Sadler's Lectures

Albert Camus, The Myth Of Sisyphus - Dostoevsky, The Absurd, And Existentialism - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher, novelist, and essayist Albert Camus' work The Myth of Sisyphus

Specifically it examines his discussion of Dostoevsky, his novels, and his characters' perspectives in the third part of the work, "Absurd Creation". While several of the characters that Dostoevsky discusses are people whose thought, life, and engagements emerge from and grapple with the absurd, according to Camus Dostoevsky himself makes a leap out past the absurd, and ends up as an "existentialist" (as Camus understands that term).

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Duration:: 20m
Broadcast on:: 21 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Sadler Lectures Podcast. Responding to popular demand, I'm converting my philosophy videos into sound files you can listen to anywhere you can take an MP3. If you like what you hear and want to support my work, go to patreon.com/sadler. I hope you enjoy this lecture. In the third part of his work, "The Myth of Sisyphus", Albert Camus has a section which is titled "Kirilov", and it's really about Fyodor Dostoevsky, his outlook, his works more generally. "Kirilov" is the character from a work that's alternately translated as the demons or the possessed, who is a secondary character, but an important one for some of the things that he's going to say, some of the things he's going to put forward, and Camus will pick up on that as one of the key ways to understand what's going on with Dostoevsky, but it's not as if "Kirilov" is the only important character. We're also going to see "Disgust" and "Stav Rogan", Ivan Karamazov, and many others could have come up as well. So it begins by saying all of Dostoevsky's heroes question themselves as to the meaning of life. In this, they are modern, they don't fear ridicule, and he's going to put out another way in which they're modern as well. But let's pause on that for a moment. So to question the meaning of life, Camus is giving this impression prior to the modern period, people would be like, "What are you talking about?" You know, this is ridiculous. It's obvious that there is some sort of meaning to life, you're just not getting it. Within the modern period, this becomes an open question. And as he's going to point out next, what distinguishes modern sensibility from classical sensibility is that the latter thrives on moral problems, but the former on metaphysical problems. So in the guise of moral problems, there are metaphysical problems to be discerned, because to say, "Well, what is the meaning of life? What should I do?" That seems most like a moral problem, concerning how I should behave, how I should order my life. But it requires a metaphysics in order to do that. He goes on and he says that in Dostoevsky's novels, the question is propounded with such intensity that it can only invite extreme solutions. And he gives this as an example, existence is illusory or it is eternal. And so this is a metaphysical problem. If we don't have eternal existence, at least the perdurance of something valuable, something we might call a God or some sort of transcendent value, well, then none of it makes sense and we can do whatever the hell we want to, right? If God is dead, everything is permitted is the hallmark of that. And when you do read Dostoevsky's novels, the characters are pretty extreme. This turns some people off, they're like, "Why do you have to jump to such wild conclusions?" Well, because they are feeling the problem at its most intense. So he goes on and he says, "If Dostoevsky were satisfied with this inquiry, whether existence is illusory or eternal, well, then he would be a philosopher. But he's not a philosopher or not just a philosopher rather. He is a novelist. He is, as Camus is gonna point out, an artist, a creative person. What makes this the case? He says that he illustrates the consequences these intellectual pastimes may have in a person's life in this regard, he is an artist. So by taking characters, who are fictional, of course, but can be modeled on people, can represent the author himself to some degree and making them live out these existential questions. He becomes an artist and no longer just a philosopher. This is interesting, we should pause on that for a moment and think about Camus himself, who does similar things and who actually puts on a performance, a production of Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" in Paris at one point. So working in lives, and so what do we have as this fundamental problem? So he begins by talking about Dostoevsky's diary of a writer and this notion of logical suicide. So he says that the desperate man comes to the following conclusions, sense and reply to my questions about happiness. I'm told through the intermediary of my consciousness. I cannot be happy, except in harmony with the great all, which I will never conceive and shall never be in a position to conceive, it is evident, dot, dot, dot. Since finally in this connection, I assume both the role of the plaintiff and of the defendant, the accused and the judge. And since I consider this comedy perpetrated by nature altogether stupid, and since I even deem it humiliating for me to dain to play it, dot, dot, dot. In my indisputable capacity of plaintiff and defendant of judge and accused, I condemn that nature which with such impudent nerve brought me into being in order to suffer. I condemn it to be annihilated with me. So this is what the logical suicide would be. I destroy myself, thereby I destroy this world, which is brought me into being without permission and doesn't make sense, doesn't jive with what it is that I need of it. And he says that this suicide kills himself because on the metaphysical plane, he is vexed. In a certain sense, he's taking his revenge. This is his way of proving he will not be had. Then we switch to talking about a different character that of Kirilloff, this engineer who is connected with his kneeless cell and who is going to commit suicide. And he's been working this out for quite some time. So he says that Kirilloff is likewise an advocate of logical suicide. He declares he wants to take his own life because it is, quote, his idea. It is for an idea, a thought he is getting ready for death. This is the superior suicide. So his fatal thought is revealed to us. And Kamu says he goes back to the arguments of the diary. What are the arguments that are being given here? So there's a reasoning for the suicide. He feels that God is necessary and that he must exist. So that's one idea. But he knows that he does not and cannot exist. Okay, we've got an opposed idea. And these are both, seemingly, equally conceivable. Thinkable. And he says, why do you not realize this is sufficient reason for killing oneself? So he says, you know, I'll let my suicide be used to the advantage of a cause that I despise because I don't really care about it. But he prepares his deed with a mixed feeling of revolt and freedom. I will kill myself in order to assert my insubordination, my new and dreadful liberty. And here we read, it's no longer a question of revenge as it was for the diary character. But of revolt, something that Kamu has been advocating for the way in which we should grasp the absurd. And he says he's going to explain this contradiction. He's also going to add to his fatal logic, an extraordinary ambition, which gives the character its full perspective. Why is he going to kill himself so that he becomes or reveals himself as God? So he says, here's the reasoning. If God does not exist, Kirillof is God, meaning that he can do whatever the hell he wants, right? There is no God, everything is permitted. If God does not exist, Kirillof must kill himself, right? Why? He must kill himself, therefore, in order to become God. And now Kamu says, is this a good argument? No, the logic is absurd, right? But yes, an absurd person can bring forth absurd reasoning. They are not going to be bound by the need to avoid absurdity. He says, the interesting thing is to give a meaning to this divinity, the being God brought to earth. So we have to clarify the premise. If God does not exist, I am God, which remains rather obscure. What is he saying? What is he asserting? And so he says that, of the supermani as nothing but the logic and the obsession, whereas of mani as the whole catalog, this is not a megalomaniacs illusion. And Kirillof is going to help us to understand. So it's not the God-man, Christ. Christ in the sense of the second person of the Trinity, the Logos taking on human form as we find in traditional Christianity. And Kamu says, it's not just springing from a concern to distinguish himself from Christ. It's rather a matter of annexing Christ, reinterpreting Christ. He says, Kirillof, fancy's for a moment, Jesus and his death did not find himself in paradise. He found out then his torture had been useless. The laws of nature made Christ live in the midst of falsehood and die for a falsehood. And so this winds up sort of representing humanity. And rather than being a God-man, we switch things and it's a man-god. And he says, like him, each of us can be crucified and victimized and is to a certain degree. So this divinity, as he says, is entirely terrestrial, earthly, human. If there is divinity, it will be found within the human. And so now can be seen. Kamu says, the meaning of Kirillof's premise. If God does not exist, I am God, what does this actually mean? To become God is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being. So you take the immortal, eternal, all, you know, whatever pick attribute you want being out of the picture, the highest value, take that out. Now it's the human being that gets to assert themself. He says, if God exists, everything depends on him. We can do nothing against his will. If he doesn't exist, everything depends on us. And so Kamu says, for Kirillof, as for nature to kill God, is to become God oneself, right? Now here we get to a key question. All right, you got to that point. Why add suicide into the mix? Why, if you're God, why would you kill yourself? And here you could say, well, it's your option. You can do whatever the hell you want. That's not what Kamu says, and that's not what Kirillof takes. So he says, Kirillof says, if you feel that you are a czar, so the czar is the head of the Russian state, basically a semi-divine figure who can do whatever the hell he wants to. So if you feel that you are a czar, far from killing yourself, you will live covered with glory. But men in general do not know it. They do not feel that. As in the time of Prometheus, they entertain blind hopes. They need to be shown the way and cannot do without preaching. So Kirillof is going to preach through his action of killing himself as God on earth, and thereby show the way for other people. He remains, as Kamu says, the man God convinced of a death without future, right? So Kirillof is going to take one path, but there are two characters, as Kamu is going to go on, who try their hand at being czars. And one of them is from that same novel. He's one of the main characters, Stav Rogan, who's kind of a bastard, really, in a lot of respects. You know, Kamu says he leads an ironic life. Yes, he does lead an ironic life, not committed to things, showing indifference, but he's also cruel. And he also does bad things to other people, in part to experiment and in part to get away with it, right? He says he arouses hatred around him, and yet the key to the character is to be found in his farewell letter. I have not been able to detest anything. And that's basically all that Kamu is going to say about him at this point. Then he turns to the brothers Karamazov. And one of the main characters, Ivan Karamazov, who in that famous chapter before the grand inquisitor titled Rebellion articulates this whole, we could call it argument from evil, but it's not the argument from evil in the classic sense, where he say, you know, God is supposed to be omnipotence, loving, all knowing, and yet look at this evil over here, there can't be God. In said, he's like, well, this is what we say about God. And look at all this evil here. I will not, you know, assert that there is no God because of this, but I'm not gonna cooperate with that God. I'm gonna return my ticket, as he says. So Kamu goes on and he tells us that Ivan is likewise by refusing to surrender the royal powers of the mind to those who like his brother, Alayosha proved by their lives, it's essential to humiliate oneself in order to believe. He might reply that the condition is shameful. His keyword is everything is permitted with the appropriate shade of melancholy, right? So we've got these two novels and Kamu is gonna go on and say, the novels like the diary propound the absurd question, they establish logic onto death, exaltation, dreadful freedom, the glory of desires become human, all is well, everything is permitted, nothing is hateful. These are absurd judgments, right? So they frame the problem of the absurd in individual lives who do things, say things, argue things, and they make absurd judgments. And then he says, we recognize in this passionate world of indifference our everyday anxieties and probably no one so much as Dostoevsky has managed to give the absurd world such familiar and tormenting charms. Now, this is an interesting thing to say, given that later in the work he's gonna talk about Kafka. So Dostoevsky in a certain way is even better at the absurd than Kafka is. But Kamu is gonna point out, Dostoevsky articulates all this and then he goes the wrong way, he makes a choice. He says, what is his conclusion? Two quotations will show the complete metaphysical reversal that leads the writer to other revelations. And what is it? Well, there's an argument for the immortality of the soul in the diary. And then, of course, at the end of Brother's Cara Mazaf, we get children asking Allayosha. Is it true what religion says that we shall rise from the dead, we shall see each other again? And Allayosha answers, certainly we shall see one another again. We shall joyfully tell one another everything that has happened and Kamu is gonna say, thus Kirilaf, Stavrogan and Ivan are defeated. The Brother's Cara Mazaf replies to the possessed. Allayosha's case is not ambiguous, as is the case of Prince Michigan in the Idiot, right? So Dostoevsky is endorsing something that goes beyond the absurd perspective. And this is a metaphysical reversal. So he's going to say, you see Dostoevsky is not an absurd novelist addressing us, but an existential novelist. And here we have to remind ourselves that existentialism gets used in multiple ways. Kamu is existentialist in the sense of belonging to the broad existential spectrum, but he does distinguish his version of it, committed to the absurd from the people that he calls existentialists, which don't include everybody that we didn't call existentialists. For example, nature, but rather people who make the leap, who go beyond the absurd and jump into something going beyond it that resolves, at least for them, the problem of the absurd. So he says, Dostoevsky wrote of the Brother's Cara Mazaf. The chief question that will be pursued throughout this book is the very one from which I've suffered consciously or unconsciously all life long, the existence of God. He's worried about that, but not just the existence of God, but immortality. And so Kamu is going to say that Dostoevsky will take the path of immortality and its joys in the end. And this is going to lead him to make a choice as he's going to put it against his characters. Having reached the end, the creator makes his choice against his characters, who he has sketched out in great length, put words into their mouth. Very often things that Dostoevsky himself has thought through. And he says, that contradiction allows us to make a distinction. It's not an absurd work that is involved here, but a work that propounds the absurd problem. So very important difference there. And he goes on and says, Dostoevsky's reply is humiliation. He might say, OK, well, humiliation, we don't take that route. And then we remain absurd. Kamu doesn't say that. Kamu says, an absurd work does not provide a reply. That is the difference. It's not going to actually go beyond. It's not going to give you a solution. Instead, it's going to leave the problem like an open wound, we could say. And so he says, what contradicts the absurd in Dostoevsky's work is not its Christian character. But rather, it's announcing a future life. He even goes on to say, it is possible to be Christian and absurd. There are examples of Christians who do not believe in a future life in regard to the work of art. It should, therefore, be possible to define one of the directions of the absurd analysis that could have been anticipated in the preceding pages. It leads to propounding the absurdity of the gospel, the good news, right? He throws light on this idea, and he says, the author of the possessed, in conclusion, took a quite different way. And so there is a reply of the creator to his characters, of Dostoevsky, to his character Kiriloff. And what is it? Existence is illusory, and it is eternal. We began with the dilemma. Either existence is illusory, or it is eternal. And you can't have both of them saying, actually, it is both. And Camus is going to, essentially, fault Dostoevsky for taking that way out. So Dostoevsky does a lot of great setting the stage, but then goes too far beyond or off the stage, and thereby becomes what Camus is going to call an existentialist, rather than an author who remains with the absurd. Special thanks to all of my Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. You can find me on Twitter at philosopher70 on YouTube at the Gregory B. Sadler channel, and on Facebook on the Gregory B. Sadler page. Once again, to support my work, go to patreon.com/sadler. Above all, keep studying these great philosophical works. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (soft music) (gentle music)