Camus: How to Deal with Absurdity?
In his essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’[1] Albert Camus embarks on a mental journey of understanding the complexities of a thought which can result in suicide, which he claims is the most urgent philosophical question. In doing so, he reveals the depth of the feeling of absurd, which we might more commonly refer to as detachment or as Sartre says nausea. He illustrates the multiple paths that can be taken in dealing with the absurd and sketches the possible outcomes of each scenario. I will first briefly look into what should be understood as the absurd. Later following the structure of the above-mentioned essay, I will concentrate on the discussion of two ways of dealing with the absurd those being the hope and the revolt.
Prior to understanding what are the ways of dealing with absurdity we should first revisit the essence of it. If we were to give a definition to the absurd, it would be the following: absurd is the product of a) the Self and its urge for unity, b) the irrational world and c) the clash between a and b. As humans we have a yearning for unity, for the absolute, Camus proposes, meaning that we search for certainty and definite answers about ourselves, the world and our meaningful existence in it. On the other hand, any attempt to do so is met by failures since we constantly encounter the inhumane and the irrational nature of the world in the broadest sense. We should clarify that the absurd is neither because of us or because of the world, but rather it results from the correlation of the two, their ‘incompatibility’.
The first encounter with the absurd is feeling it. The feeling of absurd suddenly hits us when we step back from our routine and ask the simplest question ‘why?’. We start to question why we are working for example, or why do we need to study, what is the point that we are trying to get to. The world with all its beings becomes utterly strange to us, our own self becomes detached from itself. We seize to comprehend the world and proceed into asking even broader and more ‘radical’ questions such as why do I/we exist at all, what is the meaning of life, what is our predestination or is there one at all, finally why should we choose to live. The feeling of absurd is tightly connected to death. It intensifies especially when understanding the temporal aspect of our being, the passing of time, realizing the inevitability of death and its arbitrary nature. Faced with the idea of death we come to an inevitable feeling of uselessness and the absence of meaning whatsoever.
The feeling of absurd does not mean understanding it. Therefore, we can either reject the feeling and get back to our routine, which will mean facing the feeling from time to time again, but refusing to give significance to it and making no attempts of thinking about it (like most Rationalists would do). However, if we choose to accept it, we inevitably make attempts to comprehend and analyze it in order to cope with the absurd. Once accepted there are two paths Camus suggests: to hope or embrace our mortality and revolt against the absurd.
Hope and Philosophical Suicide
While embarking on a search for answers with reason, intelligence we are faced with the challenge of distinguishing between the true and the false, where once more we are faced with necessity of unity. On the other hand, most thinkers have established, that making such claims leads to a paradox. We cannot assume the ‘same-ness’ of one reality and therefore reach a coil of paradoxes. Science cannot provide the answers that we are after, it explains our body to us, the matters existing in the world, their composition, but together with that enlarges the gap between us and the world. It cannot explain reasons or meanings, therefore we go on a mental journey which most commonly leads either to philosophical suicide or suicide.
Camus introduces us to a few philosophers, mainly those who can be categorized as existential thinkers and illustrates how the central concept underlying in their reasoning is hope. Clearly, the problems that Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Dostoyevsky and others deal with is the absurd, which they describe in other terms of course, but as Camus suggests they all tend to take a ‘leap’ while dealing with it, since they indirectly reject the ability of the human to live without an ultimate meaning.
Some ‘find refuge’ in God, others in negation or what we might call ‘absurd as god’. Many claim that there is no truth but are multiple truths, which if we pay attention proves the longing for unity. There is a discourse among these thinkers that there is no meaning of life per se, but we can create it for ourselves. We therefore can jump from knowing that life is meaningless to appropriating a meaning to it (art, God, self-improvement etc.), which is nothing less than what Camus calls a philosophical suicide. This is to say that the philosopher, by clasping to hope still bears a faith commitment, which has some ‘religious’ component. Therefore, a thinker moves away from philosophy towards theology, no longer remaining a philosopher.
Absurd Freedom and Revolt
For Camus persistence, commitment to follow a thought through is extremely important. If we are to stay true to ourselves, we shall not fall into the trap of bringing into the picture something that is uncertain. And what can we know other than we exist and the world exists? Therefore, it is vital to understand that we cannot know whether life has a meaning.
This is precisely why despite all the similarities he diverges from the existentialist thinkers. They turn absurd into a hope, but what Camus proposes exactly is to live ‘without appeal’. He proposes to engage in a constant struggle of living in the absurd and revolting it each time, accepting the absurd as something which connects us to the world. This everlasting struggle is first of all not an escape, it assumes no hope for the future, although it is not to be confused with despair. It is a constant rejection of the absurd which entails permanent dissatisfaction.
Taking the absurd as the only anchor, the only certainty we reach three important consequences: revolt, freedom and passion. Strikingly enough Camus proposes to transform absurd from something which would lead to death to something which gives a reason to live. Afterall, if the world cannot have the unity we crave for and is deprived of any meaning, we are absolutely free. The mere fact that the absurd man accepts death, mortality, makes him absolutely free and unchains him from the commonly accepted rules. The fact that the death will inevitably come, arbitrarily at any time and therefore there is no meaning in the future per se, the absurd man loses the ‘sense of hierarchy’ between his/her actions. Thoughts and actions become liberated, because there is no future, he/she is indifferent to it and the only thing that matters is using everything that is given to him/her at this very moment.
Camus introduces the notion of ‘the most living’ which is a strive for the maximum quantity and the variety of experiences. He insists that this does not depend on the consequences, but on us. First and foremost, we have to be aware, be conscious of our experiences, we need to have what he calls lucidity. To a certain extent we have control over this, but the rest as he says depends on luck, since there is death and we do not know when in life it will happen.
To illustrate his point Camus presents three sketches of ‘the most living’. First is the lover who is the analogous Don Juan seeking for a repeated experience through partnering with different people every time. Second is the actor, who in a very limited time can experience the fate multiple others. Finally, there is the conqueror who is a person of action, he/she believes we have to act within time and seize our opportunities.
However, Camus proposes that the most ‘efficient’ way of experiencing and more importantly revolting comes through art. The absurd leads to the need of creation in order to escape desperation and in this sense, he views art and philosophy in a single dimension. Through taking this path, we embark on understanding and describe small parts of ourselves, the world and the absurd finding small links between those. Creating is therefore ‘living doubly’.
Sisyphus who is the analogous absurd hero, therefore is what we should strive for. Being aware of the absurd, one should not opt out of life. It is the ‘supreme form of consciousness’ when we know our rocks will keep rolling back, but we choose to be superior to our fate and go back to carry it up each time.
In his book ‘The Rebel’[2] Camus further elaborates on the notion of revolt taking it one step further. He sees it as a path leading to a rebellion, he calls it ‘the fabricator of universes’. Our demand for unity is met with the inability to find it, therefore though rebellion we can aim to construct a substitute. We are all children of the absurd and that is what unites us. Camus says — ‘I rebel, therefore we exist’.
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy” Camus says implying that happiness and absurd are inseparable. That very feeling of absurd that consumes us and very often leads to desperation, can become the connection between the Self and the world. Although, not invalidating the paths of rejection and hope, Camus mentions that these roads are nothing but an escape from the absurd, which will consistently awaken the ‘warm in our heats’. Therefore, those who choose to accept death and the absurd should revolt against it. The absurd man, the revolting man knows that every time he is going to lose the game, but he does not care, he keeps revolting which makes him ‘stronger than his rock’ that he is supposed to carry up every time. I would like to conclude with a quote from Camus’ ‘The Rebel’ which clearly shows the importance of revolt and later rebellion: “Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live: in fact, for the humiliated”.
[1] Camus, Albert, O’Brien, Justin, The Myth of Sisyphus, And Other Essays. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
[2] Camus, Albert. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. New York: Knopf, 1956.
The paper was written in scopes of the class Death and the Meaning of Life offered by University of Tartu’s Department of Philosophy.
Instructor: Olena Kushina