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Talosian_cagecleaner t1_j216k0q wrote

Reply to comment by bumharmony in Life is a game we play without ever knowing the rules: Camus, absurdist fiction, and the paradoxes of existence. by IAI_Admin

I am going to go with you on this. On the Why? part, not the robot part.

Rhetoric can do all kinds of things, including paradoxes and ironies, and that era of thinker used both rhetoric and philosophy quite well.

But that does not mean something can't be dated, or passe as it were.

It is one of those classic tropes in Western literature that death is somehow an insult. Theological reasons? Poetic reasons? Logical reasons? I am not confident saying why this developed as a trope, but it did. Death is an insult is how Schiller more or less described it, and that same thought is kind of implied in Kant. So death is this "categorical objection" of some kind?

In any event, I think such a notion was a creature of its time, and as time goes by is starting to appear to more people as very presumptuous. Absurdity is what happened to the Romantic notion of tragedy. But what "death is" simply can no longer be assumed. There is no consensus any more. We can use these old tropes, but the point kind of is, we are apparently moving out of their range.

Do we need to turn back?

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Chilledlemming t1_j23d2j9 wrote

I think the author could have easily said “why birth?”

The cross from non-existence to existence or vice versa is absurd. Actually any existence is absurd to begin with. Buy if we except that we are here. And there is something happening here. Then why phase in and out of it?

That’s how I took it.

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Talosian_cagecleaner t1_j245d40 wrote

I think we have a similar lack of enchantment on this train of thought lol. Yes, I agree.

Death why not birth? After all, I can potentially consent to death, but I cannot consent to birth. It seems to me "violation of consent" is what badgers 19th and 1st half 20th century philosophy, in essence.

Well birth is far more an outrage than death then.

As to the here and now, and how it tends to not have room for such thoughts, I guess we can modify the saying: there are no absurdists in foxholes.

edit: "Then why phase in and out of it?" -- excellent way of putting the issue.

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