One possible response to the absurd is suicide Camus believes that answering whether acknowledgement of the absurdity of life necessitates suicide is a question that precedes all others. All of these, for him, fall short-they seek to deny the absurd, to falsely characterize it, or ignore it all together. Camus’ project, once this fact is established, is to figure out if there is a way of embracing-rather than suppressing-the absurd.īefore Camus offers his idea of the best responses, he strives to show the other most common strategies for “eluding” the absurd. But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.” The Myth of Sisyphus, then, argues that absurdism is a fact of life. That is, people live their lives habitually and use the noise of day-to-day existence to drown out the difficult question of why they live in the first place: “Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm-this path is easily followed most of the time. Camus debates various responses to the “absurd” before deciding that all are inadequate and that, ultimately, the only response is to accept meaninglessness as part of life and to simply live “as much” as possible.Ĭamus believes that the absurd is often suppressed by habit. He characterizes this as “the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation and the uselessness of suffering.” For Camus, figuring out whether it’s possible to live with full knowledge of life’s absence of meaning is the most important philosophical question of all (or if suicide is the only viable option). Camus specifically defines absurdism as the confrontation between two key elements: on the one hand, there is humankind’s “wild longing for clarity,” meaning, and “order.” On the other hand, people find nothing in the world that gives evidence of answering this search for meaning-life’s biggest questions are answered only by the “unreasonable silence of the world.” From the beginning of the book, Camus suggests that the fact of death robs life of meaning. Absurdism is often mischaracterized as solely the idea that life is inherently meaningless-and while that is undoubtedly an important aspect of absurdism, it isn’t the whole story.
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