The absurd man is amoral (which is not to say that he is immoral)...

Camus is usually taken to imply that there's some convergence of absurd ethics. We all may decide our own morals but if we've sufficiently embraced the absurd we'll come to at least similar, if not the same, conclusions. His explanation of say, an Nazi system of ethics, would be that such a system is constructed in bad faith.

In any case, Camus never really even tried to give us an ethics. If you try to read his work on that level you're going to be disappointed. He is better considered to treat epistemology, and intentionally or not give us a special flavor of aesthetics.

Absurdism is such a babby philosophy. It's really just stating the obvious and simplifying what other philosophies have already expressed.

you are taking camus too seriously

but is there something lost in translation, because his ideas on the absurd and giving into the absurd so dont kill yourself idea is shit

what would you recommend instead?

Seconding

>The absurd man lives his life the way he choices. He can be a serial killer or he can open up hospitals for the sick, or both if he really wants.

Isn't that the case for nearly everybody? You can choose to believe in god or not, to think that there is value to life... This isn't the prerogative of the absurd man, or am I mistaken?

But he can only be aware of the absurdity when he walks to go pick the boulder that has rolled downhill.

Even just Sartre is better. Just read any of lit's guides to philosophy and advance beyond Camus.

specifically though, which philosophies had already expressed absurdism?

Existentialism, common sense.

>Isn't that the case for nearly everybody?
Yes. Existence is inherently absurd, but people tend to fool themselves into various moral systems. It's not that moral beliefs are bad, but they, too, are absurd by nature.

>dont give in to absurdity
>keep rolling that boulder uphill
>dont kill yourself tho
if camus was like, "hey, im just too scared that ill fuck up a suicide so i wont do it" i would accept it. but to say you shouldnt because then youd be giving in to absurdity makes very little sense

But if you killed yourself, you would affirm that life is meaningless -- absurd, so suicide would be the incorrect choice.

Is that Joseph Gordon Levit?

hi every1 im new!!!!!!! *holds up boulder* my name is albert but u can call me t3h d0N ju4N!!!!!!!! lol...as u can see im very absurd!!!! thats why i came here, 2 meet absurd ppl like me ^_^... im 46 years old (im dead 4 my age tho!!) i like 2 kill arabs w/ my girlfriends (im unfaithful if u dont like it deal w/it) its our favorite absurd action!!! bcuz the sun is SOOOO hot!!!! jean-paul is absurd 2 of course but i want 2 meet more absurd ppl =) like they say we must imagine sisyphus happy!!!! lol...neways i hope 2 make alot of freinds here so give me lots of commentses!!!!

EXISTENCE BEFORE ESSENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't give Hollywood that idea, damn you.

Which pre-Camus existentialist articulates Camus' idea of the absurd? Like half of The Myth of Sisyphus is him talking about why existentialists are on the right track but all back out of a consistent position at the last moment which he thinks Kierkegaard's leap of faith is representative of.

I think Veeky Forums has a hate boner for him because of how much a hottie he is

im a girl btw

Guilty

...

The absurd man complains about his life even though he was a handsome, rich, critically acclaimed Chad

Fuck you Albert and you're JUST BEE URSELF ideology

Dostoyevsky. Not even trolling,

Daily reminder that Camus was an ultimate normie

/Thread

Veeky Forums be hating cause they'll never be as sexy as camus.

camus isn't nearly as bad as people make him out to be, and the myth of sisyphus is still interesting to read. stay butthurt Veeky Forums.

The absurd man has no rules mang

God damn I always thought he was handsome, but he's beautiful. Would threesome with.

nice

...

Camus may have been a qt but his philosophy was pretty obvious shit that naturally comes to pretty much everyone at the age of 18 or so

obviously a lot of thinkers have come to the conclusion of life's meaningless. what made me read camus further was his exploration of different philosophers to their eventual leap of logic to belief in divine eternity. what i got out of it was not just the obvious meaninglessness of life, but a exploration of rebellious negation to philosophical or literal suicide.

it is a little more simplistic than other thinkers, but there's value in his work and i like to think of him as a stepping stone for getting into other shit.

His suggestion is pretty fucking stupid if you ask me. He was either too much of a coward to face and deal with the inconsistency in his philosophy and his suggestion or just too stupid to think of any solution to it.

The only redeeming thing about him is that he acknowledges that his suggestion is inconsistent and that the hope that he asks us to carry is a futile one.

I'll never understand why camus is held in such high regard by Veeky Forums when he seems like just another hack incapable of building anything in the void left by what he broke down.

Utterly disappointing desu.

Camus really was the French Hemingway

Camus is a dumbass and an edgelord. Read real philosophers and dont worry about it OP

What inconsistencies? There is a limit to human understanding and reason, suicide and death can reach those extents in thought.

Seems like only on Veeky Forums people really fucking hate Camus with an irrational passion.

what's the deal with camus? this fag gets mentioned a lot

read the stranger years ago. enjoyed, good book. it was the james m cain/noir plot stripped bare and displaced. right? that's it, right?

is there anything more to this frog? what are his next-best works?

>there is no meaning to be found in an absurd world
>yet we must struggle and harbor a futile hope to find meaning in this struggle while completely knowing that there is none to be found
>the world is absurd and and no claims can be made about it. except the one that was just made obviously.

he continuously emphasizes the absurdity of the world we perceive and rants against rationalists without realizing that his entire book "the myth of sisyphus" including his claims about the "absurd world" and the suggestion of engaging in a hopeless struggle are literally just attempts at rationalizing the world and finding a way to rationally cope with the absurdity.

He is either too fucking stupid to see this or expects his readers to be dumb enough to not realize it.

The existence of a claim about the world (one such as "it is absurd") takes away from the absurdity of it. Not to mention that he provides/suggests a way of life which is bound to fail (even according to him).

Literally tell me why the fuck do I or anyone take him seriously?

>literally just attempts at rationalizing the world and finding a way to rationally cope with the absurdity.

he's saying that the response to an inherently unsatisfying world is to find meaning in something despite realising that your choice of meaning is arbitrary and the meaning itself is necessarily irrational. and you're meant to embrace absurdity, not cope with it.

>The existence of a claim about the world (one such as "it is absurd") takes away from the absurdity of it.

how? absurdity is the state of wishing the world had meaning whilst knowing it does not. that statement doesn't make the world less absurd.

>Not to mention that he provides/suggests a way of life which is bound to fail (even according to him).

sure, but that's just the essential paradox of absurdity. all philosophies of life must fail because there is no inherent meaning to the world. so the only honest way to have any meaning at all is if that meaning is arbitrary and irrational, and you know it is.

This is fucking hilarious, thanks user.

The very best pasta.

This mimicks my reaction to reading The Stranger.

i like it

kierkegaard.

i don´t get why people like the stranger that much. it was kind of meh

>camus
Get a fucking job.

>he's saying that the response to an inherently unsatisfying world is to find meaning in something despite realising that your choice of meaning is arbitrary and the meaning itself is necessarily irrational. and you're meant to embrace absurdity, not cope with it.
which is a rational statement to make. This doctrine suggests that there is a coherent position to take in a world that is absurd. This doctrine is a part of this world. Why must one value this doctrine higher than anything else? Why embrace the absurdity instead of rejecting it? Why can't you see that by simply taking a concrete position or suggesting that we take one introduces coherency and cogency in the world and takes away from the absurdity of it.

>how? absurdity is the state of wishing the world had meaning whilst knowing it does not. that statement doesn't make the world less absurd.
have you read camus? At this point I'm doubting that you have. He outright claims that the world is absurd in many different contexts: one of which being that it is entirely unintelligible and unreasonable and irrationalizable. That scientific endeavors are laughable and any attempts at rationalizing the world are fruitless. Yet he goes on to do nothing but take a rational stance. In fact any stance that you can adopt in an absurd world would be its very existence prove that the world isn't entirely unintelligible or absurd.

>sure, but that's just the essential paradox of absurdity. all philosophies of life must fail because there is no inherent meaning to the world. so the only honest way to have any meaning at all is if that meaning is arbitrary and irrational, and you know it is.
no. if the claim "the world is absurd" self contradictory or inconsistent then it must be dropped as a claim because it refutes itself by its very existence. this paradox can be avoided by formulating a more consistent philosophical system. One would have to be a hugely stupid defeatist to realize this and still cling to the "world is absurd" philosophy. and that is what camus was: a dumb defeatist hack who couldn't think beyond his inconsistent claims on absurdity or just decided not to.

>Why embrace the absurdity instead of rejecting it?
not that user, but to embrace the absurd is to have a rebellious, conscious negation of committing philosophical or literal suicide. with this denial, you reject and embrace the absurd as well as the limits of human reason and understanding with topics like suicide and death.

>That scientific endeavors are laughable and any attempts at rationalizing the world are fruitless.

yeah i dunno, i think perhaps you misinterpreted what camus was intending to say with scientific discovery and its endeavors. i don't think he meant to imply that it was completely fruitless, but from his subjective understanding there were things within scientific discovery that he couldn't understand and experience within his own knowledge, which is an admittance of limit on his part i'd say. he doesn't take on a rational stance in the strictest definition of it i feel, but more so an acceptance of humanities tendency to want to know and be able to rationalize the irrational and cold silence of the universe.

>In fact any stance that you can adopt in an absurd world would be its very existence prove that the world isn't entirely unintelligible or absurd.

the point that camus made was that by becoming cognizant of the meaninglessness our of existences, it allows oneself to strive to find their own subjective meaning and rebel against the act of suicide whether it be in literal or philosophical terms.

i disagree when you say camus is a defeatist, as that seems to be one of the common criticisms of his thinking. if anything, by the paradoxical nature of the myth of sisyphus, it's way more life affirming than anything.

then again, everything is subjective user. i don't love camus either, but i don't get the strong hatred he gets.

>just do what you feel like to do
Is existentialism really that shallow?

>This doctrine suggests that there is a coherent position to take in a world that is absurd.

no. it suggests that there are no coherent positions to take and that you might as well choose any incoherent position you like, as long as you're honest enough to admit it's incoherent. be Don Juan, be a conqueror, be a post office clerk, be anything, but recognise that there's no real reason to be whatever it is you choose to be.

>Why embrace the absurdity instead of rejecting it? Why can't you see that by simply taking a concrete position or suggesting that we take one introduces coherency and cogency in the world and takes away from the absurdity of it.

the only way to reject absurdity is to find meaning in the world or deny that you crave meaning. the position Camus suggests we take isn't coherent, it's explicitly arbitrary. it doesn't take away from the absurdity of the world because it explicitly denies any really fundamental coherent meaning.

>He outright claims that the world is absurd in many different contexts: one of which being that it is entirely unintelligible and unreasonable and irrationalizable. That scientific endeavors are laughable and any attempts at rationalizing the world are fruitless. Yet he goes on to do nothing but take a rational stance.

it's not a rational stance, Camus doesn't even pretend it is. he talks about taking a principle of thought (confronting the absurd) to a rational conclusion, but he never claims that confronting the absurd is a rational principle in itself. absurdism isn't meant to express a fundamental meaning, it's just a useful approach to a world that doesn't have one.

>if the claim "the world is absurd" self contradictory or inconsistent then it must be dropped as a claim because it refutes itself by its very existence. this paradox can be avoided by formulating a more consistent philosophical system.

the claim that the world is absurd, as framed by Camus, is trivial. it isn't self contradictory, but it describes the self contradictory nature of existence. the paradox isn't a flaw of absurdism, it's the whole point: a philosophical system that avoids the paradox can never really describe both our fundamental desire for an ultimate meaning, and the world we live in, which doesn't have one.

Here's some of my own writing on this issue.

I think I’ve finally understood what nihilism means. Nihilism is to reject the necessities the world creates, because the necessities aren’t always fair. I’m not sure what the opposite of nihilism is, but I guess it’s to believe in creating some sort of order in things, to go along with the program so to speak. I guess in some ways I’m anti nihilistic, if you believe in justice as I do I guess you could say that I’m not nihilistic. In other ways, I think there’s a lot of principles I reject. Yeah, I guess that’s the opposite of nihilism, is principles. To live on principles is to have some faith in the order that you create out of the necessities the world creates, and that’s a very operative word “necessities”. A lot of the things we do are born out of necessity, or what some people perceive blindly as necessity. One example would be money, we need money because of necessity and a principled person works hard to get money and make a living. Living on principle is probably what a lot of people see as “noble”, where as the rejection of principle is to be nihilistic. It’s hard for me to tell where I really fit in, but I don’t think there would be 100% truth in it if I were to try to make that distinction, it couldn’t be done, there’s always unknowns and nuances.

>but to say you shouldnt because then youd be giving in to absurdity makes very little sense
Would you say then that it is absurd?

I read All men are mortal but the guy was constantly whining about how boring it is to be immortal, I prefer Camus desu

Fuck you Carlos.

I'm gettin all these upboats I don't deserve. Another user made this oc thread a while ago and as I finished Myth of Sisyphu I kekd very hard so now I post it in every Camus thread here.

He was preceded in every way possible by you-know-who.