I think it's from The Rebel. I thought at first that it was from the Don Juanism bit in Myth of Sisyphus, but it wasn't.

But I think it's from The Rebel since that book focuses more on the communal aspects of an Absurd Man, as opposed to solipsistic pursuit of your own passions.

hi everyone. been aware of camus for a long time and have already read two of his other books (the outsider and the plague, adored them both) and eventually got to reading the fall. to be honest with you, i didn’t really get it. i enjoyed reading it but i really don’t know what the ‘message’ or the point of it is, and to be honest google didn’t really give me much insight either. can anyone help me out?

Good evening, everyone. Im looking for a free PDF download of "The Stranger" and "The Myth of Sisyphus." Thank you!

One must imagine Camus doin a lil boogie

I just finished the Stranger (I really enjoyed it). I read the book in English, the version translated by Sandra Smith, and in the final chapter of part 1, one line really confuses me. As Raymond gets flustered and heads down to the beach, Masson says it’s best to leave him, the lin reads ’Masson said it was best not to upset him. But I … I followed him anyway.’ It is this pause that I couldn’t understand. It sounds as if it would be a break in dialogue rather than reflection/narration. This sort of break also doesn't appear anywhere else in the book. I looked at other translations and this section is different- there is no pause. When reading, as it was near the end of the first part, I thought maybe that this whole first section was Meursult’s confession or testimony and Camus was cleverly alluding to this using this pause as if he was stood on trial etc. However, as this pause is not in other translations, and there doesn’t seem to be other hints that the first section was his testimony, I really can’t seem to wrap my head around why this pause would be included. any ideas?

Hi! I've came here because I'm not really sure what to get my boyfriend. He loves camus, he adores him, he's read the stranger a million times, and he really idolises him. I'm not too sure about camus, or what kind of things he'd like, that relate to him. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thankyou :D

Two premises that I think are close to rational/ 'not worth debating' because it could be fine tuned as Rational or you are probably a skeptic:

1.) We are given limited to no information about the universe.

2.) I think, therefore I have consciousness, therefore I feel pain and pleasure.

Now the supposed leap:

3.) We should reduce pain and increase pleasure.

What happens between 2 and 3? We accept the absurd, which is logical/rational. Since we can't know anything, we take a pragmatic approach. Pragmatism seems rational.

We can poke holes by saying 'let us increase pleasure even if it increases pain", but at the end of the day, the pragmatic claim is that we want some sort goal/meaning to increase pleasure and reduce pain.

Please find this irrational/illogical, I'm looking forward to it.

Someone asked almost the exact same thing in this community before, but it wasn't the exact same question and the answers were either irrelevant or not convincing. It seems I was following Camus with relative ease until it got to this paragraph below, and now I can't understand anything, not even the paragraphs that come after.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

"(1 - Start) The principle can be established that for a man who does not cheat what he believes to be true must determine his action. Belief in the absurdity of existence must then dictate his conduct. (1 - End) (2 - Start) It is legitimate to wonder, clearly and without false pathos, whether a conclusion of this importance requires forsaking as rapidly as possible an incomprehensible condition. I am speaking, of course, of men inclined to be in harmony with themselves. (2 - End)

Stated clearly, this problem may seem both simple and insoluble. But it is wrongly assumed that simple questions involve answers that are no less simple and that evidence implies evidence. (3 - Start) A priori and reversing the terms of the problem, just as one does or does not kill oneself, it seems that there are but two philosophical solutions, either yes or no.” (3 - End)

___________________________________________________________________________________________

From 1: Here, does he mean that a man who doesn't disillusion himself into believing there is meaning must therefore not behave according to societal commands but instead decide his own behaviour?

From 2: By "conclusion", does he mean the above (1)? What is the "incomprehensible condition"?

From 3: What is he referring to with "problem"?

Thanks for the help. I was thoroughly enjoying this essay and I'm very eager to get through this part and carry on as I was.

I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.

How to answer it? On all essential problems (I mean thereby those

that run the risk of leading to death or those that intensify the

passion of living) there are probably but two methods of thought:

the method of La Palisse and the method of Don Quixote. Solely the

balance between evidence and lyricism can allow us to achieve

simultaneously emotion and lucidity.

Both of these books present characters alienated from society but it’s interesting how different they are. Yozo takes the approach of putting on a façade to hide his hollow self. He’s very concerned about his own image and the way people perceive him. Meursault, on the other hand, doesn’t bother with all that. Even during the trial where it might possibly have helped his case, he made no attempt to conceal the hollowness within him.

The Myth of Sisyphus was the first philosophical text I've ever read and it's stayed with me over the years, but the more I learn about the world and philosophy the more conflicted I become about his views. I think there's something incredibly hopeful about his work, but I've never been able to reconcile its humanist undercurrent with my actual moral views.

I'd be less conflicted about this if it weren't for the ways in which his humanism manifested, but it gives way for an individualism that hampers revolutionary progress and stunts any notion of progress. I think that absurdism is a terrific example of philosophy as therapy - given Camus' own views on his work I think he would be inclined to agree.

The attached comment by Simone de Beauvoir sums up my thoughts fairly well.

If you've ever been conflicted about this aspect of Camus' work please let me know !

https://preview.redd.it/pb82c6fxxyxd1.png?width=547&format=png&auto=webp&s=3d121413cab56c730cd19d019cf277a0c2dde9c1

Dark? Light? Sweet or bitter? Just curious.

I've started reading camus with stranger and myth of Sisyphus so is it a right decision to start with these??

I don't know why, but my entire daily routine changed after I read The Stranger. I was always what people call a lazy and dirty person. I barely clean my room, my mom does all my laundry, I rarely take shower everyday, in short, I was disgusting. I was aware of all that and it was really hard for me to stand up and fix those issues. Then, I got into books a few months ago. I was hooked on politics but I wanted to try something else, literature. A lot of people recommended authors like Dostoevsky, Dazai, etc. to start. But what caught my attention was Camus' The Stranger. A friend of mine said that reading Camus makes his coffee taste better—especially the "ahh" sound he moans after he takes a good good sip of coffee. And so I bought The Stranger, because my friend said that it was the easiest and most accessible one to read. After I finished it, the last few paragraphs got me thinking for 6 hours straight before finally finding out what it means. What I interpreted from the ending is that living is being free. Suddenly, the day after I finished it, my entire daily routine changed. I cleaned my entire room, rearranged my wardrobe, thrown away a lot of stuff and trash from my room, and more things that I can't imagine me doing. My life changed. For the first time since forever, I felt clean and diligent. Somehow, I'm so much happier. My appreciation for life drastically increased. My Mom actually said that God answered her prayers because I changed my routine. To this day I still don't know how I suddenly got the power to stand up and face my issues. It's like that book unlocked shackles in myself, even though I don't know what it freed. I just felt the feeling of being alive for the first time since eternities. I just wanted to share my story and how beautiful The Stranger is. I would love to hear if anybody else experienced the same thing.

This is Hindi translation.

The link for article is below:

https://www.playforthoughts.com/blog/albert-camus

Have a nice read! If you have some feedback that might help me with my writing, I'd be grateful to hear one!

I'm just looking for some speeches or lectures that Camus gave that we're recorded and I can watch or listen to. If they could be in French with English captions that would be great. I'm learning French at the moment.

I’m reading The Stranger and I relate to many things Meursault is expiriencing. I’m undiagnosed but I can with almost certainty say I suffer from it. I often experience world as if it wasn’t real, even though it is. I feel like I only remeber the last hour of my life and I almost unmotivated to do anything in life. When I’ve read the first pages of the book, I felt like he was experiencing the same symptoms. And to make his character so much relatable is just a wonder.

Can someone help me find the page number for this quote from The Plague? “What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves,”

he says to Rose or Claire, that he is afraid someone will love him if he stays in Algiers with them before leaving…

It's very hard to find deep content about Camus on youtube. Someone has contents of him to indicate? Like videos, books, analysis, etc...

Any idea if/when it's happening?