One of the most wishy-washy, bourgeois philosophy out there. Bitch I know I exist, now how is that going to help us get rid of capitalism.
tell me you've never read any philosophy without telling me you've ever read any philosophy
no, liberalism is the anti intellectualism of only looking at things in some naive short term 'how does this overthrow capitalism right no?'. things have a wider context, use, analysis, and so on, that ultimately add to analysis of life in general. flippantly ignoring that is liberalism
its not like Im not well read on existentialism, I read all those stupid camus novels when I was an edgy teenager and later Ive also studied it more seriously. There's a reason people like sartre and camus are irrelevant today, their ideas are worthless. Foucault and his buddies dunked on him and everyone moved on.
God is dead. We are far past needing to reckon with religious myths.
Ok so it mattered 300 years ago. Amazing. I see why this community is so enamored with it now. It's called "class character"
And you're gonna beat it with petit-bourgeois ideology! I don't know why all the Communists who did revolution in backwards semi-feudal countries didn't think of that!
That's just Marxism. There will be vestiges of the past as we transition to Communism.
What does that have to do with existentialism?
that is just the way people interact on the internet. Her message was disparaging, so I sent a disparaging message back.
If your philosophy reading list is based on whether it has immediate utility for overthrowing capitalism, it's going to be a very short list indeed
"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."
You know being proudly ignorant is extremely :LIB:
as a person with a philosophy minor, reading philosophy does enrich us but I'm not living some increased inner life over anybody else, if anything the philosophy i've read has just introduced way more uncertainty and doubt
i just thought about abelard and heloise for the first time in a long time
why did i have to know about abelard and heloise :kermit-pain:
The fact that you call it gibberish and managed to misspell it as well says more about you than about philosophy, lmao
big brain dictionary reader here, learning words from hearing them in real life? whats that?
Maybe you should couple that with reading a book or two
how am I being proudly ignorant? Also, Sartre was one of the biggest critics of foucault and structuralism. I'll have you guess whose ideas developed into actually coherent theories today. Hint: not the one who was directly influenced by a nazi.
So what were the basis of his critiques? What assumptions did he make that were erroneous? How would you refute them? There's value in reading what you don't agree with, even if your ultimate goal is to understand why. This is all beside the point that your original critique was that it existentialism doesn't help you overthrow capitalism here and now. Guess what, neither does Foucault.
Is this post really that hard to understand? Do you think I have not thoroughly read Sartre and others to come to the conclusion that existentialism is stupid? I don't need to go through exactly why liberalism is stupid every single time I call someone a lib, right? And you somehow decided to twist my words into "overthrow capitalism here and now" which is just plain ridiculous, what is going to overthrow capitalism here and now? I engage with philosophy to improve the world and myself, where overthrowing capitalism is a primary goal. I don't know what you find is wrong with that.
If your critique wasn't so powerfully lazy, I might have come to a different conclusion about your depth of knowledge about the topic.
it isn't meant to be a nuanced critique. Simply a statement that existentialism is stupid and not worth your time to read.
Have you not read his introduction to the wretched of the earth? Dude clearly had a politics
I actually agree on that. Heidegger (POS Nazi that he is), Kierkegaard, the later Derrida are all way better at the philosophy.
My issue is not criticizing Existentialism but the extreme laziness with which its being done. Lot of really galaxybrained anti-intellectualism in this thread.
I also understand what you're saying, but honestly, the list of philosophical works that have immediate application for overthrowing capitalism is pretty short. I love Foucault, for instance (shocker), but you're not going to be equipped to make a revolution after reading him.
Isn't that the general thrust of US leftist academic philosophy during the Cold War? "Capitalism is bad but overthrowing it requires careful thought and ideological explanation because if we hastily act we could make a mistake."
EDIT: That was a genuine question based on Parenti's assertions.
I guess the only thing I have to add to what others said is that it's important to keep in mind historical context, about when and why these ideas became canonized.
Existentialism isn't my discipline, but it seems to me most of these dudes were either a. directly addressing the death of "divine right" in western society (existence is determined by our choices and actions, not pre-determined by god's command) or b. addressing the inhumanity of the world wars (we must remember that the atrocities of these wars were determined by the actions of men, and not some mystical force that cannot be understood or adressed.)
Which.... yeah is unhelpful now but that wasn't always the case.
If existentialism is stupid then how come Existential Comics is one of my favorite twitter accounts? Can you explain that?
I can’t remember who off my head
Sartre was explicitly an outspoken Marxist and Communist. I believe Camus was also a socialist
basically life has no inherent meaning
Depends on how one defines "meaning".
it’s up to individuals to define their own meaning to life an live by it.
This is one of the best copes for life in late stage capitalism. Nobody would give that much of a shit about stuff like "meaning" or "purpose" if there was a sense of solidarity between people, humane working conditions, and all efforts being directly or indirectly related towards a shared human project to improve living conditions, understand the world, etc.
Instead what exists in the west is a hellscape where individuals are pitted against each other in market competition, for the sake of perpetuating the rotting machine of capitalism where profit is the bottom line, built on a mountain of corpses and human misery. In the face of all this illogical suffering it is natural for an individual to ask "why?".
Anti-intellectualism is by far the worst feature of this community. You have no idea what you are talking about. Please stop.
Oh god have we progressed from ironic-ironic anti-intellectualism to ironically earnest anti-intellectualism? It's hard to tell.
I know exactly what I am talking about. Pointing out that existentialism is a terrible philosophy is not "anti-intellectualism".
You haven't engaged in anything. You've written off who-knows-what with just a few sentences. That absolutely is anti-intellectual.
Next time you call someone a liberal, I am going to call you an anti-intellectual for dismissing an entire philosophy that serves as the basis of our world.
Please qualify what sort of discussion that is considered "intellectual" then. What is an intellectual way to go about criticizing existentialism?
Existentialism has nothing to do with "knowing that you exist," and people are going to be pondering the "purpose" of life and determining the way they should lead their lives if we exist under capitalism, communism, or something else. Not all philosophy or religion has to orient itself towards overthrowing the current mode of production, nor should it. Life is much more than smashing capitalism.
people are going to be pondering the “purpose” of life and determining the way they should lead their lives if we exist under capitalism, communism, or something else
Yeah but under communism or something else we're guaranteed to come up with better philosophy than existentialism. Furthermore, in 1 gorillion years time once we find out how the universe was created we could know by extension what the "purpose" of life is, so its not always going to be a care.
Evaluating philosophies by "truth" and "better" isn't really what's going on here, comrade. There's never going to be an agreed upon "purpose" for life in an uncaring universe, and it doesn't matter how long we live; humans will always ponder the circumstances of their own lives.
humans will always ponder the circumstances of their own lives.
When we find out exactly how we became sentient, the nature of consciousness, the nature of subatomic particles, the nature of the universe and the nature of reality itself, then we will know the truth about our lives and the "purpose" of existence.
Some philosophies are objectively worse than others too, existentialism being better than fundamentalist christianity, for instance.
Similar to how somebody inside the Matrix can never truly "understand" it until they are taken out, I don't think humans are every going to "understand" or "find out" things like "the nature of reality or the universe."
10K years ago when we lived in caves we probably couldn't even conceive of the possibility of there being an "outer space", much less so for flight for that matter. It must have been an unknowable boundary for our ancestors.
By that same token, it will be possible for humans to "take ourselves out" of the "Matrix", so speak, once we have developed the proper theories and technologies, possibly in the far future. Once there is a tool to measure something, we have a chance of understanding it, and possibly controlling it, through the scientific method.
Yes, but the difference is the things you've listed here are within reality, and are just extensions of what we can already intuit. It's not that hard to imagine there being other planets because we already live on one. We can conceptualize flight because we see birds do it. Humans have been thinking about flying and what lays in the stars for as long as we've existed. It's much more difficult to gain understanding for the very thing we are enmeshed in, using tools that only exist inside that thing. Beware scientism comrade; it's a model like any other, and a Western-centric one at that. Not all things can be proved by the scientific method, nor should we strive to do so.
Enlightenment narratives of the steady march of human knowledge towards perfection? On my Hexbear? It's more likely than you think
:foucault-madness: :foucault-madness: :foucault-madness: :debord-tired:
The steady march of human knowledge towards knowing everything about the universe there is to know can only be started under communism. Science is a wonderful tool when put to use for enhancing human quality of life and ensuring resources for all, but it really does suck under capitalism.
It’s much more difficult to gain understanding for the very thing we are enmeshed in, using tools that only exist inside that thing.
Large Hadron Collidor go bzzzzzz
But it is true that the LHC does qualify as a tool which exists in the universe studying matter which makes up the said universe, by smashing pieces of it together and seeing what happens. However, while it is more difficult to understand the true nature of matter using tools made of matter, I am sure it is not impossible. Maybe we will find a way to overcome after we have gained the ability to manipulate the interactions between subatomic particles and solved the mystery of time. Who knows, but I have full faith in our descendants to kill god once and for all by overcoming the fundamental ignorance that we have towards reality which you outlined.
Not all things can be proved by the scientific method, nor should we strive to do so.
I partially agree since there is no use in proving shit with the scientific method when people are dying from hunger in a world full of resources. However, maybe in the future we can come up with another better system of thought which will unlock the secrets of our universe.
stephen pinker is a stupid geriatric cuck to the elite who thinks technology alone will solve all of humanity's current problems when in the hands of the "right people (TM)" and is under the delusion that human "progress" up to this moment has been accelerating.
His rotten liberal brain cannot comprehend the fact that an accelerating technological development in the pursuit of increasing human wellbeing and understanding of reality would be a good thing only in the hands of a communist world system.
Pinker sure does suck, I agree. The issue is that the essence of what the likes of Pinker assume about the progress of science isn't all that different from what you're saying either. Even under a communist world, I doubt that science will be able to solve a local issue, in our closed system, like the hard problem of consciousness because of emergent facets of consciousness that are the conditions of its own possibility. I'm not the smartest dude but that seems like a loop we aren't going to get ourselves out of
The problem is, the universe is constantly changing.
Im not sure what dialectics are yet, however, Im sure that when the day comes that our ideas about the universe are advanced enough, we will have developed a good enough theoretical model to be able to predict this change and thus the next "state" of the universe.
Understanding how something is created or how it works on a mechanical level doesn't necessarily help you form a purpose as a conscious being. We broadly understand the biological processes around sex, both as they relate to individual births and the development of a species, but that doesn't give us a good template to assess the meaning of life. The political projects that have attempted to reduce humanity in that way have been irredeemably fascist.
Existentialism isn't about if you exist or not, it's about existence preceding essence. Think of it as a fundamentally materialist philosophy: who you are isn't a platonic form of a universal (man, god, soul, etc) but instead your life and actions in the world.
In a way, Dickens in "A Christmas Carol" gives the Christian version of this with Marley: the chain you wear you forge in life. The difference is existentialism doesn't require an afterlife, this is it.
As a philosophy, it's actually really helpful as a supplement to Marxist thought, since it means that life in the world (being in the world to use that bastard Heidegger's term) matters as such. Indeed, since it's being in the world, then it's always a historical and material life we occupy. This is in keeping with materialist principles, but then goes to give the individual a place in the material world they exist in.
Tldr existentialism is good my dude.
My remark was not intended as a serious critique of existentialism. Existence preceding essence is the part of existentialism that I take the least issue with, but that itself is a very vague statement. My main gripe with existentialism is its humanism that is really just a vestige from the enlightenment. This is especially apparent when Sartre tries to mix existentialism with marxism and fit human agency and free will into histomat. It ends up being a dysfunctional idealist mess and never caught on. Foucault and structuralism pretty much buried what was left of existentialism, which really hasn't been relevant since Sartre died.
Structuralism allows us to understand the material and historical conditions we live in better than existentialism, but you still have to turn back to the individual's place in that structure.
Even Derrida went back to existentialism at the end with "The Gift of Death." Reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.
Again, I'd say that the interest in the phenomenological life of the individual is complemented (in the sense that it's completed) through structuralist and materialist thought. Understanding something like the prison allows us to understand the material and historical conditions that structure existence, but the prisoner in that system is not an "essence" anymore than one worker can stand in for all workers.
Another thinker that I think takes Foucault and merges him with existentialism effectively is agamben, in something like "what is an apparatus."
This isn't to say that there's not plenty of lib strains of existentialism, but it doesn't have to be that way. Indeed, a real recognition that existence precedes essence means that you recognize sometimes the material, social, and ideological conditions we live in prevent a free sovereign choice that :LIB: idiots believe in.
Edit. Sartre is easily the least interesting existentialist to me w his philosophy, so we're in agreement there.
I think you are working with a broader definition of existentialism, which doesn't really have a solid definition. I am talking about the strains of existentialism that are obsessed with things like authenticity, free will, etc, that is essentially just spicier liberalism. I would count people like Sartre and Camus into that category.
Yeah I'll admit that I have a broad definition. In particular I think the older strands that are indebted to theology are actually more useful than Camus. Kierkegaard or Augustine, in their decentering of man in the face of god, are more useful for materialist politics than :LIB: thinkers like Camus that want to simply put man in the place of god. Put another way, the kind of existentialism that I'm interested in takes as a starting point the idea that the individual is not an autonomous sovereign subject in control of its actions but instead embedded in the world and history. Given the fact we are thrown into this world without asking for it, this kind of existentialism is basically interested in how to act when you're not sovereign. Augustine's idea of bondage to sin is maybe the root of this kind of thinking.
For materialist politics this isn't to say we're all chained and screwed, but instead to reflect the reality that individual action is always incomplete and that it's only in collective action that we gain real power (this bit is something that Arendt talks about in the human condition)
I wish I could read philosophy, but last time I tried I ended up trying to build a time machine in my underpants so I could go back and kill Derrida.
Camus saved my life. Sure, he won't help me (or us) overthrow capitalism right here right now, but I couldn't cope with the sisyphean task of everyday existence, let alone partaking in a movement without him.
Sometimes, it's the small things, you know.
I'm not saying Camus didn't have bad takes, hell his personal life was one big bad take - I'm not even saying Camus is helpful in general, just that he was helpful to me at a time when I needed it. And I think that may be the case for Existentialism as a whole, though I haven't read very much in that area - still, it can be helpful sometimes to some people in some contexts; and it isn't 'stupid' :angery:
You cannot get materialist readings of history with existentialism. Philosophy is also not about overthrowing capitalism, it's questioning how we should live, or various other questions, regardless of current society and our position in it. You might as well ask why Euthyphro is not concerned with overthrowing capitalism, which did not yet exist.
Sartre and existentialism did get me to have a more leftist understanding of society, and I think he is a great author to get people into leftism more broadly. It introduced me to concepts such as intersubjectivity, which made teenage me realize how we are shaped by external factors and gave me the tools with which I started to analyze the social structures in which we live in. Since then I've definitely changed to a more material analysis of the world, but I think existentialism is a good gateway to get there. I do realize that there are parts of existentialism that are not compatible with Marxism, but Sartre did attempt to put the two together in Critique of Dialectical Reason (there was a great Rev Left episode on that topic).
Right, I feel existentialism is more accessible to the bourgeois than marxism, since it offers a very personal phenomenology that is easy to relate to.
All I know about existentialism is that one of their main philosopher dudes said anyone who hates their job/life (they used an example of a min wage waiter) should feel ashamed because they "chose" their situation. Its definition on google basically boils down to neoliberal "personal responsibility" alongside the lofty assertion that humans even have a "free will" as individuals (we really don't know). Seems like a dogshit ideology tbh.
Hard to square "if you're unhappy, it's your fault" with literally any kind of systemic analysis.
I dont knnow why anyone on the left thinks their philosophy is progressive at all. Heidegger was a literal nazi and hes arguably sartre's biggest influence. Ngl sartre is pretty based all around but his philosophy is really not good.
I dont knnow why anyone on the left thinks their philosophy is progressive at all.
Maybe its the notion of absolute human freedom if we take a steel man reading of their philosophy? Idk its weird af to me, most existentialists on the internet are either neolib or "muh tradishun" fascists.
Was that the same one who basically believed we have ultimate freedom because we can always choose to kill ourselves, or something like that? I remember one of my Philosophy professors in college specifically mocking that guy.
we have ultimate freedom because we can always choose to kill ourselves
:jesus-christ:
Idk whether its the same dude or not, but damn...
