I too got burned out on philosophy, but still find some of the literary/poetic/mystical/continental/existential-leaning philosophy interesting at times. I guess I now prefer pretty language to big ideas — the latter cased in the former being the only philosophy I’ll take the time to read.

Your last paragraph sounds awfully Nietzschean, does it not?

Perhaps the fundamental questions of philosophy are better engaged in works of literature?

This summer I read (almost by accident) “Wind, Sand and Stars” by Saint-Exupery – a work of literature, definitely not philosophy – and it was practically an epiphany. There were no answers to questions, but there was a resounding affirmation of life that moved me practically to tears – an affirmation of what I already knew – of course – but which could never be framed as the conclusion of a philosophical argument.

The fundamental question of philosophy since Descartes is Truth (not the meaning of life). Philosophy becomes the critique of metaphysics. Philosophy has not been able to spin out any substantive truths (of the sort that we might be able to live by) from some synthetic a priori, as Kant hoped, but it has been able to launch interesting criticisms of other people’s everyday ideas about where the Truth lies (in the heavens, in the sciences, in your gut feelings, etc).

For philosophy to guide life it would have to legislate, but when people grant a right to philosophers to legislate the chances are that it won’t be long before they roll out the guillotine. This (I think) is the basic idea Camus was trying to defend in The Rebel – a much better book that the Myth of Sisyphus.

Philosophy of the useful sort knows that it is useless. Its utility lies in clearing the way for an affirmation of life which is free of illusions. That affirmation, though, can only occur on the terrain of life – pre-philosophical life – life in the phone booth, if you like. It cannot occur on the dusty etherial plane of philosophy.

But if we take the fundamental question of philosophy to be How To Live, and then take the issue of suicide as a metaphor, or synecdoche, for that question (for is not suicide a solution to the problem of existence, albeit at an ugly polar extreme of possible solutions?) . . . I think Camus chose to write about the issue of whether or not to commit suicide at least in part because it is dark, dramatic, controversial, eye-catching — while a more down-to-earth version of his fundamental question of philosophy might be rather, as we said, “How should I live my life?”

But I’ll grant you this: loitering outside of phone booths is VERY existential.