{"id":5549,"date":"2017-05-05T11:31:16","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T11:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/05\/true-whether-or-not-aristotle-said-it\/"},"modified":"2017-05-05T11:31:16","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T11:31:16","slug":"true-whether-or-not-aristotle-said-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/05\/true-whether-or-not-aristotle-said-it\/","title":{"rendered":"True Whether or Not Aristotle (or Camus) Said It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mark<\/a>Be skeptical of all unsourced quotations. Where did the Stagirite say this?<\/span><\/p>\n

Jumping ahead a couple of millennia, one finds the following bogus Camus quotation on several of those wretched unsourced quotation websites:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

"I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't, and die to find out there is."<\/em> ~Albert Camus<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Having read and taught Camus, I can assure you that the above is not something he could have said in his own voice.  Did he put these words into the mouth of a character in one his novels or plays?<\/span><\/p>\n

Paging Dave Lull<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

UPDATE (5\/6)<\/span><\/p>\n

I had forgotten that I had already asked Dave about this and that he had already replied, in April of 2013:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
I find no evidence that a statement of Camus' is translated thusly.  I won't bore you with the things that I did (buoyed by my high tolerance of boring activity) before I finally went to Google Books and did inauthor: "Albert Camus"<\/strong> searches using combinations of various keywords and short phrases from this so-called quotation and got no statement even close.  I even tried using Google Translate to translate it into French and then used combinations of various French keywords and short phrases and also got no statement even close.  I'm not surprised.  How about you?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Our hard-working researcher now provides us with the following:<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
\n
From <\/span><\/span>Giovanni Gaetani, <\/span>\u201cThe noble art of misquoting Camus — from its origins to the Internet era,\u201d<\/a> <\/span>Journal of Camus Studies <\/em>2015:<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
2) Camus a wise gambler after Pascal's example?<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\u2018I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n
find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't, and die<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n
to find out there is\u2019. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Dozens of disoriented readers doubted at first glance of the reliability of this quote, but none of them was capable of solving the enigma: someone assumed that \u2018maybe Camus wrote it on some private letters\u2019, few others noticed the similarity with Pascal's wager on the existence of God. Unfortunately, the author of this quote is for sure neither Camus nor Pascal. According to Google, the actual spreading of this quote dates back to the early 2000s, when it firstly appeared in some American Christian sites25. In 2006, the Bishop T. D. Jakes even invented a \u20188 seconds prayer\u2019 chain letter using this quote26. Anyway, I did not manage to understand how and why Camus is considered the author of this quote.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Be skeptical of all unsourced quotations. Where did the Stagirite say this? Jumping ahead a couple of millennia, one finds the following bogus Camus quotation on several of those wretched unsourced quotation websites: "I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there isn't, than live my … Continue reading “True Whether or Not Aristotle (or Camus) Said It”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,22,326],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aphorisms-by-others","category-aristotle","category-camus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}