Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus
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Albert Camus (1913-1960) gives a quite different account of philosophy and politics of existentialism from that of Sartre. Perhaps the most striking difference from Sartre is his conception of the absurd. For Sartre absurdity belongs to the world prior to activity of consciousness, while Camus’s idea of the absurd is closer to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—the absurd is a direct consequence of the absence of God. Without God the discrepancy between human aspirations and the world is acute. The human condition is characterized by the probability of suffering and the certainty of death—a fate which human reason cannot accept as reasonable. In the face of this absurdity, the universal reason of the Enlightenment has nothing to say. In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus elucidates this concept of the absurd. The absurd comes with the realization that the world is not rational: “At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world” (28). This confrontation is epitomized in The Plague (1947) in the painful death of a child. The arbitrariness of the plague parallels the absurdity of existence. The absurdity of existence raises the question of suicide and the meaning of life thus becomes “the only truly serious philosophical problem.” The myth of Sisyphus is a potent image of futility. Camus’ response is that only the ‘lucid’ recognition of the absurdity of existence liberates us from belief in another life and permits us to live for the instant, for the beauty, pleasure and the ‘implacable grandeur’ of existence. Lucidity is the clarity and courage of mind which refuses all comforting illusions and self-deception. Lucidity is Camus’s notion comparable to Kierkegaard and Sartre’s anguish, but in the end Camus is more positive than either Kierkegaard and Sartre. Camus concludes that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Camus draws the political moral from his confrontation with the absurd in The Rebel (1951) which is an ethic of uncompromising honesty and lucid revolt against absurdity. Its most obvious enemies are found in the stifling atmosphere of conventional bourgeois morality, and more horrifyingly, in totalitarianism, of either fascist or communist varieties. Though a member of the communist party as a youth, Camus became openly hostile to communism, rejecting the idea that the ends can justify the means and the arrogance of philosophies of history which claim to know the end in advance. The Myth of Sisyphus [3] AN ABSURD REASONING Absurdity and Suicide
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HERE is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest— whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgent than that, I reply that one judges by the actions it entails. I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. Galileo, who held a scientific truth of great importance, abjured it with the greatest ease as soon as it endangered his life. In a certain sense, he did