DE Weekly: Nagel, Irony, & the Backward Step
“Most people feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some feel it vividly and continually. Yet the reasons usually offered in defense of this conviction are patently inadequate: they could not really explain why life is absurd. Why then do they provide a natural expression for the sense that it is?”
This is the opening paragraph of Thomas Nagel’s 1971 essay “The Absurd.” Nagel is an American philosopher and University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University. Among many other things, his body of work explores the philosophy of mind.
DE Weekly: Camus, Absurdism, & Revolt
One of the first names mentioned when one discusses the great philosophers of Existentialism is Albert Camus. There are those, however, who say that Camus was neither a real philosopher nor an Existentialist. One such person who claimed to believe both of those things was Camus himself.
“Why am I an artist and not a philosopher?” Camus wrote in his Notebooks, 1942–1951. “Because I think according to words and not according to ideas.”
DE Weekly: Camus, Absurdism, & A Happy Death
When one thinks of existentialism, one of the first authors to come to mind is likely to be Albert Camus. Two of his works in particular––his novel The Stranger and his book-length essay The Myth of Sisyphus––are undoubtedly his best known works. However, there is another novel of his I’ll be writing about today: A Happy Death.
A Happy Death is, in many ways, the classic Camus novel. Replete with beautifully written, endlessly quotable passages, wondrous highs and desperate lows, it is an enjoyable read, like many of his books.