RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 13, 2021 at 2:51 pm
(This post was last modified: August 13, 2021 at 2:53 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(August 12, 2021 at 11:57 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Life can't be both absurd and meaningless. Absurd has a meaning. If life is absurd, life has meaning, even if we don't particularly enjoy it's meaning. Though, I think that we're taking liberties with the phrase "life is absurd" as a declarative statement in totality. What part of it? The living part, the life, or some of lifes contents. All?
Sure, liberties are taken with "life is absurd." But there's more than a grain of truth to what is being said.
I think what is meant by the absurdists is that if you try to figure out the truth and then live by it, you'll find that it doesn't work as well as we'd wish. No matter how powerful (or true) a truth is, it doesn't work at "the ground level" so to speak. Sometimes, falsehood prevails. And maybe (sometimes) it's better that it does. Sounds pretty absurd, doesn't it?
There may be reasons for everything ultimately. But trying to pursue those reasons and live by them is, in a practical sense, impossible much of the time. That's why the absurdists urge us to dispense with that sort of thing. They call that kind of life "inauthentic."
As I said before, I mostly disregard the absurdists. They're too emotional for me. I like the Platonic route. But the absurdists have good criticisms of the Platonic route. Ultimately, such a route has its limits. As I live more, I realize that some things don't have an answer. (Or at least not an answer I can ever realize like I want to realize it.) So wisdom dictates I don't try. As Nietzsche wrote, "Wisdom sets limits, even to reason."
edit: Actually I think the Nietzsche quote is ""Wisdom sets limits, even to KNOWLEDGE." But my misquotation isn't bad either.