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.

Can Man Live Without God - Chapter 4

(Originally written September 15, 2005 in Book 1)

Can Man Live Without God?
Ravi Zacharias
1994

Chapter Four - The Homeless Mind

Antitheism hopes to create a literal and figurative utopia where goodness is derived apart from God. Unfortunately, these goals are shattered by failure without reverting to sheer pragmatism.

Immanuel Kant tried to establish a moral impetus within man and to postulate a system of right and wrong from reason alone. Kant set the groundwork for intellectual demagogues of both the Democratic West and the totalitarian Soviet Union.

The USA is to become the USSR without God.

Kant had two theories:
1) That goodness was rational and morals were rational. Thus, all rational beings would be drawn to them.
2) Kant believed that the first theory was contained within mankind and had the capacity to perform these moral and good deeds. By our reason we therefore know what is right and by our will we can do what is right.

Kant believed that God is not essential to reveal morality since man can come to morality by reason; but, he does not deny that God has given some commands. Antitheists praise the first part of this and conveniently omit the second.

Kant's efforts to provide a rational basis for ethics and morals apart from God was unsuccesful but paved the way for existentialists like Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard proposed that rational beings don't gravitate towarads morality, but they have the choice to think of terms in ethic or not to think in terms of ethics.

This and other Enlightenment Age philosophies fail to produce coherent postulates because it leaves life meaningless. To establish morals there must first be the basis of human purpose and destiny. This can solely be arrived at through God. Dostoevsky said, "If God is dead, anything is justifiable."