Camus’s own assessment of the ‘human condition’ led him to advocate a stance of ‘rebellion’ over that of ‘revolution’. The revolutionary, in contrast to the rebel, is one who seeks to silence the voices and strivings of others in order to establish a particular interpretation of the world as final and soley legitimate. In so doing, the revolutionary sets the stage for murder.
And:
The difference between the revolutionary and the rebel is, for Camus, the difference between nihilism and absurdism. Nihilism consists in that path leading humankind toward extinction, while absurdism is that path that leads toward continued, lively exertion. Camus groups all of history’s revolutionaries, from de Sade to Nietzsche, from Marx to Sartre, from the anarchists to the fascists, as nihilihists of one stripe or another. All wittingly or unwittingly lead the human race on paths resulting in the justification of murder and suicide.
Can nihilism be reduced to this, however? Isn’t it generally assumed by most nihilists that, given an essential lack of ontological or teleological meaning, the human condition cannot be reduced to a “final and soley legitimate” agenda the fascists and anarchists and ubermen and Marxists etc. tend to embrace?
And most revolutionaries were not revolting against philosophical conjectures; they were revolting instead against the very real [and brutal and institutionalized] economic exploitation and political oppression that flows from the manner in which power is distributed in the actual historical evolution of political economy.
After all, in his struggle against apartheid, was Nelson Mandella a rebel…or a revolutionary? Can we really carve out a neat and tidy distinction between them? Or in his response to the Algerian insurrection against French colonialism was Camus a rebel…or a reactionary?
One can easily grasp the relationship beteen absurdity and nihilism. If the human existence is inherently meaningless and absurd than why not behave in the manner you see fit. Anything, after all, can be rationalized in an absurd world. But that does not mean that absurdity necessarily leads to radical nihilism. Meaning and values are always situated existentially out in a real world. That is, a nihilistic point of view that can, paradoxically, lead to political and ethical moderation. It depends on how folks are willing to shape and mold their lives in an essentially absurd and meaningless world.
So, what does a rebel do in the world? I can see that often the problem with revolutionaries is that while they are good at seeing problems with the current system, they 1-do not realize how they are like the current system, though often in a distorted reflection kind of way - they take and abuse power for the good of the proletariat, not for themselves, for example, though this distinction doesn’t make so much difference for those they oppress. So 1 is weak at self-knowledge and the corruption of power and 2-overestimate their ability to come up with solutions. Weak at understanding the effects of systems or, it could be argued, weak in terms of hubris - thinking that what works in their heads must work as well in reality.
Which are fundamental errrors: one can be, for example, incredibly good at seeing problems and even removing the sources of those problems, but not be good at replacing the system. I think, for example, that Marx was very good at seeing and explaining problems and injustice invovled in capitalism. However he was weak on the replacement solution. One could, for example, think, well I see what is fucked up and my guess is that we need to tear this down, but I am not sure what the replacement should be. This kind of thinking seems very hard for people in general and with revolutionaries leads to very serious problems for everyone in a society.
But then, what does a rebel do?
And rebelling has always struck me as playing a role in the greater system one dislikes. Hinging oneself to that system.
Be a good rebel. Be loyal to rebelness, if that is one’s gift.
Humans typically think as a herd. That is, most people don’t really want to think, and so they look around to see what everyone else is thinking, and they think that. And even if we like to think, nobody can think everything through for themselves, there just aren’t enough hours in a lifetime for that.
The celebration of the Higgs is a current example of group think that seems to be speaking loudly to me at the moment, perhaps because it’s most rampant in the more intelligent and educated segments of the population.
Anyway, once the group think train gets rolling down the tracks, it becomes a form of blindness. Egos and careers are invested in the group think, and it becomes more and more ossified over time.
Rebels are needed to climb the hill outside of town, get a fresh perspective, and provide an alternative view.
The function of the rebel is not to be right. The job is to be engaging and clever enough to seduce the group in to staying alert, and not getting lost in the group think fog. A circus performer if you will. The job of the rebel is to keep the group awake, not drifting off in to the comfortable slumber of blind consensus, as if they were buried under a mountain of snow.
OK, to me that’s not a rebel per se, though they may be labelled one. A rebel is to me a temperment stance. One who opposes the status quo, the mainstream. When they go another way, they do it as a reaction to the mainstream, not necessarily because it feels right to them.
I can see the value in going your own way, when this brings up new options or feels right for you. But I am wary of the word rebel for this since I think this is a reaction to norms so one is still hinged to norms.
Sounds like a trickster or indigenous clown. I think this can also be valuable, but I am not sure how useful it is for the person if the actions in that role do not feel right for them.
The nihilist already acknowledges the absurdity but reduces it to zero as it all comes down to nothing.
Revolutionaries are just a particular kind of rebel where they are not mutually exclusive to rebellion which should be obvious.
As usual the world fails at positing any kind of higher purpose where there was none originally. The violent competition of the human species is individuals brandishing their ideals to subjugate everybody else with.
This is a spot on insight, particularly when the context has anything to do with Camus…
Imagine a meaningless and absurd existence, like in The Plague. How do you be a rebel? How do you rebel? Creating your own meaning/significance to life alone is not rebellion, in an absurd world—that would be simply not caring about not having ultimate meaning/significance. You actually have to cling to the empty useless notion of an ultimate meaning/significance for anything you do to count as ‘rebelling’ (from the absurd).
In this way, the ‘rebel’ strikes me as a really unfortunate, or tragic, or pathetic,… Or I’m not sure what…
Yes, I can see that. A natural inclination to be an outsider, whatever the group consensus is. Some people are born with this inclination and of that group, some have a knack for expressing it. We don’t see all the rebels, just the public ones.
As I see it, rebelness is just one of the many jobs that society requires to function. Shoemakers, mothers, policemen, gardeners, rebels, etc.
If we presume the function of the rebel is to provide the view from outside the group consensus, then part of the job of the rebel is to present that view in packaging that will be received by the group. So yes, a clown is an apt metaphor, someone willing to put on a show of some kind. Anonymous rebels don’t get the job done.
Well yes, trying to be a rebel when that is not one’s true nature is most likely a mistake.
The meaning of the word “rebel” here is, in my view, rooted in dasein. Camus suggested that, “[t]he only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
But what does that mean? I can only surmise that, for the most part, it suggests we live in a world where most men and women live “inauthentically”. They refuse to acknowledge that human existence is essentially absurd and meaningless; instead, they adopt a particular historical and/or cultural and/or experiential and/or ideological and/or religious narrative and call it Truth. Or Reality.
They objectify themselves and others. The rebel lives outside this norm.
But then substantively what does it really mean to rebel “authentically”? What does the true rebel actually think and feel and do in her interactions with others? Here, in my view, we can never really extricate ourselves wholly from the implications of dasein.
The crucial distinction then between the “rebel without a cause” [or Nietzsche’s “uberman?”] and the revolutionary who joins, say, OWS, is the extent to which one approaches or distances herself from the ideas of folks like Marx and Engels.
But then there are those who expand Marx to include more cultural, psychological and sexual tropes: Marcuse, Freud, Reich etc.
What does this mean though “out in the world”? Calling human existence meaningless and absurd does not make the world go away. If you choose to interact with others it is necessary to create an existential meaning. There must be something analogous to a scaffold or a framework within which “rules of behavior” are both prescribed and proscribed. But how much of this is truly within our understanding and control?
Revolutionaries are [to me] folks who recognize that “I” and “we” will do battle over those rules of behavior in the context of any particular political economy.
And this is just another way of suggesting that eventually some folks will have the power to enforce a dominant narrative. But what does this really have to do with philosophy.
I’m sure that if you read a person’s post, and respond to their actual post, after having considered the points levied for some claim that they are making, and you address your comments to those, you will never rightly be called anything other than some quality of a participant. Now, if you have a cache of phrases from a bag you draw from, to litter around, unrelated, often repeated, and unaccounted for, then this does not respect the person’s post who you are responding to.
Take my response to your OP, for example. I challenged your thesis, which was that the ‘absurd’ doesn’t lead to nihilism because you can create your own values (in your words, they’re “situated existentially”), and that this is what a rebel does (implied). My claim was that you can (and should) create your own values, but this wouldn’t make you a rebel. By analogy, someone who chooses not to eat at a hot dog vendor’s because he cares not for hot dogs is not rebelling against the hot dog vendor. He simply doesn’t care for hot dogs. If you simply don’t care that there is no ultimate meaning or reason behind why storms, plagues, natural catastrophes, happen, then you do not rebel against ‘absurdity’ when you do what Dr. Rieux does (in Camus’ The Plague) and try to create your own meaning/purpose out of them.
That was how I expanded on what I took Moreno to be saying, as well as comment on what I took your thesis to be.
The world is an illusion. Human interactions revolve around a set of illusions.
The meaning and values we create are not any less illusion either.
You are correct it becomes necessary to embrace some illusions in this world in order to survive within it but that is only because the powers that be have made it essentially mandatory for their embracing just to survive.
Rules are just a pretty coated dressing for the absurdity of this existence and they do nothing at all in making this world any less horrifying.
Organized government exists to force people to be civil? Hilarious.
It seems to me that idea if becoming free doesn’t fit easily with your positions. Especially absolutely free. In your view there is only cultured distortion. How does one free oneself from that? Won’t one inevtitable either do what one is not supposed to - which is not freer, just opposed and completely guided by the norms - or one will simply pull up some idea of a rebel - James Dean, The Buddha, Courtney Love - and follow that, despite it being, in fact, just a reaction to norms, but not freedom.
I can’t see what this has to do with freedom. To assume that human existence is meaningless and absurd doesn’t lead to freedom. It might free you from, I suppose, some particular set of ideas - at least on the surface - but there is nothing to live by, just this negating.
So we can partially? Why would you think this? How can you recognize what is not dasein determined? And if partly, why not completely?
The revolutionary could use a set of ideas as a way of analyzing the problems, without assuming one can calculate the new good system from them. There are not so many who do this and I wish more did. This feeds the conservative sense that since communism did not work, capitalism is good. Which is like saying that the oranges must be good because the apples were overripe.
Of course the problem here is this: I think that I am doing this. Here and in the philosophy forum.
But I do this by approaching philosophy more “existentially”. I’m less interested in discussing the relationship between nihilism and absurdity “academically” and more in how folks actually use the words themselves out in the world.
But, sure, if someone who fancies herself a scholar regarding these things makes an attempt to more fully enlighten me intellectually, fine. But bring that enlightenment down here and show me how it can function in a world bursting at the seams with conflicting moral and political narratives rooted in conflicting ways in which to grasp human interaction as a product of both nature and nurture. I have a “cache of phrases” only because I have narrowed my philosophical sojourn down to identity, values, no god and political economy. I use them repeatedly until someone convinces me not to.
After all, I used to use the jargon of Christianity, Objectivism, Marxism etc. But then lots of people convinced me not to.
Ultimately, though, my thesis is this:
1] the values we create in an absurd world are rooted in dasein rooted in particular worlds that can vary considerably when the time comes to choose and to embrace and to defend these ever subjunctive value judgments
2] moral nihilism revolves around a world with no God. And a world with no God is a world where all human behaviors can be rationalized from a particular point of view.
But what I think I mean here and what you think I mean here is as distant as ever.
But you do not grasp the manner in which I grasp what it means to do this as dasein. The “rebel” here is one who recognizes “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”. The “authenticity” of the rebel then is derived from the recognition of this. In other words, recognizing the implications of living in a world where “in the absense of God all things are permitted”.
But, in the end, to this end, you are still rolling the stone up the mountain over and over and over and over again. That only changes when you die.
Yes, this is a very insightful way in which to imagine how I view myself out in the world. To be “free” means only to measure a particular choice against the accummulating experiences that have come to encompass your life as dasein. And how, based on the particular sources of information you have come to accummulate in turn, you have come to think about what it means in a particular way. “Absolute” freedom is never possible.
What is one supposed to do? How do we determine this? As dasein. Some philosophers then think, “if we account for the manner in which our identity and our values are rooted in these existential variables, what is then true for all men and women?”
They wonder: “Can we then derive a deonotological agenda of some sort that is applicable to all rational human beings?”
Again: To what extent is dasein relevant here? You can’t follow James Dean, The Buddha, Courtney Love etc. if you never heard of them. You can’t believe in God or the moral philosophy of Kant if you never come across them. But what is true no matter who or what you come across?
At any particular moment you choose what to do. Some decisions are merely functional. You’re hungry so you go through all steps necessary to abate it. Almost as though on automatic pilot. Or maybe you might be unsure whether you want a hamburger or a garden salad. But eventually you pick one. Few of us will really agonize over things like this. Freedom here revolves mostly around, “this is what I want, is there anything or anyone who can stop me from getting it?”
But suppose you bump into someone who argues that eating hamburger meat is immoral. It is immoral they insist because it is wrong to slaughter animals for human consumption. You are still free to eat it but now you are starting to think that maybe the points raised in the argument make sense.
You might ask, “is there a way then to know for certain if eating a hamburger is immoral”? In my view, existential freedom is encompassed in the realization that there is not. If you approach this in terms of either/or freedom revolves around doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing. But from the perspective of the moral nihilist freedom is rooted in uncertainty, ambiguity, ambivalence and the like. So, your options are considerably more. Maybe you will eat less hamburgers. Or maybe you will eat only cows treated better before they are slaughtered.
In any event, if there is no way in which to know for certain what you ought to do, the sky is the limit. You are limited only by what you cannot do physically or to the legal reprecussions of doing what is forbidden.
Oh, and the emotion and psychological reactions of those who censure you morally for going outside the norm. Think, for example, of the Amish and “shunning”.
This is classic dasein. You think one way but now a new way to think about it is introduced—simply through the course of living your life.
Good questions. In my view, what we can do is to acknowledge the manner in which human identity is rooted in dasein. Dasein doesn’t mean “only me” though. “I” am always going to be a part of “we” situated out in a particular world. In other words, how we think and feel will overlap [more or less significantly] with others interacting in our own culture rooted in a particular historical context. We can then communicate and exchange the manner in which we have lived different lives and thought different things. We can do this more or less constructively.
For me, the “revolutionary” is one who views human interaction systemically. We think and feel and behave as we do because of “the system”. Therefore the only way to change things is not through merely changing your own personal behavior but in organizing with others who think like we do [politically] in order to take on “the system”. But “the system” of course will fight to sustain itself.
Then, for example, you have folks like Nelson Mandella and the ANC revolting against the system of apartheid.
What makes Occupy Wall Street different from other generally liberal political movements in America is the extent to which they view the world this way.
That is why the powers that be are particularly intent on reining it in. Or co-opting it. Or if necessary crushing it through the reinvention of Operation Cointelpro or Operation Chaos.
Ironically enough, nothing you do is “existential”. How many times have you asked for a solution to the problem of abortion? That’s right, abortion, in general. Abstracted from any concrete situation, and generalized. In fact, your entire outlook is a prime example of “non-existential” thinking, since you take yourself to be making claims about the ultimate status or non-existence of objective goods. (I.e., You are not saying, “I view the world relativistically”, you are saying, “The world is relativistic”. If you weren’t doing this, you would cease to argue with people who disagreed). And in the context of abortion, if your approach was “existential” at all, then you would be open to the idea that sometimes abortion may be right, and sometimes in other cases it may be wrong. If your approach was “existential” you wouldn’t think the lack of a universal moral answer was a threat to moral answers in particular situations down on the ground.
What about conflict, you ask?
If two people disagree, in math, in logic, in science—do you feel justified in concluding thereby that neither side is right and neither side is wrong? No, you don’t. But people do, in fact, disagree about complex math problems, logic problems, and scientific theories. In the latter case they can draw different conclusions from the same data.
So why do you think it is different in the realm of value? Conflict is everywhere, but you’re not entitled to the conclusion just from that that nobody is ever right and nobody is wrong. There are plenty of reasons why you might think there is a disanalogy here. But this is a question that I don’t think you’ve spent much time reflecting on… and it’s worth doing.
You have never justified this too often tossed about claim.
Many human behaviors cannot be rationalized, because to rationalize something is to give reasons for it that are better than the reasons against it. That’s just what it means to rationalize something. You can say you mean something different by the word, but then apply a different label to the word that I am using, and you will at least get my meaning, which is all that matters.
Suppose my rationalization is always, “I just wanted to, I am a psychological egoist, I do what I want”. Sometimes that’s a perfectly fine rationalization. But sometimes having that desire (the one appealed to) itself is irrational, because there’s no good reason to have that desire, and plenty of reasons not to have it. Just ask the person why he wants to fork out your daughter’s eyes, and you’ll quickly see that he’s quite irrational. --Even if he goes a step further and says they taste good. Get it?
Finally, if God existed, there would be no such thing as morality—because morality would turn into divine law. There are important differences between law, and morality. Law does not always map morality. And when you follow law, you follow it because there is punishment if you don’t. God’s morality (commandments) would be divine law. And in following God’s commandments just because they were God’s commandments, or because there was a divine punishment, you would be breaking a hugely important moral rule: You ought not follow a rule without knowing the reason behind the rule.
Is there a reason why God gives us the commandments that he does? If there is, then God could be eliminated and the reason would remain—thus morality would remain without God. If there is no reason why God gives us the commandments he does, then morality is based on his arbitrary whim, and you ought nt follow it—since there’s no independent reason to. In the latter case, God’s omniscient wouldn’t matter, because he makes no appeal to anything about the world, on which to base his commandments, that comes in the realm of he scient.
Freedom does not exist in all actuality as it is one of many illusions but what certainly does exist is the desire to be independent and not subjugated by others.
It is a desire shared by rebels and revolutionaries alike.
Again and again and again and again and again: I don’t look for a solution. Instead, I look for an argument that might convince me there can be one. I look for an argument able to demonstrate that Barrett’s “conflicting goods” approach to human morality might be set aside in favor of a proposition demonstrating the existence of an objective good.
Then we go back and forth regarding objective vs. universal good…right?
Again and again and again and again and again: the laws of science are not relative, mathematics is not relative, logic is not relative, empirical facts are not relative. Aren’t they crucial components of “the world”?
As you note:
Yes, they can. But the assumption is that, given the laws of nature, one conclusion will be born out as true objectively. True for all of us.
Where however have ethicists made similar progress with respect to conflicting value judgments? Here “nihilism and absurdity” still prevail. And they do so in the form of “conflicting goods”.
You ask:
But I state over and again that my “conclusion” here is subject to change. Show me an argument rooted in an actual circumstantial context where it has been shown that someone is morally right to have done something—on par with being able to establish that, in fact, he did do it. When you do so I will change my conclusion.
What you mean here, of course, is that I have never justified this to your satisfaction. As though that in and of itself refutes the claim.
Yes, but the very first definition of “rationalize” is this one:
…to ascribe (one’s acts, opinions, etc.) to causes that superficially seem reasonable and valid but that actually are unrelated to the true, possibly unconscious and often less creditable or agreeable causes.
Here, “to rationalize” is more or less a psychological function. Someone rationalizes splashing acid in the face of an infidel because they wish to save her soul and the souls of others who might be turned from God by being around her.
But who knows “down deep inside” subconsciously what is really behind the behavior? Then you come along to give what you insist are “better reasons” for not doing this.
What you see as superficial reasons though, they see as profound. But, like God, do you have the final say?
Now on to the egoist:
The only reason the egoist needs is this one: “because I want to”. Human motivation is rooted in all of the many, many components that make up the many, many layers of dasein. Some of which are indeed subconscious. You may pile up all the reasons in the world to show her it is not what she should want but if she then wants you dead [and can do it] you’re gone. Then what? Then people invent Gods in order to have the last laugh: Divine justice.
But not you. And not me. If someone wants to do either of us harn [for their own reasons] and can we can only endure it. Or get them first. The “universe” sure as shit doesn’t care.
This is the sort of “reasoning” that [to me] is largely abstract. The “truth” behind it is predicated on the assumption that what you mean by “morality being turned into divine law” by “God” is the only way in which to understand it. If God is omniscient and knows everything then that includes the right and the wrong way for mere mortals to behave. Then it becomes a question of how, if God knows everything, we are then free to choose what we do autonomously. That’s the more interesting question to me.
To speak of God’s reasons as though that were the same as invoking the reasons mere mortals give seems preposterous to me. We can only give reasons that come from a particular point of view—one among billions of others out in a paricular world. Some of the reasons we give will overlap with what is true objectively for all…but many of them [relating to value judgments in particular] will not.
I see no reason to respond to much of what you’ve written. This is because you are in the habit of quoting and responding to a line, with a response that could have been answered for you by simply reading further, the very next sentence, in the very next line I wrote. If you would just read an entire paragraph before stoping at the claim you want to respond to, I would appreciate it. Usually just after I make a point, I’ll give you my reasons for why I make that point. Don’t stop at the point, and respond to it, without addressing why I’m making the point. Just slow down a bit.
What is your reason for thinking that value is any different from math, science, and logic? You mentioned that people’s views conflict… but that is no reason to think there is a difference, because AS A MATTER OF FACT, people’s views conflict in math, science, and logic. So, please: WHY DO YOU THINK THERE IS A DIFFERENCE?
Wake the fuck up. I gave you one in the very post that you’re responding to. Here it is again: Your dinner guest is in the process of removing your daughter’s eyes with a fork. That is something he ought not to do. That is something one very rarely ought to do, and absolutely never for the reason that he is doing it—namely, for an appetizer.
Can he rationalize what he’s doing? Would you like to try on his behalf? You already have before…
You said that he is a psychological egoist. But that rationalization won’t work, because doing what he’s doing is worse for him. Ask why if you are having trouble. No worries.
Maybe his rationalization is that he just likes to do whatever he wants. But his wants in this case are irrational because there is no good reason for them.
And of course, we can go through the list of reasons why he shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing.
Balance them out. And you’ll have your answer.
Now, about the definition of “rationalize”. To rationalize something is to act on behalf of reasons that are not outweighed by stronger reasons not to do the act. If you would prefer, you can call this meaning something other than “rationalize”. You can use the term “__________” (fill in the blank). It’ll be a word. And now, don’t pretend that you don’t understand my meaning, because my meaning is what matters, and not the label used to convey it.
Final note, if you want “to rationalize” to mean that anybody can give some bad reason for doing some action. Then yes, anything can be “rationalized”. But that is not the meaning used when talking about reasons and morality. That meaning has nothing to do with morality.