Okay, this is going to be probably be a touchy one. There is finally an English translation of the correspondence between Albert Camus and Maria Casares, who was, I think, his longest standing mistress. I am an avid letter writer and have books of famous correspondences and have used Camus' correspondence upon his winning the Nobel Prize with his teacher in classrooms. While I own just about everything Camus wrote, ths one has me at a quandary. (Spoiler alert) The suicide of the woman on the bridge in "The Fall" is a reference to Camus' wife who attempted suicide....... I believe because of his infidelity. Okay, fine, while she may have had pre-existing mental issues, it had to hurt her. Does anyone have the English translation of the letters between them? If so, how was it? I've been cheated on, so maybe it is just me with this issue.

i was thinking this: If quantity of life is better than quality so the only valuation is more life so camus cligns to life. If an 90 years old slave on camus eyes is better of than an poet who died at 23 did what he loved so the only valuation if life itself

That sounds weird to me and almost radical because almost all philosophies accept death and prepares us for death,Its like camus struggle with death itself. So as i ponder in the myth of sisyphus,It all does make sense in my mind. To roll an bolder and come crash down again is an representation of camus struggle with death. He know that this is struggle is futile but he persevere in this anyway

Does my thinking is correct ? is anything missing here ? I'm fascinated because like its like at odd with almost any philosophy it seems that camus want to deny death itself he is so cling to life to want more and more life that he wants to deny death.

I am academically trained in philosophy for many years and graduated from an IVY university with a master degree. Yet I never understood the significance of Camus. In my opinion he is a lousy literary writer and an even worse philosopher, yet his works have been widely praised and discussed in all academic settings. To me he doesn’t even qualify as a philosopher worth mentioning in an academic scene let alone being in the textbook.

Let’s set aside The Stranger for now since it’s literally a novel. In Sisyphus he just up and claims that we will inherently look for meanings but the universe doesn’t have any which creates the absurd. And then at the end of it all he just asserts that “we must imagine Sisyphus happy”. There is NO ARGUMENTS. What meaning are we talking about? Why do we inherently want to chase your “meanings”? Why does the universe not have the whatever “meanings” you’re talking about? Why does this collision lead to the absurd? What exactly do you mean by the absurd? And why must we imagine Sisyphus happy and how does that revolt against the absurd? So basically he assumes A and B, and assumes that from A and B must come C, therefore we should do D to revolt against C. Seriously, what the F?

Also, to me it seems like his stance is no different from the nihilism that he claims to oppose. The universe is meaningless thus we should not kill ourselves or believe in God instead we should “revolt” by living our daily lives imagining ourselves “happy” while keeping in mind that the absurd exists. Just because you add a forced optimistic psychological layer to your nihilism doesn’t change the fundamental metaphysical stance of your nihilism. You’re not offering a solution nor offering a different metaphysical stance that it’s not the case that the universe is void of meanings. Defying a meaningless universe by doing meaningless things happily? So nothing matters, but do have a good time rolling the boulder up and watch it slide back down? What kind of dumb solution is that?

Even if somehow you’re his target audience so you say, “well I think that’s a perfect solution”, in philosophy, you cannot derive an “ought”from an “is”without a middle step.

1. The assumption (Is): The universe is devoid of meaning.
2. Camus’ solution (Ought): Therefore, you ought to revolt by living happily, and refuse to surrender.
   If I was a nihilist, I would argue that if the universe is a void, then surrendering, sleeping all day, or jumping off a bridge are all metaphysically identical to your so called rebellion. Camus arbitrarily decides that rebellion is heroic and surrender is cowardly. But words like noble and cowardly require a framework of values to mean anything. If you claim that there’s no values, then what heroism are we talking about?

Willingly accept a meaningless existence then trick our minds into enjoying it, I don’t think I need a whole course on that. If you’re philosophically trained (not an amateur like Camus) and you want to convince me that Camus has any significance, I very much welcome you because I’m genuinely so confused why we even talk about him.

Two months ago, someone gifted me Albert Camus' The Stranger, and I read it. Since then, I've been enjoy reading all kinds of genres. It was my first time diving into a philosophy book. I have only read few of it(The Death of Ivan Ilyich
, The Metamorphosis, Sutta-nipata last year) but I never really searched for it, and while I absolutely loved it, it’s making me overthink so much that my head hurts as well 🙉

Could you tell me about other books or thinkers related to him? I'm really curious about how other people ended up reading his work.

Receiving his book will probably go down as one of the most random events in my 20 years of life. Damn I want to sip a cup of coffee with him ☕️

It's fair enough to read Camus or Nagel and understand the absurd logically, but it never really hit me until I experienced it independently in my own life. What was the experience that uncovered the Absurd for you?

Update: mod is a Nazi, please DM me your takes, I'm interested in hearing your experiences :)

Hello guys,

I read The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus and I'm about to finish The Plague. I'm kind of torn between continuing with the cycle of Revolt with The Rebel or maybe going with Exile and Kingdom first.

I'm very interested in The Rebel but I'd like to read it when I have enough time to really commit to it. The Myth of Sisyphus although a way shorter book was a disproportionately long read, albeit I was pausing and re-reading a lot since the translation was wonky and I wanted to give it enough thought before continuing.

All recommendations are appreciated!

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Im not 'new' exactly to Camus, ive loosely followed his philosophy for decades at this point *but I've never actually read his work*. I got The Myth of Sisyphus just recently, should I be prepared for anything? I'm a voracious reader, but I've seen his work can be slow? Other than that all I really know is I feel like the book will help me in a sense, I know enough about him to know that