What is "ignosticism"?

fuckyeahexistentialism:

Ignosticism, or igtheism, is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts. The word “ignosticism” was coined by Sherwin Wine, a rabbi and a founding figure in Humanistic Judaism.

It can be defined as encompassing two related views about the existence of God:

  1. The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of god can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless. In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term “God” is considered meaningless.
  2. The second view is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, and skips the step of first asking “What is meant by ‘God’?” before proclaiming the original question “Does God exist?” as meaningless.

Some philosophers have seen ignosticism as a variation of agnosticism or atheism, while others have considered it to be distinct. An ignostic maintains that they cannot even say whether he/she is a theist or an atheist until a sufficient definition of theism is put forth.

(via drinkthe-koolaid)

Source: Wikipedia

fuckyeahexistentialism:

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever … The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them. (New Oxford Annotated Bible, Ecclesiastes I: 2-4, 11)

But there are anomalies in life: there are just men to whom what happens should happen to the wicked, and there are wicked men to whom what happens should happen to the just. I declare that such a thing makes no sense. So I commend enjoyment, for man has no other good in this life than to eat drink and be happy; this will accompany him in his struggle during the few years which God grants him beneath the sun. (Ecc. VIII: 14-15)

Ecclesiastes is a very interesting book that essentially states that everything in life makes no sense and has no meaning. The teacher in the book goes on to say that all we, as people, can do is try to enjoy life for the infinitesimal amount of time we have been given in it.

Although, the end of the book goes on to say that happiness essentially comes from constant devotion to God, many modern Biblical scholars believe that it, like the very end of Job where God restores to Job all that he has lost, was added later, after the completion of the text, in hopes of securing it an easier path to be canonized into the Hebrew Bible.

(via Submitted by themtn)

fuckyeahexistentialism:

“Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.
Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely-make that miraculously-fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny change of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly - in YOU.”
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (Submitted by radiomars)
fuckyeahexistentialism: Waking Life (2001) Philosophy Professor: The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us. I’m afraid we’re losing the real virtues of living life passionately, in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it were a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never felt once minute of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, it’s like your life is yours to create. I’ve read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as being fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibilty, he’s not talking about something abstract. He’s not talking about the kind of self or souls that theologians would talk about. He’s talking about you and me talking, making descisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world and counting, but nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never write ourselves off or see each other as a victim of various forces. It’s always our descision who we are.
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fuckyeahexistentialism:

Waking Life (2001)

Philosophy Professor: The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us. I’m afraid we’re losing the real virtues of living life passionately, in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it were a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never felt once minute of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, it’s like your life is yours to create. I’ve read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as being fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibilty, he’s not talking about something abstract. He’s not talking about the kind of self or souls that theologians would talk about. He’s talking about you and me talking, making descisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world and counting, but nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never write ourselves off or see each other as a victim of various forces. It’s always our descision who we are.

An Existential Term a Day

fuckyeahexistentialism:

The hedgehog’s dilemma, or sometimes the porcupine dilemma, is an analogy about the challenges of human intimacy. It describes a situation in which a group of hedgehogs all seek to become close to one another in order to share their heat during cold weather. However, once accomplished, they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp quills. They must step away from one another. Though they all share the intention of a close reciprocal relationship, this may not occur for reasons which they cannot avoid.

Both Arthur Schopenhauer and Sigmund Freud have used this situation to describe what they feel is the state an individual will find themselves in relation to others. The hedgehog’s dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm, and what results is cautious behavior and weak relationships. With the hedgehog’s dilemma one is recommended to use moderation in affairs with others both because of self-interest, as well as out of consideration for others. The hedgehog’s dilemma is used to justify or explain introversion and isolationism.

(via stegosaurusplease)

Source: tomorrow-ill-be-different

Death with Professor Shelly Kagan

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? Also a clearer notion of what it is to die is examined. What does it mean to say that a person has died? What kind of fact is that? And, finally, different attitudes to death are evaluated. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is suicide morally permissible? Is it rational? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

Minimalist FAQs

Q: Why be a minimalist?

A: It’s a way to escape the excesses of the world around us — the excesses of consumerism, material possessions, clutter, having too much to do, too much debt, too many distractions, too much noise. But too little meaning. Minimalism is a way of eschewing the non-essential in order to focus on what’s truly important, what gives our lives meaning, what gives us joy and value.

Q: What are the benefits of minimalism?

A: There are many. It’s lower in stress. It’s less expensive and less debt. It’s less cleaning and maintaining. It’s more enjoyable. There’s more room for creating, for loved ones, for peace, for doing the things that give you joy. There’s more time for getting healthy. It’s more sustainable. It’s easier to organize. These are only the start.

Q: What does the schedule of a minimalist look like?

A: There’s no single answer to this question, but a minimalist would probably focus on doing less, on having a less cluttered schedule, but what’s on his or her schedule would be important. A minimalist might not actually keep a schedule or calendar, at one extreme, if he didn’t have much to do each day — he might instead live and work moment-by-moment, or just decide each morning to focus on one or two important things.

Existentialism Is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre

Existentialism is a Humanism (L’existentialisme est un humanisme) is a 1946 philosophical work by Jean-Paul Sartre. It is seen by many as one of the defining texts in the Existentialist movement.

Main themes of the work

  • Existentialism is optimistic
  • Existence precedes essence
  • Man is nothing more than what he makes of himself
  • Fear is a condition of action
  • Man is abandonment
  • Man is free
  • There is no pre-established morality
  • Existentialism is a humanism

Suggestions for films that deal with Existentialism

fuckyeahexistentialism:

I’ve been receiving a lot of questions asking for more movie recommendations and several followers have send in their own suggestions as well so here is an updated list.

a lot of foreign language movies by Rohmer, Traffaut, Bergman, Fellini and Godard have an existential overtone but here are some that are readily available on netflix or elsewhere:

  • Waking Life
  • I Heart Huckabees
  • Broken Flowers
  • 13 Conversations about one thing
  • Groundhog Day
  • Requiem for a Dream
  • American Beauty
  • Citizen Kane
  • Me You and Everyone We Know
  • The Jacket
  • Donnie Darko
  • A Scanner Darkly
  • A Clockwork Orange
  • Adaptation
  • Eraserhead
  • Moon
  • El orfanato
  • Synedoche New York
  • Lost Highway
  • The Tenant by Polanski
  • The Bothersome Man
  • Un Secret by Claude Miller
  • Wild at Heart by David Lynch
  • The Big Lebowski
  • Le Feu Follet
  • The Graduate
  • The Machinist
  • IKIRU by Akira Kurosawa.
  • The Cruise by Bennett Miller 
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
  • Being John Malkovich

if you’d like to add more message me here.

Thanks,
Shifa.

adsertoris: Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher. He lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, a period corresponding to the philosophical summit of Chinese thought — the Hundred Schools of Thought, and is credited with writing — in part or in whole — a work known by his name, the Zhuangzi.  Zhuangzi’s thought can also be considered a precursor of relativism in systems of value. In the fourth section of “The Great Happiness” (至樂 zhìlè, chapter 18), Zhuangzi expresses pity to a skull he sees lying at the side of the road. Zhuangzi laments that the skull is now dead, but the skull retorts, “How do you know it’s bad to be dead?” Another well-known part of the book, which is also found in Chapter 2, is usually called “Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly” (莊周夢蝶 Zhuāng Zhōu mèng dié). Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49) This hints at many questions in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and epistemology.
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adsertoris:

Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher. He lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, a period corresponding to the philosophical summit of Chinese thought — the Hundred Schools of Thought, and is credited with writing — in part or in whole — a work known by his name, the Zhuangzi. 

Zhuangzi’s thought can also be considered a precursor of relativism in systems of value.

In the fourth section of “The Great Happiness” (至樂 zhìlè, chapter 18), Zhuangzi expresses pity to a skull he sees lying at the side of the road. Zhuangzi laments that the skull is now dead, but the skull retorts, “How do you know it’s bad to be dead?”

Another well-known part of the book, which is also found in Chapter 2, is usually called “Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly” (莊周夢蝶 Zhuāng Zhōu mèng dié).

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)

This hints at many questions in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and epistemology.

“The Happiness of Fish” (魚之樂, yúzhīlè)

Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the dam of the Hao Waterfall when Zhuangzi said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!”

Huizi said, “You’re not a fish — how do you know what fish enjoy?”

Zhuangzi said, “You’re not me, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”

Huizi said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. On the other hand, you’re certainly not a fish — so that still proves you don’t know what fish enjoy!”

Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy — so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao.”

Source: Wikipedia