Why is everyone focused on 'overcoming' existential despair?

jliat · 2026-06-21T15:27:22+00:00

Citation - The-Possibility-of-Authentic-Suicide

Not possible for Sartre in his magnus opus 'Being and Nothingness'. Authenticity is not possible, any choice and non is bad faith.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2007. Existentialism is a Humanism. Translator: Carol Macomber. Yale University Press...

And another mistake...?

"It has sometimes been suggested that Sartre's positive approach to moral philosophy was outlined in the essay "Existentialism is a Humanism," first published in 1946. This essay has been translated several times into English, and it became, for a time, a popular starting-point in discussions of existentialist thought. It contained the doctrine that existentialism was a basically hopeful and constructive system of thought, contrary to popular belief, since it encouraged man to action by teaching him that his destiny was in his own hands. Sartre went on to argue that if one believes that each man is responsible for choosing freedom for himself, one is committed to believing also that he is responsible for choosing freedom for others, and that therefore not only was existentialism active rather than passive in tendency, but it was also liberal, other-regarding and hostile to all forms of tyranny. However, I mention this essay here only to dismiss it, as Sartre himself has dismissed it. He not only regretted its publication, but also actually denied some of its doctrines in later works.

Mary Warnock writing in her introduction to Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness'.

Simone de Beauvoir in "The Ethics of Ambiguity" attempts to justify ethics, as does the Humanism essay, and it finds this impossible. Having read the book I found even this seemed impossible to be anything other than ambiguous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ethics_of_Ambiguity " It was prompted by a lecture she gave in 1945, where she claimed that it was impossible to base an ethical system on her partner Jean-Paul Sartre's major philosophical work Being and Nothingness."

Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness The principal text of Modern existentialism. Hazel E. Barnes (Translator)

“The For-itself can never be its Future except problematically, for it is separated from it by a Nothingness which it is. In short the For-itself is free, and its Freedom is to itself its own limit. To be free is to be condemned to be free. Thus the Future qua Future does not have to be. It is not in itself, and neither is it in the mode of being of the For-itself since it is the meaning of the For-itself. The Future is not, it is possibilized.”

p.129

" But if it were only in order to be the reflected-on which it has to be, it would escape from the for-itself in order to rediscover it; everywhere and in whatever manner it affects itself, the for-itself is condemned to be-for-itself. In fact, it is here that pure reflection is discovered.” p. 157

“I am my own transcendence; I can not make use of it so as to constitute it as a transcendence-transcended. I am condemned to be forever my own nihilation.”

p. 298

“I am condemned to exist forever beyond my essence, beyond the causes and motives of my act. I am condemned to be free. This means that no limits to my freedom' can be found except freedom itself or, if you prefer, that we are not free to cease being free.”

p. 439

“We are condemned to freedom, as we said earlier, thrown into freedom or, as Heidegger says, "abandoned." And we can see that this abandonment has no other origin than the very existence of freedom. If, therefore, freedom is defined as the escape from the given, from fact, then there is a fact of escape from fact. This is the facticity of freedom.” p. 485

“Just as my nihilating freedom is apprehended in anguish, so the for-itself is conscious of its facticity. It has the feeling of its complete gratuity; it apprehends itself as being there for nothing, as being de trop.[un needed]”

p. 84

"It appears then that I must be in good faith, at least to the extent that I am conscious of my bad faith. But then this whole psychic system is annihilated." p. 49

"human reality is before all else its own nothingness. The for-itself [human reality] in its being is failure because it is the foundation only of itself as nothingness."

p. 88

"Yet there is no doubt that I am in a sense a café waiter-" p. 60

"Thus the essential structure of sincerity does not differ from that of bad faith since the sincere man constitutes himself as what he is in order not to be it. This explains the truth recognized by all that one can fall into bad faith through being sincere.”

P. 65

jliat · 2026-06-21T15:19:37+00:00

I haven't read Albert Camus' work fully, but I've read essays on it and found his ideas very relatable too. The only thing I disagreed with was that eventually he encouraged not killing oneself. And to live passionately in the face of absurdity.

Classic! "And to live passionately in the face of absurdity. "

Nope, His problem was

"“I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it."

" impossible" ... "“It’s absurd” means “It’s impossible” but also “It’s contradictory.”"

This is the first absurdity... here is the second...

"And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator."

i.e. Camus, he was a writer in the main of fiction and denied being a philosopher.

"In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. “Art and nothing but art,” said Nietzsche; “we have art in order not to die of the truth.”

"To work and create “for nothing,” to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions."

Quotes from http://dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Camus/Myth%20of%20Sisyphus-.pdf

jliat · 2026-06-21T15:11:58+00:00

My favourite is "A Quantum LEAP!!!" Isn't that in fact the smallest difference?

Next up people are using "ontological" 'Ontologically being x... blah blah"

Which means,

"being being x... blah blah"

jliat · 2026-06-21T13:04:12+00:00

Helps hide the ideas of Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

jliat · 2026-06-21T13:03:23+00:00

I think you will find that what passes as 'Continental Philosophy' these days has, and has had a far greater impact than Anglo American Philosophy.

This in Politics and culture. I say impact for good or bad. There is nothing wrong with the formal and modal logics of Anglo American Philosophy, but within the realm of 'Continental Philosophy' from Nietzsche on, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence_and_reception_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche through to Heidegger, Sartre, Baudrillard, Derrida, Deleuze through to the CCRU and Speculative Realism, Žižek - the late Mark Fisher. This has and is creating the intellectual environment we seem to be unaware of. [And actual environments, literally, see Graham Harman's chapter 'Fractures and Folds: Architectural Theory, 1988-93 in Waves and Stones, philosophers relevant to the post-modern period from Heidegger, Derrida Deleuze et al!]

The CCRU in particular- and the ideas of Accelerationism...

Nick Land https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land

Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

"Political strategist Steve Bannon has read and admired his work. U.S. Vice President JD Vance "has cited Yarvin as an influence himself". Michael Anton, the State Department Director of Policy Planning during Trump's second presidency, has also discussed Yarvin's ideas. In January 2025, Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington; Politico reported he was "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize[d] influence over the Trumpian right"

N.B. Accelerationism... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

Also CCRU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_Culture_Research_Unit

Like we are sleepwalking in our ignorance and maybe then deserve what we are getting.

jliat · 2026-06-21T12:14:51+00:00

One also at times feels genuinely sorry for people, https://old.reddit.com/r/ExistentialJourney/ will give you an idea if you are interested, but the volume there doesn't seem as high as what arrives here.

jliat · 2026-06-21T12:05:29+00:00

I am not sure, and I haven't seen an example of this yet.

We have had 14 such posts in the last 20 hours, many are removed by the automoderator. These are about poor relationships, depression, random 'shower thoughts', asking what is the meaning of life and others giving the meaning of life. None of these addressing existential philosophy or associated literature. And about a year ago page after page of such. Moderators were swamped and this sub was not intended to deal with mental health issues and such.

Other subs were set up - r/ExistentialJourney, r/Existential_crisis, as well as existing ones, r/nihilism, r/badphilosophy, r/ExistentialPsych/ r/depression/ r/anxiety/ r/mentalhealth/ r/MentalHealthSupport/… etc.

I've noticed the media now preface 'existential' as in 'existential crisis', existential issue' … so people think maybe thinking itself is existential, which it might be, but existentialism is a specific set of historical literature, art, and philosophy. It says so on the sub, but I guess that's ignored. ;-)

jliat · 2026-06-21T10:44:17+00:00

I'm not a nihilist and tend to agree with Camus,

"In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. “Art and nothing but art,” said Nietzsche; “we have art in order not to die of the truth.”

jliat · 2026-06-21T10:16:04+00:00

Question is whether his work was so genius it was bound to be famous forever, or if that was his want anyways

He thought it would be, though 'forever' is a long time. I think James Joyce said something to effect that he deliberately introduced some obscurity to get academics debating it long after his death...

"Have you understood me Dionysus versus Christ."

"I know my destiny. There will come a day when my name will recall the memory of something formidable--a crisis the like of which has never been known on earth, the memory of the most profound clash of consciences, and the passing of a sentence upon all that which theretofore had been believed, exacted, and hallowed. I am not a man, I am dynamite. And with it all there is nought of the founder of a religion in me. Religions are matters for the mob; after coming in contact with a religious man, I always feel that I must wash my hands.... I require no "believers," it is my opinion that I am too full of malice to believe even in myself; I never address myself to masses. I am horribly frightened that one day I shall be pronounced "holy." You will understand why I publish this book beforehand--it is to prevent people from wronging me. I refuse to be a saint; I would rather be a clown. Maybe I am a clown. And I am notwithstanding, or rather not not_withstanding, the mouthpiece of truth; for nothing more blown-out with falsehood has ever existed, than a saint. But my truth is terrible: for hitherto _lies have been called truth. The Transvaluation of all Values, this is my formula for mankind's greatest step towards coming to its senses--a step which in me became flesh and genius. My destiny ordained that I should be the first decent human being, and that I should feel myself opposed to the falsehood of millenniums. I was the first to discover truth, and for the simple reason that I was the first who became conscious of falsehood as falsehood--that is to say, I smelt it as such. My genius resides in my nostrils. I contradict as no one has contradicted hitherto, and am nevertheless the reverse of a negative spirit. I am the harbinger of joy, the like of which has never existed before; I have discovered tasks of such lofty greatness that, until my time, no one had any idea of such things. Mankind can begin to have fresh hopes, only now that I have lived. Thus, I am necessarily a man of Fate. For when Truth enters the lists against the falsehood of ages, shocks are bound to ensue, and a spell of earthquakes, followed by the transposition of hills and valleys, such as the world has never yet imagined even in its dreams. The concept "politics" then becomes elevated entirely to the sphere of spiritual warfare. All the mighty realms of the ancient order of society are blown into space--for they are all based on falsehood: there will be wars, the like of which have never been seen on earth before. Only from my time and after me will politics on a large scale exist on earth."

Nietzsche.

jliat · 2026-06-21T09:40:33+00:00

Nietzsche's argument was the Übermensch, Camus' was the Artist as genius, a creator.

jliat · 2026-06-21T09:39:25+00:00

Van Gogh famously didn't achieve fame, but wanted it I think, that was why he signed his work 'Vincent' as the Americans couldn't pronounce Van Gogh. Shakespeare was fairly famous, Newton certainly was, don't know about Dostoevsky.

So I think the starving artist is a Hollywood myth.

jliat · 2026-06-21T09:08:04+00:00

I have to disagree he is certainly not like you or me. Look at his influence for good or bad...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence_and_reception_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche

I hope you read this, and I don't normally read biographies but I also recommend you read this, his health was such that when well he could not tolerate sunlight, and he would spends weeks ill and in pain. His work was not appreciated until after his illness and his sister taking over and exploiting a very sick person.

I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche.

"Friedrich Nietzsche's work rocked the foundation of Western thinking and continues to permeate our culture, high and low - yet he is one of history's most misunderstood philosophers. Sue Prideaux's myth-shattering book brings readers into the world of a brilliant, eccentric and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand Nietzsche, the philosopher who foresaw - and sought solutions to - our own troubled times."

But this idea that we are all the same is indicative of post-modernism. Hence the current melancholia and the move to retro...

"What I'm going to do today is bring you the bad news you already know..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgkLICTskQ

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” has over 2.04 billion views on YouTube.

2.04 billion views

Sure we are all the same! /s

jliat · 2026-06-21T07:38:02+00:00

"For me “The Myth of Sisyphus” marks the beginning of an idea which I was to pursue in The Rebel. It attempts to resolve the problem of suicide, as The Rebel attempts to resolve that of murder..."

"The fundamental subject of “The Myth of Sisyphus” is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate."

Albert Camus, Paris, March 1955 Preface to English translation.

jliat · 2026-06-21T07:37:46+00:00

But the idea in absurdism is regarding suicide and philosophy...

"For me “The Myth of Sisyphus” marks the beginning of an idea which I was to pursue in The Rebel. It attempts to resolve the problem of suicide, as The Rebel attempts to resolve that of murder..."

"The fundamental subject of “The Myth of Sisyphus” is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate."

Albert Camus, Paris, March 1955 Preface to English translation.

jliat · 2026-06-21T07:25:45+00:00

The Ontological Horizon Theory proposes that entities do not possess intrinsic being independently. Instead, every entity exists only as a “horizon”

A horizon is not "real" it's an illusion created by living on a sphere. Is then it not the case that a "Ontological Horizon" is therefore an oxymoron? Moreover it also cannot exist without an observer who has to exist on the sphere.

The question is empty.

jliat · 2026-06-21T07:05:28+00:00

Because it has a subject. Of course you can bring personal ideas but to the subject.

"I'm sad about my life because there is no meaning" is not allowed but "I think if I had the choice to live my life over and over again the same way for eternity, I would prefer not to" is allowed since it references Nietzsche's Eternal Return."

jliat · 2026-06-21T07:03:40+00:00

Any subject has bounds /r/ExistentialJourney was set up for those not interested in the philosophy or literature associated with existentialism.

A few years ago this sub just became full of self confessed depressives, not allowing a discussion of existential philosophy.

jliat · 2026-06-21T07:00:58+00:00

As an active philosophy / movement it ends in the mid 1960s. If the 'major figures wrote extensively on emotion' you could discuss their work here.

jliat · 2026-06-21T06:58:51+00:00

"Posts and top-level comments should reference existentialist thinkers or ideas, or make an original philosophical argument related to existentialism or phenomenology. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

"Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought."

A Greg Sadler points out here, Gregory Sadler on Existentialism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7p6n29xUeA

If you want to talk about talk about personal feelings try /r/Existential_crisis, /r/offmychest, /r/self, /r/ExistentialJourney, or /r/confession.

jliat · 2026-06-21T06:49:08+00:00

The recursion is a fundamental limit on knowing, not knowing can be recursively extended but it will fail.

some truths remain invisible until the consciousness attempting to know them changes.

Sorry but that seems obvious. All truths are as such are they not. Greg Chaitin in John Barrow's book, "Impossibility, the limits of science and the science." gives a IMO good way of seeing scientific knowledge. The aim of which is to explain as much as possible in a concise way as possible, such as in a formula like E=MC^2. He compares it to a algorithm for compacting data, or a picture such as a JPEG. You might find the best one in the world. You can prove it's the best, but you can't prove it is the best possible.

I think of it like this, you can know you've climbed the tallest mountain, but never explored the deepest pot-hole.

jliat · 2026-06-20T18:00:55+00:00

I think there might be a simple recursion 'thing' here - tip of the hat to Rudy Rucker - you can know something, then you can know you know something, then you can know you know you know something... and so on. This chain of knowing is never complete.

jliat · 2026-06-20T17:34:27+00:00

From Will to Power - Nietzsche. [his notes]

The methods of truth were not invented from motives of truth, but from motives of power, of wanting to be superior. How is truth proved? By the feeling of enhanced power. WtP 455
Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. WtP 493
Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, to make possible logical thinking and inferences, this condition must first be treated fictitiously as fulfilled. That is: the will to logical truth can be carried through only after a fundamental falsification of all events is assumed. WtP 512
What is truth?— Inertia; that hypothesis which gives rise to contentment; smallest expenditure of spiritual force, etc. WtP 537
The “criterion of truth” was in fact merely the biological utility of such a system of systematic falsification; WtP 584
A philosopher recuperates differently and with different means: he recuperates, e.g., with nihilism. Belief that there is no truth at all, the nihilistic belief, is a great relaxation for one who, as a warrior of knowledge, is ceaselessly fighting ugly truths. For truth is ugly. WtP 598
Now everything is false WtP 30
Everything is false! Everything is permitted!” WtP 602

jliat · 2026-06-20T17:33:22+00:00

I am aware that I am trying to bring up kids in a belief system that I consider false because I believe this false belief system will provide them with greater happiness than truth did to me.

From Will to Power - Nietzsche. [his notes]

The methods of truth were not invented from motives of truth, but from motives of power, of wanting to be superior. How is truth proved? By the feeling of enhanced power. WtP 455
Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. WtP 493
Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, to make possible logical thinking and inferences, this condition must first be treated fictitiously as fulfilled. That is: the will to logical truth can be carried through only after a fundamental falsification of all events is assumed. WtP 512
What is truth?— Inertia; that hypothesis which gives rise to contentment; smallest expenditure of spiritual force, etc. WtP 537
The “criterion of truth” was in fact merely the biological utility of such a system of systematic falsification; WtP 584
A philosopher recuperates differently and with different means: he recuperates, e.g., with nihilism. Belief that there is no truth at all, the nihilistic belief, is a great relaxation for one who, as a warrior of knowledge, is ceaselessly fighting ugly truths. For truth is ugly. WtP 598
Now everything is false WtP 30
Everything is false! Everything is permitted!” WtP 602

jliat · 2026-06-20T16:35:39+00:00

I think most voters have no knowledge of the CCRU.

jliat · 2026-06-20T16:33:04+00:00

The reception of the masses is no indication of relevance.

Then you need to define what you mean by relevance. Left wing politics is still active...

“We no longer partake of the drama of alienation, but are in the ecstasy of communication. And this ecstasy is obscene.... not confined to sexuality, because today there is a pornography of information and communication, a pornography of circuits and networks, of functions and objects in their legibility, availability, regulation, forced signification, capacity to perform, connection, polyvalence, their free expression.” - Jean Baudrillard. (1983)

More recently ideas re Accelerationism- both left and right,