I think it is more accurate to describe existentialism as a reaction to nihilism, not a branch of nihilism. Camus opposed nihilism. It is true that he (and other existentialists) took nihilism very seriously indeed.
Retracted, sorry—figured out where the disconnect was coming from after reading your other comments, which led to confusion, which led me to try to identify the source. I was interpreting nihilism itself to be the theology of the desert, so your comment didn’t make any sense; rereading the comic I realized I had missed the connection between the “Take that!” and the “And yet”. It felt to me like an Objectivist complaining that a critic of free market philosophy didn’t understand Ayn Rand; taking a generalized point and interpreting it very specifically.
I don’t think Camus opposed nihilism, though, I think he opposed the commonly-held philosophic ramifications of nihilism. Existentialism isn’t a rejection of nihilism, it’s a development of it, or at least that’s what it looks like to me, as somebody who finds nihilism to be similar to an argument about what angels look like (given that I’m also an atheist). “What’s our purpose?” “What’s purpose?”—which is to say, I find the philosophy to be an answer, “Nothing!”, in searching for a question. Existentialism replaces the answer with “What you make of it” (broadly speaking, as it’s hard to actually pin down any concretes in existentialism, which is an umbrella term for a bunch of loosely-related concepts), but never really identifies the question.
Trivially, you could say the question is “What’s the meaning of life?”, or something deep-sounding like that, but what is the question really asking? The only meaningful question to my mind is “What should I do with my life?”, which doesn’t really require deep philosophy.
I’m a lifelong atheist. To me the “Purpose of life” question, as it pertains to atheists, is a concept imported from religion—that we can have a purpose—which lacks the referent which made that concept meaningful—a god or gods, being an entity or entities which can assign such purpose. Nihilism just seems confused, to me, and existentialism is an attempt to address a confused question. Which may or may not make me existentialist, depending on exactly which existentialism you call existentialism.
I think it is more accurate to describe existentialism as a reaction to nihilism, not a branch of nihilism. Camus opposed nihilism. It is true that he (and other existentialists) took nihilism very seriously indeed.
Retracted, sorry—figured out where the disconnect was coming from after reading your other comments, which led to confusion, which led me to try to identify the source. I was interpreting nihilism itself to be the theology of the desert, so your comment didn’t make any sense; rereading the comic I realized I had missed the connection between the “Take that!” and the “And yet”. It felt to me like an Objectivist complaining that a critic of free market philosophy didn’t understand Ayn Rand; taking a generalized point and interpreting it very specifically.
I don’t think Camus opposed nihilism, though, I think he opposed the commonly-held philosophic ramifications of nihilism. Existentialism isn’t a rejection of nihilism, it’s a development of it, or at least that’s what it looks like to me, as somebody who finds nihilism to be similar to an argument about what angels look like (given that I’m also an atheist). “What’s our purpose?” “What’s purpose?”—which is to say, I find the philosophy to be an answer, “Nothing!”, in searching for a question. Existentialism replaces the answer with “What you make of it” (broadly speaking, as it’s hard to actually pin down any concretes in existentialism, which is an umbrella term for a bunch of loosely-related concepts), but never really identifies the question.
Trivially, you could say the question is “What’s the meaning of life?”, or something deep-sounding like that, but what is the question really asking? The only meaningful question to my mind is “What should I do with my life?”, which doesn’t really require deep philosophy.
I’m a lifelong atheist. To me the “Purpose of life” question, as it pertains to atheists, is a concept imported from religion—that we can have a purpose—which lacks the referent which made that concept meaningful—a god or gods, being an entity or entities which can assign such purpose. Nihilism just seems confused, to me, and existentialism is an attempt to address a confused question. Which may or may not make me existentialist, depending on exactly which existentialism you call existentialism.