/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2744870]

I apologize if this thread has been done to death before, which I believe probably is the case, but I don't have anyone to discuss this with, so I turn to you, my dear /lit/erates:

I've just finished reading Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus, and I liked it pretty much. The concept of the Absurd, for instance, was extremely poignant, and some of his insights on the mind of the suicidal were also really interesting. I didn't care so much, however, for his art analyzes through Absurdism phiosophy, and didn't understand the ideal of rebelling that well, which is why I'm creating this thread:

I understood that Camus advocates that we should live in spite of the meaningless of the universe and the incapacity of obtaining any absolute rationality for our existence; I understand that, according to him, we should "revolt against the Absurd", since "The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart". But my question is: why? Why revolting is better than just giving up? Why should we keep constant confrontation against the Absurd instead of just committing suicide? Why is revolt better than acceptance?

Also, Camus general, I guess.

[Anonymous No.2744877]

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[Anonymous No.2744885]

B-bump!

[Anonymous No.2744891]

Isn't the 'absurd' just another of our perceptions of that which we do not understand? To put meaning onto such a thing is an act of creativity and creation. It touches on many ideas that we can still have meaningful existence in an entirely subjective and epistemically-limited world.

[Anonymous No.2744907]

>>2744891

>Isn't the 'absurd' just another of our perceptions of that which we do not understand?

I might be wrong, but I thought Camus had a pretty absolute definition of the Absurd, one that was within the possible range of our comprehension. Copying from wikipedia:

"...the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when "my appetite for the absolute and for unity" meets "the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle."

[Anonymous No.2744914]

>>2744907

Looks like I need to reread Camus.

[Anonymous No.2744941]

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[Anonymous No.2744947]

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[Mad Scientist Hououin Kyouma !!RBaVX6t0twu No.2744951]

i've only read The Plague, but what do I read next by Camus? I only own this collection.

[Anonymous No.2744957]

>>2744951
I'd say the outsider but if that's not included read the fall and then the Sisyphus essay

[Anonymous No.2744968]

>>2744951

The Stranger is his best novel, by far.

[Anonymous No.2745009]

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[Anonymous No.2745022]

>>2744951
ignore the people saying The Stranger/Outsider. The Stranger is good, but the lowest of his 3 living novels. If you loved the Plague, go to The Fall. Here's a quote:
"Let’s not beat around the bush; I love life — that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life."
It's a dialogue between a character, Jean-Baptiste, and another fulfilled by the reader. Getting additional points for its brevity, I'd say it's Camus' strongest fiction work.

[Anonymous No.2745203]

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[Anonymous No.2745476]

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[Anonymous No.2747034]

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[Anonymous No.2747054]

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[Anonymous No.2747089]

Suicide is evading the problem of the absurd, and is just as "false" as creating meaning while facing the absurd (what sartre would argue).

Since suicide, creating meaning, and having an objective meaning about the world are all illogical, all that is left is living with the absurd.

[Anonymous No.2747092]

>>2747089

>Suicide is evading the problem of the absurd, and is just as "false" as creating meaning while facing the absurd (what sartre would argue).

But why is this a bad thing? In the end, since life is inherently meaningless, why giving up on it is worse than revolting and keep living anyway?

>Since suicide, creating meaning, and having an objective meaning about the world are all illogical, all that is left is living with the absurd.

Again, why is doing something illogical is necessarily a bad thing when there is no purpose at all on our existence and we are all going to end up dead anyway?

[Anonymous No.2747098]

>>2747092
Pleasure feels good, upon death there will be no opportunities to have this sensation.

As such, I am living to maximise my pleasure, and when it gets too dry, I'll just end it. I am at this current state viewing that around the 40's.

[Anonymous No.2747102]

>>2747098

Not the guy you're answering, but this has nothing to do with Camus's Absurdism, which advocates that suicide is always wrong.

[Anonymous No.2747109]

>>2747102
I was replying to the fact that life is meaningless but still justifying the act of continuing life to some extended period of time.

[Anonymous No.2747117]

>>2747092
Im not sure what Camus would argue. I would guess that he would say, if you are so concerned about death, then you should also put equal concern in not glancing away when death stares back at you, to be authentic is to face the absurd, and creating meaning and suicide are attempts to glance away from death, to be not authentic.

He might argue that you used his logic to get to the position that there is no meaning in life, so you should follow his logic when it also says that suicide is not logical.

The immediate question that follows from the above is, why be authentic, why not glance away from death. Again I dont know what he would say, died too damn early or I havent read enough of his work.

Personally I would say death is guaranteed so why rush, and pose Nietzsche's question:

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine'?”

[Anonymous No.2747197]

>Camus
>Relevant in any way

Pick one.

[Anonymous No.2747314]

bump!

[Anonymous No.2747574]

B-bump!

[Anonymous No.2747617]

>>2744951
Already been said but seconding The Fall. Best book I've read in the past year, absolutely masterful.

[Anonymous No.2747910]

Fnal bump!

[Anonymous No.2748263]

I lied, one more bump.

[Anonymous No.2749489]

Necro-bumping this thread because I have a question that doesn't necessitate a new thread. If a meaningful existence where in fact possible, what would make it meaningful? What possible conditions would need to exist for something to be universally meaningful and thus negate Absurdism? I do not think it's possible. Well, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.2749493]

>>2749489
were*

[Anonymous No.2749497]

>>2749489
> If a meaningful existence where in fact possible, what would make it meaningful?
We don't know, do we, since it isn't possible. It's like asking for the grooming habits of a mythical being, one can only speculate (and by that I mean make things up).

>What possible conditions would need to exist for something to be universally meaningful and thus negate Absurdism?
God.

[Anonymous No.2749514]

>>2749497
God is not an adequate response. I don't follow your conclusion that because there is a god there is meaning. I contend that the Absurd is literally the only possible scenario if the human condition remains unchanged.

[Anonymous No.2749532]

>>2747092
the key to all camus philosophy is honesty. hes trying to avoid folling himself.
he thought suicide was deceiving yourself in the same way creating meaning was deception. he witnessed people living nder all sorts of mythologies and ideologies most of which had caused suffering. the similarity between them is they are all attempts to answer a question tha cant be answered. suicide too is making a judgement on life that is premature. where ideologies sought to resolve the conflict of man and the universe, camus initiated a sort of meta ideology that tried to explain why you shouldnt try to resolve the conflict because in his own experience all those attempts had only resulted war . he would rather we embraced our common position and tried to make it tolerable.

[Anonymous No.2749592]

>>2749514
An omnipotent God would simply be able to create a universe with absolute, inherent meaning. Then again, he would also be able to create a square triangle, because being omnipotent he isn't bound to logic.

Look at the definition of the absurd as another anon quoted:

>"...the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when "my appetite for the absolute and for unity" meets "the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle."

This would not be the case if there was a creator God, the Christian God for example. This reverses the problem and makes it less severe. With absurdism, the rational human clashes with the irrational world. That's pretty much the end of it.

In the religious view of the world however, the world is the creation of God. He knows what he is doing and his plan is perfect. Any lack of coherence between Gods will and your understanding of it is wholly on your behalf. You're like a child in the passenger seat. While he doesn't know how a car works or how to operate it, he thrusts wholly in his father and enjoys the ride, being comfortable enough to take a nap or amuse himself as he pleases.

In this way, it is your own lack of insight that causes the problem. But this can never be wholly solved by acquiring more insight, since you are a limited human being. So at one point you will just have to let God do his thing and trust in his infinite wisdom. You can solve your anguish by doing this, becoming empty of your own criticisms of how things should be and demanding the totality of existence to submit itself to the understanding of a tiny little mammal and just let it be what it is.

[Benny Profane !!muO1YE/mn/J No.2749594]

>>2749592

>he thrusts wholly in his father

[Anonymous No.2749601]

>>2749594
Well there goes any chance of being profound. I guess I still can't into English completely.

[Anonymous No.2749602]

>>2749592
I'm still not reconciled with the concept, but thanks for taking the time to respond.

[Benny Profane !!muO1YE/mn/J No.2749604]

>>2749601

Your post was actually quite good, and explained the issue well. I just had to say it.

[Anonymous No.2749612]

>>2749602
What about it seems problematic to you? I find it quite a sound way of thinking, once one has accepted the notion of God in such a matter of course.

I'm an atheist myself, but I find such religious reasoning charming and see the enormous potential of it. I sometimes envy the religious for it, but it is something I can't quite emulate.

>>2749604
Thank you, and I fully understand. In fact it's quite marvellous that a single letter can make the difference between faith and incest.

[Anonymous No.2749616]

Because revolt feels better. It's so much more fun. Once you realize the absurdity of the universe, you no longer Fear.

You realize that all of these value-systems that have been driving you insane are just that: value-systems that you can accept and reject at will.

It almost sounds like sociopathy to put it in those terms. But you're not a sociopath.

[Anonymous No.2749617]

>>2749592

God could not create a square triangle any more than he could make 1 equal to 2. "Square" and "triangle" are defined in such a way as to be mutually exclusive. You don't understand the omnipotence of God.

Plato and scholasticism ftw.

[Benny Profane !!muO1YE/mn/J No.2749618]

>>2749612

>I'm an atheist myself, but I find such religious reasoning charming and see the enormous potential of it.

I totally agree, and I'm in the same position as well. It took me some time to reconcile myself with being okay with religion after losing my faith (I guess we all go through the edgy new atheism thing), but there comes a point when you have to realize that not all of us follow the same path when coming to terms with the enormity of our universe and all its complexity.

[Anonymous No.2749619]

>>2749617
My idea of omnipotence is actual omnipotence. Which includes the possibility of utilising the mutually exclusive in an inclusive way.

I know it sounds strange and totally opposed to any rationality, but anything short of it wouldn't be omnipotence but merely a lot of power within certain boundaries. When you say "God could not" than you're no longer talking about omnipotence.

God could create a rock so heavy that even he couldn't lift it up. But he could lift it up. That's omnipotence taken to it's logical end, which is greatly illogical. Which is has to be to be consistent. By inconsistency.

[Anonymous No.2749620]

>>2749617
>God could not
>omnipotence of God

HURR DURR

[Anonymous No.2749625]

>>2749618
I've actually never been religious in my life. It has always interested me how different that makes my general view of things. I can't really imagine how it is to truly believe. It would probably make an enormous difference to have been theistic once.

[Anonymous No.2749667]

>>2744907

>"...the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when "my appetite for the absolute and for unity" meets "the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle."

>the absolute and unity
>reduced to a rational principle

I take it Camus is saying that reason cannot be unified and absolute? This is of course true because reason splits, measures, compares, dissects etc.

[Anonymous No.2749691]

>>2749667
I believe he is saying that the human perception of existence can't be and absolute. The universe is indifferent to our need for consistency and meaningfulness. We have unrealistic expectations of it, which causes a lot of our troubles. Which is silly, because we are making demands of something not quite sentient as a whole. It's like blaming a tree for not moving out of your way when asked.

[soedgy No.2749703]

>>2749592
>An omnipotent God would simply be able to create a universe with absolute, inherent meaning.

No, God does not create a universe with inherent meaning, He essentially is the inherent meaning of the Universe.
You don't create meaning the same way one creates new life through childbirth, you define what is meaningful, the same way you define what is good and what is the good life, and the same way you define what the North and the South are. So you define God as the most Good, as the greatest Thing, and as such a life is "meaningful" only insofar as it looks on the Good and moves towards the Good, the same way one might always be thinking of the North and of moving up North.

>"...the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when "my appetite for the absolute and for unity" meets "the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle."

I wonder what they mean by "this world", and what about it makes it irreducible to a "rational and reasonable principle". I would be lead to accuse them of being fixated on an absurd world in the same way that they'd be lead to accuse a religious person of being fixated on an irrational world that requires faith. I think that the absurd world is a fiction, a fiction believed by men distraught over lacking the conviction for religious belief.

[soedgy No.2749705]

>>2749703
>While he doesn't know how a car works or how to operate it, he thrusts wholly in his father and enjoys the ride, being comfortable enough to take a nap or amuse himself as he pleases.

From a Christian view (I don't consider myself a Christian by the way), this is not only incorrect but it is immoral. We're not put here to amuse ourselves as we please, that is abhorrent. That's the pagans belief, that there is such thing as unconquerable Fate, and that we must merely resign ourselves to that Fate as we Carpe Diem, seize the day, enjoy ourselves as we please. No, the Christian must spend his day constantly reassessing his relationship to God, the Divine. He must constantly be asking himself if he is living the Good life that God (who loves him) would want him to lead. In other words, the Christian has a responsibility, he can't be idly amusing himself -- every one of his actions, thoughts and emotions brings him closer or further away to or from God and what is Good, they ring out for an eternity. He must constantly be answering to Eternity --- to bury yourself in merely temporal pleasures, in what is "today", that is the most unchristian thing imaginable. You aren't a child in the passenger seat at all, Christianity is more Manly than Paganism, Paganism is for children, Christianity gives men and women a solemn responsibility and it means Eternal damnation to shirk off that responsibility even for a moment. You are so wrong it is almost as though you were insane, though I suppose many other people would say the exact same as you did, so we'd have to admit a great many more people as being insane too.

[soedgy No.2749707]

>>2749705
>So at one point you will just have to let God do his thing and trust in his infinite wisdom.

No, no, no, you aren't letting God "do his thing". Again, that's the Pagan doctrine of Fate, Fate "does its thing". A Christian has to spend his life trying to discover what it is God wants him to do, you can't just repose in an abstract notion of "infinite wisdom" and then give your life to whatever pleasures you please.

[Anonymous No.2749719]

>>2749619
>I know it sounds strange and totally opposed to any rationality, but anything short of it wouldn't be omnipotence but merely a lot of power within certain boundaries. When you say "God could not" than you're no longer talking about omnipotence.
Well, you'd have the Divine Rationality, which causes things to be as they are through its will, and a rationality of finite beings that can only interpret the will by perceiving the world and interacting with those perceptions. So it's just like too complicated man, God's like really smart.

[Anonymous No.2749731]

>>2749703
I am of course aware that there is great deal more to Christian life, theology and practice than what I described. I was merely trying to illustrate the difference between a worldview which conceives of a absurd, indifferent universe and that which has God the benevolent Creator behind it. The latter can be a great comfort. Also note that I said that an omnipotent God would per definition be able to create a universe with absolute, inherent meaning, not that I claimed to think it to be so or that I claim to think that Christians think it to be so.

>>2749705
When I wrote that sentence I thought of adding something like "as far as the father allows, of course" but I didn't think it relevant to the question at hand. Of course Christianity places a great burden on the practitioner, but the matters of the universe are gods matter. You won't see a Christian having an existential crisis in the same way an atheist has. There's always the notion that the greater picture of it all is not in vain and has meaning. A theist is never as truly alone and abandoned as an atheist can be. I'd say an actual Christian doesn't even really know loneliness in the most absolute sense.

>>2749707
A Christian may indeed be concerned with his role in the whole thing, but would have no hesitation with leaving a whole bunch of things rest safely in the hands of God. He is concerned with how he handles himself and how he treats his Lord and his fellows. Which is quite a lot, but is also very different from the problems an Absurdist would be confronted with.

Other than the useless enmity, still a glorious exposition on your behalf. It just responded to a supposed position which I'm not really the possessor of.

[Anonymous No.2749743]

>>2749731
"Meaningless! Meaningless!" Says the teacher. "Everything is utterly meaningless."
Paraphrase of Eccliasastes.

[Anonymous No.2749750]

god lol

[soedgy No.2749757]

>>2749731
> I was merely trying to illustrate the difference between a worldview which conceives of a absurd, indifferent universe and that which has God the benevolent Creator behind it.

Yes, and your illustration was totally false and misleading.

>The latter [the Christian worldview] can be a great comfort.

I reject that statement common among atheists, that religion serves as merely comfort. Sure it might serve as comfort in times of weakness, but it equally serves as a call for bravery and for labour in times of strength.

> Also note that I said that an omnipotent God would per definition be able to create a universe with absolute, inherent meaning

But I've already said that God doesn't create meaning -- God IS the meaning!

>but the matters of the universe are gods matter.

Not at all, the matters of the world are precisely what is important to the Christian.

[soedgy No.2749759]

>>2749757
>You won't see a Christian having an existential crisis in the same way an atheist has.

This is hysterical. You do know that the greatest founder of existentialism, if not its greatest figure, is Soren Kierkegaard? No, I think the spiritual life of a Christian is bound to be heavier than that of an Atheist, and that an existential crisis is more painfully felt by a Christian than an Atheist because the Christian recognizes in the Crisis his estrangement from God, which is more than the Atheists estrangement from the "world" or from "society".

> A theist is never as truly alone and abandoned as an atheist can be.

An Atheist can only experience loneliness as far as his life extends, a Theist's loneliness can felt to stretch on for Eternity.

>but would have no hesitation with leaving a whole bunch of things rest safely in the hands of God.

Sure, the Christian has to recognize that he cannot do everything, because if he could he would be God himself. I wouldn't say that is without hesitation though, because it's a Christians responsibility to cautiously search for his limits and for the proper actions required of him by God.

>Other than the useless enmity

My enmity arises only out of how acutely I feel that you are wrong, it's not that I'm trying to bully or intimidate you necessarily.

[Anonymous No.2749774]

>>2749757
>>2749759

2.3/10, would send to the ovens

[Anonymous No.2749810]

I feel the exact same doubt as OP. Even though I found it a good book, I felt like it didn't answer the principal question it poses: why shouldn't we kill ourselves? Why revolting is better than acceptance? Why deception is worse than truth when it comes to the absurd of life; aren't we all gonna die anyway in the end?