HN

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  firasd
  His Sisyphus essay is famous for its closing line but I find it interesting how for several pages it closes with a thump, thump, thump and metaphor fusion (the essay is ending, the rock is rolling, the gods are watching, the choice is being made...) Even the second-last line is underrated:"There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn. [...] His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. [...] The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. [...] The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
• tau5210
  The Stranger and Sisyphus often seem to receive more attention, and needless to say both are great works, but I've felt that these were still the type of thought of a yet young person struggling to come to terms with absurdity. He is still trying to think about it in terms of ideas and words, which itself is not yet exempt from the absurd. Hence why the conclusion that Sisyphus is happy feels yet a bit forced.The Plague feels closer to an actual reconciliation with the absurd, through Rieux's whole existence, not just ideas and words.Indeed The Plague was written later than The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus.From The Plague:> Rieux had been listening closely to the journalist. Still looking at him, he said gently:> "Man is not an idea, Rambert."> The other man jumped up from the bed, his face contorted with emotion.> "He is an idea and a very brief one, just as soon as he turns away from love. And that's the trouble: we are no longer capable of love. Let's resign ourselves, doctor, let's wait until we are capable of it and if it's really not possible, wait for the general deliverance, without playing at heroes. As for me, I'm not going any further."> "You're right, Rambert, quite right and I wouldn't want to divert from what you intend to do for anything in the world, because it seems to me good and proper. But I have to tell you this: this whole things is not about heroism. It's about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency."> "What is decency?" Rambert asked, suddenly serious.> "In general, I can't say, but in my case I know that it consists in doing my job."
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  pandoro
  If you are not familiar with Camus' work, I highly recommend reading the essay collection Nuptials (Nuptials at Tipasa, The Wind at Djémila, Summer in Algiers and The Desert). It was written in 1936, when Camus was in his early twenties; several years before he articulated his "philosophie de l'absurde" in The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger.Camus himself described Noces as belonging to a pre-absurdist "pagan" phase. It describes, in beautifully poetic french, the intense, sensual love of physical existence and the here-and-now that gives the absurd its stakes.A quote from Nuptials at Tipasa:In the spring, Tipasa is inhabited by gods and the gods speak in the sun and the scent of absinthe leaves, in the silver armor of the sea, in the raw blue sky, the flower-covered ruins, and the great bubbles of light among the heaps of stone. At certain hours of the day the countryside is black with sunlight. The eyes try in vain to perceive anything but drops of light and colors trembling on the lashes.[...]I love this life with abandon and wish to speak of it boldly: it makes me proud of my human condition. Yet people have often told me: there’s nothing to be proud of. Yes, there is: this sun, this sea, my heart leaping with youth, the salt taste of my body and this vast landscape in which tenderness and glory merge in blue and yellow. It is to conquer this that I need my strength and my resources. Everything here leaves me intact, I surrender nothing of myself, and don no mask: learning patiently and arduously how to live is enough for me, well worth all their arts of living.
• mintflow
  Feel great to read this type of article on hackernews. Camus died too young, and the current world have enough of evidence of absurdity.
• hoodchatham
  See also "Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It" https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/027961.html
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  jordanpg
  Before reading The Stranger, I was headlong into the then-popular "New Atheism" movement, which came with a certain air of superiority of brainpower over the naive masses. But reading The Stranger had a profound impact on me, even before I knew anything more formal about existentialist philosophy.It was an awakening: I began to understand that the problem with the world isn't that everyone needs to learn more physics and think more like me. The problem is that none of this stuff -- life -- really means anything; that's a hard pill for lots of people to swallow (understandably); and our stupid little lives are just 80 years or so of farting around and trying to forget about what is obvious (h/t to KV).The book ultimately softened my overly critical views about religion and superstition and helped me mature into someone much more sympathetic to the various weird things that people think and do.
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  A_D_E_P_T
  As it happens, I recently re-read The Stranger -- the last time was in 2006, so it was essentially fresh.The first half of the short book is easily on-par with any of the great masterpieces of literature. It was written in a direct, vivid, gripping, and yet somehow languorous style -- something almost paradoxical. It was also very attuned to the aesthetics and flow of the outside world, but inattentive to the narrator's inner life -- insensitive and, in a sense, essentially masculine in a non-performative way. As a purely aesthetic work, it is truly excellent.The second half falls apart catastrophically. The key scenario, the book's turning point, is contrived almost beyond belief. The trial is a farce on several distinct levels -- you can criticize it from almost any perspective, and you'd be right. (There's a well-known Orientalist critique which is just the tip of the iceberg.) And the close of the book brings with it a number of unreliable narrator problems, which make the book as difficult to resolve as time-travel fiction.My impression was that it worked wonderfully as pure prose, and that Camus should probably have written travel journals a la Gerard Nerval. As philosophy, though, it was hopelessly muddled, badly contrived, and confused.
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  ButlerianJihad
  I heard of Camus around 1985 when I started listening to the Cure. For several years, I collected Cure records, saw the Cure live, and the Cure was near the top of my obsessions. I heard all about the controversy of their single, "Killing An Arab", how it had been introduced on the radio, and how it gained a disclaimer sticker.I eventually read the first 3 pages of The Stranger and then I stopped. I also never read any Baudelaire or Charlotte Sometimes. I am probably in the majority of Cure fans in the United States.
• gverrilla
  His position regarding Algeria says everything.
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  whalesalad
  I quite enjoyed The Stranger
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  EGreg
  Hm, Absurdity is an interesting concept, M. Camus. Thank you for posting it to HN, I have looked through the docs and I got curious.How does it compare with Buddhism of Siddharta Guatama and the preceding buddhas, or Stoicism by Zeno? I have been a big fan of Stoicism 2.0 by Marcus Aurelius. Why should one continue to download and install Absurdity? Can anyone who’s been running Absurdity in production do a comparison of its features vs the existing philosophies ..
• onesandofgrain
  Camus would laugh at what the world has become.
• reindeer2
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  zuzululu
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  rayiner
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