Overview

Although Camus was called the ""conscience of his age"", no writer has continued to be both more vilified and exalted in the West. His writings are not only a devastating critique of Western philosophy, but Camus' cultural horizons are infused with heartfelt insights of Eastern wisdom. Western culture is vulnerable to dilemmas of existence because it seeks to make abstract certain absolutes: The West has failed to come to grips with our finite existential condition. Indian thought distinguishes social, political, scientific and philosophical views of Reality from Reality itself. And this distinction evokes a hope, humility and spirituality that promotes a courage to live with truths not faced by the West. This book is a gateway to investigating whether Camus' ideal of living without conceptual absolutes is an attainable goal. Intriguingly, his writings touch upon a freedom from the anxiety of living that raise a spectre of Eastern philosophical horizons. Camus' insights in terms of the East are present in his fictional illustrations of alienated twentieth-century outsiders (The Stranger); the pursuit of truths that are not immutable and absolute (The Myth of Sisyphus); plays that highlight the absurdity of irrational views of Reality (Caligula); culminating in The Rebel, which warned of illusory dogmas of absolutist philosophies.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert Trundle
Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
Imprint:   Liverpool University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 23.00cm , Height: 2.10cm , Length: 15.50cm
Weight:   0.419kg
ISBN:  

9781902210988

ISBN 10:   1902210980
Pages:   183
Publication Date:   01 January 2001
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Experience of the Absurd; Logic that Reassures; The Absurdity of Existence; From Existential to Logical Absurdity; An Absurdity of Excessive Logic; Living Without an Excess of Logic; Disquietude that Cannot be Distilled; Maintaining a Tension of Existence; Existential Conflict; Conflict and Metaphysical Why; A Metaphysical Answer; Answers and Nostalgia for the Absolute; Camus' Own Revolt Against Absurdity; Absurdity in the Absence of Conflict?; Conflict and the Search for Meaning; The Meaning of Nothingness; Politeness and Politics; Politeness: The First Degree of Justice; Loving Abstract Humanity; A Contagion of Group Think; Self-Refuting Political Thought; Utopias Which Destroy Themselves; The Longing to be Free From Pain; A Politicised Existentialism; Flirtation and Revulsion; Intoxicating Paradoxes at a Cafe; From Paradox to Moral Anarchy; Ensuing Orthodoxies of Modernism; An Aftermath of Postmodernism; Rise of the Bourgeois Bohemians; A Mean Between Extremes; An Extremism of Success; Sacrifice to the Ever-Pressing They'; Bourgeois Anxiety and Existential Angst; Experience Defined Rationally; Contrast to an Eastern Position; Nostalgia for the Absolute; Quest for an Absolutist Epistemology; From Epistemology to Political Ideology; Rationalism Par Excellence; Independence of the World for Intelligibility; A Search for Intelligibility Ends in Paradox; A Paradox of the One over Many; From the Many to a Critique of Pure Reason; Reason and Absolutism in the Final Analysis; Need Reality Conform to Reason?; Psychological and Logical Thirst for Reality; Reality and Verbal Limitations; Limitations in terms of the Madhyamika; The Madhyamika and Misunderstanding; Misunderstanding an Eastern Existentialism; From the Existential to the Logical; Logical Consequences; Beyond the Conceptual and Linguistic; Index.

Reviews

A fine explanation of the various meanings of Camus' concept of the absurd. A useful introduction to Camus' thought. -- Choice.

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