Posted on 10/01/2010 4:51:50 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
28 Sep, 2010, 10.15AM IST,PTI
Man leaves behind 1905-page suicide note
shot himself at Harvard Yard on September 18.
His family and about 400 friends received the 1,905-page suicide note in a posthumous e-mail.
In the note Heisman wrote that he took his life as part of a philosophical exploration he called "an experiment in nihilism."
The lengthy document included 1,433 footnotes, a 20-page bibliography, over 1,700 references to God and 200 references to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Heisman wrote, "Every word, every thought and every emotion come back to one core problem: life is meaningless... The experiment in nihilism is to seek out and expose every illusion and every myth, wherever it may lead, no matter what, even if it kills us."
(Excerpt) Read more at economictimes.indiatimes.com ...
So concluded the writer of Ecclesiastes. And, without God, it is more than meaningless.
with MS Outlook, it's Options, Delay Delivery. :-)
Selah!
Which is not meaning at all, merely transitory preference. While ultimately disappoints. The finiteness of death precludes all meaning. Even Sartre acknowledged this when he stated that, for any meaning, finite man must have an infinite reference point. "All is vanity under the sun".
While = which
[Man leaves behind 1905-page suicide note]
Shouldn’t that be: Man leaves behind 1905-page suicide book?
Kind of like “Less Than Zero”. :)
1,905 pages? At least it had a happy ending: one less completely self absorbed and obsessed depressive Academic. A few thousand more such exits and we’ll be making real progress.
""Christianity can be shown to be, not `just as good as' or even `better than' the non-Christian position, but the only position that does not make nonsense of human experience." - Cornelius Van Til
The Futility of Non Christian Thought
Douglas Jones
Which is self-vitiating to the supposed autonomous, finite man without God.
Poor guy, he should have talked to Bill Maher first, then everything would be fine! /sarc
In real life, sympathy and prayers to the real victims of this tragedy, his family and friends. I volunteered on a suicide hotline for a time until I could not take it any more (too depressing) and it was a real tightrope to walk trying to convince the person on the other end that life was worth the effort. It was the heartbreak from the people who surrounded the successful(?) that showed the damage and one of the worst cases was when one suicide led to another and another within the same family. HORRIBLE!
How could Cumus derive a universal, objective 'truth' like that from his own subjective, finite experience?
The chances that those 400 people are going to read through this fool’s 1,905-page ‘note’ are about as likely as the chances that Harry Reid has read the health care bill.
Where’s that little smiley guy rolling on the floor laughing when I NEED him??
The philosophical exploration was a short one.
ping
It follows from the premise. If everything is meaningless, then even meaninglessness is meaningless. Furthermore, the fact that it is meaningless doesn’t preclude us from assigning it any meaning we want since that process too is — you guessed it — meaningless.
It’s like taking a test with no wrong answers since all the answers are ultimately wrong. You’re free to answer any way you want — or not even take the test — because you can’t score any better or worse than the person who tries.
“Transitory preference” is okay by me. Whatever universal meaning you envision is nothing more than a similar ephemera. Your belief in it becomes your purpose and defines your meaning, but that significance is always “realized” in some other vague, undefined realm.
In the Here And Now, I am free to make whatever meaning I choose, just as you are. If life has no meaning, neither does death. So I’ll CHOOSE to live. For no better reason than I choose to.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.