Albert Camus vs Henry David Thoreau on Time
Albert Camus and Henry David Thoreau on time, side by side — 4 passages against 4, and what the disagreement is actually about.
Albert Camus and Henry David Thoreau both have a great deal to say about time — 4 passages and 4 respectively in thinkr's library — and they do not say the same thing. Setting them side by side is more useful than reading either alone, because the disagreement shows you what each position is actually giving up.
Albert Camus on time
French-Algerian novelist and philosopher of the absurd. The Myth of Sisyphus asks how to live well in a universe without inherent meaning.
“It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.”
“To have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”
“Those who need myths are indeed poor. Here the gods serve as beds or resting places as the day races across the sky.”
“What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.”
Henry David Thoreau on time
American naturalist and essayist. Walden records two years lived simply by a Massachusetts pond, a meditation on awakening and the genuine life.
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth.”
“An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
“And now, at half-past ten o'clock, I hear the cockerels crow in Hubbard's barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day.”
“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”
Where they part
France/Algeria, 1913–1960 and USA, 1817–1862 are not the same world, and the difference is not only historical. Albert Camus treats time as something to be it takes time to live. Like… — a matter of practice. Henry David Thoreau approaches it from another side entirely. Neither is refuting the other; they are answering slightly different questions, and noticing which question you are actually asking is most of the work.