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May 25, 2021 · The University of Edinburgh's Guy Bennett-Hunter disputes that self-professed nihilists can enjoy a social meaning to their lives while also calling life itself ultimately meaningless.
Aug 31, 2022 · Let’s assume the worst-case scenario: all our lives are meaningless. Meaningless! No point. Empty void. A floating speck in an expanding, inhospitable universe. Does that have to be a bad thing?
The supposed conflict between our desire for meaning and the reality of a meaningless world is explored in the philosophical school of absurdism. Of all types of nihilism, existential nihilism has received the most literary and philosophical attention. [2]
- On suicide. “There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide,” so claims Camus in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. By starting with the question of whether life is worth living, Camus places the problem of how we are to live our lives squarely in the center of his thought.
- The meaning of life. Camus makes a rather bold claim on the meaning of life: there isn’t one and we can’t make one either. He argues that it is impossible for us to find a satisfying answer to the question of the meaning of life, and any attempt to impose a meaning on the universe will end in disaster, as whatever meaning we pick will be sent up later.
- The absurd. Camus’ entire philosophy is based on the idea of the absurd. Humans have a drive to find meaning in things and where it doesn’t exist we usually try to create it.
- The absurd hero. Camus critiqued those who try to endure the meaninglessness of life by imposing meaning on it. While that can bring us comfort, those systems of meaning are, themselves, doomed to failure over the long run.
Oct 3, 2021 · But even the most meaningful lives come to an end, and the people living those lives die and get forgotten. Suppose there was a person in the 800s who, by all accounts, lived as meaningful a life ...
Jun 1, 2023 · Finding meaning in the face of what can feel like a meaningless universe is a daunting challenge. Many philosophical thinkers spent their careers finding a path to a meaningful life.
Apr 5, 2016 · However, he reassures us that our inability to make sense of reality, and therefore life, as a whole does not prevent us from making sense of things within that reality: we can explain and make sense of things within a certain limited context. But the groundlessness of this context entails 'that our reasons are ultimately groundless: they are reasons given within an existence that is itself ...
