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If Not ____, then……. Philosophical Underpinnings To The Stranger. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
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If Not ____, then…… Philosophical Underpinnings To The Stranger
Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. --William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The Absurd (advanced by Keirkegaard, Camus) • We are pushed and shaped by forces we do not understand. • The human desire for meaning and order will always be a failure. • “It is to be full of doubts we can never answer but also full of purposes we cannot abandon. It’s the awareness of this clash that makes our lives absurd.” (Thomas Nagel)
Die (though Camus believed that it was even MORE absurd to end one’s existence) • Believe (leap of faith) • Accept It (live in spite of it, maybe achieve absolute freedom?) • Approach the world with existential or nihilistic mindset When facing The Absurd, an individual can do one of three things:
Evaluate/Break down the word: Existentialism
“existence before essence” • No such thing as human nature/essential self • choices in life unrestrained by ethics, morality, religion, external values • a person bears the ultimate responsibility and risk for her actions • "man is condemned to be free” (Sartre) Existentialism
“nihil” means “nothing” in Latin • When we abandon illusions, life is revealed as nothing • Nothingness reveals each individual as an isolated being “thrown” into an alien and unresponsive universe, barred forever from knowing why yet required to invent meaning. Nihilism