Existentialism
Handout on The Absurd Man (April 11)
Handout on Absurd Creation [chapter 3] and The Myth of Sisyphus [chapter 4] (April 18).
3b about facts (des évidences) that the heart can feel (“b” refers to the second quarter of the page). What is meant by heart? What interpretations are possible of this phrase?
3d “the relative value of truth” (this note is not in the French): not the supreme value in every situation: sometimes it’s time to conclude or set aside an inquiry. Or?
Jaspers’s remark about objectivity (9d): “This limitation [the impossibility of constituting the world as a unity] leads me to myself, where I can no longer withdraw behind an objective point of view that I am merely representing, where neither I myself nor the existence of others can any longer become an object for me.”
The unknowability and knowability of a human being (11a): “It is probably true that a man remains forever unknown to us and that there is in him something irreducible that escapes us. But practically I know men and recognize them by their behavior, by the totality of their deeds, by the consequences caused in life by their presence.”
The method of practical analysis implies from the outset what may seem to be “concluded” at the end of the book—a metaphysics which feels that “all true knowledge is impossible” (12a/26).
“The climate of absurdity is in the beginning. The end is the absurd universe and this attitude of mind which lights the world with its own true colors to bring out the privileged and implacable visage which that attitude has discerned in it” (12b/26.1).
The claim, for which the authority of Aristotle is adduced, that asserting any proposition implies a contradiction (16c-17a/31f).
I can only know that my heart exists and that the world exists (19a/34)
“In psychology and logic “there are truths but no truth” (19c/34d).
“Everyone lives as if no one ‘knew’ [of death]” (15c/30a).
The incomprehensibility of the universe.
Some recent philosophers have persisted in “recovering the direct paths of truth” (23b).
“All man has is his lucidity and his definite knowledge of the walls surrounding him” (27c).