Asking “Why” with Albert Camus // Sofya

It is not easy to commit suicide. One clings to life even if it is unbearable. One wants to preserve oneself, and can only commit suicide if one is already dead. When one is no longer oneself, one cannot continue living, one must jump out of oneself transforming into something else—or die. Life can never kill itself. Only one life can kill the other.

In his first essay in The Myth of Sisyphus (*), Albert Camus discusses a situation in which someone commits suicide due to the absurdity or meaningless of life. One does not decide to suicide—it is never a matter of decision: the no-longer-oneself is driven, as a passionate lover searches for her/his beloved, to the biological end of one’s condition. However, there are some thoughts in oneself anterior to the action. One may decide that an unreasonable life is not worthy of effort.

Once someone thinks that life has no meaning s/he either falls in despair, or else finds hope in God or in eternal ideas and principles. But, Camus writes, these are not the two only options. 

By realising the absurdity of life, its unreasonable nature, one can open oneself to its immense beauty. The “absurd life” (as Camus names it) teaches us how to live in the present—in the rain falling, the water sliding down one’s neck, one’s naked feet touching the grass… Finally, unconstrained by the future, by any transcendent laws or morals one starts living according to the demands of life. In other words, immanence is possible when the future is not a shadow of the present. 

Asking “why” we do what we do is essential: 

the stage-sets collapse. Rising, tram, four hours in the office or factory, meal, tram, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement. (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 11-12)

One should not be able to do anything without knowing “why.” But the answer to the question “why,” if one wants to go on, must be existential, must be the result of an in-depth reflection on life: “Why am I alive? What is to be alive?” And the response to the latter question is the only possible response to the former.

When one finally gets rid of one’s monotheist beliefs about the soul and its immortal life, one recognises death for the first time. After all, death is included in the realm of life in the form of a new shadow of the present. What can one do against the background of this abyss or nothingness?

Mere “anxiety,” as Heidegger says, is at the source of everything. (p. 12)

What is this “anxiety”? It is the disquieting awakening to life and thought, an awakening that brings unity with life, which has no reason but itself (**). Does a monotheist who believes in the soul and in the afterlife experience life? I doubt it. The shadow of the future and of God always darkens it. One only experiences life when one feels the shadow of death. Does a monotheist ever think life? I doubt it. The shadow of the future and of God always rejects this life. One thinks life only when one is able to be crushed under the overwhelming power of life, of the now, and to feel the shadow of death.

Suicide accepts the absurd—the idea that life is not worth living. A suicide due to thoughts on life’s meaningless is the suicide of a nihilist—someone who has lost her/his belief in God and has not found any reason in life. A suicide of such nature is an expression of death which has broken the chains of its prison—death is no longer a shadow, or it is a shadow devouring its figure.

However, if one revolts, one affirms life:

[t]he absurd. . . .escapes suicide to the extent that it is simultaneously awareness and rejection of death…. The contrary of suicide, in fact, is the man condemned to death. . . . One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. . . . revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it. (pp. 38-41)

Revolt is the maintenance of the awareness of life, “the awareness of the whole of experience.” Revolt is a genuine form of permanent revolution—one’s day-to-day revolt against death. And the unity attained with life in its absurdity (what Camus calls the “absurd life”) amounts to its affirmation: I am life! I am! I become! O, traverse me with your powers! I want to live! An “absurd man” (I am using Camus’ own expression) is aware of death and therefore passionately affirms life. And with the affirmation comes the only possible freedom, the freedom of thought and action:

that unbelievable disinterestedness with regard to everything except for the pure flame of life—it is clear that death and the absurd are here the principles of the only reasonable freedom: that which a human heart can experience and live. (p. 44, my emphasis)

The aforementioned question “why,” if correctly answered, leads one to experience life in “its true colours.” And then, “what counts is not the best living but the most living” (p. 45), for life cannot be judged. Moreover, it is not about the quantity of experiences one may have, but about the intensity of the exploration of one’s own possibilities. What are the limits of my life’s power? If I am the expression of life—this life being the only thing real—what am I in my utmost possibility? Or better, how can I affirm life to the most? What am I when I affirm the present, free from the shadow of the future but touched by the shadow of death? 

If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life would have a meaning or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world. (p. 39, my emphasis)

If suddenly one finds the world unreasonable and absurd, one should undergo a painful process of fusion, as people belong in this world, as well. And belonging in this world means passionately living it. 

(*) Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus. London & New York: Penguin, 2000.

(**) Only moderns can awake in this sense, as extra-modern indigenous peoples are not turned away from life.