Camus is making no claims about what anyone should do. — Jussi Tennilä
acting with integrity requires taking up the perspective of despair about life and choosing from it the values and principles by which one will live. Only by first regardin the world as valueless and absurd and - Prof Deigh — Jussi Tennilä
And therefore, i suggest, Prof Deigh may have misunderstood Camus in a pretty drastic way. Am i right? — Jussi Tennilä
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-CamusAs editor of the Parisian daily Combat, the successor of a Resistance newssheet run largely by Camus, he held an independent left-wing position based on the ideals of justice and truth and the belief that all political action must have a solid moral basis. Later, the old-style expediency of both Left and Right brought increasing disillusion, and in 1947 he severed his connection with Combat.
[snip]
As novelist and playwright, moralist and political theorist, Albert Camus after World War II became the spokesman of his own generation and the mentor of the next, not only in France but also in Europe and eventually the world. His writings, which addressed themselves mainly to the isolation of man in an alien universe, the estrangement of the individual from himself, the problem of evil, and the pressing finality of death, accurately reflected the alienation and disillusionment of the postwar intellectual. He is remembered, with Sartre, as a leading practitioner of the existential novel. Though he understood the nihilism of many of his contemporaries, Camus also argued the necessity of defending such values as truth, moderation, and justice. In his last works he sketched the outlines of a liberal humanism that rejected the dogmatic aspects of both Christianity and Marxism.
Camus is no moral nihilist, and is a deeply ethical thinker. — Moliere
Camus rejected the idea of inherent moral values or an objective meaning to life, but he didn't deny the possibility of creating subjective meaning and ethical principles. — Tom Storm
This all depends what you understand a nihilist to be. I don't think all versions of nihilism preclude morality. It rejects inherent meaning and morality. — Tom Storm
But to me it seems Camus is making no claims about what anyone should do. In my reading, Camus is making a metaphysical claim rather than ethical - the world IS absurd, regardless of what anyone thinks.
Everything might seem stable and understandable until all of a sudden:
"Of whom and of what indeed can I say: "I know that!" This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it
exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers." (Ibid. p 7)
And therefore, i suggest, Prof Deigh may have misunderstood Camus in a pretty drastic way. Am i right? — Jussi Tennilä
Perhaps it is not so much John Deigh who misunderstands Camus, as the contributors to this thread. — unenlightened
Once we realize the absurd, specific acts are never a “should” (so not really ethical). You can do anything or nothing at any time or all of the time. The sole quasi ethical component is merely realizing that whatever you do, if you think it is not ultimately absurd, you are doing it wrong. — Fire Ologist
Ultimately calling the existentialist approach to life “ethical” seems to misuse the term ethical to me. It’s not acting ethical to take responsibility for one’s absurd reasoning, it’s just the true nature of authentic acting. In the end, any particular act (murder or self-sacrifice, either/or) is meaningless in itself, beyond good and evil. — Fire Ologist
And when you find the absurd you don’t forget the truth and meaning of it.
realizing that whatever you do, if you think it is not ultimately absurd, you are doing it wrong. — Fire Ologist
if one is "doing it right," where is the standard to determine this? — Astrophel
I think I'd make a pretty hard distinction between existentialism and nihilism.
Existentialism is the philosophical response to the necessity of nihilism: given how we've lived meaningful lives before, and given how things have progressed this world feels absurd: the absurd is always an encounter. And absurdism is different from existentialism in that absurdism is a little more specific -- Sartre was no absurdist, so far as I can tell.
Nihilism is something like solipsism, but in the ethical realm -- it's an extreme point that people diverge from in various ways, and few (if any) actually adopt it philosophically (though they may in practice). — Moliere
Anyhow, Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre were the first philosophers I read and I initially took it as a sort of gospel. — Count Timothy von Icarus
But moral nihilism, extreme relativism, and radical skepticism are as old as philosophy — Count Timothy von Icarus
The difference is that Camus answers his question, whereas you reject his answer and think everything is meaningless "in itself". — Moliere
This is interesting. Existentialism comes in various forms, including Christian existentialism. But isn't existentialism of the secular variety built upon similar notions as nihilism? The absence of meaning. Nihilism holds that life, existence and reality itself are devoid of inherent meaning, purpose, or value. It rejects the notion of any objective significance or ultimate truth. Existentialism tends to identify same lack of meaning and then moves in to fill the void. — Tom Storm
I would often consider myself to be a nihilist. But I don't tend to see this approach as one of destructive apathy, or assertive repudiation, rather a more cheerful springboard to make decisions about what choices you will make and what you will do. I would not consider myself to be an existentialist.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that
is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to
answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—
whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind
has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards. — Camus
For me “The Myth of Sisyphus” marks the beginning of an idea
which I was to pursue in The Rebel. It attempts to resolve the
problem of suicide, as The Rebel attempts to resolve that of
murder, in both cases without the aid of eternal values which,
temporarily perhaps, are absent or distorted in contemporary
Europe. The fundamental subject of “The Myth of Sisyphus” is
this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a
meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide
face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the
paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in
God, suicide is not legitimate. — Camus
My gospels used to be (some maybe still) Heraclitus, Plato/Aristotle, Nietzsche and the others, and then Kant of course
I think existentialism, to me is the philosophy of modernity, and we are still in its era
Again, there is plenty of room left to talk about ethics. But the backdrop, where Dionysian instinct for Nietzsche lives, where either/or matters and matters not the same, the abyss, where existence precedes…, where Sisyphus absurdly climbs again. Precise in its starkness, yet somehow setting the widest stage. I love that stuff.
At this lonely place of separation, you build an ethics of authenticity, something intimately tied to a “self” and need foremost one’s lonely disconnected will, to chose, and only then be ethically. — Fire Ologist
https://friesian.com/existent.htmIndeed, if the loss of God means the loss of all meaning and value, then actions are without meaning or value either, and one cannot say that it matters whether actions are "right" or "wrong," since those words, or the corresponding actions, don't mean anything more than anything else. Dostoyevsky, indeed, may be counted as himself an Existentialist, but in a theistic rather than the French atheistic manner,
You list the novels. But have you read the essay The Myth of Sisyphus? That's where I'd draw from to point out his ethical thinking. — Moliere
It is very strange how some people consider Kierkegaard a nihilist. When I read this OP, I decided to search for information to back up my points, and surprisingly, Kierkegaard appeared as an example of a nihilist. Very disappointed with this! I think K was a lover but pessimistic about how Christianity was ruling in Denmark. In his diary, K confessed he was a true Lutheran. If he was that religious and a believer in faith, how could some people label him as a nihilist? For a nihilist, life is meaningless and there is no despair about choosing the right decision because everything is pretty absurd (as Camus points out). — javi2541997
On the other hand, I personally believe that a true nihilist doesn't recognize the existence of a sacred authority. For example, the quote of 'without God, everything is permitted' by Vania Karamazov. This phrase is wrongly connected to nihilism, but what Dostoevsky goes beyond just that. — javi2541997
What I attempt to say is that while K and D are true existentialists for dealing with ethical dilemmas, Camus is a nihilist because he doesn't bother to debate about this issue. — javi2541997
it begs the question, what is it about bad behavior that makes it evil? — Astrophel
One is confronted by the question, is ethics rational in its essence? Kierkegaard said yes to this. — Astrophel
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