An Absurd Reasoning: Absurdity and Suicide

Summary

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide." If we judge the importance of a philosophical problem by the consequences it entails, the problem of the meaning of life is certainly the most important. Someone who judges that life is not worth living will commit suicide, and those who feel they have found some meaning to life may be inclined to die or kill to defend that meaning. Other philosophical problems do not entail such drastic consequencesCamus suggests that suicide amounts to a confession that life is not worth living. He links this confession to what he calls the "feeling of absurdity." On the whole, we go through life with a sense of meaning and purpose, with a sense that we do things for good and profound reasons. Occasionally, however, we might come to see our daily actions and interactions as dictated primarily by the force of habit. We cease to see ourselves as free agents and come to see ourselves almost as machine-like drones. From this perspective, all our actions, desires, and reasons seem absurd and pointless. The feeling of absurdity is closely linked to the feeling that life is meaningless.

Camus also associates the feeling of absurdity with the feeling of exile, a theme that is important not just in this essay but also in much of his fiction. As rational members of human society, we instinctively feel that life has some sort of meaning or purpose. When we act under this assumption, we feel at home. As a result, absurdists feel like strangers in a world divested of reason. The feeling of absurdity exiles us from the homelike comforts of a meaningful existence.

The feeling of absurdity is linked to the idea that life is meaningless, and the act of suicide is linked to the idea that life is not worth living. The pressing question of this essay, then, is whether the idea that life is meaningless necessarily implies that life is not worth living. Is suicide a solution to the absurd? We should not be fooled, Camus suggests, by the fact that there are only two possible outcomes (life or suicide)—that there are only two possible answers to this question. Most of us continue living largely because we have not reached a definitive answer to this question. Further, there are plenty of contradictions between people's judgments and their actions. Those who commit suicide might be assured life has meaning, and many who feel that life is not worth living still continue to live.

Face to face with the meaninglessness of existence, what keeps us from suicide? To a large extent, Camus suggests that our instinct for life is much stronger than our reasons for suicide: "We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking." We instinctively avoid facing the full consequences of the meaningless nature of life, through what Camus calls an "act of eluding." This act of eluding most frequently manifests itself as hope. By hoping for another life, or

hoping to find some meaning in this life, we put off facing the consequences of the absurd, of the meaninglessness of life.In this essay, Camus hopes to face the consequences of the absurd. Rather than accept fully the idea that life has no meaning, he wants to take it as a starting point to see what logically follows from this idea. Rather than run away from the feeling of absurdity, either through suicide or hope, he wants to dwell with it and see if one can live with this feeling.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.

An Absurd Reasoning: Absurd Walls

Summary

A feeling carries with it more than can be expressed in words. The feeling of absurdity—like the feeling of jealousy or the feeling of generosity—frames the way we look at the world and defines our perspective. A feeling is a worldview and comes prior to words. As such, Camus acknowledges that it is difficult to describe the feeling of absurdity. Instead, he offers a series of sketches to clarify the kinds of experiences that might provoke such a feeling.We may experience a moment of awakening in the depths of weariness with routine. The impulse to ask why we bother leads us to the feeling of absurdity. Or the feeling may strike us as we become aware of ourselves as drift wood on the river of time: nothing we can do can extract us from time's inevitable progress. Or it may strike us when we see objects in the world divested of the meaning and

purpose that we give them. In a moment of absurdity, we see them as naked "things." Or it hits us when we see a person talking animatedly behind a glass so that we hear nothing and his gestures seem a ridiculous pantomime without significance. Or we sense absurdity when we see a dead body and realize that this is our inevitable, cold, senseless end.These are examples of the feeling of absurdity on the level of experience. Camus notes that we can encounter the absurd on the level of the intellect as well. The mind is driven by a "nostalgia for unity," an ardent desire to make sense of the universe, to reduce it to a unified, comprehensible whole. Camus uses Aristotle to show on a logical level the problems with asserting a single, unified "truth." On the level of science, a theory can describe the world, but it cannot ultimately explain it. The world is made up of such diversity, and there are so many different perspectives we can take on understanding it, that it seems futile that we should ever find one absolute Truth, one correct way of looking at the world and understanding it at once in its entirety. The unifying reason that we hope to apply to the world is not in the world itself: the world is fundamentally irrational.

Camus identifies the absurd in this confrontation between our desire for clarity and our understanding of the world's irrationality. Neither the world nor the human mind is in itself absurd. Rather, absurdity finds itself in the confrontation between the two.

There have always been thinkers who have tried to confront the irrationality of experience rather than deny it, and Camus notes that the past century has produced quite a number of such thinkers. Heidegger speaks of our anguish when confronted with the absurd, but asserts that we find our greatest alertness in this anguish. Jaspers asserts that we cannot know anything that goes beyond immediate experience, and exposes the flaws of philosophical systems that claim otherwise. Chestov examines human irrationality, and is more interested in seeking out the exception than the rule. Kierkegaard essentially lives the absurd, fearlessly diving into all sorts of contradictions. Husserl is interested in the diversity of the world, and encourages full and equal awareness of all phenomena. These thinkers all share the awareness that only the limitations on human knowledge are clear: the rest is incomprehensible.

Commentary

This chapter rehearses the shortcomings of rationalist philosophy, and defines the philosophies of the irrational that have sprung up in response. Rationalism, as Camus uses it, is the idea that human reason can make sense of the world it inhabits. A rationalist philosopher hopes to construct some sort of system according to which all experience can be explained: he wants to be able to say once and for all how and why things are. The sky is blue for this

reason, I exist for that reason, the universe works the way it does for that reason. A rationalist wants the world to make sense, for things to be clear. Rationalism is based on the not unreasonable hope that we can give reasons for why things are the way they are.Camus rejects rationalism, but he does not seem to provide any philosophical argument against it: he claims several times in this chapter that he is doing nothing more than rehearsing and clarifying ideas that are familiar to all. He does not try to convince us that there is a flaw with rationalism so much as he assumes that we already agree that it is flawed. True, he touches on reasons why we might find rationalism unsatisfying—our failure to unify the diversity of experience, etc.—but these reasons are hardly convincing in themselves. They are not arguments, but rather examples of where a rationalist worldview seems untenable.ames Wood suggests that Camus's essay rests on faith, though faith of a negative kind. Camus is determined to believe that there is no God and that life is meaningless more than he is determined to argue for that meaninglessness. He is not presenting a philosophical system so much as he is diagnosing a certain way of looking at the world. Camus is not trying to argue that "seeing the world as absurd is the right way of seeing the world." Rather he is first of all doubting the idea that there is a "right way" of seeing the world, and second of all suggesting that seeing the world as absurd is often inevitable. The feeling of absurdity is essentially the feeling that strikes us from time to time that, like it or not, the world does not make sense and it is not clear. He is not saying the feeling of absurdity is necessarily "correct" so much as he is saying that it exists. He is less of a philosopher and more of a physician: he is interested in what living with this feeling entails more than he is interested in whether this feeling is correct.

Camus lists a number of thinkers whom he associates with the "irrational," with the rejection of rationalism. Where Camus uses the term "irrational" we might today use the term "existential." "Existentialism" is a tricky term to use correctly, largely because very few philosophers openly associated themselves with it. Still, it shares many of the themes Camus has been discussing, particularly the idea that the world in itself simply exists, and that any meaning or essence that makes sense of the world is applied after the fact by a human mind. Jean-Paul Sartre, a contemporary and sometime friend of Camus's, was the main proponent of existentialism as a movement. Though he borrowed the name from Jaspers's existenz-philosophie and many ideas from Heidegger, neither of these German thinkers considered themselves existentialists. While Kierkegaard or Nietzsche are sometimes called "proto-existentialists," they lived and died in the nineteenth century, before "existentialism" as a term had currency. Even Camus would later disown himself from this movement, leaving only Sartre as a committed "existentialist."We should note that Camus, and all the thinkers he refers to, are deeply rooted in the philosophical tradition of the European continent. This tradition is deeply influenced by Hegel and by the earlier

rationalist tradition of figures such as Descartes and Leibniz. It places a heavy emphasis on the faculty of reason and our ability to sort out metaphysical truths through the exercise of pure reason.

The English language tradition of philosophy, by contrast, follows much more in the empiricist vein of Locke and Hume. This tradition de-emphasizes the abilities of pure reason, insisting instead that we turn to sense experience for knowledge.

The dilemma Camus faces in discussing the absurd could, in a sense, only exist in the tradition of continental rationalism. The idea that our mind cannot make sense of experience is a far greater emergency to a rationalist thinker than to an empiricist. This is not to dismiss Camus' position so much as it is to place it in its proper context.

An Absurd Reasoning: Philosophical Suicide

Summary

Absurdity derives from the comparison or juxtaposition of two incompatible ideas. For instance, we would say "that's absurd" if someone suggested that a perfectly honest and virtuous man secretly lusts for his sister. We would be juxtaposing the two incompatible ideas of the virtuous man on the one hand and the man with the incestuous lust on the other hand. The concept of the absurd as Camus has been discussing it also consists of such juxtaposition. We are faced on one hand with man, who wants to find reason and unity in the universe, and on the other hand with the universe, that provides him with nothing but mute and meaningless phenomena. As such, the absurd does not exist either in man or in the universe, but in the confrontation between the two. We are only faced with the absurd when we take both our need for answers and the world's silence together.In order to determine what follows from our absurd relationship with the universe we must not reject the absurd. If we try to reconcile the conflict between our need for answers and the world's silence we will be evading the absurd rather than confronting it. Camus characterizes our confrontation with the absurd with an absence of hope, continual rejection, and conscious dissatisfaction. Living with this conflict is neither pleasant nor easy, but trying to overcome the conflict does not answer so much as it negates the problem of the absurd. Camus is interested in whether we can live with the feeling of absurdity, not whether we can overcome it.Camus remarks that existential philosophers generally try to evade this confrontation with the absurd. Jaspers claims to find transcendence, by means of a totally illogical leap, just at the point where reason breaks down. Chestov asserts that the absurd is God, suggesting that we need God only to help us deal with the impossible and incomprehensible. Kierkegaard is famous for making the "leap of

faith" into God, where he identifies the irrational with faith and with God. Husserl is a more complicated case, as his phenomenology, which deals only with direct experience, seems to embrace the absurd, but he then tries to associate some sort of transcendental essences with the simple phenomena that he discusses.

Camus is clear that he does not intend to discuss the thought of these philosophers as a whole, but simply their encounter with the absurd. Each one of them tries somehow to resolve the conflict between human reason and an irrational universe in one way or another. Jaspers, Chestov, and Kierkegaard, all in their own way, deny human reason and fully embrace an irrational universe, associating that with God. Husserl tries to deny the irrationality of the universe by finding reason in the phenomena of direct experience. As Camus has already noted, the absurd can only exist in the conflict between human reason and an irrational universe, and all four thinkers try to diffuse this conflict by negating one of the terms of the conflict.

Existential philosophers try to find some sort of transcendence in the absurd itself. Camus insists that the logic of the absurd demands that there be no reconciliation or transcendence. These philosophers try to wriggle away from the logic posed to them by the absurd, and, as such, they commit "philosophical suicide."Analysis

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 we need 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.

An Absurd Reasoning: Absurd Freedom

Summary

The absurd man demands certainty above all else, and recognizes that he can only be certain of the absurd. The only truth about himself

that remains constant is his desire for unity, reason, and clarity, and the only truth about the world that seems certain is that it conforms to no obvious shape or pattern. There may be a meaning to life, but there is no sure way of knowing what this meaning is. The absurd man wants to live only with what he can be sure of.The absurd is this conflict created between human reason and an unreasonable universe, and it exists only so long as one is consciously aware of it. In order to cling to the absurd, then, the absurd man must maintain conscious awareness of this conflict within him without trying to overcome it. Camus identifies three consequences of trying to live with the absurd: revolt, freedom, and passion.

Camus firmly counters the notion that a proper acceptance of the absurd entails suicide. On the contrary, he suggests, accepting the absurd is a matter of living life to its fullest, remaining aware that we are reasonable human beings condemned to live a short time in an unreasonable world and then to die. We remain aware of the conflict between our desire and reality, and so living the absurd is living in a constant state of conflict. It is a revolt against the meaninglessness of our life and the finality of the death that awaits us. Suicide, like hope, is just another way out of this conflict. Living the absurd is more akin to the predicament faced by the man condemned to death yet who, with every breath, revolts against the notion that he must die.We generally live with the idea of freedom—that we are free to make our own decisions and to define ourselves by our actions. With this idea of freedom comes the idea that we can give our lives direction, and then aim toward certain goals. In doing so, however, we confine ourselves to living toward certain goals—to playing out a certain role. We might see ourselves as the good mother, the charming seducer, or the hard-working citizen, and our actions will be determined by this self-image we create. This idea of freedom is a metaphysical one: it claims that the universe and human nature are such that we can choose our own course. The absurd man is determined to reject everything he cannot know with certainty, and metaphysical freedom is no more certain than a meaning of life. The only freedom the absurd man can know is the freedom he experiences: the freedom to think and to act as he chooses. By abandoning the idea that he has some role to fulfill, the absurd man attains the freedom of taking each moment of life as it strikes him, free of preconceptions or prejudices.

In abandoning the idea of there being any meaning to life, the absurd man also abandons any notion of values. If there is no meaning or purpose to what we do, there is no reason for doing one thing rather than another. That being the case, we can apply no standard of quality to our experiences. Instead, we can apply only a standard of quantity: the more one experiences the better. By quantity of experience, Camus doesn't mean a long life so much as he means the passion of a full life. A person who is aware of each passing moment will experience more than someone who is otherwise preoccupied will. The absurd man is determined to live in the present.

Analysis

Camus applies a kind of skepticism that has been prevalent in Western philosophy since Descartes, but he applies it in a very peculiar way. He follows Descartes's lead in doubting every proposition that he cannot know with certainty, but unlike Descartes, he does not follow up his skepticism with an attempt to re-establish metaphysical knowledge on more certain grounds. Instead, he observes that philosophers generally seem to be unable to agree on metaphysical questions, and takes that as a reason to doubt metaphysics generally. Following Descartes's lead, Camus does demand certainty, but he decides that there is no certainty to be found in metaphysics.This position is profoundly un-philosophical. He is not interested in sorting out the correct intellectual position; he is interested in how to live. What matters to Camus is that there is no clean-cut answer to these questions, and he wants to know whether it is possible to live with certainty.

We might complain here that there is no clean-cut answer for Camus because he doesn't make the effort to find one. He doesn't seem to make any particular effort to justify his shunning of metaphysics. His claim that we cannot be certain about any rational order or meaning in the universe is not based on careful arguments that show this kind of certainty to be impossible. Rather, this claim comes from the awareness that the greatest minds of the past two thousand years haven't been able to agree on a correct answer, and therefore we are not likely to be able to discover certainty either. His is not a philosophical position so much as a practical consideration. Camus admits as much in this chapter: "I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it." The "just now" presumably suggests that perhaps this meaning is knowable, but not without a considerable and life-long intellectual effort that would prevent him from actually living. He wants to know if he can live with the certainty he has "just now" and with nothing more.

Camus identifies three consequences of living only with the certainty that there is no certainty: "my revolt, my freedom, and my passion." His "revolt" is living in the perpetual state of conflict characterized by the absurd. He must not cease to yearn for unity and order, but he must also remain aware that this unity and order is impossible. His revolt is without hope for resolution. This may seem a bit of an odd notion, for how can one be in a state of revolt—how can one struggle—if one has no hope of success? This concept of revolt without hope largely defines the absurd man, and characterizes the myth of Sisyphus, which Camus takes as the title of this work. (His attempt to characterize Sisyphus as his ideal absurd hero comes near the end of the essay.)

The concept of "freedom" that Camus employs is characteristically un- philosophical. Rather than concentrate on the human ability to be free from cosmic or metaphysical restraints (such as God or physical laws), he concentrates on freedom on an earthly level regardless of whether God or physics may or may not be operating as well. Camus asks, to what extent can we do and think what we want here on earth? The opposite of freedom, then, is not a person restrained by the laws of physics, but a person restrained by a repressive government or by his own timidity—earthly, alterable influences. The absurd man is free in this sense because he has abandoned the idea that his life has any value or any meaning, and so does not feel committed to living toward any particular goal. As a result, he faces every new moment free from the constraints of thought and actions that we normally conform to in society.Philosophical debates on the nature of free will are far more complex than Camus makes them out to be. Most philosophers have abandoned the notion that freedom is necessarily defined against some kind of metaphysical determinism. Rather, they generally see it as linked to human rationality: I act freely if I act for a reason rather than due to blind impulse or desire. I am free if I make a choice to do something. In discussing absurd freedom, Camus ignores the greater part of philosophical discussions of freedom.

The "passion" that Camus refers to as the final consequence of living the absurd is a matter of living in the present. Because the absurd man is not concerned with the future and is not preoccupied with the past, the present moment seems that much more intense and alive to him

The Absurd Man: Don Juanism

Summary

In the second part of the book, Camus tries to continue his discussion on a more practical level. While the first part carried an abstract discussion of the concept of the absurd and the consequences of living with it, this part provides a number of examples of lives that embrace Camus's principles of revolt, freedom, and passion (see An Absurd Reasoning: Absurd Freedom ). Here he gives us the seducer ("Don Juanism"), the actor, and the conqueror, and then he discusses the role of the writer in the subsequent part. Camus is careful to note that though these are examples, they are not necessarily meant to be emulated. He does not want to hold them up as ideals, but wants only to use them to clarify the position he is discussing.Camus prefaces his analysis of these examples with a few remarks as to what they all hold in common. The absurd man relies only on his courage not to hope for anything more than life has given him and on his reasoning that tells him that all his actions are limited to having

consequences in this world, and not in a world beyond.

The absurd man is amoral (which is not to say that he is immoral). Either morality comes from God or it is invented by humans in order to justify certain kinds of behavior. The absurd man cannot believe in God, and he has no need of justification. He is guided only by his own integrity, and integrity does not need to be guided by a moral code. Because he is free from morality, and thus from the concepts of guilt or wrong-doing, Camus describes the absurd man as "innocent."His first example of the absurd man is the famous seducer, Don Juan. He moves from woman to woman, seducing each one in turn with the same tactics—the same maneuvers—with which he seduced his previous lovers. He never stays with one woman too long before moving on to his next conquest.

Camus dismisses all accusations that Don Juan is desperately seeking true love, or that he is melancholy, or that he is unimaginatively repetitive, or that he is callously selfish, or that he will be a miserable old man. All these accusations seem to assume that Don Juan is ultimately hoping to achieve transcendence, to find something that will take him beyond his day-to-day seductions, and that he is totally incapable of finding that transcendence.

On the contrary, Camus portrays Don Juan as a man who lives for the passions of the present moment. He lives without hope of finding any transcendent significance in his life, and he recognizes the meaninglessness of his seductions. He is not looking for true love; he wants only to experience the continual repetition of his conquests. He is not melancholy; that would suppose that he hopes for something more or that he doesn't know all that he needs to know. He is not unimaginatively repetitive in his seductions; he is interested in quantity, not quality, and so if the same techniques always get him the desired result there is no reason to alter them. He is not callously selfish; he may be selfish in his own way, but he does not seek to possess or control those whom he seduces. He will not suffer the consequences of his actions; he lives in full awareness of who he is and of where he is going. Therefore, old age and impotence can hardly catch him off-guard.hroughout the first part, we have seen that Camus's discussion can only be called "philosophy" in the loosest sense of that word: he seems to have little interest in arguing for the positions he takes, and is not primarily concerned with whether or not his assertions are true. His interest is in the art of living, and throughout the first part, his investigation is constantly directed not by a search for truth but by a search for a way of life that does not rely on metaphysical speculation. His primary interest is how to live, and it is only natural that he should then turn to a practical discussion of the absurd life, as he does in this section.The difference between the absurd man and the rest of mankind is not so much a matter of outward actions but of the inward attitude he

takes toward his actions. The difference, it seems, between Don Juan and an ordinary seducer, is not so much a difference in behavior as a difference in their attitude toward their behavior. One might lay on a run-of-the-mill seducer all the accusations that Camus defends Don Juan against. The significant difference, it would seem, is that for Don Juan there is nothing beyond the seduction. Don Juan does not seduce women in the hope of finding love or of easing his melancholy: he seduces for the joy of seducing. Don Juan is an absurd man in that he acknowledges that his life is meaningless and that his actions have no significance beyond their consequences in this life.

Camus characterizes the absurd man as essentially innocent, a term he probably uses in contrast to the Christian concept of sin. According to Catholic doctrine, we are all born sinners, stamped with the original sin of Adam and Eve. A Christian lives with a constant awareness of sin and guilt, and works to earn forgiveness and entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The Christian life thus focuses on a cosmic struggle between our inherent evil and our capacity for good. The innocence of the absurd man, however, negates any awareness of sin or guilt. A fear of divine judgment or a sense of a cosmic struggle between good and evil does not overshadow his actions and decisions. There are no internal checks to prevent him from doing what he wants. In this sense, the innocence of the absurd man also entails a kind of integrity. He is able to lead a life that is consistent with his interests and desires. He does not need any kind of moral code beyond "what I like is good and what I dislike is bad."In the absence of a moral code, there is nothing to stop people from behaving in a criminal or harmful manner, but Camus does not take this to be much of a problem, even though perhaps he should. His focus is on the inward attitude that the absurd man takes toward his actions, and not on what these actions might be. By demonstrating his concept of the absurd man through a series of examples, he avoids facing the question of how an absurd life might realize itself. Could a serial killer live an absurd life? Isn't it possible to kill just as Don Juan seduces, free from moral qualms and guilt? And if this is so, what reservations might this give us about Camus's philosophy of the absurd? Camus seems to think that an absurd man would be no more harmful than an ordinary person, but he never gives any compelling reasons for why this should be the case.

This ideal of living outside any kind of moral code owes a great deal to ##Nietzsche##, who coined the notion of living "beyond good and evil," of living outside of a moral code. Though Camus differs greatly from Nietzsche in terms of his style, his preoccupations, and his ultimate conclusions, the direction of his thought bears Nietzsche's distinct imprint. Camus's concept of the absurd is quite similar to what Nietzsche characterized as "nihilism," and his absurd man is similar in many ways to Nietzsche's concept of the "free spirit."

The Absurd Man: Drama

Summary

The actor is Camus's second example of a life consistent with his absurdist principles. Humans are drawn to the theatre because of the different possibilities achievable in fiction. The absurd man as actor is not content simply to observe and imagine lives different from his own; he insists on living them. The actor compresses the intensity and variety of a great many lives into the span of his career.Both the life of the actor and the lives of the characters he plays are fleeting. Of all artists, an actor's fame has the shortest life span. Camus is discussing stage actors here, who are not immortalized on film like screen actors: certainly in Camus's day, and even today, it is difficult to record the past performances and successes of stage actors. As a result, their fame and glory is limited to the response of the audience. A novelist can hope to achieve fame after he dies, but an actor knows that his fame is limited to what he enjoys during his career. Similarly, the characters in a play have only three hours to experience the totality of their being.

A great writer's fame might live five hundred years after his death while a great actor's fame will die with him, but an absurd awareness of the immensity of time will negate the significance of posterity. Ten thousand years from now, Camus suggests, no one will know who Goethe (the author) was, and none of his works will survive. There may be some small comfort in the thought that one's name will survive, but in the grand scheme we cannot hope for any kind of immortality or transcendent meaning that will be given to our life posthumously.Actors live free of the illusion that their achievements might be recognized in the future or after their death. They live with the absurd awareness that nothing they do has any significance beyond the act itself. More than other artists, then, they must live for the present.

Actors are also not overly caught up in a private, inner world. Their job is to make the inner states of the characters they portray understandable to others. There is no value in privacy or in self-restraint; actors are always trying to express themselves and to be understood. Actors have only the tools of their body and voice for elucidating inner states. This same body and voice will portray many characters over a career, so the same tools will be used to elucidate many different inner states. Because the actor leaves nothing unexpressed, and because inner states are elucidated by means of the body, the distinction between mind and body, the barrier between inner and outer, is broken down.

The church has naturally opposed acting, because actors place an emphasis on living many lives and living them in the present, whereas the church emphasizes the unity of a single life/soul and the importance of living for the future—for life after death. Actors are interested in the quantity of different experiences, not quality, and

value a long life rather than an eternal life.

Analysis

Camus is no stranger to the theatre. Before the Second World War he split his time between journalism and the avant-garde theatre troupe that he had founded. His first play, Caligula, appeared in 1939, and deals with the theme of the absurd that Camus discusses in this essay.

The idea of playing a role is central to Camus's ideal of the absurd man, so we should not be surprised that he takes the life of the actor as one of his examples. The absurd man is aware that his life is meaningless and that nothing that he does will have any cosmic significance (at least none that he can be sure of). This awareness, coupled with a desire that things should be otherwise, make it impossible for the absurd man to take himself seriously. He cannot commit himself fully to any activity; he must always remain aware that his actions are ultimately futile. For instance, an absurd man cannot lose himself completely in love. He will always remain aware that he and his lover are just lowly animals following instinctive sexual impulses over which they have little control. He cannot take the concept of romance fully seriously, and yet he must behave "as if" he cared in order to sustain any kind of human contact (to some extent he does care, but he also recognizes the ultimate nsignificance of his emotions). The absurd man can be compassionate and loving, but he must also always retain an ironic self- awareness that keeps him from losing himself in affection. Because he must always maintain a higher awareness that prevents him from being too absorbed by any particular perspective, he is to some extent "acting" rather than fully living when he plays out particular emotions.

In this sense, the actor fits the description of the absurd man perfectly. Actors are constantly adopting new roles, playing life to the hilt, and yet remaining aware that this isn't them, that ultimately they are only pretending. They are aware that there is something unreal and faked about all their great passions. Nothing that any character suffers or experiences will have any significance outside of the short three-hour span in which his destiny is played out.

James Wood notes that The Myth of Sisyphus is often weighed down by its own use of metaphor. He asks if Camus ever really manages to describe a way of life that goes beyond the figurative. It seems that, to a large extent, the absurd life is a matter of self-consciously playing a role. Camus wants to convince us that living the absurd life is the only way that we can truly live, but this life often is simply a matter of pretending, of mimicking the lives and passions of people who, by Camus's analysis, are not truly living.We recall that Camus defines the absurd life as being characterized by revolt, freedom, and passion. We can see all three in evidence in

the life of the actor. The contradiction between our desire for unity and clarity on the one hand and the meaninglessness of the universe on the other hand is what defines the absurd, and the struggle against that contradiction defines the revolt of the absurd man. The absurd man wants unity and clarity above all, and will struggle to achieve it even though he knows that it is a doomed enterprise. On one hand, he is aware that each role he plays is as limited and as empty as every other one, but on the other hand, he plays out these various roles in a constant search for meaning and clarity. He wants to live as many lives as possible because he wants to find life, he wants to be able to live free of the irony that tells him he is always only playing a role.

An actor is also aware of his freedom of thought and action. Because he plays many roles throughout his life, his actions are not determined by any particular role that he sees himself as playing. Most of us play only one role—ourselves—through our life, and unconsciously allow our actions to be determined by an attempt to realize the image we create of ourselves. An actor has the freedom of playing many different roles, and is also more aware than most of us are of the way self-image can inform decisions and actions.

The passion of the absurd man is a matter of living in the present and of valuing the intensity of experience. An actor plays out the great passions of hundreds of different lives, and so compresses an enormous wealth of experience into a very short span of time

he Absurd Man: Conquest

Summary

Camus distinguishes sharply between living in the present and pursuing a life of contemplation that aspires to eternal ideals. The latter type includes, but is not limited to, the religious type, which is less concerned with the events of the world and more concerned with putting people in touch with eternity and with God. The conqueror is of the former type, choosing to live exclusively for the world he inhabits. Political concerns are of paramount concern to him, and he engages enthusiastically in political struggle. Paradoxically, he must recognize the futility of his struggle and does not expect to be able to change the world or human nature. The only victory that would ultimately satisfy him would be an eternal victory, one that would change the world forever, and he knows that this kind of transcendence is impossible.The absurd man is drawn to rebellion and conquest because they bring out humanity's fullest potential. People engaged in political revolt are exclusively focused on the needs and dignity of human life and on the relationships that exist between people. They have clearly defined purposes and goals, and this makes them fully aware of themselves and of their capabilities. In rebellion, people cease to be

complacent and ineffectual. They become aware of the enormous impact that they can make on the world. In that sense, the rebel, or conqueror, is attractive not because he overcomes any external opponent but because, in a sense, he overcomes himself in realizing his full potential. Naturally, Camus claims, the church has always opposed such conquerors, because they place earthly concerns ahead of eternal ones.

Camus concludes this part of the book by remarking that the seducer, the actor, and the conqueror are only three examples of the absurd man, and that they are rather extreme examples. Absurdity does not entail a certain style of life, but a certain frame of mind. An office clerk or a politician can also live an absurd life so long as they maintain an awareness of the futility and meaninglessness of all their struggles and remain determined to live consistently and with integrity in the present moment.

Analysis

Though the title of this chapter is "conquest" and Camus refers to this character as a "conqueror," it would seem that he is speaking largely from his own experience as a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War. He seems more concerned with rebellion and resistance than with world conquest. To the absurd man, all struggle is futile and no victory is eternal, but the struggle without hope is what defines his life. Naturally, Camus prefers the lost cause and the struggle of the underdog, where the struggle is more intense.

Though Camus is often classified as an existentialist or discussed alongside other existentialists, he never claimed the title for himself, and he distances himself (as we have seen) from many of the conclusions of existentialism. Even his preoccupations and interests differ significantly from existentialist thought. As we mentioned briefly in the section on Don Juanism, Camus's primary influence is unmistakably Nietzsche. In this chapter, that influence can easily be seen. Camus even borrows some terminology from Nietzsche. The concept of "self-overcoming" is very important to Nietzsche, and a brief overview of how Nietzsche uses it may clarify where Camus is coming from here.Nietzsche sees within every human being the potential either to serve or to be served, to rule or to obey. People are at once (to use Nietzsche's language) creatures and creators. Nietzsche asserts that the primary force that drives us is what he calls a "will to power"—that is, a will to assert our own independence and to impose our will upon others. On a superficial level, this will to power manifests itself as a brutish desire to subjugate and dominate others. Such a brute person would want only to rule and be served. A more subtle and refined person might direct his will to power toward himself, so that he tries to master himself rather than other people. He learns to

overcome his animal instincts and to act and think independently. In such a case he is both ruler and ruled, creator and creature. Nietzsche calls this process of deepening and enriching one's inner life "self-overcoming."Not coincidentally, Camus says the importance of the rebel's struggle is not that he overcomes others but that he overcomes himself. Ultimately, victory is as futile to the conqueror as posthumous fame is to the actor. For both, the only kind of achievement that would matter to them would be some sort of transcendental achievement, something that would give their life and their work some kind of meaning according to some set standard. However, both recognize the absurdity of their position, and recognize that there is no meaning or transcendence to be found in this life. Any lesser success will make no difference in the grand scheme of things. The rebel with an absurd awareness knows that a victory against his oppressors will not give life meaning, and so the success or failure of his struggle is ultimately unimportant beyond the present. Nonetheless, the struggle itself focuses his energies in such a way that he becomes more creative and more engaged with the world around him. Though his struggle may not overcome the political forces he opposes, it will teach him to overcome himself, so to speak, and to face the absurdity and the intensity of life head on.While Camus's own life can be read into the examples of seducer and actor, his discussion of the conqueror is markedly autobiographical. He wrote The Myth of Sisyphus while working for the French Resistance during the Second World War. We see in his discussion of the conqueror the portrait of a man who does not so much choose to engage in political struggle as one who has the struggle thrown upon him. There is no sense of moral outrage at his oppressors, just a sense that their oppression has made rebellion the only satisfactory mode of life. Under the Nazi occupation, which severely limited the freedoms of the French people—freedom of expression in particular—resistance became the only possible outlet for self-expression and self-realization.

In closing, let us quickly link the conqueror with Camus's three characteristics of the absurd man: revolt, freedom, and passion. The conqueror is in a state of revolt in a very obvious and literal sense. But not only does he object to the political forces he struggles against; he also revolts against the fact (which he cannot deny) that his struggle will make no difference in the grand scheme of things. His freedom is linked on a very literal level to his political struggle. In rebelling, he is refusing to accept the laws and orders imposed on him by others, and fights for his freedom to act and think as he chooses. As Camus remarks, the absurd man's struggle focuses his energies on the present moment, on himself, and on the people around him. This sense of immediacy is precisely what Camus means when he talks about passion

Absurd Creation: Philosophy and Fiction

Summary

In this, the third part of the essay, Camus examines artistic creation— fiction writing in particular—as the epitome of the absurd life.he absurd man, as we have seen, lives out a kind of mime. Aware that his actions are absurd and meaningless, he cannot take them fully seriously. Rather than live fully caught up in his actions and interactions, he sees himself playing out a kind of mime in which he acts out his life.

If the absurd life is played out as a mime, the act of creation is the greatest mime of all. An artist invents an entire world that mimics our own. The absurd man does not hope to explain life, but only to describe it: art reflects different aspects of, or perspectives on, life but cannot add anything to it. There is no meaning or transcendence to be found in art, as in life itself, but the creative act of asserting one's own perspective on the world epitomizes the revolt, freedom, and passion of the absurd man.

Both our impulse to think and our impulse to create arise from the anxiety we feel when we face the fundamental contradiction of the absurdity of our lives. As we saw in part one, thinkers generally try to evade this contradiction by leaping into faith or hope. Camus asks if the same is true for creation: do people inevitably try to use art to escape from the absurd? Or can there exist absurd art?Camus suggests that efforts to draw some distinction between art and philosophy are generally vague or incorrect, and he attacks in particular the assertion that, while a philosopher works from within his system, an artist creates from without. Both artist and philosopher work to forge their particular perspective on the world, and must inhabit that perspective in order to be creative.

Absurd art must be content to describe and not to explain: it does not try to signify anything greater, to point to some sort of meaning or consolation in life. Just as the absurd man cannot hope for transcendence, absurd art cannot promise transcendence. Bad art will weigh itself down in pretensions by trying to give a universal picture of the way things are. Good art accepts that it can only portray a certain perspective, a certain piece of experience, and leaves everything universal or general at an implicit level. A good artist is also good at living: he is alert to the vivid nature of experience and can share it eloquently.he visual arts and music affect us on an experiential level, so it is not difficult for them to achieve the absurd ideal of describing without explaining. Language, however, is primed and suited to explain, and Camus wonders how absurd fiction might be possible. Like a philosopher, a good writer creates an entire world that he also inhabits. However, he communicates by means of images rather than reason because he prefers lucid exposition to any attempt to explain matters. In order to remain true, however, the absurd writer must

always remain aware of the futility of his work: it will never bring clarity or transcendence to him or to others.

Analysis

A person leading an ordinary life, unaware of the absurd, is driven by hopes and ambitions. There is a sense that there are things in life that are 'worth doing.' Camus often clumsily associates the commonly accepted idea that there are things in life worth doing with the idea that life must be meaningful. This association is a bit suspect, but the initial assertion, that most people assume life is worth living, is sound. The absurd man, by contrast, lives with the awareness that nothing he does really matters.

The absurd man essentially lives free of illusions. He can see that all our deeds, passions, and thoughts are ultimately insignificant. At the same time, he has no other option but to continue living. He can see other people unconsciously playing out their roles and he chooses to play along. Because he is aware of the absurdity of existence, he is aware that he is acting out a role, while the ordinary man remains blissfully unaware.

Camus would most likely approve of Shakespeare's line that "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Camus would distinguish the absurd man from the ordinary man by saying that the absurd man is aware that he is merely an actor, while the ordinary man is deceived into thinking that he is something more.

Ever since (and even before) Aristotle, the idea that art imitates life has been in common usage. The Greeks used the word mimesis to describe the kind of imitation art plays on life, which is the source of the English word "mime." Camus almost certainly has the Greek concept in mind when he speaks about the absurd man as living out a mime, and about the creative act being the greatest mime of all.Art is mimetic because it imitates real life. Camus is suggesting that life is also mimetic, that we are ultimately just actors on a stage, unconsciously playing out our roles. But what is the "real life" that this life imitates? Camus suggests that we live under the illusion that life has a meaning and that the human soul is eternal. We play out our roles, imitating a life that does indeed have meaning. The absurd man behaves similarly, but remains aware that he is only pretending. It seems then, that the heightened awareness of the absurd man gets him no further than an awareness that his life is just an act.

In his discussion of absurd art, Camus recommends that writers confine themselves to description, and not attempt to explain the world. Explanation is an attempt to impose some order on experience, to make sense of the world, and thus tries to go beyond a mere acceptance and awareness of the unreasonableness of the universe. Rather than try to explain why the world is the way it is, an absurd artist should just give as full a description of the world as he sees it.

Camus says that artists should use images to fill out their worldview. His own fiction is full of rich imagery: his most famous novels are unforgettably set in the hot, dry landscape of Algeria. The Myth of Sisyphus is also rich in images. Camus is not saying that art should faithfully copy the world as it is, but rather that artists should use their art to reflect their unique perspective on the world. Any attempt to say "this is life" is bound to fail, and artists should rest content to say "this is life as I see it."It would seem that Camus is violating his own principles in the very essay in which he sets them out. His style is exactly what he recommends for fiction, but The Myth of Sisyphus is not fiction. Moreover, though it conveys thoughts in an artistic way, The Myth of Sisyphus is also an attempt at explanation, at saying, "this is life." A possible line of defense might suggest that The Myth of Sisyphus is indeed a violation of the principles it sets out, but that it is a necessary violation. If Camus were not to attempt to explain his absurd philosophy we would not recognize that such an explanation generally is misguided. Wittgenstein follows a similar line of reasoning in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, where, at the end, he asserts that his propositions are nonsense, but that only by reading these propositions can we come to recognize them as nonsense and "see the world aright." Unlike Wittgenstein, however, Camus does not seem aware that his work might contradict itself in this way, and makes no effort to extract himself from this difficulty.