Suicide
Edit Page
Report
Scan day: 06 February 2014 UTC
-2
Virus safety - good
Description: Suicide and the absurd. Contrasting the views of Albert Camus and Thomas Nagel.
Life for many people is clearly not worth living,examples range from the elderly person wishing for euthanasia to the AIDS infected children of Romania.The situation of many alive today was mirrored by the situation founded by many in post-war Europe,where men ended up in a desolate landscape - where God is not only dead but buried.Men werre without hope that a better world would result from their efforts.The additional responsibility of forming a new society was neither wanted nor chosen- so the question 'why is life worth living - why not end it?' assumes a most important status. A.Camus captured this mood in his essay 'The myth of Sisyphus'.Here [F1] Sisyphus was condemned (as perhaps we all are) to do an useless and absurd task for all eternity(viz.rolling a stone up a mountain,at the summit the stone rolls back down,Sisyphus must roll it back up ad finitum).Sisyphus,like most of us(including I suspect politicians) will not make the world a better place nor will he make himself happy or even self-fulfilled.Camus suggests that this mirrors the human condition - it is pointless,absurd and cannot be justified in either religious or humanist terms.Camus suggestion as to why life is worth living is that it is in the recognition and willed acceptance of his absurd fate that this is itself transcended. I have mentioned the absurd - Camus has an interesting distinction to make [F2],that between feeling of the absurd and the notion of the absurd. The feeling of the absurd arises in many ways,the indifference of nature to human life(eg.Armenian earth-quake),the realisation of death,the pointlessness of daily life and its monotonous routine-all of which reveal the iuselessness of daily life.This feeling of the absurd is different to the notion of the absurd although it is its foundation - the conviction of the absurd belongs to the sphere of clear consciousness,which is essential to the very existence of the absurd.The absurd does not exist in the human mind alone, nor alone in the extra-mental world
Size: 2048 chars
Contact Information
Email: —
Phone&Fax: —
Address: —
Extended: —
WEBSITE Info
| Page title: | Suicide |
| Keywords: | |
| Description: | |
| IP-address: | 193.195.70.8 |