in search of wisdom: Existentialism =/= Nihilism (?)

insearchofwisdom:

Please, stop posting about how existentialists think the world is meaningless. This is an incredibly skewed understanding of existentialist theory and further perpetuates the false conception of it as a depressing and self-defeating movement. To quickly clarify:

I cause the world to be in my contingency since the mere fact that I exist necessarily presupposes a world. This is not to say that I create the world; rather, my existence presupposes it.

Because of my situatedness in the world and the fact that all engagements and experiences occur from a given perspective (of which I am the center), I perceive the world as an instrumental complex that involves a relation to me in some way or another (the book is on the table to the left of the cup, for example).

Additionally, this situatedness and way of engaging with and experiencing the world presents me with choices, since it structures my possibilities and affords certain projects that I may take on for myself (a simple example being to drink from the cup on the table, or read the book).

The way I engage with and experience the world is, to some degree, a meaningful endeavor which the world itself affords, since again, my existence is contingent. (This is something that would need much further elaboration, but is not necessary for our current purposes.)

Since the individual and the world are inseparable, and meaning is necessarily afforded by the world in the individual’s engagement with it, it follows that meaning is inseparable from the world itself. The point, however, is that meaning is contingent, and not necessary; therefore, it is better to think of it as ambiguous.

For those of you who just read Myth of Sisyphus and think the world is absurd, remember that Camus thinks the absurd is the bond between the individual and the world as the individual engages with the world in search of clarity. Camus wasn’t a nihilist; otherwise Sisyphus couldn’t take joy in the fact that his condemnation was his own.