Flaw in Camus Philosophy

[Intrepid99]

Albert Camus is an extentialist philosopher. His philosophy says, "Even though man propably doesn't have a purpose in his life, each individual is creating one for his or her own"

I think the flaw in his philosophy is that, if our life is like a journey on sea, which doesn't have a specific path or destination, and deprived of compass or technology that shows the way, how can one create an own destination??

What do you think is a flaw in Camus Philosophy?

 

[Jesus_loves_me]

shrug*

 

[Eudaimonist]

I'm no expert on Camus, but what leads you to think that, in his worldview, we are deprived of a "compass or technology that shows the way"?

 

[Motus]

I don't think that life is like a journey on a sea, but instead like a journey on a river. You're free to cross back and forth between the banks, but the larger purpose is to eventually end up at the delta.

 

[burrow_owl]

I'm no expert on Camus, but what leads you to think that, in his worldview, we are deprived of a "compass or technology that shows the way"?

Nothing, because that's not what he would have said. We clearly have certain moral intuitions or projects that we value. The point, though, is that I am responsible for the course I chart. I assent to my intuitions and projects. Per Camus, 'I have to do X' is always a nonsensical thing to say. We don't have to do anything; we don't even have to continue living, which is why he once said that suicide is the ultimate philosophical question.

My take on Camus: it's not really a flaw per se, since he's not really a philosopher, but to the extent that the 'radical freedom' is a transcendental and ontological claim, it's not very interesting: yeah, we're free. So what? Sartre does a better job of fleshing out the ontology and showing how this ontology structures our experience. Since Camus is fiction writer, of course, he gestures toward this, but I've never found his fiction particularly compelling with respect to showing the interaction of ontology and phenomenology.

 

[hyperborean]

Albert Camus is an extentialist philosopher. His philosophy says, "Even though man propably doesn't have a purpose in his life, each individual is creating one for his or her own"

I think the flaw in his philosophy is that, if our life is like a journey on sea, which doesn't have a specific path or destination, and deprived of compass or technology that shows the way, how can one create an own destination??

What do you think is a flaw in Camus Philosophy?

Camus didn't see life as a journey but as a universe without intrinsic meaning. "The absurd". Whatever purpose or meaning lies solely in our commitment to them. Our choices that we struggle against the absurdity of existence is what overcomes the inheritant nothingness of existence. There are many things that happen for no apparent reason, but once they happen you can use them for your purposes. When one does that, they have givin them meaning and reason. Camus died way to soon i'm afraid. You might want to read up on Nietzsche.

Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus".

In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.