Amos

Well lucky for us but I don't agree with that.

phaedrus

Amos

In Christendom the end of religion is heaven on earth which is much the same as Nirvana in Buddhism. For example, in Catholicism the Christ-mass is equal to the final round of samsara in Buddhism. An "end" like this is not found in Existentialism and the reason why I say that it is much better than Christian fundamentalism is because with the absense of heaven the condition we call hell is also not available to them (the implication here is that the'd all go to hell too).

I perfer buddhism anyday as far as making choices is concerned. The end as i indicated above is "death" in existentialism.

So what Existentialism calls "the end" is really our defeat wherein we accept the unknown element of life and learn to cope with it as knowledge that can never be ours. I find this tragic and would much rather that we ignored it all together.

The end is death, the means to the end => understanding the absurd nature of the world around you so that you can live your life and not merely exist

For sure, except that we are much more discreet about it. The flip side of this is that we get more opposition from fundamentalism (rational religions).

Fundamentalism is a rational religion ????? What is your point?

The absense of the absurd is to know our own soul wherein we are God and therefore omniscient.

That doesnt make the absurd vanish, you are just sugar-coating it by accepting the postulation of god and painting a solipsistic picture

Someone here will know more about the division in Existentialism but I remember there was a movement that returned to include the mystery of religion. It was just presented to us like this in a lecture and I found this very interesting.

That is bull crap. Sartre didnt return to the church (do let me know if you have any evidence for that)

jp

Endymion

These feelings are the same when one is denied his consensual sense of humanity. I look at his hands and I saw mine. They were not crab claws, how horrible if they were! ("Thoughts of lobster in his head..." from Nausea by JPS)

What I think is interesting about the birth of of existentialism in an individual is that the ideas of angst and forlorness sprout directly from the realization of its principles. To be aware of true freedom is to recognize your seperateness from the 'stare of the other.' The imposing realities of others when observed are so different from the individual's standpoint, such in the way he is doomed to interpret them. Once this is realized man's alienation becomes real to him.

Ultimately it seems to accord with the necessities of myth. Ted feels the emptiness in his attempts to truly grasp the ambience of his peers but the impossibility only came about when he discovered that he was the alien. In that feeling of anxiety and seperateness he fed the 'Alien.' The totem around which dances the union of culture and its intoxicating influences toward oneness fade into the rationalization of one man for feeling reality's relativism. Ted knows his art like no other and that is what terrifies him.

DOLBAC DENIS

It is your inalienable right to refuse to see facts.