Image via Wikipedia

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

A true philosopher must engage in the most desperate contradictions in life and follow these contradictions to logical conclusions by reason.  The fact that Camus wants to explicate absurdity with reason seems an absurdity in itself.   

“Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.”

Camus recognizes that the historical systems of philosophy apply only within the context (Heideggar) in which certain truths may be maintained.   He wants to know all, and here he resembles his compatriot Therese of Lisieux.   The compartmentalized truths of the past have lead him to a certain state of despair regarding the world of man. 

“…in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger.”

Man is a stranger to himself.  Modern men no longer possess reliable mythologies to which they may cling.  Is this ultimately a problem of belief?

“In a man’s attachment to life there is something stronger than all the ills in the world…the body shrinks from annihilation.”

Despite the mind’s delusions, the greatest delusion being the realization of the absurd that Camus identifies, the body reacts in its animalistic wisdom.  The flesh knows that death is bad and rebels against it.  The philosopher may trap his own mind in the suicidal snare, but the body still has knowledge that the mind must learn. 

“…a man defines himself by his make-believe as well as by his sincere impulses.”

I can’t explain or understand this quote, but I know it is true.  Usually we see our delusions and our truths as contradictory, but human reality requires an admixture of the two.  How else submit to the daily despair?  We refuse to master the ultimate choices.  Stall and delay. Stall and delay.  Maybe death won’t catch us.

“All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.”

Ben Franklin flying a kite in a thunderstorm (electricity); Augustine talking to a child on the beach (Trinity); Einstein imagining a man falling from a window (relativity). 

I am not sure that the absurd need be unpleasant.  Perhaps it is cause for laughter: comedy and tragedy.  I am listening to the Sex Pistols on Youtube: Sid singing “My Way”–comedy and tragedy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIXg9KUiy00&feature=PlayList&p=0189022BE77C5451&index=3&playnext=2&playnext_from=PL).

“Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm–this path is easily followed most of the time.  But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”

“The Magnificent Seven” by the Clash comes to mind (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_DPKWGH9yc).  Who has not arrived in this stupor that we call life?  We are far enough above basic survival, but we are not truly free.  The animal needs to eat, work, procreate, lay on the couch, but the animus (mind /spirit/soul) might need more if it allows itself to think about it.  The basic rewards for a conformed life may not fulfill. How many sins, crimes, irrational behaviors, adulteries, acts of love and genius arise from a soul which comes to this point and must act, for good or for ill.

“Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness.  It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows.  What follows is the gradual return into the chain or is it the definitive awakening.  At the end of the awakening comes…the consequence: suicide or recovery.”

This reminds me of Walker Percy novels.  The main character finds himself a cuckhold, a widower, or in an asylum; life has become a crisis.  What comes next? Read “Lancelot”.

“Yet a day comes when a man notices that he is thirty.  Then he asserts his youth.  But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time…he admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end.  He belongs to time…there are days when under the familiar face of a woman, we see as a stranger her we had loved months or years ago…”

I have become this man.  Past, present, and future, for myself and others, become one.  I look at the woman with the lavendar-rimmed glasses and I see that she is older than me but she is trying still to be pretty.  I wonder what kind of girl she was: did she grow up in New Hampshire, by the cemetary on the hill under the large oak and maple trees?  Was she smart and did she read books?  Conversation kills the illusion.  She is  the type of liar who tells stories about a daughter or a friend when she really confesses her own errors.  She feigns charm.  The conversation descends into convention, but always with women there is the chance that a talk will delve.