
Albert Camus: Humanism and Tragedy - flannery
https://hopkinsreview.jhu.edu/current-issue/albert-camus-humanism-and-tragedy/
======
jeisc
also a good reads from Camus:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_(Camus_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_\(Camus_novel\))
and a quote: [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/29516-there-is-but-one-
trul...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/29516-there-is-but-one-truly-
serious-philosophical-problem-and-that)

“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. These are games; one must first answer.”

~~~
ikeyany
I also enjoyed reading The Plague.

"You can't understand. You're using the language of reason, not of the heart;
you live in a world of abstractions."

------
nbabitskiy
Albert Camus' nobel prize acceptance speech is as good, as his best novels.
Read it!

"Il me reste à vous remercier , du fond du cœur ,et à vous faire publiquement
en témoignage personnel de gratitude, la même et ancienne promesse de fidélité
que chaque artiste vrai , chaque jour, se fait à lui-même dans le silence."

~~~
javajosh
Allow me to translate: "I speak French!"

~~~
nbabitskiy
excuse me!
[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/spee...](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/speech/)

------
thom
“That explains the complete disappearance of compassion in their world
populated by aggressive old men”

------
sysbin
The best thing I came to realize in life is that free will is an illusion and
simply it doesn’t exist. Thus, life has never been worth living because we’re
simply forced like a victim sent to prison and whatever we experience is not
really our own. Good or evil is simply an illusion as well because of the
preceding. I wish I had been educated about this young.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
Philosophy of mind has little to no understanding of consciousness and the
will. Most people who have a considered opinion are 'physicalists' who think
that the mind is reducible to the physical activity of the brain, but this
belief is not based on an especially compelling neurological research
programme but on the ontological expectation that all phenomena are reducible
to physical processes. That is, they believe the mind must be of this quality
because most everything else studied by natural science is.

What the true nature of the mind is - and it may simply lie beyond human
understanding - makes no difference to the phenomenological experience of
being a first-person subjectivity, and the struggle to live that we all must
lead. Do you confront the world without a predetermined purpose? Yes. Then for
the existentialists you are radically free and, inescapably, have to choose
who you want to be.

~~~
sysbin
The mind could only be free if independent from what encompasses it. That’s
simply impossible and even if our mind had some quantum physics thrown into
the equation. Anyhow this all is a difficult subject unless understanding
determinism and processing life with the knowledge for awhile. In either case
fate decides the outcome but I wish I knew earlier in life. Maybe I’ll live
the same life over but the universe will allow that to happen but that would
arguably not be my own doing as well because this life made that desire. All
nifty cause & effects...

~~~
Emma_Goldman
>"The mind could only be free if independent from what encompasses it."

No it could be an emergent property that arises from physical processes but is
not reducible to them (emergentism). It could be that the mental and the
physical are not independent substances but different elements of the same
thing, and thus one does not need to be reducible to the other (neutral
monism). Or you could be a dualist and claim that the mind really is separate
from the physical world.

Or, more sensibly, you could be agnostic because we lack any solid grounds for
belief in any theory of the mind.

And again, as I just said, this ontological problem is separate from the
phenomenological problem with which the existentialists were concerned. For
what the mind is, ontologically, makes no difference to our subjective
experience as radically free beings without a predetermined essence.

~~~
sysbin
You're interpreting my definition of what makes the mind different than your
own. I consider the mind to be free if independent from what encompasses it.
Meaning the ability to choose how life plays out. That's not truly fitting of
free will either because even then a person will desire whatever the first
experiences force them into desiring. Everything is predetermined. Cause &
effect.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
No, I am not. The three substantive positions that I described - emergentism,
neutral monism, dualism - reject the idea that mental activity is reducible to
antecedent physical processes. Agnosticism suspends belief about the mind.
Existentialism recasts this as a phenomenological issue; about our subjective
experience of radical freedom.

In other words, every one of these positions rejects the idea that we are
imprisoned by a physical nexus of 'cause & effect'.

~~~
sysbinn
Those three positions are substantive? How so.., I assume if you're that loose
with the word.. the most widely shared definition of free will should be
substantive to you. Even one could say free will rejects the idea that we are
imprisoned by a physical nexus of 'cause & effect' and typically what people
follow from reading the bible. Evil fairy tales that delude a person. Anyhow I
wish I knew of cause & effect very young because then I wouldn't have been
grossly taken advantaged of and I assume is the reason the majority of people
are conditioned to stay deluded.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
I am struggling to understand what you are saying. Your views are not clearly
stated or elaborated, and they are not obviously related to what I said.

I called them substantive because they are worked out philosophical theories,
as opposed to agnosticism, which is simply the suspension of belief.

~~~
sysbin
Maybe email me at alizeebellerose @ icloud .com and we can have a better
discussion. I was temporarily banned from HN for conversing about this topic.
In any case the discussion would be better by email or elsewhere. I'm agnostic
in the sense of purpose but I enjoy neuroscience enough and with physics that
I cannot see real control existing in reality. Although, I would love to have
someone explain to me how they see otherwise.

