In my 6th form, 17 year old me read The Plague and The Outsider, quite ostentatiously. I thought girls would want to snog me, but they didn't. Years later a song I wrote about this period went ... 'I read clever books, but they never give me second looks'.
“They enjoy books that say confusing things so that they can read them and think “wow, so profound—I must be a real intellectual for reading this.”” <- Do they TRULY enjoy such books, or do they simply enjoy the pride boost they get from reading them?
When I was a freshman in college, I read The Plague and loved it. The Myth of Sisyphus too, though not quite as much. Ten years later I read The Stranger and it did absolutely nothing for me. Maybe it had something to do with my discovery of philosophy (starting with Descartes and Hume and eventually leading to contemporary analytic stuff) during the intervening years. I don’t know.
The comparison to Wittgenstein is apt. I’ve read the Tractatus twice—the first time with the guidance of a professor and some secondary literature—but I’d be reluctant to claim I understood any of it. It all sounds cool as shit, though.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Camus, Nietzsche, etc etc understood this. You shouldn't use the same (in your case purely analytical) mental framework to evaluate Benatar's asymmetry and Camus on the meaning of life. But they're both legitimate methods to find useful answers to the ~same, real question, and insofar as there's a home for the latter in academia, it's philosophy.
I should add that I wish more writers would write like this. A genuinely good essay.
In my 6th form, 17 year old me read The Plague and The Outsider, quite ostentatiously. I thought girls would want to snog me, but they didn't. Years later a song I wrote about this period went ... 'I read clever books, but they never give me second looks'.
Thank god you wrote this essay. I have never agreed with something more.
This reminds me a bit of https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/inquiry-porn and Daniel Dennet's idea of a 'Deepity'.
“They enjoy books that say confusing things so that they can read them and think “wow, so profound—I must be a real intellectual for reading this.”” <- Do they TRULY enjoy such books, or do they simply enjoy the pride boost they get from reading them?
This is exactly the kind of essay I imagine you would want to write. Good work.
When I was a freshman in college, I read The Plague and loved it. The Myth of Sisyphus too, though not quite as much. Ten years later I read The Stranger and it did absolutely nothing for me. Maybe it had something to do with my discovery of philosophy (starting with Descartes and Hume and eventually leading to contemporary analytic stuff) during the intervening years. I don’t know.
The comparison to Wittgenstein is apt. I’ve read the Tractatus twice—the first time with the guidance of a professor and some secondary literature—but I’d be reluctant to claim I understood any of it. It all sounds cool as shit, though.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Camus, Nietzsche, etc etc understood this. You shouldn't use the same (in your case purely analytical) mental framework to evaluate Benatar's asymmetry and Camus on the meaning of life. But they're both legitimate methods to find useful answers to the ~same, real question, and insofar as there's a home for the latter in academia, it's philosophy.