ALBERT CAMUS (1913-1960)

On certain mornings, as we turn a corner,

an exquisite dew falls on our heart

and then vanishes.

But the freshness lingers, and this,

always,

is what the heart needs.

The earth must have risen

in just such a light,

the morning the world was born.

-Albert Camus

"If we are to take seriously existentialism's claim that ultimately it is the individual who counts and that no power of reasoning is adeqate either to justify to to explain him away, the Camus is more existentialist than either Sartre or de Beauvoir" (Hazel Barnes, Humanistic Existentialism,  p. 244)

Constrast this with Camus' 1945  statement: "I have little liking for the well-known existentialist philosophy, and to speak candidly, I believe its conclusions are false.  But it represents nevertheless a great adventure in thought response to Camus (quoted in Gill & Sherman, p. 535 1st column).  See Gill and Sherman's response in the second column, same page.

Camus vs. Sartre:  Mediterranean temperament vs. northern European (Protestant); Dionysian (Camus?) vs. Apollonian; moraliste vs. professional philosopher; apolitical vs. very political.  Camus was political at one time:  joined the Communist Party in 1934, but quit soon afterward.

Camus said that Sartre was too pessimistic; Sartre said that Camus was philosophically naive.  But Camus was trained in philosophy.  Liked Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in high school.  Wrote a thesis on Plotinus and Augustine at university.

Philosophical suicide:  main break with previous existentialism.  It is the moral equivalent of physical suicide:  SK=s leap, Kirillov=s self-will, the Overman=s overcoming of herself (or lion lashing out instead?)  The philosophical or religious way of settling the absurd.  In short, Camus rejects early existentialism=s Titanism.

Solidarity not Community:  solitary individuals brought together in a common struggle.  G & S, p. 537, rare I and Thou relations.

Role of Rationality:  Rational humans vs. irreduciably dense world produces the absurd.  Sartre:  Camus was a Cartesian of the absurd.  Camus' view of the self-world correlation.  It's not that the self is irrational, as some existentialists say, or that even the world is irrational.  But it is the relationship between them that is absurd.  Camus has a different view of suicide too.

Sol. 178  A "they-self" (Heid.) view of suicide.  What would Camus' view of Kirilov's suicide be?

179  "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined."  Does Camus agree with Nietzsche that self-consciousness is inauthentic?  Mersault in The Stranger seems to bear this out.  Does thinking of suicide involve too much hyper-reflection?  What's the difference between Camus' "lucidity in the face of existence" and ordinary reflection?  See handout on lucidity.

180 Camus' version of Sartre's en-soi? - "absurdity can strike any man in the face."

181  "absurd universe"  A good life is giving the absurd nobility; making the void eloquent.

182  Cartesian starting point.  Heid's "mere" (?) anxiety.  Sartre's Nausea: "Revolt of the flesh is the absurd."

182 bottom  Camus' en-soi: "The world evades us because it becomes itself again.

183 Finally, an acknowledgment of Sartre and nausea.  Other people and even ourselves are disappearing into en-soi.  They're allowing their pour-soi to be "swallowed up" by en soi.  The absurd is alive! (21 original)

Life can "be lived all the better if it has no meaning....living is keeping the absurd alive."

"Impossible transparency"?  En-soi as totally pour-soi?  The Cartesian mind with completely clear and distinct ideas?  (See Richard Rorty's critique of this view in his classic work Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.) Camus' lucidity as a translucent mind?

"Suicide does not follow revolt." This is Kirillov's mistake.  Suicide is not the ultimate revolt against the absurd.

184 Suicide (physically taking one's life) and the "leap"-- philosophical suicide.  Suicide "settles the absurd" (physical or philosophical), but the "authentic" person keeps the absurd alive.

No dialogical exist. for Camus:  the absurd is kept alive by solitary effort like Sisyphus' effort.

185 What counts is not "the best living but the most living."  "Value judgments are discarded here in favor of factual judgments."  If this requires that I live dishonorably then so be it!  Dost's "Undergound Man."

186 Let's avoid romanticism.  Too much of it in strict existentialism.

Lucidity:  "Being aware of one's life, one's revolt, one's freedom...."  This involves self-consciousness, right, and not Mersault's "animal consciousness."

Value means nothing for lucidity.  "Conscious life of 40 yrs. and a lucidity spread over 60 yrs."

187  Of Camus' consequences of the absurd--revolt, freedom, passion --doesn't at least the latter two require a life of quality, not just quantity?  Doesn't Mersault believe he has a better life, even though condemned to death, than a religious person, represented by the priest, who lives in bad faith?  The priest will continue to have more life, but not better.

187  Sisyphus as a man of passion?  The hero is conscious.  Everyone is Sisyphus.  Must mean self-conscious, other wise we wouldn't see the absurdity of our everyday lives.

188  Lucidity constitutes his torture?  Where is Sisyphus' revolt, freedom, and passion?  "silent joy"?  Where is Sisyphus in Nietzsche's Three Metamorphoses?

189-191  Compare these thoughts with Kirillov.

191  To be happy it's not necessary to be concerned about others.  (Like Sisyphus' happiness?)  It's also not necessary to hope(!?)  Lucidity, absurdity, and cosmic laughter.  benign indifference of the universe.

Full text of Myth of Sisyphus

8  "Others, princes of the mind, abdicated likewise, but they initiated the suicide of their thought in its purest revolt."  They should stay in revolt, but also in the absurd. 

16  Philosophers negate the mind's "profound truth, which is to be enchained"?

17  "The royal road to reason" is blocked, but that uncovers "the direct paths of truth."  Camus credits Nietzsche, SK, Heid, Jaspers, and the phenomonologists with this discovery.

18  Comments on Heid.  Work from text.  Heid. "does not separate consciousness from the absurd"?  Quote.

18  Comments on Jaspers, who "despairs of any ontology."

19  SK does not only discover the absurd, but he lives it.  No criticism of his leap.  Comes later on p. 29.

21  "The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."  Quote also 22-23.  (Quote 24) General critique.

24:  Existentialism "suggest[s] escape"  Their solution is a "religious" one.  Jaspers is typical of all of them.  Sacrifices his autonomy and reason to the "transcendent."

25  Nothing logical prepares Jaspers for this move to God.  Therefore it is an irrational "leap."

The Russian Checkov (?) and SK have the same problem.  They "rely" on God, even they have no good reason to.

26  We must remain "faithful to the commandments of the absurd."  What are these?  "opposition, laceration, and divorce"  Doesn't Abraham experience all of these?  Reason keeps the absurd alive?

29  SK wants to be cured of the absurd.  Christianity and its "scandal" is the cure.  But "reconciliation through scandal is still reconciliation." 

30  The leap "transcends...the human scale; it must be superhuman."  Titanism.  The leap destroys reason, which I want to maintain.  Quote p. 30.  "My intelligence must remain clear" (lucid?)  "The absurd is sin without God."