Why Camus Was Not An Existentialist

[Philosophy Now]

Greg Stone presents the evidence.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/115/Wh ... tentialist

[Doverphilosopher]

I am listening to a Great Course on Existentialism and have just finished listening to how the course academic considers Camus an existentialist thinker. I agree instead with Greg Stone. His little historical lesson on how they, too, wanted a disclaimer to this labeling echoed reasonable.

[Dalek Prime]

Much ado over a label. Every ideology has infighting, and members who resist being labelled as such. But if it quacks like a duck, then Sartre was right. Quack quack, Camus.

[Impenitent]

Much ado over a label. Every ideology has infighting, and members who resist being labelled as such. But if it quacks like a duck, then Sartre was right. Quack quack, Camus.

or a bovine rhyme, moo moo Camus...

-Imp

[Dalek Prime]

Much ado over a label. Every ideology has infighting, and members who resist being labelled as such. But if it quacks like a duck, then Sartre was right. Quack quack, Camus.

or a bovine rhyme, moo moo Camus...

-Imp

Oh, one of my fave commercials!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C2A6YPowfwk

[Benito Espinoso]

This paragraph: “Camus, on the other hand, was willing to posit legal rules so absolute that they could be said to point to ‘essences’ – among them a belief that almost all violence is immoral. Therein lies the foul: dogmatic principles for living, no matter how well intentioned, are not ‘existential’”, seems too bold to me.
Of course Camus’ point of view was not Sartre’s, but I wouldn’t dare to say that Camus’ philosophy consisted in positing absolute legal rules. From my point of view, the kernel of Albert Camus’ philosophy is the answer to this question: “How do we cope with absurd?” In his own words, there is only one philosophical problem (strictly): Suicide. In “Le Mythe de Sysiphe” he clearly considers the world as an alien object, not far from Sartre’s conception, and he explicitly explains that morals are just a possibility, never a justified rule. There is no tomorrow, and that’s the point for considering liberty as the key value in Camus’ philosophy. The (I would say only) moral rule inferred from Camus’ explanation in the book is a sort of mixture between “carpe diem” and “Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt”: live the present, feel your own freedom and experience fate and the world as something out of control, even despise it.
Quoting your own words: “almost all violence is immoral” doesn’t seem an absolute statement at all. Trying to introduce Camus in the world of “essences” is just, in my opinion, bending a stiff anitmetaphysic theory. In fact, that’s why Camus has more to do with Sartre than they both asserted…