Do you think that Camus had assessed suicide fairly in his work The Myth of Sisyphus ?

[Specific_Milk]

Do you think that Camus asserted alot of stuff (based on the Existentialist framework of existence preceding essence and that meaning can be made in this meaningless universe etc) and did not assess suicide fairly as being a valid solution to the problem of the Absurd?

Here I will quote some passages (hopefully the context is not lost) and that I think are just mere assertions from Camus rather than conclusions derived from logical deduction:

pg 53''that revolt gives life its value" : a clear assertion of an existentialist idea that one can make meaning in a meaningless universe. This is an assumption of the whole philosophy to which other schools before it do not agree with. There are plenty of philosophical traditions that do not subscribe to this idea. (for instance, the religious school of thought, that meaning is within God and God alone. Or the entirety of the Greek tradition, where essence precedes existence is the traditional viewpoint of life)
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pg 52-''it may be thought that suicide follows revolt-but wrongly. For it does not represent the logical outcome of revolt''

pg 52-''it is essential to die unreconciled and not of one's own free will. Suicide is a repudiation''

Both quotes above asserts that revolting is more desirable than suicide

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Here is a more explicit quote: pg 52'Living is keeping the absurd alive. … One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt''

I mean he could've put in a little more effort in hiding the fact that he is approaching this problem with a life affirming attitude, already assuming that life is desirable to death (and made no logical arguments to explain this assumption)

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An interesting one comes from this line:pg 52 ' suicide settles the absurd. It engulfs the absurd in the same death. But I know that in order to keep alive, the absurd cannot be settled. It escapes suicide to the extent that it is simultaneously awareness and rejection of death. '



If I understand this passage above correctly, he argues that suicide does settle the absurd but then makes a sort of metaphysical claim that somehow, even the act of suicide does not adequately resolve the Absurd as it some how escapes/eludes this? How confusing and deceptive is all of this. A book that started off claiming to objectively assess the extent that suicide is a valid solution to the Absurd, only for all nooks and crannies to be filled with the assumptions of existentialism (life affirming and a belief that value can be made in a value-less universe). To a person not subscribe to the assumptions of existentialism, these are mere assertions.

 

[moondazed]

Do you think that Camus asserted alot of stuff (based on the Existentialist framework of existence preceding essence and that meaning can be made in this meaningless universe etc) and did not assess suicide fairly as being a valid solution to the problem of the Absurd?

Here I will quote some passages (hopefully the context is not lost) and that I think are just mere assertions from Camus rather than conclusions derived from logical deduction:

pg 53''that revolt gives life its value" : a clear assertion of an existentialist idea that one can make meaning in a meaningless universe. This is an assumption of the whole philosophy to which other schools before it do not agree with. There are plenty of philosophical traditions that do not subscribe to this idea. (for instance, the religious thought, that meaning is within God and God alone. Or the entirety of the Greek tradition, where essence precedes existence is the traditional viewpoint of life)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


pg 52-''it may be thought that suicide follows revolt-but wrongly. For it does not represent the logical outcome of revolt''

pg 52-''it is essential to die unreconciled and not of one's own free will. Suicide is a repudiation''

Both quotes above asserts that revolting is more desirable than suicide

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a more explicit quote: pg 52'Living is keeping the absurd alive. … One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt''

I mean he could've put in a little more effort in hiding the fact that he is approaching this problem with a life affirming attitude, already assuming that life is desirable to death (and made no logical arguments to explain this assumption)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An interesting one comes from this line:pg 52 ' suicide settles the absurd. It engulfs the absurd in the same death. But I know that in order to keep alive, the absurd cannot be settled. It escapes suicide to the extent that it is simultaneously awareness and rejection of death. '



If I understand this passage above correctly, he argues that suicide does settle the absurd but then makes a sort of metaphysical claim that somehow, even the act of suicide does not adequately resolve the Absurd as it some how escapes/eludes this? How confusing and deceptive is all of this. A book that started off claiming to objectively assess the extent that suicide is a valid solution to the Absurd, only for all nooks and crannies to be filled with the assumptions of existentialism (life affirming and a belief that value can be made in a value-less universe). To a person not subscribe to the assumptions of existentialism, these are mere assertions.

Camus never claims to be pro suicide so I'm not sure what you were thinking going ito that book. It is pretty heavily regarded as an argument against suicide, but I found it to be mostly trying to understand the why of suicide, rather than the moral implications.

His description of the absurd is heady and complicated like any good philosophy but he does make an attempt to look at it without rose tinted glasses. He essentially claims that suicide is giving up, giving in, letting the absurd win. He's not wrong?

The suicidal man succumbs to the absurd while the absurd man smiles at it. That's essentially his thesis. It's not a moral argument, or at least I didn't take it that way. Camus certainly was fighting his own battle, and reading his other writings you can likely figure he's dealt with suicide up close and personal so I think a lot of his language stems from that.

Also philosophy isn't empirical or a science, really at all. Anyone can make anything sound persuasive enough with the right words

 

[Specific_Milk]

Camus never claims to be pro suicide so I'm not sure what you were thinking going ito that book. It is pretty heavily regarded as an argument against suicide, but I found it to be mostly trying to understand the why of suicide, rather than the moral implications.

His description of the absurd is heady and complicated like any good philosophy but he does make an attempt to look at it without rose tinted glasses. He essentially claims that suicide is giving up, giving in, letting the absurd win. He's not wrong?

The suicidal man succumbs to the absurd while the absurd man smiles at it. That's essentially his thesis. It's not a moral argument, or at least I didn't take it that way. Camus certainly was fighting his own battle, and reading his other writings you can likely figure he's dealt with suicide up close and personal so I think a lot of his language stems from that.

Also philosophy isn't empirical or a science, really at all. Anyone can make anything sound persuasive enough with the right words

I never said he was pro-suicide. I knew what absurdism was before reading it. He claimed to be assessing suicide objectively in the beginning pages. Here's the passage: pg 5 'The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd'

I'm simply trying to follow the arguments of this book. When he talked about philosophical suicide (as in taking the leap of faith or any other variation of it like in the case of Husserl) his arguments are clear and every step is logically deduced to arrive at the conclusion that taking the leap of faith is not a solution to the absurd. But when he talked about physical suicide, there are no such logically deduced arguments to be found. My frustration is with his many assertions not logically deduced. If you actually read the text you will see them as assertions. The fact that there are only a few pages dedicated to discussing physical suicide goes to show that he really just wants to promote his Absurdist philosophy.

 

[moondazed]

The fact that there are only a few pages dedicated to discussing physical suicide goes to show that he really just wants to promote his Absurdist philosophy.

Yeah I completely agree with you on this point. I was a little disappointed with MoS, especially since I had fell in love with Camus when I read The Stranger as a teen. It was a slog tbh and I read it when I was very depressed this past January, so I didn't absorb everything nor remember all the context. There's a good handful of quotes that I highly admire from it though

 

[Specific_Milk]

I was adamant about going through the book myself and to make my own critiques based on what i understood. It seems like, my evaluation of his approach is also shared by other people. I previously said that he comes from an angle that presupposes the existentialist position. The opinion below based on a simple google search shares the same sentiment.
Below it's worded as 'he presupposes a search for meaning' and my own evaluation is that he presupposes it is even possible in the first place to do the act of searching for meaning.





there seems to be many other academic critiques out there and so i need not even finish the book. The work has already been done by other people. Camus did not assess suicide fairly is the conclusion

 

[real person]

continental philosophy moment