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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
reflective
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
I think one great strength of Camus' writing is how he can condense his point down into a very lucid paragraph or even single sentence. He is adept at the aphorism, at the quotable. The challenge for me in reading him is his extension of that small, lucid, thinking over the 90 pages of the full essay. An abstraction is great for me to read on the short term, but extended over several pages I start to have trouble remembering what the subject of the sentence is. Camus has a nasty habit of saying "that" or "it" like a full paragraph after what the referring refers to. This isn't necessarily a style knock but it did make it overall more difficult, and at its worst, sloggy, for me to work through. I'm also surprised that for so many this is the first philosophy book they try to read. Absurdism is appealing on a wikipedia page and aesthetically, so I get it, but this actual essay is so dependent on knowing a wide web of cultural references and existentialist philosophy history which provided another barrier of entry for me personally.
But for all its difficulty, I thought his actual writing was pretty beautiful, and once I followed his argument, I typically found it convincing and appealing. I just had to find those moments where it clicked for me. I was talking it over with Bella and I think that I like philosophy, or maybe writing in general, most when it does not discuss the main themes of the work directly, but alludes to them in the midst of a work which is on paper about some other topic. I like when an artist dances around the subject because I like the dance as much as I like the subject.
So for me, I think I'll take Camus' novels over his work where he discusses philosophy directly. The best parts of the Myth of Sisyphus for me, it follows, are when he enters into a different style of poetic rhapsody and builds up a small story or symbol, especially his section where he creates different portraits for different "lifestyles of the absurd". I can see why he admires Kafka so much, because Kafka excels at this-- expressing a philosophy or condition through a symbolic language so compelling that the symbols end up eclipsing what they intended to symbolize. The parts where he tries to elucidate his philosophy more directly I found dry, less convincing, and way less interesting.
I'm particularly grateful that the edition I have paired the central essay with a series of smaller pieces of writing. The smaller essays gave me that aforementioned experience I prefer. Most were, on the face of it, travel essays, but in reality they dealt with the same themes of the absurd condition, allowing Camus to make, instead of an elaborated treatise, an oblique portrait of his beliefs. He can slip in those essays more readily into a poetic voice, which is just a lot more fun for me to read. It also let me think about how the colonial landscape of Algiers may have directly influenced Camus' philosophy (think of how much he uses the desert as a symbol of the absurd), which is a whole nother thing to chew on, and I wonder if it's ground that has been already covered by another writer. Altogether, I did really enjoy this, but I would couch a recommendation with the qualifier that I don't think it works well as a gateway text into philosophy as it's often viewed.
But for all its difficulty, I thought his actual writing was pretty beautiful, and once I followed his argument, I typically found it convincing and appealing. I just had to find those moments where it clicked for me. I was talking it over with Bella and I think that I like philosophy, or maybe writing in general, most when it does not discuss the main themes of the work directly, but alludes to them in the midst of a work which is on paper about some other topic. I like when an artist dances around the subject because I like the dance as much as I like the subject.
So for me, I think I'll take Camus' novels over his work where he discusses philosophy directly. The best parts of the Myth of Sisyphus for me, it follows, are when he enters into a different style of poetic rhapsody and builds up a small story or symbol, especially his section where he creates different portraits for different "lifestyles of the absurd". I can see why he admires Kafka so much, because Kafka excels at this-- expressing a philosophy or condition through a symbolic language so compelling that the symbols end up eclipsing what they intended to symbolize. The parts where he tries to elucidate his philosophy more directly I found dry, less convincing, and way less interesting.
I'm particularly grateful that the edition I have paired the central essay with a series of smaller pieces of writing. The smaller essays gave me that aforementioned experience I prefer. Most were, on the face of it, travel essays, but in reality they dealt with the same themes of the absurd condition, allowing Camus to make, instead of an elaborated treatise, an oblique portrait of his beliefs. He can slip in those essays more readily into a poetic voice, which is just a lot more fun for me to read. It also let me think about how the colonial landscape of Algiers may have directly influenced Camus' philosophy (think of how much he uses the desert as a symbol of the absurd), which is a whole nother thing to chew on, and I wonder if it's ground that has been already covered by another writer. Altogether, I did really enjoy this, but I would couch a recommendation with the qualifier that I don't think it works well as a gateway text into philosophy as it's often viewed.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Creo que no fue la mejor forma de empezar a probar un poco de Camus, sobretodo teniendo en cuenta que fue de los primeros ensayos a leer. Se me hizo muy cuesta arriba la lectura pero no me impidió apreciar la trascendencia e importancia que tiene este trabajo en temas existencialistas.
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
The Myth of Sisyphus is a wonderfully insightful essay. Camus is a very clear and helpful thinker for exploring the world of Existentialism. This essay along with Sartre's Existentialism as a Humanism will give you a great picture of the philosophy. The only reason this is 3 stars is that the other essays in the collection really didn't interest me. They were mostly about towns and I was just uninterested. The title essay is certainly worth reading though.