Review: Nausea

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Apparently, this book was originally meant to be titled "Melancholia", and I think that is a far more fitting title to the book. The protagonist is definitely melancholic, probably depressed, and the whole book drips with melancholia, with sentimentalism, with pseudo-nostalgia. The writing as a whole seems way too sentimentalist. In fact, the narrator/protagonist says that himself - he comments in a passage that his latest writing is too sentimental and pompous! But he continues with it anyway.

Despite the over-sentimental style, the content itself is mostly a description of mundane everyday events and settings. Is this what existentialism novels are supposed to be like? An endless description of mundane events? As if to say everything is meaningful, and thus everything is meaningless? And then it has one or two significant events buried inside, for us to find and then re-cast the rest of the story, give meaning to everything that came before? So that the structure of the novel itself is a metaphor for life? If so, I don't like it.

At the end of the book, there is a bit of a discussion on existence, its value, the meaning of existence, and on the possibility that the meaning of life is given by history and collective memory. But the discussion is very weak, and obviously a red-herring, it doesn’t go anywhere. The whole book doesn't really seem to go anywhere. I really couldn't see why this is such a foundational book for existentialism.

One last thought: I was surprised by the number of mentions of pedophilia - there are at least 3 cases of it in the book, which is rather a lot considering the story has nothing to do with it.


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Review: Blindsight

Blindsight by Peter Watts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a very captivating mystery sci-fi - the story really pulls you in, trying to figure out what is going on. That is, chronologically, you get told what is happening, but not what is behind it all - only glimpses, hints, foreshadowing. There is an alien - that is clear from the cover - but what kind? what is it doing? What does it want? I like that this is the kind of story in which the alien is completely different from human it is, not only morphologically, but even logically - a completely alien mind.

It has a very dark beginning, right off the bat, it does not seem like it's going to be a nice story. And as you dive deeper into it, you see it's not. Towards the middle, I started to realize that it has gone from "hard sci-fi" to something more like "horror sci-fi" - it most reminded me of "Event Horizon" (the movie, not the book, I never read the book). I don't think there will be gateway to hell here, but that's what it feels like.

But then you get a lot of discussion of neuroscience, neurological syndromes, "fun facts" about the brain its inner workings, about intelligence, sentience, consciousness - it becomes a full-fledged discussion of philosophy of the mind! In fact, I think the "hard sci-fi" part is not really about the space travel or computers or electronic technology at all - it's exactly about the neuroscience part of it. It is very different, and very interesting.

It ends with a kind of twist about the alien, and then a plot twist about what is happening on Earth. The one about the alien is very interesting, and makes you think; the one about Earth is just weird, feels like it was just tacked on to the story at the last minute. Although I saw that there is a second book to the series, I felt that the story had enough closure that I will not be picking up the next book of the series.

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Review: The Ethics of Ambiguity

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an excellent, truly essential read! Of the few existentialism books I have read, this is by far the one that best describes its aims, that best explains what is trying to say - it should be considered the pinnacle of existentialist thought, and is the best book on ethics and morality I have read! I was amazed by all the themes discussed within it - this is a really important book, it should be required reading for life!

First, de Beauvoir is by far the most readable of all existentialists, none of the other writers even comes close to being as easy to understand as she is (not that she’s easy to understand, just easier).

Second, I was surprised by the themes that were discussed in this book. I was expecting more about ethics of personal matters, but instead most of the book is about discussions of politics and sociology, and how philosophy can inform us how we should during extreme historical events - it's mostly about political activism and related activities, revolution, and war. The author presents great historical and political analyses from a philosophical point of view, to be contrasted, as the author does, with Hegel and Marx. The discussions are centered on citizenship and also what a person should do in the face of war, dictatorships, fascism, right-wing government, and other extreme ideologies and situations, such as slavery, paternalism, and anti-feminism.

I like a digression she had about the "adventurer", who detaches himself from the world, in search for adventure, glory and riches, which is kinda like the right-wing hero: "It is not a matter of chance, but a dialectical necessity which leads the adventurer to be complacent regarding all regimes which defend the privilege of a class or a party, and more particularly authoritarian regimes and fascism. He needs fortune, leisure, and enjoyment, and he will take these goods as supreme ends in order to be prepared to remain free in regard to any end." - An adventurer is actually an accomplice of the tyrants and dictators, if only by taciturn acceptance so that they can retain their privileged position.

The book is clearly a product of its time. It discusses freedom, oppression, capitalism, and conservatism in the context of totalitarian regimes and wars, which was very relevant to the time existentialism flourished, during WWII. I initially thought this made this discussion less universal, but then as I read more and more, and I saw how the author explored these themes, I realized that it was actually extremely relevant, as it applies directly to our time, with the ongoing anti-vax and anti-mask movement, the rise of right-wing governments and fascism all over the world, and with Russia starting its war on Ukraine. The political aspects of existentialism are, sadly, as relevant today as they were when written.

Part 2 elaborates on what it means "to will freedom" - to me, this finally resolved what Nietzsche had been talking about, with that whole “impose your will on the world” stuff he kept going on about in his books. Here we arrive at the main theme of de Beauvoir's ethics, which is very humanistic - that although there is nothing uniting us a priori, we are still bound together. "that the ethics which have given solutions by effacing the fact of the separation of men are not valid precisely because there is this separation. An ethics of ambiguity will be one which will refuse to deny a priori that separate existants can, at the same time, be bound to each other, that their individual freedoms can forge laws valid for all." Also, my freedom requires that it emerges into an "open future" - and it’s others that open this future for me. Part 2 concludes with the central tenet of de Beauvoir ethics is thus: "to will oneself free, is also to will others free".

The end expands on this proposition, and it does include a discussion about personal ethics. The author specifically mentions that ethics is not about telling you exactly what to do in a given situation, but it’s about giving you a framework with which you can make decisions. Further, she uses existentialism to inform us how to make this kind of ethics, and it’s not that she’s trying to develop whole new set of rules or guidelines on how to behave, but more like she is just trying to ground existing guidelines or existing rules or just common sense using existentialism as a framework for those rules and guidelines. Which I do find extremely interesting because it’s all about the question why should we behave a certain way, why do we have to be good, what defines being good? In the framework of extentialism, with the whole Nietzschean notion that "God is Dead", what is the standard for what is good? And here Simone De Beauvoir makes a very compelling case that existentialism can be standard of what is a good, can help you think about what is good, that you don’t need a God to ground your ethics: "It is not a matter of being right in the eyes of a God, but of being right in his own eye"; [Man] "bears the responsibility for a world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself".

I also like that the author has a good grasp of the role science: it fails to fulfill one’s life, but it’s extremely successful in giving means to fulfill one’s life (specially when it comes to extending it, and increasing its reach).

One last interesting passage I wrote down:

"For, in a metaphysics of transcendence, in the classical sense of the term, evil is reduced to error; and in humanistic philosophies it is impossible to account for it, man being defined as complete in a complete world. Existentialism alone gives — like religions — a real role to evil, and it is this, perhaps, which make its judgments so gloomy. Men do not like to feel themselves in danger. Yet, it is because there are real dangers, real failures and real earthly damnation that words like victory, wisdom, or joy have meaning. Nothing is decided in advance, and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose that he can also win."

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Review: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wow! The book is quite a tour de force, going from how life is inherently meaningless, the the human condition is absurd, to how that is exactly the reason to live, to how suicide (and murder, and death in general) is not acceptable! It's strange that a question about suicide leads to an inquiry into the meaning of life.

I was initially struck by how well Camus writes - the beginning is lyrical, flowing with relative ease; but he immediately morphs into the usual existentialist writer. The first chapter is dense, hard to follow; it's full of name-dropping and quotes from other philosophers, and Camus seems to think that is makes for good arguments; he is also full of quotable sentences, phrases that sound great and profound, but when you try to make sense of he is saying outside of a single sentence, any meaning is lost; it's like each sentence is on its own, a text full of disjointed sentences without connection to what came before and what comes after. It looks to me that the author makes his arguments basically through two techniques: repetition and metaphor. First, he repeatedly mentions "absurd", and "reasoning", and "meaning", and related things, that by the end it feels like he must have made an argument about it, even if we didn't get it. Second, he makes lots of similes and metaphors for what the absurd means, that again by the end of it we think we should understand it.

But despite the confusing and meandering way he goes about it, the point of the book is fascinating. Towards the end of the first essay, almost by surprise, he arrives at the main statement of the book: “This is where it is seen to what a degree absurd experience is remote from suicide. It may be thought that suicide follows revolt—but wrongly.” […] “That revolt gives life its value”. The meaning of life is to revolt against the absurd! (the absurd that is human life).
This is a quite an intriguing and really brilliant concept! If the reader digs through the book, it is possible to glean several places where he expands on this idea, and it shines! I liked one metaphor Camus used: Sisyphus is all of us - all our work comes to nothing. "Sisyphus is the proletariat of the Gods". In the end, though, I am left unsatisfied: WHY is it that the revolt against the absurd is what gives life its value? The answers, as I mentioned, come from metaphors, never from a good explanation.

After the philosophical essays, there is a sort of weird travel guide, in which he basically reviews a number of travel destinations. I am being only a little facetious - he describes his city and a few neighbors, but it feels like a high-minded, pedantic travel guide. He is not entirely pedantic - his writing here makes him look like a humanist, and this is specially and weirdly true in his weird essay on a boxing match. It's an interesting read, even if he is trying too hard to be poetic. After that, there are some more semi-philosophical musings on history and life.

Rating this book is pretty difficult; on one hand, the writing is difficult, confusing, wanders all over the place, sometimes in very incoherent ways; on the other hand, once in a while coherent statements and even arguments break through, and when they do, they are brilliant.

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