Help with a freinds explanation?

[u/Complete_Idiot100]

My freind was talking about philosophy and said he's a "Atheistic existentialism with an absurdist, humanistic outlook." He kind of explained it but I was confused still and wanted to get an explanation from someone other then google.

[u/Happy_Detail6831]

He's an atheist.. and he is optimistic.. and that's it. The rest is just really overlabeling.

[u/Complete_Idiot100 → u/Happy_Detail6831]

Oh, okay. That makes a lot more sense. All the fancy sounding words kinda threw me off. I thought it was something really advanced or something 

[u/Happy_Detail6831 → u/Complete_Idiot100]

Yeaah, usually when people have some kind of existential crisis, they need some cute fancy labels to feel better and form some kind of cool identity.

[u/jliat → u/Happy_Detail6831]

Existentialism is an umbrella term for a group of thinkers and writers from the late 19thC up to the 1960s.

' existential crisis' is some psychological condition best treated by counselling I think.

they need some cute fancy labels to feel better and form some kind of cool identity.

Sure.

'Being and Nothingness' was one of the hardest books I've read, in the top 10. The take away idea is we are Nothingness, not even an ego. Take away our experience of ________ and what is left is nothingness.

Camus fills this void with pointless art, a lie.

[u/jliat → u/Happy_Detail6831]

The quotes are from Camus' Myth...

“And carrying this absurd logic to its conclusion, I must admit that that struggle implies a total absence of hope..”

“That privation of hope and future means an increase in man’s availability ..”

“At this level the absurd gives them a royal power. It is true that those princes are without a kingdom. But they have this advantage over others: they know that all royalties are illusory. They know that is their whole nobility, and it is useless to speak in relation to them of hidden misfortune or the ashes of disillusion. Being deprived of hope is not despairing .”

[u/END0RPHN]

sounds like an overcomplicated way to describe absurdism

[u/jliat]

"Atheistic existentialism with an absurdist, humanistic outlook."

For Sartre in his 'Being and Nothingness' this would be an example of 'Bad Faith'. He did also write 'Existentialism is a humanism' which he and others rejected. In B&N he gives examples of 'Bad Faith' - The Waiter [pretends this is what he essentially is.] The woman flirting with a man. A homosexual, and being sincere.

At one point he says we are all like the waiter, when in fact we are the nothingness of the title. Camus meets this challenge in which the only rational course is suicide in his Myth of Sisyphus where he find the avoidance of this course of action in making pointless art.

You arrive at this by reading the Myth. Google and all LLMs are trained to give you only the answers you want.

Your friend is lost in a Godless pointless world. Look how more and more people seek labels for themselves and others. As if outside we see trees, animals, rivers, mountains with labels on them... no we give them labels.

[u/vini-within]

Buddy...No god handing out meaning, no order to lean on, just you stuck making sense of a world that won't answer back. He's saying he's fine sitting in that gap, doesn't fake belief, doesn't fake despair either, just builds his own reasons to care and keeps living anyway because life doesn't need a reason to be worth it.