PFTSoP

So this was a rather boring assignment to compare and contrast Camus and Epicurus. And it was limited to three pages, so I couldn't really get into a lot of the nitty gritty Camusian details. Like I didn't get to write:

"In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger."

(I've always secretly wished that line started with "In a world" so it could be read like one of those deep-voiced movie previews. It's from Camus's Myth of Sisyphus, btw).

Anyways, here goes, please don't ridicule too much, and note that I went 1/2: I did include the phrase "clove-smoking, black-clad adolescents" but I did not work in the TH lyrics, even in a footnote. I have let myself down once again.

Page 623, #4: Compare Camus with Epicurus. In what ways are their views similar? In what ways different?

The name “Epicurus” prompts thoughts of delicious meals, ebullient gusto, and live-for-the-moment vitality. “Camus” evokes clove-smoking, black-clad adolescents in berets brooding over life’s fundamental emptiness. It’s hard to imagine two more disparate popular conceptions of the meaning of life. They are indeed highly dissimilar, but a close reading of the authors’ texts dispels some of the knee-jerk reactions to their philosophies that cause such a popularly-received wide divide. In this essay, I will first outline some of these two views’ commonalities before limning the well-known differences that prompt their separation to the poles of the “meaning of life” spectrum.

Camus's essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" is quite notorious for its insistence that the question of whether to commit suicide is the fundamental question of philosophy. The gravity of this question stems from the ideal, cited from Nietzsche, that a philosopher "must preach by example" and in order "not [to] cheat, what he believes to be true must determine his action" (616, 618). Camus contemplates whether the belief that life "is not worth the trouble" (618) dictates suicide. Epicurus addresses this question as well and answers in the affirmative, arguing that a man who believes that "once born, make haste to the gates of Death" and does not follow up that statement with suicide is merely "speak[ing] in jest," and his "words are idle" (610). Both men, specifically with regards to suicide, argue that certain beliefs about life, if honestly held, dictate certain corresponding actions: a requirement to follow-through on conviction.

Both philosophers also, while maintaining wildly different views of the condition of life, argue for a freedom in how to respond to that condition. Both abhor resignation to one's fate. Epicurus argues that the better man "laughs at destiny," and while he acknowledges the role of chance in life, he maintains that "with us lies the chief power in determining events" (612). Man can take comfort in taking reasonable action, even if outcomes are unsuccessful. Camus is even more emphatic in his conviction that revolt and freedom are the keys to maximum living (620). Even in a workman's life that is analogized to Sisyphus's rock-moving torture, a man can be happy by choosing to own his struggle. While Epicurus is generally considered the happier of these two perspectives, both philosophers actually supply a means - freedom of self-determination in response to one's fate - that allows for a positive outlook.

The final similarity between the philosophers is a shared method that brings about their divide. A divesting of a commonly held belief is the initial seed for both worldviews. For Epicurus, the key is to realize that death is an event which we do not experience and therefore does not bear on us (609). Elimination of this fear of death, of death as an issue, is the step that permits the remainder of Epicurus's pleasure- and pain-focused hedonism. For Camus, the divested notion is the "light and illusion" that life is a sensical, hopeful enterprise, i.e. recognition that life is absurd (618). Once a person recognizes this, he/she becomes conscious, the moment in which "everything begins" and "nothing is worth anything except through it" (619). Both philosophies require an elimination of certain everyday beliefs about the nature of life in order to proceed. This, however, is where the commonalities stop.

The fundamental difference between the two is their attitudes toward death. As noted, for Epicurus, death is a non-issue as it is not an experience, and experiences are all that matter. He also denies that one should be anxious toward death as that is "an empty pain in anticipation" (609). For Camus, the issue is not death-as-experience, but rather the shadow that death casts over all of life's other experiences. Because of death, the habits of everyday living serve no end and lack meaning. It is not whether death is experienced, it is that death detrimentally affects the quality of all life. Because of these attitudes toward death, Epicurus and Camus differ severely on their attitudes toward mortality and toward the aspect of experience that bears on life's meaning. Epicurus appreciates the limitations and temporal nature of life as supplying many things (e.g., friendship) with their pleasurable qualities, and he subsequently focuses on the unlimited quality of experience rather than the limited quantity. Camus argues oppositely that because of our mortality, all we have is a pointless quantity of experience, that the quality is rendered absent by life's absurdity. All we can do is be conscious of the absurdity of the quantity of our experiences and revolt (happily?) against our predicament.

The "revolt" alludes to a further stark contrast between these systems. Camus's outlook is entirely about revolt, struggle, and railing against one's fate. He casually mentions that "living, naturally, is never easy" (618) and that "life's equilibrium depends on ... my constant revolt and the darkness in which it struggles" (619). Epicurus's work, on the other hand, is peppered with references to the ease of life: "the limit of good things is easy to fulfill and easy to attain" (612), "the wealth demanded by nature is ... easily procured," (614) and "that which ... makes the whole of life complete is easy to obtain" (614). Epicurus's focus on prudence and his esteemed goal of freedom from pain are antithetical to Camus's directive to confront one's experiences and see the world as it is: chaotic, unforgiving, utterly irrational: absurd.

The final and perhaps most telling difference is that Epicurus places a premium value on experiences, but Camus places that same exalted value on consciousness of those experiences. Camus seems to want to understand the significance of experiences and concludes that there (usually) is none. Epicurus stops at the experiences qua experiences and advocates for their intrinsic qualitative value independent of their larger meaning (or, perhaps more directly, that their quality is their larger meaning). On a fundamental level, Camus aims at a true but unforgivingly cynical, painful take on life, whereas Epicurus would have us focus on experience and avoid choices which might "know no placation" (612).

By this interpretation, the strength of Camus's representation lies in its attempt at an authentic approach to the negativity he sees in the world that, I must re-emphasize, still allows a free and happy protagonist. It is, if nothing else, absurdly courageous: a stated intention to spend one's life struggling against an impossible meaninglessness. The weakness of Camus's theory is its overtly bleak view on the nature of existence and its seeming saint-like requirements for successful, smiling navigation of such a harsh place. Epicurus's view succeeds to a much greater degree as a practical guide to living in that it maintains meaning in the world and offers an approach toward maximal quality of life. Its weaknesses are, perhaps, a rather superficial treatment of the implications of our mortality on the rest of our lives and a certain predisposition to inauthentic screening. (I.e., I wonder if taking such measures to avoid pain and produce pleasure can preclude recognition that the world is (at least sometimes) a rather terrible, absurd place - the pain of acknowledging this seems like it might pre-qualify as one of Epicurus's pains to avoid). These diametrically opposed views of life's meaning, while frankly incompatible, surprisingly share some underlying constructs and could serve as complements despite their conceptual differences.