Absurdism

Overview

The absurd is the clash between the human search for inherent meaning and a universe that stays silent. The task is to live in that clash without pretending it resolved.

Camus names the absurd as a clash, not as a property of rocks. A human being keeps asking the world for a meaning that would answer them. The world, as he describes it, does not answer. The absurd is the collision of those two facts. Take away the asking, or invent an answer the world did not give, and the absurd goes quiet. Neither of those is his recommendation.

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Where it answers

Key terms

The absurd

The clash between our demand for meaning and a world that gives no answer.

Revolt

Camus’s response: living fully and with open eyes, without denying the absurd.

Philosophical suicide

Camus’s name for escaping the absurd through a leap into hope or faith.

Sisyphus

The man condemned to roll a rock uphill forever, whom Camus says we must imagine happy.

In their words