(Originally written October 14, 2008 in The Journal)
The Artist and His Time (1953) by Albert Camus
The artist accepts his time as it is. He minds his own business.
Word, though perverted, provisionally keep their meaning.
Marxism is religious in nature.
The end of history cannot have any definable significance to us in our present condition. It is only knowable by faith.
Artists have no need to interfere in the affairs of the world, but men do. The artist however does not need to sacrifice his nature to some social preaching.
The ivory tower and the social church are two points of the resignation of life.
The artist must simultaneously serve suffering and beauty.
The artist is to give voice to the sorrows and joys of all.
Art justifies itself by proving it is no one's enemy.
Art gives form, not content to justice and liberty.
Any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Return to Tipasa (1952)
(Originally Written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
"To be sure, it is sheer madness, almost always punished, to return to the sites of one's youth" (Camus)
One must recapture the strength to accept what is, when once one has admitted that one cannot change it.
"And in this muddy Tipasa the memory itself was becoming dim" (Camus)
There is no love without a little innocence.
In innocence we do not know of the existence of morality. In knowledge we are guilty of not being able to live up to the standards of morality.
Noting is true that forces one to exclude.
It is bad luck to be unloved, it is a misfortune to be unloving. We are dying of this misfortune today.
Equally welcome what delights and what crushes.
The highest virtue of Camus: a will to live without rejecting anything of life.
"To be sure, it is sheer madness, almost always punished, to return to the sites of one's youth" (Camus)
One must recapture the strength to accept what is, when once one has admitted that one cannot change it.
"And in this muddy Tipasa the memory itself was becoming dim" (Camus)
There is no love without a little innocence.
In innocence we do not know of the existence of morality. In knowledge we are guilty of not being able to live up to the standards of morality.
Noting is true that forces one to exclude.
It is bad luck to be unloved, it is a misfortune to be unloving. We are dying of this misfortune today.
Equally welcome what delights and what crushes.
The highest virtue of Camus: a will to live without rejecting anything of life.
Helen's Exile (1948)
(Originally Written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
Helen's Exile (1948) by Albert Camus
Despair can be known through the stifling effect of Beauty. Tragedy reaches its fulfillment in stifling beauty.
Greek thought negated nothing, but practiced balance. It never went to extremes. Modern thought negates whatever it does not glorify. It is extreme. It glorifies one thing and leads to the eventual total ruin of reason.
The execution of God has left man only to think of power and history. It has left man to not think of nature, but only what man can or has built.
The artist wishes to remake the world. He aims at freedom. Beauty cannot exist apart from men nor can man exist apart from beauty.
We cannot live hating ourselves. We may dislike our era, but this is our only time.
Admit of ignorance, reject fanaticism, accept the limits of this world and of man, this is the Greek reasoning.
Helen's Exile (1948) by Albert Camus
Despair can be known through the stifling effect of Beauty. Tragedy reaches its fulfillment in stifling beauty.
Greek thought negated nothing, but practiced balance. It never went to extremes. Modern thought negates whatever it does not glorify. It is extreme. It glorifies one thing and leads to the eventual total ruin of reason.
The execution of God has left man only to think of power and history. It has left man to not think of nature, but only what man can or has built.
The artist wishes to remake the world. He aims at freedom. Beauty cannot exist apart from men nor can man exist apart from beauty.
We cannot live hating ourselves. We may dislike our era, but this is our only time.
Admit of ignorance, reject fanaticism, accept the limits of this world and of man, this is the Greek reasoning.
The Minotaur (1939)
(Originally written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
The Minotaur, by Albert Camus
The citizens of Oran have accepted their fate - being eaten by the Minotaur (boredom) and yet thrive.
Spiritual hunger is fed by the bread of memory. Spiritual hunger (future) is fed by memory (past).
The mind profits from occasionally focusing on something of no importance.
Stone lasts longer than the men who use it.
"Moving things about is the work of men; one must choose doing that or nothing" (Camus)
The world says one thing only; at first this excites man, then bores him. Regardless the world wins. Men die, the world continues on.
The absurd life cannot be shared (explained); it must be lived (experienced).
When the mind recollects itself it is like the Mount of Olives. The sleeping of Apostles is approved, not reproved.
There is a drive in man to be nothingness - but this is futile. One can be neither nothingness nor absolute.
The Minotaur, by Albert Camus
The citizens of Oran have accepted their fate - being eaten by the Minotaur (boredom) and yet thrive.
Spiritual hunger is fed by the bread of memory. Spiritual hunger (future) is fed by memory (past).
The mind profits from occasionally focusing on something of no importance.
Stone lasts longer than the men who use it.
"Moving things about is the work of men; one must choose doing that or nothing" (Camus)
The world says one thing only; at first this excites man, then bores him. Regardless the world wins. Men die, the world continues on.
The absurd life cannot be shared (explained); it must be lived (experienced).
When the mind recollects itself it is like the Mount of Olives. The sleeping of Apostles is approved, not reproved.
There is a drive in man to be nothingness - but this is futile. One can be neither nothingness nor absolute.
Summer in Algiers (1936)
(Originally Written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
Summer in Algiers (1936)
The openness and abundance of Algiers gives pleasure without remedy and joy without hope. It gives man his splendor and his misery.
Truth carries with it a bitterness.
It is ridiculous not to live by the body. To deny its impulses is to deny it life. Rather, drink when you are thirsty, bed a woman you desire, marry a woman you love and afterwards (as Camus' friend Vincent) say I feel better.
Algiers offers two contrasting pleasures; the abundance of the beach and the silence of the city. The key here is experiencing it, of living it.
Life, as joys, in Algiers are merciless and sudden. Life is not to be built up, but to be burned up.
Virtue is meaningless, but that does not mean that men lack principles.
There is nothing sacred in death; it is abhorred.
"The contrary of a civilized nation is a creative nation" (Camus)
The greatness of man as culture is one cast fully in the present (no past/future) and without myth or solace.
Relative truths are the only truths that stir individual men.
Spirituality is solely confined to this lifetime. Eternity is solely what survives us.
What exalts life increases the absurdity of life.
To sin is to sin against life, which is to elude life in the hope of another one.
Hope is resignation, to live is not to resign oneself.
Summer in Algiers (1936)
The openness and abundance of Algiers gives pleasure without remedy and joy without hope. It gives man his splendor and his misery.
Truth carries with it a bitterness.
It is ridiculous not to live by the body. To deny its impulses is to deny it life. Rather, drink when you are thirsty, bed a woman you desire, marry a woman you love and afterwards (as Camus' friend Vincent) say I feel better.
Algiers offers two contrasting pleasures; the abundance of the beach and the silence of the city. The key here is experiencing it, of living it.
Life, as joys, in Algiers are merciless and sudden. Life is not to be built up, but to be burned up.
Virtue is meaningless, but that does not mean that men lack principles.
There is nothing sacred in death; it is abhorred.
"The contrary of a civilized nation is a creative nation" (Camus)
The greatness of man as culture is one cast fully in the present (no past/future) and without myth or solace.
Relative truths are the only truths that stir individual men.
Spirituality is solely confined to this lifetime. Eternity is solely what survives us.
What exalts life increases the absurdity of life.
To sin is to sin against life, which is to elude life in the hope of another one.
Hope is resignation, to live is not to resign oneself.
Notes on Sisyphus (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally Written October 14, 2008 in the Journal)
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
Sisyphus is an absurd hero. He has contempt for the gods and a passion for life.
His punishment was eternal labor to a futile end. "This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth" (Camus).
Sisyphus had to push a rock up a hill only to have the rock roll back down when it reached the top. Camus admires Sisyphus on the way down the hill. He leaves the heights and goes back to the valley. He marches to his torment and in that moment, he is stronger than his rock.
The walk to the rock from the top is his conscious moment. To be conscious is to overcome the torment.
Scorn your fate and you overcome the depth of it.
The absurd man is the master of his days.
Appendix
(Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka)
The human heart only labels as fate that which crushes it.
It is through humility that hope enters in. (These are detestable to Camus. The philosophers who leap by deifying the absurd, i.e. Kierkegaard, Kafka, or Chestov).
To the philosophers like Kierkegaard, Kafka and Chestov the absurd of their existence assures them of a supernatural reality. The absurd leads them to God.
The Absurd man seeks what is true, not what is universal
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
Sisyphus is an absurd hero. He has contempt for the gods and a passion for life.
His punishment was eternal labor to a futile end. "This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth" (Camus).
Sisyphus had to push a rock up a hill only to have the rock roll back down when it reached the top. Camus admires Sisyphus on the way down the hill. He leaves the heights and goes back to the valley. He marches to his torment and in that moment, he is stronger than his rock.
The walk to the rock from the top is his conscious moment. To be conscious is to overcome the torment.
Scorn your fate and you overcome the depth of it.
The absurd man is the master of his days.
Appendix
(Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka)
The human heart only labels as fate that which crushes it.
It is through humility that hope enters in. (These are detestable to Camus. The philosophers who leap by deifying the absurd, i.e. Kierkegaard, Kafka, or Chestov).
To the philosophers like Kierkegaard, Kafka and Chestov the absurd of their existence assures them of a supernatural reality. The absurd leads them to God.
The Absurd man seeks what is true, not what is universal
Monday, October 13, 2008
Notes on the Absurd Creation (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally written October 13, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Creation
To create is to live doubly. They know to begin with and work to enrich and enlarge through examination of what they know.
The absurd man concerns himself with experiencing and describing - not explaining and solving.
Does the Christian explain and solve? Does he do this as an apologist or as a believer? Or does the Christian resolve the conflict through faith (creating a paradox out of an inconsistency) and merely experience and describe?
The universe is attractive, not for its depth but for its diversity (quantity not quality). Explanation is futile, but sensation (experience) remains.
"The idea of an art detached from its creator is not only outmoded, it is false... the artist commits himself and becomes himself in his work" (Camus)
"The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete" (Camus)
Art is carnal.
Thought provokes art but the creation of art is the repudiation of the provoking thought.
Art cannot be the end, the meaning, or the consolation of life.
Art is bad when it tries to explain existence in total. Art is good when it is a slice of experience.
"If the world were clear, art would not exist" and "expression begins where thought ends".
To think is to create a world (or to limit one's world, which is the same thing)
Camus desires to liberate his universe of phantoms and focus on flesh-and-blood truths, of which he cannot deny (This sounds a bit Cartesian).
The heart of man is full of stubborn hope.
Kirilov
In Dostoevsky, existence is either illusionary or eternal.
Dostoevsky is convinced that life is an utter absurdity for anyone without faith in immortality.
The independence which Kirilov gains (Dostoevsky's The Possessed) is the independence of serving God, of being god himself - this is a painful independence for him.
Ivan Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov), like the great assassain of God, Nietzsche end their lives in madness. Camus praises this: "But this is a risk worth running, and faced with such tragic ends, the essential impulse of the absurd mind is to ask - what does that prove?" (Camus).
All is well, everything is permitted, nothing is hateful, dreadful freedom - these are the mantras of the absurd mind.
Dostoevsky, like Kierkegaard, follows out the absurd logic only to metaphysically reverse at the end (there is a God, necessarily). Thus, hope in the eternal, an abandonment of the temporal.
Dostoevsky's works deal with the absurd problem, but are not absurd works. His works offer a reply (the leap); whereas, true absurd works offer descriptions, not replies.
"It is possible to be Christian and absurd. There are examples of Christians who do not believe in a future life" (Camus). [What? Who? This is a contradiction. The entire thrust of Christianity is the eternal life].
Ephemeral creation
The art and artist are inseparable. The entire body of work by the artist is his one creation. Each piece complements, chastises, or corrects one another. (Experience is emphasized in this, a lifetime of experience infused in a lifetime of work).
"From death, for instance, they (the art) derive their definitive significance. At the moment of death, the succession of his works is but a collection of failures. But if those failures all have the same resonance, the creator has managed to repeat the image of his own conditions to make the air echo with the sterile secret he possesses" (Camus).
Art finds its importance in the demands it makes on the creator and the opportunity it affords him of getting closer to his naked self.
Diversity is the home of art.
There is no barrier between being and appearing.
The illusion of another world binds man; hope binds man.
Notes on Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus
Absurd Creation
To create is to live doubly. They know to begin with and work to enrich and enlarge through examination of what they know.
The absurd man concerns himself with experiencing and describing - not explaining and solving.
Does the Christian explain and solve? Does he do this as an apologist or as a believer? Or does the Christian resolve the conflict through faith (creating a paradox out of an inconsistency) and merely experience and describe?
The universe is attractive, not for its depth but for its diversity (quantity not quality). Explanation is futile, but sensation (experience) remains.
"The idea of an art detached from its creator is not only outmoded, it is false... the artist commits himself and becomes himself in his work" (Camus)
"The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete" (Camus)
Art is carnal.
Thought provokes art but the creation of art is the repudiation of the provoking thought.
Art cannot be the end, the meaning, or the consolation of life.
Art is bad when it tries to explain existence in total. Art is good when it is a slice of experience.
"If the world were clear, art would not exist" and "expression begins where thought ends".
To think is to create a world (or to limit one's world, which is the same thing)
Camus desires to liberate his universe of phantoms and focus on flesh-and-blood truths, of which he cannot deny (This sounds a bit Cartesian).
The heart of man is full of stubborn hope.
Kirilov
In Dostoevsky, existence is either illusionary or eternal.
Dostoevsky is convinced that life is an utter absurdity for anyone without faith in immortality.
The independence which Kirilov gains (Dostoevsky's The Possessed) is the independence of serving God, of being god himself - this is a painful independence for him.
Ivan Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov), like the great assassain of God, Nietzsche end their lives in madness. Camus praises this: "But this is a risk worth running, and faced with such tragic ends, the essential impulse of the absurd mind is to ask - what does that prove?" (Camus).
All is well, everything is permitted, nothing is hateful, dreadful freedom - these are the mantras of the absurd mind.
Dostoevsky, like Kierkegaard, follows out the absurd logic only to metaphysically reverse at the end (there is a God, necessarily). Thus, hope in the eternal, an abandonment of the temporal.
Dostoevsky's works deal with the absurd problem, but are not absurd works. His works offer a reply (the leap); whereas, true absurd works offer descriptions, not replies.
"It is possible to be Christian and absurd. There are examples of Christians who do not believe in a future life" (Camus). [What? Who? This is a contradiction. The entire thrust of Christianity is the eternal life].
Ephemeral creation
The art and artist are inseparable. The entire body of work by the artist is his one creation. Each piece complements, chastises, or corrects one another. (Experience is emphasized in this, a lifetime of experience infused in a lifetime of work).
"From death, for instance, they (the art) derive their definitive significance. At the moment of death, the succession of his works is but a collection of failures. But if those failures all have the same resonance, the creator has managed to repeat the image of his own conditions to make the air echo with the sterile secret he possesses" (Camus).
Art finds its importance in the demands it makes on the creator and the opportunity it affords him of getting closer to his naked self.
Diversity is the home of art.
There is no barrier between being and appearing.
The illusion of another world binds man; hope binds man.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Notes on the Absurd Man (B) (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally Written October 12, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
The Absurd Man
The absurd man is assured of temporally limited freedom.
The absurd man lives his existence in his lifetime.
The absurd man does nothing for the eternal.
The absurd man lives by courage and reasoning.
He is assured of his temporally limited freedom. (Contrast with the Christian who is assured of his absolute freedom in Christ).
"The absurd does not liberate, it binds" (Camus)
"In the absurd world the value of a notion or a life is measured by its sterility" (Camus)
Don Juanism
Genius is intelligence that knows its frontiers.
Those who live on hope are called either a weakling, an idealist or a saint - each insulting.
Ethic is quantitative for the absurd man, the saint sees ethic qualitatively.
Regret is another form of hope.
Love, like that of a passionate wife or a mother necessarily closes its heart to the world. Those who turn away from all personal life through a great love are certainly enriched, but the object of that great love becomes impoverished.
Love can only be defined subjectively based on our experiences. "I do not have the right to cover all those experiences with the same name" (Camus).
Love is noble when it recognizes its short-lived and exceptional nature.
Again, the absurd man quantifies his experiences of love and doesn't base it on any qualitative experience (This is what Camus calls Don Juanism). [This is a truly detestable notion]
A fate is not a punishment - a natural consequence of a consciously chosen act is not a punishment. The absurd man chooses his direction and accepts the reality of his choice.
It is the absurd way to knowledge without illusion.
Drama
The thoughtless man continues to hasten from hope to hope.
There is a profound nobility in indifference. Indifference directs us to the most important concern: the immediate.
"Preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each much play his part" (Camus). Obviously, the absurd man chooses oneself over losing oneself in any way - especially to something atemporal or eternal. (The absurd man lives in time, his adventure lasts from birth until death).
Conquest
The conqueror can thoroughly define what they believe. Beware of those who say 'I know this too well to express it' because they either do not know it or were too lazy to pursue it. (This is a condemnation of mysticism).
Given the choice between history or eternal Camus chooses history because it is certain and he likes certainties.
A proud heart cannot compromise. "There is God or time, that cross or this sword. This world has a higher meaning that transcends its worries, or nothing is true but those worries. One must live with time and die with it, or else elude it for a greater life. I know that one can compromise and live in this world while believing in the eternal. That is called accepting. But I loathe this term and want all or nothing" (Camus).
Flesh is struggle, but flesh is my only certainty.
Man is his own end; he is his only end.
Life is both the conquerors' destitution and wealth. It is in this tension that he thrives, exalting and crushing man, the individual.
True riches are riches because they are transitory.
Knowing the limits constitutes the freedom, the liberation.
"The truths that come within my scope can be touched with the hand" (Camus)
Pity is the only acceptable form of compassion for the absurd man.
"Being deprived of hope is not despairing" (Camus)
The absurd, godless world is full of thinking men without hope.
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
The Absurd Man
The absurd man is assured of temporally limited freedom.
The absurd man lives his existence in his lifetime.
The absurd man does nothing for the eternal.
The absurd man lives by courage and reasoning.
He is assured of his temporally limited freedom. (Contrast with the Christian who is assured of his absolute freedom in Christ).
"The absurd does not liberate, it binds" (Camus)
"In the absurd world the value of a notion or a life is measured by its sterility" (Camus)
Don Juanism
Genius is intelligence that knows its frontiers.
Those who live on hope are called either a weakling, an idealist or a saint - each insulting.
Ethic is quantitative for the absurd man, the saint sees ethic qualitatively.
Regret is another form of hope.
Love, like that of a passionate wife or a mother necessarily closes its heart to the world. Those who turn away from all personal life through a great love are certainly enriched, but the object of that great love becomes impoverished.
Love can only be defined subjectively based on our experiences. "I do not have the right to cover all those experiences with the same name" (Camus).
Love is noble when it recognizes its short-lived and exceptional nature.
Again, the absurd man quantifies his experiences of love and doesn't base it on any qualitative experience (This is what Camus calls Don Juanism). [This is a truly detestable notion]
A fate is not a punishment - a natural consequence of a consciously chosen act is not a punishment. The absurd man chooses his direction and accepts the reality of his choice.
It is the absurd way to knowledge without illusion.
Drama
The thoughtless man continues to hasten from hope to hope.
There is a profound nobility in indifference. Indifference directs us to the most important concern: the immediate.
"Preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each much play his part" (Camus). Obviously, the absurd man chooses oneself over losing oneself in any way - especially to something atemporal or eternal. (The absurd man lives in time, his adventure lasts from birth until death).
Conquest
The conqueror can thoroughly define what they believe. Beware of those who say 'I know this too well to express it' because they either do not know it or were too lazy to pursue it. (This is a condemnation of mysticism).
Given the choice between history or eternal Camus chooses history because it is certain and he likes certainties.
A proud heart cannot compromise. "There is God or time, that cross or this sword. This world has a higher meaning that transcends its worries, or nothing is true but those worries. One must live with time and die with it, or else elude it for a greater life. I know that one can compromise and live in this world while believing in the eternal. That is called accepting. But I loathe this term and want all or nothing" (Camus).
Flesh is struggle, but flesh is my only certainty.
Man is his own end; he is his only end.
Life is both the conquerors' destitution and wealth. It is in this tension that he thrives, exalting and crushing man, the individual.
True riches are riches because they are transitory.
Knowing the limits constitutes the freedom, the liberation.
"The truths that come within my scope can be touched with the hand" (Camus)
Pity is the only acceptable form of compassion for the absurd man.
"Being deprived of hope is not despairing" (Camus)
The absurd, godless world is full of thinking men without hope.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Notes on the Absurd Man (A) (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally Written October 11, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
The Absurd Man
The absurd man, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal.
The absurd man prefers to live in courage and with his reasoning. This courage teaches him to live without appeal (void of hope or meaning); the reasoning informs him of his limits.
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
The Absurd Man
The absurd man, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal.
The absurd man prefers to live in courage and with his reasoning. This courage teaches him to live without appeal (void of hope or meaning); the reasoning informs him of his limits.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Notes on An Absurd Reasoning & Absurd Freedom (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally Written October 10, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
Myth of Sisyphus
An Absurd Reasoning
"Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to human, stamping it with his real" (Camus)
This is pure subjectivism - all thought is anthropomorphic. A thought then, What of Imago Dei? If we, created in the image of God reflect on the world out of this sense aren't we reflecting on the world from a universal standpoint, albeit imperfectly due to our limitations?
Camus is an absolute empiricist. I feel my heart, it exists. I feel the world, I touch it. Therefore, it exists. "There ends all my knowledge, the rest is construction" (Camus). But he states even his own heart is and will remain indefinable to him.
The gap between certainty of existence and defining the content of existence is so wide it cannot be filled.
The irrational (existence's paradoxes and inconsistencies), the human nostalgia (our deepest desire for unity familiarity, and obsession with clarity), and the absurd (the abyss we stare at when we attempt of true knowledge and find none) converge to create in our minds a desert which we ought not attempt to escape by suicide (literal or the act of giving up thought or reason) or attempt to transcend by hope (a process of leaving knowledge to enter into pure construction). This is the point that demands action - suicide or recovery.
Philosophical suicide is the abdication of duty in pursuing knowledge either by giving up or by giving into hope.
The absurd is "the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints" (Camus).
The absurd is to be both impossible and contradictory.
The absurd is a disproportion between intentions and reality of consequences. "The absurd, which is a metaphysical state of the conscious man does not lead to God. Perhaps the notion will become clearer if I risk this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God" (Camus).
Absurdity springs from comparison. It is essentially a divorce; it does not lie within the two things being compared but in the actual confrontation of the two things. The absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in the meeting of the two.
The absurd is the fundamental truth - the one thing that cannot be disposed of.
Now, it is the absurd that crushes man - the force that drives man to a broken point. The thing that crushes us we must fight to preserve. The absurd is an unceasing struggle - which implies "a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest)" (Camus).
So Camus' way is thus:
1. Break from the monotony of life to discover life is meaningless.
2. This shock demands action, either suicide or recovery
3. The recovery is acceptance of the absurd as ceaseless struggle
4. Ceaseless struggle brings to the mind three realizations
- There is no hope
- There is continual rejection
- We must be dissatisfied
The existentialists (Chestov, Kierkegaard and Jaspers) came to the truth of the absurd and offered their reaction to it as escape. They did so out of forced hope - creating religion.
The absurd man, the existentialist, recognizes the absurd and the limited value of reason - but, rather than abandoning reason for religion, he in his awareness, simply knows there is no longer a place for hope.
The absurd man seeks to live with his ailments, while the man who has seen the absurd and turned to religion has become frantic and frenzied, seeking to be cured.
Kierkegaard views despair not as a fact, but as a state of existence - the state of sin. Now, Kierkegaard in his final dealings with the absurd sacrificed the intellect (reason) to the belief in God for he sacrificed his pride (sin) to God. Camus recognizes the limitations of reason, but states that if this is pride he sees no sufficient cause to sacrifice it.
The absurd man, the absurd mind seeks what is true at all costs. It seeks what is true, not what is desirable. If Kierkegaard warns that there is nothing but despair then the absurd man takes truth and despair.
Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl) - the making of structures of consciousness and the phenomena which appears in acts of consciousness - objects of systematic reflection and analysis. Husserl used this to provide a firm basis for all human knowledge.
Phenomenology seeks to describe actual experience - not explain the world.
Phenomenology claims truths but that there is no Truth.
Husserl's method was "the intention":
1. Negate classical reasoning (thinking as a unifying/familiarizing procedure). Thinking is actually a relearning how to see again and to direct consciousness.
2. Directing consciousness illuminates every little truth.
3. It isolates events from one another to represent an incoherent-ness in experience; thus, every isolated object of consciousness is its own "magical appearance".
The absurd spirit wishes to enumerate experience, not transcend it.
Husserl's methodology would be acceptable to the absurd man if it simply stopped at the enumeration of experience, but Husserl jumps from the psychological truth of his theory to the metaphysical. Thus, he reintroduces a rationalism akin to Plato. Unlike Kierkegaard who returns to God - Husserl returns to a form of truth as polytheism - flattening all hierarchy and making all truth equal little gods.
The difference between Husserl's abstract god and the dazzling God of Kierkegaard is minimal and only one on how to arrive at the conclusion. Kierkegaard, like other religious philosophers deified the absurd and called it God. The abstract philosophers like Husserl rationalized the absurd to the point of creating standard reasons. They began at the nausea of recognizing the absurd but go to one extreme (rationalizing/abstract) or irrationalizing (deifying/religious escapism).
Nausea is looking into the face of the absurd. There are then three paths to follow. Religion is the path of deifying the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The abstract is the pat of rationalizing the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The absurd man does neither. He takes the divorce. This is the path of acceptance.
The absurd man knows that existence is unreasonable - neither too rational nor too irrational. He accepts the limits of reason and does not give it limitless power as Husserl or abandon it as sin (pride) like Kierkegaard.
Absurd Freedom
What is known (that what is certain) cannot be denied or rejected. One can negate all, but one's desire for unity. One can refute all the world but chaos.
One can only understand a thing in human terms (thus cannot transcend). "What I touch, what resists me - that is what I understand" (Camus).
The break - the divorce of mind (reason) and the world is caused by awareness of it.
The absurd man lives in the certainty of this divorce and does nothing except on the basis of certain knowledge. The only certainty is the absurd and thus he cannot escape it in good conscious through religion. He hears that this is the sin of pride but he does not know what sin is.
Life is better lived because it does not have a meaning.
Hope in transcendence (religion) is to escape the reality of the absurd - to abolish the intellect is to elude, not solve the problem.
The absurd man lives in constant revolt against the world and against his desire for unity (escape/hope). It is in this revolt that gives life its value.
Camus really loves the pride of man. He focuses all of his energy on praising the absurd man and abhors any type of degradation.
To the absurd man the notion of the metaphysical freedom or determinism is not important - the absurd man is only certain of his own freedom.
Camus denies the paradox of God and freedom has been solved or laid to waste, it remains. Either god is all-powerful and the author of all evil or we are free and God is not all-powerful. But, none of this is important because we only experience our own freedom and the eradication of hope and future makes us more free.
The absurd tells me this: there is no future. Freedom in the classical sense is based on hope, hope based on future. Our hope in the future actually makes us slaves to the conventions of thinking.
The Ideal of the absurd man: to live with a constantly conscious soul in a ceaseless procession of presents (no pasts/no future)/
Three consequences of absurd reasoning:
1. Revolt
2. Freedom
3. The ideal (passion)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
Myth of Sisyphus
An Absurd Reasoning
"Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to human, stamping it with his real" (Camus)
This is pure subjectivism - all thought is anthropomorphic. A thought then, What of Imago Dei? If we, created in the image of God reflect on the world out of this sense aren't we reflecting on the world from a universal standpoint, albeit imperfectly due to our limitations?
Camus is an absolute empiricist. I feel my heart, it exists. I feel the world, I touch it. Therefore, it exists. "There ends all my knowledge, the rest is construction" (Camus). But he states even his own heart is and will remain indefinable to him.
The gap between certainty of existence and defining the content of existence is so wide it cannot be filled.
The irrational (existence's paradoxes and inconsistencies), the human nostalgia (our deepest desire for unity familiarity, and obsession with clarity), and the absurd (the abyss we stare at when we attempt of true knowledge and find none) converge to create in our minds a desert which we ought not attempt to escape by suicide (literal or the act of giving up thought or reason) or attempt to transcend by hope (a process of leaving knowledge to enter into pure construction). This is the point that demands action - suicide or recovery.
Philosophical suicide is the abdication of duty in pursuing knowledge either by giving up or by giving into hope.
The absurd is "the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints" (Camus).
The absurd is to be both impossible and contradictory.
The absurd is a disproportion between intentions and reality of consequences. "The absurd, which is a metaphysical state of the conscious man does not lead to God. Perhaps the notion will become clearer if I risk this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God" (Camus).
Absurdity springs from comparison. It is essentially a divorce; it does not lie within the two things being compared but in the actual confrontation of the two things. The absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in the meeting of the two.
The absurd is the fundamental truth - the one thing that cannot be disposed of.
Now, it is the absurd that crushes man - the force that drives man to a broken point. The thing that crushes us we must fight to preserve. The absurd is an unceasing struggle - which implies "a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest)" (Camus).
So Camus' way is thus:
1. Break from the monotony of life to discover life is meaningless.
2. This shock demands action, either suicide or recovery
3. The recovery is acceptance of the absurd as ceaseless struggle
4. Ceaseless struggle brings to the mind three realizations
- There is no hope
- There is continual rejection
- We must be dissatisfied
The existentialists (Chestov, Kierkegaard and Jaspers) came to the truth of the absurd and offered their reaction to it as escape. They did so out of forced hope - creating religion.
The absurd man, the existentialist, recognizes the absurd and the limited value of reason - but, rather than abandoning reason for religion, he in his awareness, simply knows there is no longer a place for hope.
The absurd man seeks to live with his ailments, while the man who has seen the absurd and turned to religion has become frantic and frenzied, seeking to be cured.
Kierkegaard views despair not as a fact, but as a state of existence - the state of sin. Now, Kierkegaard in his final dealings with the absurd sacrificed the intellect (reason) to the belief in God for he sacrificed his pride (sin) to God. Camus recognizes the limitations of reason, but states that if this is pride he sees no sufficient cause to sacrifice it.
The absurd man, the absurd mind seeks what is true at all costs. It seeks what is true, not what is desirable. If Kierkegaard warns that there is nothing but despair then the absurd man takes truth and despair.
Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl) - the making of structures of consciousness and the phenomena which appears in acts of consciousness - objects of systematic reflection and analysis. Husserl used this to provide a firm basis for all human knowledge.
Phenomenology seeks to describe actual experience - not explain the world.
Phenomenology claims truths but that there is no Truth.
Husserl's method was "the intention":
1. Negate classical reasoning (thinking as a unifying/familiarizing procedure). Thinking is actually a relearning how to see again and to direct consciousness.
2. Directing consciousness illuminates every little truth.
3. It isolates events from one another to represent an incoherent-ness in experience; thus, every isolated object of consciousness is its own "magical appearance".
The absurd spirit wishes to enumerate experience, not transcend it.
Husserl's methodology would be acceptable to the absurd man if it simply stopped at the enumeration of experience, but Husserl jumps from the psychological truth of his theory to the metaphysical. Thus, he reintroduces a rationalism akin to Plato. Unlike Kierkegaard who returns to God - Husserl returns to a form of truth as polytheism - flattening all hierarchy and making all truth equal little gods.
The difference between Husserl's abstract god and the dazzling God of Kierkegaard is minimal and only one on how to arrive at the conclusion. Kierkegaard, like other religious philosophers deified the absurd and called it God. The abstract philosophers like Husserl rationalized the absurd to the point of creating standard reasons. They began at the nausea of recognizing the absurd but go to one extreme (rationalizing/abstract) or irrationalizing (deifying/religious escapism).
Nausea is looking into the face of the absurd. There are then three paths to follow. Religion is the path of deifying the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The abstract is the pat of rationalizing the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The absurd man does neither. He takes the divorce. This is the path of acceptance.
The absurd man knows that existence is unreasonable - neither too rational nor too irrational. He accepts the limits of reason and does not give it limitless power as Husserl or abandon it as sin (pride) like Kierkegaard.
Absurd Freedom
What is known (that what is certain) cannot be denied or rejected. One can negate all, but one's desire for unity. One can refute all the world but chaos.
One can only understand a thing in human terms (thus cannot transcend). "What I touch, what resists me - that is what I understand" (Camus).
The break - the divorce of mind (reason) and the world is caused by awareness of it.
The absurd man lives in the certainty of this divorce and does nothing except on the basis of certain knowledge. The only certainty is the absurd and thus he cannot escape it in good conscious through religion. He hears that this is the sin of pride but he does not know what sin is.
Life is better lived because it does not have a meaning.
Hope in transcendence (religion) is to escape the reality of the absurd - to abolish the intellect is to elude, not solve the problem.
The absurd man lives in constant revolt against the world and against his desire for unity (escape/hope). It is in this revolt that gives life its value.
Camus really loves the pride of man. He focuses all of his energy on praising the absurd man and abhors any type of degradation.
To the absurd man the notion of the metaphysical freedom or determinism is not important - the absurd man is only certain of his own freedom.
Camus denies the paradox of God and freedom has been solved or laid to waste, it remains. Either god is all-powerful and the author of all evil or we are free and God is not all-powerful. But, none of this is important because we only experience our own freedom and the eradication of hope and future makes us more free.
The absurd tells me this: there is no future. Freedom in the classical sense is based on hope, hope based on future. Our hope in the future actually makes us slaves to the conventions of thinking.
The Ideal of the absurd man: to live with a constantly conscious soul in a ceaseless procession of presents (no pasts/no future)/
Three consequences of absurd reasoning:
1. Revolt
2. Freedom
3. The ideal (passion)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)