Understanding the Appeal

The older I get the more I think that Camus and the other absurdist philosophers had a point. The order in the universe is the order we bring to it rather than the order that’s there. I find myself increasingly in agreement with this passage from “The Myth of Sisyphus”:

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Edipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: “Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well.” Sophocles’ Edipus, like Dostoevsky’s Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.

In the ancient world men were the bread of the gods. It is the lovely conceit (definition 1a) of Christianity to turn this on its head and that God has become the bread of men.

2 comments… add one
  • jan Link

    The order in the universe is the order we bring to it rather than the order that’s there.

    It’s similar to going within to make your own happiness, rather than seeking it through external means or people.

  • TastyBits Link

    The problem with European white males is that you need to have a large body of knowledge to understand them. This is how I wound up reading over half of Western literature.

    What is a nice Jesuit boy doing reading existential nonsense, or what is he doing buy into the nonsense? The good Fathers might have encouraged you to read Camus, but I expect it would be to refute him. Nothing that a wooden ruler cannot fix, or was that the nuns?

    The problem with existentialism is nihilism. Existentialism negates metaphysics and epistemology, but it does not replace them with anything. The world is left floating without a foundation, and there is nowhere to go. Camus and others realized this, but they could not reconcile it.

    They were not the first. This is a problem for all atheist philosophers. The human mind requires a metaphysical and epistemological foundation. There must be some beginning, and it must be credible. Religion is the usual source, but it need not be the only one.

    Plato’s solution was the perfect concept. Kierkegaard solution was the leap of faith. Dostoyevsky’s was also a leap of faith and a subjection to authority. Nietzsche’s solution was the Overman. None of these were proper existential philosophers, and only Nietzsche was a confirmed atheist. Sartre was the first existential philosophers.

    (Ayn Rand was not a philosopher, but she formulated a solution: “I am. Therefore, I will think.” I doubt anybody on the left would care to use her as a supporting reference.)

    After Sartre, it was all downhill. He destroyed metaphysics and epistemology leaving nothing in its place. The Absurd is nothing more than recognizing the lack of a foundation and celebrating it. Existentialism is to philosophy as Wile E Coyote is to physics. It works in the cartoons, but it is a disaster when applied to real life.

    Today’s atheists do not have the foggiest idea of what they believe. They claim to not believe in God because they are science based, but not more than a handful could support that claim without circular reasoning. Science is requires a metaphysical and epistemological basis, also. If one is to remain a human, there is nowhere to run away from this simple fact. (Hence, Nietzsche’s Overman)

    Today’s atheist have never wrestled with the questions that Sartre, Camus, and others tried to answer. Instead, they replaced God with science wholesale, but they have kept the moral code of the God they dethroned basically intact. Religion tied down the old moral codes, and when the chains of religion were severed, those codes were free.

    Science cannot provide a moral foundation, and it requires a metaphysical and epistemological basis. Even in the case where these can be established, they are usually not easy for most people to grasp. The universe having a Big Bang but having no beginning or end because time loops back upon itself like a Mobius strip would not be easy to grasp.

    Science is nothing more than witchcraft or magic by another name. It is a black box into which things happen, and those who profess to be scientific are nothing more than a cargo cult. They follow the motions, but they have no idea of why or how anything works. Scientists are the high priests of Nature.

    Nihilism always ends badly. Few nihilists can live in a meaningless world. Nietzsche realized the opportunity, but he also foresaw the problems. The nihilist kills God, but he cannot bring himself to kill the moral codes of that God. The nihilist cannot take the final step, but Nietzsche saw this as the birth of the Overman. To my knowledge the post-Sartre existentialists never thought to create their own moral code.

    (I was an atheist long before it was fashionable, and at that time, an atheist had to defend every statement in a discussion. To claim science as a basis would never have worked, and that is true for many of today’s atheists who have discovered their non-belief in the recent past. I am no longer an atheist, but I can still argue that side of a debate.)

    The nihilist finds something to believe in, and it is usually extreme. Today, you see young people flocking to join ISIS and other terrorist groups. I suspect that racist groups are experiencing an enrolment increase. Gangs are also a place for the nihilist to find something to believe in.

    To your original point, the order we find in the universe is man-made. It must be. It is the only order we could find. Actually, we find the man-made order that is understood at the time, and we change the order when the understanding changes.

    As a good Jesuit boy, all you need to remember is that the actual order is that of God, and if we could understand His logic, mind, reasoning, etc., we would be gods. For God, there are no contradictions. 0 = 1. God can make a rock so big He cannot pick it up, and God can pick up all rocks He makes. These are both true statements for God, but we can never understand how this can be.

    God is never bound by man, but man must obey the Will of God. So it must be.

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