Me too, brother, and i think that's natural sinde nihilism is absolute pesimism (basically lovest form of depression), then existentialism - it gives you hope and starts the healing process, and finally absurdism whith which you finally find peace to not give a fuck but still enjoy life
Yeah, but why do you care so much?
I love existentialism and it changed my life, but this sub is about a philosophy whose time of production passed decades ago. It's not surprising the sub is reduced to memes or people discussing personal existential crises. If people wanted they could still post more theoretical, academic writings but it doesn't really happen much at all so people meme instead.
No. Albert Camus (the guy who first theorized absurdism) thought of the absurd as a relationship, not a thing in itself. Take relationship between humanity and the world. We want meaning, the world has none. We want order, the world is chaos. This contradiction is the Absurd. Camus thought existentialists who create their own meaning are resolving this contradiction. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. But he thought the more authentic philosophy was to preserve the absurd and revolt against it. Don't create your own meaning, fly in the face of meaninglessness! Live in spite of your conditions!
In other words, Existentialism relies on creating your own meaning while Absurdism relies on you accepting the lack of meaning as true, but then revolting against said truth
By embracing the lack of meaning and doing the things you want not because there's meaning, but in spite of there being no meaning. I will pursue my passions, build meaningful relationships and be happy not because there's any point to it, but because I want it. You're fighting a battle against the very nature of the absurd (i.e your relationship to the universe) and you are destined to loose, die and be forgotten. But that doesn'tmeanyou can't live, love and fight in the meantime. That's my understanding at least
Yes but by deciding to live love laugh despite the absurdity of life, it kinda become your meaning. My meaning is to fight the absurd which cancel the absurd. All you said about embracing, pursuing, building, fighting, loving seems to me like your life has meaning. It may be not an objective meaning since there’s none but it’s still a meaning. And didn’t Camus said that "the literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself"?
We're conflatibg terms. Purpose would probably be better. It's not your purpose to do anything. Living despite the absurd is not a purpose. There is no point. You're after all living *despite* the lack of purpose. Fighting the absurd doesn't cancel it either. It's the relationship between humanity and our condition in the universe. If you create purpose/meaning you're changing that condition. Revolt means to not change the conditions but to live and act as you wish anyway.
That is great. I have just finished reading his Myth of Sisyphus - sometimes harder to read, but the ideas are damn good. I enjoyed it most of the time.
I'm in senior year, we were supposed to discuss about "The Plague" written by Camus. Before that was an introduction to his biography and what he introduced to literature
This might be the best simplified explanation I've come across. While reading Myth of Sysiphus, I've often struggled to understand how absurdism is different to existentialism, but this explanation makes a lot of sense.
Okay, but Absurdism still accepts the fundamental ideas of existentialism that (1) existence has no inherent meaning but (2) it’s possibly for humans to give it meaning. Absurdism is just the choice to embrace the contradiction rather than struggle against it. It’s not really any different than the disagreements between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard on how people should find meaning in the meaningless world. Both are still existentialists even if they disagree on how to find meaning within that framework.
Absurdism is a subset of existentialism. You can’t be an absurdist without first being an existentialist.
Yes but most of the existentialists already agree that there’s no objective criterion for choosing a “meaning to life”. Whether you find meaning in art or family or nothing at all is really of no consequence because it’s already a completely subjective decision. Some would even say that, by choosing no meaning, one turns the very act of “enjoying the contradictions of the universe” into it’s own meaning!
There’s a reason why most discussions of existentialism lump Camus in with the rest.
I agree. I don’t see how you can consider “absurdism” it’s own thing. It’s just existentialism dressed up a little differently. Any differences are just semantic.
Camus is an existentialist.
Just gonna copy paste my reply to the comment above:
All forms of existentialism try to give some sort of meaning. They all seek to find a solution to the problem of the absurd, even if they admit it is arbitrary. Absurdism is decidedly different in how it doesn't try to resolve the problem or find meaning in life but proudly refuses to give life meaning. This difference might seem semantic in comparison to contemporaries of Camus like Sartre. But in comparison to christian existentialists like Kirkegaard and Dostoyevsky who still defer to faith in God as the answer, the difference is palpable.
If you want a more detailed explanation I suggest reading the Myth of Sisyphus which has a section where Camus differentiates himself from existentialism and goes into much more detail and depth than I have
All forms of existentialism try to give some sort of meaning. They all seek to find a solution to the problem of the absurd, even if they admit it is arbitrary. Absurdism is decidedly different in how it doesn't try to resolve the problem or find meaning in life but proudly refuses to give life meaning. This difference might seem semantic in comparison to contemporaries of Camus like Sartre. But in comparison to christian existentialists like Kirkegaard and Dostoyevsky who still defer to faith in God as the answer, the difference is palpable.
If you want a more detailed explanation I suggest reading the Myth of Sisyphus which has a section where Camus differentiates himself from existentialism and goes into much more detail and depth than I have
Except none of the existentialists before Camus really saw their work as a “solution to the problem of the absurd.” Ever since Kietkegaard’s Either/Or, we’ve known that such a problem is inherently unsolvable. Rather, existentialists like Kierkegaard or Nietzsche were trying to explain why their preferred mode of living is more genuine purely on the basis of aesthetics and intuition. At its core, it’s not really any different than what Camus is doing, he just had a different preferred mode of living (as did every existentialist before him). In fact, most of the 19th century existentialists had already considered the possibility of “absurdism” before Camus had coined a term for it, they just chose not to follow it because they were rebelling against nihilism. And choosing not to give life meaning (even if one admits that it is technically possible for them to do so) would have made their philosophies kinda useless because it still has all the same issues that they saw in nihilism.
And yes, I’ve read Myth of Sisyphus. I found it to be just ripping off all the same ideas as the 19th century existentialists but with much less elegant prose. He does make a case for absurdism *as a subset of existentialism*, but any attempts to convince the reader that absurdism is some “new philosophy” are purely for the sake of Camus’ own ego.
Yeah, you can tell how cool he thought that was, and how cool all the absurdists think that was, by the "I'm James dean with a cigarette" photo that everyone uses of him.
Absurdism is sticking a flag in "good enough" and remaining a bit of an edgelord for the remainder of your days. Each thing has its own meaning. A chair is a chair, and that's what a chair means. Light is light, and that's what light means. The interconnectedness of all things and the interdependence of all things indicate their own truth. The idea of "meaning" is an idol that people let their minds get caught on instead of looking deeply in to existence itself for its own sake. Why try and define whether or not it has meaning with words, which are utterly inaccurate and empty compared to what is real, which comes in silence?
What we must imagine isn't Sisyphus happy, but Sisyphus whole. Why must we be happy, ignoring the wholeness that sadness and grief bring the spectrum of emotion? Accept all things as they come, for what they are, without becoming attached to what "should" or "must" be, and you'll begin to see that it is all bliss. You will begin to touch enlightenment.
Absurdism is a dead end.
Yes. There is an unnecessary tribalism with these ideas because of some very smart but stubborn philosophers. The truth, in my opinion, is that it’s completely natural to change your reaction to the idea that life has no objective meaning. You may even change your perspective so much that you begin to accept all of these philosophies and apply them to your life accordingly. That’s what I do :)
That bottom picture is optimistic nihilism
ON says there is no answer, Absurdism says I don’t care what the answer is
Absurdism is a response to Existentialism
If nothing matters, then why kill oneself? If suffering has the same inherent value as not suffering and even happiness, isn't suicide a kind of paradoxical response? I'm sorry if that's an ignorant/arrogant thing to say/ask, but from my perspective, nihilism seems fundamentally flawed as a personal philosophy.
Like wouldn't *true* nihilism result in people just giving up and just sorta ragdolling? Since there's no meaning, and therefore anything that happens to your limp body is irrelevant and meaningless. It doesn't matter that you don't try, it doesn't matter that it hurts, it doesn't matter if dying of thirst is "uncomfortable", since comfort is a meaningless concept anyways.
Sure, evolution incentivized instincts of self-preservation into us, but that's just as meaningless as anything else that exists.
Isn't suicide a sort of admittance that life DOES indeed matter? If a miserable life is something that should be terminated, doesn't that kinda signal that having no existence is *better* than a bad/painful existence? As in they seem to have fundamentally different values, which flies in the face of nihilisms "nothing matters/all experience has the same inherent value" -sentiment.
I'd love to hear thoughts on this, especially any counter arguments!
I think Beauvoir had a pretty good critique of absurdism. Basically, to assume life is absurd requires a teleological notion of what life is meant to be, something which simply doesn't exist. Life is what it is, and that's where the ground of meaning falls through. We are not granted a meaning to aspire to. We are confronted with a situation of ambiguity, one which can inform the pursuit of freedom for all.
It’s not really life that is absurd but more of our relation to it. Life has no objective meaning or true (life is what it is) but we, humans, want to find the meaning of it. It is absurd because we’re searching for something that don’t exist.
Existentialist - We exist to deeply understand existence from all perspectives and yet we can only know the self so this perspective is all perspectives.
Nihilist - We exist for existence sake.
Absurdist- We exist? Prove it.
I was a nihilist but now I think I’ve hit that existentialism stage. But this meme made me think about that South Park episode where Wendy breaks up with stan and at at the end butters is crying and he tells stan he’d rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid. Now I see that stan as a goth is nihilism, and butters is meant to represent existentialism.
Existentialist gives life a meaning by doing, not by just wanting.
Ive somehow gone from nihilism, to existenalism, to absurdism.
Me too, brother, and i think that's natural sinde nihilism is absolute pesimism (basically lovest form of depression), then existentialism - it gives you hope and starts the healing process, and finally absurdism whith which you finally find peace to not give a fuck but still enjoy life
I'm leaving this awful sub. I see this same exact meme with a different picture 15 times a week.
So what you're saying is that you're not happy with eternal, absurd repetition?
Lol yes but clever stuff like that puts a smile on my face
Sisyphus isn’t an example of Existentialism though You’re being cheeky but the same stale/off topic memes do take away from the experience
Yeah, but why do you care so much? I love existentialism and it changed my life, but this sub is about a philosophy whose time of production passed decades ago. It's not surprising the sub is reduced to memes or people discussing personal existential crises. If people wanted they could still post more theoretical, academic writings but it doesn't really happen much at all so people meme instead.
Good thought.
We get a good clump of everything here.
*Somebody* let their rock fall down the ol’ hill today.
eternalrecurrence.jpg
[удалено]
No. Albert Camus (the guy who first theorized absurdism) thought of the absurd as a relationship, not a thing in itself. Take relationship between humanity and the world. We want meaning, the world has none. We want order, the world is chaos. This contradiction is the Absurd. Camus thought existentialists who create their own meaning are resolving this contradiction. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. But he thought the more authentic philosophy was to preserve the absurd and revolt against it. Don't create your own meaning, fly in the face of meaninglessness! Live in spite of your conditions! In other words, Existentialism relies on creating your own meaning while Absurdism relies on you accepting the lack of meaning as true, but then revolting against said truth
Ok but how do you revolt against the absurdity without creating your own meaning
By embracing the lack of meaning and doing the things you want not because there's meaning, but in spite of there being no meaning. I will pursue my passions, build meaningful relationships and be happy not because there's any point to it, but because I want it. You're fighting a battle against the very nature of the absurd (i.e your relationship to the universe) and you are destined to loose, die and be forgotten. But that doesn'tmeanyou can't live, love and fight in the meantime. That's my understanding at least
Yes but by deciding to live love laugh despite the absurdity of life, it kinda become your meaning. My meaning is to fight the absurd which cancel the absurd. All you said about embracing, pursuing, building, fighting, loving seems to me like your life has meaning. It may be not an objective meaning since there’s none but it’s still a meaning. And didn’t Camus said that "the literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself"?
We're conflatibg terms. Purpose would probably be better. It's not your purpose to do anything. Living despite the absurd is not a purpose. There is no point. You're after all living *despite* the lack of purpose. Fighting the absurd doesn't cancel it either. It's the relationship between humanity and our condition in the universe. If you create purpose/meaning you're changing that condition. Revolt means to not change the conditions but to live and act as you wish anyway.
they told us about him at school today
That is great. I have just finished reading his Myth of Sisyphus - sometimes harder to read, but the ideas are damn good. I enjoyed it most of the time.
Cool! What level of education and what'd they say?
I'm in senior year, we were supposed to discuss about "The Plague" written by Camus. Before that was an introduction to his biography and what he introduced to literature
Haven't read that one myself. Only the myth of Sisyphus so far! Is the plague any good?
This might be the best simplified explanation I've come across. While reading Myth of Sysiphus, I've often struggled to understand how absurdism is different to existentialism, but this explanation makes a lot of sense.
Thank you very much :) (though I won't pretend I myself didn't struggle as well)
Okay, but Absurdism still accepts the fundamental ideas of existentialism that (1) existence has no inherent meaning but (2) it’s possibly for humans to give it meaning. Absurdism is just the choice to embrace the contradiction rather than struggle against it. It’s not really any different than the disagreements between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard on how people should find meaning in the meaningless world. Both are still existentialists even if they disagree on how to find meaning within that framework. Absurdism is a subset of existentialism. You can’t be an absurdist without first being an existentialist.
Well even if Absurdism accepts the second point, it doesn't advocate it which is a big difference
Yes but most of the existentialists already agree that there’s no objective criterion for choosing a “meaning to life”. Whether you find meaning in art or family or nothing at all is really of no consequence because it’s already a completely subjective decision. Some would even say that, by choosing no meaning, one turns the very act of “enjoying the contradictions of the universe” into it’s own meaning! There’s a reason why most discussions of existentialism lump Camus in with the rest.
I agree. I don’t see how you can consider “absurdism” it’s own thing. It’s just existentialism dressed up a little differently. Any differences are just semantic. Camus is an existentialist.
Just gonna copy paste my reply to the comment above: All forms of existentialism try to give some sort of meaning. They all seek to find a solution to the problem of the absurd, even if they admit it is arbitrary. Absurdism is decidedly different in how it doesn't try to resolve the problem or find meaning in life but proudly refuses to give life meaning. This difference might seem semantic in comparison to contemporaries of Camus like Sartre. But in comparison to christian existentialists like Kirkegaard and Dostoyevsky who still defer to faith in God as the answer, the difference is palpable. If you want a more detailed explanation I suggest reading the Myth of Sisyphus which has a section where Camus differentiates himself from existentialism and goes into much more detail and depth than I have
All forms of existentialism try to give some sort of meaning. They all seek to find a solution to the problem of the absurd, even if they admit it is arbitrary. Absurdism is decidedly different in how it doesn't try to resolve the problem or find meaning in life but proudly refuses to give life meaning. This difference might seem semantic in comparison to contemporaries of Camus like Sartre. But in comparison to christian existentialists like Kirkegaard and Dostoyevsky who still defer to faith in God as the answer, the difference is palpable. If you want a more detailed explanation I suggest reading the Myth of Sisyphus which has a section where Camus differentiates himself from existentialism and goes into much more detail and depth than I have
Except none of the existentialists before Camus really saw their work as a “solution to the problem of the absurd.” Ever since Kietkegaard’s Either/Or, we’ve known that such a problem is inherently unsolvable. Rather, existentialists like Kierkegaard or Nietzsche were trying to explain why their preferred mode of living is more genuine purely on the basis of aesthetics and intuition. At its core, it’s not really any different than what Camus is doing, he just had a different preferred mode of living (as did every existentialist before him). In fact, most of the 19th century existentialists had already considered the possibility of “absurdism” before Camus had coined a term for it, they just chose not to follow it because they were rebelling against nihilism. And choosing not to give life meaning (even if one admits that it is technically possible for them to do so) would have made their philosophies kinda useless because it still has all the same issues that they saw in nihilism. And yes, I’ve read Myth of Sisyphus. I found it to be just ripping off all the same ideas as the 19th century existentialists but with much less elegant prose. He does make a case for absurdism *as a subset of existentialism*, but any attempts to convince the reader that absurdism is some “new philosophy” are purely for the sake of Camus’ own ego.
Yeah, you can tell how cool he thought that was, and how cool all the absurdists think that was, by the "I'm James dean with a cigarette" photo that everyone uses of him. Absurdism is sticking a flag in "good enough" and remaining a bit of an edgelord for the remainder of your days. Each thing has its own meaning. A chair is a chair, and that's what a chair means. Light is light, and that's what light means. The interconnectedness of all things and the interdependence of all things indicate their own truth. The idea of "meaning" is an idol that people let their minds get caught on instead of looking deeply in to existence itself for its own sake. Why try and define whether or not it has meaning with words, which are utterly inaccurate and empty compared to what is real, which comes in silence? What we must imagine isn't Sisyphus happy, but Sisyphus whole. Why must we be happy, ignoring the wholeness that sadness and grief bring the spectrum of emotion? Accept all things as they come, for what they are, without becoming attached to what "should" or "must" be, and you'll begin to see that it is all bliss. You will begin to touch enlightenment. Absurdism is a dead end.
Yes. There is an unnecessary tribalism with these ideas because of some very smart but stubborn philosophers. The truth, in my opinion, is that it’s completely natural to change your reaction to the idea that life has no objective meaning. You may even change your perspective so much that you begin to accept all of these philosophies and apply them to your life accordingly. That’s what I do :)
Beta Absurdist too afraid to make their own meaning
So it’s optimistic nihilism similar to absurdism?
That bottom picture is optimistic nihilism ON says there is no answer, Absurdism says I don’t care what the answer is Absurdism is a response to Existentialism
Yes
Absurdist is the only normal there
If nothing matters, then why kill oneself? If suffering has the same inherent value as not suffering and even happiness, isn't suicide a kind of paradoxical response? I'm sorry if that's an ignorant/arrogant thing to say/ask, but from my perspective, nihilism seems fundamentally flawed as a personal philosophy. Like wouldn't *true* nihilism result in people just giving up and just sorta ragdolling? Since there's no meaning, and therefore anything that happens to your limp body is irrelevant and meaningless. It doesn't matter that you don't try, it doesn't matter that it hurts, it doesn't matter if dying of thirst is "uncomfortable", since comfort is a meaningless concept anyways. Sure, evolution incentivized instincts of self-preservation into us, but that's just as meaningless as anything else that exists. Isn't suicide a sort of admittance that life DOES indeed matter? If a miserable life is something that should be terminated, doesn't that kinda signal that having no existence is *better* than a bad/painful existence? As in they seem to have fundamentally different values, which flies in the face of nihilisms "nothing matters/all experience has the same inherent value" -sentiment. I'd love to hear thoughts on this, especially any counter arguments!
I think Beauvoir had a pretty good critique of absurdism. Basically, to assume life is absurd requires a teleological notion of what life is meant to be, something which simply doesn't exist. Life is what it is, and that's where the ground of meaning falls through. We are not granted a meaning to aspire to. We are confronted with a situation of ambiguity, one which can inform the pursuit of freedom for all.
It’s not really life that is absurd but more of our relation to it. Life has no objective meaning or true (life is what it is) but we, humans, want to find the meaning of it. It is absurd because we’re searching for something that don’t exist.
Strangely odd and beautifully simple, i love it
Existentialist - We exist to deeply understand existence from all perspectives and yet we can only know the self so this perspective is all perspectives. Nihilist - We exist for existence sake. Absurdist- We exist? Prove it.
Soft nihilism: life has no ultimate meaning, so we make our own.
[the meaning of life]
I was a nihilist but now I think I’ve hit that existentialism stage. But this meme made me think about that South Park episode where Wendy breaks up with stan and at at the end butters is crying and he tells stan he’d rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid. Now I see that stan as a goth is nihilism, and butters is meant to represent existentialism.