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So I'm studying Albert Camus's philosophy from a second-hand source and I'm questioning if Camus committed "philosophical suicide" himself.

We commit philosophical suicide when we perform a leap of faith. To perform a leap of faith is to suspend rationality, it is to claim knowledge at the cost of coherence.

So the way I interpret the absurd is not that the universe does not have any causal structure* but rather that we humans cannot trace nor foresee the causal chain of events. Now contrasting this to man's pursuit of meaning: One cannot say the universe is indifferent to our pursuit of meaning nor can he say it is helpful to our pursuit. Rather, given the premise we cannot "trace nor foresee the causal chain of events" we cannot reach an answer on the universe being indifferent.

There is evidence that someone who perseveres is more likely to manifest meaning rather than one who doesn't. So it isn't a simple claim that the "universe is indifferent"

*I don't want to get into the whole causality debate.

user
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More Anonymous
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    You can see Camus: Suicide as a Response to Absurdity: "[Camus] concern about “the most urgent of questions” [i.e. “Should I kill myself?”] is less a theoretical one than it is the life-and-death problem of whether and how to live." – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Aug 22 '23 at 06:41
  • i feel like this is a pun, actually. indifferent can mean lacking sympathy or neither good or bad. anyway, the universe itself is indifferent, and without us or stuff like us, there is no good or bad, nothing to prompt awe, because there's means to prompt it, whether that is because of us or our absence. mind you, i don't follow the argument as it is –  Aug 22 '23 at 12:45
  • It seems like he's using the "universe" as a substitute of an indifferent God :/ – More Anonymous Aug 22 '23 at 14:41
  • Non-sinners in the hands of an indifferent universe. – Scott Rowe Aug 23 '23 at 00:20

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While there's merit to the idea espoused in the qustion, true to the esse of philosophical suicide, commits a fallacy, argumentum ad ignorantiam, but hey, if we're abandoning reason in toto, what's one fallacy or two along the way?

Agent Smith
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I have noticed that nothing makes me more suicidal than feelings of having committed to the wrong philosophical theory. But don't worry, that hasn't happened yet! HTH

the upside of that is that arguably your human dignity is only violated by yourself. So it's a self responsibility thing, rather than some kind of combat situation.