From the Myth of Sysyphus (1942):
I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that is what I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition?
If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world. I should be this world.
In 1957 Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 to January 4, 1960) accepted the Nobel Prize for literature. On January 4, 1960 Camus died in a car crash.
Showing posts with label Albert Camus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Albert Camus. Show all posts
January 4, 2017
November 7, 2015
November 7, 1913
We have this precis of Camus's philosophy:
The essential paradox arising in Camus's philosophy concerns his central notion of absurdity. Accepting the Aristotelian idea that philosophy begins in wonder, Camus argues that human beings cannot escape asking the question, “What is the meaning of existence?” Camus, however, denies that there is an answer to this question, and rejects every scientific, teleological, metaphysical, or human-created end that would provide an adequate answer. Thus, while accepting that human beings inevitably seek to understand life's purpose, Camus takes the skeptical position that the natural world, the universe, and the human enterprise remain silent about any such purpose. Since existence itself has no meaning, we must learn to bear an irresolvable emptiness. This paradoxical situation, then, between our impulse to ask ultimate questions and the impossibility of achieving any adequate answer, is what Camus calls the absurd.
Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 to January 4, 1960), won a Nobel Prize (1957) "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".
Camus died a few years later in a car crash. Which you could consider absurd. And this next point, some will say falls into that category:
There is a vandalism in the records regarding the cats of certain writers. Camus is reported to have named a cat "Stranger" which if true would reveal an obvious lack of taste. It cannot be true. I have noticed a parallel tackiness with other writers. It is not surprising that someone's joke has been copied all over. What I have not found is the origin of these errors.
We do know Albert Camus had a black cat.
The essential paradox arising in Camus's philosophy concerns his central notion of absurdity. Accepting the Aristotelian idea that philosophy begins in wonder, Camus argues that human beings cannot escape asking the question, “What is the meaning of existence?” Camus, however, denies that there is an answer to this question, and rejects every scientific, teleological, metaphysical, or human-created end that would provide an adequate answer. Thus, while accepting that human beings inevitably seek to understand life's purpose, Camus takes the skeptical position that the natural world, the universe, and the human enterprise remain silent about any such purpose. Since existence itself has no meaning, we must learn to bear an irresolvable emptiness. This paradoxical situation, then, between our impulse to ask ultimate questions and the impossibility of achieving any adequate answer, is what Camus calls the absurd.
Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 to January 4, 1960), won a Nobel Prize (1957) "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".
Camus died a few years later in a car crash. Which you could consider absurd. And this next point, some will say falls into that category:
There is a vandalism in the records regarding the cats of certain writers. Camus is reported to have named a cat "Stranger" which if true would reveal an obvious lack of taste. It cannot be true. I have noticed a parallel tackiness with other writers. It is not surprising that someone's joke has been copied all over. What I have not found is the origin of these errors.
We do know Albert Camus had a black cat.
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