The Chad Philosopher

In the philosophy world, the questions we often encounter are all the whys and whats. Why are we born? What is the purpose of life? Why do we suffer? What is the point of this suffering? One question leads to another and that’s how we get sucked into the never-terminating cycle of the search for meaning in this seemingly meaningless and vast universe.

‘At any street corner, the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.’

Albert Camus was a French-Algerian philosopher, author, and journalist born in 1913, Algeria. Camus studied philosophy at the University of Algiers and later went on to become a journalist. His family was poor so he didn’t have many books to read, growing up. He loved football in university and attributed his morality and knowledge about the obligation to this game. He received the Nobel prize in literature in 1957and at 44 years old he was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel prize. Some of his works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel. Through his work, Camus tried to bring out the absurdness of life. He is considered to be an existentialist even though he firmly rejected the term throughout his life. Camus, inspired by the philosophers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, gave rise to the philosophy of Absurdism.

In 1942, Camus published his first novel, The Stranger. It is a story about a man named Meursault and how even though he wants to live but is condemned to die. Camus brought about the absurdness of life and the acceptance of it in this novel, which is a common theme in all of his later works.

Man’s search for reason and meaning and order in this chaotic and irrational universe leads to despair. Camus brought out the fact that this very relationship, between man and the universe, was an absurd one. One seeks order and the other is infinitely volatile.

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

― Albert Camus

Although these ideas may sound grim and hopeless, Camus strictly rejected nihilistic thinking. To become aware of and accepting the absurdity of life is to transcend it. He stressed on the acceptance of this absurdity thereby making it our own and then eventually overcoming it.

The Myth of Sisyphus is a famous philosophical essay by Camus. He uses the old Greek story as a metaphor and draws fascinating parallelism through it. He starts this essay by stating, ‘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.’

Sisyphus was the founder and king of Ephyra. He was punished by the Greek gods for cheating death twice by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down every time it neared the top, repeating this action for eternity. He led a life of pain and anguish and worked hard only to have his efforts be completely futile in the end.

This parallels our everyday lives. Working a 9 to 5, doing the same things every day, even the holidays and vacations become repetitive if analysed in the end. Though, this repetition does not make our life absurd. It is the consciousness of our Sisyphean condemnation and our efforts to avoid the traps of philosophical suicide.

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Albert Camus’s philosophy ultimately boils down to a simple fact- Accept the Absurdity. He coined the term, The Absurd Man, a hero who lives his life without committing philosophical suicide. Religion or escapism to the world of entertainment leads to philosophical suicide, according to Camus. He instead preached to honestly confront all of life’s uncertain nature, to confront the absurd. Becoming conscious of the human experience and the interesting things within this absurdity and creating things that are personally meaningful to us. Life’s meaninglessness means that all the mistakes that we’ve made don’t really matter and this is how one gets to enjoy existence.

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me, there lay an invincible summer."

Camus’s philosophy, his life, and his works are an inspiration to many. He got to live the absurd and bring about the revolt, but he was killed before what he predicted would be the love and happiness part of his life.

Through his, work Camus teaches us that life has an inherent worth even if it has no inherent meaning, and hence it is worth living. I’ll end this article now, by yet again quoting Camus,

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that our very existence is an act of rebellion.”

Circa June 2021