Philosophy etc. Book Club

[Brandon]

I'd like to address something here in regard to Camus.

Nagel criticizes his work on a very narrow basis, assuming that the negation of death was his only rationale for calling life "absurd." Nagel then goes on to say that the discrepancy between the subjective importance we place on life clashes with the objective unimportance of it. The thing is? Camus never denied that this was so. He called life absurd on many levels, the most basic of which being that...

Man is a rational being who desires unity and meaning from a universe that is passive, silent, and elusive.

He dealt with the idea of death's negation primarily in The Myth of Sisyphus because it was a reflection on suicide. Some philosophers of the day were taking suicide to be a "solution" to the absurd, when Camus claimed it was just the logical opposite--it was acceptance at the extreme.

Camus was not a systematic philosopher inent on being "right"--he was much more concerned with finding a mindset by which someone could live a fulfilling life without despair. He writes to those who have already rejected divinity and accepted the Absurd as a rule of life.