Thursday - January 25, 2007
Nauseated Stranger
...
I am certain I got more out of Nausea this time around. The Stranger hit me about the same, I suppose. There's always been a part of me that can respond to the existential ideal. At least in the sense that Ayn Rand would say, "Existence exists". The primacy of existence is the root of everything, I suppose. While Rand was considerably more optimistic about the implications of the axiom "Existence exists", there are times that the sheer absurdity of it (according to Sartre or, perhaps more precisely, Camus) strikes me as more "real".
...
My relationship with God is probably not what most Christians' is. That's not a good thing or a bad thing necessarily. It's just the way it is. Sartre's Nausea is better for me on some days than Camus. Roquentin's angst (for lack of a better term) feels natural to me. Why am I here? I never asked to be here. Who am I? Do I even want to know? If and when I answer that question, what am I obligated to do about it? What can I do about it? Or is it and inescapable fact of life that I am indeed "condemned to be free" and must take action (according to Rand) or responsibility (sort of according to Kierkegaard)? It's all very confusing....
...
I suppose, ultimately, my biggest gripe about the
existentialists is that they don't have to be so damned upset about it! Cheer
up you miserable fuck (great song, by the way!). I'm just not sure
that existentialism
REQUIRES
being in such a bad mood all the time. But that's just me, I
guess....