Albert Camus (1913–1960) is not a philosopher so much as a novelist with a strong philosophical bent. He is most famous for his novels of ideas, such as The Stranger and The Plague, both of which are set in the arid landscape of his native Algeria.
Camus studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, which brought him into contact with two of the major branches of twentieth century philosophy: existentialism and phenomenology. Existentialism arises from an awareness that there is no pre-ordained meaning or order in the universe and that we must take responsibility for determining the meaning and order we are to give to our lives. Camus is particularly interested in religious existentialists, such as Kierkegaard (though such a label is not entirely fair to Kierkegard), who conclude that there is no meaning to be found in human experience, and that this necessitates a "leap of faith" that places an irrational and blind faith in God.
Phenomenology, as advocated by Edmund Husserl, confines itself to observing and describing our own consciousness without drawing any conclusions regarding causes or connections. Like existentialism, phenomenology influenced Camus by its effort to construct a worldview that does not assume that there is some sort of rational structure to the universe that the human mind can apprehend.
This idea—that the universe has a rational structure that the mind can apprehend—characterizes an older trend in European philosophy called "rationalism." Rationalism traces its roots to Rene Descartes and to the birth of modern philosophy. Most of twentieth century European philosophy has been a direct reaction to this older tradition, a reactionary attempt to explore the possibility that the universe has no rational structure for the mind to apprehend.
Camus wrote The Myth of Sisyphus around the same time he wrote his first novel, The Stranger, at the beginning of World War II. Camus was working for the French Resistance in Paris at this time, far from his native Algeria. While it is never wise to reduce ideas to their autobiographical background, the circumstances in which this essay was written can help us understand its tone. The metaphor of exile that Camus uses to describe the human predicament and the sense that life is a meaningless and futile struggle both make a great deal of sense coming from a man, far from his home, who was struggling against a seemingly omnipotent and senselessly brutal regime.
The central concern of The Myth of Sisyphus is what Camus calls "the absurd." Camus claims that there is a fundamental conflict between what we want from the universe (whether it be meaning, order, or reasons) and what we find in the universe (formless chaos). We will never find in life itself the meaning that we want to find. Either we will discover that meaning through a leap of faith, by placing our hopes in a God beyond this world, or we will conclude that life is meaningless. Camus opens the essay by asking if this latter conclusion that life is meaningless necessarily leads one to commit suicide. If life has no meaning, does that mean life is not worth living? If that were the case, we would have no option but to make a leap of faith or to commit suicide, says Camus. Camus is interested in pursuing a third possibility: that we can accept and live in a world devoid of meaning or purpose.
As his starting point, Camus takes up the question of whether, on the one hand, we are free agents with souls and values, or if, on the other hand, we are just matter that moves about with mindless regularity. Reconciling these two equally undeniable perspectives is one of the great projects of religion and philosophy.
One of the most obvious—and on reflection, one of the most puzzling—facts about human existence is that we have values. Having values is more than simply having desires: if I desire something, I quite simply want it and will try to get it. My values go beyond my desires in that by valuing something, I do not simply desire it, but I also somehow judge that that something ought to be desired. In saying that something ought to be desired, I am assuming that the world ought to be a certain way. Further, I only feel the world ought to be a certain way if it is not entirely that way already: if there was no such thing as murder it would not make sense for me to say that people should not commit murder. Thus, having values implies that we feel the world ought to be different from the way it is.
Our capacity to see the world both as it is and as it ought to be allows us to look at ourselves in two very different lights. Most frequently, we see others and ourselves as willing, free agents, people who can deliberate and make choices, who can decide what's best and pursue certain ends. Because we have values it only makes sense that we should also see ourselves as capable of embodying those values. There would be no point in valuing certain qualities if we were incapable of acting to realize those qualities.
While we generally take this outlook, there is also the outlook of the scientist, of trying to see the world quite simply as it is. Scientifically speaking, this is a world divested of values, made up simply of matter and energy, where mindless particles interact in predetermined ways. There is no reason to think that humans are any exception to the laws of science. Just as we observe the behavior of ants milling about, mindlessly following some sort of mechanical routine, we can imagine alien scientists might also observe us milling about, and conclude that our behavior is equally predictable and routine-oriented.
The feeling of absurdity is effectively the feeling we get when we come to see ourselves in the second of these two alternative perspectives. This is a strictly objective worldview that looks at things quite simply as they are. Values are irrelevant to this worldview, and without values there seems to be no meaning and no purpose to anything we do. Without values, life has no meaning and there is nothing to motivate us to do one thing rather than another.
Though we may never have tried to rationalize this feeling philosophically, the feeling of absurdity is one that we have all experienced at some point in our life. In moments of depression or uncertainty, we might shrug and ask, "what's the point of doing anything?" This question is essentially a recognition of absurdity, a recognition that, from at least one perspective, there is no point in doing anything.
Camus often refers metaphorically to the feeling of absurdity as a place of exile. Once we have acknowledged the validity of the perspective of a world without values, of a life without meaning, there is no turning back. We cannot simply forget or ignore this perspective. The absurd is a shadow cast over everything we do. And even if we choose to live as if life has a meaning, as if there are reasons for doing things, the absurd will linger in the back of our minds as a nagging doubt that perhaps there is no point.
It is generally supposed that this place of exile—the absurd—is uninhabitable. If there is no reason for doing anything, how can we ever do anything? The two main ways of escaping the feeling of absurdity are suicide and hope. Suicide concludes that if life is meaningless then it is not worth living. Hope denies that life is meaningless by means of blind faith.
Camus is interested in finding a third alternative. Can we acknowledge that life is meaningless without committing suicide? Do we have to at least hope that life has a meaning in order to live? Can we have values if we acknowledge that values are meaningless? Essentially, Camus is asking if the second of the two worldviews sketched above is livable.
Camus is not a philosopher and he is not interested in engaging the aforementioned thinkers in an intellectual debate. As in the previous chapter, where he rejected rationalism, Camus is not trying to refute these thinkers. He does not give us arguments as to why their thinking is askew, but simply gives us reasons as to why he finds their thinking unsatisfying.
Camus reduces the problem that interests him to two basic facts: first, that man expects and hopes to find some sort of meaning in the world, and second, that whatever meaning the world may have is concealed from man. It is important to note that Camus does not deny that God exists or that there is some inherent meaning or purpose behind everything. He simply claims that he has no way of knowing whether or not there is a God or meaning or purpose. His aim in The Myth of Sisyphus is to determine whether or not it is possible to live simply with what he knows. That is, can he live with those two basic facts, or does he need either to hope for something more (a God or meaning or purpose) or to commit suicide?
The absurd is the relationship that links these two basic facts. It is absurd that I should expect the universe to have a meaning when the universe itself is so resolutely silent. Because the absurd is the relationship that links the only two basic facts we can know for certain, Camus asserts that the absurd is our fundamental relationship with the world. The absurd is a fundamental truth and Camus takes it as his duty to follow out its logic.
The absurd is also essentially a conflict. We demand meaning but the universe gives us none. The dissatisfaction we feel with our lot in life is fundamental to the absurd, and any attempt to resolve this dissatisfaction is an attempt to escape from absurdity.
Camus's complaint against the four thinkers discussed in this chapter is that, each in his own way attempts to escape from absurdity. To do this, each thinker must reject one of the two basic facts that Camus has taken as his starting point. Jaspers, Chestov, and Kierkegaard reject the need for reason and purpose in the world. They embrace the idea that the world is irrational, and find God in this idea. Husserl rejects the idea that we cannot find meaning in the world, claiming to find essences behind its mute phenomena.
Camus is not a philosopher, and he is not accusing these thinkers of reasoning wrongly. He is simply accusing them of not finding content in what they can know. All four go beyond the basic, undeniable facts of experience to assert that there is something more, something transcendent, something that resolves the dissatisfaction caused by their confrontation with the absurd. They are not mistaken in doing so, but they are avoiding the question that seems to Camus to be fundamental: do weneed to assert that there is something more in order to live? Camus's problem is a hypothetical one: if there is nothing more than rational humans in an irrational universe, can we live with the absurdity of that situation?
The route Camus takes here is committed to shunning philosophy. He purports to be interested only in whether a certain proposition is livable, not whether it is true. If he were to try to assert his own metaphysical position, if he were to try to claim that such-and-such is the case, he would then be burdened with the responsibility of proving the superiority of his metaphysical position over those of other philosophers.
All this is relevant because Camus comes dangerously close to metaphysics when he asserts that the absurd is our fundamental relationship with the world and that our need for reasons and the silence of the universe are the two basic facts of human existence. Camus might defend himself by saying that these assertions do not come from any positive knowledge about the nature of the world, but are rather all that is left over when he denies himself any positive knowledge. The absurd is our fundamental relationship with the world because it does not rely on claims to know anything about the world beyond what is given to us.
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