Embrace emotional illogical motives?

As people who have denied the existence of meaning and reason.. but decide to make their own "reason" to live.. does this entail just throwing yourself into a world of emotional impulsion?

There is no objective meaning in the world.. and therefore we are not going to be able to create it ourselves. But existentialists live through creating their own meaning.

The meaning they create can therefore only be subjective and meaningless motive.

We are void of reason but we are not void of emotion. Emotion makes us human beings... otherwise we would be complex machines with no drive.

Should we just embrace love freedom and emotion? Regardless of whether or not they have any meaning, should we just stand for a cause because it takes us on a journey? Isn't it all about the journey as apposed to the reason for the journey?

Should existentialists live a multicolored life of emotional splurge and artistic expression and creation?

Is the beauty of the world in it's meaningless wonder and experience?

 

The appearance of the world is without meaning though to the Existentialist.

 

Existentialism seems logically to lead either to hedonism (if you have the balls to go with it), or malaise (if you don't). You're either comfortable doing whatever you want, or you're too self-conscious to do so.

I don't think anyone can be an existentialist unless they've been raised at such, because severing emotional responses requires a conscious motivation, which in turn requires a reason which, as an existentialist, you shouldn't really have.

 

please explain.

 

People all over the world are living for reasons they created themselves.. not particularly enpowering ones.. but nevertheless reasons.

Just as Christians (IMO) are living fairly happy lives when there is no meaning in the world... an existentialist can also achieve this happiness... it's just that he does not have to follow any laws made for him.

When we are born we have no meaning in life.. we are happy.. we are brought up to believe in meaning.. we are still happy.... although it may be a shock to suddenly have this meaning taken away, (existential angst) because we are in the position of a baby again but with reasoning power, we can learn to be happy in anyway we want again.

 

I don't believe, personally, that one can revert to that child-like, semiotic state. Many try, and we can remind ourselves of it through certain kinds of art, but I don't think we can ever truly free ourselves of our upbringing or of our experiences. Maybe if one were struck with amnesia they could do it, but it's my personal belief that we are better off being aware of and factoring for our preconceptions than in trying to rid ourselves of them.

 

I don't mean that we can revert to being anything likes babies again... but we can lose any sense of meaning. We are babies again but only in that sense... we still have all our experience and thought.

 

But how can you have experience and memory of those experiences without attaching meaning? If you have memories from before your existential revelation, they're going to influence you. If you rid yourself of the conscious influences, you'll still have the unconscious ones, and if you're unaware that they're still there they'll probably be more influential on your behaviour.

 

This is like one big debate across three boards xD

Well meaning and emotion aren't the same thing. Emotion is real to us. All our past experiences never had any meaning.. we just thought they did.

All we do is realise that they have no meaning.. but they still had emotion. I think we only act upon emotion.. all our experience is registered in emotion..

The world doesn't have to have meaning for us to experience subjectively.

 

Nice donnie d mix as well.

 

I don't like the use of the word "realise". I'd prefer "assume". Existentialism is just an idea that you take up and run with. You might think of it as your eyes finally being opened to reality. But you have no point of reference for what is and isn't real.

 

That is exactly what existentialism argues for.

How can you claim all that stuff about universally sound human rights and stuff and also say i have no reference of what is and isn't real?

Existentialism is based on the fact that we don't know what is and isn't real... it doesn't take any side of the same coin it abandons logic all together.

How can you ever think you are opened to the reality of what is best for soceity?

Most theories operate within logic and what we CAN know... existentialism is different in that it refuses logic in itself. (perhaps more nihilism)

 

1. I didn't make those claims.
2. I'm not an existentialist, so I wouldn't be unable to do so if I had.

If we accept that meaning is a human artifice, this is not, to me, a sign that we need to give it up.

 

"You might think of it as your eyes finally being opened to reality. But you have no point of reference for what is and isn't real."

That is pretty much what existentialists say about other theories.
Existentialists are less "opened to reality" and more "removed from understanding of a reality".

no.. we do not need to give it up, but to use it would be fundamentally meaningless. However, why not live as though we have a reason.. even though we know there is none? This is why the title is "embrace emotional illogical motives".... is that what we are forced to do if we wish to live?

Everyone is doing the same but for different reasons. Some are living because they think there is a reason, others are living as though there is a reason.

 

Maybe, but presumably they think they have some kind of revelation that that is the sensible approach - the realisation that reality cannot be understood.

What would be illogical about embracing emotional motives if we continue to have emotions whether we are existentialists or not? Surely in the absence of meaning, we should look to what little certainty we have to find that meaning.

 

On this point i am un-sure off. It is a major issue with existentialism.. How do we deny meaning of things when we are using words that have meaning?

Even though this is hard to explain or understand.. i don't think it is a flaw in the theory. Surely it is possible for meaning to not exist..

There is nothing illogical about it because "illogical" implies that some things are "logical". I know i used it in the title.. bad choice of word.. well i guess i shouldn't have used a word at all. "Embrace emotional motives" sounds better suited. It is not illogical or logical it just is.

It is the absence of possibility to even have meaning. If meaning is an illusion then we don't even need it. We just exist and do things based on emotion.. or not at all. Meaning is not a must-have of the human race.

I believe that we have always been looking for that little bit of meaning... hence religion etc.. but everything has doubt... the flaw is not in our understanding of meaning... the flaw is in the concept of meaning itself.

Meaning will always create dead ends because we are ultimatley free of meaning.

 

Existentialists also assume that they will take whatever consequence their actions result. So it doesn't mean that existentialists are just going to commit violent rampage on their whim. Albert Camus has said: "The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions. It does not recommend crime, for this would be childish, but it restores to remorse its futility."

But Soren Kierkegaard, the first exponent of existentialism, has already solve the problem, with the leap of faith. Many later philosophers such as Sartre and Camus disagree, but it is undeniable that some people's unqualified (misguided) endorsement of Sartre would be led into chaotic hedonism. Kierkegaard is the true genius.

 

It would be easy enough to use a "consequences only" version of morality derived from existentialism to commit crime - you just have to reduce the consequences that make that crime "wrong". So stealing from someone becomes more acceptable if a) they have no friends and family, b) you kill them relatively painless afterwards, and c) no-one finds out/cares.

Of course, one should be fully aware of why one is stealing in the first place. But I think it would be a very middle-class attitude to imagine that no-one could ever come up with a good reason. It sort of depends what position in society you're at when you become an existentialist.

 

It would still burden many people's consciences to steal. That is consequence enough not to do it. An existentialist who truly and authentically doesn't feel bad about stealing and doesn't fear the external consequences (going to jail, getting beaten up, etc) is going to steal. But one who does have an active conscience or perhaps fears the external consequences will not steal.

I hate to be a nit-picker but that's not existential angst. It's existential despair.