- In-Class Writing: Summarize Albert Camus’ essay, “An Absurd Reasoning”
-Remember all the elements you will need to properly cite and summarize the text—author name, name of essay, perhaps even name of book, and maybe even the time frame it was written.
-Make sure to begin the statement(s) actively.
-This should be done in no less than 30 words and no more than 50.
- Notes and Discussion and Questions regarding Camus’ “An Absurd Reasoning” // The absurdity of Hurricane Sandy and how it compares to A.C.’s work. . .
-Review: “My reasoning wants to be faithful to the evidence that aroused it. It is that divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, my nostalgia for unity, this fragmented universe and the contradiction that binds them together.”
Key term, here, is divorce, the divorce of the world the individual lives in and the rationality that connects the individual to her living.
Human Individual ((the absurd)) The World
(both planet and humans, living collectively, i.e. societies)
-“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.
-“Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide.”
-How can the latest natural (act of the absurd) disaster help us to better and more personally understand Camus’ words, above?
-For Camus, we learn what thinking is (critically, revoltingly, revolutionarily, existentially) and then we are able to do other things. He writes, “Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one’s consciousness, making of every image a privileged place. In other words, phenomenology declines to explain the world, it wants to be merely a description of actual experience.”
-The three main components to Camus’s essay/theory are: (1) consciousness, an awareness of self and the world connected to an awareness of the absurd, and (2) freedom, both of the body/mind and that which is relegated to the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural spheres; disacknowledging or disavowing the freedom that each individual possesses inherently is absurd and indirectly suicidal, and (3) revolt, being aware of the limits that hold the individual back from what the individual wants, that nearly all of existence is a consistent revolt, not an avoidance, but a revolt . . .
-Last sentence: “But the point is to live.” How can we acknowledge this as the concluding statement? Why does it make sense that this would be the last line?
- Research // Outlines
-Make sure you organize and map out your argument: (1) main claim, supporting claims // (2) support types: famous people’s words, statistics, other similar arguments made by professionals, scholars, etc… (3) concluding statements (not the same as the introduction)
-Purdue OWL Outline Help:
-Research: Gather at least five (you will need ten for the final draft of the paper) sources that provide you with enough gusto to back up and support your argument. Make sure you jot down all the citation elements (year, page numbers, author name, publication title, etc…) of their citation (as you will need them for your Works Cited page).
-You will need to use at least ONE reading from class, as a source for the essay.
-Purdue OWL MLA Citation Help:
- Assignments // Things to do
-Gather five research sources. Print them, jot down their citation-elements in a notebook.
** See this blog post for professional resource links:
-Download, print, read, and annotate Malcolm Gladwell’s “The 10,000 Hour Rule”
-Post your summary of Camus’s “An Absurd Reasoning” from The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays to today’s blog post. (We will go over these next Tuesday, in class).
-All introductions need to be posted by Thursday, 11/8. Go here to do so: