
Albert Camus: A reconstructed conversation - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/49/the-absurd/ingenious-albert-camus
======
gregschlom
If you'd like to read something from Camus, I highly recommend The Stranger:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_\(novel\))

If you have some knowledge of French, you may try the original French edition
- the style is simple and should be very accessible.

~~~
dmix
I haven't read much Camus but I absolutely loved his semi-autobiographical
story about his childhood growing up in Algeria he wrote just before he died
in a car accident: [https://www.amazon.com/First-Man-Vintage-International-
ebook...](https://www.amazon.com/First-Man-Vintage-International-
ebook/dp/B008QLVNE2/)

The story stuck with me for a long time and I was told it was much more
accessible than many of his earlier books that were more philosophical.

It's a great story if you were ever the intelligent rebellious independent
type growing up.

------
CalRobert
A lighthearted view of Camus that some people here may enjoy can be found at
[http://existentialcomics.com/philosopher/Albert_camus](http://existentialcomics.com/philosopher/Albert_camus)

------
harwoodleon
Camus has been a guiding light for me through my youth and I still draw from
him today.

The human absurdity is very real in the modern condition. The challenges we
face are so much more profound these days.

With Nuclear armament, AI and climate change, We are literally dealing with
topics that frame the end of humanity, but we can't face it.

In the rebel, Camus teaches us that rebellion is probably a futile task.

Governments won't save us, so why riot?

Acceptance of absurdity gives us true freedom to create. Acceptance of systems
stifles our ability to solve problems. Technology as a movement is heartening,
as long as we continue to break it, reinvent it, hack it - in order to rescue
ourselves.

Thanks for sharing this, made my day.

~~~
StevePerkins
> Governments won't save us, so why riot?

Because everything you're talking about, and all of the ideas in the posted
article, basically deal with the top-most peak of Maslow's hierarchy:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

There's still 90% of that iceberg beneath this surface, however.

In other words, human systems and institutions may be powerless to help you
reach self-actualization, "save us", solve everything, make humanity endure
forever, etc. However, you must be living a VERY comfortable life, free from
hunger, health, and personal safety concerns, to wonder why humans bother to
riot in some cases.

------
tpeo
I cannot be anything but skeptical here. Who's to say what Camus would have
said if actually asked this questions? Can the dead be "reconstruted" from
things said in different contexts, at different points in time? Certainly not
with an absolute degree with confidence. Thus, as there is some degree of
uncertainty regarding the answers, there would be more than one way in which
he might have answered any question given what we know about him. And not one
of the possible interviews might be satisfactory, because none of them might
be close to an actual interview with Camus.

~~~
coldtea
> _I cannot be anything but skeptical here. Who 's to say what Camus would
> have said if actually asked this questions?_

Nobody, but that's beside the point. It's not supposed to be a seance, but a
made up conversation (plus, the answers are adapted from the writer's own
work).

A "discussion" with the writer similar to the way an author discusses with
their ideas by reading their books and getting to understand their way of
thinking.

> _Certainly not with an absolute degree with confidence._

Yeah, but no such degree of confidence is promised -- or even expected from
the readers to have. Approach this similar to how one would approach this
guy's writing about Hemingway's Javascript preferences:

[http://byfat.xxx/if-hemingway-wrote-javascript](http://byfat.xxx/if-
hemingway-wrote-javascript)

Of course Hemingway didn't have any, and never wrote JS. But the idea is to
put what we know about the author (and their preferences, beliefs, mannerisms,
style, etc) and apply it to how they'd answer a question or how'd they do
something like writing JS.

There's no absolute degree of confidence here either -- Hemingway, were he
actually alive today at ~120 years old and interested in programming might
surprise us all and opt for Angular. But from what we know, and to the best of
our ability to interpret them, this would be his style (and "that would be
what Camus would have said" in TFA case).

~~~
tpeo
So, I was sleepy and going off to bed when I made that comment and now I've
realized that how massively I botched it. Major failure of communication on my
part, sorry.

But it's good that you mentioned the Hemingway article, because the difference
between that article and this interview highlights pretty well what's my issue
with trying to "reconstruct" Camus from quotes. A living person is able to
perceive as well as react to context. What questions have been asked, who's
asking them, what is the level of understanding of the world, where we are ...
these all might be grouped into "context", and the point is that they're all
relevant in conversation.

Now, when a person takes up the mannerisms of someone else, it doesn't really
detract from their ability of adhering to context. But when they're trying to
"reconstruct" a person from things they've said at some point for the purposes
of an interview, while trying to preserve those quotes to some degree, there
can never be such a close fit between question and answer because each was
made in different contexts.

Another way to look a it: what the author did is essentially search the Camus
corpus for continuous segments of text which most closely fit his questions.
But the answer which Camus would have most likely given could depend on
discontinuous segments of text. This is actually pretty common in academic
literature: whenever people are trying to reconstruct the meaning of certain
concept, like Aristotle's "entelechy" or like Kant's "noumenon", sometimes we
have to refer to different passages of the relevant corpus in order to get a
clearer picture of what it might have meant. And there's an interaction
between these passages, because they don't just heap over one another as in a
concatenation of disjointed facts, but instead build upon another. The
interaction between different passages might actually change the perceived
meaning of individual passages. If there were a living person to answer these
questions, whether it be Camus or just someone who really knows Camus, he
already has these higher degree interactions in his head. He doesn't have the
excerpts of text, he has the model which generates them. So if there's any
question which might warrant a more subtle or complex answer, he'll able to do
it. Maybe even a question which wasn't previously considered by Camus and for
which we can find no immediately relevant passages in the corpus.

My issue isn't that this is some bit of necromancy, but rather that it is a
_Procrustean_ bit of necromancy. I wasn't skeptical because there's some
degree of uncertainty either (though I think that in between chopping text and
answering based on some model there would be less uncertainty regarding the
latter), I was skeptical because I think this is an awkward and useless
approach. It doesn't "reconstruct" anything, it merely deconstructs the Camus
corpus.

------
adjkant
Just a good related book recommendation: At the Existentialist Cafe is a great
piece on philosophy and modern history.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25658482-at-the-
existent...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25658482-at-the-
existentialist-caf)

