Existentialism and ASD

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@The_Znof

I am with you on Buber… ‘I and Thou’ is amazing… I’ll give a more detailed response later. But big thumbs up. Buber is critical in applying these ideas to real life, not just blabbing on and on with hyper intellectual garbage.

Cool, look forward to it!

Ive not even cracked the book, but read some of Kaufmann's intro recently.

Kaufmann wtf lol

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard's (1813 - 1855) "Sickness Unto Death" is often thought of as being very difficult to understand, some even think that Kierkegaard wrote it to satirize how hard it is to understand Hegel.  Kierkegaard was a pretty angsty dude, even for an existentialist, and possibly the angstiest philosopher who ever lived. He's got a ton of super emo quotes like "My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love."  Ultimately, he thought the only true escape from anguish was to take the "leap of faith" into religion.  Whether this worked out for him we cannot really say, because he seemed to produce angsty quotes his entire life.

Kierkegaard thought people who tried to ignore or distract themselves from the human condition of having a finite life and being forced to make free choices were on the lowest stage of despair (but the worst to be in, for Kierkegaard).  They had to become more aware of this, and develop themselves by making real choices in the world.  This would cause more anxiety and despair, but eventually, he thought, the only solution would be to make the "leap of faith" into Christianity.

For Kierkegaard, there were different "levels" of despair that you could be in.  As you descended (or ascended, or whatever) the levels, you became more in touch with your despair, and more fully realized as a person.  For Kierkegaard despair was a fact of life, and it was better to be more fully conscious of your despair than trying to hide from it.

I had to read 3 of his books before realizing he was just plain weird.

When I was introduced to the concept of the veil, it was not attributed to a specific individual. I favored it as a tool for building my construct of morality due to it's tendency to reveal bias, even if that bias has a justification or rationalization. I also use a lot of Buddhist ideologies in my morality and world view.

Kant helped me accept things like "I don't have to like a choice to still make a choice", and not to use the potential consequences of my choices as the main excuse for my decisions, cos I can always choose to do that thing, AND accept the consequences of it. The ability to willingly choose the hard path over the easy path, due to the difference in results. Racing against people who are slower than you might be easier, and help you "win", but it doesn't actually help you get FASTER per se. Lowering the bar might make it easer to clear it, but it doesn't help you jump higher.

Many people seem to misunderstand the allegory of the cave, and I'll leave it at that. I use it as a reminder that even twins experience two different worlds, and that my life's experiences are entirely my own, and just cos I haven't seen it or lived it doesn't mean it isn't real. The allegory isn't just about who's "inside" and who's "outside" - the person in the cave who thinks shadows are demons is guilty of the same error as the person outside in the fields who thinks the sun is an angry god. The idea is that the limits of your knowledge and experience have an effect on your willingness to accept or even be aware of things which are beyond that limit. Just cos you know something that someone else doesn't know, doesn't mean that you know MORE than them, it just means your knowledge is DIFFERENT from theirs.

The valley of ignorance is fertile ground for imagination. In the absence of knowing, creativity takes over, with no limits to the possibilities, since the owner of the thoughts has no way of knowing better.

I don't really pay attention to who comes up with which ideas, save for a few specific individuals (Kant, Skinner, et al). Even people who's ideas I largely disagree with have made valid points that I've incorporated into my ideology (Pascal's Wager). I freely intermix the various schools of thought, and rather than using them as a strict framework, see them as a toolbox of possible ways to interact with the world I exist as part of. At this point I don't so much "study philosophers" as I rummage though their pockets for useful items or loose ideas, and leave the rest behind. Usually I'll just point out that the hierarchy of needs doesn't HAVE to be sequential or linear, rather than get all technical about how Mazlow's version differs from Herzberg's - I have to do that enough formally, so I get a little lazy when it's conversational.

I had the impression that a lot of what makes American culture different from European cultures is this heavy focus on individual identity - being American is supposed to be about freesom, but the obvious question this raises is what freedom means, and how to practice that freedom. Follow your dreams - well, what are your dreams? - Do what thou wilt - but what wilt thou?

The American "tradition" has existentialist questions baked into it.

Which is funny to think about: if you happen to be born in the US, you are pushed into following your dreams -
as in: there's circumstance and a bit of involuntariness involved. I mean, you're not being asked whether you want to be free or maybe rather have some security instead.
it's the freedom of being pushed out of a car onto a lonely street at night.


I have not read Harris or given him much attention, except for some brief look inro what he has to say. - he brushed away all of the history of philosophy to introduce his own terminology, and as I was listening a few counterarguments from the history of philosophy came to my mind- but he wasn't going to adress those, because he did away with 2400 years of debating the thing he claims to have figured out.
it's like if I came up with a theory of everything but you have to learn my new math before you can check whether the equation even makes sense syntactically - and I don't accept what your boring old math says, because I invented my own.
so... yeah... there's a very high chance, someone has had his ideas before, and someone else found a flaw in them. that's the history of philosophy.

@Fnord

Thanks Fnord.. yeah Kierkegaard is really really an oddball. I have not read “sickness’ but I recently read “Fear and Trembling” I had to read it twice because i got so lost. Along with the book ‘Kierkegaard for Beginners’ by Donald Palmer, I think I was able to piece together a rudimentary understanding. I don’t think I will every really ‘get’ Kierkegaard.. When I consider the whole notion of ‘indirect truth’ and his use of pseudonyms the layers get very complex. I do think I get the feeling of his work.. its hard to get it into words as I think he is trying to express ideas beyond the reach of language through language which may be an intentional paradox… I do find him pretty funny. I think he was being funny a lot of the time with talking about people getting hit on the head with tiles falling from roofs etc.. Anyway thanks for what you wrote and I will keep it in mind one day when I tackle “Sickness”.

@Laputian (Are you a fan of Laputa?)

Please don't apologise, it's always intellectually invigorating to have somebody explore topics deeper than superficially skimming over a deep pool of historic knowledge.

I should have specified I am referring to socratic thinking and not so much the socratic method which you are correct is a form of pure rationalism. In this respect I only use this method when speaking to others or reading books to help uncover the assumptions and evidence that underpin people's thoughts in respect of problems/issues/phenomena. Science is after all a combination of deduction and reason.

How one chooses to weigh up the evidence gleaned from books, articles or personal conversation is based on how deeply they scrutinise the veracity of the evidence underpinning the information gleaned. There are always gaps in knowledge and when you take information from others its up to you as an individuals to approximate as close as possible what is truth from the evidence. But in the first instance its important to remove/partial out the assumptions that carry no weight other than opinion. This is where socratic thinking (or my interpretation of it) is useful.

But I respect people's need to justify some assumptions related to faith, culture, music, relgion etc which they may have an emotional attachment not subject to cold rational objectivism or empiricism. It may have functional value.

With regard to Hinduism being older than Greek? Not actually true. Hinduism is an amalgam of early Indo-European beliefs that are of equal antiquity to Greek philosophy, Hindu oral tradition is much older than written, If you go by written records then Greek is actually much older than Sanskrit (ancient Greek and Sanskrit are actually very close languages). There is a remarkable intersectionality in that the oldest hindu god from the Rig Veda (Indra) is infact synonymous with Zeus (the sky father),

Secondly Socrates philosophy came from a long tradition not just with Plato but with Solon and the ancient scholars in the ancient library of Alexandria in Egypt, Almost all Greek scholars attest their knowledge came from the priests of Egypt which long predates hinduism. If you want to know about the origins of pre-Hindu faith of India I will need to take you on a journey.

I'm a big fan of Graham Hancock's books on ancient civilisations and his early work actually predicted the discovery of Gobleke Tepe. Up to that time archaeologists considered Palaeolithic hunter gathers incapable of building anything, Hancock proposed that the end of the ice age sunk many advanced pre-deluvian civilisations, His ideas were largely ignored by science. Then evidence has turned up about underwater cities in south America, Asia and India which were not supposed to exist (10,000 yrs ago), Gobekli tepe is supposed to be 12,000 yrs old but there appear to be stones buried underneath suggesting it predates the ice age.,

@Cyberdad

Absolutely fascinating information … I’m getting nervous about reading your responses because they set me off on a frenzy of reading and i have a difficult time stopping as I get so obsessed with learning.. and I actually have to work today. Hah.. great stuff.. and all makes a lot of sense about the link between Egypt and Greece.

This could seriously open up an unescapable knowledge Rabbit Hole… but what are your thoughts on the Antikythera Mechanism? (Perhaps this deserves its own thread… )

What about the ethico religious sphere.

Is it real or a systematic joke


edit: to be honest, this is a paraphrase of a dead posters question. His handles include Wilbro99 and aasor (all astir of reflection) aasor's sidekicks he threw in way back were "Touchstone" and "Hemlock"

I met him at "Kierkegaard on the Internet" in 1998, last posted with him 2014 at KFA (Krishnamurti Foundation of America) He died around 2016 or so.

He used the term "Polemical Device" where I used systematic joke, I cant exactly remember how he phrased the "is it real" part of the question, which is probably why my words suck so bad on that part.


Also if his quote bin is lost that is my fault too.

'All Things Are Possible' (Shestov) was a quick but potent read.

I have to wonder how many people who read existentialism find a lot of solace in stoicism as well, it really seems like it's mostly the same issues and contemplations of life just set back in antiquity. Seneca truly lived it, pretty much strapped to a human bomb of a madman who he knew in the end would get him killed, and in the end he was right.

Shestov Rocks

Probably. I could quote Shakespeare's Hamlet (BTW Shakespeare was remarkable adept at embedding philosophy in his writing to fly under the radar of the church) Hamlet suggests that human knowledge is limited: There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy [science].

The antikythera mechanism is a window into how the evolution of human technology and science is subject to the principle (that also applies to biological evolution) of punctuated equilibrium. This is simply where technological, scientific and philosophical developments can be lost and the flame of knowledge is not passed on to future generations due to cataclysm (floods, earthquakes, tidal waves) or war, I mentioned the library of Alexndria, the key/blueprint to this antikythera mechanism might well have burned with the library in ancient times after Alexander the great himself rampaged through the city, The apparently advanced science of the greek Archimedes died with him, many of his strange weapons for example which were so successful in protecting Athens were never used again.

There are other strange examples including the use of batteries in ancient times and the knowledge of creating mechanisms to generate an electrical current. This knowledge was lost in the rubble of invasion and only remerged in the age of the European enlightenment.

Albert Camus’ ‘The Stranger’ (or more aptly ‘The Outsider’) is arguably the single most important and popular work of existential literature. The main character Meursault exhibits many traits of ASD and multiple essays and analyses have pointed this out.

I was recently diagnosed with ASD as an adult. I’m in my mid 50’s (so I’m very very new to all this and I don’t know much!). Since I first read ‘The Stranger’ at age 16, I have been profoundly drawn to Camus’s novel and felt deeply connected to Meursault. For the last few decades I have been studying existential philosophy, never realizing this connection to ASD.

Could the core of existentialism, with its focus on angst and isolation, the sense of estrangement, its description of the ‘monstrous’ nature of freedom, actually be about or describing ASD? Is the notion of being on the ‘Wrong Planet’ synonymous with existentialism?

Can someone present a strong argument that the character Meursalt is NOT a description of someone on the spectrum? If existentialism is deeply connected to ASD what can be learned from this? Could there be nuggets of wisdom within the philosophy that could be utilized to better the lives of those of us living on the spectrum?

I thought he was in the dissociated, anhedonic state depressed people sometimes fall into.
It could be either way, ASD and/or depression, but I don't see anything that points towards as ASD as indispuably more likely than the other.
Camus's biography doesn't particularly point towards ASD as likely...

Mersault just isn't nerdy.
So either it's breaking with the clichée, before it even existed, or it's a particularly realistic character study. Neither seens likely to me, because Mersault feels very much like a plot device...

I think existentialism is connected to existential questions, which are associated with depression. After all, the main question is: why not kill yourself?
- which doesn't sound like a specifically Aspie problem to me

As someone who has spent decades studying existentialism, I assure you, and can demonstrate, that existentialism is the antithesis of ‘depression’.

It is the philosophy of how to be the author of your own existence, or as Nietzsche said it ‘how to become who you are’. It is about ultimate responsibility for being who you choose to be.

Existentialism has been presented superficially and is often characterized in the media to represent depression by those who only glance at it.. without really taking a deep dive. I think a lot of people are intimidated by the audacity and profundity of the insights of the existential philosophers.

If you think existentialism has anything at all to do with ‘depression’ i encourage you to read ‘How to be an existentialist ‘ by Gary Cox.. it is short and to the point and really fun and brilliantly life affirming! He’s a wonderful writer on philosophy!!

I also find The Stranger to be a life affirming and very positive book. Alienation need not be negative.. it’s all about how you choose to frame it and first knowing that it is in fact a choice!

The 1980s rock band the butthole surfers made a two valid comments that sum up existentialism

1. You never know just how you look through other people's eyes
2. You never know just how to look through other people's eyes

The second one is the important one because its the one we can control.

The entire philosophy of existentialism is an exercise in group psychology. We dive into the world/universe through other people's eyes,