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| Thread: Existentialism |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Svarog
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posted December 16, 2004 04:56 AM |
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Existentialism
What do you think about existentialism?
Have you read anything from Nietzsche, Dostoevski, Kafka, Camus, Sartre? And what do you think about it?
If theres any interest in the topic, I might post a short review of existentialist ideas later.
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The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
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Rhyanna
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posted December 16, 2004 05:49 AM |
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I've read SOME Nitczhe (horrible speller, me), some Sartre, and I like to philosophise myself 
Humanity makes their own path, and is responsible for all of their accomplishments AND failures.
i for one am proud of this
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I can resist anything but temptation
- Oscar Wilde
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Svarog
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posted December 17, 2004 03:03 AM |
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Edited By: Svarog on 16 Dec 2004
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Good to hear these guys are still read (at least by one), but if you really have to sum up their thought in one sentence, dont use the word "humanity" as the actor. 
Alienation of the individual from humanity is, I would say one of the most important aspects in existentialism.
Kafka has the best artistic representations of this imo.
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The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
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Rhyanna
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posted December 17, 2004 03:07 AM |
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Quote:
Good to hear these guys are still read (at least by one), but if you really have to sum up their thought in one sentence, dont use the word "humanity" as the actor.
Alienation of the individual from humanity is, I would say one of the most important aspects in existentialism.
Kafka has the best artistic representations of this imo.
Well I meant as in each individual human...
I should have clarified
I'll need to read some Kafka... any sugguestions?
Plus, and this has just bothered me... did they name Kefka Kefka on purpose to make fun of Kafka? I know none of his work, so...
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I can resist anything but temptation
- Oscar Wilde
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bort
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Discarded foreskin of morality
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posted December 17, 2004 03:09 AM |
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I would respond, but unfortunately, I awoke this morning and found myself transformed into hideous vermin.
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Rhyanna
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posted December 17, 2004 03:12 AM |
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Quote:
I would respond, but unfortunately, I awoke this morning and found myself transformed into hideous vermin.
damned coucoons...
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I can resist anything but temptation
- Oscar Wilde
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Svarog
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posted December 17, 2004 03:15 AM |
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i'll tell you about kafka, if you tell me about kefka.
who the hell is that guy?
I strongly recommend that you read "Process" (i think its "trial" in english), but also "castle" is good, as well as "metamorphosis" (thats a short story). and thats about all i know from him, but its all really good. He's a highly intellectual writer, often very obscure and layered, but if you percieve the stories on the right level, you'll be under his influence for a lifetime.
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The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
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Svarog
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posted December 17, 2004 03:17 AM |
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Quote:
I would respond, but unfortunately, I awoke this morning and found myself transformed into hideous vermin.
lol. thats metamorphosis, isnt it bort?
of course it is. Should have happened to you a long time ago. Or at least I thought it has.
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The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
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Rhyanna
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Queen of the Harpies!
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posted December 17, 2004 03:19 AM |
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Quote:
i'll tell you about kafka, if you tell me about kefka.
who the hell is that guy?
I strongly recommend that you read "Process" (i think its "trial" in english), but also "castle" is good, as well as "metamorphosis" (thats a short story). and thats about all i know from him, but its all really good. He's a highly intellectual writer, often very obscure and layered, but if you percieve the stories on the right level, you'll be under his influence for a lifetime.
I will do my best to find them
Kefka is umm... an egomaniacle madman who gained the power of magic and nearely destroyed the world in FF6.
That help any? lol
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I can resist anything but temptation
- Oscar Wilde
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Consis
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posted December 17, 2004 07:56 AM |
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Off-Topic
um...About Kefka in the Final Fantasy.....
When he mentally enslaves your girlfriend I was so pissed off!
And it wasn't called "FinalFantasy 6" in the america. In actuality, it was the sixth game coming before FinalFantasy VII(greatest game of all time), but when 6 was released here in america they called it "FinalFantasy III". This is because the last Final Fantasy game americans had been able to purchase was FinalFantasy 2. Series 3, 4, and 5 were never officially released in the U.S.
Please don't delete me! Sorry for being off-topic =)
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Roses Are Red And So Am I
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privatehudson
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posted December 17, 2004 10:38 AM |
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Everything I know about philosophy I learnt from Monty Python 
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Wiseman
Known Hero
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posted December 17, 2004 08:55 PM |
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Surely the best philosophers in second half of twentieth century.
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Truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
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Shiva
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posted December 17, 2004 10:10 PM |
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Edited By: Shiva on 18 Dec 2004
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hehe, I like Monty Python. Humor surely is more welcome than the bleakness of existentialism. Take a look at the following:
The doctrine that existence takes precedence over essence and holding that man is totally free and responsible for his acts. This responsibility is the source of dread and anguish that encompass mankind.
- Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition; William Collins Publishers, Inc.; Cleveland, Ohio; 1979
A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts.
- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation.
I think the key words are "source of dread and anguish" and "hostile and indifferent". There is such an abject negative quality to such views, that can only lead to severe depression, and thus, the taking of more anti-depressants. And Svarog, we know you don't want to support those multi-national drug companies .
Therefore, I tend towards a more positive approach. Perhaps I should call it a positive experientialism where one's experience leads to a greater possibility of communing with one's own source of life. That source may well be unknowable, but rather than arousing dread, or fear of the unknown, why shouldn't it initiate a sense of awe and reverence for the infinite?
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hamsi128
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posted December 17, 2004 10:20 PM |
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Albert Camus books ''etranger'' and ''La chute'' are my favorites..
J.P. Sartre book ''la nausee'' is a classic ... for kafka i cant say he is real existencialist...
p.s. sorry for books name on french i dunno name of them in english.
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sirzapdos
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Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
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posted December 18, 2004 02:05 AM |
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Etranger means stranger, as in someone you don't know. La chute means The Waterfall I believe. Don't know about La Nausee though. My french isn't what it used to be.
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So I try to live a complicated world...
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Svarog
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posted December 18, 2004 03:51 AM |
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Edited By: Svarog on 17 Dec 2004
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Quote:
I think the key words are "source of dread and anguish" and "hostile and indifferent".
I think you’re putting those out of context a bit. Responsibility of individual choice as the source of dread and anguish, is more correctly, an optimistic approach, since it doesn’t attribute negative things to supernatural powers, but solely on human will, thus giving him the power to change things. And “hostile and indifferent universe” (personally, i think it’s a bad definition, since hostile makes sense just as friendly would do; in which case both are opposite to indifferent) is constructed in that way, so that it emphasizes that there’re no divine powers, or higher causes, or anything which is more meaningful than the absurdity of meaningless of existence. Humanity is not in focus anymore, but each individual to himself is the center of the universe.
Given the more accurate interpretation I gave, I think this sentence:
Quote:
There is such an abject negative quality to such views, that can only lead to severe depression, and thus, the taking of more anti-depressants.
…loses from its logic. I don’t see any negative implications such views may have, and much less danger of “severe depression”. Quite the contrary, it prevents humanity’s boring tendency to constantly create meanings of life, and forcefully pushing themselves to believe it, in fear of their own selves, alone in the middle of the dark big “unfriendly” universe, that doesn’t give a f**k that you exist. It is maybe worth considering whether its better to remain cozy entrenched in your thoughts of a higher purpose (almost always afterlife, since not surprisingly, no one locates the purpose of life in the earthly life), or stop deluding yourself into hoping that theres “more to it” than just dying and embrace the existentialist spirit clean in front of yourself and the world. That is why it is an imperative for the existentialist hero to alienate himself from society and the world. It is in fact, effectively alienating oneself from the collective strive for the positive, the meaning of things, and in striving so, subjecting and degrading individual’s needs, which are the only thing that is for sure real and within reach. I would argue that the positive approach in relation to yourself, would in fact be the defocuzation from outer unknowable sources to the only knowable one – the individual. That way, you save about a lifetime of wasted time (which equals eternity, in existentialist terms ) on bad faith, and set on to do something positive with it. That is true freedom.
Hamsi, “The stranger” (I only read it couple of months ago, and it was excellent) was more fun to read than kafka, but I think kafka is more subtle than camus. Anyways, why do you think kafka is not existentialist?
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The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
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Defreni
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posted December 18, 2004 12:23 PM |
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Actually existensialism is in its original form, pretty depressing.
Sartre in his philosophical mainpiece "L`Etre et le Néant" (Being and nothingness in english) draws heavily from Kierkegaards concept of anguish. This is after his rather bad analysis of of the concept of being, where he basically rip off Heideggers phenomonological analysis, and then proceeds to claim that its is only through nothingness that anything exist, and it is just through anguish that we come near to our transcendental selves.
As it shows, I was not impressed, probably because I read it in extension off Husserls "Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomonologie" and Heideggers "Sein und Zeit".
Basically what Sartre does is to take the phenomological analysis carried out by Husserl (which is the original of these 3) modified by Heidegger and draws some rather unsupported conclusions based upon it.
Existensialism became hugely popular right after WW2 due to the meaningless hardship endured by people in this war. Probably why it has such a bleak perspective.
The best introductory work to existensialism is still Sartres own "Existensialism et une Humanisme" which is a short essay in defence of the very negative conclusions people like me draw from "L`Etre et le Néant".
His mainpiece is the 4 novels in the series "The roads of freedom" (Not sure thats what they are called in english, as I have read them in danish)
As a short appendix to Sartre its interesting to see how he tries to reconcile his extreme individualism in his existential works, while maintaining a political doctrine of Marxism. He does that in his second major philosophical treatise "Critique of dialectical reason".
Regarding Albert Camus, he furiously denied that he was an existentialist, but it is very difficult to see why he wasnt. Some of the best readings from Camus is actually his "Diary" which was published post mortem after his tragic death in 1960 in a car crash.
Kafka is not an existentialist, though especially Camus is inspired by him. Kafka is alot closer to a romantic nihilist, and you can see that he had been reading his Dostoyievsky. But eventhough both of these has been labeled existentialist, aswell as the dane Soeren Kierkegaard (Which by some is classified as the father of existensialism) all three of them are before the rise of existensialism. Rightly the title of father to this topic should be Jean Paul Sartre.
Oh well back to my studies, and please dont say anything to my girlfriend, she thinks Im working my behind off
Regards
Defreni
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hamsi128
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posted December 18, 2004 06:17 PM |
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thanks defreni for sharing some knowledge i dont know before
and some add-on
When Albert Camus died , he got an happy smile in his face ''' i dont care, im dead so what?'' ... Sartre is father of existencialisme but there is rumour that before he is dead,in his bed, he accepted the existence of the God and he did something with a priest i dunno name on english(after a sin you go to church pray ina little room then all forgotten)
I dont know if he is existencialist or not but i advice Boris Vian's books to anyone who like Camus or Sartre... or Ingvar Ambjornsen is acceptable too if your life philo is drugged to death and forget...
.. Svarog, Kafka is dramatically nihilist... He cares about something, at least nihilists wants to format world to create new one... Camus just dont care about anything...
Defreni , could you please tell more about Soeren Kierkegaard ... i heard of him never read... thanks.
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Consis
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posted December 18, 2004 06:30 PM |
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Edited By: Consis on 18 Dec 2004
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Quote:
there is rumour that before he is dead,in his bed, he accepted the existence of the God and he did something with a priest i dunno name on english(after a sin you go to church pray ina little room then all forgotten)
"Confession"?
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Svarog
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posted December 19, 2004 04:53 AM |
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Edited By: Svarog on 18 Dec 2004
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Def, good to see you back. There’s some good potential lying around unfinished since you disappeared, that you promised to develop in a productive thread, as you always do.
Anyways, that’s a lot of books man, that I havent read. I hope you’re ok to discuss all this with someone with much less book baggage than yours.
That’s why, I dare you to shoot with ideological bullets. Stop using dead bodies to throw at me.
Quote:
Actually existentialism is in its original form, pretty depressing.
Defreniii… After all the effort I put in the post above, you come up with this?
Regarding Sartre: Well, I havent read his early work ‘being and nothingness’, so it would be ungrateful of me to comment, but from what i know of sartre, he’s not a nihilist. I believe its much more likely that people have misinterpreted his context of ‘anguish’ and ‘nothingness’ into nihilism and pessimism, and that’s why he felt the need to defend them in his following works (my previous post being a vague Sartrerian defense against such charges).
You said: “Only through anguish we can come to our transcedental selves”. First of all, its rarely that you find existentialist thinkers talking of transcendental concepts, and much less searching for them. And second, the ‘anguish’ is most likely to be a bad influence from that danish theologist of urs.
Of course, I don’t claim this to be 100% so, but it seems to me its misinterpretation we’re talking about, having in mind Sartres later works.
As for who’s existentialist an who’s not, I can say that all these writers had existentialist influences (even Dostoevski).
Even though Kafka lacks the constructivist approach in his works, I think he gets the work pretty well done when it comes to the destructive component of existentialism. And thats an utterly important part of the birth of any new philosophical school, so in this respect, I think Kafka plays a major role in establishing a clear ground on which it would develop.
On the other hand, Camus is more existentialist than Sartre, I agree. Unlike hamsi said (that he doesn’t care about anything) , I think he has a much more positive philosophical attitude than Kafka, although his artistic style might not give off that impression. In “Stranger”, theres the clear existentialist model of Mersau (french? Sorry  ) presenting us the “virtues” of existentialism, against Kafka’s universal everyman (K.) in “Prozess”, who’s helplessly caught in the dreadful spiral of the absurd, without indicating a way out.
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…[Sartre] he accepted the existence of the God and he did something with a priest
LOL. Cute! I guess the most likely thing an existentialist would do before death.
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The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
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