![]() ![]() He views it as a ‘not legitimate’ choice, a side step away from dealing with the paradox presented by an absurd world (human striving for meaning in a meaningless world) without man, the absurd cannot exist. Camus would extend the same argument to suicide. Camus however would reject this conclusion, feeling it to be a contradiction of the absurd, and hence not a reconciliation – ‘philosophical suicide’. The question that Camus addresses is how can we find meaning in a meaningless world? Philosophers before him had sought this meaning from a higher source, a greater power, from God. Surely everything we do is absurd, and once resigned (or enlightened) to this decision examples of this absurdity can be seen everywhere. His thesis is that given that life will, without exception, end, what is the point? Man searches for reason, meaning and order, only to march irreconcilably towards his own demise. These are the opening lines of his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus, where he seeks to further the themes of ‘the absurd’ explored in the classic The Outsider. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. ![]() ![]() An unused train ticket for the same journey was found in his coat pocket having changed his travel plans last minute.Ĭamus did not shy away from tackling the big issues of life head on: ‘There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. He went on to establish himself in the Parisian intellectual left-bank scene before dying in a car crash in 1960. He was French-Algerian and spent his early years in North Africa, later moving to France and playing an active role in the French Resistance during the Second World War. Albert Camus (1913–1960), aside his onetime great ally Sartre, was an important post-war French existential philosopher, although he later rejected that label. ![]()
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