Did Camus take the leap? (Myth of Sisyphus)

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Some preliminary/review before I state the issue in next paragraph… Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus tries to make a case for living as if life has meaning (without considering it objective meaning) even if it doesn’t, and regardless if it does, rather than committing (philosophical) suicide. He considers this sort of living a form of rebellion, revolt, or scorn… against objective meaning (because what he thinks he can know about it is not more palatable/palpable)… and against the lifeless desert of nihilism.

The issue: When he says “That revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it,” (p.54 if you have my copy) … is he not taking the sort of leap into knowledge (attempt at synthesis of dialectic) he opposes? Perhaps I misunderstand what he means by “a crushing fate”? It seems he does have a metaphysic or belief about whether or not there is objective/transcendent meaning (and not just about whether or not he can know it)…otherwise, why is there a crushing fate in this scenario? Just because he (thinks he) cannot have/know (or enjoy?) what he desires? Is that why he “manages” with Kierkegaard’s despair (p. 41) rather than at that point discussing joy or happiness (or is he just saving that for the grand finale?)?

Second issue: Could one create a reductio ad absurdum argument using the absurd to turn Camus’ thought into an argument from desire? Would it be any more of a leap than the one he seems to have taken above?

Thanks. Hope this finds all of you well.

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Yes, perhaps by falling backwards, without resignation.
As opposed to the forward fall.

No, Camus did not take the leap.

And likewise, hope You are well.

Through Clamence is humanity that portrays Camus: selfish, or autism, living in the pure entertainment, modern man seems to have lost sight of the concepts of justice and accountability. The injunction of Socrates “The unexamined life is not worth living” could be that of Camus in this novel. Camus says that we must judge ourselves uncompromising with a distancing between me and myself. For one can legitimately make me judge myself.

However, the record is heavy philosophical Camus: whatever our attempts to improve ourselves, we judge, everyone is guilty, nobody will be saved from his conscience. In this, the existentialism of Camus is obvious.

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Publications > 67

The Coward in Albert Camus’s Carnets

Abstract
Camus evokes the traits of the coward on the very first page of his Notebook I (May 1935). Twenty-one years old at the time, he describes the conditions of poverty which constitute “the true sense of life” and subsequently names what, for him, amounts to the makings of this fundamental truth: “ What counts […] are the unpleasant disgraces, the little acts of cowardice,

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And after a few sketches above will put this, understandibly on a back burner…of some duration.

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When it comes to the actual existential reality of living one’s life from the cradle to the grave – birth, school, work, death – philosophical speculations of this sort are no less rooted in dasein.

For some, Camus’s assessment becomes a profound challenge. For others, it is entirely moot. And, for the overwhelming preponderance of those who are necessarily focused on sustaining their life from day to day to day…given that it revolves almost entirely around subsistence itself…if it comes up at all, it is usually given over to the ecclesiastics in their lives.

Mostly, it seems, it will come down to the conclusions that particular individuals arrive it given the time they allot to philosophy and the time they allot to sets of circumstances that provide them with bountiful opportunities to be fulfilled and satisfied.

If your life is bursting at the seams experiences that bring you great rewards – the food you eat, the music you love, the sex you enjoy, the accomplishments you accumulate – what then of Camus’s speculations about “suicide”?

Why go there at all?

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Why not?

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I remember when I first started reading Camus that I intentionally started to make really bad decisions in my life. If he didn’t take the leap, then I took it for him.

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My point though is that any particular individual will either 1] go there 2] not go there or 3] not think about it at all, based on the actual sets of circumstances in which they find themselves interacting with others…or with the world around them. And, even more crucially, the manner in which the trajectory of their life experiences predispose them to go in the particular direction that they do.

That, in other words, Camus is just one more philosopher to speculate about all of this “intellectually” based on his own subjective/subjunctive assessment of “I” out in the world of value judgments that seem [to me] rooted largely in dasein.

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Thank You :slight_smile:

So … I’ll grant he wasn’t flying … he was falling with style. That reminds me. Go BEYOND nihilism? Haaaa! To infinity… and beyond! Oh, Camus.

No sketch of a reductio then? I heard somewhere it is the mark of an educated person to entertain a thought without assenting to it…

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iAMBIGUOUS (take that, spell check!) … I think your point is that the absurd is not as universal as Camus made it out to be. Do I understand correctly? That’s your pushback to my reductio thought, yes?

Berkley Babes… My first encounter with Camus was in 2002. I was a young atheist mom. Stuff I wrote about the Myth of Sisyphus sort of sounded like I got it at the time. But. I really didn’t. I was inwardly calling bullshit the whole time I was spouting it, but was ignoring it. Perhaps Camus’ “falling with style” is an indication that he was inwardly calling bullshit, too.

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Ever read Ecclesiastes, by any chance? Written by a king who had everything… he called it all “vanity of vanities” … emptiest of meaningless things… (12:8) and came up with multiple examples of absurdity. C.S. Lewis would call everything you listed “mud pies in a slum” (desires we consider too strong that Lewis considers too weak, heh!) compared to the “eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor. 4:16-18).

Ever read any C.S. Lewis? This nugget gets at the hunger of Camus’ absurdity: “The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. … If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

I always was put off by that “another world” part because I really think it starts now (I don’t think Lewis would disagree). All the stuff Camus enjoyed in this life … it means something. Little clues. Little evidences that point to something. Experience (often) ignored. Kind of ironic… they can point to the absurd… they can feel meaningless… leave us wanting. But, sometimes they also seem to remind us of … well … the point. That this is not ALL there is. That this is just a little taste of the beauty. (Sometimes a chemical imbalance ramps up the good vibes, or deadens them completely… like (badly) tuning in the radio frequency… or different levels of mathematical intelligence… but the signal is still real… there is still a right answer… even if all the answers to which we currently have access seem a little off…) That some of us are currently indifferent has no bearing on that, which is a good thing for those of us who are not indifferent!

The question then becomes… well… what IS the point? But that is a different thread.

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It’s coming, it’s merely simmering on the back burner.
That is different from a qualified assent, though…

I did mention the phases in Camus writing that corresponded to his changed attitude, he wrote Sysyphus, then the Fall and the third one i cited did not i believe changed course that much, if I remember correctly it became more personal, a direction which again double corresponded with the narrowing of the gap of certain human boundaries.

The major break with Sartre happened with Sartre’s abandonment of Communist Socialism, and the metapsychological logistics( corresponding to my personal vandetta at the present time to causes which I can not disclosd-i wish I could); reflects very broadly the actual reduction into the seeming absurdity from a patently evident bird’s eye view.

Your inflective suggestion surely needs a-priori apprehension, with which I totally agree with.

Now I am not going to present educational credentials as proof of my commitment to philosophy, and this is why further evaluation is required on my part on passing any kind of judgement.

This is merely a beginning, I hope into insights into this forum’s objectives.

Thanks

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:slight_smile:

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Meno, scrolling up I see you added to your reply. Will read after work. For now, I wonder what the clear distinction is between absurdity and lucidity and if in my reply before my smile reply I conflated the two. I’m going to let those flavors blend.

Can you smell what the (mumbles) Rock is cooking (ugly laughs)?

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Right. In my place the kitchen is quite a far place from other rooms, and the odors are very languid and their slow upward wafting is countered by large doses of incense. We don’t want remedial odors to enter the tufts of furniture, as the current menu will be quite different, the next day.

Then the guest coming over may develop. Unrealistic expectations based on what is sensible, and what has been discarded.

Past menus are often remembered as things no longer intended by any household, yet if say manna from heaven was on for the day, why everyone might donne their togas.

But beware of places where every man or woman were to be made aware of an obvious a placard in front of their mote with the warming, beware he who enters here…
.
At any rate there is not much difference in opinions or states of mind between dwellings, when after carefully preparing a menu, the.partner suddenly declares, " lets go and eat out," wasting all that time, energy, and incense.

Every cook should know today’s food will no longer appeal to most, and hasn’t anybody had a chance to find even years old remains of green looking stuff left over from last thanksgiving in the abscesses of the fridge.

It’s quite absurd to plan ahead with menus, for the unexpected one-might pop over,

That is why always keep the stuff on the range simmer as long as possible, for one never knows.
Really.

I knew one lady that kept that up for quite a while and THE GUEST found cockroaches in her soup…

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No, my point is that in the English language, when one comes across the word “absurd”, they can go to the dictionary to look up its general meaning: merriam-webster.com/dictionary/absurd

Then, in regard to a particular set of objective circumstances viewed from a particular subjective frame of mind rooted in dasein, they can discuss with others what might be established more or less objectively as absurd.

Suicide for example. There are the objective facts pertaining to any particular suicide. And then there are subjective/subjunctive reactions to this particular suicide…and to the act of suicide overall.

What here can be pinned down as absurd?

What, as philosophers, using the tools at our disposal, are we obligated as rational men and women to agree on in regard to either absurdity or suicide.

And then the two of them together relating to, say, these particular suicides: allthatsinteresting.com/famous-suicides

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sigh I’m sure the guest forgave her before he even knocked. You need to proofread, son.

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Camus would say perhaps they had concluded life was not worth living, —or— that they died for something they valued more highly than their own life. I don’t think he considers (philosophical) suicide absurd but rather an escape from the absurd. I think essentially for him the absurd is the hunger for true meaning without the satisfaction of that hunger.

I am so exhausted right now but words popping into my head are things like cognitive dissonance, feeding hunger with poor substitutes, failing to recognize the real thing, emphasizing the sign over what it points to, wanting to get some homework done before I dive deeper into this, frustration with metaphors. Yadda.

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Hi. Take a deep breath. This, very simply just concede on the point You are making:

Literal suicide for Camus was actually the reduction ad absurdum, llbut what You are implying was more profound, and You said as much, that the death of philosophy was really more, more than the cessation of the shift away from the metaphor , toward that reductive, objectless hole. from which the word can not ever return, (to some) and it is consciousness, the retention of conscious awareness that can avoid it, literally and figuratively, and this is the part toward which Heidegger’s intention aims at as far as the ’ leap ’ , the leap into existence concerns it’s self with, and not necessary the one that most people believe was his singular point.

Heidegger makes this quite clear, and it is a pure intentionality which can achieve a determinitive causality.

This is also allied to the problem of how it is so difficult a task it is to uncouple the necesseru hard natural determination from. any idea of freedom
This seemingly enigmatic coupling are such only because a sense that they operate on the same level ( one dimensionality) which they are not.

Ichstus, I was referring to Peacegirl’s forum on determinancy.

And this is behind what i perceive a reduction toward absurdity, and what gets most into a quagmire, that, what really is being reduced , a leveling off toward the the way AI language source’s feed, back to saving memory that some futurists already beacon as the death of history.

So what is human knowlege, what is the real meaning of ’ human’ or ’ humanist’ other then the many layered sequential associative connections which can recall, through generational links other than through vast circuitry of regressively and phenominally reduced signs, where the signs get successively lost, and more elementary leveled signals can indicate the gap that used to contain multi level associations.

This is perhaps why, Man, is on his way to loose his soul. The redemption is more than a eeaction to the hard driven political straight jacket of purely pragmatic consideration with a filling hole of guilt as an antidote, but more a moral profundity that transcends mere eco-political defenses based on power plays and territorial claims.

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Right, like because someone calls the activities and the experiences that bring me an enormous amount of pleasure, satisfaction and fulfillment “mud pies in the slum” this makes them that.

Look, if others need an overarching meaning in their life – God or No God – to sustain their own pleasures, satisfactions and fulfillments, that, in my view, is their problem. I don’t need it. Thus Camus’s ruminations on suicide [as “I” understand them] are not applicable to me. To the “I” that here and now I have come to embody as a manifestation of dasein.

But, sure, given the reality of death – oblivion – I would certainly like to acquire an overarching meaning if somehow that would sustain my pleasures, satisfactions and fulfillments beyond the grave.

Only for those here who are able to think themselves into believing in one or another God and religious path, their own pleasures, satisfactions and fulfilments are constricted by their current understanding of Judgment Day. They can’t do things that might displease God or, for the No God spiritualists…the “Universe”?

Yes, all the “stuff” that Camus enjoyed on this side of the grave was meaning enough for him. No actual existential suicide for him.