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Existentialism

paranoid android

paranoid android

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Does anyone here consider themselves a existentialist/ I do to some extent even though i have some problems with Sartre the best known one i guess.
 
I've never fully understood what not being existentialist would be.
Aren't we all fully immersed in our existence?
Or at least in our perception of our existence-- which is basically the same thing?
 
paranoid android said:
Does anyone here consider themselves a existentialist/ I do to some extent even though i have some problems with Sartre the best known one i guess.
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Yes. For me, existentialism flows naturally into stoicism, which I am an informal adherent of.

Without stoicism, I would probably have taken the existentialism train straight to nihilism like so many do.
 
It seemed to center around french aesthetics and the notion "existence precedes essence" which really is just some propped up way to say "you can be whatever you want" and doesn't hold to philosophical scrutiny whatsoever.

Quoting wikipedia:

"To existentialists, human beings—through their consciousness—create their own values and determine a meaning for their life because the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value. That identity or value must be created by the individual. By posing the acts that constitute them, they make their existence more significant.[2][3]"

I find this to be feelgood nonsense wrapped up in high-brow severity.
 
So what do we do in existence..?

What do we base our beliefs on..?

I guess the question isn't "do I exist?"

But what should I do with my self in this existence?

My choices are partially predetermined by the past..

Telling the truth is the best way.

Freewill is cool but I can't fly.

Meaning between the lines..
 
Brendan12 said:
I exist therefore?
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I exist therefore I am comes from cogito ergo sum by Descartes, I think therefore I am and belongs to metaphysics, not existentialism.

Descartes wrote this in his second medtitationes de prima philosophia, the first philosophy and he thought about what we can know; he asks himself for example how can I know for sure anything exists?

He concluded he existed, cause he could think...
 
paranoid android said:
Does anyone here consider themselves a existentialist/ I do to some extent even though i have some problems with Sartre the best known one i guess.
Click to expand...
Sartre might be famous, but he only contributed one major book to existentialism, l'ètre et le neant, being and nothingness, and it is hardly to be understood, a professor specialized in Sartre that I know said I studied Sartre my entire life and just one thing I dont understand: Sartre.

Dont forget Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Visker, Shopenhauer, and so on...
 
Schopenhauer is a beast. I find his content by far the most relatable. Much like in classical music I find the tragic and poignant works of Chopin to be the most relatable. It's raw. Real. There is much less pretence and dressing up of the content, and I respect that as being far more authentic because it feels like he is talking to my heart and not just trying to project into my head.
 
I had existential crisis without suicidal ideation...so sense-wise! If that makes any sense?
 
Is existentialism the philosophy that existence is all that matters? The answer to the question of the meaning of life is... life?

I got Yin Yang out the yin yang.
 
brokedownpalace10 said:
Is existentialism the philosophy that existence is all that matters? The answer to the question of the meaning of life is... life?

I got Yin Yang out the yin yang.
Click to expand...
I think part of existentialism is akin to the chicken/egg argument. They ask: Which came first, essence or existence?

If we as humans were created by a Creator and destined to be alive, then our essence came first. If we were simply born and nothing ever came before that, then our existence came first. Of course, this is just my tl/dr very brief synopsis of shit I read 20 years ago.

IIRC another aspect of existentialism is that in the grand scheme of things our lives are completely meaningless and full of misery. Then we die.
 
Jerry Atrick said:
I think part of existentialism is akin to the chicken/egg argument. They ask: Which came first, essence or existence?

If we as humans were created by a Creator and destined to be alive, then our essence came first. If we were simply born and nothing ever came before that, then our existence came first. Of course, this is just my tl/dr very brief synopsis of shit I read 20 years ago.

IIRC another aspect of existentialism is that in the grand scheme of things our lives are completely meaningless and full of misery. Then we die.
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Or, the meaning of life is that there is no meaning. Life is life and it's meaning is life. (Life=existence)

The essence vs existence thing is interesting. That will give me something to ponder.

I'm hardly knowledgable on this subject. When I was younger I read quite a bit of Hesse, a bit of Camus, and a little Kafka.
I'm not sure Hesse is even seen as 100% an existentialist and his stuff prolly shows in the statements I've been making.
I couldn't "get" Kafka in the slightest as a teenager, probably since my balls had not spent much time on the anvil yet.
 
Jerry Atrick said:
I think part of existentialism is akin to the chicken/egg argument. They ask: Which came first, essence or existence?

If we as humans were created by a Creator and destined to be alive, then our essence came first. If we were simply born and nothing ever came before that, then our existence came first. Of course, this is just my tl/dr very brief synopsis of shit I read 20 years ago.

IIRC another aspect of existentialism is that in the grand scheme of things our lives are completely meaningless and full of misery. Then we die.
Click to expand...

I think you're actually describing nihilism there, not existentialism. Existentialism says that each individual is responsible for creating meaning and purpose in their lives and that there is no pre-designed, grandiose, cosmic framework of meaning that's on-tap to draw from. It's all up to you, all of it. Existentialism leads to nihilism when the individual doesn't believe that any meaning can stick so the default is nothingness. I've also observed that nihilism and Judeochristian civilization kind of go hand in hand because once some people give up on (or rebel completely against) the notion of a higher power who can grant them meaning, they have no faith in their own personal agency to generate meaning instead. They think that personal generation of meaning is just as a bogus as God-derived meaning.

What I like about eastern philosophy is that it takes the question of essence vs. existence and reminds us that both exist only in the mind. It also asks, "Who is asking the question?" If one can reverse engineer consciousness itself (the consciousness that is asking), these questions can be resolved. This has helped me a lot.

I think it's true that life is ultimately meaningless when stripped down, simply because all meaning is subjective. However, proponents like Victor Frankyl argue that meaninglessness does not have to mean emptiness (in the nihilistic sense) because human beings are "meaning machines" and we attach meaning to everything whether we intend to or not. While we may not have agency against the forces of nature, we have the freedom to create our own meanings, and that isn't trivial. During his time in the Nazi death camps, he observed that people who gave up on all meaning (nihilism) died sooner than those who had something to hold onto, whether it was the idea of seeing a loved one again, God, resuming their careers, etc. It doesn't matter if what they found meaningful was true or not or real or not to someone else. What it proved was that meaning itself is somehow uniquely crucial to the human experience and without it we wither.

Nihilists might call it a cop out to try and trick yourself with some kind of meaning as though it's just another fairy tale, but nihilism itself is not above being a fairy tale because nobody knows for certain what's going on here. If you think that the fundamental reality is nothingness, then anything you believe would be its natural opposite and therefore generating meaning, including beliefs about a meaningless world. In other words, if meaning is bogus, then nihilism is just as bogus as anything else. Even a non-position is a position. So from a pragmatist point of view, you might as well generate a meaning that is supportive of a stoic reality since you're going to generate meaning no matter what you do.
 
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So with regards to people or beings the very thing is that the start was both essence and existence. Both dualistic being one. The one soul consciousness without time as The Creator.

When it comes to creation though.. and thoughts.. the essence of something exists in the source of all possibilities but we tap in and extract and extend from that potential.. thus essence precedes existence.
 
Foreigner said:
I think you're actually describing nihilism there, not existentialism. Existentialism says that each individual is responsible for creating meaning and purpose in their lives and that there is no pre-designed, grandiose, cosmic framework of meaning that's on-tap to draw from. It's all up to you, all of it. Existentialism leads to nihilism when the individual doesn't believe that any meaning can stick so the default is nothingness. I've also observed that nihilism and Judeochristian civilization kind of go hand in hand because once some people give up on (or rebel completely against) the notion of a higher power who can grant them meaning, they have no faith in their own personal agency to generate meaning instead. They think that personal generation of meaning is just as a bogus as God-derived meaning.

What I like about eastern philosophy is that it takes the question of essence vs. existence and reminds us that both exist only in the mind. It also asks, "Who is asking the question?" If one can reverse engineer consciousness itself (the consciousness that is asking), these questions can be resolved. This has helped me a lot.

I think it's true that life is ultimately meaningless when stripped down, simply because all meaning is subjective. However, proponents like Victor Frankyl argue that meaninglessness does not have to mean emptiness (in the nihilistic sense) because human beings are "meaning machines" and we attach meaning to everything whether we intend to or not. While we may not have agency against the forces of nature, we have the freedom to create our own meanings, and that isn't trivial. During his time in the Nazi death camps, he observed that people who gave up on all meaning (nihilism) died sooner than those who had something to hold onto, whether it was the idea of seeing a loved one again, God, resuming their careers, etc. It doesn't matter if what they found meaningful was true or not or real or not to someone else. What it proved was that meaning itself is somehow uniquely crucial to the human experience and without it we wither.

Nihilists might call it a cop out to try and trick yourself with some kind of meaning as though it's just another fairy tale, but nihilism itself is not above being a fairy tale because nobody knows for certain what's going on here. If you think that the fundamental reality is nothingness, then anything you believe would be its natural opposite and therefore generating meaning, including beliefs about a meaningless world. In other words, if meaning is bogus, then nihilism is just as bogus as anything else. Even a non-position is a position. So from a pragmatist point of view, you might as well generate a meaning that is supportive of a stoic reality since you're going to generate meaning no matter what you do.
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Nihilism belongs to existentialism, and that is not what he is talking about, he is talking metaphysics, cf aristoteles his metaphysic, the first mover.
 
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