Meaning requires affirming the concrete thickness of individual life

Evidence

Thus, nihilistic pessimism and rationalistic optimism fail in their effort to juggle away the bitter truth of sacrifice: they also eliminate all reasons for wanting it. Someone told a young invalid who wept because she had to leave her home, her occupations, and her whole past life, “Get cured. The rest has no importance.” “But if nothing has any importance,” she answered, “what good is it to get cured?” She was right. In order for this world to have any importance, in order for our undertaking to have a meaning and to be worthy of sacrifices, we must affirm the concrete and particular thickness of this world and the individual reality of our projects and ourselves. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 106

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• STORYSTEM: The invalid’s retort — ‘what good is it to get cured?’ — is a compact dramatic engine; a story where a character takes the optimist’s platitude literally and refuses to be ‘saved’ could revolve around its consequence.