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and inaccurate. The question of whether the world has three dimensions
may not be a philosophical problem at all; and no one seriously inquires
as to whether the mind has nine or twelve categories. What is the good
life? What is the good state? What am I? What can I know? What
ought I to do? Does God exist? These are serious and fundamental
philosophical problems. And insofar as the problem of suicide is not a
psychological one, it is a question settled when these prior problems are
settled. In
The Myth of Sisyphus,
Camus quotes Dostoevsky's description
of
The Brothers Karamazov:
"The principal question which will be pur–
sued in every part of this book is the very one from which I have
suffered consciously or unconsciously. throughout my life: the existence
of God." Faced with this serious and fundamental problem of a great
philosophical novelist, Camus attempts to transform Dostoevsky's ques–
tion into something consistent with his own views by saying that the
Russian author did not write "une oeuvre absurde," but a work "qui
pose le probleme absurde." But the best he can do to make Dostoevsky
say what he himself is trying to say is to cite a critic who declared that
Dostoevsky identified himself with I van Karamazov. And then, as further
evidence, Camus adds that the religious passages in
The Brothers
Karamazov
required three months of effort while the blasphemous por–
tions were written in three weeks and in a state of exaltation! As
if
it
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