/lit/ - Literature

>>15289610
It's called absurdism because it has no meaning.

>>15289630
That was it? I thought I had the wrong idea. So I was trying to find meaning in a novel whose purpose is the general lack of meaning in life? Well, now I feel fucking dumb. Sorry for my worthless thread although all of them are, according to this branch of though, aren't they?

I just thought one of the bug ideas from it is that pretty much anthing can happen to anybody, and there's sometimes no reason for it.

>>15289636
It's not worthless, philosophy should be talked about
Absurdism is trying to find meaning in a meaningless world
Read some kurt vonnegut, soren kierkegaard, and franz kafka
Watch brazil or dr strangelove

>>15289610
It's a sissy trainer

>>15289630
>absurdism because it has no meaning
>>15289669
>Absurdism is trying to find meaning in a meaningless world
Both you tards are wrong. Absurdism is the idea that idea humans are fundamentally locked into a search for meaning, and will never find it. Not that it doesn't exist, or that it has no meaning. Fucking pseuds.

>>15289669
I see; thank you for correcting me. I read Kafka when I was in highschool and he is in serious need for a revisit on my part. I appreciate the rest of your recommendations. Hopefully I'll be able to use Camus as a proper starting point from which to look deeper into absurdism.

>>15289681
You should read Wikipedia more carefully before you call someone pseud.

>>15289610
The stranger is incredible to read, doesn't underscore his points well. Read Sisyphus, he does a much better job there. The Rebel is meh.

>>15289706
I teach Camus you fuck, read any of his essays then pull a kirilov

>>15289723
I need to write a short paper on L'étranger for college. Do you have any advice on how to tackle it?

My interpretation of it has always been the struggle between being an individual and how society can not only judge you for your expression of individuality, but possibly convict and murder you for it if you do not conform. The end is the perfect expression of an existential epiphany, where he realizes he was proud and that the universe doesn’t give a shit about him or society.

>>15289748
Does it have a specific topic or just on the stranger in general?

>>15289763
It's in general; our professor just told us to write her about any French book that we please, so that should give you an idea on the scope of this project.

>>15289723
>im a TA that nobody listens to

>>15289723
I only asked you to check one Wikipedia article, I didn't ask you if you teach Camus, read Camus or if you are Camus.

>>15289760
I did really enjoy his final realization that he was just happy to have lived and to be alive, even if that would end soon. He seemed to embrace the whole "life has no meaning" as a form of liberation rather than of damnation.

>>15289793
See, while I agree with you that in the universe of this novel that life has no inherent meaning, Mersault gave it meaning when he decided to kill the Arab and defend his friend. He didn’t just do it for no reason - by this act he gave it a reason. I think this is a reasonable take away from The Stranger

>>15289774
Oh, that's easy enough. Take a look at his book A Happy Death, which would be scrapped in Favor of the Stranger. An easy shirt topic would be to analyze the few scenes that he kept the same between the books, and why would he do that?
>>15289791
>Knowing whether or not one can live without appeal is all that interests me. I do not want to get out ofmy depth. This aspect of life being given me, can I adapt myself to it? Now, faced with this particularconcern, belief in the absurd is tantamount to substituting the quantity of experiences for the quality. If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then Imust say that what counts is not the best living but the most living
Congratulations, you're now aware that you're a pseud quoting wikipedia. Camus isn't concerned if there is meaning, he's concerned if he can live a life without ever needing to know it. Read a book you fucking idiot
>>15289793
Replace that as "Life's meaning can't be known" and you've got it

>>15289791
>he's quoting wikipedia in a philosophy argument

>>15289828
>read a book you idiot
He can’t - he’s busy reading Wikipedia articles

>>15289791
Absurdism is so obviously the correct option.

>>15289841
No, nihilism is.

>>15289832
There was no philosophy argument. It was argument about facts. We weren't arguing if there is an inherent meaning, only that if there is an inherent meaning in absurdism. That's something that you can check in Wikipedia.

>>15289893
>There was no philosophy argument. It was argument about facts. We weren't arguing if there is an inherent meaning, only that if there is an inherent meaning in absurdism. That's something that you can check in Wikipedia

>>15289791
I'm not sure that represents Absurdism properly. If we're talking about Camus then it is admittedly a bit vague what exactly his concept of rebellion entails in terms of personal creation of meaning. To act as though meaning did exist regardless of it not existing, is this the same thing as 'embracing the transient, personal nature of our meaning-making projects'? That sounds more or less just like existentialism, not absurdism.

It means something along the lines of.
>REEEEEE I JUST WANT TO FUCK WOMEN AND SHIT MAN LET ME DEVISE SOME DUMBFUCK """PHILOSOPHY"""" THAT JUSTIFIES LITERALLY EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO BY CLAIMING ALL IS ABSURD LIKE DUDE LMAO AS IF ANYTHING HAS MEANING WAIT I'M NOT A NIHILIST IT'S DIFFERENT I'M ABSURDIST BECAUSE I CREATE MY OWN MEANING IN THE CHAOS, NAMELY FUCKING WOMEN AND NO YEAH THAT'S PRETTY MUCH IT I WANNA FUCK WOMEN CAN I FUCK WOMEN NOW LIKE FUCK GOD IS SUCH A NONCE.

>>15289893
>You can fact-check philosophy with wikipedia

>>15289908
> /lit/ is the smartest board on 4chan

>>15289893
listen pseud-boy, that quote i posted shows you why you're wrong, you're just too dumb to understand it. If I put it to the wikipedia article would it be right?

>>15289914
Part of being smart is identifying hacks and properly disposing of their shitty ideas.
Camus is a hack.

>>15289825
Was that what happened? The way I interpreted the events of the murder were more on the lines of him walking by the beach and coming across the Arab by chance. When he felt threatened he decided to go for the kill kind of without thinking, and once committed to the act he felt the need to be thorough, which is why he shot him four more times. I thought that added to the whole "I don't understand why this happened but it did and now I have to deal with it; that's life" theme of the book.

>>15289828
>An easy shirt topic would be to analyze the few scenes that he kept the same between the books, and why would he do that?
That'd make for an interesting essay; thanks for the suggestion, anon.

>>15289610
Life's a cope and then you die

>>15289930
>properly disposing of their shitty ideas.
but your post cleary shows that you didn't understand his shitty ideas in the first place. Maybe actually read his books?

>>15289990
No problem!

>>15289828
> The world itself, whose single meaning I do not understand, is but a vast irrational. If one could only say just once: "This is clear," all would be saved.

>I don' t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me?

Can we at least agree that if everything has no meaning that means that asking if there is a meaning has no meaning?

>>15290062
>Can we at least agree that if everything has no meaning that means that asking if there is a meaning has no meaning

Camus talks about that in an earlier section, but his core issue is that man truly cannot determine if there is meaning or if there is not, without committing a philosophical suicide

>>15290073
What is a "philosophical suicide"?

>>15289981
He shot the Arab for no reason, that's the point of the whole bit about 'because the sun was in my face'. He's totally bereft of any delusions about meaning/morality, there is no logic to why he killed the arab, he just sort of felt like it.

His arc in the book is to decide to act as though there is meaning anyway, which is to condemn himself for his action(note that this is contradiction to society/the court who condemn him for 'not crying at his mother's funeral', for breaking the social norms, rather than for killing someone for no reason, Camus chose an Arab specifically because a court at that time wouldnt have cared about a Frenchman killing an Arab).

The character is very much a contrived personality meant to show the absurd nature of reality. He is just naturally aware of this, unlike most people who are deluded. Camus uses this to show what happens when people realize the basically nihilistic state of reality, and then he offers the transformation Mersault has at the end as the solution. Mersault condemns himself for the murder, after explicitly rejecting the Priest's religious justifications for acting morally, as a rebellion against the absurd cruelty of human existence.

The final page is particularly important, it says that Mersault opens himself to the tender indifference of the world, and finds that it is like him(because he is naturally the Absurd man), but he nonetheless finds it 'charged with signs and stars', and hopes that tomorrow on the day of his execution he be killed alongside cries of hate, that he be judged for what he did. So expectations or appearances of meaning and morality have been restored in some sense.

>>15290088
Taking a leap of faith, for example.

>>15290094
>'because the sun was in my face'
I might be autistic because I took this as face value and interpreted it as that the sun was blinding him while a hostile man holding a knife was in front of him, so rather than letting him take that chance of momentary blindness to stab him he decided to take the shot just to be safe.

>>15290120
So, giving up the way of reason in way of reaching a more desirable conclusion by refusing to admit reality? Am I interpreting this correctly?

>>15290122
He doesn't feel threatened, he feels irritated, and then he continues to shoot the corpse after he knows the man is dead. It's given as a legal justification for his actions though you're right.

If he were acting in reasonable self-defense the book wouldn't make any sense seeing as he'd have no reason to condemn himself.

>>15290156
Yeah, it doesn't make much sense thematically. He never even claims that he was just defending himself, although I kinda read that as that it made no difference at all whether he was justified in taking another person's life or not, he just did it and that was what mattered.

>>15290136
Yeah, Sartre's Bad Faith is another related concept.

>>15290088
Religion or ideology, AKA premade sense of meaning.

>>15290088
Checked. It's any meaning that fills in a gap that you yourself cannot fill.

>>15289681
Camus know how to enjoy woman

>>15289836
what the fuck is that picture

maybe you should read sally rooney instead

>>15290156
I don't get it though, the Arab assaulted Raymond and tried to kill him, why was this never brought up in the trial? Or is this just an auxiliary point?

>>15290604
The trial was more about him not crying at his moms funeral, banging marie the day after, and not converting to christianity in jail.

I really liked how pleasant the first half of the book is, when we are simply seeing his day to day life. What part does that section play into the book's message? Is it an invitation to enjoy life regardless of our inevitability to find its meaning?

>>15290897
inability*

>>15290897
>Is it an invitation to enjoy life regardless of our inability to find its meaning?

Yes. To make the choices you want regardless of the nonexistence of any grand scheme

An Algerian author wrote a response to The Stranger in the form of a novel that narrates the events of the book from the perspective of the brother of the Arab that got killed by Meursault.
The only thing I know about it is that it exists. Has anyone here read it or heard about it?

>>15290604
Camus had a hard line stance against the death penalty, the trial scene is his way of showing how stupid a system it is. Mersault is not convicted because of what he did, but how he is perceived. The fact that he never cried for his mother and generally operates outside of society’s norms was used to paint him as a monster.
If he just said “the Arab pulled a knife” he probably could have gotten away with it. But Mersault felt he should be jailed because he killed someone regardless of the situation, so he let the prosecutor run his mouth about how cold a person Mersault must be.

>>15291116
it really sucks. There was an interview where he talks about living under the shadow of Camus, and how white people always make african characters nameless, calling them The Arab, or shit like that. It's cheap, cash-grab post-colonial lit.

>>15291818
Wasn't the point of making Meursault's victim nameless a way to bring home how little the crime actually mattered, and how what was being judge was rather his attitude towards society?
Anyway, it is always pretty iffy to write a "response book" specially when the author you're responding to can't answer back because he's been dead for decades. I understand the idea of wanting to reply to someone else's ideas, but it feels sort of cowardly. Although I don't feel the same way about Nietzsche responding Plato, so maybe I'm just racist.

>>15291877
Nice dubs. And yeah, it shows his detachment, among other things. Imo it reads as an author/journo piggybacking off a celebrity. And also, philosophy is basically slow, one-sided conversations over thousands of years. Not to mention Nietzsche didn't sell a ton of his books while he was alive.

Is Camus legit? Do you agree with him?

>>15293357
He’s had an impact on how I think so I’d say he’s “legit.” But I’m not super versed in philosophy, and from what I know he’s not a huge name in that crowd. Emphasized his art over the academic writing and all that.
All of his stuff is pretty short, if you’re interested you should just dive in and see for yourself.

fuck sun
fuck minorities
and most importantly
fuck remembering birthdays

>>15293357
He is generally one of the less mentally ill philosophers, self-made man, and if you want someone to look up to he's not a bad example. His writing is approachable, which is important for a beginner. The Stranger is very well written, and the myth of Sisyphus has some parts that are a pure pleasure to read.

Absurdism is a decent attempt at existentialism, but, to me, it has its limitations, and I've therefore discarded it. I suggest you read Sisyphus and see for yourself, critical thinking and all.