ourselves as individuals, involves making a ‘plea’ to others, appealing to them for their attention and cooperation.

...somewhere.

[iambiguous]

Existentialism
Is Kierkegaard Still Relevant Today?
Lucian Lupescu says the disputatious Dane dares us to live.

There is a general tendency in the non-philosophical world to dismiss philosophy as being purely theoretical, with no connection to the types of problems that people are confronted within their everyday lives. But this is not necessarily true. Many philosophers struggled to find ways to improve people’s lives, by drawing attention to, and making people think about, fundamental aspects of life. A good example would be Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).

First, of course, in my own "rooted existentially in dasein" frame of mind, a number of philosophers here seem content to explore God and religion and human morality up in the theoretical clouds. What Will Durant called the "epistemologists":

"In the end it is dishonesty that breeds the sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation. A man who is not certain of his mental integrity shuns the vital problems of human existence; at any moment the great laboratory of life may explode his little lie and leave him naked and shivering in the face of truth. So he builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric tomes and professionally philosophical periodicals; he is comfortable only in their company...he wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not concern him...He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology. He ceases to be a philosopher, and becomes an epistemologist."

What Kierkegaard attempted to do, in my view, was to connect the dots between the Christian God and the existential parameters of the lives we actually live:

"According to Kierkegaard, faith does not have logic, reason, and rationality. Therefore, the definition of a leap of faith is a person having trust in something despite the lack of logic, reason, and rationality. They leap, figuratively, to interact or explore this thing." study.com

Compare that to the "philosophical God" those like IC and others here flounder about in attempting to capture in their "theoretical" exchanges here.

Feeling discontent with Hegel’s then-dominant philosophical system (and with every other philosophy popular in his time), Kierkegaard sought to answer life’s questions by turning back to ancient times, and a thinker to whom he felt closer in mind and spirit. Socrates, ‘the gadfly of Athens’, became the role-model for the young Kierkegaard, who wanted to continue his spiritual mentor’s art of ‘philosophical midwifery’, and become himself ‘the gadfly of Copenhagen’.

You tell me:

"The Athenians had certain beliefs concerning deity. Socrates also believes in deity, but his conception is completely different from the typical Athenians. While to the Athenians gods are human-like and confused, Socrates believes god to be perfectly good and perfectly wise. His god is rationally moral." BYU

Of course, things get complicated: https://medium.com/@edwardliguori/kierk ... 03bb3c1a66

And, from my frame of mind, those like Kierkegaard and Socrates are no less the historical, cultural and experiential embodiment of dasein. They lived particular lives, had particular experiences, formed particular relationships, came into contact with particular information and knowledge...then took their own existential leap to God and religion.

Just as Socrates did, Kierkegaard tried to challenge the common beliefs of his time. He wanted to show that the only truth that is important is subjective truth. For Kierkegaard, only through a deep and honest analysis of oneself, can one truly know what one is or is not, what are one’s values and beliefs, what are one’s truths.

Here, of course, I would be tapping both Socrates and Kierkegaard on the shoulder and asking them to comment on these four factors:

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

[Impenitent]

there would be no knights of faith if there were proof

-Imp

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Existentialism
Is Kierkegaard Still Relevant Today?
Lucian Lupescu says the disputatious Dane dares us to live.

Unlike Socrates, whose ideas we know only through other sources, Kierkegaard was a prolific writer. He left behind a collection of writings centered on particular themes and interests. His works may seem contradictory at first glance. However, on a closer reading, one can see that they follow the same ‘negative’ scheme as Socrates. The ancient philosopher believed that no one had a privileged claim to absolute knowledge (hence the title ‘negative’, as opposed to ‘positive’, philosophy), and that each individual can and should think for themselves and so find their own paths in life, and their own values.

And how fascinating it would be if I could travel back in time, agree with this "negative" philosophy, and then ask both to react to the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296

Given a particular context of course.

This can be done by a close examination of one’s thinking. Socrates called his technique of helping people become aware of their inner knowledge maieutic, or midwifery. Socrates humbled himself, claiming he didn’t know anything, and would ask his interlocutor a series of questions that aimed to reveal that person’s knowledge, or lack of it. These dialogues usually ended in aporia – a state of puzzlement about the subject being discussed, without finding a solution, but the person thus realizing his ignorance.

Ah, the Socratic Method:

Charles W. Kingsfield Jr.: "The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you. We use the Socratic Method here. I call on you, ask you a question and you answer it. Why don't I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions, you learn to teach yourselves. Through this method of questioning, answering... questioning, answering...we seek to develop in you the ability to analyze that vast complex of facts that constitute the relationships of members within a given society. Questioning and answering. At times you may feel that you have found the correct answer. I assure you that is a total delusion on your part. You will never find the correct, absolute and final answer. In my classroom there is always another question...and question to follow your answer."

Of course, some answers get you an A and some an F.

On the other hand, if Socrates claimed he didn't know anything then, after asking others questions to determine what they know, how would he determine if what they claimed to know was really rational in and of itself? How would he know which questions to ask next if he wasn't able to grasp what others had already told him?

And that sort of knowledge would be especially crucial in regard to legal prescriptions and proscriptions. Instead, Socrates seemed to have God in the background...someone who did have an ultimate knowledge of, well, everything?

Kingsfield may have been an authority on contract law, but he was training the minds of his students to grasp it given the assumption that the capitalist political economy itself was the bottom line.

Same thing with Kierkegaard. Once you have taken a leap of faith to God, He is always there. He is always there to pass the buck to given one or another rendition of Judgment Day.

Again, "Socrates believes God to be perfectly good and perfectly wise. His god is rationally moral." BYU

Or is this only Plato's take on him?



As an aside, I never liked the ending of The Paper Chase movie. Susan and others finally make him aware that it was all just basically a paper chase. But...

Susan: Here's your mail.
[hands Hart an envelope marked "GRADES ENCLOSED"]
Susan: I just got a letter from my father, something very interesting. My divorce is final. A piece of paper, and I'm free.
[pauses]
Susan: Aren't you going to open your grades?

Nope. He turns the envelope containing them into a paper airplane and sends it flying out into the Atlantic Ocean. But then, he doesn't have to open it, does he? We already know that Kingsfield gave him an A.

[iambiguous]

Existentialism
Is Kierkegaard Still Relevant Today?
Lucian Lupescu says the disputatious Dane dares us to live.

Kierkegaard embraced Socrates’ project, analyzing his own thinking, and in doing so, realized that:

“...the thing is to find a truth which is a truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die…"

Right, and how on Earth is this not basically the embodiment of dasein? Back again to all of these "my way or the highway" truths:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

All of these conflicting One True Paths to immortality and salvation.

"What use would it be in this respect if I were to discover a so-called objective truth, or if I worked my way through the philosophers’ systems…? And what use would it be in that respect to be able to work out a theory of the state…which I myself did not inhabit but merely held up for others to see?"

Then there's the part where others who more or less shared a life similar to his own might grasp this...might embrace it themselves. But what of those who were indoctrinated to live lives very, very different from his own? Is there or is there not one deontological truth that logicians and epistemologists and ethicists can pin down...philosophically?

Indeed, isn't that what some philosophers [here for example] insist is possible?

"What use would it be to be able to propound the meaning of Christianity, to explain many separate facts, if it had no deeper meaning for myself and my life? One must first learn to know oneself before knowing anything else…Only when the person has inwardly understood himself, and then sees the way forward on his path, does his life acquire repose and meaning.”

Or...

"What use would it be to be able to propound the meaning of Islam, to explain many separate facts, if it had no deeper meaning for myself and my life?"

Then right down the line, each path to immortality and salvation in the link above embracing Kierkegaard's belief about a deeper meaning...but no less as convinced as he was that this revolves around their own God or their own spiritual path.

I can't help but be curious as to how Kierkegaard might have responded to the points I raise in regard to dasein.

[iambiguous]

Existentialism
Is Kierkegaard Still Relevant Today?
Lucian Lupescu says the disputatious Dane dares us to live.

Kierkegaard used pseudonyms to, in a way, distance himself from the ideas in each book. Each persona is an embodiment of a way of seeing the world, a way of living your life. Across his works he suggests three main paths of life: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious (for him, Christian).

In other words, three paths whereby the tools of philosophy are least likely to be effective in establishing anything in the vicinity of the objective truth. The paths, in turn, most infused with dasein.

The aesthete sees the world through an interesting/boring dichotomy. For him, life is made to live, to experience, and there are no serious choices. Life is immediacy.

Any aesthetes here? You tell me. Given your own personal experiences.

I've always associated them with this:

"Aesthete: 1] a person who has or affects to have a special appreciation of art and beauty."

On the other hand:

"2] a person who affects great love of art, music, poetry, etc., and indifference to practical matters."

The hedonist, say? Or the epicurist? Or the libertine? Or the debauchee? Or, as with those like Hannibal Lector, the cultured sociopath?

For the ethicist, on the contrary, there are only serious choices. For him, life is what you make of it. It is not enough to just live it; you must make concrete choices that will give shape to your existence, to your self. Life is responsibility. The ethicist’s dichotomy is, let’s say, good versus evil.

And, of course, for many religionists, all of this eventually comes around to Judgment Day. Thus, your most serious "concrete choices" have stark implications in regard to immortality and salvation itself.

The Christian, on the other hand, acknowledges that you cannot succeed in creating a perfect self. But through faith in God’s forgiveness you can accept your imperfect condition, and live your life as yourself.

And, indeed, if the Christian God was not just someone you had to take a more or less blind leap of faith to...someone who was actually around...this would make sense. Like Catholics with the Pope. The Pope really does exist...someone the flocks can go back and forth with in regard to right and wrong, good and evil behaviors.

However, although these options look a lot like they represent ultimate solutions, Kierkegaard’s life possibilities are just that – possibilities. None of them represents an ‘ultimate truth’. As Kierkegaard sees them, they are merely choices that one can make in one’s life.

Thus, as an existentialist, that proverbial leap of faith. A largely subjective, subjunctive -- intuitive? -- "deep down inside" gut feeling one hopes is the real thing.

[iambiguous]

Existentialism
Is Kierkegaard Still Relevant Today?
Lucian Lupescu says the disputatious Dane dares us to live.

Kierkegaard’s Socratic approach is still relevant because of its focus on the individual. Each of us feels the need for purpose. What Kierkegaard, and Socrates, teach us, is that this purpose can be gained only by our choices, our actions, the way we live our lives. No one, neither philosopher nor priest, can tell us who or what we are, or what we should do. We must discover and decide that for ourselves, in our inner, most intimate place, where we can make our true self come to light, then shine upon our own, singular path.

Yes, I once bought this myself...hook, line and sinker.

But now I am no less fractured and fragmented in my reaction to it.

Sure, one can emphasize the individual here. But all of us as individuals were in fact thrown fortuitously out into a particular world at birth. We were indoctrinated as children to understand that world as others insisted it was. And then depending on the historical and cultural and demographic parameters of our own particular experiences as adults, we come to embrace one set of religious and political and moral and philosophical assumptions rather than another.

How was this not true of both Socrates and Kierkegaard? Put their equivalents in the same room today and ask them to differentiate authentic from inauthentic "purposes" in regard to any particular conflicting goods.

It's as though both are intent on providing us with a philosophical scaffold [linked to different renditions of God] but when we take that framework down out of the intellectual clouds...then what?

Then just look at the world we live in. In other words, so much for moral philosophy?

Then this part:

It is important for us to know ourselves, to discover what are really our values, our beliefs – our truths – in order to live a more fulfilling life. It is important to know who we truly are, so that nobody can manipulate us into doing what is contrary to our inner selves.

The part that in my view completely ignores the points I raise here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529

Kierkegaard does not present us with absolute, objective truths, but challenges us to discover subjective truths for ourselves. He proposes to encourage us to become independent: “The phrase ‘know yourself’ means: separate yourself from the others"...In the end, what Kierkegaard does is dare us to live, by choosing how we live, and by taking responsibility for our lives. Can we rise to his expectations?

On the other hand, over and over and over again, we bump into one of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...who insist that to truly "know yourself" you must become "one of us".

For example: https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora

[iambiguous]

Why Camus Was Not An Existentialist
Greg Stone presents the evidence.

When Johnny Depp raises a wry eyebrow on screen, it’s an ‘existential performance’. When Donald Rumsfeld says there are ‘unknown unknowns’, they call it ‘existential poetry’. Though many politicians and entertainers welcome the label, Albert Camus certainly did not. Even so, many people, even in academic publications, have inaccurately identified him as an existentialist. What in the name of Nietszche is going on?

Indeed, what does that tell us if not this: your guess is as good as mine.

Again, there were aspects of his existence which all reasonable people can agree on. For example, the various demographic components of his life. All of the unequivocal facts embedded in all of his unequivocal experiences. The things he said and did that are entirely documented.

Just like all the rest of us.

But who can pin down for certain whether or not he was an "existentialist"?

Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

Historically, he is clearly construed to be a part of the existential movement. But that also includes Christians and Nazis.

Though, sure, if you include Johnny Depp's raised eyebrow in the mix, well, who is to say where existentialism stops and something else begins?

In an interview in Les Nouvelles Littéraires, 15 November, 1945, Camus said point-blank: “I am not an existentialist.” He went on to say, “Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked. We have even thought of publishing a short statement in which the undersigned declare that they have nothing in common with each other and refuse to be held responsible for the debts they might respectively incur. It’s a joke actually. Sartre and I published our books without exception before we had ever met. When we did get to know each other, it was to realize how much we differed. Sartre is an existentialist, and the only book of ideas that I have published, The Myth of Sisyphus, was directed against the so-called existentialist philosophers.”

Nope, that doesn't convince me. He may have had his own "rooted existentially in dasein" assessment of existentialism...but then so do I. And mine includes him.

Mine starts with the assumption that in a No God world "existence is prior to essence". And did not his? Also, where does existentialism end and absurdism begin?

And, in my view, where Camus and Sartre truly parted ways revolved more around Sartre's commitment to Communism and Maoism. In fact, there, start here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/novack ... y/ch12.htm

Camus compared existentialism to “philosophical suicide,” causing followers to “deify what crushes them” – saying, in effect, that they turn negation into a religion.

Now, here, I'm more inclined to agree. Once existentialism becomes a philosophy of life that one embraces in order to differentiate "authentic" from "inauthentic" behavior, it becomes the moral and political equivalent of "essence being prior to existence". Or, rather, so it seems to me.

Camus in turn had a religion of his own – a quasi-pagan quasi-Greek reverence for nature. Case in point: Sisyphus, his hero of the absurd, who is condemned to push a heavy boulder up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll down each time into the valley below. Sisyphus achieves a serene unity with the physical world: “The cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands”. In Camus’ version of the story, Sisyphus is happy. If Jean-Paul Sartre had written it, Sisyphus would have experienced nausea as he contemplated the alien substantiality – the ‘being-in-itself’ – of the rock.

Come on, let's get real. If you actually did find yourself in a position of endlessly rolling a heavy boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down into the valley, compelling you to roll it back up again all the way to the grave and beyond...how happy would you be? I can hardly imagine a more "nauseating" predicament myself.

[Impenitent]

some weight lifters actually enjoy the lifting...

and if no one lifts the weight, the benefits thereof are not realized...

-Imp

[Gary Childress]

Come on, let's get real. If you actually did find yourself in a position of endlessly rolling a heavy boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down into the valley, compelling you to roll it back up again all the way to the grave and beyond...how happy would you be? I can hardly imagine a more "nauseating" predicament myself.

I feel the same about futile tasks. If there was a chance of success, it'd be different. However, according to the Greek myth, no such chance existed (as ordained by "the gods"). Perhaps Camus should have used a different example to make his point?

[attofishpi]

Come on, let's get real. If you actually did find yourself in a position of endlessly rolling a heavy boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down into the valley, compelling you to roll it back up again all the way to the grave and beyond...how happy would you be? I can hardly imagine a more "nauseating" predicament myself.

Really? I am sure I speak for many on this forum that being forced to read your copious amounts of waffling drivel would be far more "nauseating".



ps. Hey, you started it.