Words, like men, are often pretentious.
No, ostentatious.
Don’t mind me. I’m just avoiding the inevitable.
Ah, of course! CornerSpeak!!
Looks like it’s becoming contagious!!!
Those memes & genes’ll get ya.
Or, sure, all of the above.
Thomas Nagel
The Absurd
Conclusion…
This may well be the most crucial point being raised here. And it revolves entirely around my own assumption regarding dasein. The “human condition” is such there are aspects of our lives that all of us experience without exception. The need to subsist: water, food, clothing, shelter. A common biology. Sense organs. Brains capable of reasoning. Indoctrination as children. Experiences as adults.
But depending on that indoctrination and on those uniquely personal experiences as adults, some may go all the way to the grave and never have cause to perceive “the absurd” in their lives.
And even if someone does, there does not appear to be a way to establish [philosophically or otherwise] that Nagel’s own assessment of the absurd is our “true situation”. For all the reasons I note above and for all the reasons others note given their own individual assumptions regarding the meaning and the purpose of human existence.
So, what does it really mean then to resent or to escape something that can never truly be ascertained to be either ontologically or teleologically the case? Unless, of course, someone here is prepared to establish that, objectively, one and/or both can be so ascertained.
Cue “the gap”. Cue “Rummy’s Rule”.
Or, sure, again, as some here do, given human autonomy, scoff at all that and argue as though you really do grasp all of this: The. Way. It. Really. Is.
The part embedded existentially in dasein. At least until someone is able to establish [philosophically or otherwise] whether all rational men and women are obligated to either feel agonized by it or defiant of it.
His final assumption. As though he himself in terms of either cosmology or cosmogony can establish objectively the importance or unimportance of the human species in the universe/multiverse.
And then this part: “for all practical purposes”, in regard to the behaviors we choose, it can very much matter what we conclude about this. After all, isn’t the absurdity of the human condition that which some will fall back on to rationalize, say, being a sociopath? Isn’t it basically the foundation upon which the “in the absence of God all things are permitted” frame of mind is anchored?
Daily reminder that Nagel is shit.
What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
Not only that but any number of philosophers here will insist that until we do come to an agreement on what the definition of nihilism is, there is no little or no hope of truly grasping it. Worse, until we pin down the most technically correct philosophical definition of it, there’s no point in attempting to explore the actual existential implications of it in regard to human social, political and economic interactions.
Right.
I don’t define it myself so much as attempt to explain what it means to me existentially given the life I have lived. On this very thread for example.
I agree. Yet there are still those who insist that I myself am embracing nihilism ideologically. That I am myself but another of the “objectivists” that I seem so willing to revile.
Well, I don’t think of myself that way at all. The ideology of nothing? But even that is something. And, existentially, from day to day, there are tons and tons of things that are not only meaningful to each and everyone of us, but are meaningful in exactly the same way.
No, the part where nihilism comes in for those like me revolves around the assumption [and that’s all it can ever be] that there is No God. There is no actual entity that we can attach ourselves to such that meaning itself is given – both ontologically and teleologically – a necessary, essential foundation. And both before and after the grave.
Exactly!
That’s why so much of this revolves around language itself. There are just inherent gaps between words and worlds. We can’t encompass everything “out in the world” such that everything out in the world can be “named” with an unerring accuracy. Ayn Rand to the contrary. It’s just that the language we employ pertaining to both value judgments and the Big Questions is likely ever to be considerably more problematic.
Is abortion immoral? Are women free – autonomous – in choosing an abortion?
Go ahead, pin that down objectively with language.
Is a person free – autonomous – in choosing to kill another human being?
What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
And it’s not nihilism [in my view] because pessimism generally revolves around circumstances. Your life is in the toilet and you don’t see any realistic possibility of coming up out of it. So, sure, why not just flush it all away. Besides, there’s no getting around death anyway.
Whereas a nihilist [as I understand it] can not only be up out of the toilet but veritably awash in circumstances that bring him or her an avalanche of fulfillment. One can be a nihilist and still relish the food one eats, the family one loves, the job one has, the sports one pursues, the arts one craves, the sex one engages in. Existential meaning and purpose are still everywhere
Nihilism as a philosophy of life, however, revolves more around the realization that in a No God world there is no way in which to determine what one’s meaning and purpose ought to be. There is no way to pin down an objective morality. There is no way to get around the fact that eventually one does die and that ultimately everything that is “I” becomes essentially meaningless and purposeless. Is, in fact, obliterated.
Then it comes down existentially to how each of us as individuals, living our at times very different lives, come to embody our own subjective assessment:
From my frame of mind, despair is no less embedded existentially either in circumstances or in an overarching philosophy of life. And things really can get bleak when one’s life becomes such that the despair is deeply in embedded in both. You don’t have the circumstantial pleasures to outweigh the grim philosophical assessment. Both existentially and essentially your life becomes empty and desolate.
So, pessimism and nihilism may be well apart for some but very much in sync for others.
As for “dwelling on” or “hiding from” it, that almost always depends on where you are in your life “here and now”.
Given my own life “here and now”, I’m still optimistic that in the foreseeable future there is no need for pessimism. But I know that is only a matter of time before “Fowles’s phones” begin to ring and the glass goes tumbling to the floor shattering into pieces.
That’s when a No God nihilistic perspective comes into sync with the “circumstances”. That’s more or less what it’s all about when you are “waiting for godot”.
What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
Why? Because, again, as suggested above, if you are a pessimist because your life [circumstantially] is in the toilet and all you have to look forward to is the flush, how exactly would you go about keeping that grim frame of mind from others?
On the other hand…
Same thing. If, circumstantially, your life is bursting at the seams with all manner of pleasurable and fulfilling and rewarding experiences, but your philosophy of life is straight out of waiting for Godot…so what? And, whether you do seek to actually sweep your despairing “life is essentially meaningless and purposeless” philosophy under the rug or not is often beside the point. You are so busy being distracted from it by the satisfying life that you live from day to day, there’s no need to dwell on it.
Was, perhaps, that the case with Samuel Beckett? I don’t know. I’m not familiar with his personal life. But I suspect that given his fame and celebrity he had his share of rewarding experiences.
And then this guy…
Only, again, that’s his own subjective assessment of the distinction. Mine is different.
The man and the woman are hardly what one would call nihilists given my own perspective. Philosophical nihilists? No way. But they are still able to live lives that they construe to be happy by simply not pondering things like Sisyphus and his boulder at all.
Though, sure, today, Woody Allen himself, his life revolving in part around all the sexual abuse charges and, at 87 years of age, is almost certainly both a pessimist and a nihilist. Tired of living perhaps but still no less scared of dying. The worst possible frame of mind there is for some.
All we have are imperfect fathers who warn us of the boys they used to be when we get old enough to go BOwLing for bozos. There’s gold & diamonds & rubies & emeralds & even pearls under them thar mountains.
Less we forget.
Corner! Corner! Corner!
So?
What, me worried?
We all need some levity ,regardless
(WE forget)
“The person who cannot set himself down on the crest of the moment, forgetting everything from the past, who is not capable of standing on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without dizziness or fear, will never know what happiness is.” – Friedrich Nietzsche , Human all too human
EXISTENTIAL ANGST: THE ABSURD
EXISTENTIAL RISK & EXISTENTIAL HOPE
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OCTOBER 15, 2022
On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense - Friedrich Nietzsche. “In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of “world history”- yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.”
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas. Poem.
The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus. “We live in the future: “tomorrow,” “later on,” “when you have made your way,” “you will understand when you are old enough.” Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it’s a matter of dying. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd.”
The Absurd - Thomas Nagel. Replies to Camus: “If a sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation (even though the situation is not absurd until the perception arises), then what reason can we have to resent or escape it? Like the capacity for epistemological skepticism, it results from the ability to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter for agony unless we make it so. Nor need it evoke a defiant contempt of fate that allows us to feel brave or proud. Such dramatics, even if carried on in private, betray a failure to appreciate the cosmic unimportance of the situation. If sub species aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn’t matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.“
unknown source
…”claims that a creature that has spent its entire life in isolation cannot have thoughts. His two reasons for this claim are that (i) in- teraction with another creature (what he calls “triangulation”) is required to locate the cause of the creature’s responses, and that (ii) linguistic com- munication is necessary to acquire the concept of objective truth, which is itself required in order to have thoughts. I argue that, at best, these two reasons imply that in order to have thoughts a creature must be capable of participating in triangulation, not that it must have already participated in triangulation. I then argue that triangulation doesn’t solve the ambiguity problem; that is, it doesn’t entail that a being’s thoughts and utterances are about distal objects rather than proximal patterns of stimulation. Fortunately, ambiguity, like other forms of indeterminacy, doesn’t entail that we cannot have thoughts.”
Research gate.com
Yo, Alan!
How’s it going"? 
Back from the dead, thanks for asking
Yo, ecmandu!
That makes two of you!!
iambiguous goes full metal Corner
I don’t lie, I was dead at a Burger King in Paris for 5 min no vitals