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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 14 KB, 400x268, albert camus.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3115785 No.3115785 [Reply] [Original]

Albert Camus vs Jean-Paul Sartre. Who was the better author, who was the better philosopher, who's ideas do you like most. My personal favorite of the two is Camus; his writing is far more focused and mature, while his philosophy is more realistic. Not to mention that Camus was an overall nicer guy. What does /lit/ think?
>pic related

>> No.3115788
File: 99 KB, 960x960, Rabbititis.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3115788

Apples to oranges, red to blue. Read them both and develop your own preference.

>> No.3115792

I already have my preference. I'm just curious about what other people think.

>> No.3115793

>Not picking Sartre

Enjoy never having sex

>> No.3115795

>>3115793
...I don't get the reference

>> No.3115802

>>3115788

OP is asking for people to present such opinions...

>> No.3115808

im actually interested in the answers. self-bump

>> No.3115829

>>3115793
>not picking Camus
Accessibility + generally better writing ability + (imho) better ideas= superior

>> No.3115851
File: 101 KB, 700x539, sartre, camus, beauvoir 2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3115851

I can't decide.

Camus:

+better fiction writer
+tried to be non-partisan politically and tried to break out of the attitude of capitalism vs communism (at least according to The Mandarins)
-Sisyphus is a terrible role model of existence: roll it up, roll it down, be happy with your lot, repeat.
-Dodgy stance on Algeria as France

Sartre:

+Better philosopher. Although we're not absolutely free like he claims, ideas like bad faith and our essential freedom to act are far better models to live by than Camus' Sisyphus.
+Better politics of decolonisation
-Defended communism for far too long, wilfully blind to Stalinism
-often too convoluted expression which hinders understanding/application

I want to take the freedom of Sartre with the non-partisanship of Camus.

>> No.3115904

>>3115851

Communism is good though.

>> No.3115905

lol @ the idea that a person could be "non-partisan"

>> No.3115919

>>3115829
>trying to make an argument
>imho
Oh, well, at least you tried.

>> No.3115939

>>3115851
>tried to be non-partisan politically
this isn't a good thing...

>> No.3115946

>>3115785

Camus is the better writer, by far.

Sarte may have been a better philosopher, but he was still a shitty philosopher.

>> No.3115962

>>3115785
Best author
>Camus
Best writer
>Sartre
Critic
>Sartre
philosopher
>Sartre

Sartre had more than a single popular philosophy

>> No.3115967

>>3115851
I like how you treat his philosophy and Stalinism as separate. Of course the exact opposite is true: his continued support for Stalin is a direct result of his ideas, which just goes to show how utterly terrible they are as models to live by.

>> No.3115968

Maybe its just the translations I've read, but Camus's prose just reads a lot more dryly than Sartre's in my opinion. Can't really comment on who's the better philosopher, having only read novels from either side.

>> No.3115970

Just walked over to the base library and picked up "The Plague" Thanks bros!

>> No.3115985

>>3115968

Lol. Also, Sartre was as a philosopher very unoriginal and how would you say, haphazard or incomplete or something like that. He for instance never truly commented on the moral implications of his version of existentialism. I might be wrong though, seeing as I've only read summaries and studies of his work.

>> No.3115987

>>3115985
Why lol? Was that not a valid thing to have said?

>> No.3115994

>>3115987

It's continental philosophy. The novels sum up the philosophies. Camus didn't even write anything extensive in philosophy, just fiction.

>> No.3115998

>>3115994
Oh, right. I see then. I thought judging the merits of their philosophies would mean judging their academic works.

>> No.3115999

>>3115851
sisyphus isnt a role model, dumbass. its a metaphor
mfw lit cant even read the simplest material

>> No.3116000

>>3115851
sartre never said anything about absolute freedom. concepts like bad faith illustrate its not about what freedom you actually have, its about how you process and conceptualise that freedom

>> No.3116015

Easy the one who scored more points

>> No.3116027

Camus because he wasn't a filthy commie.

>> No.3116036

Sartre, because at least he didn't support French imperialism.

>> No.3116048

camus is babby tier sartre at best. just because after reading nausea three times you still dont understand it does not detract from the fact that its manifestation is a greasy metaphysical beast, writhing at the edge of existence, towering before the juvenile deadpan ramblings of camus, revelead to us through a post menopausal frog of sorts, sometimes as a menstruating prairie dog, with measles. im glad his life was cut short.

>> No.3116051
File: 59 KB, 450x600, emo20kid2001.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3116051

>>3116048

so edgy

>> No.3116053

>>3116048
Are you a heteromollusc?

>> No.3116054

Camus is a kind of absurdist-stoic which only superficially resembles existentialism. Sartre is an amazing synthesist, but contributes very few original ideas. Sartre in Being and Nothingness is just watered down Heidegger+Hegel+Descartes.

>> No.3116066

i prefer Camus. Its not only existintialism, He also presents the reader the far more powerful pictures.

>> No.3116105

>>3116054
>stoic
what do you mean by that?

>> No.3116117

>>3116051

> Nightwish t-shirt

OH GOD, MY SIDES.

>> No.3116121

>>3116048
I was wondering if someone had saved that quote from satan. Tripfag and shitposter, but I thought the way that one was worded was hilarious.

>> No.3116122

I think Camus was a better stylist. I like his prose better. Though I haven't read any of Sartre's non-fiction, so I'm talking strictly about their fiction.

>> No.3116219

>>3116117
I thought it was Lacuna Coil.

>> No.3116274

>>3116219

I only laughed hard because I used to listen to nothing but Nightwish from the age of 16 - 17.

>> No.3116836

>>3116036
Camus didn't either

>> No.3116846

>>3115851
Sisyphus was a metaphor; and you seem to have taken it literally. Sisyphus' meaningless task is a metaphor for the meaninglessness of life as a whole. The idea is that life lack purpose, yet it should be accepted as is.

>> No.3116876

Better author - Camus
Better philosopher - both of their philosophies were shit.

>> No.3117205

Camus.

>> No.3117256

>>3115802
>expecting a namefag/tripfag to give an intelligently formulated response

>> No.3117271

camus can do, but sartre is smartre.

>> No.3117275

>>3117271
OMFG LOL ROFLMAO MY SIDES UPBOAT UPBOAT UPBOAT LIKED COMMENTED SHARED TWEETED

>> No.3117276

sartre's philosophy was fucking stupid so camus I guess

>> No.3117298

>>3117276
>sartre's philosophy was fucking stupid

basically you can't comprehend it, so it's "fucking stupid".

>> No.3117309

>>3117298
nah man it's philosophy 101 but it is pretty fucking dumb, it's cool though if you like it though, I don't care. I don't let people liking twilight bother me either

>> No.3117316

>>3117309
There's no way you've actually read Being and Nothingness in its entirety.

Kindly fuck off.

>> No.3117317

>>3117309
where does it say that I like it? both authors are overrated and entry level. it's not "fucking stupid" though, using a term like that to describe literature is "fucking stupid".

>> No.3117328

>>3117316
Even if he had, it's the Critique of Dialectical Reason that really matters, so...

>> No.3117335

>>3117309
>twilight
>categorical, unqualified dismissal of an entire author's corpus

Your post is fucking stupid.

>>3117317

>attacks tone, ignoring the obvious deficit of even the most cursory reasoning in the post to which he replies
>overrated
>entry level

Posture harder, kid.

>> No.3117341
File: 490 KB, 500x281, thom yorke doesnt like the looks of this.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3117341

>>3115904
seriously hope you mean the kind without the oppressive government

>> No.3117338

>>3117335
cool

>> No.3117347

>>3117341
>oppressive government

who are you referring to?

>> No.3117345

>>3117317
Using a term like entry level is "fucking stupid".
I don't consider Camus to be overrated in any way.
Perhaps The Stranger, but it's still a great book.
Are the themes in The Plague and The Fall not deep enough for you?

>> No.3117357

>>3117347
Dunno let's start with the murderous political repressions of the USSR and the PRC during most of their early existence.

>> No.3117362

>>3117347
>tens of millions slaughtered in the USSR and People's Republic of China
>all dissidence silenced
>only good author allowed to publish is Gorky, and Stalin even killed him off eventually

Gee, you tell me

>> No.3117369

>>3117362
>>3117357
got an tangible proof of these claims?

>> No.3117375

>>3117369
Oh, you're one of these people. I imagine my grandfather's time in the Gulag was made up, and that all his friends WEREN'T all killed.

>> No.3117378

>>3117375
What do you expect from tripfags, they sit with their fingers and their ears and start shouting, hoping someone stupid enough will listen.

>> No.3117388

>>3117357

Uh, it was good to murder pro-capitalists.

>> No.3117392

>>3117362

Tens of millions have been slaughtered by the US too, boohoo boohoo. Capitalist crocodile tears don't work on me.

>> No.3117394

>>3117369
Start with the original red terror and wave of repressions against the left, the anarchists and the green army by the bolsheviks. Move on to the great purge and the holodomor and the postwar expulsion of ethnic minorities.

In the PRC refer to the massive famine of the 50s and the regressive, anti-intellectual fervor of the cultural revolution.

>>3117388

Except most weren't in any way that doesn't require the mental gymnastics Stalin demanded from the political class in the USSR.

>> No.3117403

lol we got a trot in here

>> No.3117412

>>3117394

Those countries were both lifted out of poverty and the quality of life improved drastically for the majority of people.

I think you've read too much US propaganda and taken it to heart

>> No.3117417

>>3117394
I said tangible, all I can see is words on my screen, typed by some edgy teen from his parents home in middle america.

>> No.3117419

>>3117403
Nope.

>>3117412
In spite of those things, not due to them.

>> No.3117421

>>3117417
Sorry, I'm not interested in doing your history homework for you.

>> No.3117425

>>3117421
you're right, you should be doing your times tables.

>> No.3117426

>>3117419

It was due to communism. Stalin and Mao helped improve the lives of the majority of people. If you deny that you're basically working for US-imperialism

>> No.3117427

>>3117417
I mean really, "tangible"? Do you want to go to an archaelogical dig at a former gulag? I want tangible proof you're serious about your desire for tangible proof.

>> No.3117428
File: 60 KB, 600x462, sartre, camus, beauvoir 1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3117428

>>3115904

I don't think people living under it would have agreed with you

>>3115939

So a binary world view is much better then?

>>3115967

They are actually in stark contradiction. Absolute freedom doesn't really gel well with subordination to a tyrannous state apparatus. He tried to fuse existentialism with Marxism but wasn't successful.

>>3115999
>>3116846

Of course he was.

>I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

And so too are WE to be happy. Sisyphus is a pedagogical tool to change the way we think and act in our own lives.

>>3116000

haha seriously?

>> No.3117429

>>3117426
I hear Hitler did the same thing.

>> No.3117440

>>3117427
>gulag

you keep repeating this word

is that the best you can do?

>> No.3117443

>2012
>still not filtering tripfags

You people are fucking retarded.

>> No.3117445

Camus is for high school students. Sartre is for undergraduates.

>> No.3117447

>>3117428
>I don't think people living under it would have agreed with you

Actually most of them do agree. Look at polls of the people in former USSR. Most say communism worked better than capitalism. Indeed just before the breakup of the USSR there was a referendum about if the USSR should stay communist. 70% responded that it should stay communist. If democracy meant anything, the USSR would still exist. Of course, democracy doesn't mean a thing to US financial interests.

>> No.3117449

>>3117443
>being this mad

yes, bury your head in the sand, philistine.

>> No.3117461

>>3117429

Hitler responded to the contradictions of capitalism by tightening certain contradictions. Fascism is merely an ultrareactionary response to the failings of liberal democracy (without actually solving any of those failings).

If you dislike Hitler without also rejecting capitalism as a whole, you are a hypocrite.

>> No.3117463

>>3117445
Who is Merleau Ponty for?

>> No.3117470

>>3117463
Faggots

>> No.3117471

>>3117440
Is their existence somehow controversial? Did I miss a chapter in the big book of Soviet apologetics?

>>3117447
You're talking about the USSR in the late 1980s, after generations of propaganda.

>>3117461

I do reject capitalism as a whole. I don't find the politics of the soviet bloc anymore compelling, however.

>> No.3117473

>>3117470
who are you for?

>> No.3117475

>>3117471

And after a generation of capitalism most people in the former-USSR agree that communism was better. Again, you are unwittingly serving as an agent of US propaganda and imperialism.

>> No.3117476

I prefer Camus as an author but I am a much bigger reader of prose than drama. Although that opinion is based largely off of The Plague, I'm not such a big fan of L’Étranger.
Ultimately both are good writers and when assessing the literature of them it comes down to personal choice.

>> No.3117481

>>3117471
>I don't find the politics of the soviet bloc anymore compelling, however.

You need to take a quick look at works organisation in Yugoslavia in relation to the demonstration of the potential for workers control (the absence points to the possibility).

You also need to read up on Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968 as the highpoints of the proletariat's aufheben of the contradictions of nomenklatura society, and pointing the way to actual socialism.

There's a lot to learn from the struggle in the East against capitalism.

>> No.3117479

>>3117471

The US prison system is actually far worse than gulags.

>> No.3117483

>>3117479
exactly, no niggers in gulag.

>> No.3117488

>>3117475
>And after a generation of capitalism most people in the former-USSR agree that communism was better.

Again, it was the late 1980s. It's not controversial in the least to claim that everyone got a shittier deal out of the neoliberal kleptocracy.


>Again, you are unwittingly serving as an agent of US propaganda and imperialism.

I'm not trying to discredit the theoretical basis of communism in any way, so I disagree.

>> No.3117486

>>3117481

Agreed. The guy who dislikes USSR is probably a recent convert from liberalism. It's very hard to scrub away the remnants of US-indoctrination.

>> No.3117493

>>3117488

Hahah "I like communism but please get rid of actually existing communism". You might as well be working for the CIA dude.

>> No.3117495

>>3117475

hahaha this guy.

1. commies always fiddle with numbers to suit their purpose
2. people couldn't just come out and say "oh capitalism is way better!" even in the 80s this would have led to serious repercussions
3. even if there was a majority who thought that after a decade of capitalism that doesn't say much about communism because
i. it was the worst kind of oligarchical capitalism possible, not a more moderate form tempered by democratic government.
ii. there is always nostalgia for the past after such events. the past becomes a mythological happy place so different from the wretched present. i.e. most east berlinners thought life was better before the collapse of the berlin wall, but at the time they were all desperate to escape to the west and decry the east.

>> No.3117497

>>3117493
It's already been gotten rid of.

>> No.3117503

>>3117495

Or you could just look at statistics and eye-witness reports an coclude that life really was better? So funny when there's a fusion between CIA-interests and conspiracy-theory.

>> No.3117509

lol "moderate capitalism" as if this is a thing that could exist. typical liberalism.

>> No.3117530

>>3117495

Yeah dude all those people who actually lived through the USSR and want to return to it are sooo brainwashed. You're the one who knows what's best for them, everyone should do what you think is best!! Incredibly how fast the liberal veneer of "democracy" erodes whenever the people decide they want communism.

>> No.3117532

>>3117479
Not surprising in the least. Nice attempt at cred-baiting I guess.

>> No.3117539

>>3117317
"both authors are overrated and entry level."
>mfw

>> No.3117550

>>3117493
>Hahah "I like communism but please get rid of actually existing communism". You might as well be working for the CIA dude.

Czechoslovakia 1968 and Hungary 1956.

The only violence came from Soviet troops. And in Hungary many of them defected or went neutral.

>> No.3117552

>>3117369
darren's troll is successful

>> No.3117555

>>3117530
It's easier to just ask them why, isn't it? But don't let something as bourgeois as cognitive biases or the institution of an even more toxic system in the post-Soviet era confuse any of that. Let's resort to platitudes about self-determination and paternalism instead.

>> No.3117568

>>3117509

So the capitalism of russia in the 90s is synonymous with the capitalism of Australia or Scandinavia in the present? Even Gorby though Scandinavia was a great social model because it successfully mixed free market with state regulation.

>> No.3117574

>>3117568

you're an idiot lol

>> No.3117583

>>3117576
Welcome to weekend /lit/

>> No.3117576

>>3117445
why are you fuckers so stupid? The purpose of the thread is to explain why you prefer one reader over the other; not to make stupid baseless claims. fuck

>> No.3117578

>>3117568
Australia doesn't have the right to strike, there is nothing "moderate" about Australian capitalism.

>> No.3117581

>>3117574
you're a lol idiot

>> No.3117588

>>3117568

Go talk to an Aboriginal about how "moderate" australian capitalism is you stupid fucker

>> No.3117599

>>3117583
>kneejerk accusations of trotskyism and liberalism flying (lol)
>/mu/-style posturing over two popular and widely read authors of the 20th century
>everyone trying their hardest to be the angriest and most dismissive

This is the type of thread /v/ might have in mid-July..

>> No.3117636

>>3117588

i did. yesterday some abo comes up to me and tells me 2 jokes. each of the punchlines was unintelligible but i the set ups were good:

1. what do you get when you cross a donkey and an onion?
2. how do you know adam and eve were aboriginal?

i will never know the punchlines.

he then asked for change, brova and took my hand. my hand smelled like cigarettes and dirt afterwards. i gave him no change. he was already drunk.

>> No.3117646

totalitarianism for other people

utter and complete freedom for me

Isn't this the best system?

Prove me wrong.


also, camus cuz i aint read shit by the other guy and he's ugly

>> No.3117909

>inb4 camus sucks cock

>> No.3117944

>>3117588
>Abbos
>People

Wow you sure are deluded

>> No.3117949

Sartre was better, but I dislike them both. Have some Takuan Soho instead.

>The body is like a dream. When we see this and awake, not a trace remains. How much time is left for the looking? It was not without reason that the ancients went from night to day, lighting the lamps and amusing themselves throughout the hours of darkness.
>At this point, one could fall into error. There should be standards for amusement, and if there are, amusement will bear no evil. The person who has no standards will become insane. If the one amusing himself does not fall into error, he will not go beyond these standards. Like the joints in bamboo, amusement, for the most part should have limits. It is not good to go beyond them.
>There are those who say, "Everything is like a dream! The only thing to do is play!" These people rattle their minds beyond limit, sink themselves in pleasure, and go to the extremes of luxury. Though they quote the words of the men of old, they are as far from the minds of the ancients as snow is from soot.

>> No.3117967

>>3117636
>>3117944
>>>/pol/

>> No.3117971

Heidegger.

>> No.3117998

>>3117971
was a nigger

>> No.3118034

>>3117461

>If you dislike Hitler without also rejecting capitalism as a whole, you are a hypocrite.
>If you dislike Hitler without also rejecting vegetarianism as a whole, you are a hypocrite.
>If you dislike Hitler without rejecting mustaches as a whole, you are a hypocrite.

All those hypocrites disliking genocide! Don't they realize Hitler's monetary system was just as bad?