Outline your interpretation of Camus' views on absurdity. Do you agree with him?

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PHL31 – Values and the Meaning of Life

2nd ESSAY

Michelle Quee

OLA Student Number:  72854

Question:  Outline your interpretation of Camus’ views on absurdity.  Do you agree with him?


 

Albert Camus claims that human existence is absurd and that life has no meaning.  This essay explores Camus’ notion of absurdity in ‘The Absurdity of Human Existence’.  The inevitability of death, combined with contradictions between the body, the mind and the world have Camus reflecting on whether suicide is a solution to the absurd life.  While analysing Camus’ views I discuss how they fit with my subjective interpretation of life’s meaning.  Although life has no objective meaning I aim to show this does not mean that life is not worthwhile, because subjective meaning can still be found. 

Philosophically, absurd is defined as “contrary to reason or beyond the limits of rationality; paradoxical, nonsensical, or meaningless”.   Camus however sees absurdity as more than life and actions being meaningless, but also as a relationship between a meaningless world and the human desire for unity outside oneself, which the world cannot provide. Absurdity, in the sense that Camus refers to it, is “an inescapable  of any  to live in the face of an indifferent . The human tendency to  most passionately what we can never have is absurd in this sense”.  Or, according to Camus, “this divorce between man and his life … is properly the feeling of absurdity”. 

Absurdity for Camus is not meaninglessness conceived of as loss of value, because during lucid states we are aware no values exist.  Lucidity is a state of self-awareness and alertness, bringing simple certainty to knowledge.  It is a knowing about what we are feeling.  Life’s meaninglessness therefore arises because we become conscious that whatever values we held, are in fact false and were never values at all.  

While Camus’ sees values as non-existent I do not agree.  Intrinsic values can be tied to an individual, and life need not be meaningless when we incorporate our values with our actions in the world.  It is the incorporation of our values into everyday actions and interactions with the world, which give life meaning.  Interestingly, Camus later claims in The Myth of Sisyphus that “revolt gives life its value” which seems a contradiction.  He first rejects any objective reality of values and then argues for revolt as a certain value.

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Camus claims the absurd is primarily ““the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart”.  The longing human heart confronts an unreasonable and silent world making life absurd.  Absurdity comes from feelings which arise when we try to rationalise an irrational world.  We might try to accept that no rational answer is possible, however we are not satisfied with this, yearning for it anyway because the human condition desires rational explanation and clarity.  Absurdity therefore exists as a relation between humans and the world, expressed by Camus when he says, ...

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