Author Topic: Depressive Realism  (Read 4518 times)

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Nation of One

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Depressive Realism
« on: December 26, 2015, 10:31:07 am »
When someone asks me how I'm doing, I think I'll just respond with "mildly depressed".

If they ask me if I am an atheist, I'll say, "Most likely.  I like to refer to myself either as a Depressive Realist or a Cosmic Pessimist.  I don't know.  Maybe Comic Pessimist is more accurate."

 :-\
« Last Edit: December 28, 2015, 08:41:08 am by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Holden

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Re: Cosmic or Comic Pessimism ?
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2015, 01:26:17 pm »
I don't think I could maintain even a little bit of cheerfulness if I were younger and was still deluded about "getting somewhere" with my studies.

While I am younger,I will try not to get deluded about "getting somewhere" with my studies.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Re: Cosmic or Comic Pessimism ?
« Reply #2 on: December 27, 2015, 03:13:28 pm »
My intention is not to discourage you from your studies, but to encourage you to pursue your studies without regard to being acknowledged by society.

This is just from my own experience.
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2016, 07:13:54 pm »
" ... it is often impossible to separate a 'bad mood' from a philosophical proposition (and do not all philosophies stem from a bad mood)?"

~ Eugene Thacker, Cosmic Pessimism c.2015


Here's that essay I pointed to while researching Zapffe:  What You Call Depression I Call the Truth

Quote from: Nat (JQ)
The forms of madness which hide madness from the mad are considered sane, despite the obvious insanity of self-delusion. The forms of madness which recognize madness are considered insane, despite the obvious sanity of telling it like it is.

I wrote a little note yesterday which might sum it up:  Oh, I’m crazy, alright. In a world as backward as this one, I worry about the sanity of anyone who isn’t crazy.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2016, 08:44:57 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #4 on: January 03, 2016, 10:40:22 pm »
What I have tried to do for years is to try to be brutally honest with myself.  This may not make for very exciting literature.  It may even cultivate a depressive mood "disorder".

The kinds of things I try to understand may aggravate this sense of futility, and if this is the case, rather than just lose interest in everything, I want to be able to forge ahead, even at a turtle's pace.  My keeping track of daily existence in my notebooks, along with notes on what I am studying, is all I produce. 

I would like to keep it this way.  If one finds one's life ridiculous, and one finds highways, wars over fossil fuels, and TV Land celebrity culture a kind of nightmarish carnival, there may be a method available to us to view our daily existence as some kind of existential novel/film ...

Have you ever found yourself reflecting on python snakes, sharks, poisonous insects, psychopathic human beings, extreme weather, deformed births, and the countless horrors taking place at any given moment?  And then there's just plain living.  What a drag!

How weird I must seem to those who get a thrill over stupid sporting events ... that I am excited over a mathematics textbook or a little book called "Every Cradle is a Grave:  Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide".

I remember when I was 14 years old reading Ira Levin's THIS PERFECT DAY.  I was fascinated.  I had never read a book like that.  I always wondered why Hollywood wouldn't touch it ... maybe it was just too much like our reality ... reality is not America's cup of tea.

I also remember reading Hesse's Steppenwolf when I was young.  Has it not been referred to as autobiographical fiction?

Isn't Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night also kind of autobiographical?

Well, now I am reaching the exact age that the protagonist, Harry Haller in Steppenwolf, was.  He was determined to end his life on his 50th birthday.  Can I really have reached the age of the Steppenwolf ... I am similar in many ways to Harry Haller, I think.

So I will keep scribbling my notes in a private notebook the way Harry Haller did, the way countless others do.  Even if not so many keep an actual notebook, they keep one in their heads.  Each morning and each night, there is how we really think and feel, and only we know what it is we truly think and feel.  The thing is, I think I get actual relief from writing.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2016, 12:47:47 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #5 on: January 05, 2016, 03:23:47 am »
Have you ever found yourself reflecting on python snakes, sharks, poisonous insects, psychopathic human beings, extreme weather, deformed births, and the countless horrors taking place at any given moment?  And then there's just plain living.

Yes.That Thou Art.I could have been a snake eating my own young ones.Gorts think they could have been the guy who is going to French Riviera with his young comely bride.
I reject them both.
I wonder if like the Jews who write commentaries on Old Testament, I could spend my whole life writing about WWR.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2016, 06:33:53 am »
Quote from: Eugene Thacker
The Ruins of a Book

Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation is one of the great failures of systematic philosophy.  What begins with the shimmering architectonics of Kant ends up crumbling into dubious arguments, irascible indictments against humanity, nocturnal evocations of the vanity of all being, cryptic quotes from the Upanishads, and stark, aphoristic phrases, entombed within dense prose, prose that trails off in meditations on nothingness.  Schopenhauer, the depressive Kant.

“Your book is a failure.” —- “No doubt, but you are forgetting that I wanted it to be one, and that it could hardly be a success otherwise.”  ~ Cioran

Quote from: Holden
I wonder if like the Jews who write commentaries on Old Testament, I could spend my whole life writing about WWR.

If you do that, I would be very interested in which parts of Schopenhauer's opus speak to you in particular, since you are such a forgiving reader - as far as having insight into one's inner rage, frustration, and disappointment, how one must act as if it is a perfectly acceptable activity to critique this contrivance of horror.

I was encouraged when you innocently confessed to being put off or confused by the very part of Schopenhauer's work, the beginning of WWR, with its shimmering architectonics of Kant, where he demands his readers read Kant first.  But Kant is not so interesting as Schopenhauer.  He doesn't seem to reveal that inner tension ...

I say I was encouraged, because you appear to have been attracted to the very things Eugene Thacker considers one of the great failures of systematic philosophy, and I am curious to see if we are attracted to the same elements of Schopenhauer's opus.  I wonder if we both find this great failure of systematic philosophy Schopenhauer's greatest, albeit accidental, success. 

It would be thrilling to witness you spending your life thinking and writing about those parts of WWR that crumble into dubious arguments, irascible indictments against humanity, nocturnal evocations of the vanity of all being, cryptic quotes from the Upanishads, and stark, aphoristic phrases, entombed within dense prose, prose that trails off in meditations on nothingness.

HT aka Holden Caulfield II - the depressive Nietzsche of India ...

You see, even as you appear young as an individual, you are culturally far older and, I suspect, far wiser than Nietzsche.  Looking back only as far as the Greeks or the Hebrews is a joke of cosmic proportions.  You, Holden, have far deeper roots, and you might be able to discern just where Schopenhauer (let's call him an accidental genius of European culture) was articulating truths that far more ancient beings figured out long ago.   

Schopenhauer was well aware of this, and I always respected him for pointing out, that while "modern man" is impressed with the "new" ... our species may have reached its heights closer to its origins, and now we are in a decadent phase, drowning in stupidity, despite our technological sophistication.  Perhaps these are symptoms of the great tiredness.

I rose at 4AM this morning.  It is 12 degrees Fahrenheit = -11 Celsius

The weather mocks my words ... Maybe this is what the ancient Hebrews (the people of the book) mistook for ... that word they were not supposed to say ...



Now, there is something I want to do before I carry my carcass to day jail.  From my experience with the Internet over the years, obscure yet great little message boards are always disappearing while commercialized corporate websites pollute cyberspace like so many strip malls in the "outer realm".   So, I want to get some quotes from the blog post I linked to above.

I will start a separate entry, forever organizing our chaos.  Chaos is ok.  It is the nature of our thinking.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2016, 08:46:02 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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A Post By So-Sad-Today
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2016, 06:56:41 am »
I want to lift the text of a post by So-Sad-Today just for posterity.  I will not have time to comment, but would like to make it a part of this thread.

Quote from: So Sad Today
What You Call Depression I Call the Truth

 Does the truth really set you free, or does it only f-u-c-k you up? This is what I'm wondering as my psychiatrist and I continue to adjust my meds, looking for the right combination to keep an existential doom from eclipsing me. Simultaneously, I'm working with a cognitive-behavioral therapist on the "meaning" that I assign these feelings. She's trying to help me be less afraid of them.

I'm still afraid. But I've begun to think that these feelings are trying to tell me something pure and true—a message from my soul about the way I live my life and the nature of life itself. Primarily, they are telling me that the way I've been living is no longer working.

It is said that what we resist persists, and I have been trying to suppress these feelings my whole life. But only recently have I begun to really look at what they are—all of the layers that comprise what the Norwegian metaphysician, Peter Wessel Zapffe, describes as "cosmic panic." Now it seems that I can no longer ignore what part of me has always known, which is that life is absurd and terrifying. Perhaps we should be afraid of the truth?

In his 1933 essay " The Last Messiah," Zapffe describes depression as the over-evolution of the mind. He compares the mind of the anxious or depressed person to a particular type of deer from paleontological times, who were thought to have died off after acquiring overly-heavy horns.

"In depressive states," he writes, "the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendor pinning its bearer to the ground."

 He also conveys the idea that the mind of the anxious or depressed person may be more awake, or connected to a deeper truth, than that of other people.

"Depression, 'fear of life,' refusal of nourishment and so on are invariably taken as signs of a pathological state and treated thereafter," he writes. "Often, however, such phenomena are messages from a deeper, more immediate sense of life, bitter fruits of a geniality of thought or feeling at the root of antibiological tendencies. It is not the soul being sick, but its protection failing, or else being rejected because it is experienced— correctly—as a betrayal of ego's highest potential."

So why isn't everyone suffering from depression? What is this "protection" that I, like most people, have been able to cobble together throughout much of my life? And what is it that makes a person suddenly, and scarily, see through it?

This protection, as Wessel describes it, is composed of four defense mechanisms: isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation.

Isolation, according to Wessel, is not the solitary confinement of the self (though I do a lot of that). Rather, it is the banishing of scary thoughts about the nature of existence, meaninglessness, personal freedom, and death, into the periphery of the mind. I used to be better at this maybe? Or I used to be able to fake it better, especially when it came to what Wessel calls the general code of "mutual silence" in which we don't bring up scary thoughts in our daily, superficial interactions with other people.

As a poet, I've been able to relegate my exploration of these thoughts and feelings to the realm of my art. But lately, it's been harder and harder for me to keep my social mask on in mundane interactions. It physically hurts me now to interact at this level, to have a "pleasant" yet superficial conversation with another person, because I wonder: Why aren't you consumed by these thoughts and feelings? Are you not devoured by fear? If not, then what is wrong with me? And if so, then why are we both denying the existence of this fear and talking about bull-sh-it? I feel like we should all be hugging and crying, or something.

The second defense mechanism, anchoring, is to identify oneself with various social constructs: one's family role, job, religion, morality, position in society, physicality, goals. When we anchor ourselves to these external identities, we are able to construct "walls around the liquid fray of consciousness." The potential for existential crisis then occurs either when these ideas of who we are become opposed to one another, or, when we lose them entirely: a job, a loved one, or another external element that helped us to define who we are.

One loss that I've experienced recently is the desire to impress certain people, or seduce them with my achievements. One might think this is a good thing. But it's left me with a feeling of meaninglessness.

I've achieved a lot lately in terms of creative goals. But now I'm eluded as to why it should even matter. I feel like, well, if this person I had a crush on is now blocked on Facebook, he can no longer see what I've achieved. So what's really the point of achieving it?

Is it possible for me to be happy for myself in my creative accomplishments? I'm ashamed to say that the answer, for now, still looks to be no. The accomplishments feel hollow and pointless. In the face of death, perhaps they are. Even the work I do to help others—the girls I mentor and the dog I rescued—I seem to deconstruct. My new obsession is that the girls and the dog all eat animals. So while I am helping them with their suffering, they are causing suffering for other beings. Thus, I am only enabling more suffering. Also, I eat McDonald's sometimes too.

I'm finding the same lack of refuge in distractions that once protected me from feelings of doom. There are ways I've compulsively busied myself so I didn't have to think about deeper questions. I obsessed about my physical appearance, love, achievements. I waxed body parts, ****ed with my eating, and waited for texts. I've never been good at watching TV, but now I feel like I'm suffocating the moment I even turn it on. It seems like a lot of these tactics are being stripped away by some unseen force.

Perhaps this is what they mean on the depression questionnaire when they say, "Have you lost interest in activities you once enjoyed?" They say it like losing interest is a bad thing. But what if the truth is that those activities were always stupid, meaningless, and destructive? What if I am getting closer to a higher truth?

One thing that does keep me going is sublimation: the channeling of these experiences into this column. The act of writing provides a meaning and a framework to scary thoughts and feelings. It makes them feel less bottomless. But what if bottomlessness is the truth? Why am I so quick to be afraid of what is real?

Something inside of me says I should I be running as fast as I can from an awareness of meaninglessness, death, endless questioning. Another part of me says no: you should follow the destruction of what you think you know. There will be something higher on the other side.

I will print this out and go over it while caught up in the web of the Thought Police with their artificial authority and misguided, overbearing concern about how I'm "feeling".   ::) >:(
« Last Edit: January 05, 2016, 08:46:54 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Schopenhauer Contra Nietzsche
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2016, 04:44:24 pm »
Schopenhauer defiantly faced reality and slew all the bull****.
Nietzsche was a confused child.
He didn't understand that Schopenhauer had laid the foundation for truth.
N. built ignorance on Schopenhauer's foundation and claimed to have surpassed him.
What a fool!
He single handedly undermined all the work of Schopenhauer, and perpetuated ignorance.
'Will to Power'? Ha!
(In fairness, you lost your mind too young. Perhaps you would have one day grown to be a man.)

The N. drones don't understand Schopenhauer, or they're too scared to embrace him.
I accept Schopenhauer with open heart.
**** his debasers. Cowards, the lot of them.
Schopenhauer was right, and his Will to Live was misrepresented.
The only integrity found within N., are all elements of Schopenhauer.
N. piggy backed on Schopenhauer, and was an accomplice to centuries of ignorance.
Schopenhauer had it right.
Schopenhauer was rejected by society.They waited until his death, before they derailed his thought.
But the truth doesn't die.
N.'s actions are of an irrelevant child, misunderstanding the genius of a man.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2016, 04:53:56 pm by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #9 on: January 05, 2016, 06:19:43 pm »
I have had similar feelings concerning Nietzsche.  I was put off from the start by how he turned on Schopenhauer ... but, alas ... I would then find the shelves of book stores lined with Nietzsche's books ... and I was not interested too much in Heidegger since he promoted Nietzsche's work but ignored Schopenhauer.  Shameful.

For Nietzsche to present himself as having surpassed Schopenhauer with the use of clever sayings,  I pity the fool.  As you so brutally point out, he is a boy whistling in the dark.  For his entire life he was haunted by Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation.  For us, reading Shopenhauer's opus is a consolation.  We know truth when we hear it!  We stand in truth!

Quote
N. built ignorance on Schopenhauer's foundation and claimed to have surpassed him.

What a fool!

He single handedly undermined all the work of Schopenhauer, and perpetuated ignorance.

'Will to Power'? Ha!

Anyway, I was a little more frustrated than usual today by the mandatory and redundant "positive thinking" therapy-as-punishment.   When I returned to the Mother's domicile, the hot water heater was leaking into the bathroom.  I had just received Colin Feltham's Keeping Ourselves in the Dark as well as Sarah Perry's Every Cradle is a Grave:  Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide.  All I wanted to do is read some honest assessments of our pitiful reality, but .... well, I turned off the electric to the water heater, shut off the water, and am draining the tank with a hose (that was packed with ice) into the tub.  What the hose doesn't drain, I'll do with a pan.  It's a wonderful life.   ::)

Also, there are other problems having to do with banks and loans and losing house, but let's not discuss such things.  Those kinds of worries will cause premature heart failure.  I know, it is tempting, isn't it?   I'm not too keen on worrying myself to death ...

I think your rant against Nietzsche was justified and understandable.  I too am a Schopenhauer disciple.   I won't refer to you as the depressive Nietzsche of India.  I see that that might be insulting considering how he turned Schopenhauer on his head ... Will-to-Power - jeezuz.

Maybe by honoring Schopenhauer, we might shame Nietzsche.  Maybe one day we might work on a book together ... or, we'll just work it out here and ignore the book publishing industry.  Let them continue peddling their self-help, religion, positive psychology, and ... energy drain ... We will just work out what we can here.  We'll do what we can, and that's all we can ask of ourselves. 

Thank you for your bold honesty.  I guess I sometimes pity Nietzsche too much.  Evidently, you are taking your gloves off. 

As frustrated and "shaky" as I am, I am relieved to have a couple books that could serve as an antidote to some of the bulls-h-i-t I am fed on a daily basis as "therapy" ...

Now our attitudes can be criminalized!   Talk about the thought police.  Holy F*ck, it is infuriating.
____________________________________________
AFTERTHOUGHT:  At least the tank is drained and did not flood the unit.  We'll call a plumber in the morning and pray it doesn't need to be replaced.
______________________________________________

Ah, those books came just in time.

Maybe these books will keep me calm tomorrow.  It is better I quietly fester than to become too vocal about my disgruntled attitude.   The demon was on a roll today.  Old Captain Howdy made an appearance ... laughing up a storm ... but it was angry laughter.  How to explain?  Just that.  Angry laughter.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2016, 11:01:15 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #10 on: January 06, 2016, 02:01:19 pm »
I came across this today on a philosophy forum:

I'm not aware of too many seminars on Schopenhauer being offered, but my university and my former university (I transferred) both held Hegel seminars, which could be a reason Hegel philosophy continues to propagate. Personally, as a philosophy major during undergrad, the only experience I ever had with Schopenhauer was through Nietzsche. He talked about him so much I figured I would give him a read. No professor ever taught his philosophy. Again, this is the opposite for Hegel. So, in short, in my experiences, Hegel is more popular
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #11 on: January 06, 2016, 06:16:10 pm »
Oh, there certainly is something fishy in Denmark.

This is why I would never, and I mean NEVER suggest choosing Philosophy as a major to study in the University.

It is best to just study Schopenhauer and do your own thinking.  I had taken some philosophy courses to fulfil Humanities requirements, and the professor confessed to me that I taught him about Schopenhauer.  He really appreciated my term papers.  Years later, he happened to have my nephew as a student, and my nephew wrote a paper on the various ideas Freud used that were obviously spin-offs of Schopenhauer's philosophy, such as the unconscious (being the Will). 

Remember the Critique of Power Thread?

Quote from: Bryan Magee
Schopenhauer despised Fichte and Schelling, but he hated Hegel and described him as ‘that clumsy and nauseating charlatan, that pernicious person, who completely disorganized and ruined the minds of a whole generation.’    On almost any square foot of ground in the landscape of his writings a geyser of wrath may suddenly erupt, spewing out imprecations against the same three men. ‘What was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make use of this privilege; Schelling at best equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel…’

Hegel, said Schopenhauer, was ‘a commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive and ignorant charlatan, who with unparalleled effrontery compiled a system of crazy nonsense that was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his mercenary followers…’

I do not think anything in the whole history of philosophy compares with this invective by one now world-famous philosopher against another, especially when one considers that they were near-contemporaries and colleagues.

I see what Schopenhauer meant.  I stay clear of philosophers who complicate things with their jargon. 

I follow my own gut.  I trust Schopenhauer.  I don't trust the universities.  Like I said, there's something very fishy in Denmark.

You know, that quote from a philosophy forum is kind of revealing.  Here the person concludes that Hegel is more popular.  Is it just me, or don't you want to reply, "No S-H-I-T Sherlock."

No kidding Hegel is more popular.  That is common knowledge, right?  The more interesting question is what merit is popularity?

Just because something is popular does not make it virtuous. 

To me, the absence of Schopenhauer in the curriculum is because Schopenhauer is ignored, either out of ignorance or out of fear.  Why would the professors of universities promote a philosopher who did not pay deference to professional academic professors of philosophy?

What is a gort?

( The Short Answer ) : A gort is someone who believes that “That which is so, is so.”

If someone perceives Hegel as being more significant a thinker than Schopenhauer because he is taught in our universities, my phenomenological radar might detect a gort.  Neither of us probably have the will to bust the gorts.  It is more relaxing not giving a damn about the perceptions and views of other subjectivities. 

"The first repsonsibility we have is to recognize the gort inside ourselves, and to insure that it will never take control of the human consciousness control panel in the brain’s command center."

"There is a tradition of human awareness in the history and evolution of our species. Let us be part of it."

« Last Edit: January 07, 2016, 10:19:49 am by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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Re: Depressive Realism
« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2016, 05:33:08 pm »
A 16 page paper by Eugene Thacker: DARKLIFE: NEGATION, NOTHINGNESS, AND THE WILL-TO-LIFE IN SCHOPENHAUER

Quote from: Eugene Thacker
As Schopenhauer evocatively notes, every manifestation of the Will-to-Life is doubled by a kind of Willlessness (Willenslosigkeit), every sense of the world-for-us doubled by a world-without-us. Pessimism for Schopenhauer is not so much an individual, personal attitude, but really a cosmic one – an impersonal attitude. The indifference of the Will-to-Life thus stretches from the micro-scale to the macro-scale: 

Thus everyone in this twofold regard is the whole world itself, the microcosm; he finds its two sides whole and complete within himself. And what he thus recognizes as his own inner being also exhausts the inner being of the whole world, the macrocosm. Thus the whole world, like man himself, is through and through will and through and through representation, and beyond this there is nothing.

In an enigmatic way, negation courses through Schopenhauer’s notion of the Will-to-Life. Evocations of the Will-to-Life as “nothing” or “nothingness” recur throughout Schopenhauer’s writings. Certainly Schopenhauer was influenced by his encounter with classical texts in the Buddhist traditions.  As we’ve noted, this type of cosmic pessimism stands in opposition to the ontology of generosity in post-Kantian Idealism, with its emphasis on overpresence, flux and flow, and the becoming of the Absolute. In response to the Kantian split between Life and the living, and in contrast to the post-Kantian ontology of generosity, Schopenhauer opts for a negative ontology of life.

However, that life is “nothing” can mean several things. The enigmatic last section of WWR I bears out some of these meanings. Here Schopenhauer makes use of Kant’s distinction between two kinds of nothing: the nihil privativum or privative nothing, and the nihil negativum or negative nothing. The former is nothing defined as the absence of something (e.g. shadow as absence of light, death as absence of life). For Schopenhauer the world is nothing in this privative sense as this interplay between Representation and Will; the world, with all its subject-object relations, as well as its ongoing suffering and boredom, is transitory and ephemeral. By contrast, the indifferent Will-to-Life courses through and cuts across it all, all the while remaining in itself inaccessible, and “nothing.”

The problem is that, at best, we have a limited and indirect access to the world as a nihil privativum, and “so long as we ourselves are the will-to-live, this last, namely the nothing as that which exists, can be known and expressed by us only negatively.”  For Schopenhauer the very fact that there is no getting outside the world of the nihil privativum hints at a further negation, one that is not a relative but an absolute nothingness:

...in opposition to this nihil privativum, the nihil negativum has been set up, which would in every respect be nothing...But considered more closely, an absolute nothing, a really proper nihil negativum, is not even conceivable, but everything of this kind, considered from a higher standpoint or subsumed under a wider concept, is always only a nihil privativum.

At this point it seems that one must say – or think – nothing more. It is as if philosophy ultimately leads to its own negation, to Wittgenstein’s claim that what cannot be thought must be passed over in silence. That WWR closes with an enigmatic affirmation of life as nothingness is indicative of the limits of Schopenhauer’s negative ontology. On the one hand the Will-to-Life is nothingness because, considered as the interplay between Life and the living, the Will-to-Life in itself is never something in an affirmative or positive sense. But Schopenhauer suggests that the Will-to-Life is nothingness for a further reason, which is that, in itself, the Will-to-Life indicates that which is never manifest, that which is never an objectification of the Will, that which is never a Will for a Representation. To the relative nothingness of the nihil privativum there is the absolute nothingness (absolutes Nichts) of the nihil negativum. While Schopenhauer is himself opposed to the post-Kantian Idealists, he is united with them in his interest in the concept of the Absolute, albeit one paradoxically  grounded in nothingness.

His contribution is to have thought the Absolute without resorting to the ontology of generosity and its undue reliance on romantic conceptions of Life, Nature, and the human. To the negative ontology of life, it would seem, therefore, that there is an kind of meontology of life. It is for this reason that Schopenhauer can close WWR I by stating that “this very real world of ours with all its suns and galaxies, is – nothing.”
« Last Edit: January 15, 2016, 09:35:19 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Re: Depressive Realism [Colin Feltham]
« Reply #13 on: October 14, 2017, 01:15:08 am »
What's Wrong with Us: The Anthropathology Thesis by Colin Feltham   (fixed link as of 2017.10.14)

I was relieved to find the above as Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Explorations in Mental Health) is prohibitively expensive.   
« Last Edit: October 14, 2017, 10:07:26 am by Non Serviam »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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Re: Depressive Realism [David Benatar]
« Reply #14 on: October 16, 2017, 10:13:35 am »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~