Douglas Todd: My favourite atheist

[rug]

Novelist Albert Camus asked important questions, avoided self-righteousness and sought to serve the common good with integrity



French writer Albert Camus poses for a portrait in Paris on Oct. 17, 1957 after the announcement that he was being awarded the Noel Prize for literature. Born into poverty in French-ruled Algeria on November 7, 1913, Camus was an unlikely candidate to become one of the giants of 20th century literature. (Photograph by: STRINGER , AFP/Getty Images)

By Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun columnist November 22, 2013 2:09 PM

I was a teenager when I read the Albert Camus novels The Stranger and The Fall.

As a budding atheist, I resonated with Camus’ views that life was replete with unexplainable suffering, alienation and apparent absurdity.

By Grade 12 in North Vancouver, I was carrying around in my wallet a card with a maxim from one of Camus books. I had written on it: “Whatever does not kill me strengthens me.”

That existentialist assurance captured an attitude I needed in the 1970s — the conviction that, even though life seemed intimidating, unfair and a little crazy, it was worth taking risks in the name of a full and adventurous future.

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Douglas+Todd+favourite+atheist/9201743/story.html

I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?
- An Absurd Reasoning

[Jim__]

1. The NYRB recently reviewed the new English translation of his "Algerian Chronicles."

Here.


In the paragraph that you quote from An absurd Reasoning, I usually see your line: But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it, translated as: But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it, which I like better. But, knowing no French, I can't vouch for which is correct:

Now the main thing is done, I hold certain facts from which I cannot separate. What I know, what is certain, what I cannot deny, what I cannot reject—this is what counts. I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me—that is what I understand. And these two certainties—my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle —I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition?

[rug]

2. Thanks for the link to the review.

I only know him by some of his novels but the review is an eye-opener about the rest of his writing and his life.

There was a time when his works were everywhere. I hope there's a resurgence. He is a relentlessly honest writer.

[IrishAyes]

3. Relentless honesty - how rare! - is what I can admire in a person whether I agree or not.

[struggle4progress]

4. Existentialism really captures something important about modern life