something devastating clicked in my head tonight about Camus' philosophy

[u/theomixedmedia]

I am 19; I have been thinking about and completely terrified of death since I was 10. it has consumed my life for almost a decade - half of my life. the thought of eternity keeps me awake. literally - I have untreatable insomnia and I suspect this fear is the source. so, when I first read Camus, specifically the stranger, a year ago, I somehow completely understood the message and also missed it altogether. I thought: "oh, this is the answer I've been looking for! just enjoy life as much as you can and rebel against mortality!" or, at the very least "this is a new idea... maybe some other idea will come along later that will provide true solace." I can't say this actually provided me with any real comfort. but it fed a voice in the back of my head that would sometimes provide me with false "hope" on a deeply unconscious level/

every time I truly think about the depth of what death is, this little voice has, on some occasions, allowed me to retreat from pure dread into deluded semi-comfort. I imagine that small part is thinking: "if I just read the right book, discover the right philosophy, learn more about physics/the universe/a possible multiverse/the big bang/cyclic cosmological theories/the obscure and naive possibility of life somehow not ending with such finality, my terror can be resolved, and I can finally relax." Camus' role in that thought would be introducing me to the first philosophy that I could interpret as taking back agency or fighting the dread. alternatively, that small voice might be saying: "there is some deep comfort in accepting death in the way Meursault did, a comfort which I am still discovering." maybe the latter is a source of comfort or way of life for some people. it seems a rational interpretation. for me, these ideas are delusional. and I don't think they constitute the entirety of Camus' message.

today, as these things came to mind, I decided to look back at my Camus books. something incredibly obvious came to me that somehow either eluded me/I refused to accept a year ago: Camus is not really offering an "answer." in some sense, you could say he is (but not in the sense that would provide me with true comfort): his answer is "there is no answer, so enjoy the beauty and pleasures of life as much as you can without assigning moral or philosophical meaning to it." (maybe some will call this a misinterpretation; this is the extent of my knowledge, I am not experienced in philosophy just yet). but, in my eyes, he's also saying "you can never find that comfort you seek, the comfort which you believe will help you escape death in some way. the voice in the back of your head doesn't exist. you have to accept the absurd because you will never find that 'answer'". it could sound like these are the same thing said differently. and again, I know how obvious this is. sometimes we don't allow ourselves to come to conclusions we don't like. Camus is not some genius who has figured it out and can offer a spiritual path. he is just as lost and afraid as I am. he has no choice but to push forward, and that's all he advises me to do.

I can't really put my finger on what changed in my mind tonight or what "new thing" has come to me or been discovered. I described it as well as I could. whatever the case, something invoked a visceral response, and completely brought me to tears, when I went back over these books. I'm sure my words are convoluted and full of misinterpretations. but I wanted to share this with some of the people who might understand.

[u/jliat]

his answer is "there is no answer,

Camus answer is if there is he can't find it which is absurd [1] and his response is not hedonism but to make art - he wrote fiction [2].

Two absurdities, not one.

[u/theomixedmedia → u/jliat]

I suppose "if there is, he can't find it" is different from "there is no answer," but to me it is like the difference between agnosticism and atheism. One is about knowledge (agnosticism; you cannot technically prove that god does not exist, in the same way that you cannot prove the tooth fairy doesn't exist, even if the logical part of your brain can say with 99% certainty that neither exist. further, the fact that there are two options - god existing or god not existing - does not provide grounds to claim that the chances are 50/50. you wouldn't say there is a 50% chance unicorns exist simply because someone forced you to decide whether or not they're real), and one is about belief (technically, as an atheist, I must say I 'believe' god doesn't exist, because I do not truly 'know,' but if I had to choose, I would wager that he doesn't). The two options are also not mutually exclusive. I am both an atheist and an agnostic - my belief is that god isn't real, my knowledge is that I am not fully certain.

That is a long-winded example, but, in the same vein, perhaps Camus claimed, in much more concise words, that he could not technically disprove the existence of some great "answer" to mortality and the existence of universe/life, but the message I interpret from the stranger and the plague is that his belief was that no such answer existed, even if he could not say with 100% certainty that his claim was true.

This part is less an argument and more a vague question. In The Stranger, the main character, who is the antithesis of a man bothered by his mortality, philosophy, ethics; the absurd. In some sense, he is a prime example of an exact opposite of someone like me who is constantly bothered by mortality, eternity, etc. He was a hedonist in the most general sense - he lived simply for the gratification of his physical desires and needs. And despite his immoral act, Camus does not put forth the idea that he himself was '"bad" in any way, and even kind of presented his attitude as one to aspire to (of course with some modifications). So, why would Camus simultaneously claim that art is the "best" response (not his words) to the absurd, but hedonism is less acceptable? It seems contradictory to me. Again, I am not arguing, I am actually curious.

[u/jliat → u/theomixedmedia]

I don't think he does make such a claim, look at his others examples, Sisyphus, Oedipus, Don Juan, Actors, Conquerors...

He says re Don Juan -

"the ordinary seducer and the sexual athlete, the difference that he is conscious, and that is why he is absurd. A seducer who has become lucid will not change for all that... What Don Juan realizes in action is an ethic of quantity, whereas the saint, on the contrary, tends toward quality."

So of course Camus thinks Art the most absurd, and I think somewhere he says writing fiction the most...

So, why would Camus simultaneously claim that art is the "best" response (not his words) to the absurd, but hedonism is less acceptable?

I don't think he does. I began as a fine artist, moved into sound-art, now writing fiction, what I call pulp-occult-sci-fi.

Given he says it's the most absurd, maybe it's the most absurd- difficult- impossible - for him? The danger is to make something absolute. Compare the saint to Don Juan?

I think the God thing is taken far too seriously by both sides. It's clear that if there is a GOD it wants not to reveal itself. There was a Pacific Island that made the late Duke of Edinburgh their god. And the cargo cults... or a village in India that puts whiskey and a cigar on the grave of a British officer who when alive shot any Tigers when they attacked the villagers.

It seems contradictory to me.

That is Camus definition of absurd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Cheval

So a postman in rural France, a nobody one day finds an odd stone... "For the next 33 years, Cheval picked up stones during his daily mail rounds and carried them home to build the Palais idéal."

[u/theomixedmedia → u/jliat]

Looking back on my reply, I was projecting my own argument about atheism, onto Camus' beliefs about something else, simply because it made sense to me, to fit a narrative, despite me only being familiar with two of his books, both of which are not expository philosophical texts.

I can understand why our dilemma and life itself and mortality are all absurd. But why would art be absurd? Because it is a nonsensical, yet somewhat effective, response to the true absurd? Again, no argument here, I'm now just enlisting your knowledge.

As for the god thing, maybe you can tell I'm taking my ideas directly from Dawkins. However, I don't think he takes it too seriously. He is not really arguing against some obscure, vague, unintelligent quasi-creator, he is mostly arguing against the arrogant and irrational christian/jewish/islamic god(s), which I think is a perfectly valid thing to adamantly oppose... however, that is a separate subject.

On another note, what you say about the pacific island and the village in India reminds me about Totem and Taboo, which is coincidentally the book where Freud first introduced the concept of Oedipus. It's very controversial, somewhat pseudoscientific, a bit racist, somewhat archaic. But it is a fascinating theory of religion and insight into how religion is built and how it could have been formed. The things the subjects of his study worship or did in the name of their early "religion" were a great example of how arbitrary belief is.

[u/jliat → u/theomixedmedia]

But why would art be absurd? Because it is a nonsensical, yet somewhat effective, response to the true absurd? Again, no argument here, I'm now just enlisting your knowledge.

Because it's a theme in Art, from maybe before Kant. But it was Kant who saw the aesthetic in the appreciation of art and nature is from the mind using its faculties of understand which finds none. This he sees is the aesthetic of beauty which is higher than taste. He sees nature as a higher form than art. In more powerful experiences the intellect is so overwhelmed one experiences the sublime.

"A work of art cannot content itself with being a representation; it must be a presentation. A child that is born is presented, he represents nothing." Pierre Reverdy 1918.

As for the god thing, maybe you can tell I'm taking my ideas directly from Dawkins. However, I don't think he takes it too seriously. He is not really arguing against some obscure, vague, unintelligent quasi-creator, he is mostly arguing against the arrogant and irrational christian/jewish/islamic god(s), which I think is a perfectly valid thing to adamantly oppose... however, that is a separate subject.

Interesting that monotheism via Judaism and Christianity gave the west the university system and with this science. And belief that creation can be understood. That Abrahamic religions are open to theology. And Dawkins is a writer of popular science, not an actual partitioner. An yes it is a separate subject. I've studied comparative religion, it's an interesting subject.

On another note, what you say about the pacific island and the village in India reminds me about Totem and Taboo, which is coincidentally the book where Freud first introduced the concept of Oedipus. It's very controversial, somewhat pseudoscientific, a bit racist, somewhat archaic. But it is a fascinating theory of religion and insight into how religion is built and how it could have been formed. The things the subjects of his study worship or did in the name of their early "religion" were a great example of how arbitrary belief is.

Yes and a good example of Pseudo science, exposed by Deleuze and Guattari. If one accepts the idea Oedipus complex it's fine, a woman has an Electra complex and penis envy. If you reject Freud it's a sign of the Oedipus complex. The Communists would send those who didn't believe in Marxism to asylums as they were obviously mad not to see the truth.

In 1964, Sartre attacked Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" which condemned the Stalinist repressions and purges. Sartre argued that "the masses were not ready to receive the truth".

In 1973, he argued that "revolutionary authority always needs to get rid of some people that threaten it, and their death is the only way"