Albert Camus

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sthilda87
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by sthilda87 »

I just read a book of Camus' short stories - "Exile & the Kingdom."

Does anyone understand the background of the story of the seminarian who ran away, was captured, became an idol worshiper & then died? (The Renegade.)
RickLewis
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Arising_uk wrote:Whats to say? Camus died in a French car crash when he had a train ticket for the same journey. Ironic given his philosophy. If you'd ever driven in France 20 years ago you'd understand why it was not an uncommon event. Its only recently that they've got them to realise that deciding what drinking enough meant was not a Frenchmans right and to slow down.
All true. Since you wrote the posts earlier in this thread, there has been an article by Sam Morris in Issue 75 of Philosophy Now which gives a fuller version of the incident:

http://philosophynow.org/issue75/75morris.htm
The 4th January 1960 was an overcast and drizzly day in northern central France. Albert Camus was returning to Paris with his publisher Michel Gallimard and Gallimard’s wife and daughter in a powerful four-door sports car, a Facel Vega. The Vega was infamous for its rear hinging ‘suicide’ doors that were known to pop open at high speeds upon high vibrations. However, this would not be the issue on this particular journey. Joining the Route Nationale No 5, at about half a kilometer from Yonnes, the car lost control and hit a tree. Gallimard’s wife and daughter were thrown from the car, landing between 10-20ft from the wreck. They would recover. Gallimard suffered severe impact wounds, and would die two days later in hospital. Camus was killed instantly. He was only forty-six years old, and had written as recently as 1958, “I continue to be convinced that my work hasn’t even been begun.” Camus had wished to take a train back to Paris and was renowned for his dislike of cars, but Gallimard had persuaded him to take a lift. The train ticket for the return journey was found in the top pocket of Camus’ jacket.
It just goes to show - you have to be careful of publishers.
Maleficus
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by Maleficus »

Hello everyone,

I just read Camus' 'The Myth of Sisyphus' and wondered how he reasons that the absurdity must keep alive.
Besides, what do you think about his philosophy?
chaz wyman
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by chaz wyman »

Maleficus wrote:Hello everyone,

I just read Camus' 'The Myth of Sisyphus' and wondered how he reasons that the absurdity must keep alive.
Besides, what do you think about his philosophy?
We all die. There is no ultimate meaning to life. We realise this and yet we all have our own purposes. Further it is the very realisation of the lack of ultimate meaning that is so empowering. It is only those that reject the absurdity of life, that convince themselves of some transcendent overbearing authority that will provide them with eternal life and ultimate meaning. For them their life is enslaved. THe absurd are free.
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info
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by info »

Enjoyable reads. Looked at A Happy Death most recently.
chaz wyman
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by chaz wyman »

info wrote:Enjoyable reads. Looked at A Happy Death most recently.

Looks like it has put a bit of colour in your cheeks!
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info
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Re: Albert Camus

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Yeah. I think it's a better image.
justinwilkes
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by justinwilkes »

Does anyone know where I can find a copy of "Islands - Lyrical Essays" in English by Jean Grenier. I was just reading Camus' notebooks 1935-1942 and I'm curious to read Grenier, who Camus deeply admired.

Thanks in advance.
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The Voice of Time
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Re: Albert Camus

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I'm not quite able to understand why Camus has become so popular... what exactly is it that he provides?
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NielsBohr
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by NielsBohr »

Hi VoiceOfTime,
I am happy for your intervention!
The Voice of Time wrote:I'm not quite able to understand why Camus has become so popular... what exactly is it that he provides?
-I have a "proof":
RachelAnn wrote:Camus went so far as to say that when a regime uses totalitarian means, it destroys all hope for a better world.
:mrgreen:

-Everytime I hear Camus as being a (self-said ?) philosopher, I cannot prevent myself of laughing...

Yeah, I think to know that Platon developed the idea of a well-intentionned totalitarian regime,

but Camus destroyed it with one peace-and-love sentence. :lol:
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The Voice of Time
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Re: Albert Camus

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So he provides commentaries?
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Arising_uk
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by Arising_uk »

The Voice of Time wrote:I'm not quite able to understand why Camus has become so popular... what exactly is it that he provides?
Answers to those with an existential crisis and a nice turn of prose.
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DesolationRow
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by DesolationRow »

The Voice of Time wrote:I'm not quite able to understand why Camus has become so popular... what exactly is it that he provides?
I have not read Camus' actual works (though I'd like to soon), but from my understanding of secondary literature, his popularity stems, partially, from his personality and humanitarian outlook. Camus was very likable (unlike Sartre) and he championed the poor and noted the strength that growing up in poverty can provide. Though I'm not exactly sure how his notion of the absurd differs significantly from already established ideas (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger).
Blaggard
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Re: Albert Camus

Post by Blaggard »

It differs I think in providing an answer to the absurd, the absurd man according to Camus is noble and potentially a hero. In other philosophies the absurd is not recognised as valuable so much. Camus says the absurd hero is not just valuable but it is all of us if we choose to be.
Maleficus wrote:Hello everyone,

I just read Camus' 'The Myth of Sisyphus' and wondered how he reasons that the absurdity must keep alive.
Besides, what do you think about his philosophy?
Well only Camus could explain that:
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this. Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets. Aegina, the daughter of Aesopus, was carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell about it on condition that Aesopus would give water to the citadel of Corinth. To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water. He was punished for this in the underworld. Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of the conqueror.

It is said also that Sisyphus, being near to death, rashly wanted to test his wife's love. He ordered her to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square. Sisyphus woke up in the underworld. And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of the earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, led him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him.

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is,as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain. It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and th sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same time, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Oedipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.

One does not discover the absurd without attempting to write a manual of happiness. "What! by such narrow ways--?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.

All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. there is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that silent pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
In every toil man is absurd and in every endeavour he is struggling, but every man can find a way to put the rock down. Was I think the point. To change how we view life, how we find it absurd and how we might live a better one nonetheless. Camus is offering a way out of the existentialist crisis.
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DesolationRow
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Re: Albert Camus

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Blaggard wrote:It differs I think in providing an answer to the absurd, the absurd man according to Camus is noble and potentially a hero. In other philosophies the absurd is not recognised as valuable so much. Camus says the absurd hero is not just valuable but it is all of us if we choose to be.
Hmm I see what you're saying. And I think you're right that the absurd man's response seems to be what Camus is revered for. I just don't see how it is fundamentally different than Nietzsche's notion of the heroic man, whose self-mastery and nobility give meaning to his life which is otherwise meaningless (absurd). I suppose Camus was likely more sensitive to altruism and empathy in defining nobility than Nietzsche was, but in essence it seems they're both saying: Life is meaningless. You alone control your destiny and have the ability to choose to affirm life (or imagine Sisyphus happy) and therefore can give your own life meaning and purpose which should be the task of every individual.
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