An 18-year-old who has solved exactly zero (0) philosophical problems, but has made everyone around her significantly more tired.
Currently reading Hegel in a coffee shop so you know I'm serious. I have underlined things. I have sighed audibly. I am, as the kids say, going through it — except the "it" is the entire Western canon and I refuse to shut up about it.
I am eighteen years old, which is to say: old enough to have read Notes from Underground and mistaken it for a personality, young enough to still believe my suffering is structurally significant.
I am told this phase passes. I am told I will eventually file taxes and stop quoting Kierkegaard at dinner parties. This is, I suspect, a lie propagated by people who have never read Kierkegaard at dinner parties.
My therapist says I intellectualize my emotions. Hegel says that's fine. Hegel says everything is fine, eventually, after several hundred pages and a dialectical detour through Prussia.
I do not have answers. I have footnotes. I have a carefully curated inability to enjoy things without first writing a paragraph about why enjoying them is a form of false consciousness.
The first book that ever made me feel seen, which in hindsight is concerning. I was 16. I underlined the sentence "I am a sick man" and felt personally attacked. Which is exactly what a sick man would say.
800 pages of men arguing in a monastery. Someone is murdered. Everyone cries. I have never felt more understood. The Grand Inquisitor chapter took me three weeks and at least two panic attacks.
Currently on page 47. Hegel has not yet said anything, but has implied everything. I am told the master-slave dialectic is somewhere around page 110. I will get there. Probably. Eventually. Or heat death will arrive first.
The rock is a metaphor for my homework. The hill is also a metaphor for my homework. One must imagine Sisyphus doing his readings, and also imagining he is doing them. Absurdity is a lifestyle brand.
I, too, am afraid and trembling. Mostly about whether I'll get into a good university, which I am choosing to interpret as a spiritual trial of the highest order. Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son. I was asked to write a personal statement.
Nietzsche would have hated my Instagram. He would have hated this website. He would have hated me. I love him anyway, which is the most toxic dynamic I have ever been in with a man dead for 124 years.
Read it in one sitting. Did not blink. Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I can't be sure. I have since used this line at three family dinners and been asked to leave two of them.
"Das Man." That is the only thing I have understood. That, and the word "being" appears a statistically improbable number of times. Currently using the book as a coaster. Heidegger would want it that way. Probably.
Today I stared at a wall for twenty minutes and called it praxis. My mother asked if I was okay. I said the question itself presupposes a stable subject. She left the room.
Someone asked me my favorite color. I said "the absence of color is itself a color." They walked away. This is the third time this month.
Concluded that everyone at school is living in bad faith. Except me. I am also living in bad faith, but I am aware of it, which makes it worse.
If Hegel were alive today he would have a Substack. If Dostoevsky were alive today he would have a gambling problem and a Substack. These are not different things.
Realized today that "ennui" is just French for "I haven't done my homework." I am, nevertheless, going to keep using it.
My little brother asked me why I'm always sad. I told him consciousness is a disease. He said "ok" and went back to his iPad. He is the most well-adjusted person I know.
| Philosopher | Alignment | How often I quote them | Do I actually understand them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dostoevsky | Soulmate | Mostly | |
| Camus | Situational ally | Yes (he's accessible) | |
| Kierkegaard | Emotional support Dane | Vaguely | |
| Nietzsche | Toxic ex | Selectively | |
| Hegel | Aesthetic crush | Absolutely not | |
| Sartre | Reluctant acquaintance | Enough to be annoying | |
| Heidegger | Coaster | I know the word "Dasein" | |
| Schopenhauer | Forebear of my vibe | I feel him in my bones |
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars, and complaining about them at length, in a café, to no one in particular."
— Oscar Wilde (probably)Real attribution: me, just now, in this font
"Hell is other people. But also, sometimes, heaven is other people. Mostly hell, though. Statistically, mostly hell."
— Jean-Paul SartreReal quote: "Hell is other people." The rest is editorial.
"One must imagine Sisyphus happy. One must also imagine Sisyphus updating his Goodreads status: 'still pushing the rock. still pushing. still pushing.'"
— Albert CamusReal quote: "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." The Goodreads bit is mine.
"If God does not exist, I am responsible for everything. Including, unfortunately, the dishes."
— Jean-Paul Sartre, againReal quote ends at "everything." Dishes are my addition.