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Student run seminar lead by Alison A Raimes, 13th March 2002
Kent Institute of Art & Design (Masters
in Fine Art Degree Programme)
This seminar was created in collaboration between Alison and Peter
Heller, a painter from Vermont, USA and includes feedback from the
online discussion group known as Artlives
In
this first seminar, we will discuss the notion of Camus' 'absurd' man
in relation to his essay The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert
Camus was born in November 7, 1913 in Mondovi, Algeria. He would learn
early the sometimes senseless nature of life. Within a year of Camus'
birth, his father, an impoverished agricultural worker of Alsatian origin,
was killed in Europe fighting at the first battle of the Marne. His mother
moved the family to the Belcourt district of Algiers where they lived
with her mother who had also been widowed. In primary school, Camus was
fortunate enough to cross paths with a teacher, Louis Germain, who recognized
the young boy's intellectual potential and encouraged him in his studies.
By the time Camus received his baccalauréat in 1930, he was reading the
likes of Gide, Montherlant and Malraux. Tuberculosis in his youth prevented
him being drafted to fight in WWII. After earning a degree in philosophy,
he worked at various jobs, ending up in journalism. In the 1930s, he ran
a theatrical company, and during WWII was active in the French Resistance,
editing an important underground paper, Combat. Albert Camus won
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.
On January 4, 1960, Camus was killed in an automobile accident while returning
to Paris with his friend and publisher Michel Gallimard. He was only forty-six
years old and had written as recently as 1958, "I continue to be convinced
that my work hasn't even been begun." Adding to the tragedy was the fact
that Camus disliked cars and had intended to return to Paris by train
until Gallimard convinced him to change his mind. The return half of a
rail ticket was found unused in his pocket.
Discussion
topics:
1. The human condition
which Camus describes as a "widespread sensitivity of our times"
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Camus, as one
of the Existentialist writers of his time (along with Sartre, Simone
de Beauvoir, Merleu Ponty) was responding to the dissatisfaction
of the times in regard to the conventional ideas on mortality (which
centred around religion). Threats to personal freedom and individuality
became the focal point. In a world of mass conformity, the concern
was then how the individual could find uniqueness. The notion of
the absurd is used by Camus to describe the human condition - and
disillusionment in the failure of God to put right the things in
life which are wrong, and in the inability of man to replace God--socially,
intellectually, spiritually.Camus lived during a period of turmoil
and war where faith in the Divine was diminished as the realisation
of the human capability for destruction became so apparent. Without
the ultimate belief in the Divine the reason for living became uncertain
- why not then choose suicide? asks Camus. If God was no longer
the judge, then Camus was asking who was. Camus believed that life
was an attitude (not a pilgrimage or a Programme). For him, everything
is projection - law, religion, art. I judge, therefore I am.
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2. The confrontation
between ourselves - with our demands for rationality and justice and an
"indifferent universe"
| The confrontation
between ourselves with our demands for rationality and justice in
an "indifferent" world renders life ultimately meaningless
by the fact of death and that the individual cannot make rational
sense of his experience. For Camus, life has value but not
meaning. Meaning implies a goal which is a teleological approach,
but for Camus there is no goal. Life is an endless cycle of rolling
the rock up the mountain, seeing it, under its own weight, descend
from where it has been pushed only for the cycle to start again. For
Sisyphus, the struggle to roll the rock to the top gives him the opportunity
to think as it rolls to the bottom again. For Camus, the only way
to be happy is to acknowledge that life has no meaning and thus we
are defeated before we start. Life is not absurd - the absurd is life.
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3. The uniqueness
of the human individual as distinguished from abstract universal human
qualities
| Sisyphus, condemned
by the gods to ceaselessly rolling a rock up the mountain (where its
own weight sent it back to the bottom again), is seen as an exemplar
of the human condition, struggling hopelessly and pointlessly to achieve
something. But in this he thrives (he could even be imagined happy).
By virtue of rebelling against the gods he has refused to give into
despair. His life and torment are transformed into a victory by concentrating
on his freedom, his refusal to hope, and his knowledge of the absurdity
of the situation. |
4. Our responsibility
for free action and the values according to which we act
| By accepting
that there is no meaning in life, the absurd man is able to realise
that there is no "eternal" freedom, as promised in religion,
but is able to magnify the freedom of individual action. The individual
is always free when he is involved in choice. Thus, Sisyphus, by accepting
his fate and creating from it a personal challenge rather than sink
into despair, is ultimately free. He has chosen purpose over despair.
Sartre says that we are 'condemned to be free'. But that sort of thing,
the absolute commitment to acting as free, and therefore as authentic
human beings has not created a new order in which justice triumphs
over 'evil'. For Camus, there are ultimately two choices in life -
to reject it (and accept suicide) or to rebel against it. The heroes
are those who do not run away. The heroes are truly authentic. |
For Camus, creativity
is a very intense form of rebellion and acknowledges the very struggle
to create in this world as sufficient rebellion. The creative person who
fights the inevitable with all his power, who takes responsibility for
his own life and through his subjective choices is able to make life meaningful
and therefore worth living. One can live happy if the sacrifice of ones
liberty makes the punishment worth it, where the VALUE is the sacrifice.
Albert
Camus Nobel Prize for Literature1957 Acceptance Speech
Useful links:
http://www.tameri.com/csw/exist/camus.html
http://www.inch.com/~ari/ac1.html
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/indexa.htm
Questions to consider
in regard to present day life:
1. Why would Camus
be of interest to anyone in 2002?
2. How have our ideas of Freedom, Authenticity and Originality changed
since Camus wrote the Myth?
3. What has changed
them?
4. What do we see as the modern day Absurd man?
In the next seminar,
we will discuss Sartre's idea of Freedom
and Authenticity in regard to the essay Being and Doing:
Freedom. Here are some useful links in preparation for that seminar
(date to be announced):
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Sartre.htm
http://www.tameri.com/csw/exist/sartre.html
http://sophies-world.com/SophieText/sartre.htm
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