Tag: Philosophical suicide
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Melville’s Bartleby: An absurd casualty
Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French writer and philosopher. He did not want to be pinned down as an existentialist or an absurdist, or indeed a nihilist. Nevertheless, he is well known for coining the expression ‘the absurd hero’. Camus used the Greek myth of Sisyphus to illustrate this idea. Sisyphus’s…
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Sophocles’ Antigone and the complexities of suicide
Grant GillettRobin HankeyOtago, New Zealand Suicide has been a recurring human tragedy for as long as human affairs have been recorded. The principal suicide in Antigone does not at first pass seem relevant to the twentieth century, as it arises in the context of a judicial death penalty in a despotic state. Antigone’s suicide, however,…