Abstract

Albert Camus’ views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as Absurdism, he defines the Absurd “as the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any meaning in a purposeless, meaningless, and irrational universe, with the ‘unreasonable silence’ of the universe in response.” However, this world in itself is not absurd, what is absurd is our relationship with the universe, which is irrational. Camus is considered to be an existentialist, even though he firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime. He is properly categorised as an atheist existentialist. However, he would also disagree with this label. In his notebooks, he presents the following contradictory statement: “I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.” This reflects the notion of the Absurd. The search of the possibility of the existence of God is humanly impossible, but this also entails that the proof that God does not exist is impossible too. He writes in The Myth of Sisyphus: “In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.” The Myth of Sisyphus is a fierce expression of the Absurd. It starts off with a powerful and thought-provoking statement: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”