Sisyphus rock
We just do not, and according to Camus, we cannot understand what we want to understand.Ĭamus’s doctrine of the absurd then has both metaphysical and epistemological aspects. We also want to understand why bad things happen to good people, why good things happen to bad people, why we’re here, where we’re going, and what it all means.Ĭoncerning how things actually are, however, evil goes unpunished, good deeds often are not rewarded, good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people, and we don’t understand any of it. This though is not what Camus means by “absurd.” For Camus, the absurd originates from a combination of two things: the way we want the world to be and the way the world actually is.Ībout how we want the world to be, it just seems to be a part of human nature that we have a sense of justice and fairness, and so we want the world to be just and fair: we want evil punished and virtue rewarded. There are many things we might naturally call absurd: a rude joke, an outrageous statement, or the price of a pair of designer jeans. This essay will outline the origin and consequences of Camus’s notion of the absurd from his 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus. It might seem flippant to remark that the essential question in philosophy is “Should I kill myself?” But the question of suicide rests on what Camus considered the essential human problem: the sense in which our lives are entirely absurd. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” – Albert Camus
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“ There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Category: Phenomenology and Existentialism, Ethics