The meaning of life

The meaning of life

According to absurdism, humans historically attempt to find meaning in their lives. Traditionally, this search follows one of two paths: either concluding that life is meaningless, and that what we have is the here-and-now, or by filling the void with a purpose set forth by a higher power - often a belief in God, or adherence to some religion or abstract, irrational concept.

Elusion

Camus perceives filling the void with some invented belief or meaning as a mere "act of eluding"—that is, avoiding or escaping rather than acknowledging and embracing the Absurd. To Camus, elusion is a fundamental flaw in religion, existentialism, and various other schools of thought. If the individual eludes the Absurd, then he or she can never confront it.

God

Even with a spiritual power as the answer to meaning, another question arises: What is the purpose of God? Kierkegaard believed that there is no human-comprehensible purpose of God, making faith in God absurd itself. Camus on the other hand states that to believe in God is to "deny one of the terms of the contradiction" between humanity and the universe (and therefore not absurd), but is what he calls "philosophical suicide". Camus (as well as Kierkegaard), though, suggests that while absurdity does not lead to belief in God, neither does it lead to the denial of God. Camus notes, "I did not say 'excludes God', which would still amount to asserting".^[14]

Suicide

For some, suicide is a solution when confronted with the futility of living a life devoid of all purpose, as it is only a means to quicken the resolution of one's ultimate fate. For Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, suicide is not a worthwhile solution, because if life is veritably absurd, it is therefore even more absurd to counteract it; instead, we should engage in living, and reconcile the fact that we live in a world without purpose. Suicide, according to Camus, is merely another way of avoiding the Absurd, rather than continuing to live in spite of it.

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Personal meaning

For Camus, the beauty which people encounter in life makes it worth living. People may create meaning in their own lives, which may not be the objective meaning of life (if there is one), but can still provide something for which to strive. However, he insisted that one must always maintain an ironic distance between this invented meaning and the knowledge of the absurd, lest the fictitious meaning take the place of the absurd.

[edit]Freedom

Freedom cannot be achieved beyond what the absurdity of existence permits; however, the closest one can come to being absolutely free is through acceptance of the Absurd. Camus introduced the idea of "acceptance without resignation" as a way of dealing with the recognition of absurdity, asking whether or not man can "live without appeal", while defining a "conscious revolt" against the avoidance of absurdity of the world. In a world devoid of higher meaning or judicial afterlife, the human being becomes as close to absolutely free as is humanly possible. It is through this freedom that man can act either as a mystic (through appeal to some supernatural force) or an absurd hero (through a revolt against such hope).

Hope

The rejection of hope, in absurdism, denotes the refusal to believe in anything more than what this absurd life provides. Henceforth, the absurd hero's refusal to hope becomes his or her singular ability to live in the present with passion. Hope, Camus emphasizes, however, has nothing to do with despair (meaning that the two terms are not antonymous). One can still live fully while rejecting hope, and, in fact, can only do so without hope. Hope is perceived by the absurdist as another fraudulent method of evading the Absurd, and by not having hope, one will be motivated to live every fleeting moment to the fullest.

[edit]Integrity

The absurdist is not guided by morality, but rather, by his or her own integrity. The absurdist is, in fact, amoral (though not necessarily immoral). Morality implies an unwavering sense of definite right and wrong at all times, while integrity implies honesty with the self and consistency in the motivations of one's actions and decisions.