What is "The Absurd"?

Imagine this.

You had a bad day at work. Not just a bad day, but it was a grueling and painful series of unfortunate circumstances. As the hands of the clock moved forward you watched as your idea of a "good day" seemed more and more like a distant star. By the end of the day, you have reached a point of total existential despair. Filled to the brim with feelings of inadequacy and self loathing, all you want to do is to go home and talk to your significant other about your troubles. You want to be comforted and validated by him or her. You want them to love you and tell you that its going to be okay. Instead, to your unpleasant surprise, you find that the one person who you hoped would listen and care for you turns a cold shoulder. Your spouse ignores you completely, not even acknowledging your entire existence. As you try to spill out your troubles and concerns, there is an eerie silence and apathy from the one source where you want there to be some.

This is a metaphor for the absurd in a philosophical aspect.

Camus

In order for one to fully understand the depth of a philosophy, he must first know the philosopher behind the ideas. Albert Camus is considered to be the author of Absurdist thinking. (However there are traces that go back to Kierkegaard and even Saint Augustine.) Camus never considered himself a philosopher. First and foremost, he was a writer and from his many literary triumphs his philosophy sprung. Within his many writings, he brings forth the ideas of "The Absurd." and "Revolt." (Today we will focus more on the "Absurd.")

Though he was baptized, raised, and educated as a Catholic and invariably respectful towards the Church, Camus seems to have been a natural-born pagan who showed almost no instinct whatsoever for belief in the supernatural. In his younger years, he was seen sun-worshipper and nature lover than boy of religious zeal. On the other hand, there is no denying that Christian literature and philosophy served as an important influence on his early thought and intellectual development. As a young high school student, Camus studied the Bible, read and savored the Spanish mystics St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and was introduced to the thought of St. Augustine St. Augustine would later serve as the subject of his baccalaureate dissertation and become—as a fellow North African writer, quasi-existentialist, and conscientious observer-critic of his own life—an important lifelong influence.

In college Camus absorbed Kierkegaard, who, after Augustine, was probably the single greatest Christian influence on his thought. He also studied Schopenhauer and Nietzsche—undoubtedly the two writers who did the most to set him on his own path of defiant pessimism and atheism. Other notable influences include not only the major modern philosophers from the academic curriculum—from Descartes and Spinoza to Bergson—but also, and just as importantly, philosophical writers like Stendhal, Melville, Dostoyevsky, and Kafka.

While he has been labeled as an existentialist, he wished to create his own philosophy.

"The absurd is not in man nor in the world,” Camus explains, “but in their presence together…it is the only bond uniting them.”

What does this mean? In a sense, we are fundamentally at odds with an indifferent universe. (or God) As humans, we are deeply tied to our search for meaning. In some aspects, it is our search for meaning that makes us human. According to Camus, it is the act of living that shows just how tethered we are to the notion of meaning. Searching for meaning in the universe is like looking for a nonexistent black cat in a dark room.

What then?

There are three philosophical responses to the absurd according to Camus.

There is another response which I believe he completely glossed over in his works and that is hedonism.

Physical Suicide

The first answer is the most simple. It is the literal act of killing oneself. In fact, it is the fact that people kill thenselves that prove that life has no meaning. (Camus calls it the "One philosophical problem.) If there was intrinsic meaning, a loving God, or comfort in the Universe, then people would have no trouble maintaining and continuing their life. In a meaningless and despairing world, it is only natural that one would not continue the game. Life in this sense, is like playing a board game that has no winner, no looser, no value ad no joy. It is the monotonous continuation of a dull series of moves that provide no significance to the game. Kafka illustrates this well throughout his books. The idea of bureaucracy that is prevalent is a metaphor to the draining uselessness of living. Meaningless files and reports. Dull and long briefs that will never be read. This is life. Why then would one continue to play the game? he wouldn't. Thus, suicide is no less than a tipping of the king in a game that you will never win. In essence this is the the True Nihilist response. (I have said before that being a True Nihilist is impossible but I will go through that another time.)

Philosophical Suicide

In they eyes of Camus, there is a suicide worse than the physical. To live a lie is worse than death in the truth. To create meaning where there is none is indeed a lie according to Camus. In this sense, he rejects traditional existentialism and religion. Religion is mankind giving into his want for meaning in a meaningless world. This was the error of Kierkegaard. To find meaning where there is none is nothing more than slavery to a lie. In the end, all of our efforts to fill the void where the void is infinite is nothing more than futile and irrational.

Hedonism

There is an area where the suicide of the philosophical and the suicide of the physical overlap. This is Hedonism. The philosophy that says "Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die." I would call this "Philosophical Anarchy." The lack of meaning, in the eyes of the hedonist means that therefore there is a lack of values, and thus the only response is Carpe Diem to the extreme. Thus their construction of meaning is to live life to the fullest. Commit all the sins, drink all the beer and get laid by hot women. (Or men) Thus there is the philosophical suicide that contracts a false meaning and a physical suicide that is the pursuit of an unhealthy lifestyle that kills you over time.

Embracing the Absurd

It is through rebellion that we can find freedom. This is at the heart of all of Camus's writings and his philosophy. Instead of living a lie where a false meaning is constructed, we can instead recognize the fact that there is no meaning but still persist. It is ultimately not a surrender (suicide) but instead a rebellion. This answer is the most rational. We don't live a lie nor does the truth kill us. We simply accept it and move on. The question is then "How do we rebel?" According to Camus, it is through carrying on... persistence and perseverance in a universe that is indifferent. In this sense, Camus is an existentialist at heart since there is "meaning." Our "meaning" in life is to rebel from the fact that there is none. Our rebellion is then the only form of philosophical suicide that isn't irrational. In fact, it isn't philosophical suicide at all. It is philosophical life. The life that is rational enough to recognize the lack of empathy from an indifferent universe but strong enough to persist despite it. This is the challenge.